Mahāmati and Sumati

When Jaimini asked the Dharma-Pakshis about the cycle of birth and death, they told him of a brahmin named Mahāmati and his remarkable son Sumati. Sumati was born with jāti-smaraṇa (memory of earlier births) and remembered ten thousand past lives. He described how death comes, the road to Yamaloka, the narakas, life in the womb, rebirth and the endless turning of the saṃsāra-cakra (wheel of birth and death). He urged his father to seek moksha through yoga and vairāgya (detachment).

The son who remembered

Mahāmati was a brahmin of the line of Bhṛgu. His son Sumati was born looking like a simple, silent child, a seeming jaḍa (dull-witted one). The father often urged him to study the Vedas, to take up the āśramas (stages of life) and to do all his dharmic duties. Sumati listened in silence.

Then one day Sumati laughed gently and told his father that he remembered ten thousand earlier births. He had been a brahmin, a kshatriya, a vaiśya and a śūdra. He had been an animal, an insect and a bird. He had known svarga and naraka alike. He had been a king’s servant, a warrior and a wanderer.

“Father,” he said, “the saṃsāra-cakra is like a ghaṭī-yantra (a water-wheel). I have gone up and come down in it without end. In it there is no true sukha (happiness), not even the smallest part of it.”

The process of death

Sumati told his father in clear detail what happens at the moment of death. As death comes near, all the relatives cry out and cling to the dying person: brothers, mother, father, wife and children. But the speech of the dying person becomes unclear and memory fails. Sight merges into one colour, the eyes roll and the face dries up. Fear and exhaustion overpower him.

The yamadūtas (messengers of Yama) appear and drag the jīva away. They take it over thorny and rocky ground, through burning places, through heat and darkness, along the terrible road to Yamaloka.

On the twelfth day after the cremation, the jīva eats the tilodaka (water with sesame) and the piṇḍa offered by its family. Then it is brought before the terrifying Yamadevī, the Kāla-devatā and the Antaka-devatā.

The narakas

Sumati described the main narakas in detail.

  • Raurava: for false witnesses, killers of brahmins, killers of cows, adultery and trespass on the fields of others. The feet are burned on coals that form again and burn again, without end, until the pāpa (sin) is used up.
  • Mahāraurava: its floor is of copper, heated from below. It is for those who misuse women, betray trust and destroy holy places. It is twelve yojanas across.
  • Tama: dark and bitterly cold. It is for killers of cows, killers of brothers and killers of children. Bones break in the cold, and the wrongdoers eat each other’s bodies.
  • Nikṛntana: the wrongdoer is cut by the kālasūtra, a thread that cuts from foot to crown. Even so, the wrongdoer does not die.
  • Cakrasaṅkara: wrongdoers are put in a ghaṭī-yantra and spun for a thousand years.
  • Asipatravana: a forest of trees with leaves like swords. It is for those who block brahmacarya (self-control) and tapas.
  • Taptakumbha: vats of boiling oil and metal-dust. It is for those who insult the dharma-śāstras. The wrongdoers are thrown in head first and stirred with ladles by the yamadūtas.

Life in the womb

Sumati then told how the jīva comes back into birth. At conception the jīva, freed from svarga or naraka, enters the mingling of śukra and śoṇita (the father’s and mother’s seed), and the body begins to form. First it is like foam, then a bubble, then a small piece of flesh. The unborn child grows like a coconut ripening from inside.

In the womb the jīva knows its earlier births and suffers from knowing what waits for it. It is pressed in the dark womb and fed through the navel-vein, the āpyāyanī-nāḍī. It remembers all its past lives with grief.

At birth the jīva is squeezed through the birth canal by the prājāpatya-vāyu. The shock wipes out all earlier memory, and the jīva enters another life of forgetting.

Karma-phala

Sumati described in fine detail how pāpas match the births that follow. Examples are:

  • theft of various things leads to births as various animals
  • neglect of ṛtu-dharma leads to naraka
  • disrespect to teachers leads to disease in the next life
  • the pious rise through one birth after another of growing puṇya (merit)

He also told of a pious king who entered naraka only by coming near it. The king’s very presence eased the torment of all the wrongdoers around him. His gift of puṇya freed them completely.

The teaching

Sumati ended by saying that the saṃsāra-cakra keeps the jīva bound without end through rāga (attachment) and lobha (greed), through adharma and avidyā (ignorance). He said: “Father, knowing this, I will practise yoga and seek moksha.” Mahāmati was deeply moved and asked his son to guide him too.

Sources

  • Mārkaṇḍeya Mahā Purāṇa, Chapter 13