I am back again with "Tales of the Mahabharat " A guest post by one of my favourite blogger Suresh Chandrasekaran of " Life is Like This " http://jambudweepam.blogspot.in/
#mahabharat #mahabharata #uttangrishi #lordkrishna
The reclusive Uttang Rishi stayed the forests for most of his life with
little contact with the rest of the world. It was during one such long stay
away from civilization that the war between the rift between the Pandavas and
Kauravas ripened to enmity and ended in the calamitous war at Kurukshetra that
resulted in the decimation of all the Kauravas.
On one of his peregrinations in the forest, Uttang Rishi met Krishna.
As was the custom in those days, Uttang asked Krishna of the well-being of his
family and, then, sought to know about Krishna’s relatives – the Pandavas and
Kauravas. Krishna had the unpleasant task of explaining to the Rishi about the
dreadful war between the two.
Uttang was enraged and said, “Krishna! You are the Lord of the universe
and quite capable of stopping this destruction from happening. Yet, you allowed
such disastrous violence. I, herewith, curse you…”
Krishna interrupted the powerful Rishi and said, “Even the Lord of the
Universe may not tamper with destiny, once it is written, O sage, or else the
very basis of all order shall be disturbed. Know you that this incarnation of
mine was intended to destroy evil and the Kauravas, because of their thirst for
power, were part of the evil that I sought to destroy.”
Uttang was pacified.
Krishna said, “I wish to grant you a boon, O most righteous sage! What
would you ask of me?”
Uttang said, “I need nothing, Lord! The only thing that I, perhaps, may
seek is that I may not lack for water wherever I am, since I travel in wild and
inaccessible places.”
“Granted!”
After some time, while Uttang Rishi was traveling in the forest, he was
afflicted by thirst and could not find any water to drink. He remembered the
boon of Krishna and besought water. Whereupon a huntsman accosted him and
offered him water from his deerskin container.
Uttang was aghast. How could he, a Brahmin, take water from this
low-caste huntsman? Thrice the huntsman offered water and thrice the Rishi
refused. The huntsman disappeared.
Uttang was surprised by this miraculous disappearance of the
huntsman. Clearly, he could not really
be a huntsman but some divinity sent by Krishna as a test. Uttang felt dejected
about the possibility of having failed the Lord, when Krishna appeared before
him.
Uttang complained, ”Lord! You promised me water whenever I needed it.
How could you send it in the hands of a huntsman?”
Krishna laughed and said, “O Sage! I asked Indra to give you divine
nectar and make you immortal. Indra refused saying that Amrit was not for
normal human beings. I said that you were a realised soul and deserving of
immortality. Indra then said that if you truly were a realised soul, you would
know that all differentiation between people were only the creation of mortals;
that all people were the same in the eyes of a realised soul and, thus, if you
accepted the nectar from Indra in the guise of s huntsman, you would deserve
it. I agreed. You let me down!”
The great epic, thus, does not support
differential treatment on the basis of caste. True, the social order of the
times did differentiate between people but the epic clearly states that such
differentiation is not the divine order of things but only man-made
