Jaḍabharata Upākhyāna

The Jaḍabharata Upākhyāna is told in the Vishṇu Mahā Purāṇa. It follows Bharata, the eldest son of Ṛshabhadeva, through three births. In the first he is held by attachment. In the second he is a deer. In the third he is born as a brāhmaṇa who acts like a fool, and he finds liberation. At the centre is his meeting with King Rahūgaṇa of Sauvirā, whose palanquin he is made to carry. Their talk shows how the pure ātman (self) differs from the body, and why the word “I” cannot be pinned on any part of the body or mind. Rahūgaṇa is changed by the teaching and wins moksha (liberation).

Bharata’s tapas and the deer

Bharata Cakravartī had ruled the world that bears his name. He gave it up to do tapas (austerity). He was living on the holy Śālagrāma mountain and doing deep and steady austerities.

One day, while he was drawing water from the river, he saw a doe giving birth on the bank. A lion roared nearby, and the frightened doe leapt into the river. She gave birth in the water, and the shock killed her. The fawn was left without a mother, stranded on the bank.

Bharata felt for the helpless fawn and took it in. He fed it, kept it safe and cared for it. Day by day the fawn grew, and day by day Bharata’s heart grew more attached to it. His meditation was broken. He wondered where the fawn had wandered and whether it was safe, and whether any hunter was near. When it stayed away long, he was anxious. When it came back, he was glad. His attachment began in pity but was kept alive by ahaṃkāra (the sense of “I”). Little by little it pushed his tapas out of the first place in his mind.

Death with the deer in mind

As the end of his life came near, the deer was always in his mind. His last thoughts at the moment of death were of the deer. The ācāryas teach that the last thought at the moment of death decides the next birth. Bharata had gathered immense tapas, and his bhakti (devotion) to Bhagavān Vishṇu was deep, so he was not sent to a low birth. But his last thought drew his jīva (living being) into the form of the one he had loved most in that last period of his life.

He was born as a deer. He was born with jāti-smṛti, the full memory of his past life as Bharata the king and tapasvin. As a deer he lived near Śālagrāma. He spent the whole birth in repentance. He kept away from other deer and stayed close to āśramas (hermitages). He grieved over the way his tapas had turned. He waited with patience for the deer-birth to run out.

Rebirth as a brāhmaṇa, Jaḍabharata

Bharata lived out the deer birth in full awareness. Then he was reborn as a brāhmaṇa. This was the third and last birth of this great ātmā. Again he was born with the full memory and jñāna (knowledge) of all his past lives. The highest understanding was already fully in him. But his own life had shown him how the ties of saṃsāra (the cycle of birth and death) can throw even the most advanced sādhaka (seeker) off course. So he chose to hold himself completely apart.

He acted like a simpleton. He did not do the duties given to him. He did not bathe properly. He did not recite the Vedas when told to. He kept no ordinary ties with people. He took whatever food or scraps were given to him, without complaint or request.

His father, a learned brāhmaṇa, tried again and again to teach him the upanayana and the study of the Veda, but the boy stayed apparently unmoved. After his father died, his step-brothers treated him badly. They gave him the lowest work and coarse food, and he took all of it without a word.

He got the name Jaḍabharata, jaḍa meaning “dull” or “stupid”. The world could not see the ocean of jñāna behind the veil of his play-acted stupidity.

The palanquin

The king of Sauvirā, Rahūgaṇa, was travelling by palanquin to meet the great Kapila Maharshi and learn from him. His palanquin-bearers needed one more man. They took Jaḍabharata from the fields, where he was doing farm work.

Jaḍabharata went with them without protest. But as he walked, he moved with great care. He stepped gently, stopped, changed his path and went round things, because he watched every small living creature on the ground and would not tread on an ant, a worm or any other being. His steps were uneven and halting.

The palanquin lurched and swayed. Rahūgaṇa was irritated and called out to the bearers. They pointed to the new man as the cause. Rahūgaṇa spoke to Jaḍabharata with a mix of anger and mockery:

“Friend, you look strong and healthy. You are not old or ill. Yet you make the palanquin rock like a boat in a storm. I shall punish you if you go on being careless.”

Jaḍabharata’s teaching: the ātman carries no burden

Jaḍabharata did not say sorry. He answered with a talk that took apart every idea in Rahūgaṇa’s rebuke.

He began by questioning the starting point. The body is made of the five mahābhūtas (great elements): earth, water, fire, air and space. Each of these elements is jaḍa (without awareness). The body, made of these elements, is itself without awareness. Now, the “I” that is said to be tired, or fat, or weak: does it mean the body? If so, the body is matter, and matter does not feel tired. If the “I” means the ātman, the pure awareness, then the ātman is nirguṇa (without qualities). It is beyond all change, beyond tiredness, beyond hunger, beyond pleasure and pain.

