Takshaka and Kashyapa: The Mahabharata’s Poison Story and Agada Tantra in the Sushruta Samhita

इस लेख को हिंदी में पढ़ें: तक्षक और कश्यप की कथा: महाभारत का विष-प्रसंग और अगद तंत्र

📖 19 min read · Mahabharata, Adi Parva, Astika Parva, Sections XLII-XLIII (K. M. Ganguli’s English; Sanskrit from sa.wikisource); Sushruta Samhita, Sutrasthana 1; Charaka Samhita, Sutrasthana 1, 11, 26 and 30, Vimana Sthana 3; Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary

Takshaka and Kashyapa: One Had the Poison, the Other Had Its Antidote

Our reel opens with one line: one of them had a poison that could burn a tree, and the other had its antidote. Both halves come straight from the Mahabharata. The serpent Takshaka bites a banyan, and the tree blazes up and falls to ash. The learned Kashyapa gathers the ash and raises the tree again: a sprout, then two leaves, then branches, then the whole tree.

That is what makes the story of Takshaka and Kashyapa so strange. The antidote existed. It was on the road on the right day, and it had just proved itself in front of the poison. Still, the king it was going to save died that evening. The book’s own reasons may not be the ones you expect. Kashyapa was not beaten. He was paid, and he saw in meditation that the king’s span of life had run out.

We retell the story in order from K. M. Ganguli’s English translation, with the Sanskrit verses, and add no dialogue, motive or event the text does not have. Then comes the part the reel promised: Agada Tantra, Ayurveda’s branch for poison, and Charaka on poison and medicine. One plain line first, because this is a story about a bite: a snakebite today is a hospital emergency, and the place to go is the nearest hospital, at once.

Saptaratra: The Curse of Seven Nights (Adi Parva XLII, 1.42.20)

Section XLII opens after a quarrel in a forest hermitage. King Parikshit had placed a dead snake on the shoulders of a sage who was keeping a vow of silence. The sage, Samika, forgave him. His young son, whom Ganguli calls Sringin (Shringi in the Sanskrit), cursed the king, and now tells his father that the words spoken by me shall never be in vain. Samika agrees, sadly, that thy curse shall never be falsified, and sends his disciple Gaurmukha to warn the king.

Gaurmukha gives the king the message in the presence of his ministers. Of the sage he says: He himself forgave thee that act. But his son could not. And the centre of the message is one line:

तक्षकः सप्तरात्रेण मृत्युस्तव भविष्यति

takṣakaḥ saptarātreṇa mṛtyustava bhaviṣyati

Ganguli’s English: within seven nights hence, shall (the snake) Takshaka cause thy death (1.42.20). The Sanskrit is tighter: in seven nights (saptaratrena), Takshaka will be your death (mrityu). And, Gaurmukha adds, there is none to falsify his son’s curse.

The king’s response shows who he is. Ganguli writes that he did not grieve so much for hearing of his death as for having done that act to the Rishi. He asks for Samika’s grace, and then, in great anxiety, without loss of time, consulted his ministers.

Ekastambha Prasada: The One-Pillar Palace With Physicians and Medicines (1.42.30-33)

The king’s answer is a building. Ganguli: he caused a mansion to be erected upon one solitary column. It was well-guarded day and night. And for its protection were placed there physicians and medicines, and Brahmanas skilled in mantras all around.

प्रासादं कारयामास एकस्तम्भं सुरक्षितम्
रक्षां च विदधे तत्र भिषजश्चौषधानि च

prāsādaṃ kārayāmāsa ekastambhaṃ surakṣitam / rakṣāṃ ca vidadhe tatra bhiṣajaścauṣadhāni ca

The Sanskrit calls it a palace (prasada) that is ekastambha, which Monier-Williams glosses as resting upon one pillar, with a guard (raksha) of physicians (bhishaj), medicines (aushadha) and Brahmins accomplished in mantras. The text does not say why one pillar. It says only that no one could approach that best of kings there. The air even could not go there. In the Sanskrit, even the moving wind (vata) was held back at the entrance (1.42.33).

A closed hall round one pillar: the text puts physicians and medicines in the king’s one-pillar mansion.

