Mṛtyu
Mṛtyu is Death, named and described as a person. The Mahābhārata tells of Mṛtyu as a woman who was born from the anger of Brahmā and did not want the task of ending lives. The Padma Mahā Purāṇa shows a Mṛtyu who is a truthful and caring father, the father of Sunīdhā.
In the Mokṣadharma Parva of the Mahābhārata, Bhīṣma tells the account to Yudhiṣṭhira. It is also known as the Mṛtyu-Prajāpati Saṃvāda (the talk between Mṛtyu and Prajāpati).
Birth from the anger of Brahmā
Brahmā’s creation had filled the world beyond its limit. Beings were born again and again, but they did not die. The weight of so many beings pressed on the order of the cosmos. Brahmā became angry as never before.
Flames came out from his three eyes. From the power of his third eye a figure came forth. She was a woman of dark skin, great beauty and terrible power. She wore crimson clothes and golden ornaments, and her coppery-red eyes burned with the fire of her birth. This was Mṛtyu.
The task and her refusal
Brahmā spoke to Mṛtyu at once: “Go and take the lives of beings. Your purpose is to dissolve what has been created, so that the cosmos does not collapse under its own weight.”
Mṛtyu refused. She was afraid of the adharma (wrong action) of killing. She feared the pāpa (sin) that would gather from ending the lives of countless beings: good and wicked, young and old, men and women, the innocent and the guilty. To kill without choosing seemed to her the worst wrong against dharma.
She wept before Brahmā. Her tears fell as drops of water. Brahmā was moved by her real compassion. He gathered the tears in his hands and declared that they would become the diseases of the world. Each tear would be a kind of illness. Illness would carry beings toward their end by the slow wearing down of the body, and not by the direct act of Mṛtyu.
Her tapas and Brahmā’s assurances
Mṛtyu still refused. She went to a remote place and performed tapas (austerity) of great strength. She stood still for ages of the world, thinking on dharma and truth, and looking for a way out of her task.
In time Brahmā came to the place of her tapas. He gave her these assurances:
- The beings she would take had already prepared the conditions of their going through their own karma. She would carry out the decree of karma, and would not be ending lives at her own whim.
- Disease, old age and the loss of the body’s strength would be the near causes. Her part would be the last moment of a long, natural process.
- No pāpa would touch her. Pāpa clings only where there is a personal saṃkalpa (intention) to harm another. Mṛtyu works without any such personal aim. She is the movement of time that follows dharma.
- Without her, the order of the world and the dharma she wished to protect would themselves be destroyed.
With these assurances Mṛtyu accepted. She became the exact carrier-out of karma, the one through whom what is born returns to its source.
The tears as disease
The tears that Mṛtyu shed before she accepted her task became the diseases of the world. They remain as the marks of her unwillingness and of her grief at the task she was given.
Mṛtyu in the Anuśāsana Parva
Mṛtyu appears twice in the first chapters of the Anuśāsana Parva. Bhīṣma tells these two ākhyānas (accounts) to Yudhiṣṭhira to ease his grief over those who died in the war.
Gautamī, the hunter, the serpent, Mṛtyu and Kāla (Chapter 1)
A serpent bites and kills the son of Gautamī, a brāhmaṇa widow. The hunter Arjunaka catches the serpent so that he can kill it in revenge. The serpent defends itself. It says that Mṛtyu had made it powerless and had driven it to the deed.
Mṛtyu is called into the dispute. She says that she herself was driven by Kāla, Time in his form as Īśvara, just as wind drives clouds. She says she is not the true kāraṇa (cause) of the child’s death. She and the serpent are both parādhīna (dependent), bound to the command of Kāla as an elephant is bound to its mahout.
Kāla then comes to settle the matter. He rules that none of them is the true doer, not Mṛtyu, not the serpent, and not Kāla himself. The boy died only through his own karma.
The story of Sudarśana (Chapter 2)
This is the Sudarśanopākhyāna, the account of King Sudarśana, son of Agni. Sudarśana had taken a vow to conquer Mṛtyu through atithi-sevā (serving guests with food and care).
Mṛtyu follows Sudarśana all the time, in secret, inside his own house. She looks for any slip in his vow. She also follows Dharma himself, who has come in the form of a brāhmaṇa to test Sudarśana’s vrata (vow). Mṛtyu carries a kūṭamudgala, a false iron mace. She is ready to kill Sudarśana the moment his vow of hospitality fails.
Sudarśana meets the test with steady joy. He shows that he has conquered kāma (desire) and krodha (anger) as completely as he has conquered death. Mṛtyu loses her chance. Dharma declares that Sudarśana has conquered her through his own dhairya (steadfastness).
Mṛtyu in the Padma Mahā Purāṇa
The Bhūmi Khaṇḍa of the Padma Mahā Purāṇa gives Mṛtyu a very different part. Here Mṛtyu is the father of Sunīdhā. Sunīdhā is the woman whose union with Aṅga, son of Atri, produced Vena, the wicked king. Mṛtyu appears in the Vena Upākhyāna (the account of Vena).
His character
This Mṛtyu has no fearful or destructive marks. He is satyavān (truthful), upright in conduct, and a caring father. He went to the devas and the ṛṣis to look for a husband for Sunīdhā. He asked the greatest beings in creation about a right match for her, and he treated her marriage as a matter that needed high guidance.
Suśaṃkha had given a śāpa (a curse): any son born of Sunīdhā would be a mahāpāpī (a great sinner) and a destroyer of his family line. Because of this, all the devas and ṛṣis refused to accept Sunīdhā as a daughter-in-law. Mṛtyu was crushed. He had a beautiful and virtuous daughter, and he could find no one willing to marry her.
His teaching to Sunīdhā
Sunīdhā came back from her meeting with Suśaṃkha in the forest in deep shame and grief. Mṛtyu then gave her a teaching in four parts.
- He told her plainly what she had done wrong. She had struck Suśaṃkha, a peaceful, upright and blameless tapasvin (ascetic). This was a major wrong.
- He told her the result. Because of the śāpa, she would not easily find a husband, and any son born to her could be a source of suffering.
- He showed her a way through. Suśaṃkha had answered her with a śāpa, and a śāpa given in answer to harm sends part of the pāpa back to the one who gave it. So half of Sunīdhā’s pāpa had already passed back to Suśaṃkha. The other half could be cleansed by tapas and satsaṃga (the company of the good).
- He gave strong comparisons to explain how the śāpa works. Pure water of the Gaṅgā with one drop of wine becomes wine. Milk with one drop of oleander juice becomes poison. He also set this within the wider rule that sattva (purity) and goodness can overcome a stain.
The Bhūmi Khaṇḍa gives this teaching at length as its lesson on how pāpa and śāpa work and how they are put right.
Sources
- Mahābhārata, Śānti Parva, Mokṣadharma Parva, Chapters 257–258 (the Mṛtyu-Prajāpati Saṃvāda)
- Mahābhārata, Anuśāsana Parva, Chapters 1–2
- Padma Mahā Purāṇa, Bhūmi Khaṇḍa, Chapters 30–34 (Mṛtyu’s character in Chapters 33–34; his teaching to Sunīdhā in Chapter 33)