Five Worthy Couples in the Mahabharata

(Episodes)

PROF. V. SITARAMIAH

Here is a general sum up of and a few observations on five stories from the Upakhyanas of the Mahabharata. The episodes are connected with Nala and Damayanti, Savitri and Satyavan. Ruru and Pramadvara, Cyavana and Sukanya and Sakuntala and Dushyanta. They are not connected with the main Mahabharata story and belong to a strand of existence and events of a period even before its time. They have no relationship to the Vedic or Upanishadic period. All these have a worth in the love-life between a husband and wife who have chosen each other in circumstances unique to each. The choices are free and each depicts a feature which distinguishes love and respect for conjugal values when life was freer from the shackles in later social history. They deserve to be understood and cherished. One thing that strikes above all is how under trying circumstances these men and women chose to behave in love and loyalty. Freedom is right and healthful always but self-discipline and understanding of mutual obligation between the members can make for a finer living in today’s situation as well. They clear and bold: and as such can be basis for greater family comfort.

What shows up in the five stories is a vision of love and loyalty as I have said. They are pictures of true love redeeming and redeemed. Whatever social, political or ethical organised may build up in any country or time the relations between the two sexes and the love that solders the couple in married life and the standards of conduct that sanction it have to be presented clearly and definitely. Family life, homes and progeny all hang on it. Social living shapes round it and finds in it its basis and warranty. Howsoever much people may deny the value of or deride the worldly life and describe its disgusts, call beauty of the physical form harshly as “Maamsa vasaadi vikaaram” and preach the superior value of Renunciation, Sanyaasa and Mokshadharma, all social processes and stability hang round the family whose primary members are a husband and wife. This relationship will, I hope, persist till the end of time and of the world. And the problems connected with this relationship will have to be continuously solved, without which life will have to expose itself to misery and hardship. In the economy or the flourish of creation, the attraction between the sexes is the basic phenomenon. Creative energy of the highest ‘spiritual’ kind cannot suppress this natural predilection, because is born with life and persists through life in some form or other, disturbing and calling for response. No religion or ethical system, no activity that has tried to build anything trying to suppress this as of no value has succeeded. Human history for 5,000 years has been witness to it. Soon as youth appears love-craving springs up and jets out. The attraction of the eye becomes the fascination of the mind. Desire (Kama) craves enjoyment (Rati). The impulse to enjoy its sweetness d pleasure spreads all round. This is nature. The evil results caprice, selfishness, viciousness, lust, jealousy, deceit, or excitement and other destructive traits can show up in this stage. Dharma and Karma, i.e., Ethic and Action, should achieve the joy of life d the welfare of the world by discovering and recognising it and seeing what flavour and temper could keep it clean and clear. Love arises naturally. It is not intellect or position or money that draws and wins, brings together and holds prisoner - as much it is a call of the blood; a desire for possession and belonging. It is difficult to trample it; and its passions and pains are hard bear. Common people cannot get beyond it. Even Hari, Hara and Brahma could not destroy it. There are stories about where they too have been subject to it. Except when anti-social behaviour, treachery or betrayal develops, society must provide opportunities for accommodating and realising it. Traditions, courtesies and modes of proper behaviour should understand its urgency and shape it without violating the moral law. If society tries to assert its victory its virtue gets lost and it loses freshness and vitality. That would otherwise be one of its most delightful claims to recognition it loses. Hypocrisy, hide and seek develop. The pursuits of Artha and Kama are extremely powerful impulses. That is why our people gave them importance and placed them among the Purusharthas, i.e., the Ends. This is an attitude which secures the health of life if it be – or allows itself to be–directed and regulated by Dharma. Without transgressing Dharma, Artha and Kama may be secured as one desires them and secure their pleasures; With the institution of marriage civilisation and culture took a definite step forward.

But the individual has no fame and society cannot achieve welfare if the word prevails that love is enough and there need be no restraint on thought. Whatever happens without principle self-restraint strains the balance, hurting it; neither it nor its environment gains from it. Selfish ends grow up among the strong. This is the normal feature of life. Many cannot live in the world single. They have to live commonly among others. When we recognise that one is born in society and has to live in it we have to adjust our conduct to suit it and in a way not inimical to its interests and practices. Only harmonising one’s relationship with society makes for smooth social relationships. Not that life is otherwise impossible, if one sets himself in opposition to it, or in trying to live beyond it, life becomes difficult–a toil. This is an argument for love’s effort.

