Sūrya's Akṣaya Pātra for Yudhiṣṭhira

Classical

When the Pāṇḍavas left Hastināpura for twelve years in the forest, a crowd of learned Brahmins chose to go with them. Yudhiṣṭhira was now a king without a kingdom, and he could neither feed these followers nor bring himself to send them away. Troubled, he went to his family priest Dhaumya and asked what a man in his position should do. It is the first practical problem of exile: not danger, but hospitality, the duty of a householder that even loss at dice could not cancel for him. Dhaumya answered by teaching him about the Sun. In the beginning, he said, creatures were starving and the Sun took pity: he drew up water with his rays, held it, and the Moon turned it into clouds that fell as rain, so that plants grew and became food. All living things are therefore fed by the Sun, and he is rightly called the father of beings. Dhaumya urged Yudhiṣṭhira to take refuge in him, as earlier kings of great merit had done, and he recited the hundred and eight names of the Sun, said to have been revealed by Brahmā.

Yudhiṣṭhira went to the Gaṅgā, bathed, turned to face the Sun, and with restrained breath and speech sang a long hymn of praise. He called the Sun the eye of the world, the self of all bodies, the one who dries the waters in summer and sends rain in the monsoon, the lord of time from the days of Brahmā to the dissolution of the world. At the end he asked for one thing only: food, so that he could honour his guests. It was a request for the means to keep a vow of generosity, not for power or revenge.

The Sun appeared before him, blazing like fire, and was pleased. He gave Yudhiṣṭhira a copper vessel and a condition. For twelve years the food cooked in the Pāṇḍavas' kitchen would not run out, so long as Draupadī held the vessel and ate last. He added that in the fourteenth year Yudhiṣṭhira would regain his kingdom, and that anyone who recited the hymn with devotion could win what he asked for. Then the god vanished. The hymn, he said, had passed from Brahmā to Indra, to Nārada, to Dhaumya, and now to Yudhiṣṭhira.

Yudhiṣṭhira came up from the river, honoured Dhaumya, and went with Draupadī to the kitchen. A small meal was cooked, and it multiplied without end. He fed the Brahmins first, then his brothers, then ate what remained himself, and Draupadī ate last; only then did the food finish for the day. With this gift the exile could be borne. The pot also sets up a later crisis, because a day's food ends when Draupadī has eaten, and Duryodhana's schemers know it. After the rites, the Pāṇḍavas set out with Dhaumya and the Brahmins for the Kāmyaka forest.

Told by Vaiśampāyana → Janamejaya

Who: Yudhiṣṭhira, Dhaumya, Sūrya, Draupadī

Bound to

Durvāsas' Untimely Visit and Kṛṣṇa's Morsel boon

Vidura Banished and Recalled origin

Places: Gaṅgā, Kāmyaka forest

Where this comes from

read for this telling · Mahabharata, Ganguli translation (ibiblio sripedia mirror) Vana Parva, Section III (Surya and the copper vessel)

See it on the tree · All stories

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