Gautamī Mṛtyu Kāla Saṃvāda

At the start of the Anuśāsana Parva of the Mahābhārata, Yudhishṭhira tells Bhīshma that the teachings on śānti (peace) he has heard have not quieted his heart. Bhīshma answers with an old dialogue. A brāhmaṇa woman named Gautamī lost her son to a snake bite. A hunter caught the serpent, and the serpent, Mṛtyu and finally Kāla were each called in turn to answer for the boy’s death. Each of them, by careful reasoning, is shown not to be the true doer.

Yudhishṭhira’s grief is not quieted

The Anuśāsana Parva opens right after the Śānti Parva, which taught many ways to cross over śoka (grief). Yudhishṭhira tells Bhīshma that he has heard these fine teachings on śānti, but no śānti has come in his own heart. He looks at Bhīshma lying on the bed of arrows, his body torn by wounds that Arjuna, Śikhaṇḍī and the others gave for Yudhishṭhira’s own sake. Grief fills him again. He grieves not only for Bhīshma’s pain but for the countless kings and kinsmen who died in the war because of him.

He even says that Duryodhana’s death was in a way a mercy to Duryodhana, since the dead prince at least does not see Bhīshma’s present pain.

Yudhishṭhira asks Bhīshma to teach him the dharma that will still this grief. It is born of kartṛtvābhimāna, the feeling that he himself is the doer of the deaths of his kinsmen. He wants this so that the pāpa (sin) of bandhu-vadha (the killing of kinsmen) will not follow him even into the next birth.

Bhīshma’s answer: who is the true doer

Bhīshma replies that Yudhishṭhira, like all beings, is always paratantra, depending on kāla (time), īśvara and adṛshṭa (destiny). The true cause of any action, good or bad, is a very subtle matter, beyond the reach of the senses. To show this, Bhīshma tells the old saṃvāda (dialogue) between Mṛtyu and Gautamī, which also involves Kāla, the hunter Arjunaka and a serpent (vyāla).

The death of Gautamī’s son

In ancient times there lived an aged brāhmaṇa woman named Gautamī, calm and in control of herself. One day she found her son dead, his life taken by a snake’s bite. A hunter named Arjunaka could not bear it. He caught the serpent in a snare of sinew (pāśa) and brought it before Gautamī. He said this was the very one that had killed her son, and asked whether it should be burned or cut into pieces. A serpent laden with pāpa that has killed a child, he said, does not deserve to live long.

Gautamī refuses

Gautamī tells Arjunaka to let the serpent go at once, for he does not yet have true jñāna (knowledge). What is meant to happen, she says, no one can stop. To kill the serpent in ignorance only takes a new load of pāpa on oneself. Those who walk in dharma cross the ocean of saṃsāra lightly, like a boat floating on water. Those who load themselves with pāpa sink like weapons thrown into water. She asks what good could come from killing the serpent. Her son will not come back to life because of it. And she who orders the death of a living creature will gain no puṇya (merit), only a fall into endless naraka (hell).

Arjunaka presses his case. The wise say that only those who are themselves free from suffering are fit to advise patience, and a mother struck by grief is under no duty to forgive. He decides to kill “this vile serpent” in any case.

Gautamī answers that brāhmaṇas do not keep krodha (anger), and she begs for the serpent’s release out of mṛduta (gentleness).

Arjunaka argues that killing the guilty brings puṇya, just as a yajamāna‘s (the sponsor’s) yajña with the offering of an animal takes both to svarga. The serpent has done great harm and deserves death. Its death, he says, is the only true and lasting lābha (gain) in this matter.

Gautamī replies that killing an enemy who is already caught and harmless gives no gain at all, and she can see no lasting benefit in killing this serpent.

Arjunaka answers that many other people must be protected from the serpent’s future bites, and that dharma requires giving up the guilty to save the many.

Gautamī holds firm. Her son will not live again even if the serpent dies. She sees no aucitya (fitness) in the killing, and she orders Arjunaka to let the serpent go.

Arjunaka then points to what the devas did. Indra killed Vṛtra to secure his throne, and Bhagavān Śiva destroyed Daksha’s yajña to claim his share. He urges Gautamī to follow the ācāra (conduct) of the devas and kill the serpent without more doubt.

The serpent speaks

Though pressed again and again, Gautamī does not decide to kill the bound serpent (bhujaga). At last the serpent, tied in the snare, gathers its breath and courage and speaks in a human voice for the first time.

It tells Arjunaka that the fault is not its own. It was wholly parādhīna (under another’s control). Mṛtyu made it powerless and drove it to the deed. The pāpa of a killing belongs to the one who shoots the arrow, not to the arrow. It was Mṛtyu’s command that made it bite the boy. If there is pāpa here, it belongs to Mṛtyu and not to the serpent.

Arjunaka rejects this. The instrument that acts, he says, is as much a cause of death as the one who uses it, like the rod and the wheel that are causes in the making of a clay pot. So the serpent, though acting under another’s control, is still guilty. If the serpent’s argument were accepted, that a controlled being has no fault, then thieves and other wrongdoers could never be justly punished by kings, and the whole order of daṇḍa (punishment) and śāstra would mean nothing.

