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Ashvamedhika Parva · Episode 2 · Chapters 1–10, 62–64, 70–93, 96
Yudhishthira performs the richest rite in the epic, and a half-golden mongoose says one poor family's barley meal was worth more
The Pandavas won the whole earth and found the treasury empty.
After the water offerings for Bhishma, Yudhishthira fell on the bank of the Ganga like an elephant shot by a hunter. He had killed his grandfather and Karna, he said; what act would clean his mind? Vyasa named one: perform the horse sacrifice, as Rama did, and as your ancestor Bharata did.
Yudhishthira's objection was practical. Duryodhana had drained the treasury, and he could not bring himself to tax kings whose wounds were still open. Vyasa told him where to look: in the Himalaya lay the gold left behind from the sacrifice of King Marutta, a rite so rich that Indra came to sit in its assembly and heaps of gold were raised at every step.
So the brothers rode north, fasted a night on kusha grass, made offerings to Shiva, to Kubera the lord of wealth and to the yakshas, and dug. Out came bowls, pitchers and cauldrons of gold by the thousand. It took sixty thousand camels, and elephants and porters beyond counting, to bring it home.
At the full moon of Chaitra, Yudhishthira was consecrated, and the chosen horse was set free to wander wherever it liked, with Arjuna following to guard it. Yudhishthira gave him one instruction: if kings come out against you, avoid war with them as far as you can, and invite them to the sacrifice. People at the back of the crowd could not see him go, the text says, but they could see the Gandiva.
There were battles anyway. In Sindhu, Jayadratha's widow Duhshala came out carrying her grandson, whose father had died of grief at the news that Arjuna was coming. Arjuna put down his bow and made peace.
At Manipura the king who came out humbly to meet him, with brahmanas and gifts, was Babhruvahana, his own son by Chitrangada. Arjuna was angry. You meet the guardian of the sacrificial horse with soft words, like a woman, he said; that is no warrior's way. Then Ulupi, the serpent princess who was also Arjuna's wife, rose through the ground and told the boy to fight: it was his duty, and it would please his father.
They fought, each delighted with the other. Babhruvahana's first arrow went in at Arjuna's collarbone and through him into the earth, and Arjuna, reeling, praised him: well done, son of Chitrangada. After that he held back. Babhruvahana shot him in the heart, and Arjuna fell. The wounded son fainted too. Chitrangada came onto the field, turned on Ulupi for causing it, and sat down to fast to death. Babhruvahana woke, said there was no atonement for killing a father, and sat down to die too.
Ulupi called to mind the serpents' jewel that brings the dead back to life, and it came to her. Your father was not killed by you, she told Babhruvahana; he came to test your strength, and I worked an illusion for his sake. Lay this on his chest. He did, and Arjuna rose as if from sleep.
Then Ulupi told Arjuna why. After Bhishma's death, the Vasus came to the bank of the Ganga and told the river goddess that Arjuna had killed her son while Bhishma was not fighting him but engaged with Shikhandi. They meant to curse him, and Ganga agreed. Ulupi's father begged the Vasus, and they named the release: the young king of Manipura would bring Arjuna down with arrows. A son is one's own self, Ulupi said, so you were defeated by no one but yourself. Arjuna was glad, invited his son to the sacrifice, and rode on.
When he came home, the rite was performed on a scale the epic can barely hold, and everything was gold. Each time a hundred thousand brahmanas had eaten, a drum sounded, day after day, and Bhima saw to it that no one there went hungry. At the end Yudhishthira gave the whole earth to Vyasa as the priests' fee. Vyasa gave it back and told him to pay in gold, and Yudhishthira paid three times the fee.
Then, with flowers still falling on the king's head, a mongoose with one golden side came out of its hole and spoke in a human voice. This sacrifice of yours, it said, does not equal a measure of barley meal given by a gleaner of Kurukshetra.
Asked to explain, the mongoose said that in a famine a poor brahmana lived by gleaning with his wife, his son and his son's wife, eating once in three days. One day they had ground a measure of barley into meal and divided it four ways when a hungry guest arrived. The old man gave his share, and the guest was still hungry. The wife gave hers, over her husband's protests, then the son, then the daughter-in-law, and only then was the guest satisfied. He was Dharma himself. A small gift honestly earned and given in faith, he told them, outweighed many horse sacrifices, and a chariot carried them to heaven. Afterwards the scent of the meal, the wet ground and the fallen heavenly flowers turned the mongoose's head and half its body to gold. Ever since, it had gone from sacrifice to sacrifice hoping to gild the other side. Here too it had failed.
When Janamejaya later asks who the mongoose was, Vaishampayana tells him: Anger itself. Long ago it had spoiled the milk the sage Jamadagni set aside for the ancestors, to test his temper, and the ancestors cursed it into this shape until it should revile Dharma. Yudhishthira was Dharma. Mocking his sacrifice was the creature's release.
So the epic closes its account of the victory. The sacrifice is real: Yudhishthira is cleansed and Jayadratha's grandson is crowned in Sindhu. But the last word goes to a mongoose and a starving family, and to Vaishampayana's list of what is held equal in worth: harmlessness toward every creature, contentment, good conduct, honesty, austerity, self-control, truth and giving.
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