The healing of Agni
Telling the story behind the telling of the Mahābhārata
I wrote this story a couple of summers ago when wildfires from around the world were all over the news. Many of these wildfires had grown particularly large because of overzealous fire suppression efforts over several decades, which had led to the accumulation of highly combustible materials in several regions. This then led me to think of an episode from the Mahābhārata about a particular wildfire which was, in a way, directly responsible for the recitation of the Mahābhārata itself.
Part I: Agni’s hunger
Long ago, in the distant shadows of India's hoary past when gods walked among men and men shone like gods, there was a king named Śvetakī. Lustrous, radiant, dedicated to the Vedic rite, Śvetakī was known for his great yajñas that proceeded unceasingly. Indeed, so incessant was his sacrificing that his kingdom’s officiants (ṛtvijs) were burned out and refused to assist him any further. But Śvetakī was bent upon performing yet another hundred-year-long sacrifice to benefit the land and the people, and his ṛtvijs’ obstinacy only fueled his own desire to sacrifice. In order to persuade the great god Mahādeva to himself officiate the rite, Śvetakī built an altar, invoked Agni, and poured clarified butter (ghṛta or ghee) into the altar in an unbroken stream for twelve continuous years. At the end of this rite, Mahādeva was delighted by Śvetakī’s persistence, and directed the seer Durvāsas to officiate for Śvetakī. The ritual went spectacularly well, and Śvetakī took his place in heaven while the people of his land gained greatly in wealth and possessions through his donations.
But Agni was in pain. After drinking ghee continuously for twelve years, he was utterly satiated and could consume it no more. The very thought of consuming more ghee sickened him, so far past the point of diminishing marginal utility was he.
This was a total disaster! If Agni couldn't drink the offerings of ghee made by humans, he would no longer be Hutāśana, consumer of oblations. If he could no longer convey these offerings to the other gods, he would no longer be Havyavāha, bearer of oblations. The entire structure of sacrifice and Vedic ritual would fall apart.
In his desperation, Agni turned to the All-Grandfather Brahmā for guidance. Brahmā realized that, having gorged upon saturated fat, Agni could only cure his indigestion by changing his diet. He needed a lot more green leafy matter (including herbs), tree bark to provide roughage, and finally a good mix of plants and animals for variety. The best source of all these materials was the forest of Khāṇḍava. If Agni could just burn the whole forest down along with everything in it, his condition could be cured.
There was just one problem. The lord of snakes, Takṣaka, dwelled in Khāṇḍava along with all his family, and he came under the aegis of Indra. Whenever Agni tried to burn Khāṇḍava, Indra would unleash a storm (without the lightning, of course) to extinguish the fires and to frustrate Agni’s efforts. And what's more, the elephants and snakes of the forest had their own fire-fighting crews ready to pour water onto any stray spark that might dare to burn the forest. Seven times did seven-tongued Agni try to burn Khāṇḍava, and seven times was seven-tongued Agni quenched and quelled.
Agni was in a fix. Who could help him overcome Indra? Who could keep the animals within the conflagration so that Agni could consume them? This task was far beyond any mortal’s capacity. And so Agni’s agony persisted for a long time while he prayed and waited for the right person to come along.
Part II: Agni’s hunger satiated
And one fine day, the right person did come along. Or to be more precise, the two right persons came along.
After many squabbles and struggles with their more numerous Kaurava cousins, the Pāṇḍavas had finally moved to the Khāṇḍava region to set up camp. Their subjects loved them, and they in turn were at peace. No conflict with the Kauravas bothered them at this time, nor did other kings seek to fight them. In a celebratory moment, then, Arjuna held a party on the banks of the Yamunā, where he was joined by his close friend and mentor Kṛṣṇa.
Seeing the two of them on the riverbank, each lustrous and radiant in his own way, Agni knew his moment had arrived. He donned the garb of a poor brahmin and approached them, begging to be fed. As he well knew, this was not a request that a good king could reject. Arjuna, of course, immediately agreed to feed the poor man his fill of whatever he wanted to consume. It was then that Agni dropped his costume and revealed himself in his blazing golden form that was nevertheless jaundiced by his continuing indigestion.
“Noble ones, you have agreed to feed me whatever I want. What I want, then, is to feed on the Khāṇḍava forest and all of its denizens. That is the only thing that can cure my indigestion, which is impairing the proper operation of the whole sacrificial model. Will you stand by your word?”
