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यवक्रीतोपाख्यन (yavakrItopAkhyana)

 
Mahabharata
English
[Yavakrītopākhyana(ṃ)]
(“the episode relating to Yavakrīta”). § 414 (Tīrthay.). The learned Raibhya and the Ṛshi Bharadvāja were friends. Raibhya had two learned sons, Arvāvasu and Parāvasu
Bharadvāja only one son, Yavakrīta. As Yavakrīta saw that Raibhya and his sons were esteemed by the brahmans, while Bharadvāja was slighted, he practised austerities (exposing himself to a blazing fire) in order to acquire Vedic knowledge for himself and his father (cf. v. 10817) instead of acquiring it from a teacher during a long time. Indra was alarmed, and twice he in vain attempted to make Yavakrīta desist from his penances, saying that they never could be successful. As Yavakrīta declared that he would cut off his limbs and sacrifice them in the fire, Indra assumed the guise of an old decrepit brahman, and began to throw up a dam of sand at that spot of the Bhāgīrathī where Yavakrīta used to bathe, and declared that Yavakrīta's intentions were equally impossible. Then Yavakrīta desisted from his plan, and Indra granted him that the Vedas should be revealed to him and his father, and that he should excel other men. Bharadvāja said that Yavakrīta would become proud and uncharitable and thence destruction would soon overtake him (§ 415), and told him some gāthās, narrated by the gods, about Medhāvin (q.v.).--§ 416. Bharadvāja made Yavakrīta promise to shun the irritable Raibhya and his sons, and Yavakrīta began to offend other ṛshis (III, 135). Once, in the month of Mādhava, he came to the hermitage of Raibhya and seduced (?) (cf. sajjayām āsa, var. lect. Nīl., instead of majjayām āsa) the wife of Parāvasu. When Raibhya came home and saw what had happened, he offered in the fire two matted locks of his hair, whence sprang out a woman resembling his daughterin-law, who robbed Yavakrīta of his water-pot, and a Rakshas, who flew at him with his uplifted spear, as he had been deprived of his water-pot and rendered unclean (ucchishṭa). Yavakrīta fled to a tank and then to all the rivers, and, finding them all devoid of water, he attempted to enter into the agnihotra room of his father, but was stopped at the door by a blind śūdra warder, and killed by the rakshas. The Rakshas, with the permission of Raibhya, began to live with the female (III, 136). When Bharadvāja returned home, the sacrificial fires, which used to welcome him every day, did not come forward to welcome him. Having heard from the śūdra what had happened, he cursed Raibhya, saying that he should be killed by his eldest son. He cremated Yavakrīta, and then himself entered the fire (III, 137). At that time king Bṛhaddyumna, the yājya of Raibhya, employed Arvāvasu and Parāvasu at a sacrifice, while Raibhya stayed at home with the wife of Parāvasu. One day Parāvasu, returning home to see his wife, met in the darkness his father in the wood wrapped in the skin of a black antelope, and, mistaking him for a deer, killed him. Then, after having performed the funeral rites of his father, he prevailed upon Arvāvasu to observe the vow prescribed in the case of killing a brahman, while he himself conducted the sacrifice alone. When Arvāvasu came back, having observed the vow, Parāvasu caused him to be driven away from the sacrifice as a slayer of a brahman. The brahmarshi Arvāvasu went to the wood, and, applying to the Sun, he practised austerities and mastered the Rahasyaveda of the Sun. The Sun appeared to him in his embodied form, and said the gods were pleased by him. They elected Arvāvasu and rejected Parāvasu. The gods Agni, etc., granted him the boon that Raibhya, Bharadvāja, and Yavakrīta revived, that Parāvasu was absolved from his sin, that Raibhya did not recollect his having been slain, and that the Saura Veda should attain celebrity (pratishṭhāṃ). The gods explained to Yavakrīta that Raibhya had been able to kill him because he had acquired his knowledge with great exertion and in the course of a long time, while Yavakrīta had learnt the Vedas without exertion and without a guru. Then Indra and the gods returned to heaven (III, 138).