The composition of the great epic, Mahabharata, did not give contentment to the great poet, so goes the legend. Sage Narada told him that it was because he had not expatiated on the majesty and the glory of Sri Krishna. He would attain spiritual satisfaction by depicting his leela (divine doings) and thereby celebrating his magnificence, his mahima. That is how the Bhagavata Purana was composed by the great sage-poet. It is a devotee’s narrative of the Supreme Avatara Krishna’s life from his birth to his ascending to Vaikuntha. Part of the story of Mahabharata enters Bhagavata Purana because there was a Hastinapura phase in the Avatara’s life.
What is interesting is that in Bhagavata Purana, Kunti does not join Dhritarashtra and Gandhari when they go for vanaprastha, and Yudhisthira does not go to swarga (the abode of the gods) without passing through death. Kunti stays in Hastinapura. When she gets to know about Krishna’s passing away, she is devastated. She does not want to live any longer. She meditates on Krishna and surrenders herself to him and attains supreme bliss. Yudhisthira decides to abandon worldly life forthwith, hands over the kingdom of Hastinapura to Parikshita, and undertakes a journey to swarga — a journey from which there is no return. His brothers follow him, and with utmost devotion, they all meditated on Krishna and attained eternal bliss. Draupadi followed the path of her husbands. She completely focused her mind on Krishna and attained him. The same was the case with Dhritarashtra. He attained ultimate bliss. He lived a virtuous life in the forest, and when he was completely focused on Sri Hari, the forest fire engulfed him. The virtuous Gandhari consigned herself to the fire and, as suggested in the text, earned bliss. Vidura, who had left Hastinapura and had chosen life in the forest, concentrated on Krishna’s lotus feet and, giving up his body by his yogic powers, attained ultimate bliss. None of them went to the higher world of supreme and eternal bliss in their mortal body.
In Bhagavata Purana, the only character from Mahabharata who goes to swarga, the abode of the gods, without passing through death is the savara (name of a tribe) Jara. The forest dweller had, by mistake, fatally wounded Krishna. Finding that his arrow had not killed a deer but had hurt Krishna, he was beside himself in grief. He was inconsolable. He condemned himself and pleaded with Krishna to kill him. Krishna comforted him and told him that he had done only what he himself had willed. The Avatara asked him to go to swarga in his mortal body. In the words of the sixteenth-century Odia poet Jagannath Das, who has rendered Bhagavata Purana into Odia, “mora bachane tu nirmala / ehi sarire swarga chala” (roughly, in my judgement, you are blemish-less / go to swarga in your mortal body).
The above shows that when a human-centric narrative became part of the story to expatiate on the mahima — the majesty and the magnificence of the Avatara — this is the transformation that the narrative underwent. The poet views actions, events, and states from the perspective of bhakti (devotion). These stories of Bhagavata Purana embody the poet’s understanding of karma (action) and kripa (the Lord’s grace) – the former is an agent-oriented notion, whereas the latter, a receiver-oriented one – one receives grace from the giver of grace.
Kunti, the Pandava brothers, Vidura, and Draupadi all attain supreme bliss because of their karma. They all voluntarily abjured the world, meditated with complete devotion on the Avatara’s lotus feet, and this was their karma. There was no intervention by the Avatara with regard to what they attained. That was the phala (consequence) of their karma. Incidentally, no other karma of theirs in life mattered. Only the last one did. In contrast, Jara attained swarga in his mortal body because of the Avatara’s grace, not because of his karma or the karma of his earlier existences. As Krishna told him, he had done only what he wanted. But Jara did not know that he was the instrument, not the karta (doer) that he thought he was. Now, he was Krishna’s choice to become the instrument for the execution of his will, and the Avatara’s choice was not the consequence of Jara’s karma of his present life or of the earlier lives. That indeed is grace, and grace cannot be explained in terms of the theory of karma.