Arjuna was awestruck by the sudden manifestation of this divinity. (Kṛṣṇa, not so much!) He knew that this task was not a simple one, for the Khāṇḍava and its wild dangers were well known to him. Worse, though, was the fact that it was Indra who would oppose them himself. Not because Indra was the lord of the celestials, not because Indra’s ferocity in combat was daunting—Arjuna had enough confidence in his abilities to go up against anybody—but because Indra was in fact his own father. The world may have called Arjuna a Pāṇḍava, declaring him a son of the pallid, flaccid Pāṇḍu, but he knew the story of his own divine conception, when his mother Kuntī had overcome her husband’s impotence and fulfilled her dharma to give him a son by binding the god Indra with a sacred mantra and conceiving a boy. Even at birth, the child had shone with the silvery-white luster of a lightning-bolt cast down upon earth by Indra, and had thus earned the name Arjuna. And now he would have to prove his own worth by standing up to his heavenly father in combat.
Arjuna, of course, could not go back on his word to allow Agni to feed on the Khāṇḍava forest. He would either succeed in his mission or die trying, and there was no dishonor in either end. But to accomplish any goal (sādhya), the right instruments (sādhanas) must be deployed in the right fashion (iti-kartavyatā). One simply could not hope to battle celestial Indra with terrestrial weapons. And who knew, perhaps these celestial weapons could one day be useful in terrestrial combat against certain recalcitrant cousins too …
“O Agni, bearer of oblations, burner of flesh! I gave you my word and I will stand by it until either the last twig of Khāṇḍava is burned to cinder or my soul is cleaved from my body by Indra’s thunderbolt. But to do this, I need your help too. I need weapons and vehicles worthy of fighting the gods.”
Agni was doubly pleased by Arjuna’s willingness to hold a promise and his craftiness in extracting something of value for himself in this process. He thus bestowed upon Arjuna the priceless gift of the Gāṇḍīva bow, unparalleled in all the cosmic realms in power and beauty, along with two inexhaustible quivers full of arrows, each as sharp as Indra’s thunderbolt. And he furnished him with a chariot equipped with every weapon imaginable, yoked to cloud-white steeds, with a golden flagstaff carrying the banner of Hanumān fluttering atop.
Thus fully equipped, the three took their positions around Khāṇḍava: Arjuna at one end, Kṛṣṇa at the other, Agni encircling the forest. As his seven tongues started to hungrily lick the branches at the edge of the forest, and as smoke started to spread, the birds and beasts in Khāṇḍava panicked and tried to escape. But they found their escape routes cut off by Kṛṣṇa’s golden Sudarśana discus on the one end and by Arjuna’s inexhaustible arrows on the other. As they burned, their cries of anguish reached up to Indra, who was outraged by Agni’s audacity in attacking Khāṇḍava again.
Indra thus launched his first salvo by pouring down large showers upon ravenous Agni. But unlike Agni’s seven previous failures, this did not suffice. Agni had already grown too large and too hot, and evaporated the waters even before they descended into the lower atmosphere. Frustrated, Indra called forth a colossal storm to envelop the whole forest, with scarcely a gap between the falling raindrops.
Now was Arjuna’s moment to shine. With untiring arms and unerring aim, he unleashed a constant stream of arrows from one end of the forest to another. As he raced around the circumference of the forest firing off arrow after arrow, their parabolic arcs intersected to weave an iron dome over the whole of Khāṇḍava. Not a single drop of water could penetrate the dome, while all of the wildfire’s energy was contained within it, further increasing the ferocity of the flames and speeding up Agni’s advance through the forest.
Infuriated and astonished in equal parts, Indra now called all the celestials to do battle with this young upstart. Yama and Kubera, Varuṇa and Kārtikeya, the Aśvins, Dhātṛ and Tvaṣṭṛ, Sūrya and Mṛtyu, Mitra and Aryaman, Pūṣan and Bhaga, the Rudras and the Vasus, the Maruts and the Viśvedevas: all of them came forth to fight Arjuna. These divine beings had successfully waged war against any number of asuras or rākṣasas previously, and were sure this mere human could do nothing against them. But between Arjuna’s bow and Kṛṣṇa’s discus, their repeated assaults proved utterly futile. Defeated in combat and defeated in spirits, they fled back to Indra. And all the while Agni continued to burn through Khāṇḍava unopposed and undeterred.
It was then that a disembodied voice spoke, impossibly deep, heard as much by the bones of the body as by the ears:
CEASE YOUR FIGHT WITH ARJUNA AND KṚṢṆA, O INDRA. THEY ARE DESTINED TO SUCCEED HERE, JUST AS AGNI IS DESTINED TO BURN KHĀṆḌAVA.
BESIDES, YOUR FRIEND TAKṢAKA IS NOT EVEN HERE TODAY. YOU HAVE NO REASON TO TRY TO SAVE THIS FOREST.
