Tomorrow when the woods become visible, we will go hence, if thou please! If, O sinless one, it is thy wish, we shall pass this night even here!’ At these words of hers, Satyavan replied, ‘The pain in my head is off; and I feel well in my limbs. With thy favour I wish to behold my father and mother. Never before did I return to the hermitage after the proper time had passed away. Even before it is twilight my mother confineth me within the asylum. Even when I come out during the day, my parents become anxious on my account, and my father searcheth for me, together with all the inhabitants of the sylvan asylums. Before this, moved by deep grief, my father and mother had rebuked me many times and often, saying,--Thou comest having tarried long! I am thinking of the pass they have today come to on my account, for, surely, great grief will be theirs when they miss me. One night before this, the old couple, who love me dearly, wept from deep sorrow and said into me, ‘Deprived of thee, O son, we cannot live for even a moment. As long as thou livest, so long, surely, we also will live. Thou art the crutch of these blind ones; on thee doth perpetuity of our race depend. On thee also depend our funeral cake, our fame and our descendants! My mother is old, and my father also is so. I am surely their crutch. If they see me not in the night, what, oh, will be their plight! I hate that slumber of mine for the sake of which my unoffending mother and my father have both been in trouble, and I myself also, am placed in such rending distress! Without my father and mother, I cannot bear to live. It is certain that by this time my blind father, his mind disconsolate with grief, is asking everyone of the inhabitants of the hermitage about me! I do not, O fair girl, grieve so much for myself as I do for my sire, and for my weak mother ever obedient to her lord! Surely, they will be afflicted with extreme anguish on account of me. I hold my life so long as they live.Mbh 3.295.4b · Mahabharata · VANA PARVA
Mbh 3.295.4b
Mahabharata · translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
Themes in this passage
FamilyGriefSufferingAnxietyChildrenThe DivineLoveSpeech
Family in other traditions
The same theme, as Christianity, Islam, Hellenism and Taoism address it.
The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.Luke 12:53 · Bible · Luke
Unto the men (of a family) belongeth a share of that which parents and near kindred leave, and unto the women a share of that which parents and near kindred leave, whether it be little or much - a legal share.Quran 4:7 · Quran · Women
“O wretched husband of a wretched wife! Born with one fate, to one unhappy life! For sure one star its baneful beam display’d On Priam’s roof, and Hippoplacia’s shade. From different parents, different climes we came. At different periods, yet our fate the same! Why was my birth to great Aëtion owed, And why was all that tender care bestow’d? Would I had never been!—O thou, the ghost Of my dead husband! miserably lost! Thou to the dismal realms for ever gone! And I abandon’d, desolate, alone! An only child, once comfort of my pains, Sad product now of hapless love, remains! No more to smile upon his sire; no friend To help him now! no father to defend! For should he ’scape the sword, the common doom, What wrongs attend him, and what griefs to come! Even from his own paternal roof expell’d, Some stranger ploughs his patrimonial field. The day, that to the shades the father sends, Robs the sad orphan of his father’s friends: He, wretched outcast of mankind! appears For ever sad, for ever bathed in tears; Amongst the happy, unregarded, he Hangs on the robe, or trembles at the knee, While those his father’s former bounty fed Nor reach the goblet, nor divide the bread: The kindest but his present wants allay, To leave him wretched the succeeding day. Frugal compassion! Heedless, they who boast Both parents still, nor feel what he has lost, Shall cry, ‘Begone! thy father feasts not here:’ The wretch obeys, retiring with a tear. Thus wretched, thus retiring all in tears, To my sad soul Astyanax appears! Forced by repeated insults to return, And to his widow’d mother vainly mourn: He, who, with tender delicacy bred, With princes sported, and on dainties fed, And when still evening gave him up to rest, Sunk soft in down upon the nurse’s breast, Must—ah what must he not? Whom Ilion calls Astyanax, from her well-guarded walls,[279] Is now that name no more, unhappy boy! Since now no more thy father guards his Troy.Iliad 22.46a · Iliad · 22
When the mother is found, we know what her children should be. When one knows that he is his mother's child, and proceeds to guard (the qualities of) the mother that belong to him, to the end of his life he will be free from all peril.Tao Te Ching 52.2 · Tao Te Ching
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