Nakula (the Mongoose)

Classical

After the great war, Yudhishthira performed the horse sacrifice, the most splendid rite a king can offer. The scale of it is part of the story. At its close, Yudhishthira and his brothers gave away millions of gold coins, three times the prescribed fee. Vyasa took the gold and divided it into four parts for the priests, and Yudhishthira felt as if he had paid for the earth and washed away his sins. The Brahmins divided the gold ornaments and vessels from the ground, and what remained went to the other orders.

Into this scene came a mongoose, half of whose body was gold. It addressed the assembled Brahmins and said its words were not boasting. The horse sacrifice, it said, does not equal the merit of giving one measure of lawfully earned barley flour. And it would tell what it had seen and felt.

In Kurukshetra there lived a Brahmin who followed the practice of gleaning, picking up leftover grain after the harvest the way pigeons do. He lived with his wife, son and son's wife, in austerity and restraint, ate one meal a day, and fasted on any day when the food had not come. Then famine struck. Plants withered and stores emptied, and the family went hungry day after day. One day in the month of Jaishtha, at midday, the Brahmin gleaned in the scorching sun, exhausted and starving. After the time for his meal he got a measure of barley. The family ground it into flour, did their silent prayers and fire offerings, and divided it so each had one kudava.

As they sat down to eat, a guest arrived. The wife urged her husband to give her portion to the guest. He had supported her, protected her and given her a son, she said, and if he was old and weak and fasting, so was she. He took her share, mixed it with his own, and gave it to the guest. The guest ate it all and was still hungry.

The Brahmin was troubled. His son offered his own share. A son should support an aging father, he said, and his father's life was the more precious. The father refused: his son was still a child to him, children's hunger is fierce, and he himself was old, had done penance for years and did not fear death. The son replied that a child is called putra because he rescues his parent, that the father's own self is born again in the son, and that the father should save himself through him. In the end each of them, including the daughter-in-law, whom the Brahmin praised as chaste and devoted to her duty to elders, gave up a share for the stranger.

Then the guest revealed himself: he was Righteousness, Dharma, in human form, and he was pleased. The gift had been earned honestly and given freely, he said, and it was being talked about in heaven. Flowers fell from the sky, and celestial beings and sages from Brahma's world praised the Brahmin. Dharma told him he had freed his ancestors for countless ages and should go to heaven. He explained that giving with a pure heart in a time of hardship wins heaven, that hunger weakens wisdom and steadiness, and that the Brahmin had set aside family affection and his own cravings for righteousness. Giving has grades, he said: earning wealth is little, giving it to a worthy person is more, giving it at the right time more, and giving it with devotion most. The Brahmin, his wife, son and daughter-in-law all went to heaven.

The mongoose said it had come out of its hole and the smell of the flour, the muddy water that the Brahmin had given the guest, the divine flowers that fell, and the flour's crumbs had touched it, and its head turned to gold. Half its body became gold through the Brahmin's truthful gift. It had gone to hermitages and royal sacrifices since, hoping the rest of its body would turn, and here too it had not. That, it said, is how the Kuru king's sacrifice stands against that one prastha of barley. Then it vanished, and the Brahmins went home. Vaisampayana's last words to Janamejaya are that sacrifice should not be overvalued, and that harmlessness, contentment, good conduct, truthfulness, penance, self-control and giving are equal in merit.

Told by Vaiśampāyana → Janamejaya

Who: Yudhiṣṭhira

Where this comes from

CE · Mahabharata, Critical Edition 14.92-96 14.92-96
read for this telling · Mahabharata, Aswamedha Parva (krishnakosh.org; translator not named on page) Aswamedha Parva, Chapter 89 (close of Yudhishthira's horse sacrifice)
read for this telling · Mahabharata, Aswamedha Parva (krishnakosh.org; translator not named on page) Aswamedha Parva, Chapter 90:2 (the mongoose speaks; the Brahmin's family and the famine)
read for this telling · Mahabharata, Aswamedha Parva (krishnakosh.org; translator not named on page) Aswamedha Parva, Chapter 90:4 (the wife, husband, son give in turn)
read for this telling · Mahabharata, Aswamedha Parva (krishnakosh.org; translator not named on page) Aswamedha Parva, Chapter 90:6 (the daughter-in-law; the guest is Righteousness)
read for this telling · Mahabharata, Aswamedha Parva (krishnakosh.org; translator not named on page) Aswamedha Parva, Chapter 90:8 (the mongoose's gold; closing)

See it on the tree · All stories

← Uttaṅka · Babruvahana beheads Arjuna and invades Patala (Jaimini) →