Chapter 32
It was evening when Yajnyawalkya finished the expository discourse on the ritual of sacrifice embodied in the Vedas. It was his practice to condense the substance of the discourse in aphorisms after elucidating the main idea.
The intellectual effort exhausted him. As usual, he felt that he had spoken too much. When he looked around before taking leave of the congregation, he found two among them not ready to let him go. Gargi had been there from the beginning, but he found Janaka sitting in the rear corner, evading notice. None had noticed him because Janaka had covered himself with a shawl and was not attended by his retinue.
All got up except these two. The departing members looked at them with a casual curiosity. Everyone left and Yajnyawalkya found himself facing a rather incongruous company.
While the discussion was in progress, Gargi watched from a peripheral position, Yajnyawalkya smiling to his disciples, answering their questions with a playful affection. She could not hear the substance of their conversation; the words did not matter to her. Her innate vanity and pride were giving way to envy, and envy was giving way to a wistful sadness. Yajnyawalkya seemed to have a world of his own around him. It made her peaceful, but she still felt alienated. It was a world she wanted to inhabit with Yajnyawalkya to the exclusion of all others.
Why was she staying in Videha? To tease Yajnyawalkya's philosophy out of him? A world of mystic beauty was concealed behind Yajnyawalkya’s philosophy. Gargi felt an outpouring of music from an unknown origin when she heard him speak, but the notes vanished before she could learn to play them on her own flute.
In her mind's eye she would often visualize the conquest she was aiming at. She would often rehearse her questions with great solemnity, imagining once again a congregation, an assembly of learned scholars, and herself confronting Yajnyawalkya: “Hear O Yajnyawalkya, you have refrained all along, from defining or describing Brahma, the ultimate. Why don't you finally confess to your defeat and concede your seat to those who are more learned than you in these matters?”
Now, as she sat there, brooding by herself, she laughed to see how hollow every bearing of logic sounded! Somewhere from the silence within, a voice began to speak to her!
“The highest truth, O Gargi, is manifest in all that you see, but you are able to see only as much as you can perceive! It is never exhausted. How can you define that which is there to be seen and yet, is not just what is seen?”
Gargi came out of her reverie and realized, she was still there where she was. The discourse was over. There were only three of them: Yajnyawalkya, Gargi and Janaka. There was a moment of silence experienced by three minds simultaneously, without being able to share what they felt and saw.
From the outskirts of the city, where the Shudras lived, a sound of the beating on a drum came
floating on the air. It was slow and deliberate at first. Then the pace quickened, until it pulsated with the ecstasy which only the oppressed and the anguished souls pour so exquisitely in their art.
When Gargi came to herself, she saw that Yajnyawalkya had walked away, accompanied by a tall and sturdy man who had placed a hand around Yajnyawalkya and was walking away with him. They seemed to share a world Gargi did not know of. She felt like an intruder even as she watched them from behind.
The sound of the drum beaten by the Shudras had acquired a deep, distressful rhythm, almost like a tormented cry! Who ever could say that music liberates? Or perhaps it does! This particular music was a part of a sacrificial ritual offered daily, at the altar of life as it were, a robust offering made by a robust people: robust, not lusty! It transmuted pain into a rhythm that absorbed pain and gave something that was far more sublime than the pain.
The two men were gone, leaving Gargi alone, unable to solve the tangle of all that she needed to know and all that she refused to know.
It was evening when Yajnyawalkya finished the expository discourse on the ritual of sacrifice embodied in the Vedas. It was his practice to condense the substance of the discourse in aphorisms after elucidating the main idea.
The intellectual effort exhausted him. As usual, he felt that he had spoken too much. When he looked around before taking leave of the congregation, he found two among them not ready to let him go. Gargi had been there from the beginning, but he found Janaka sitting in the rear corner, evading notice. None had noticed him because Janaka had covered himself with a shawl and was not attended by his retinue.
All got up except these two. The departing members looked at them with a casual curiosity. Everyone left and Yajnyawalkya found himself facing a rather incongruous company.
While the discussion was in progress, Gargi watched from a peripheral position, Yajnyawalkya smiling to his disciples, answering their questions with a playful affection. She could not hear the substance of their conversation; the words did not matter to her. Her innate vanity and pride were giving way to envy, and envy was giving way to a wistful sadness. Yajnyawalkya seemed to have a world of his own around him. It made her peaceful, but she still felt alienated. It was a world she wanted to inhabit with Yajnyawalkya to the exclusion of all others.
Why was she staying in Videha? To tease Yajnyawalkya's philosophy out of him? A world of mystic beauty was concealed behind Yajnyawalkya’s philosophy. Gargi felt an outpouring of music from an unknown origin when she heard him speak, but the notes vanished before she could learn to play them on her own flute.
In her mind's eye she would often visualize the conquest she was aiming at. She would often rehearse her questions with great solemnity, imagining once again a congregation, an assembly of learned scholars, and herself confronting Yajnyawalkya: “Hear O Yajnyawalkya, you have refrained all along, from defining or describing Brahma, the ultimate. Why don't you finally confess to your defeat and concede your seat to those who are more learned than you in these matters?”
Now, as she sat there, brooding by herself, she laughed to see how hollow every bearing of logic sounded! Somewhere from the silence within, a voice began to speak to her!
“The highest truth, O Gargi, is manifest in all that you see, but you are able to see only as much as you can perceive! It is never exhausted. How can you define that which is there to be seen and yet, is not just what is seen?”
Gargi came out of her reverie and realized, she was still there where she was. The discourse was over. There were only three of them: Yajnyawalkya, Gargi and Janaka. There was a moment of silence experienced by three minds simultaneously, without being able to share what they felt and saw.
From the outskirts of the city, where the Shudras lived, a sound of the beating on a drum came
floating on the air. It was slow and deliberate at first. Then the pace quickened, until it pulsated with the ecstasy which only the oppressed and the anguished souls pour so exquisitely in their art.
When Gargi came to herself, she saw that Yajnyawalkya had walked away, accompanied by a tall and sturdy man who had placed a hand around Yajnyawalkya and was walking away with him. They seemed to share a world Gargi did not know of. She felt like an intruder even as she watched them from behind.
The sound of the drum beaten by the Shudras had acquired a deep, distressful rhythm, almost like a tormented cry! Who ever could say that music liberates? Or perhaps it does! This particular music was a part of a sacrificial ritual offered daily, at the altar of life as it were, a robust offering made by a robust people: robust, not lusty! It transmuted pain into a rhythm that absorbed pain and gave something that was far more sublime than the pain.
The two men were gone, leaving Gargi alone, unable to solve the tangle of all that she needed to know and all that she refused to know.
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