Bhīshma's Terrible Vow

When Shantanu went to the chief of the fishermen to ask for Satyavatī's hand, the shrewd old chief named a heavy condition. The child born of Satyavatī, he said, must be the one to be crowned king after you. And at this Shantanu, mad with desire as he was, could not agree; for it would mean setting aside his eldest son, the godlike Devavrata, the rightful heir, the greatest young prince of the age.

And so the king, unable to make such a promise and unable to master his longing, returned to Hastināpura in silence, and there he pined, sick with a desire he would not name, wasting away with a secret sorrow.

His son Devavrata saw his father's decline, and could not understand it, and came to him and asked: Father, you have everything a heart could wish; why are you so unhappy, like a man pining with some secret grief? And Shantanu, ashamed to confess a lustful longing, would not tell him the truth, but spoke vaguely of anxiety for the family's future, saying that Devavrata was his only son and life uncertain.

But Devavrata was not satisfied, and determined to find the true cause, and he questioned his father's charioteer, and so learned the whole matter: the fisher-chief, Satyavatī, the condition about the throne.

And then Devavrata did a thing that would define his whole life, and give him his name. He went himself, with a delegation of elders, to the chief of the fishermen, and there, before them all, he made his first great renunciation. I give you my word, he declared, that the son born of Satyavatī shall be king; and I renounce, in his favour, my own right as heir to the throne. He gave up the kingdom, freely, for his father's happiness.

But the fisher-chief, cunning still, raised a further objection, and it was a shrewd one. I do not doubt that you will keep your word, best of the Bharata race, he said; but how can I be sure of your children? Your sons will be mighty heroes like yourself, and if they should one day seek to seize the throne by force from Satyavatī's line, who could resist them? That is the doubt that torments me. And to answer this doubt, Devavrata took his second vow, and it was the terrible one, the one that would cost him everything a man can lose.

Raising his arm to the heavens, he declared: Then I shall never marry. I dedicate myself to a life of unbroken chastity, and I shall have no children who could ever claim the throne.

It was a vow of absolute and total renunciation, the giving-up not only of a kingdom but of marriage, of children, of a whole ordinary human life, all for his father's passing desire; and as he spoke it, the gods themselves showered flowers upon his head, and from the heavens came the cry, Bhīshma! Bhīshma!, which means, the one who takes a terrible vow and keeps it.

And from that day Devavrata was called Bhīshma, and he escorted Satyavatī to his father, and she was married to Shantanu, and the price of the marriage was paid, in full, by the son who had everything and gave it all away. Let us not pass too quickly over the enormity of what Bhīshma did, for the story means us to feel it, and to feel too the shadow that lies over it.

Here was the greatest prince of his age, the rightful heir, godlike in his gifts, and he renounced his throne, his marriage, his children, his whole future, in a single afternoon, for no fault of his own, to satisfy an old man's infatuation. There is a terrible grandeur in it, the grandeur of a total sacrifice freely made out of love for a father.

And yet the story does not present it as simply admirable, for we will see, across the long tragedy to come, that Bhīshma's vow, magnificent as it was, bound him also to terrible things: it chained him to the throne of Hastināpura through all its later corruption, made him the servant of whoever held that throne, and set him at last, this best of men, on the wrong side of the great war, fighting for a cause he knew to be unjust, because his vow bound him to it.

A sacrifice can be noble and can also be a chain; a vow can be heroic and can also imprison; and Bhīshma's terrible vow, which made him the wonder of the gods, made him also the prisoner of a lifetime, and that is a truth about renunciation that the story will unfold, slowly and sorrowfully, all the way to Kurukshetra.