The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c9.10

c9.10

Very often we meet with the form *râjarshi* in the Mahâbhârata. In the celebrated Sâvitrî episode in the third book, Sâvitrî chooses as his consort Satyavâna, the son of the blind Dyumatsena who was robbed of his kingdom and practises austerities in the forest with his wife and his son.¹ In the ninth book it is narrated how Duryodhana voluntarily offered Yudhishṭhira of his own free will an uncontested kingdom, explaining that he wanted to go into the forest, clad in two animal skins (vanam eva gamishyâmi vasâno mṛigacarmaṇi IX.31.52). Yudhishṭhira declines the offer and challenges him to a duel; but after Duryodhana is defeated and his kingdom falls to Yudhishṭhira, the latter resolves, being himself tired of sovereignty, to practise austerities in the forest. "The wrong that has happened," so he explains to his brother Arjuna (XII. 7.37 sq.) "is expiated by virtue, by open confession, repentance, begging alms or by castigation, world-renunciation, pilgrimage to sacred places or recitation of sacred verse. He who has renounced the world cannot sin any more, so goes the revelation. When, as the revelation teaches, a man renounces the world, he has neither birth nor death, then he is merged, after he has found the right path by conscious striving, in Brahma. So will I alone, a seer in possession of knowledge, go into the forest and take leave of you all.”