The story

Parikshit had asked how a person can escape the hells Shuka had just described. Atonement alone is not enough, Shuka told him: it washes away the act but leaves the desire that produced it, so the person sins again. Then, to show what reaches deeper, he told of Ajamila.

Ajamila lived in Kanyakubja. He was a brahmana and, as a young man, an exemplary one: learned, gentle, truthful, careful in his vows, devoted to his teachers and his father. One day his father sent him into the forest for fruit, flowers, firewood and kusha grass. On the way back he saw a low-born man, drunk, openly embracing a serving woman, the two of them without any shame.

That was all it took. Desire rose in him; he tried to hold his mind steady and could not. He began to think only of the woman, spent his father's wealth on her, and in the end abandoned his young wife of good family to live with her. To keep that household going he gambled, cheated and stole. He had ten sons by her, and the youngest, a small boy, was named Narayana. His parents loved him above all the others.

When Ajamila was eighty-eight, his hour came, and his mind was on the child. Three dreadful figures stood beside him with nooses in their hands, the messengers of Yama come to drag him away. In terror he cried out, with tears, to his son, who was playing some distance off: Narayana!

At that name four messengers of Vishnu arrived and stopped them.

The argument that follows is the heart of the episode, and the Bhagavatam lets both sides speak. Yama's messengers asked who these strangers were to interfere with Yama's order. Vishnu's messengers asked them in turn what dharma was. Dharma, Yama's servants replied, is what the Vedas lay down, and its opposite is adharma; the sun, fire, sky, wind, moon and the rest witness every deed. This man had sinned and never atoned, so he must go before Yama to be judged.

Vishnu's messengers answered that he had already atoned, more than atoned, for the sins of countless lives, because he had said the name of the Lord. It made no difference that he meant his son. The Lord's name, they said, whether it is spoken to mean something else, in jest, as a filler in a song, or even in contempt, removes every sin. A medicine works whether or not the patient understands it; fire burns dry grass whether or not the hand that lit it knew what fire is. Then they cut the ropes and left.

Ajamila sat up. He had heard the whole dispute, and it broke something open in him. He was ashamed of what he had done to his wife and his parents, and amazed that a man like him had been saved. He went to Gangadvara, at Haridwar, and gave himself to devotion and meditation. When in time the same four messengers came for him again, he left his body on the bank of the Ganga and went with them.

The next chapter follows the other party home. Yama's servants went to their master bewildered. They had believed there was one judge of the dead, and now someone had overruled him. Yama answered that there is a Lord above him, and that the Lord's own messengers guard his devotees. The true dharma, he said, is hard to know. It is known to twelve: Brahma, Narada, Shiva, Sanatkumara, Kapila, Manu, Prahlada, Janaka, Bhishma, Bali, Shuka and Yama himself. And it is devotion to the Lord, beginning with the singing of his name. Then he gave his servants an order. Do not go near those who take refuge in the Lord. Bring only those whose tongues never speak his name and whose hearts never remember him.

It is a remarkable thing for the god of death to say about his own work, and that is why the episode stands where it does. The sixth book opens with a question about hell, and answers it from inside the court of the dead: the law Yama enforces has a Lord above it, and that Lord's name, said even by a frightened old man calling for his son, is enough to halt the proceedings.

Verses in this episode

Who appears, and what it shows

• Ajamila — A brahmana who fell into a life of theft and gambling, and was saved by the name he had given his youngest child.
• Theme: The power of the Name
• Theme: Surrender and grace

Keep reading

• Bharata and the fawn — Skandha 5, adhyayas 7-13 — The king the land is named after renounces a kingdom, then loves an orphaned fawn so much that it costs him two more births.
• Vritra's prayer — Skandha 6, adhyayas 9-12 — The demon Indra must kill turns out to be a devotee, and prays on the battlefield more beautifully than the god who kills him.

Questions to explore

• Does a name said without meaning it really carry power?
• What argument did Vishnu's messengers give to Yama's messengers?
• What did Yama tell his own servants after Ajamila was freed?