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Skandha 9, adhyayas 4-5 · Saptah day 4
A king breaks his fast with a sip of water, a sage takes offence, and the Lord's own discus chases the sage across the worlds.
Ambarisha ruled the whole earth with its seven islands and held all of it lightly, as one holds a dream. The text spends real care on his ordinary day before it tells a single event of his life. His mind rested on Krishna's feet, his speech on the Lord's qualities, his hands on cleaning the Lord's temple, his ears on the Lord's stories. His eyes sought the Lord's images and shrines, his body the touch of devotees, his sense of smell the tulasi offered at the Lord's feet, his tongue the food first offered to him. His feet walked to holy places and his head bowed. Every faculty a king uses to enjoy a kingdom was turned, one by one, toward a single centre. He ruled through ministers, performed great sacrifices, wanted nothing for himself, and the Lord, pleased, set his own discus, the Sudarshana, to guard him.
With his queen, who shared his devotion, Ambarisha kept the vow of the Dvadashi for a whole year. At its close he fasted for three nights, bathed in the Yamuna at Madhuvana, worshipped, gave away a great many cows and fed the brahmanas. He was about to break his fast when the sage Durvasa arrived as a guest.
The king welcomed him and asked him to eat. Durvasa agreed, went down to the Yamuna to bathe first, and there sank into meditation. Time passed. The Dvadashi, the day on which the fast had to be broken, was nearly over. Ambarisha consulted the brahmanas. If he did not break the fast within the Dvadashi he would fail his vow; if he ate before his guest he would insult him. He found a way between the two. He would sip water, for water, the learned say, is both eating and not eating. With his mind on the Lord he drank, and waited.
Durvasa returned, knew by his own powers what had happened, and was enraged. This man, he said, proud of his wealth and no devotee at all, had eaten before his guest and would now see the result. He tore out a lock of his matted hair, and from it rose a fiery being, a kritya, sword in hand, rushing at the king. Ambarisha did not move from where he stood.
The discus moved instead. It burned the creature to ash and turned on Durvasa, and the sage ran. He ran to every quarter, into the sky, across the earth, down into the lower worlds and over the oceans, and the blazing wheel followed. He went to Brahma, who said he could not shelter him: the whole universe, Brahma included, stands under Hari's command. He went to Shiva, who said that neither he nor the greatest sages understand the Lord's power, and that this weapon was beyond them all; go to Hari. So Durvasa came to Vaikuntha and fell at the Lord's feet.
The Lord's answer is why the story is told. I am dependent on my devotees, he said, as if I were not free: "ahaṁ bhakta-parādhīnaḥ". The saints hold my heart. They have given up home, family, wealth and life itself to take refuge in me; how could I give them up? The saints are my heart, and I am theirs. Austerity and learning, he added, do a brahmana good, but in one who is arrogant they work the other way. Go to Ambarisha, and ask him for pardon.
Durvasa went back and clasped the king's feet. Ambarisha, ashamed to have a sage at his feet, at once prayed to the discus, praised it as the Lord's own power, and asked it to spare the brahmana for the sake of whatever good his family had ever done. The wheel grew calm. Only then does the text say how long Durvasa had been running: a full year. Through all of it the king had not eaten. He had waited, living on water, for his guest to come back. Now he fed Durvasa first, with every honour, and ate only afterwards. Durvasa, humbled, praised him and went his way, and in time Ambarisha handed his kingdom to his sons and withdrew to the forest.
The episode stands near the start of the ninth book for a reason. This skandha is a history of the royal lines descended from Manu, and it could easily become a list of names. It opens that history with a king whose greatness lies in a sip of water and a year of patience, and with one of the plainest statements anywhere in the Bhagavatam of whose side the Lord is on.
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