His children Bharata and Bahubali

At a Glance

• Central figures: Bharata, eldest son of Rishabhanatha and emperor of Bharatavarsha, and Bahubali, his younger brother, a man of immense physical strength who renounced the world after defeating Bharata in single combat.
• Setting: The city of Ayodhya and the kingdom of Podanapura in ancient India, within the Jain tradition of the first Tirthankara Rishabhanatha’s lineage.
• The turn: After Rishabhanatha renounces the world and divides his kingdom, Bharata conquers all earthly rulers except Bahubali, and the two brothers face each other in three contests rather than wage war.
• The outcome: Bahubali wins every contest but is so struck by the futility of victory that he renounces his kingdom on the spot and stands in meditation so long that vines grow up his body - yet he cannot attain Kevala Jnana until he lets go of a final, hidden pride.
• The legacy: The colossal statue of Bahubali at Shravanabelagola in Karnataka, known as Gommateshvara, stands fifty-seven feet tall and is anointed every twelve years in the Mahamastakabhisheka ceremony.

Rishabhanatha had a hundred sons. When he renounced the world - pulled out his hair, shed his garments, walked barefoot out of Ayodhya toward the forest - the kingdom did not simply pass to one heir. He divided it. Bharata, the eldest, received Ayodhya and the title of Chakravartin, the wheel-turning emperor whose destiny was to bring every kingdom under one rule. Bahubali, born of the same father but a different mother, received the territory of Podanapura to the south.

For a time, this was enough. Bharata had his divine disc, the chakra, which rolled ahead of his army and flattened resistance. Kingdom after kingdom submitted. The disc moved east, west, south, and every king who saw it approaching laid down his arms. Bharata followed it across the subcontinent like a man following a compass needle, and by the time it had completed its circuit, he ruled everything.

Everything except Podanapura.

The Disc That Would Not Move

The chakra rolled back toward Ayodhya after its great circuit, but at the gates of the city it stopped. It would not enter. Bharata’s ministers understood the sign: somewhere, a king still stood who had not submitted. Bharata’s own brothers - ninety-nine of them - had already taken diksha, monastic initiation, and followed their father into renunciation. They were no obstacle. But Bahubali had not renounced. Bahubali sat in Podanapura with his territory intact and his pride undimmed, and the disc would not rest until every sovereign had bent.

Bharata sent a message south. The message was simple: submit, or fight.

Bahubali read the message in his court and laughed. He was taller than Bharata, stronger, and he had not spent years trailing behind a rolling weapon. He sent his own message back: he would not submit.

Three Contests at the Border

The two armies assembled, but the ministers on both sides saw the waste. These were brothers, sons of a Tirthankara. A war between them would stain every soldier who drew a blade. So the elders proposed three contests - personal, physical, no armies involved. The brothers agreed.

The first was a staring contest - drishti yuddha - eye against eye, unblinking, until one looked away. Bharata blinked. Bahubali won.

The second was a water fight - jala yuddha - each brother standing waist-deep in a river, striking the surface to send waves at the other, trying to knock him off his feet. Bharata staggered. Bahubali won.

The third was wrestling - malla yuddha - body against body, the oldest kind of combat. Bahubali lifted Bharata off the ground. He held his brother overhead, and the armies on both sides went silent.

He could have thrown him. He could have broken him against the earth. Every witness expected it.

Bahubali set Bharata down.

The Blow and the Standing

What happened next depends on which account you follow. In one telling, Bharata - humiliated, shaking with rage - hurled the chakra at his brother. The divine disc, which had conquered every kingdom in the known world, struck Bahubali and did nothing. It circled him once and fell harmless to the ground. A weapon meant to subjugate could not touch a man who had already decided to let go.

In that same moment, or perhaps in the moment just before - when he held Bharata overhead and chose not to throw him - something turned in Bahubali. He saw what the fight was. Two sons of a man who had abandoned everything, grappling in the mud over territory. Their father was somewhere in the forest, barefoot, eating nothing, seeking Kevala Jnana. And here were his sons, wrestling.

Bahubali did not return to Podanapura. He did not reclaim his kingdom. He stood where he was and did not move. He entered kayotsarga - the standing meditation, body released, arms hanging straight at the sides, eyes fixed on nothing. He resolved not to move until he had attained omniscience.

The Vines

He stood for a year. The rains came and went. Anthills rose around his feet. Creepers climbed his legs, circled his thighs, wound around his torso. Snakes nested at his ankles. His body became part of the landscape.

But Kevala Jnana did not come.

Bahubali had renounced his kingdom, his name, his body’s comfort. He had stood motionless while vines threaded through his fingers. Yet something held. Deep in the back of his mind, a single thought persisted: I am the one who defeated Bharata. I am the one who chose to let go. My renunciation is greater than his conquest.

It was pride - not the pride of a king, but the pride of a renunciant. The subtlest kind. The kind that disguises itself as humility.

Bharata, by now, had understood something too. His rage had cooled. He came to the place where Bahubali stood, vine-wrapped and motionless, and he saw what his brother could not see about himself. He spoke to him. Or, in some tellings, Rishabhanatha’s own daughters - Brahmi and Sundari, Bahubali’s sisters - came and spoke to him.

You have given up everything except the thought that you have given up everything. Let that go too.

Bahubali heard. The last thread of self-regard dissolved. Kevala Jnana broke over him the way light enters a room when the last shutter opens. He became omniscient - the first human being in this cosmic cycle to achieve it, before even his father Rishabhanatha attained it.

Gommateshvara

Centuries passed. Kingdoms rose and dissolved. But the image of Bahubali standing in kayotsarga, vines climbing his still body, persisted in the Jain memory. In the tenth century, the minister Chamundaraya commissioned a statue carved from a single block of granite on the hill at Shravanabelagola. Fifty-seven feet tall. Arms straight at the sides. Creepers carved winding up the legs. The face calm, eyes open, seeing nothing and everything.

Every twelve years the statue is anointed in the Mahamastakabhisheka - milk, saffron water, sandalwood paste poured from scaffolding over the great stone head - and for a few hours the granite looks alive, golden and wet, a man standing in the rain, waiting for the last thought to leave him.