A fter the rakshasha Baka’s killing by Bhima, the Pandavas and their mother, Kunti, move towards the kingdom of Panchala, where princess Droupadi’s swayamvara is about to take place. On their way, while crossing a dense forest at the banks of the Bhagirathi, the Pandavas bump into a gandharva named Angaraparna who, angered, starts a fight with Arjuna. The gandharva is promptly defeated, but his truce with the Pandavas soon turns into friendship, such that he starts telling them stories from the past.
The first tale Angaraparna tells Arjuna and his brothers is of how the famous sage Vashishtha once helped one of the Pandavas’ ancestors, king Samvarana, get married to Tapati, the daughter of the sun god. Asked about Vashishtha, Angarparna then recites the famous story of rivalry between Vashishtha and Vishvamitra, which begins at a time when the latter is a king visiting the former’s hermitage.
There, Vishvamitra is amazed at the sight of a cow named Nandini, for it produces whatever is desired from it. He tries to get the cow for himself, employing his ten thousand-strong army in the service, only to see that army squandered by a defensive force borne out of Nandini’s body. That defensive force, notably, is formed of pahlavas, yavanas, simhalas, barbaras, and mlecchas — which is to say, foreigners and outcastes — and this composition forces Vishvamitra to realise that a kshatriya force can lose to any group committed to the service of the brahmans. Identifying brahman power as greater than kshatriya power, Vishvamitra decides to commit himself to austerities and become a brahman himself. In due time, he becomes a true rival to Vashishtha.
Carrying on with Vashishtha and Vishvamitra, Angaraparna recites another story of how a powerful king of Ayodhya, named Kalmashapada, picks up a small argument with Vashishtha’s son, Shakti, and is cursed to become a man-eating monster by the sage. To invoke Kalmashapada to now eat Shakti himself, Vishvamitra, now a powerful sage, invokes a rakshasha to enter the king’s body. Kalmashapada eats Shakti and kills the ninety-nine other sons of Vashishtha. But Vashishtha is forbearing. He frees the king from the curse, and even resolves the king’s issue of a male heir by uniting with his wife, Madayanti. This last bit is something that most great sages rather enjoy doing.
Angaraparna’s storytelling ends with the Pandavas convinced that they need a brahmana priest of their own. At his advice, they convince the sage Dhoumya for this service. Upon reflection one finds that it is this, the sensitisation of the Pandavas to the powers and the supremacy of the brahmans, that is the role played by the Angaraparna episode. Following the Baka-vadha parva, where the Pandavas commit their first selfless act of removing evil for the general benefit of the populace and without any clear reward, the development of their kshatriya character probably now requires an understanding of and submission to brahman might.
(The writer’s first novel ‘Neon Noon’ is now available)
Tanuj Solanki @tanujsolanki