396 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
Brahmans has been smitten. Take possession of the three worlds, and protect their inhabitants, O husband of Sachi (Indrani) subduing thy senses, overcoming thine enemies, and celebrated by the great Rishis.”
The fourth case is of King Nimi. Nimi was one of the sons of Ikshvaku. The facts of his conflict with the Brahmans are related in the Vishnu Purrana which says:
“ [1] Nimi had requested the Brahman Rishi Vashistha to officiate at a sacrifice, which was to last a thousand years. Vashistha in reply pleaed a pre-engagement to Indra for five hundred years, but promised to return at the end of that period. The king made no remark, and Vashistha went away, supposing that he had assented to his arrangement. On his return, however, the priest discovered that Nimi had retained Gautama (who was, equally with Vashistha, a Brahmin-rishi) and others to perform the sacrifice; and being incensed at the neglect to give him notice of what was intended, he cursed the king, who was then asleep, to lose his corporeal form. When Nimi awoke and learnt that he had been cursed without any previous warning, he retorted by uttering a similar curse on Vashistha, and then died. Nimi’s body was emblamed. At the close of the sacrifice which he had begun, the gods, were willing, on the intercession of the priests, to restore him to life, but he declined the offer; and was placed by the deities, according to his desire, in the eyes of all living creatures. It is in consequence of this that they are always opening and shutting (nimisha means “The twinkling of the eye”).
The fifth case relates to the conflict between Vashishtha and Vishvamitra. Vashishtha was a Brahmin priest. Vishavamitra was a Kshatriya. His great ambition was to become a Brahmin. The following episode reported from the Ramayana explains the reasons why he became anxious to become a Brahmin.
“ [2] There was formerly, we are told, a king called Kusa, son of Prajapati, who had a son called Kusanabha, who was father of Gadhi, the father of Vishvamitra. The latter ruled the earth for many thousand years. On one occasion, when he was making a circuit of the earth, he came to Vashishtha’s hermitage, the pleasant abode of many saints, sages, and holy devotees, where, after all first declining, he allowed himself to be hospitability entertained with his followers by the son of Brahma. Vishvamitra, however, coveting the wonderous cow, which had supplied all the dainties of the feast, first
1 Muir Vol. I, pp. 316.
2 Muir Vol. I, pp. 397-400.