SIX
Jarasandha's father, Brihadratha's, fame was like the light of the sun that falls across the earth. He was a just king and he married a king of Kasi's twin daughters, whose beauty and virtue were a legend. Brihadratha had everything he wanted, but he did not have a son to continue his royal line. There was no yagna he had not performed to get an heir, but to no avail.
Finally, in despair, he went into the jungle with his queens. They wandered in the wilderness for months, living on fruit and roots, hunting occasionally. One day, they saw the rishi Chandakausika's asrama.
The distraught king began serving the hermit, like a common sishya. Chandakausika was moved by Brihadratha's sincerity. The king never told the rishi who he was; he did not ask him for a boon. One sweltering day, Brihadratha sat before the sage in the shade of a mango tree, when a ripe fruit fell into the muni's lap. Chandakausika gave the mango to Brihadratha and said, "Give this to your queens and they will bear you a son. Return to your kingdom now. Your place is not in the forest but upon the throne of Girivraja."
Brihadratha prostrated himself at the sage's feet. Then he ran to his queens with the precious fruit. That king had two wives, like mirror images of each other and he had only one mango. He cut the fruit in two with his sword and gave a half to each of the women.
The three of them spent that night in love and when they returned to Girivraja, both queens were pregnant. Nine months passed; the twins went into labor at the same time and both delivered together. It was midnight of the night of a new moon, when not even the breeze stirred in the trees and the world seemed enveloped in a hush, when each queen gave birth to half a child. He would have been an enormous baby had he been born whole; but, as it was, he was lifeless, cloven by fate.
No one thought of the rishi's boon; or how wisely he had blessed the king and his wives: there would never be jealousy between them, since both would be the natural mothers of the same son. Instead, the queens wailed, the midwives wept. And without showing the bisected child to his father, the palace maids swaddled the two halves of a prince in silk and left them at the edge of the jungle, in the dark night.
When he heard what had happened, Brihadratha thought this was as a lesson to him: a warning that he would never have a son; it was not written.
In the jungle outside his city, a miracle was unfolding. Jara, the rakshasi, had woken from a deep slumber to the howling of wolves and she was ravenous. In her slouching, creeping shamble, she set out on her nightly hunt. She sniffed the air; there was not a breath of wind tonight, to carry the scent of any warm-blooded animal. Her eyes were keened for the slightest glimmer from other eyes in the darkness. But all she caught were some mice, which she gobbled; they only whetted her appetite.
Moaning softly, the rakshasi stalked on through the black forest, down the hill-slope and she saw Girivraja before her. Usually, she never came this far; she was terrified of Brihadratha's guards. Suddenly, the sweetest, most unlikely scent invaded her flared nostrils. She stood hunched, sniffing hard and she was sure the delicious aroma came not from within the city, but from outside its gates. It was the scent of human flesh.
Drooling, Jara crept forward. The smell of flesh mingled with that of fresh fetal blood was driving her wild. Soon, she scrabbled in frenzy through the undergrowth and found the two parcels of swaddling. A human woman had miscarried and abandoned her abortion in the night. Quickly scooping up the two warm wet parcels, the rakshasi scurried back into the deeper forest, whimpering in anticipation of a feast.
Her eyes alight, Jara undid the bloody swaddling of the first parcel. She gave an amazed chuckle: in it, lay half a huge human child. She mumbled to herself, "He would have a made a fine rakshasa, but there is only half of him. I wonder whose child he is."
She untied the other parcel. She wanted to lay out her banquet and feast her eyes, before she tore at it with claw and fang. She hissed in surprise when she had uncovered the second parcel. She began to laugh. As she gazed at the contents of the two parcels by starlight, she felt a wave of pity for the cloven infant. Crooning to the lifeless baby instead of devouring it, she held the halves, one by one, to her breast.
Jara whispered, "How handsome you would have been if only you were born in one piece! My, you would have been a great kshatriya, little one."
Tenderly, she placed the divided infant in her lap, both pieces together. "Let me see how handsome you would have been if you had been born whole."
The rakshasi joined the two pieces together in her lap. There was a flash of light. A powerful charge surged through her hands, as if she had clasped a streak of lightning. She sprang up with a cry, ready to run from the eerie sorcery. But the light had vanished and Jara saw that the two halves had joined miraculously and a lusty human baby lay at her feet. He stared up at her with shining eyes and she saw he breathed. He was alive!
Now the rakshasi had a vision: she saw who the child was and how he had been born. Poor Jara, all her hunger vanished. She did not have the heart to eat the child to which she had given life. She picked him up and slouched toward the gates of Girivraja, as dawn reached its fingers over the horizon.
Brihadratha's guards were astonished to see the apparition at their gates in the early dawn: a rakshasi carried a strapping infant in her arms and she claimed the child was the king's son. The guards sent word in to the palace. Just then, a holy man appeared there; it was Chandakausika. The rishi and the rakshasi clutching a child in her arms were shown into the king's presence. Chandakausika confirmed Jara's story and said the prince should be named Jarasandha—'joined by Jara'—since but for her he would have rotted in the wild.
When the king rewarded Jara, fed her a bloody meal of raw goat's meat and gave her freedom of Girivraja to visit Jarasandha whenever she wanted, she shambled back into the jungle.
Chandakausika said to Brihadratha, "Your son is no common child. He will have many strange powers as he grows. He will be awesomely strong and a great king of the earth. He will be invincible: not the Devas or the Asuras will be able to kill him in battle. He will be the greatest Sivabhakta of his times and the Lord will bless him."
In Indraprastha, Krishna said to Yudhishtira, "It won't be easy to kill him even now, when he has turned away from dharma. I have heard Jarasandha has seen Siva with his own eyes."
Yudhishtira asked in a whisper, "How will we kill him?"
The Dark One smiled. "No man, even the most gifted, may live beyond the time given him. I know how he can be killed."
Arjuna, Krishna and Bheema set out for Girivraja. Yudhishtira was anxious, but he did not let doubt prevail over his faith in the Blue God.