Pativratopākhyāna

The Pativratopākhyāna is a short narrative in the Mārkaṇḍeya Samāsyā Parva of the Vana Parva (Chapters 205–206). Mārkaṇḍeya Maharshi tells it to Yudhishṭhira. A brāhmaṇa named Kauśika killed a cāṭaka bird by accident, through anger. A pativratā (a wife faithful to her husband) told him that her sight came wholly from unbroken service to her husband. She sent him to Mithilā to learn from the Dharma-Vyādha.

The brāhmaṇa Kauśika

Kauśika was a brāhmaṇa who studied the Vedas. He lived in his guru’s āśrama and kept strict brahmacarya. One day he sat under a tree in tapas. A cāṭaka bird perched above him, and its droppings fell on him. Kauśika was angry that his concentration had been soiled. He turned his gaze on the bird in rage. That gaze, charged with the stored force of his long austerities, killed the bird where it sat. The bird fell dead.

At once Kauśika was struck with remorse. He had not meant to kill. The anger had risen by itself, and the bird’s death was a result he had not intended. He saw that his tapas, which should have made his nature gentler toward ahiṃsā (non-harm) and calm, had become a tool of harm when anger overcame his judgment. Shaken, he left his guru’s āśrama and went to a nearby town to beg for food, as a brahmacārī does (Mahābhārata, Vana Parva, Chapter 205).

The pativratā

In the town Kauśika came to a householder’s house and called for alms in the usual way. A woman came out to give him food. She asked him to wait a little, because she was in the middle of serving her husband his meal. When the meal was over, she came out with the alms. Kauśika was annoyed at the delay. The waiting had felt long, and he was hungry. His impatience showed.

But the woman looked at him with calm understanding and said: “Kauśika, I know why you waited with irritation. And I also know what you did at the āśrama: how the cāṭaka bird died when your anger turned on it. You should know that a brāhmaṇa who has not overcome anger is not a true master of tapas. Serving my husband with complete devotion, without a moment’s turning aside, is my tapas, and it has given me the sight to see what has happened in your life.”

Kauśika was astonished. He had not spoken of the bird. He had not told her about himself or his past, and he had not told her his name. That she knew all this, his name, his fault and what happened at the āśrama, could come only from the unusual clearness of sight that her pātivratya (devotion to her husband) had given her (Mahābhārata, Vana Parva, Chapter 205).

Her teaching on pātivratya

The woman then told more of her practice. She had served her husband without thought of herself. She did not eat before him, nor sleep before him, nor attend to her own wishes first. Her husband was her first duty and her last. She had never spoken harshly to him. She had never looked at another man with desire. She had never talked of her husband’s private matters with others, and she had never done any act that would displease him.

She drew a sharp contrast. Kauśika’s tapas, the formal austerities of a brahmacārī, had not been enough to stop the sudden rush of anger that killed the bird. But her service to her husband, kept up without a break through her whole married life, had given her what his austerities had not given him: direct sight of what was true and what was happening in the world around her.

She taught that pātivratya, practised with complete sincerity, becomes tapas of the highest order. It is not lower than the tapas of the ṛshis. It is equal to it, and in some ways higher, because it is done in the world, in the middle of family life, without the help of the quiet of the forest (Mahābhārata, Vana Parva, Chapter 205).

The instruction to go to the Dharma-Vyādha

After she had shown the nature of her knowledge, the woman told Kauśika where to seek more teaching. She told him to go to the city of Mithilā. There lived a man called the Dharma-Vyādha, a hunter and a seller of meat by trade. This man, she said, would teach Kauśika the whole teaching of dharma that he was looking for. Kauśika should not be misled by the Dharma-Vyādha’s humble work, for his wisdom was true and his knowledge of dharma was complete.

Kauśika was surprised that a woman who had never formally studied the śāstras could know of such a man, and that she would send a brāhmaṇa to a meat-seller to be taught. But her unusual knowledge had already shown her to be a teacher with authority. Kauśika accepted her direction and set out for Mithilā (Mahābhārata, Vana Parva, Chapter 206).

What follows

This narrative opens the longer Brāhmaṇa-Vyādha Saṃvāda, the dialogue between Kauśika and the Dharma-Vyādha. The woman herself is not named in the text.

Sources

• Mahābhārata, Vana Parva, Mārkaṇḍeya Samāsyā Parva, Chapters 205–206 (Pativratopākhyāna), narrated by Mārkaṇḍeya Maharshi to Yudhishṭhira: Chapter 205 (Kauśika and the bird; the pativratā; her teaching), Chapter 206 (the instruction to go to the Dharma-Vyādha)