Maṅkī Gītā
The Maṅkī Gītā is a poem in the Mahābhārata, in the Mokshadharma Parva of the Śānti Parva, Chapter 177. It is sung by Maṅkī, a man whose hopes of wealth were ruined again and again. At the moment of his last loss he gave up all craving (vairāgya). The poem is spoken to kāma (desire), which Maṅkī addresses as if it were a person.
Context
Yudhishṭhira asks Bhīshma a question. What should a person do who wants to carry out some needed work but cannot get the wealth for it, and whose heart is broken by this failure? How can such a person find sukha (happiness)?
Bhīshma gives five qualities that lead to sukha:
- sarvāsmya: calm in every condition
- anāyāsa: no striving driven by craving
- satya: truthfulness
- vairāgya: freedom from craving
- avidhitsā: no desire in action
He then shows how they work through the account of Maṅkī. (Śānti Parva, Chapter 177)
Maṅkī and the camel
Maṅkī tried again and again to gather wealth, and each time his effort failed. With what little he had left he bought two young bullocks. This was his last attempt to set himself up. He tied the two bulls to a cart yoke and set out to train them to pull.
On the road a camel was standing still in their way. The untrained bulls took fright and ran into the camel. The camel was upset and stood up. It caught both bulls around its neck, like two weights hung from a balance-beam, and ran off with them at great speed. Maṅkī ran after them but could do nothing. He watched his last possession vanish.
At that moment a deep change came over Maṅkī. He stopped running and thought:
“I have done everything that ought to be done to secure wealth. I focused my intelligence. I worked carefully. And yet — this camel collision happens, by sheer coincidence, by daivatā (fate). The bulls are gone.”
He saw clearly that the whole effort to gain wealth by personal effort (purusha-prayatna) depends on forces outside a person’s control. Even perfect effort, perfect attention and perfect preparation can be undone by what the text calls kākatālīya, a chance event, like a crow landing just as a palm fruit falls. (Śānti Parva, Chapter 177)
Maṅkī speaks to kāma
Maṅkī then sings his gītā. It is a long, strong and in the end joyful address to kāma itself. He speaks to desire as a person and stands against it:
“O desire! I know you now. You arise from saṃkalpa — the very moment of mental intention you are born. You will not get a chance to arise in me again. I will not give you a saṃkalpa to be born from. You will die at your very root.”
He lists how kāma has held him. Hundreds of times it fooled him with the promise of gain and gave him only emptiness. The wealth he gathered went away again and again. His relatives and friends shamed him when the wealth was lost. He speaks to kāma with both blame and farewell:
“O kāma! You are the mother of āśā, duhkha, and śrama (hope, sorrow, and weariness). Your depth is like pātāla — unfathomable; even if all the waters of the world were poured into you, you would not fill. I am awake now. Leave me.”
He also speaks to his own manas (mind):
“O heart, broken by desire! You have been tricked over and over. Your accumulated wealth has slipped away again and again. Will you ever find freedom from this dhana-kāma?”
Then comes the answer:
“The sukha of kāma and the great sukha of the devalokas — neither of these approaches even the sixteenth fraction of the sukha that comes from the complete renunciation of āśā.”
Maṅkī decides to enter brahmapuram, the city of brahman, which is the heart. He will do it by destroying kāma down to its root (kāma-mūlam), and he will reach the endless sukha of brahman. (Śānti Parva, Chapter 177)
Śuka in the poem
In the poem Maṅkī names Śuka, the son of Vyāsa, who left Janaka’s palace for the forest and gave up all desires. Maṅkī holds up Śuka as the highest example of one who did not fulfil his desires but gave them up altogether. He says that this giving up is greater than any amount of fulfilled desire.
The end of the chapter
The chapter closes with Bhīshma’s word that Maṅkī, through the understanding that came from the camel, reached amṛtatva (deathlessness) by cutting kāma at its root. He entered the great sukha of brahman. The text says that through vairāgya he arrived at brahma-rūpam mahā-sukham, the great bliss that is brahman itself.
Maṅkī in the Mokshadharma Parva
In the same part of the Śānti Parva, Piṅgalā (Chapter 174), Śampāka (Chapter 176) and Maṅkī (Chapter 177) each reach vairāgya through a strong experience. The loss of the bulls became the moment of Maṅkī’s freedom.
Sources
- Mahābhārata, Śānti Parva, Mokshadharma Parva, Chapter 177
- Mahābhārata, Śānti Parva, Chapter 174 (Piṅgalā) and Chapter 176 (Śampāka), named for comparison