Parva 13

Anushasana Parva

Bhishma, still on the arrows, finishes what he has to say

The teaching on giving

This parva continues from where the last one stopped. The same field, the same bed of arrows, the same two men, one asking, one answering. Most of it concerns giving, which gift, to whom, when, and why, and with what state of mind a gift becomes a true gift.

The story of Bhangashvana

A strange tale appears here. King Bhangashvana performed a great sacrifice, which angered Indra and left him waiting for a chance. One day the king went hunting, lost his way, grew thirsty, and stepped into a lake. When he came out, he was a woman. As a man he had had a hundred sons, now as a woman he bore a hundred sons as well. Indra set the two groups against each other, and they killed one another in battle. Finally Indra appeared and offered the king the chance to become a man again. He refused. Asked why, he gave two reasons, first, that he felt more attachment to the children he had borne as a woman, and second, that the pleasure of union he had known as a woman had not existed for him as a man. The text records this without comment.

The Vishnu Sahasranama

In this same parva Yudhishthira asks what the greatest refuge is. Bhishma answers with the thousand names of Vishnu. This is the Vishnusahasranama. It is not a separate text from the Mahabharata, it sits inside the Anushasana Parva, within this same conversation, and printing it separately for daily recitation came from a later devotional tradition.

Bhishma waits for the northern course

At last the sun turned north. Bhishma finished his teaching. Then he took his leave, and gave up his body. He had held on until then because his father's boon had given him the power to choose the hour of his own death. The son of Ganga, who never married, who never took a kingdom, and who fought to the very end for the same Hastinapura he had wanted to protect, departed that day.

Note: The teaching on giving, the story of Bhangashvana, the Vishnu Sahasranama and Bhishma leaving his body as the sun turned north are all in the Anushasana Parva of Vyasa's Mahabharata. The Vishnu Sahasranama is inside this book — it is not a separate text; its life on its own came from the later devotional tradition, exactly as with the Gita.

Source: Mahabharata (ascribed by tradition to Vyasa), Anushasana Parva

Now — how much stayed with you?

Fact

What is the largest part of the Anushasana Parva about?

  • Rajadharma
  • Giving
  • The rules of war
  • Liberation
Read the whole story — Two parvas, one scene

Shanti and Anushasana run in the same place — the same field, the same bed of arrows, the same two men.

The difference is emphasis. The Shanti Parva is on running a kingdom and being free of it; the Anushasana's weight is on giving.

Non-violence, truth, pilgrimage and vows come in between, and every question is answered with a story of some kind.

Which is why the two are often counted together. The parva changes in the middle; the conversation does not.

Who am I?

I was a king. Indra turned me into a woman. Later I was offered my old form back, and I refused. Who am I?

  • Bhangashvana
  • Shikhandi
  • Ila
  • Arjuna
Read the whole story — The question this story answered

What had been asked was who gets more pleasure, a woman or a man.

Instead of answering directly, Bhishma told this story, in which one person lived both lives.

Bhangashvana had a hundred sons as a man and a hundred as a woman. Given the choice, he chose to stay a woman.

The Mahabharata gives this answer through a story rather than as a rule — which is why the passage still surprises people.

Who said it?

Who said the thousand names of Vishnu in the Mahabharata, and to whom?

  • Krishna to Arjuna
  • Vyasa to Janamejaya
  • Bhishma to Yudhishthira
  • Narada to Yudhishthira
Read the whole story — The answer to one question

Yudhishthira had asked what the greatest dharma of all is, and by remembering whom a person is released from bonds.

Bhishma answered with a thousand names of Vishnu. The Vishnusahasranama is part of that conversation.

Today it is read and sung separately, and many people do not know it comes from inside the Mahabharata.

Its independent recitation and its wide use in devotional tradition developed later. In the Mahabharata it is the answer to a question inside the Anushasana Parva.

What happened?

When did Bhishma give up his life?

  • As soon as the war ended
  • At the sun's northward turn, after finishing the teaching
  • At the end of the Shanti Parva
  • At Krishna's word
Read the whole story — The end of the waiting

Bhishma fell on the tenth day. After that came eight more days of war, then the night of the Sauptika, then the mourning, then two whole parvas of teaching.