Then he used the palanquin itself to make the same point. He said: “You say you are riding in the palanquin (śibikā). But the śibikā is made of wood (dāru). The dāru comes from a tree (vṛksha). The tree, the wood and the palanquin are not three separate things. They are one material in three forms (rūpa), with three names that people use by habit. When the names are gone, what is left? The material. Where is the palanquin then? Where is the wood then? Your followers do not say you are riding on the tree or on the wood. They say only ‘palanquin’, which is itself a name given to a shape made of what was once a tree. Now use the same reasoning. Where is ‘I’ in this shape of elements that is called the body?”

He then asked: “Which part of you is ‘you’? Your head? Your neck? Your belly? Your feet? You are different from each of these parts. But if you are none of these parts, and all you are made of is these parts, then this ‘you’ that says it rides, or rests, or commands: where does that exist?”

He ended: “There is one Purusha who is the ātman of all beings. The ātman is one and not split among the many bodies. So ‘you are a king’, ‘I am your servant’, ‘this is your kingdom’: all this is only asatya (untrue, a matter of convention). The ātman in you, in me, and in the ant I step aside to spare is the same. That ātman carries nothing, commands nothing, and is weighed down by nothing.”

Rahūgaṇa surrenders and hears more

Rahūgaṇa was shaken to his depths. He got down from the palanquin and bowed fully at Jaḍabharata’s feet with folded palms. He said: “You have spoken words of paramārtha (the highest truth). I understand. I am not the one who rides. The body carries the palanquin, and the guṇas (qualities) of the mahābhūtas act by their own nature. I have no part in this. O great brāhmaṇa, who are you? I now see that Kapila Maharshi himself, the avatāra of Bhagavān Vishṇu who comes down to free the world from moha (delusion), has appeared before me in this form. Please give me moksha too.”

Jaḍabharata went on with the teaching. He said that dharma and adharma are the causes behind the chain of births. The chain of bodies is there for the enjoying of the fruit of karma (karma-phala). He spoke of the statement so’ham (“I am That”), which says that the individual and the Supreme are one. This, he said, lies beyond ordinary speech. The tongue, teeth and palate make speech, yet none of them is “I”. The very use of the word “I” falls apart when it is looked at closely.

He went on. King, royal attendants, kingdom and palanquin are all asattu (not real by themselves). What looks like many names and forms is one material, seen as different only through rūpa-bheda (difference of shape). An umbrella, its handle and a wooden frame are the same thing, with different names given to different shapes. The ātman behind all these shapes has no given name, no mark of the body and no place in society.

The Ṛbhu–Nidāgha account

To make the teaching clearer, Jaḍabharata told the account of Ṛbhu Muni and Nidāgha. These two ṛshis spoke as guru and śishya (pupil) over thousands of years. Their talk reached its height in the riddle of the elephant and the king, and through it Nidāgha gained firm footing in advaita (the non-dual truth). Ṛbhu showed advaita through a real event, sitting on Nidāgha’s back and asking, “Who are you and who am I?” In the same way Jaḍabharata showed it through the palanquin.

Rahūgaṇa’s liberation

The Vishṇu Mahā Purāṇa says that King Rahūgaṇa heard Jaḍabharata’s talk on paramārtha and then the Ṛbhu–Nidāgha account. By the power of this hearing he gained jāti-smṛti (memory of his past births) and apavarga (liberation) in that very birth.

The text adds:

“Whoever speaks this carita (account) of the kings of the Bharata line, which is the essence, or hears it with śraddhā (faith) and bhakti, that person gains a pure mind, becomes free from ātma-moha (the false idea of ego-identity), and becomes truly fit for liberation.”

The Bhāgavata Mahā Purāṇa account

The fifth Skandha of the Bhāgavata Mahā Purāṇa tells of the same events. It gives Bharata’s three births, the attachment to the deer, the birth as a brāhmaṇa who seems simple, the meeting with Rahūgaṇa in the palanquin, and the dialogue that frees him.

In the Bhāgavata account, Jaḍabharata meets thieves, and Bhadrakālī steps in. Its dialogue includes a long allegory of a merchant in the forest, for saṃsāra. Its teaching centres on manas (the mind) as the root of bondage and of liberation. In the Bhāgavata account too, Rahūgaṇa is freed through this meeting.

In the Vishṇu Mahā Purāṇa, the dialogue is built on the picture of the palanquin, the wood and the tree. Its teaching centres on the fact that “I” cannot be found in any part of the body or in the whole. The Vishṇu Mahā Purāṇa sets the Ṛbhu–Nidāgha account directly inside the teaching, as Jaḍabharata’s own continuation of it.

Sources

• Vishṇu Mahā Purāṇa, Dvitīyāṃśa, Chapter 13
• Vishṇu Mahā Purāṇa, Dvitīyāṃśa, Chapter 14
• Vishṇu Mahā Purāṇa, Dvitīyāṃśa, Chapters 15–16
• Bhāgavata Mahā Purāṇa, Fifth Skandha