Jaratkāru and the Pitṛs
Jaratkāru was a wandering ṛshi who had vowed never to marry. One day he found his own ancestors, the pitṛs, hanging upside down in a pit. They asked him to marry and have a son. This meeting led to the marriage that gave birth to Āstīka, who later saved the nāgas from Janamejaya’s sarpa-yajña. The episode comes in the Āstīka Parva of the Ādi Parva of the Mahābhārata.
The wandering ascetic
Jaratkāru was a brāhmaṇa of very great tapas (austerity). He was thin, ruled his senses, owned nothing and had no fixed home. He lived on air and leaves alone. He had taken a strict vow of brahmacarya (celibacy). He meant to live his whole life without marriage, without children and without the duties of a gṛhastha (householder). He walked from one tīrtha (holy place) to another and kept up hard austerities.
The sight in the pit
On one of his journeys Jaratkāru came upon a strange sight. A group of thin, weak figures hung upside down in a deep pit. They were held by a single cord of kuśa grass above them. The cord was thin and worn, and a rat was gnawing it from one end. The figures hung between life and ruin, wholly helpless.
Jaratkāru stopped and asked: “Who are you? What has brought you to this state? What can I do to help you?”
The pitṛs say who they are
The figures answered: “We are your pitṛs, your fathers of old. We hang here because our line is almost at an end. Only one descendant of ours is left, a man named Jaratkāru, a brāhmaṇa of great tapas. But he has taken a vow of celibacy and will leave no sons. When he dies our line ends. Then our śrāddha (the rite for the ancestors) will stop, and we shall fall from this unsafe place into the emptiness below.”
Jaratkāru’s grief and his offer
Jaratkāru was deeply shaken. These were his own fathers, and he himself was the cause of their coming ruin. He offered to do whatever he could. The pitṛs asked him plainly: “Marry. Have a son who will perform our śrāddha after you. That son will lift us out of this pit and make us safe again.”
Jaratkāru said that he had taken a vow of brahmacarya and had never thought of marriage. But the sight of his pitṛs suffering, and the weight of his duty to his line, moved him fully. He agreed to marry, but he set three conditions.
- The woman must have his own name. She too must be called Jaratkāru.
- She must be given to him freely as bhikshā (alms), without his having to seek her or ask for her.
- She must not be a burden to him. She must be able to support herself.
If no such woman existed, he said, he would simply not marry. The conditions seemed almost impossible, but they were already met. Vāsuki’s sister, whom her brother had kept unmarried for years, had the same name.
The debt to the pitṛs
Every brāhmaṇa owes three debts (ṛṇa): to the ṛshis, to the devas and to the pitṛs. The debt to the pitṛs is paid through śrāddha and through children, and not through tapas alone. Jaratkāru’s tapas was real and great. Yet when he saw his pitṛs he was willing to step back from his hard vow to meet this debt.
How it leads to Āstīka
Jaratkāru agreed to marry because of this sight alone. That agreement led directly to his marriage with Vāsuki’s sister and to the birth of Āstīka. Without this meeting with the pitṛs the marriage would not have taken place.
Sources
- Mahābhārata, Ādi Parva, Āstīka Parva, Chapter 13