Ajamila — saved by a name

At the edge of death, after a life gone wrong, he spoke the name of God without meaning to

Ajamila — saved by a name is chapter 3 of Bhagavata Devotees. Source: Bhagavata Purana. It is told in 4 scenes — The slip; At the threshold; Both sides; A second life — followed by 10 quiz questions.

The slip

Ajamila was a brahmin of Kanyakubja — today's Kanauj. His parents had taught him the Vedas and the rules of a dutiful life, and for years no crack showed in his days. Morning bath, evening prayers, recitation — everything went as it should.

Then one day, returning from the forest with fruit, flowers, sacrificial twigs and kusha grass for his father, he saw a drunkard and a prostitute embracing openly by the road. And Ajamila's mind wavered.

The mind he had guarded with rules for years slipped out of his hands in a single moment. He left his wife, his parents, his studies. He brought that woman home, and the house where the Vedas had once been chanted now lived on the earnings of gambling, theft and fraud.

He had ten sons. The youngest he named Narayana.

In his old age he doted on this youngest boy above all. Through every meal, every hour of sitting and rising, the house rang with the same call: "Narayana, come here. Narayana, eat this."

At the threshold

Then the time of Ajamila's death came.

He lay in bed while his son played nearby. Suddenly he saw three terrible figures, nooses in their hands, coming toward him. They were Yama's messengers, the Yamadutas. Fear stopped his breath, and he cried out for his son — "Narayana!"

He had called his boy. But the name was God's.

In the same instant four more figures stood there, blazing with light, and held back the nooses. They were Vishnu's messengers, the Vishnudutas.

Both sides

Yama's messengers objected. "This man was a sinner all his life. His sins still have to be answered for. The right to take him is ours."

Vishnu's messengers answered. "The Name has a power of its own. Whether it is spoken as a hint, in jest, in pain, or to call someone else, it still burns up sin the way fire burns fuel — whether or not the speaker knows it. Whatever this man meant when he called, it was that Name he called."

They added that even Yama is not the final authority. And later, Yama himself told his servants: "Do not go near those who have taken refuge in the Lord; they are not under my rod." He ordered them to bring only those who never speak the Lord's name, never remember him, and never bow their heads to him.

A second life

Ajamila survived — and woke up completely.

His whole life came back to him at once — the wife he had abandoned, the parents he had abandoned, the home he had wrecked with his own hands — and he was sickened by it. That very moment he set out for Haridwar, the Gate of the Ganges.

There he practised true devotion. After some time Vishnu's messengers came for him again, this time properly, to take him home.

Grace had opened the door. He still had to walk in on his own feet.

Note: Ajamila's whole story is in the sixth canto of the Bhagavata Purana (chapters 1–2), and later Vaishnava literature cites it constantly as the proof-text for the power of the name. What is unusual about this chapter is that the argument is inside one book — the Yamadutas voice ordinary moral bookkeeping (sin must be paid for), and the Vishnudutas answer with something that genuinely offends that bookkeeping. The text sides with the Vishnudutas, and so does this note — but later ethicists, and Yama's own servants, did not find it easy. The story calls the drunk man a "shudra"; in context the point is public drunkenness and license, and the one who falls is Ajamila, by his own eyes.

Source: from the Bhagavata Purana, Ajamila — saved by a name