Read with Ayurveda in mind, the guard list is interesting. Charaka sorts care into three kinds, which the handbook renders spiritual, rational and psychological (Charaka Samhita, Sutrasthana 11.54). The first includes recitation of mantras, wearing roots and gems; the second is rational administration of diet and drugs. Parikshit’s mansion had both. That parallel is ours, not the epic’s, but it shows a king doing everything his world knew how to do.

Kashyapa on the Road: Artha, Dharma and an Old Brahmin (1.42.34-43)

Ganguli: And when the seventh day had arrived, that best of Brahmanas, the learned Kasyapa was coming (towards the king’s residence). He meant to reach the king after the bite and, in the Sanskrit’s word, make him apajvara, which Monier-Williams glosses as free from fever. He is frank about what he hoped to gain: By that I may have wealth and may acquire virtue also. The Sanskrit names the two goals, wealth (artha) and merit (dharma): tatra me’rthaśca dharmaśca bhaviteti vicintayan (1.42.36).

On the way he meets an old Brahmin. It is Takshaka, in the form of an old Brahmana. Asked where he is hurrying, Kashyapa explains that Takshaka, by his poison, will today burn king Parikshit of the Kuru race, and that he is going to save the king after the bite. Then the old man says who he is:

अहं स तक्षको ब्रह्मंस्तं धक्ष्यामि महीपतिम्।
निवर्तस्व न शक्तस्त्वं मया दष्टं चिकित्सितुम्॥

ahaṃ sa takṣako brahmaṃstaṃ dhakṣyāmi mahīpatim / nivartasva na śaktastvaṃ mayā daṣṭaṃ cikitsitum

Ganguli’s English begins: I am that Takshaka, O Brahmana, who shall burn that lord of the earth. Stop, and the Sanskrit goes on: turn back (nivartasva), you are not able to give medical care (chikitsa) to one bitten by me (1.42.42). Takshaka’s verb for his own bite is not “kill” but “burn” (dhakshyami). In this story, poison behaves like fire.

Kashyapa does not step aside. He is possessed (that I am) of the power of learning, he says; the Sanskrit calls it vidya-bala, the strength of knowledge (1.42.43).

An empty road beside a great banyan: on the seventh day Kashyapa was on his way to the king.

One verse in the sa.wikisource text, 1.42.41, goes further: there Kashyapa calls himself a knower of the science of poison (visha-vidya), able to destroy poison (visha-nashana). That edition marks the verse as an addition, and it is not in Ganguli’s English, so it stays a note here.

Nyagrodha: The Banyan Burnt to Ash and Raised Again (1.43.1-12)

Section XLIII opens with a test. Takshaka points to a banyan (nyagrodha): revive thou this tree bit by me. O best of Brahmanas, I burn this banian in thy sight. Try thy best and show me that skill in mantras of which thou hast spoken. Kashyapa accepts: bite thou then, O king of snakes, this tree. O snake, I shall revive it, though bit by thee.

Takshaka bites. And that tree, bit by the illustrious snake, and penetrated by the poison of the serpent, blazed up all around. The Sanskrit word for that serpent is ashivisha (1.43.5), a kind of venomous snake in Monier-Williams; keep it in mind, because Charaka uses it too. The tree was reduced to ashes by the poison of that king of snakes. Kashyapa gathers the ashes and says: O king of snakes, behold the power of my knowledge as applied to this lord of the forest! (the Sanskrit for that lord of the forest is vanaspati). Then comes the scene the reel shows:

भस्मराशीकृतं वृक्षं विद्यया समजीवयत्।
अङ्कुरं कृतवांस्तत्र ततः पर्णद्वयान्वितम्।
पलाशिनं शाखिनं च तथा विटपिनं पुनः॥

bhasmarāśīkṛtaṃ vṛkṣaṃ vidyayā samajīvayat / aṅkuraṃ kṛtavāṃstatra tataḥ parṇadvayānvitam / palāśinaṃ śākhinaṃ ca tathā viṭapinaṃ punaḥ

Ganguli (1.43.9-10): Kashyapa revived, by his vidya, that tree which had been reduced to a heap of ashes. And first he created the sprout, then he furnished it with two leaves, and then he made the stem, and then the branches, and then the full-grown tree with leaves and all.

From a sprout to a leafy sapling: the order in which the text says Kashyapa raised the banyan.

