Ajamila

An abridged retelling from J. M. Sanyal's English translation of the Srimad Bhagavatam

King Parikshit asked the sage Shuka how a person could be saved from the hells that await sinners. Penance alone, the king said, is like an elephant that bathes and then throws dust over itself again. Shuka agreed that one act cannot wipe out another, and said that devotion to the Lord cleanses a person more surely than any austerity. To show this, he told the story of Ajamila.

The fall

In Kanyakubja lived a young Brahmin named Ajamila, learned in the Vedas, truthful, gentle and devoted to his elders. One day, returning from the forest with fruit, flowers and sacrificial fuel for his father, he saw a drunken man embracing a maidservant. Desire seized him. He struggled against it but could not master it, and in time he spent his father's wealth on the woman and abandoned his young wife of a noble family.

Ajamila lost all his religious practices. He supported the woman and her relatives by gambling, cheating and theft. He lived this way until he was eighty-eight, and had ten sons. He doted on the youngest, a little boy named Narayana, feeding him and watching him play, so absorbed that he never noticed death drawing near.

The deathbed

When his last hour came, Ajamila saw three terrifying figures with nooses in their hands: the messengers of Yama, come to take him. In terror he cried out to the child playing nearby: "Narayana! Narayana!"

At the sound of the Lord's name, the radiant, four-armed messengers of Vishnu appeared at once and stopped Yama's servants from dragging his soul away.

The debate

Yama's messengers protested. Dharma, they said, is what the Vedas lay down; every creature is witnessed by the sun, moon and elements, and must reap the fruit of its deeds. Ajamila had abandoned his wife, lived by theft, and never atoned. He must be punished.

Vishnu's messengers replied that Ajamila had already atoned. By uttering the four syllables Na-ra-ya-na at the moment of death, even without meaning the Lord, he had wiped out the sins of countless births. The Lord's name, they said, is the greatest expiation for every kind of sinner. It works even when spoken in jest, carelessly, or while meaning someone else, just as fire burns fuel and strong medicine heals whether or not the patient knows what it is. Ordinary penance removes a single sin but leaves the mind unchanged; the Name changes the heart itself. "If you doubt us," they said, "ask Yama. He is himself a great devotee and knows every secret of dharma." Then they freed Ajamila from the nooses.

Awakening and liberation

Ajamila bowed to his rescuers, and they vanished before he could speak. Having heard the whole debate, he was overcome with remorse for the wife, parents and faith he had abandoned, and wondered at the grace that had let the Lord's name pass his lips. He resolved to master his mind, be kind to all creatures, and give up the sense of "I" and "mine".

He left everything and went to Hardwar on the Ganga. There, seated in a temple, he turned his mind wholly to the Lord. When his meditation became steady, the same radiant beings appeared again. Ajamila bowed to them, gave up his body on the bank of the Ganga, and rose with them in a golden chariot to the abode of the Lord of Lakshmi.

Shuka said that whoever hears or recites this story with faith will not go to hell, and Yama's messengers will not even look at them. If Ajamila was saved by saying "Narayana" while calling his son, how much more will those who say the name with faith?

Yama's teaching

Yama's messengers returned to their master bewildered. Was he not the sole judge of all beings? Yama explained that above him stands the Supreme Lord, in whom the whole universe is woven like threads in cloth, and whom even the gods cannot fully know. The Lord's messengers protect his devotees everywhere. Only twelve know true dharma: Brahma, Narada, Shiva, the Kumaras, Kapila, Manu, Prahlada, Janaka, Bhishma, Bali, Shuka and Yama himself. The highest dharma is devotion to the Lord, beginning with chanting his names.

Yama ordered his servants never to approach those who take refuge in Hari, and to bring only those whose tongues never speak his name and whose heads never bow to him. Then he asked the Lord's forgiveness for his servants' error. From that day, Yama's messengers keep far from the devotees of the Lord.

This story, Shuka said, was first told by the sage Agastya, seated on the Malaya mountain in meditation on Hari.