The story

In a forest called Naimisha, a large company of sages led by Shaunaka had sat down to a sacrifice meant to last a thousand years. A rite of that length is less an event than a way of life, and it leaves a great deal of quiet in the mornings. One morning, after the fires had been tended, they turned to the Suta, a storyteller who had learned the Puranas and histories from Vyasa and his disciples, gave him a seat of honour, and put their questions to him.

The questions are set out with care, and their order matters. First: what is the final good for human beings, the good that is good without qualification? Then they explain why they ask it this way. The scriptures are many, they say, and each demands long study. People in this age live short lives; they are slow, easily distracted, unlucky and harassed by troubles. So draw out the essence of everything you have heard, and tell it for the good of all beings, so that the self may be at peace.

Only after that do they ask about Krishna: why he was born to Vasudeva and Devaki, what he did, what forms the Lord has taken. Their last question is the sharpest. Krishna has gone back to his own abode. Where has dharma taken shelter now?

The Suta does not answer at once. He first bows to Shuka, Vyasa's son, the wandering sage who left home so young that when his father ran after him calling "Son!", only the trees answered. Then he bows to Nara-Narayana, to Sarasvati and to Vyasa. Only then does he speak.

His answer is a single verse, which the Bhagavatam's readers have treated ever since as the hinge of the whole book. The highest dharma for human beings, he says, is the one from which devotion to the Lord arises: devotion with no motive behind it and nothing able to interrupt it, by which the self becomes wholly content. Everything else follows. Knowledge and detachment come of themselves to someone who loves in this way. And then a hard sentence: dharma performed perfectly that does not awaken a taste for hearing about the Lord is only labour, śrama eva hi kevalam.

The Suta also gives the sages a vocabulary. Those who know the truth, he says, call the one non-dual reality by three names: Brahman, Paramatman and Bhagavan. The same truth is seen as the impersonal ground, as the witness within, and as the Lord who has qualities and a story. The book they are about to hear will mostly use the third name.

In the third chapter he answers the question about forms. He lists the avatars one after another: the first Purusha, the Kumaras, the boar who lifted the earth, Narada, Nara and Narayana, Kapila, Dattatreya, Rishabha, Prithu, the fish, the tortoise, Narasimha, Vamana, Parashurama, Vyasa himself, Rama, Balarama and Krishna, and avatars still to come. Then he says the list cannot be finished. The avatars are beyond counting, like streams running off an inexhaustible lake.

Immediately after the list comes the line the Bhagavata traditions quote more than almost any other. These are parts and portions of the Supreme Person, the Suta says, but Krishna is the Lord himself, kṛṣṇas tu bhagavān svayam. The list prepares for the tenth book, where Krishna's life will take up more space than every other avatar together.

The Suta's answer to the last question closes the third chapter. When Krishna left the world, he says, taking dharma and knowledge with him, this Purana rose like the sun for people in the Kali age who had lost their sight. Vyasa drew it out as the essence of all the Vedas and histories and taught it to his son Shuka. Shuka recited it to King Parikshit, who sat by the Ganga waiting to die, surrounded by sages. The Suta was seated there too, and heard it.

So the answer to "where has dharma gone" is: into this book. The opening verses had already said as much in an image. The Bhagavatam calls itself the ripe fruit fallen from the wish-fulfilling tree of the Veda, made sweeter by the touch of a parrot's beak, which is a pun on Shuka's name, since shuka means parrot. A ripe fruit needs no further work. One only tastes it.

That is why these three chapters matter more than their length suggests. The sages ask for one good thing in place of many. The Suta answers with devotion, names the one reality in three ways, counts the avatars and stops at Krishna. And then he tells them that what they asked for is a story, and that he is about to tell it.

Verses in this episode

Who appears, and what it shows

• Theme: Devotion as the highest dharma
• Theme: The descents of the Lord

Keep reading

• Vyasa's unrest and Narada's story — Skandha 1, adhyayas 4-6 — The man who divided the Vedas and wrote the Mahabharata sits by the Sarasvati unsatisfied, until Narada tells him why.

Questions to explore

• Why do the sages ask for "the essence" instead of studying everything themselves?
• What does it mean that Krishna is "the Lord himself" while the other avatars are parts?
• Why does the Bhagavatam call itself the ripe fruit of the Vedic tree?