Turning now to Sarala Mahabharata. It is a remarkably creative retelling, by the fifteenth-century Odia poet Sarala Das, of the ancient story of the Pandavas and the Kauravas composed by sage Vyasa: Vyasa Mahabharata. But in his retelling, Sarala incorporated in it episodes from Bhagavata Purana, Skanda Purana, and local tales, among others. In his narrative, Sarala described the composition at many places as “Vishnu Purana”. He used the story of the last phase of the Kuru clan to expatiate on the leela of Krishna. In other words, he wrote Mahabharata from the perspective of Bhagavata. Incidentally, the Odia Bhagabata was composed a few decades after Sarala’s Mahabharata. Now, just as Vyasa had transformed parts of the Mahabharata story in his Bhagavata Purana, Sarala had transformed the Mahabharata narrative in the spirit of Bhagavata Purana in his Mahabharata. As a result, his Mahabharata reads like a Vishnu Purana.
In Sarala Mahabharata, Kunti went with Dhritarashtra and Gandhari (and Vidura and Sanjaya) to the forest. When Gandhari asked her why she was going with them, she gave her one explanation. When Yudhisthira asked her the same question, she gave him another explanation. To her sister-in-law, she said that having lost her dear son Karna and her grandchildren, she had no desire to live in the palace, etc. To Yudhisthira, she said that by looking after her old, blind, and infirm brother-in-law and sister-in-law in the forest, she would protect him and his brothers from their curses. She, along with them, perished in a forest fire.
In Sarala Mahabharata, as in the canonical work in Sanskrit, only Yudhisthira went to swarga in his mortal body. One after another, Draupadi, Sahadeva, Nakula, Arjuna, and Bhima fell to their death (Bhima’s death is somewhat different, but let us ignore those details. Those interested might visit the blogpost: saralamahabharat.blogspot.com). It is because of their karma that they died, and it is because of his karma that Yudhisthira went to swarga. None of the above, from Dhritarashtra to Yudhisthira, focused on the Avatara. But there is a Bhagavata Purana-like suggestion in Sarala’s narrative that it was Krishna’s will that Yudhisthira would not die. When he saved him from the yogic fire of Gandhari, who wanted to destroy him, he told Gandhari that the world cannot exist without dharma. If Yudhisthira did not wish to live in a Krishna-less world and if he could not die for the reason Krishna gave to Gandhari, then (setting aside the traditional views), what narrative option remained for the poet to describe his leaving the mortal world without passing through death?
As for Jara, in Sarala’s Mahabharata, as in Vyasa Mahabharata, the wounded Krishna comforted him and told him not to grieve and not to worry about what he had done. He asked him to go to Hastinapura and bring Arjuna to his presence, which he did. The Avatara then left his mortal body and entered Vaikuntha, his own abode. Arjuna held Jara responsible for Krishna’s death and attacked him. Reluctantly Jara fought with him. They fought till the Voice from the Sky asked them to stop fighting and cremate the body of Krishna. Let us leave that story here. Now, there is no mention of when and how Jara died. Neither is there any suggestion that he was immortal. In either case, he did not attain swarga in his own body, unlike, to repeat, in Bhagavata Purana.
Concerning grace, the only one who received it in Sarala Mahabharata was Belalasena, also referred to in this work as “Belabali”. When Krishna wanted his head, he readily gave it to him and appealed to him to allow him to witness the Kurukshetra War. Krishna gave life to the severed head and his objective was fulfilled. After he told the Pandavas and their women what he had witnessed, Bhima, his father, felt humiliated and slapped him. The head fell on the ground and died. Krishna absorbed his soul in him: prana nija ange kale lina, and freed him from the karmic cycle. For some details, see:
https://in.search.yahoo.com/search?fr=mcafee&type=E210IN1274G0&p=The+story+of+Belalasena+in+samachar+just+click
That’s moksha. And that was his grace. Belalasena’s desire to witness the war was fulfilled because of his karma, and his absorption in Krishna was the grace he received from the Avatara. Karma phala (the fruit of karma) is earned; grace is received, not earned, which is how Bhagavata Purana too understands kripa.
(The views expressed are the writer’s own)
Prof. B.N.Patnaik
Retd. Professor of Linguistics and English, IIT Kanpur
Email: bn.patnaik@gmail.com
(Images from the net)