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Skandha 8, adhyayas 15-23 · Saptah day 4
A dwarf asks a generous king for three steps of land, and the king keeps his word after learning who the dwarf is.
The story begins with a defeated king who did everything right. Bali, Prahlada's grandson, had been struck down by Indra in the war after the churning, and his preceptors, the Bhrigus with Shukracharya at their head, revived him. He served them with complete devotion, and they performed for him the Vishvajit sacrifice. A chariot, horses, a bow and armour rose out of the fire; Prahlada gave him a garland that never faded; Shukra gave him a conch. With these Bali took Indra's city. The gods, on Brihaspati's advice, simply left it and hid. Bali's strength, Brihaspati told them, came from the brahmanas behind him, and nothing could stand against it until that changed.
Aditi, the mother of the gods, could not bear her sons' exile. Her husband Kashyapa taught her a vow of worship, and at its end the Lord appeared to her and promised to be born as her son. He was born four-armed and radiant, and then, before his parents' eyes, became a small brahmana boy, a dwarf, a vamana. The gods and sages gathered to give him the sacred thread, the deerskin, the staff and the water pot of a student, and he walked to the bank of the Narmada, where Bali was holding a sacrifice.
Bali received him with every honour, washed his feet, and told him to ask for anything: cows, gold, land, villages, a kingdom. The boy praised Bali's family, in which, he said, no one had ever been a miser, and then asked for three steps of land measured by his own feet.
Bali laughed. A child's wisdom, he said kindly, to ask a lord of the worlds for so little; ask for enough to live on. Vamana answered with a short lesson on contentment. A man not satisfied with three steps, he said, will not be satisfied with a continent or with the whole world; a brahmana who is content with what comes keeps his radiance, and one who is never content loses it. Three steps were all he needed.
As Bali took up the water to seal the gift, Shukracharya stopped him. This boy is Vishnu, he said, come to take everything for the gods. One step will cover your earth, the second the heavens, and you will be left nowhere to stand. He told Bali plainly that in such a case a promise could be withdrawn: where one's life and livelihood are at stake, a falsehood is not blamed.
Bali's reply is the centre of the episode. He was Prahlada's grandson, he said, and could not take back his word. The Earth herself had once said she could bear any burden except a liar. Wealth and life pass; what is given remains. And if this really was Vishnu, so much the better: to have the Lord of sacrifice stand before him with his hand held out was itself the reward, and even if the boy bound him, he would not harm him. Shukra, stung, cursed him to lose his fortune soon. Bali did not waver. His wife Vindhyavali brought a golden pitcher, Bali washed the boy's feet, sprinkled that water on his own head, and gave.
Then the dwarf grew. Bali saw the whole cosmos in his body, the worlds, the oceans, the gods and the demons too. One step covered the earth; his body filled the sky; the second step rose past heaven to the highest worlds, where Brahma washed the foot with water from his pot. That water, the Bhagavatam says, fell as the Ganga. There was no room left for a third step.
Bali's followers attacked and were beaten back, and Bali himself called them off: time, he said, was not with them now. Garuda bound him with Varuna's nooses, and Vamana pressed him. Where was the third step? Bali answered quietly: place it on my head. He feared dishonour more than bondage, and punishment from the Lord was no disgrace.
Here the text raises the hard question itself: was Bali punished? Prahlada arrived, and Brahma and Vindhyavali pleaded for him. The Lord's answer turns the episode over. When I wish to show someone favour, he said, I slowly take away his wealth, because wealth makes a man proud and blind to me. Bali had been deserted by his allies, cursed by his guru and bound by his enemy, and had not let go of truth. So he was freed, sent with Prahlada to Sutala, a realm richer than heaven, and promised Indra's own seat in a future Manu's age. The Lord added that he himself would stand at Bali's door, club in hand, as his guard.
The gods got their heaven back, but the book is not mainly interested in that. Its eye is on a demon king who gave everything and was told it was grace, and on a single foot: the foot that took Bali's world is the one whose washing became the Ganga, a river the ninth book will soon bring down to earth.
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