The Boy at Death's Door

Vajashravasa wanted heaven, and so he held a sacrifice at which he gave away everything he owned.

His son Nachiketa was still a boy. He stood and watched as the cows were led up to be handed to the priests, and as he watched, something serious came into him. The cows were old. They had drunk their last water and eaten their last grass. They had no more milk to give and would never calve again.

"What kind of heaven does a man reach by giving these?" the boy thought.

His father had promised to give everything. A son is part of everything. So Nachiketa went up to him.

"Father, who will you give me to?"

His father did not answer. Nachiketa asked a second time, and a third.

"To Death!" his father snapped. "I give you to Death."

It was said in anger. But it had been said, and Nachiketa would not let his father's word be a false one. "A mortal ripens like corn," he said, "and like corn he comes up again." And he went.

When he reached the house of Yama, nobody was at home.

Nachiketa waited for three nights, and in that time he was given nothing to eat.

When Yama returned, his household met him with a warning. A Brahmin guest comes into a house like fire, they said, and a guest left hungry burns up a man's hopes, his good deeds, his sons and his cattle. "Bring water, son of Vivasvat."

Yama went to the boy.

"You have stayed three nights in my house without food, and you are a guest who should be honoured. I bow to you. Choose three wishes."

"For the first," said Nachiketa, "let my father's anger be gone. Let him know me and greet me when you send me back."

"He will know you, and be as he was. He will sleep in peace."

"For the second: there is a fire that leads to heaven, where nobody is afraid and nobody is hungry. You know it. Teach it to me."

Yama taught him the fire, which bricks to lay, how many, and in what order. The boy repeated it all back to him without a mistake. Yama was so pleased that he gave him more than he had asked. "This fire will be called by your name," he said, and he put a chain of many colours into the boy's hands. "Now choose the third."

"When a man is dead," said Nachiketa, "some say he still is, and some say he is not. I want to know which. Teach me that."

Death did not want to answer.

"Even the gods were unsure of this once. It is a fine and difficult thing. Choose something else, Nachiketa. Do not press me."

"If even the gods were unsure, and you call it difficult, then no other teacher is like you and no other wish is like this one."

"Choose sons and grandsons who will live a hundred years. Choose cattle, elephants, horses, gold. Choose wide lands, and live as long as you like. Only do not ask me about dying."

"These things last until tomorrow," said the boy. "They wear a man out. Keep your horses. Keep the dance and the song. How can anyone be happy with wealth once he has seen you? I ask for nothing else."

Then Death was glad, because he had found a student.

"The good is one thing and the pleasant is another," he said. "Both come to a man. The wise one walks round them and chooses the good. You looked at every pleasure and let it go."

And he taught him. The one who knows, he said, is not born and does not die. Think of the self as the rider in a chariot. The body is the chariot, the mind is the reins, and the senses are the horses. Nachiketa listened, and the Upanishad says that he was freed from death.

The ritual book of the Yajurveda tells the same visit in a few plain lines, and in its telling the boy arrives with instructions.

The beginning is the same. The father gave away all his wealth, the cows were led in, and the boy asked three times who he would be given to. His father turned round. "To Death I give you."

As the boy stood up, a voice spoke to him.

"Your father has said it. Go to the house of Death. Go when he is not at home, and stay there three nights without eating. He will ask you how many nights you have been there. Say, three. He will ask what you ate the first night. Say, your children. The second night? Your cattle. The third night? Your good works."

The boy went. Death was away. He stayed three nights and ate nothing.

Death came home and found him.

"Boy, how many nights have you been here?"

"Three."

"What did you eat the first night?"

"Your children."

"And the second?"

"Your cattle."

"And the third?"

"Your good works."

Death understood well enough what an unfed guest costs a house. He bowed to the boy.

"I honour you, sir. Choose a wish."

"Let me go back to my father alive."

"Choose a second."

"Tell me how my good works may never run out."

So Death taught him the fire that is named after Nachiketa.

"Choose a third."

"Tell me how to conquer dying again."

And Death taught him the same fire once more, and by it, the text says, he conquered that second death.

That is all. The Brahmana is explaining where a certain fire altar got its name. Nobody tempts the boy with horses and gold, nobody refuses to answer, and the answer to every wish is the ritual.

In the Mahabharata it is the dying Bhishma who tells the story, and it starts with some things left by a river.

The sage Uddalaki had finished a long observance. He had left his firewood, his sacred grass, his flowers, his water jar and his herbs on the riverbank, and he sent his son Nachiketa to fetch them. The boy went and looked. The river had carried everything away.

"I cannot find them," he said when he came back.

His father was hungry, thirsty and worn out, and he lost his temper.

"Go and see Yama today!"

"Be kind to me," the boy began, with his palms joined. He did not finish. He fell down lifeless at his father's feet.

Uddalaki cried out, "What have I done?" and fell beside him. He wept over his son for the rest of that day and all night. In the morning, wet with his father's tears, Nachiketa stirred on his mat of grass, like a seed after rain.

"Have you come back to me?" his father asked. "You do not look as you did."

Then the boy told what he had seen. He had come to a golden hall thousands of leagues wide. Yama had ordered a seat and water brought for him, and had said, "You are not dead. Your father only said that you should see me, and I could not make his words untrue. Now you have seen me. Go back. But you are my guest. What would you like?"

"Show me the worlds kept for those who do good."

So Yama took him in a bright chariot and showed him shining houses, rivers of milk and hills of butter. "These," Yama told him, "are for people who give cows as gifts." And Bhishma, who was telling the tale to explain exactly that, went on to the rules for giving a cow.