Chapter 42 — Significance of Anant Vrat

Literal. Shri Guru narrates the Anant Vrat — Yudhishthira asks Krishna how to regain his kingdom; Krishna prescribes Anant worship on Bhadrapad Shuddha 14. Embedded story: Sumantu has a daughter Sushila married to Koundinya; Sushila observes Anant Vrat and gets prosperity; Koundinya, suspicious, throws her Anant string into fire. The kingdom collapses. He goes searching for Anant. He sees a fruitful tree no bird touches, a cow with calf trying to eat grass, a bull, two lakes no birds drink from, an elephant, an ass, an old Brahmin. The old Brahmin reveals himself as Anant, gives him three boons. The other figures are reinterpreted: the tree was a Brahmin proud of his learning who did not teach; the cow was a Brahmin proud of his charity but the gift was infertile land; the bull was a rich Brahmin who gave nothing; the lakes were two sisters who only exchanged charity with each other; the elephant is your anger; the ass is your vanity.

Symbolic. A perfect example of narrative encoding of moral diagnosis: the figures encountered along the journey are not random; each one is a coded form of a specific moral failure.