Itihāsa / Mahābhārata chronicle / Āśvamedhika · 48 of 50
48. The horse
Āśvamedhika (आश्वमेधिक)
Before the horse is loosed, while Kṛṣṇa is still at Hāstinapura, he speaks the Anugītā, a second discourse, because Arjuna has forgotten the first. The forgetting is the most honest thing in the parva. A teaching spoken between two armies did not remain vivid in the man who needed it. The Anugītā is mapped from here. The lines are not sat.
A king who has won by a war like this is told to perform a horse sacrifice, an aśvamedha, the old rite by which a sovereignty is announced and, in the poem's hope, repaired. A horse is set loose. Arjuna follows it with an army. The kingdoms it crosses submit, or they fight and are spared more often than they are destroyed. The poem is tired. This page says the circuit happened. It does not describe the fights.
On that circuit Arjuna meets a son who was not at Kurukṣetra. Babhruvāhana, born of Citrāṅgadā. The son brings the father down. Ulūpī, the nāga wife, brings him back. The poem's reason is a debt connected with Bhīṣma's fall. The page names the fall and the return and does not describe either. It is the strangest mercy in the parva: the war's great archer, killed by his own child in a rite of peace, and raised.
When Arjuna returns, the sacrifice is completed. Then a mongoose, half his body turned to gold, laughs at the scale of it. He has been looking for a gift equal to a poor family's meal, given to a guest who was Dharma, a meal that cost the family everything. Half his body turned gold in the remnants of that gift. The horse sacrifice has not turned the other half. The poem puts a small animal at the end of the royal rite and lets him say that the spectacle is not the measure.
नेपालीमा
घोडा छोड्नुअघि, हस्तिनापुरमै, कृष्णले अनुगीता भन्नुभयो, किनकि अर्जुनले पहिलो शिक्षा बिर्सेका थिए। अनुगीताको नक्सा यहाँबाट खुल्छ। श्लोक बसाइँदैन। यस्तो युद्धपछि राजालाई अश्वमेध गर्न भनियो। घोडा छोडियो। अर्जुनले पछ्याए। यो पृष्ठले यात्रा भयो भन्छ। लडाइँको तरिका लेख्दैन। बाटोमा चित्रङ्गदाका छोरा बभ्रुवाहनले बाबुलाई ढाले। नागपत्नी उलूपीले उनलाई ब्युँताइन्। कारण भीष्मको पतनसँग जोडिएको ऋण हो। यो पृष्ठले पतन र फिर्तीको नाम लिन्छ। तरिका लेख्दैन। अर्जुन फर्केपछि यज्ञ सकियो। अनि आधा सुन भएको नकुलो यज्ञको ठाटमा हाँस्यो। उसले गरिब घरको भोजनबराबरको दान खोजिरहेको थियो, जुन धर्म अतिथि भएर आउँदा घरको सबथोक लाग्यो। त्यो दानको बाँकी अंशले उसको आधा शरीर सुन भएको थियो। अश्वमेधले बाँकी आधा सुन बनाएन। कविताले राजकीय दृश्यलाई नाप बन्न दिँदैन।