The story cycle set up for the Pandavas’ pilgrimage in the Tirtha-Yatra Parva of the Mahabharata continues to deliver, with sage Lomasha narrating stories of the significance of various sacred spots that the Pandavas visit. One of the stories in this cycle is the story of king Somaka and his son Jantu.
Somaka had a hundred wives, yet it was only in old age that a son was born to him from one of them. There was no jealousy among the mothers, who all surrounded the prince named Jantu and showered him with their affection. Jantu always had someone looking after his welfare, and was incredibly pampered.
Despite the constant oversight, one day an ant bites the child Jantu on his left hip, and he cries in pain. All hell breaks loose in the inner quarters of the palace, where the mothers are found delirious with worry. When he looks at the scene, Somaka is left with a very different kind of anxiety.
With his advisors and priests, king Somaka shares the emotion that having only one son is not any better than having none. This distressing opinion is most likely the result of the king witnessing the pandemonium that followed after the small harm to the prince. According to the king, too much attention is concentrated on the prince’s welfare, too much is staked upon the lone prince, such that any harm to him is a direct harm to the entire kingdom.
Somaka rues the fact that he and his wives are too old to try for more progeny now. The officiating priest, however, comes up with a diabolical plan. The priest suggests a ritual through which a hundred sons can be born, but demands that prince Jantu be sacrificed first.
The sacrifice, in fact, involves offering Jantu to a fire, whose smoke is to be inhaled by the hundred queens, who will each then give birth to a valorous son. This atrociously cruel act is accepted by the all-or-nothing Somaka, who is so bent on reducing the risk of having only one son that he is willing to sacrifice him for a chance at having a hundred. The mothers, of course, are devastated by the action, and scream ‘like female ospreys’ as their son is dragged away by the priest and offered ‘as an oblation into the fire’. The ritual works, though, and after ten months a hundred sons are born.
After his death, king Somaka sees his officiating priest burning in the fires of hell for the crime of the ritual. Very fitting, you might say. Somaka demands that he share the punishment, for it was as much his deed as his priest’s. His wish is granted by Dharmaraj (Yamraj), and Somaka too, then, partakes is the infernal punishment meted out for the crime. The idea of the story is to perhaps say that it is wrong to take a single life, even if only for the chance of creating more life.
Tanuj Solanki
Twitter@tanujsolanki
The writer is reading the unabridged Mahabharata