A Finished Life's Work, and Still Unsatisfied
On the western bank of the Sarasvatī, in his hermitage at Śamyāprāsa, Dvaipāyana Vyāsa sat in a mood he could not account for. By any external measure his work was complete. He had divided the single Veda into four so that it could be carried by ordinary memory into a darker age. He had entrusted each branch to a capable disciple. He had composed the Mahābhārata — a hundred thousand verses — precisely so that the truths locked inside Vedic Sanskrit would reach women, labourers and everyone else the formal study excluded. He had compiled the Purāṇas and the histories. And yet, the Bhāgavata says, his heart was not at peace. He asked himself what was missing. He had followed the disciplines, honoured the fires, served his teachers, spared nothing. Why then this dissatisfaction, like a hunger that eating had not touched?
✦ Visual cue — An elderly sage seated in meditation on a riverbank at dawn, palm-leaf manuscripts stacked beside him, expression troubled, soft misted light.