The serpent answers with the picture of a felled tree. Fire made by the rubbing of two branches burns the forest, and no single branch is its “doer”. An axe is only an instrument of the user’s karma. The serpent’s own action was wholly that of an instrument and had no icchā (will) of its own, so it carries no personal dosha (fault). Any dosha spreads across the whole chain of causes and does not fix on one link. The serpent adds that the ṛtvik (priest) who pours the offering in a yajamāna‘s yajña does not receive the phala (fruit) of the yajña. In the same way, having acted only as Mṛtyu’s instrument, it bears none of the resulting pāpa. The true offender, it says, is Mṛtyu, the taker of all prāṇas (life breaths).

Mṛtyu is summoned

At this point Mṛtyu herself, who had driven the serpent to act, comes to the place and speaks. She tells the serpent that she too was driven by Kāla, Bhagavān Kāla in his form as Time, just as the wind drives clouds from place to place. Neither she nor the serpent is the true kāraṇa (cause) of the child’s death. Only Kāla is.

She says that sāttvika, rājasa and tāmasa states of being all arise only through Kāla’s prompting. Everything in the higher worlds and on earth, all moving and unmoving beings, all pravṛtti (action) and nivṛtti (withdrawal) and their fruits, are under Kāla’s rule. Even Sūrya, Candra, Vishṇu, water, wind, Indra, Agni, ākāśa (space), the earth, Mitra, Parjanya, the Vasus, Aditi, the rivers, the oceans, aiśvarya (power) and its lack are all made and again drawn back by Kāla alone. If there is dosha in this matter, Mṛtyu says, that dosha belongs equally to the serpent, since the serpent too acted as Kāla’s instrument.

The serpent replies that it makes no claim about whether Mṛtyu is at fault or free of fault. It says only that Mṛtyu was the one who set it in motion. To decide who in the end bears the dosha is not for the serpent to judge. Its only aim was to clear the charge laid on itself.

Arjunaka is unmoved by this exchange between the serpent and Mṛtyu. He declares Mṛtyu herself a cruel and adharmic tormentor of good people, and he vows to kill her as the true cause of the child’s death.

Mṛtyu answers that neither she nor the serpent should be seen as acting from dvesha (malice). Both are parādhīna, bound to Kāla’s command as an elephant is bound to its mahout’s command, and so they carry no personal dosha.

Arjunaka, still troubled, asks why, if both are equally under Kāla’s control, one should feel harsha (joy) toward a benefactor and krodha toward these two. If all action is driven by Kāla, then neither feeling is warranted. Mṛtyu answers only that she and the serpent do exactly as Kāla tells them, and so should not be seen as guilty.

Kāla settles the dispute

The question of dharma is still not settled, and Kāla himself comes to the place and speaks to Arjunaka directly. Neither Kāla, nor Mṛtyu, nor the serpent, he says, is guilty in the boy’s death. None of them was ever a preraka (one who prompts) of anyone’s death at all. It was the boy’s own karma that set all three in motion. No being is ever destroyed for any outside reason (hetu) apart from its own karma. The boy died by his own karma, through the work of Kāla. His karma alone was the true cause of his end, for all beings without exception are vaśa (subject) to their own karma.

Kāla explains that karma follows the doer through this world just as sons and grandsons follow a father. Karma alone makes the bonds of sukha (happiness) and duḥkha, and karma alone makes one thing act on another in this world. Kāla, Mṛtyu and the serpent were themselves set in motion only by that same karma. A potter shapes a lump of clay into whatever forms he wishes. In the same way a person gets fruits exactly according to the karma he has done. Sunlight and shade are always bound together and cannot be parted. So too the doer and the karma stay bound to each other according to their nature.

Therefore, Kāla ends, neither he, nor Mṛtyu, nor the serpent, nor Arjunaka, nor even the aged brāhmaṇa woman Gautamī can be the kāraṇa of the child’s death. The child himself, through his own karma, is the only cause of his own end. Karma alone is the true hetu that fixes whichever loka, svarga or naraka, a being comes to live in.

The resolution

Gautamī hears this. She reflects that svarga and naraka come only from one’s own karma. She tells Arjunaka that neither Kāla, nor the serpent, nor Mṛtyu is the cause of her son’s death. Her son died through Kāla only because of the karma he himself had done.

With this, Mṛtyu, Kāla and the serpent go away as they came. The hunter Arjunaka and Gautamī are both freed (nivṛtta) from their grief.

Bhīshma then tells Yudhishṭhira that, having heard this ākhyāna (account), he too should find śānti and give up śoka. Every being gets only the lokas that its own karma brings it to. Neither Yudhishṭhira nor even Duryodhana did the killings of the war. Kāla alone brought about the deaths of the kings on the battlefield.

Hearing this, the radiant Dharmarāja put aside his grief.

Sources

• Mahābhārata, Anuśāsana Parva, Chapter 1