Each Sanskrit word is a stage: ankura, a sprout, shoot; parna-dvaya-anvita, with a pair of leaves; palashin, leafy, covered with foliage; shakhin, provided with branches; and vitapin, having branches or boughs (as a tree) (all from Monier-Williams). Where Ganguli writes “stem”, the Sanskrit has palashin, leafy. The text does not make a grown tree appear at once; it follows the order in which a tree grows, out of the ash (bhasma). Fittingly, nyagrodha means ‘growing downwards’, the tree whose fibres descend from its branches to the earth and there take root and form new stems.

Takshaka does not argue: It is not wonderful in thee that thou shouldst destroy my poison or that of any one else like myself. (1.43.11-12). The poison has met its match, so the snake changes weapons.

Kshina-Ayus: The Offer, and Why Kashyapa Turned Back (1.43.12-20)

Takshaka asks a new question: O thou whose wealth is asceticism, desirous of what wealth, goest thou thither? He offers to pay it himself, and warns Kashyapa about his good name: Decked with fame as thou art, thy success may be doubtful on that king affected by a Brahmana’s curse and whose span of life itself hath been shortened.

Kashyapa answers plainly: I go there for wealth, give it unto me, O snake (dhanārthī yāmyahaṃ tatra, 1.43.16). Takshaka raises the offer: even I will give thee more than what thou expectest from that king. Therefore do not go.

Takshaka offered more than the king would give, and Kashyapa took as much wealth as he desired.

The story could have ended in a bargain. It does not. Kashyapa first sat in yoga meditation over the king, and then, ascertaining that the period of life of that king of the Pandava race had really run out, returned, receiving from Takshaka as much wealth as he desired.

दिव्यज्ञानः स तेजस्वी ज्ञात्वा तं नृपतिं तदा।
क्षीणायुषं पाण्डवेयमपावर्तत काश्यपः॥

divyajñānaḥ sa tejasvī jñātvā taṃ nṛpatiṃ tadā / kṣīṇāyuṣaṃ pāṇḍaveyamapāvartata kāśyapaḥ

The key word is kshina-ayus, a life (ayus) worn away: one whose life goes to an end, says Monier-Williams (1.43.19). Takshaka had said it first (kshinayushi, 1.43.14), but Kashyapa does not take the snake’s word for it. He checks with his own divine knowledge (divya-jnana), and only then turns back. So the text gives two reasons side by side, the wealth and the run-out life, and does not choose between them. Neither will we.

The Fruit at Sunset: How Takshaka Reached the King (1.43.21-36)

Takshaka at the proper time speedily entered the city of Hastinapura, and heard that the king was protected by means of poison-neutralising mantras and medicines (the mantras are vishahara, poison-removing, 1.43.22). The monarch must be deceived by me with power of illusion, he decides.

He sends some snakes in the guise of ascetics taking with them fruits, kusa grass, and water (as presents). The king accepts them and tells his ministers and friends: Eat ye, with me, all these fruits of excellent taste brought by the ascetics. They feel the wish to eat, Impelled by Fate and the words of the Rishi, and The particular fruit, within which Takshaka had entered, was taken by the king himself for eating.

ततो भक्षयतस्तस्य फलात्कृमिरभूदणुः

tato bhakṣayatastasya phalātkṛmirabhūdaṇuḥ: as he was eating it, a tiny creature (krimi) came out of the fruit (1.43.31).

Fruits, kusha grass and water: the presents Takshaka sent. The king spoke at sunset.

Ganguli calls it an ugly insect out of it, of shape scarcely discernible, of eyes black, and of coppery colour. The king holds it up. The sun is setting, he says, and the Sanskrit goes on, viṣādadya na me bhayam: “today I have no fear of poison” (1.43.32). The curse gave seven nights, and the king speaks as the sun goes down. Then: Therefore, let this insect become Takshaka and bite me, so that my sinful act may be expiated and the words of the ascetic rendered true. And then the monarch smiled, losing his senses, his hour having come. And he quickly placed that insect on his neck. Takshaka coiled himself round the neck of the monarch and bit that protector of the earth (1.43.36).

Every guard was in place. The poison came in as a present, and the king lifted it to his neck himself. As our reel puts it at the end: the one who had the antidote turned back, and the one who had the poison got through.