It was not everyday that Indra, lord of the gods, received instructions from an even higher authority. And it was rarer still that he was told to refrain from fighting a pesky human who was nevertheless able to hold his own against all the gods. This was not a fight that he wanted to continue in any case; there were celestial dancers to be enjoyed and celestial music to be heard, after all. Indra thus retreated from the stage, followed by the other gods, leaving Khāṇḍava to Agni.
Agni burned Khāṇḍava for fifteen days and nights, consuming everything. Every leaf, every twig, every branch and every trunk: his burning maw swallowed it all. Every bird and every beast, every yakṣa and every rākṣasa: his seven tongues tasted them all. Six living creatures alone escaped that conflagration: Aśvasena, son of Takṣaka (whose mother sacrificed herself to save him), the asura architect Maya (who surrendered himself to Arjuna), and four śārṅgaka birds (whose fascinating story is too long to be retold here).
Epilogue
Fire burns life, but fire also perpetuates life. The California wildfires of old certainly scorched combustible material, but their heat also propagated seeds and permitted new cycles of growth, and of future fires as well. So too was it with the burning of the Khāṇḍava forest: it was the fiery end of much life, but it also sowed the seeds for new prosperity as well as a new generation of conflict. For immediately after the Khāṇḍava conflagration, the grateful architect Maya built for the Pāṇḍavas a spectacular palace in their new royal citadel Indraprastha. (No small irony that the city was named after the god who was supposed to have protected the forest that grew there!)
When their Kaurava cousin, Duryodhana, was invited to Maya’s palace, his envy exceeded all bounds, as did his humiliation on being laughed at by Draupadī. This in turn directly set up the fateful gambling match that resulted in the Pāṇḍavas losing everything to the Kauravas, which in turn led to the catastrophic Mahābhārata war.
But we are still not done here! Aśvasena, the son of Takṣaka, assisted Karṇa in that war during his duel with Arjuna, in an attempt to avenge the death of his mother. He was, however, slain, thus amplifying Takṣaka’s rage against the Pāṇḍavas.
Two generations later, when the opportunity finally came, Takṣaka poisoned Arjuna’s grandson Parikṣit. This in turn triggered another brutal reprisal, in which Parikṣit’s son Janamejaya launched a vicious ophiocidal campaign to exterminate all snakes on earth in a colossal sarpa-sattra (snake sacrifice). It was at this sacrifice that Vaiśampāyana recited the Mahābhārata to Janamejaya, recounting the tale of his ancestors and their internecine conflict, as well as the origin of the war between the Kuru dynasty and the snakes of the world.
Only when he was fully educated about the past was Janamejaya able to overcome his present ophidiomisia and to live in relative peace in the future alongside them.
Foreshadowings
This story of the burning of Khāṇḍava may seem far too long a digression (although trust me when I say that I have skipped over many, many details presented in the Mahābhārata itself!), but in fact every aspect of it is pertinent to our current situation.
Notice what happens at the beginning. King Śvetakī overfeeds Agni with ghee, against the advice of all his sacrificial officiants, in an attempt to go to heaven. He does succeed in his attempt, despite the extended negative consequences for many, many individuals in the future. But isn’t this exactly what we are doing today? Substitute fossil fuels for ghee, substitute the modern lifestyle of abundance for heaven, and you get a fairly accurate correspondence of events.
Notice, too, the amorality of the sacrificial model: Śvetakī performs the sacrifice well and so reaps its benefits, no matter the long-term effects. The modern technopoly is similarly amoral in nature: it doesn’t care about people’s morals or motivations, only about whether the right technology has been used effectively or not to yield the desired goal.
Notice also the worsening of the wildfires over the course of the story. Precisely because Agni’s initial attempts to consume the Khāṇḍava forest were suppressed by Indra, his condition worsened so that the forest was ultimately utterly incinerated. This parallels developments in our world remarkably closely: wildfires are worsening globally not only due to our overconsumption of fossil fuels that is driving climate change, but also because of fire suppression policies that prevent healthy burn-off from happening.
Also notice what happens after the Khāṇḍava forest is burned down: a marvelous, magical crystalline palace is built in its place. Humans replace a messy, dynamic, interconnected, natural ecosystem with a transparent, static, inorganic structure. Furthermore, this artificial structure provokes envy, jealousy, and conflict even within a family in a way that the original forest did not. This is because Maya’s magical palace is a rivalrous good, whereas the Khāṇḍava forest is not. It is also private property, in a way that a wild forest can never be. All of these human impositions upon nature are kindling for further conflicts.
|| Sarvaṃ Śrī-Kṛṣṇârpaṇam astu ||
Beautifully explained and especially the contrast with the present world
Loved this thoroughly. Cannot wait for the next installation