Ancients Speak
Suman K Sharma
The daitya king, Raja Bali, great grandson of Hrinyakashipu and grandson of Prahlad, requested his guru Shukracharya to tell him how he may bring back the lost glory of daityas.
Shukracharya told him to perform Vishwajeetyagya. The yagya was performed and Raja Bali got, among other boons, a celestial rath and a golden quiver that never fell short of arrows. Thus equipped, he waged a war against devas. The latter fled to their hideouts as they had no defence against Bali’s weapons. Their mother Aditi pleaded with her husband Kashyap to do something about it. The sage faced a problem of his ownthere, since daityas too were his offspring, born to his other wife, Diti.
Adopting a middle course, he advised Aditi to seek Vishnu’s help. When, having successfully performed certain rituals, Aditi saw Narayan standing before her, she prayed to Him to take birth from her womb and provide help to devas. The Deity granted her prayer.
In course of time, He was born to Aditi as a dwarf, Vaman. In the meanwhile, Raja Bali, following his guru’s advice, had vowed to perform a hundred yagya for the prosperity and continuity of his reign. In the process, he donated so much of his wealth that there were no takers left for his generosity. Ninety-nine of the yagyas were performed in this manner. At the hundredth, a dwarf Brahmin appeared before the king and asked for alms – just three steps of land. The king was aghast. Why only three steps, he was willing to give him whole villages, he said. But the Brahmin replied that he did not want to fall into the bottomless pit of greed. For him only three steps of land would do. ‘So be it,’ said Raja Bali. Having taken the sankalpa, Bali asked the Brahmin to measure the land He wanted to take.
At this, Vaman Avatar assumed an enormous form, outreaching the heavens. In one step, He covered Earth and in the other, the skies. Then He asked the over-generous king where to put His third step. Bali said He might put it on his head. This Narayana willingly did, sending him down to Sutala to rule over there.
Is this story a mythicized version of a coup by some North-Indian Brahmin who cheated an excessively pious monarch of his realm and forced him to go South? Or a narrative of a cosmic event recorded by our ancestors, as some Western thinkers tend to believe? Readers will judge for themselves.
The myth of Vamana avatar and King Bali has also a profound spiritual significance. The wish to sacrifice one’s ego and to surrender to the Deity may emerge dwarf-like in a man. If he allows it to be fulfilled, it assumes massive proportions, claiming his other desires relating to the material world as well as his wish for heaven after death. That is how Vaman Avatar takes possession of Bali’s Earth and the skies. Such a possessed man cares not for kingdoms, nor for the splendours of paradise. But his sankalpa – sacred pledge – is only half redeemed till he willingly surrenders his consciousness to the Deity and retreats to his inner self, there to bask in His grace.
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