What Ayurveda Learns From It: Agada Tantra, the Branch for Poison (Sushruta Samhita Sutrasthana 1)

Our reel ended with a promise: Ayurveda has a whole branch for poisons, one of its eight. The Sushruta Samhita sets it out in its first chapter (Sutrasthana 1). Brahma, it says, thought of the small duration of human life on earth, and the failing character of human memory, and so found it prudent to divide the whole of the Ayurveda into eight different branches: the Salya-Tantram, the Salakya-Tantram, the Kaya-Chikitsa, the Bhuta-Vidya, the Kaumar-Bhritya, the Agada-Tantram, the Rasayana-Tantram and the Vajeekarana-Tantram. Sixth in that list is the branch our story needs. The translator glosses it as Toxicology:

So what Sushruta lists under Agada Tantra is, in plain words:

• bites from snakes;
• bites from spiders;
• bites from venomous worms;
• the signs of each, which the translator calls symptoms, and their antidotes;
• removing poison from a person overwhelmed by it, whether the poison is animal, vegetable, or chemical, the last from incompatible combinations.

Both halves of our story are on that list: the snake’s bite, and the work Kashyapa set out to do. The name says the same. Agada is a-gada: Monier-Williams gives free from disease, healthy, and as a noun, a medicine, drug, (especially) antidote. Tantra is a body of teaching. Agada Tantra is, word for word, the teaching of antidotes.

Agada Tantra, the branch for poison, is one of the eight branches the Sushruta Samhita names.

Charaka keeps the same branch under a longer name. In his list of the eight (Charaka Samhita, Sutrasthana 30.28) it is Visha-gara-vairodhika-prashamana, which the handbook renders dealing with alleviation of poisons, artificial poisons and toxic symptoms due to intake of antagonistic substances: poison (visha), artificial poison (gara), clashing substances (vairodhika), and their calming (prashamana). Sushruta names the branch Agada Tantra; Charaka names it by what it deals with.

The Mahabharata does not call Kashyapa a follower of Sushruta or Charaka, and the medical passages we quote do not tell his story. But the epic shows a world in which poison and its antidote were matters of knowledge (vidya), and the medical books show that world from the inside, as a named branch.

Poison and Medicine: Charaka Samhita on Visha and Bheshaja (Sutrasthana 1.124-126)

The second half of the reel’s promise comes from the first chapter of the Charaka Samhita. It sets poison (visha) against medicine (aushadha, bheshaja), and it turns on one idea: whether a substance is known.

यथा विषं यथा शस्त्रं यथाऽग्निरशनिर्यथा।
तथौषधमविज्ञातं विज्ञातममृतं यथा॥

yathā viṣaṃ yathā śastraṃ yathā’gniraśaniryathā / tathauṣadhamavijñātaṃ vijñātamamṛtaṃ yathā

The handbook’s English: A drug, if unknown, is fatal like poison, weapon, fire and thunderbolt while, if known, is vitalizer like nectar. (Sutrasthana 1.124-125). Known how? By name, form and properties (including actions), that is nama, rupa and guna; a drug unknown, or known but badly administered, brings trouble. The known drug is vijnata and nectar is amrita. Then comes the line the reel promised:

योगादपि विषं तीक्ष्णमुत्तमं भेषजं भवेत्।
भेषजं चापि दुर्युक्तं तीक्ष्णं सम्पद्यते विषम्॥

yogādapi viṣaṃ tīkṣṇamuttamaṃ bheṣajaṃ bhavet / bheṣajaṃ cāpi duryuktaṃ tīkṣṇaṃ sampadyate viṣam

Charaka draws the lesson at once: Hence, the wise person desiring for long life and health should not take any medicine administered by irrational physician (quack). A few verses on, he reaches for snake venom himself. Sutrasthana 1.131 begins varamāśīviṣaviṣaṃ, “better the venom of an ashivisha”, the very word the Mahabharata used for Takshaka (1.43.5). The handbook’s English: The serpent poison is good or the intake of decocted copper or the swallowing of red hot iron balls but the acceptance of medicine from one putting on the robe of scholars is not at all good. Receiving food, drink or money from the surrendered patient is also not proper. (Sutrasthana 1.131-132)

