Harivamsha 16
English (machine translation) 16
- Language
- English
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Mārkaṇḍeya said: / The world is established upon the ancestral rite; from the ancestral rite yoga proceeds.
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Come, I shall recount to you the supreme fruit of the ancestral rite / that was attained by Brahmadatta across seven births, O descendant of Bharata.
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For from that alone does the understanding of dharma gradually arise; / even though by injury to dharma, once an ancestral rite was performed in the past, O sinless one,
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what was attained by those brahmins formerly—understand that, best of men!
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Then, in Kurukṣetra, I saw seven twice-born men, not very virtuous, / devoted to ancestor rites, who had been pointed out by Sanatkumāra,
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whom the lord had spoken of in the past with that divine eye:
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Vāgduṣṭa, Krodhana, Hiṃsra, Piśuna, and Kavi, / Khasṛma, and Pitṛvartin, [named thus] after their names and deeds.
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Sons of Kauśika, my dear, and pupils of Gārgya, O descendant of Bharata, / when their father died they all undertook vows then.
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At the command of their guru, they were tending a milch cow, / a brown cow with a matching calf, which had been acquired lawfully by him.
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Afflicted by hunger on the road, out of childishness and delusion, O descendant of Bharata, / a cruel intention arose in them to slaughter that cow.
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Then Kavi and Khasṛma pleaded with them, 'Do not do it!' / Yet those twice-born could not be restrained by the two of them.
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Then he among them named Pitṛvartin, a twice-born who daily performed ancestral rites, / filled with righteousness, spoke in indignation to all his brothers:
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'If it must be done, let us properly offer this cow / for the sake of the ancestors, all of us with concentrated minds.
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Thus this cow will attain righteousness, of this there is no doubt; / by worshipping the ancestors according to dharma, no sin will attach to this.'
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Saying, 'So be it,' they all sprinkled the cow with water, / consecrated her to the ancestors, and consumed her, O descendant of Bharata.
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Having consumed the cow, they all reported to their guru: / 'The cow was killed by a tiger; please accept this calf.' / And out of simple honesty, that twice-born accepted the calf.
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Having treated their guru deceitfully through wrongdoing, those twice-born, / when their life reached its end, all met their death in course of time.
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Because of cruelty and wickedness, and through their ignoble behavior toward their guru, / seven fierce brothers delighting in violence were born, / as sons of a hunter, my dear, strong and resolute.
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Because they had worshipped the ancestors according to dharma and sprinkled the cow with water, / they possessed memory and self-awareness in that other birth.
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They were born in Daśārṇa as seven hunters skilled in dharma, / all devoted to their own duty, free from greed and falsehood.
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They engaged only in as much [hunting] as was needed for sustaining life; / devoted to dharma, they spent the rest of the time meditating on their past deed.
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And these were their names, O ruler of men: / Nirvaira, Nirvṛta, Kṣānta, Nirmanyu, and Kṛti, / Vaidhasa, and Mātṛvartin—hunters of supreme righteousness.
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Living thus, my dear, while practicing the duty of hunters in the forest, / their aged mother was revered, and their father was well pleased.
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When their mother and father met the fate of time, / then, abandoning their bows in the forest, they cast off their lives.
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By that auspicious deed, they were born on the lovely mount Kālañjara / as deer remembering their past lives, agitated by fright and agitation.
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Unmukha, Nityavitrasta, Stabdhakarṇa, Vilocana, / Paṇḍita, Ghasmara, and Nādī—such were their names as deer.
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Meditating on that very purpose arising from the memory of past births, / they were forest-dwellers, patient, free from dualities, without possessions.
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Those forest-dwellers, all performing good deeds and sharing the same dharma, / undertook the fast unto death, took light food, and as ascetics cast off their lives.
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The places of the footsteps of those who undertook the fast unto death / are still seen even today on mount Kālañjara, O imperishable one, descendant of Bharata.
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By that good deed, my dear, freed from bad deeds, / they attained an even more auspicious birth from that auspicious one, becoming cakravāka geese.
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In a fair region, on a river islet, the seven water-dwellers lived, / abandoning the mate-seeking nature, practicing righteousness like sages.
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Desireless, free from possessiveness, patient, beyond dualities, without possessions,
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Nirvṛtti and Nibhṛta—thus were the birds known by name.
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All those birds were observers of chaste studentship, living virtuously;
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taking no food, endowed with ascetic heat, they gave up their lives on the riverbank.
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Then those brothers were born as swans haunting Lake Mānasa,
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remembering their past lives, closely bonded, the seven practicing chaste studentship.
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Because they had deceitfully treated their guru through delusion in their brahmin birth,
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they were therefore born into animal births and wandered in the cycle of rebirth.
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Yet because the rite for the ancestors was performed by them while pursuing their self-interest,
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they attained knowledge and successive births of superior quality.
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Sumanas, Muni, Suvāc, Śuddha, the fifth Chidradarśana, / Sunetra, and Svatantra—thus were the birds remembered by name.
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The fifth among them was born as Pañcika in the seven births; / the sixth was Kaṇḍarīka, and Brahmadatta was the seventh.
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By virtue of their ascetic heat performed through seven births, / and by the perfection of yoga and their splendid intuition,
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the brahman that was heard in the guru's lineage in their past lives / remained just so, even as they moved within the cycles of worldly existence.
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All those chaste students, roaming at will as birds / and meditating upon the dharma of yoga, wandered about there.
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Reaching Lake Mānasa, they became water-dwelling swans.
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As those companion birds were moving about there, / the lord of the Nīpas, King Vibhrāja of the Paurava lineage,
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radiant in form, endowed with majestic power, / fortunate and surrounded by his women's quarters, entered that forest.
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The ruddy goose, Svatantra, envied that king, / seeing him arriving endowed with splendor: "May I become like this!
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If I have any merit, ascetic heat, or religious observance— / for I am exhausted by fasting and by fruitless ascetic heat—
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I desire kingship, if there is any merit in me."
Linked texts (1)
- Harivaṃśa — Vyāsa, Sanskrit