An Index to the Names in the Mahabharata, with Short Explanations and a Concordance to the Bombay and Calcutta Editions and P. C. Roy's Translation c5.s2.461

c5.s2.461

said: The seven R. Kaçyapa, etc. (α), and Arundhatī together had one single maidservant, Gaṇḍā, who was married to the çūdra Paçusakha. While they, in days of old, practised penances, themselves for (upaikṣanto) Brahmaloka by yoga meditation (samādhinā), there occurred a severe drought; Çibi's son Çaibya had in former times given away a son of his as the sacrificial present to the rivijes; that prince now died of starvation; impelled by hunger, the Rṣis cooked his body in a vessel. King Çaibya Vṛṣādarbhi came and offered to give them kine, etc., but they refused it: that acceptance of gifts from a king was poison; they left the spot abandoning that flesh. The king sent his ministers with figs, some of which were filled with gold; but Atri, finding them heavy, refused to take them; and so did all of them (β), and left the spot. Filled with wrath, Vṛṣādarbhi, after having observed penances, poured libations into the fire accompanied by mantras; from the fire a hag (kṛtyā) sprang forth, whom he called Yātudhānī; he ordered her to slay the Rṣis, etc., having ascertained their names. While R. roved within the forest, subsisting npon fruits and roots, they saw a well-nourished mendicant [called further below Çuṇahsakha] with a dog in good condition; Arundhatī pointed him out to them, and each of them explained the superior condition of this mendicant with reference to one of the points in which he was better sitnated than they (γ). The wandering mendicant approached them and touched their hand according to custom. One day they beheld a beautiful lake overgrown with lotuses, and desired to gather some lotus-stalks; urged by Vṛṣādarbhi, Yātudhānī, who guarded the lake, would know their names before they took the stalks; Atri knew that she stood there in order to slay them; but they all told their names with their etymological explanations (δ); at each explanation Yātudhānī declared that she did not understand it, [in some cases] "in consequence of the inflections which the roots had undergone"; Çuṇahsakha calls himself Çuṇahsakha-sakhi, and as Yātudhānī wishes to hear the name once more in order to understand it, he struck her head with his triple stick, at which she was consumed to ashes. Having gathered lotus-stalks, they once more plunged into the lake in order to oblations of water to the Pitṛs. As they came up, the stalks were nowhere to be seen. They took, each of them, oaths to their innocence (ε); but the oath of Çuṇahsakha was "no oath at all," and he confessed that he had stolen the stalks from desire of testing them; he turned out to be Indra, who had come to test them, and told them the whole matter about Yātudhānī. They then ascended to heaven in the company of Indra himself * (XIII, 93).