The two books are not talking about each other, and the epic never calls Kashyapa a pretender: he proves his knowledge on the banyan. But both put a physician, money and a snake’s poison side by side, and both make knowledge the dividing line. Takshaka’s poison turns a tree to ash; Kashyapa’s vidya turns the ash back into a tree; and Charaka says one substance is poison or nectar depending on whether it is known and how it is used. In Sutrasthana 26 he even lists, among his examples of prabhava (specific potency), poison: acts as antidote to poison (Sutrasthana 26.69; handbook p. 33). The teaching is about knowing a substance, never about trying one, and none of it is advice: if anyone near you is bitten or poisoned, the knowledge they need is at a hospital.

Ayus and Daiva: Charaka on the Measure of a Life (Sutrasthana 1.41, Vimana Sthana 3)

The turn in our story rests on one word, ayus, life. It is the word that names Ayurveda, and Charaka defines both in his first chapter:

हिताहितं सुखं दुःखम् आयुस् तस्य हिताहितम्।
मानं च तच्च यत्रोक्तम् आयुर्वेदः स उच्यते॥

hitāhitaṃ sukhaṃ duḥkham āyus tasya hitāhitam / mānaṃ ca tacca yatroktam āyurvedaḥ sa ucyate

The handbook’s English: Ayurveda that which deals with good, bad, happy and unhappy life, it’s promoters and non-promoters, measurement and nature. (Sutrasthana 1.41). “Measurement” is mana, and life itself means conjunction of body, sense organs, mind and self (1.42). When the epic has Kashyapa read the length of a king’s life before he acts, it gives him a skill Charaka writes into the very definition of Ayurveda. That parallel is ours; the epic does not mention Charaka.

Is a life’s length, then, fixed? The Mahabharata tells it so: the king acts impelled by Fate, and every guard fails. Charaka, in Vimana Sthana 3, takes a different line: The stability of life-span of all living beings depends on their personal daiva and purusakara, where daiva is deed self-done in the previous life and purushakara is deed self-done in the present life (3.29-32). Weak Daiva may be subdued by Purusakara (which is stronger). But by distinguished Daiva, Purusakara is subdued. (3.33). If every life-span were fixed, he argues, there would not be any necessity to apply mantras, herb-roots, gems, nor to keep away from various poisonous reptiles, serpents etc. (3.36; handbook pp. 216-218). Two books, two kinds of writing: the story tells what happened to one king, and the medical book tells why care still counts.

Where This Story Comes From: Mahabharata, Adi Parva, Astika Parva XLII-XLIII

The book. The Mahabharata, Book 1, the Adi Parva, in the part called the Astika Parva: Sections XLII and XLIII of K. M. Ganguli’s English (printed pages 91 to 95), which are adhyayas 42 and 43 of the Sanskrit. The narrator is Sauti, telling the story to Saunaka; you can hear him in the aside O Saunaka in the scene with the insect.

The translation. Kisari Mohan Ganguli’s English Mahabharata is in the public domain; we read the archive.org full text. He spells the names Kasyapa, Sringin and Gaurmukha, and writes “banian”. Where that text has the king say he has no more “tear” from poison, read “fear” (the Sanskrit is bhayam). Where Ganguli has “the stem”, the Sanskrit has palashin, leafy.

The Sanskrit. The verses are from the Sanskrit Wikisource (sa.wikisource) Mahabharata, Adi Parva, adhyayas 42 and 43. Editions do not all number these chapters alike; these vulgate numbers match Ganguli’s sections. That text marks a few verses as additions (1.42.28, 1.42.41 and part of 1.43.3), which are not in Ganguli.

Read it yourself. Search for “Ganguli Mahabharata Adi Parva Section XLII” for free copies of the English, and open the adhyaya pages on sa.wikisource for the Sanskrit. The Ayurveda passages: Sushruta Samhita, Vol. I, in Bhishagratna’s English (Sutrasthana 1, p. 4); Charaka Samhita, Sutrasthana 1, 11, 26 and 30 and Vimana Sthana 3, read in Charaka Samhita: Handbook on Ayurveda, Vol. I (2002-2003), with the Sanskrit checked online. Word meanings: Monier-Williams.

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