In each one of the stories is an example of love and conjugal affection and of one peculiar type of hardship and difficulty. When a beautiful woman is found free and alone, the eyes of gods themselves set on her and desire her, talk sweet words, trying to make her stray. One however sees that the purity of all these stories had the same ethos. It is seen prepared or ready to go to the limit in guarding its Dharma. It lives for and secures the survival of the other. When there was ample opportunity and freedom they guarded themselves; and the picture is one of realisation and fulfilment which has been an example of approbation for all time. Man more than woman, woman more than man is deep in love with each other. Each yields to the quality of the other, and wins and saves it from break and death. They fulfil themselves through mutual acceptance and devotion. This also is true: men who have won the love and regard of women like Sakuntala, Damayanti, Savitri and Sukanya learn not to treat them lightly. Their quality and character are that high; so binding is the bond of love.

Love is not a rush of blood or pressure for a moment merely; not alone a craving or an ache, a means of pleasure, a passionate excitement. It can begin that way but it goes on growing in each other’s memory and affection, where each protects the other, develops through happiness; each gives to the other, feeling what the other lacks. There is gratitude for what is received, agreeing to live with the other understandingly, to the extent that this body respects the other, is kind to it, agrees to be clean itself in return for the cleanliness of the other, without desiring a third; does not get deflected or change but keep itself devoted to the other. Where there is no such devotion in conduct and mental attitude there is no constancy or firmness and, therefore, no true love. Where there is no edge and vitality and the vivifying largeness of love, conjugal life is inert and hopeless. It is stale food and becomes mere co-existence. Cynics have called such “dull habit.” Not that there is no element of truth in this. Love is a condition of mind, daily new and daily yielding attention. Through conducting itself properly, it is a power that saves. Only when love is born, develops and gets firm this way between men and women will it be a beneficent influence in society. If it becomes wilful and capricious or lax, it has neither merit nor a desirable end.

Father or mother, elder or teacher, with no one to bear witness in the hermitage, Sakuntala gave herself to Dushyanta and exposed herself to hardship and humiliation. She went after many years of neglect where her husband was and confronted him with the truth and her rights and won for herself honour. That is her story in the Mahabharata. If the person who spoke clever, pleasant words failed in performance and broke his promise and he happened to be the king of the country behaving unfairly, she challenged him in open assembly. “Today I stand before you without witness or evidence- ‘Asaakshinee mandabhaagaa’. I go the way I came. My sorrow is mine. It is not worthy of a person like you to be dishonest. Your heart and mind and eyes are speaking to you the truth. You are rejecting us shamelessly. This sort of behaviour may feature a rustic or a cheat”–she said fearlessly. The very gods have to bow before a stand and utterance like that. The anger of a truthful person can hold prisoner the heaven itself. The heaven will then be milked for the welfare of the world. If everyone lives his or her life in Dharma it becomes the task and the responsibility of the gods to sustain Dharma. Yet to those who read the story of Sakuntala, one thing becomes clear: the point is established that secret love, the one unwitnessed, has to abide hardship and trouble. The woman feels orphaned and is cast on the streets. The hardest picture of this condition is given by Kalidasa:

Saa nindantee svaani bhaagyaani baalaa
Baahootkhsepam kranditum ca pravrihtthaa

one of the highest agony in all Kalidasa. The world must understand that a good woman should not be so caught and exposed to pain and trouble. That is why the world always arranges the marriages sufficiently publicly before hundreds of people: in the eye of the household fire inviting at Hindu homes with the gods, as it is deemed, witnessing the union of a particular woman with a particular man–priests proclaiming it.

Damayanti is more vital and dominant than Nala. Even when the gods desire her and make their prayers to her she firms her resolve for Nala, rejected them all and won their regard. She lived with him as wife and bore him twin children. When he gambled away all he had and had to live in the forest she kept company with him without thinking of her comfort or privation, her prestige or suffering and pleaded with him to keep her as companion in the hard days. It is the picture of a Sahadharminee which both Sita–not herself a quiet wife–and Damayanti illustrate in this country’s culture. Not jewellery nor the other good things of life, not happiness or position matter. If the husband whom she has loved and approved gets exposed to hardship, well, it shall be hers too. If it be cheer and happiness, that will they be to her. “We shall live life together and enjoy its sorrows and pleasures; I shall not go to my father’s place”–she said. Yet, he left her alone, with the best of intentions, no doubt, in midforest helpless and went away from her. But she sends parties after him and fetches him to her. In her behaviour and procedure there is an awesome freedom. The hound which with the smell of the blood fetches the murderer is no match for her efficiency. And, when he meets her she says: “I am mother of sons to you and have been living for your love, anxious about your happiness. To a wife with faith in you, how could you be  so unjust? This may seem unpleasant for a moment. But it contains in it the flavour and essence of all that makes for culture, love, Dharma, courage, cleanliness and character. To live married to a wife like that is really difficult but a privilege to the male. Each one of its flavours could be effort enough to have, hold and taste. Nala who got the tribute of such lofty love is one of God’s fortunates. None but a barbarian can hurt such a love.

