king janaka offered the competitors a prize of thousand cows with 10 pieces of gold hanging from each cow to ascertain vedic truths .thousandsake the cattle participated,specially from kuru-panchala, the strong hold of vedic learning.those who were ready for answers were grilled with intense questioning. the failure to answer would result in the explotion of pretender's head., so naturally many scholars were afraid.surprisingly one local was Yajnavalkya, who was with his assistant to take the cattle home.very little was known about him at janaka's contest.he was to retire to forest to meditate along with his wife Maitreyi. Priests wanted to test him. Hotri the chief told yajnavalkya" tell me-when this whole world is caught in the grip of death,how can the patron of the sacrifice free from it's grip? Yajnavalkya replied "by means of the hotri priest- that is by means of fire., by means of speech. so this speech- it is this fire here. it is the hotri priest' it is freedom' and it is complete freedom"ashvala the hotri was the connection between his role at sacrifice, fire he controlled, and speech which he knew best' it had to be good to hear specially the king being present,that complete freedom from death{for the sacrificer-the king]' would be gained through hotri's own ritual work . The questions like verses,oblations, songs and gods involved in the sacrifice,and their meanings etc were answered by yajnavalkya who culd perform the yajna single handedly.. THE display of yajnavalkya's knowledge was so autoritative that Ashwala king's priest fell silent and sat down defeated . ARTHABAGA another priest asked yajnavalkya" tell me when a man dies his speech disappears into fire, his breath into the wind, his sight into the sun,his mind into the moon, his hearing into the quarters,his physical body to the earth, his atman into space, hair into the plants,blood into the water. Yajnavalkya replied i cannot reply in public.take my hand follow me to discuss in Private. what they talked about was karma.the sage told him "A man turns into something good by good action and into something bad by bad action--[Brihadaranyaka upanishad 3.2.13]
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