In the third parva of the Mahabharata, a student named Utanka informs Janamejaya, the ruler of Hastinapur, that it was a snake, Takshaka, who had killed his father. Janamejaya is a descendant of Pandavas (Arjuna’s great-grandson and Abhimanyu’s grandson). His father, Parikshit, was the ruler after the Pandavas left the kingdom.
To avenge his father’s death, Janamejaya carries out a massive snake sacrifice — the sacrifice means a big fire in which all the snakes (nagas) of the kingdom and beyond are thrown in. The sacrifice is a critical event in the Mahabharata, for it is there that the flashback, through which Janamejaya’s ancestors’ stories (basically, stories of the great war) are narrated to him, begins.
The snakes we talk of here are shape-shifters, capable of taking human forms. Snakes had kingdoms and kings then, according to the text. It is, in fact, not beyond imagination that the word ‘snake’ is being used here for an ethnic group, and that Takshaka is a rival leader fighting a guerilla war against the powers in
Hastinapura.
And therefore, Janamajeya’s sacrificial act should perhaps not be seen literally, as that of unprecedented cruelty against an animal species. Perhaps it is an act of genocide, fuelled by rage. The task of stopping Janamejaya was done by a brahmana named Astika, who for his contribution got a complete parva of the Mahabharata named after him (the fifth section).
Astika’s intervention is a story of the power of nonviolence, and is quoted even before it transpires in the text. In the Pouloma parva, a series of stories about the Bhrigu lineage ends with the sage named Ruru attempting to kill a non-poisonous snake, who turns out to be a sage itself. The sage tells Ruru how brahmans have prevented violence against harmless beings, and gives the specific example of Astika’s intervention in Janamajeya’s sacrifice. It is probable that this contrivance exists only to point out how violence is the domain of kshatriyas, and that brahmans ought to avoid it. Caste distinctions are, of course, rigidly impressed multiple times in the text.
A notable thing is that even before we reach Astika’s intervention in Janamajeya’s snake sacrifice, the text tries to convince us that the sacrifice was a pre-destined event. This could be read as an attempt to exonerate Janamajeya, to show the sacrifice as ordained by powers greater than his own. In the Astika Parva itself, Astika’s origination story includes digressions in which a clairvoyant woman curses snakes to be consumed in the impending sacrificial event. (The snakes are actually her sons: once again, human and snake forms interchange)
We see, thus, a narrative structure in which the before and after of an event is presented even before the event. This heightens tension, and there remain no doubts that the event itself is crucial.
(The writer’s first novel ‘Neon Noon’ is now available)
Tanuj Solanki @tanujsolanki