The heroism and enterprise of Savitri are even greater in comparison. The husband of Damayanti is at least alive. He may be alive and be somewhere. All that is needed is to seek out and discover. ‘Gurvapai virahaduhkham aasaabandhah saahayati’ (Kalidasa)–the bond of hope enables a person to endure the heavy sorrows of separation. Or there is the more perfect obser­vation of Sita in the Ramayana: ‘Eti jeevantam aanandam naram varsha sataadapi’. Some day happiness will come even if it takes a hundred years to do. Hope is easier where the faith is clear that one may be got as long as one keeps right. Savitri has no such chance. Things were dead set. What a situation was hers? For long no groom came seeking her hand. The father felt despon­dent, even desperate. Permitted by him, she left on her own, went over forest and field to find a person whom her heart could approve. She chose Satyavan. Her choice was final. Heart, life–all now belong to him. That he is destined to die under a year is learnt later. So what? She was not deterred by the challenge of Fate or fear of Death. She followed Yama, won his heart, gained his approbation and saved the husband for herself. All connect­ed with his family derive joy and attainment of desires through the boons and favours secured for them by Savitri. Yama is a God who punishes the wicked. Yet, this conduct of his in connec­tion with Savitri vouchasafes to the world the vision that he is the Lord of Dharma as well. Indeed, it unlocks the mystery of life and death. Has not the highest Truth been featured as “Yasya chhaayaa amritam yasya mrityuh”–that whose shadow on one side is Death; the other Immortality?

Possibly, the action of Rum has not the weight or loftiness which these examples attain but in quality and steadfast­ness and in the wealth of true love Ruru’s was not second to any. Pramadvara is a young woman who is not married to him yet. She has come to the end of her time in life just before the time set for it. He awards a full half of the limit of his own life to endow her dead body with life; that brought to life what was dead. What matters whether the life is that of the woman or of the man? That one is higher the other lower is an unequal, an unfair way of looking at as measure of Love.

Right up to the present day, discriminations have been made in Dharma and Karma. The male has been the dominating factor. Everything happens as if the male was superior to the female. Woman weighs lighter than was Paativratya, devotion to the husband and cleanliness as a governing principle of conduct to the woman and serving in exercise–all liberties he wills himself. Men have not looked after tenderly and largely the life they choose for wife; make it bear all the burden of wrong and treated it cruelly. The male may stray and flourish accepting many women. It gratifies itsdesire if it has to cross rivers of tears–a double standard in Dharma between men and women. Social regulations, the laws of the country and the regulative principles of conduct in Ethics all fetter woman’s freedom; or shall we say it did practically until today. In this nexus, Ruru’s enterprise and spirit in saving for his love the life of the young woman whom he chose for wife by making a gift of half his own longevity was unheard of. It became the first example of conduct for large living in the world of love. The world that extended a worshipful regard in praise of Savitri forgot to extend even approval to the intensity and constancy of Ruru’s mind, and has not remembered him!

Sukanya is a princess. She gets exposed to the anger of a Rishi by her playful waywardness. She has to agree to marrying Cyavana both to relieve her people and the distress of her father and had to accept the terms declared by the Rishi. She did not speak a word against the dispensation. When she became wife to the Rishi, she conducted herself like a Sati, won over the husband and did not abate one jot when paragons of male handsomeness like the Asvins strove to move her affection. “No”, she said to them. When after their treatment of rejuvenation her husband became rich in form and youth and all the three stood before her in competition she chose her husband again. Her own husband had given her the right and freedom to choose from among them, but she did not exploit it. This is extraordinary.

When she who was devoted to the husband when old would she leave him and go when he became young again? Devee vavre svakam Patim.

The pictures of conjugal conduct in all these five stories have been presented*, considering that they can have fund of meaning and inspiration in our time as well. They are nearly as in the original ground, true to the words, names, manner as therein more or less. The atmosphere tries to realise an antiquity earlier than the Mahabharata strata and cannot easily be evoked in a different language, not native to India. It just indicates how straight and simple and bold they present to us men and women whose life can still be deemed romances: and true–yes, true: when most unfettered and free they chose to remain true. Life was simpler then than now and the pictures are idealised. Sophistication does not enter. There is no self pity. The situations are epic and have to be accepted.

* In a small booklet where they are rendered in five small chapters. The last chapter therein is devoted to some problems of conduct in modern living in our country as elsewhere.