All of it happens inside one man's waiting, a man who has stopped because he chose the hour of his own death.

When the northward turn came he finished the teaching, took leave of everyone, and gave up his life.

The Pandavas performed the rites, and water was offered on the bank of the Ganga. Ganga came herself — she was his mother.

Whose son?

At the last rites a river came there herself, because the man dying was her son. Who was she?

  • Ganga
  • Yamuna
  • Sarasvati
  • Narmada
Read the whole story — The first parva and the thirteenth

Bhishma's story begins in the Adi Parva — Shantanu, Ganga, and seven children put into the water.

Ganga carried the first seven into the river. The eighth survived — that was Devavrata, who after his vow was called Bhishma.

His end comes on the bank of that same Ganga, and she comes there.

This circle forms repeatedly in the Mahabharata — where a story begins is often where it ends.

Why is that?

What made it possible for Bhishma to give so long a teaching?

  • He was not wounded
  • Krishna kept him alive
  • Vyasa had given him a boon
  • Shantanu's boon gave him the power to choose the hour of his death, so he stayed
Read the whole story — The whole weight of the boon

Shantanu gave the boon when Bhishma had given up both the throne and children for his father's marriage.

The benefit was not that he did not die. It was that his ending was drawn out longer than anyone's.

Two of the Mahabharata's largest parvas fit inside that drawing-out.

So the book's greatest teaching is given in a time nobody else ever gets — between dying and being dead.

Vyasa or tradition?

"The Vishnusahasranama is a separate book." — is this right?

  • Yes, it is from outside the Mahabharata
  • Yes, it comes from the Puranas
  • No; it is inside the Anushasana Parva, though reading it separately comes from later devotional tradition
  • No; it is in the Bhishma Parva
Read the whole story — Books inside the book

This happens more than once in the Mahabharata. The Gita is inside the Bhishma Parva, the Vishnusahasranama inside the Anushasana Parva.

Both are printed separately today, read separately, and many people take them for independent works.

In the text both are answers given to someone who asked — one on a chariot, one on a bed of arrows.

Knowing this changes no story, but it shows how much the Mahabharata keeps inside itself.

Fact

In this parva Bhishma also explained the cause of his own death. Which old story was it tied to?

  • Draupadi's humiliation
  • The story of Amba, which reaches as far as Shikhandi
  • Ganga's seven sons
  • The assembly of the dice
Read the whole story — The man who gave his own reckoning

Amba was a princess of Kashi whom Bhishma carried off from a swayamvara. She had already chosen Shalva in her heart. Bhishma let her go to Shalva, and Shalva would not accept her.

Her vow of revenge connects onward to Shikhandi's story. Seeing Shikhandi in front of him, Bhishma did not raise a weapon, and Arjuna used that opening to bring him down with arrows.

In the Anushasana Parva Bhishma puts the whole reckoning together himself — so he knows why he is lying there.

This recurs in the Mahabharata: the dying man understands the cause of his death better than anyone else does.

Put it in order

Which is the right order of these events?

  • Yudhishthira's coronation → the Vishnusahasranama → the northward turn → Bhishma giving up his life
  • The Vishnusahasranama → Yudhishthira's coronation → the northward turn → Bhishma giving up his life
  • Yudhishthira's coronation → the northward turn → the Vishnusahasranama → Bhishma giving up his life
  • The northward turn → Yudhishthira's coronation → the Vishnusahasranama → Bhishma giving up his life
Read the whole story — Where the story starts moving again

Shanti and Anushasana both pass almost entirely inside one stopped scene — the same bed of arrows and the same questioning at the centre of it.

The moment Bhishma gives up his life that stillness breaks, and the Mahabharata becomes a story again.

The five parvas after this are short and go quickly — the horse sacrifice, Dhritarashtra going to the forest, the end of the Yadavas, and the Pandavas' last journey.

So the slowest part of the book sits exactly where everything begins to fall away fast.