After reading the chapter ‘Sulabha’ in Chaturvedi Badrinath’s book: The Women of the Mahabharata: The question of Truth’ (Hyderabad, Orient Blac swan Pvt. Let. 2008, pp. 130-147) I wrote this song. It is long chapter for me to give the summary. But this is a well-known dialogue between King Janaka of Mithila and the Yogini Sulbha.
After hearing about Janaka who ‘was making great claims in most extravagant langue, which had become very widely known, about his having achieved in this life itself, even as a householder, ultimate liberation, moksha, and citing his personal example was pronouncing on what moksha truly was, [and] wanting to know if there was any truth in his claims, Sulabha resolved to visit him’. (p.131)
‘Using her yogic powers, she meanwhile transformed herself into a young and radiantly beautiful woman….entered Janaka’s Court, seemingly begging for customary alms….Satisfied with the fullest welcome accorded customarily to a sannyasin, Sulabha….wanting to have more a private conversation than a public debate with him, and again using her yogic powers Sulabha concentrated her eyes upon his, held the light in his eyes still, and then held his mind in a (p.111) kind of mesmeric hold, yoga-bandha, and entered in a psychic sense, King Janaka’s subtle inner being. He quickly sensed what she was about, and smiled….(112)’
Then followed a long dialogue the King began even to abuse her as he was upset that she came to test him not believing. After listening all his abusive words finally Sulabha clearly proves that all his claim that he is a jivanmukta is wrong.
For me the main point is not the way King paraded his knowledge and claim as a jivanmukta and not even the rhetorical statements that Badrinath often makes in all his books on Mahabharat {Mahabharata: An Inquiry in the Human Condition, 2006}: enquiring human condition, but why Sulabha, even as a true sannyasini interested in the first place to know what Janaka claims is true or not. If she is a true sannyasini as she claims in her own words, ‘I am a sannyasini, one who has renounced the world’ complaints to the king that he ‘ought not to be saying such things’# to her (p.143).
If a true sannyasi (or sannyasini) really renounced everything, that too of his/her ego what is the need for her to know about others claim whatever they make? Why should she, in the first place took interest to know about his claim and then expose that he is a fake? Is it out of jealousy that a house-holder usurp the claim of a sannyasi as the only jivanmukta?
In conclusion (or interpretation@ which he denies doing) Badrinath says:
Sulabha was only questioning the pretensions of Janaka, a king, of being a totally liberated man; for pretensions, or wrong perceptions of one’s self, do no good:
…King! I don’t think you are liberated; you have only the wrong impression that you are which should be removed from your mind by those who wish you well….
Hearing Sulabha say this, King Janaka said nothing more. (p. 147).
But I think the wise king Janaka, who is famous for his wisdom, has done the right thing by not saying anything more. Because there is no point of educating such a sannyasini, who in the name of doing good to others, has still ‘CURIOSITY’ and ‘INTEREST’ to know whether Janaka was really a jivanmukta or not. Above all (this I say as a joke) he knows well, may be out of his experience (having many wives) that there is no point of further arguing with a woman, that too such a sannyasini like Sulabha (changing her real form also) who will never let any men to win them over any kind of argument. After reading this chapter, as I was thinking about Sulabha’s dialogue with Janaka I wrote this song having my own reading in this story as Badrinath well said (in the introduction):
…In being a most systematic philosophic inquiry into the human condition, the Mahabharata does not see the meaning of a story in the way it ends. The particular end of a story is not the whole of its meaning. (p.9)
# King Janaka to Sulabha:
If you have come here for some purpose of your own, or have been sent by another king (on a spying mission), then it is thoroughly wrong for you to wear a false guise (of a yogini)….You should, therefore, honestly disclose your caste, your education, your calling, the kind of person that you are, and the purpose of your coming here’—p. 139
In response to the King Sulabha says this:
Just as a fast-running horse is one moment here and in the next moment not seen, this world, too, is moving very swiftly from one state into another. Therefore, it will be impossible to say: ‘From where does one come, or from where one does not? To whom does one belongs, or to whom one does not? If you have a sense of unity with the other, seeing your own self in the other, then why do you keep asking me: ‘Who are you? Who do you belong to’? If you have liberated yourself from the conflicting dualities of gaining this and avoiding that, then what is the point in your asking me: ‘Who are you? Who do you belong to? Where have you come from?’ (p.141) Italics original.
@ …I have not interpreted, nor analysed, any of the women of the Mahabharat I have assembled here….—p. 9 (italics original)
I wrote this for Secular song 176
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