Harināma Kīrtanam · Verse 37

The thirty-seventh verse names two more scenes from the Mahābhārata's Kurukshetra. Whip in hand, reins drawn tight, you stood as charioteer for the son of Indra in war. This is Krishna driving Arjuna's chariot, the central image of the Bhagavad Gītā. With one hidden arrow you killed another son of Indra. This is Karna's death, often read as Krishna allowing Arjuna's hidden-arrow shot at Karna against the laws of dharma-yuddha (war-righteousness). The verse asks: Krishna driving for one son of Indra, Krishna allowing the hidden-arrow death of another, what design is this?

The verse continues the bhakti-tradition's privilege of asking about the Lord's līlā directly, with affection and bewilderment together.

The Living Words

Cammaṭṭi pūṇṭu kaṭiññāṇuṁ muṟukki-uḍan Indra-ātmajannu yudhi tēr-pūṭṭi-ninnu bata. Carrying the whip and pulling the reins tight, you stood for the son of Indra (Arjuna), having yoked the chariot for war. Cammaṭṭi is whip; kaṭiññāṇ is reins; muṟukki is pulled tight; Indra-ātmajan is son of Indra (Arjuna); tēr-pūṭṭi is yoked the chariot.

Cemmē maṟaññoru śaraṁ koṇḍu konnatumora Indra-ātmajanne Hari Nārāyaṇāya namaḥ. And by one hidden arrow you killed another son of Indra (Karna, born to Kuntī from the Sun, often associated with Indra in this tradition; or the verse may be using the patronymic loosely for kṣatriya-warrior). Cemmē maṟaññoru is one carefully hidden; konnatum is killed; Indra-ātmajan in the second instance is the rival warrior.

Scripture References

The Heart of It

The two scenes the verse names are central to the Mahābhārata. Krishna as Arjuna's sārathi (charioteer) is the foundational image of the Bhagavad Gītā: the Lord, in his līlā, takes the lower position (the driver, not the warrior) and from that position teaches the highest doctrine. The killing of Karna is harder. The Mahābhārata records that Arjuna's killing arrow was released while Karna was lifting his chariot's wheel from the mud, a moment when dharma-yuddha required Arjuna to wait. Krishna, in the narrative, advises Arjuna not to wait. The killing has been read by the tradition as adharmika by ordinary measure but dharmika by the larger measure of ending Karna's protection of Duryodhana.

The verse-37 tease is the seeker's recognition that the Lord's līlā sometimes uses tactics that, by the seeker's own ordinary morality, look unjust. The seeker is not asked to approve the tactics. The seeker is asked to keep loving the Lord whose līlā uses them. The bhakti-tradition's term for this is aparādha-kṣamā, the forgiveness of the Lord's seeming-faults: the seeker assumes the Lord has reasons larger than the seeker's vision.

If you have come to this verse with a sense that the Lord has done something unjust (in your life, in the world, in the scriptures), the verse legitimizes the experience and asks the seeker to bow anyway. The Lord's līlā is not the seeker's ethics-textbook. The bow is what the seeker can offer, regardless.

The Saints Who Walked This Road

Two saints adjacent to the verse-37 Mahābhārata scenes.

Sañjaya, the charioteer-narrator in the Mahābhārata, was given by Sage Vyāsa the gift of yogic sight: he could see and hear, from inside the palace at Hastinapura, everything happening on the Kurukshetra battlefield, and report it to the blind King Dhṛtarāṣṭra. The Bhagavad Gītā, which Krishna spoke to Arjuna on the chariot-floor, is preserved in the world only because Sañjaya heard it through this gift and repeated it. The body image is the small chariot-driver beside the blind king, the eyes turned outward but seeing inward, the Sanskrit verses arriving as he reported. Sañjaya's gift was, like the verse-37 affection, neither approving nor refusing the līlā: he saw it, he reported it, he stayed.

Vidura, in the same epic, was the maid-born half-brother of King Pāṇḍu and Dhṛtarāṣṭra, denied the throne because of his birth. Krishna, when visiting Hastinapura before the war as a peace-emissary, refused to eat at Duryodhana's elaborate feast and instead went to Vidura's small house, where Vidura's wife was so overwhelmed she handed Krishna banana-skins to eat (in the legend, having absent-mindedly thrown the fruit away in her excitement). Krishna ate the skins and called them sweet. The body image is the small house in Hastinapura, the Lord refusing the king's feast, the maid-born minister's house being chosen, the banana-skin offered with love and accepted as sweet. Vidura lived the verse-37 truth: the Lord's līlā is not graded by the world's measure; it is graded by the love at the door.