STORY OF ARJUNA, AS THE INCARNATION OF NARA-NÁRÁYANA.
Argument.--The Narrative of Arjuna given in Illustration of the truth,
that the world is a dream and unworthy of our reliance.
Vasishtha said:--Know Ráma, this world to be as a dream, which is
common to all living beings, and is fraught with many agreeable scenes,
so as to form the daily romance of their lives, which is neither true
nor entirely false.
2. But as it is not likely that the living souls of men should be
always asleep; therefore their waking state is to be accounted as one
of dreaming also. (Life is a dream. Addison).
3. Life is a longer dream than the short lived ones in our sleep; and
know it, intelligent Ráma, to be as untrue as it is unsubstantial and
airy in its nature.
4. The living souls of the living world, continually pass from dream to
dream, and they view the unrealities of the world as positive realities
in their nature. (The unreal is thought as real by the Realists).
5. They ascribe solidity to the subtile, and subtilty to what is solid;
they see the unreal as real, and think the unliving as living in their
ignorance.
6. They consider the revolution of all worlds, to be confined in the
solar system; and rove about like somnambulists and fleeting bees about
the living soul, which they differentiate from the supreme.
7. They consider and meditate in their minds, the living soul as a
separate reality, owing to its ubiquity and immortality, and as the
source of their own lives. (This is the living liberation--Jívanmukti
of Buddhists, who consider their living souls as absolute agent of
themselves).
8. Hear me to relate to you the best lesson of indifference (_i.e._
the unattachment to the world and life), which the lotus-eyed lord
(Krishna) taught to Arjuna, and whereby that sagely prince became
liberated in life time. (Here is an anachronism of antedating
Krishnárjuna prior to Ráma).
9. Thus Arjuna the son of Pandu will happily pass his life, and which I
hope you will imitate, if you want to pass your days without any grief
or sorrow.
10. Ráma said:--Tell me sir, when will this Arjuna the son of Pandu,
come to be born on earth, and who is this Hari of his, that is to
deliver this lesson of indifference to the world to him?
11. Vasishtha replied:--There is only the entity of one soul, to whom
this appellation is applied by fiction only. He remains in himself from
time without beginning and end, as the sky is situated in a vacuum.
12. We behold in him the phantasmagoria of this extended world, as we
see the different ornaments in gold, and the waves and billows in the
sea. (Identity of the cause and effect of the producer and produced).
13. The fourteen kinds of created beings display themselves in him; and
in him is the network of this universe, wherein all these worlds are
suspended, as birds hanging in the net in which they are caught.
14. In him reside the deities Indra and Yama and the sun and moon, who
are renowned and hallowed in the scriptures; and in him abide the five
elemental creation, and they that have become the regents (of heaven
and earth).
15. That the one thing is virtue and therefore expedient, and the
other is vice and therefore improper, are both placed in him as
his ordinances (or eternal laws); and depending on the free agency
(sankalpa) of men, to accept or reject the one or the other for good or
evil. (Hence there is no positive virtue or vice, nor God the author
of good and evil; but it is the obedience or disobedience to his fixed
laws, that amounts to the one or other).
16. It is obedience to the Divine ordinance, that the gods are still
employed in their fixed charges with their steady minds.
17. The lord Yama is accustomed to make his penance, at the end of
every four yugas (or kalpa age), on account of his greatness in
destruction of the creatures of God. (Yama the Indian Pluto and god of
death.)
18. Sometimes he sat penitent for eight years, and all others for a
dozen of years, often times he made his penance for five or seven
years, and many times for full sixteen years.
19. On a certain occasion as Yama sat observant of his austerity, and
indifferent to his duty, death ceased to hunt after living beings in
all the worlds.
20. Hence the multitude of living beings filled the surface of the
earth, and made ground pathless and impassable by others. They
multiplied like the filth born gnats in the rainy weather, that
obstruct the passage of elephants.
21. Then the gods sat together in council, and after various
deliberations came to determine the extirpation of all living beings,
for relieving the over burdened earth. (This was to be done by the
Bharata war celebrated in the great epic of the Mahábhárata).
22. In this way many ages have passed away, and many changes have taken
place in the usages of the people, and unnumbered living beings have
passed and gone with the revolutions of the worlds.
23. Now it will come to pass, that this Yama--the son of the sun and
the lord of the regions of the dead; will again perform his penance in
the aforesaid manner after the expiration of many ages to come.
24. He will again resume his penitence for a dozen of years, for the
atonement of his sin of destroying the living; when he will abstain
from his wonted conduct of destroying the lives of human beings.
25. At that time, will the earth be filled with deathless mortals, so
as this wretched earth will be covered and overburthened with them, as
with dense forest trees.
26. The earth groaning under her burden, and oppressed by tyranny and
lawlessness, will have recourse to Hari for her redress, as when a
virtuous wife resorts to her husband from the aggression of Dasyus.
27. For this reason, Hari will be incarnate in two bodies, joined with
the powers of all the gods, and will appear on earth in two persons of
Nara and Náráyana, the one a man and the other the lord Hari himself.
28. With one body Hari will become the son of Vasudeva, and will thence
be called Vasudeva; and with the other he will be the son of Pandu and
will thereby be named the Pándava Arjuna or Arjuna the Pándava.
29. Pandu will have another son by name of Yudhisthira, who will adopt
the title of the son of Dharma or righteousness, for his acquaintance
with politics, and he will reign over the earth to its utmost limit of
the ocean.
30. He will have his rival with Duryodhana his cousin by his paternal
uncle, and there will be a dreadful war between them as between a snake
and weasel.
31. The belligerent princes will wage a furious war for the possession
of the earth, with forces of eighteen legions on both sides. (Those of
Duryodhana were eleven legions, and Yudhisthira were seven).
32. The God Vishnu will cause Arjuna to slay them all by his great bow
of Gándíva, and thereby relieve the earth of her burden of riotous
peoples.
33. The incarnation of Vishnu in the form of Arjuna, will comprise
all the qualities incident to humanity; and will be fraught with the
feelings of joy and vengeance, which are connatural with mankind.
34. Seeing the battle array on both sides, and friends and kinsmen
ready to meet their fate, pity and grief will seize the heart of
Arjuna, and he will cease from engaging in the war.
35. Hari will then with his intelligent form of Krishna, persuade his
insensible person of Arjuna, to perform his part of a hero for crowning
his valour with success.
36. He taught him the immortality of the soul by telling him that, the
soul is never born nor does it die at any time, nor had it a prior
birth, nor is it new born to be born again on earth, it is unborn and
ever lasting, and is indestructible with the destruction of the body.
37. He who thinks the soul to be the slayer of or slain by any body, is
equally ignorant of its nature, never kills nor is ever killed by any
body.
38. It is immortal and uniform with itself, and more rare and subtile
than the air and vacuity; the soul which is the form of the great God
himself, is never and in no way destroyed by any body.
39. O Ráma, that art conscious of yourself, know your soul to be
immortal and unknown, and without its beginning, middle and end; it is
of the form of consciousness and clear without any soil, so by thinking
yourself as such, you become the unborn, eternal and undecaying soul
yourself.