Reflections on the history of Ajamila

How did Ajamila fall so easily? A woman and a man embracing is a scene that most of us see regularly, for us it doesn't seem anything special. How is it that it had such a profound effect on Ajamila?

Most of us know well the story of Ajamila. In his youth, he was a pure Brahmana who worshiped Lord Vishnu, but he fell into a degraded life after seeing a prostitute embracing a drunk man on the side of the road.

How did Ajamila fall so easily? A woman and a man embracing is a scene that most of us see regularly, for us it doesn't seem anything special. How is it that it had such a profound effect on Ajamila, to the point of making him abandon his young wife and elderly parents and give up all religious principles to live with a prostitute? Does it mean that living a guarded life can actually prove a disadvantage in the long run?

One point to take into consideration is that Ajamila was able to remain pure part of his life, something that not many of us can claim. Most of us never really reach this stage of purity at any stage of our lives. We are bombarded by sexual stimulation since we are children and later get involved with different bad habits, which we have difficulty abandoning later, even when we start practicing Krsna Consciousness. We may be able to restrict ourselves from grossly breaking the principles, but mentally we are often meditating on these things.

A second point is that the fall of Ajamila is actually quite similar to something that is very common nowadays: divorce and remarriage. It's mentioned in the verses that Ajamila married the prostitute with whom he became involved. Putting it in modern terms, therefore, he divorced his first wife and married another. Something that is common nowadays.

One can argue that he re-married a degraded woman, which is pointed to by the Yamadutas as a reason for taking him to hell. However, there is also a nuance here: the woman with whom Ajamila got involved is mentioned as a "prostitute" following the context that is used for the word in other passages. She was not selling her body but was some kind of lower-class unmarried young woman who was having affairs with different men. In other passages, she is described as a "sudrani" and as a "maidservant". According to the strict Vedic principles, she was considered a prostitute, but in modern terms, it was not as bad as the word may suggest.

Ajamila saw her with the drunken man and apparently understood the situation, seeing that if he would offer her something better she would probably come to him. He thus offered her a job as a maidservant in his house, which she gladly accepted. Once they were living under the same roof it was easy for him to get involved with her. We don't know how long this process took. It's described that Ajamila at first tried to resist, using the spiritual knowledge he had got to try to control his mind and so on, but at the end he was unsuccessful. Maybe Ajamila tried to resist at first, but after meeting the lady again in different situations his resistance was eventually broken. Maybe the lady didn't have a place to live, and he thought it would be pious to give her shelter and a job. Such details are not included in the narration, but we can imagine that it followed the principle of fire and butter. Ajamila tried to resist, but gradually he got involved with her.

In this way, it's not that Ajamila immediately went from his pure life to a life of crime, it was a gradual process that took several weeks, or months, maybe even years.

Therefore, the fall of Ajamila didn't happen just because he saw a man and a woman embracing, but because he saw a woman he was attracted to, in a lascivious situation, who was available and with whom there was a good possibility of him getting involved with. That's actually a quite common situation.

Ajamila was a high-class man, who was young and beautiful. He had a privileged position in society and was relatively wealthy. For most men nowadays, the only thing that prevents them from having affairs with different women is the lack of opportunity. Unfortunately, that was not the case for Ajamila.

A third point is that before meeting the maidservant, Ajamila was having sexual life with his Brahmana wife following religious principles (probably once per month, following the regulations of the Manu Samhita, which was rigidly followed by Brahmanas at the time), but the affair with this lady offered him the possibility of enjoying illicit sex frequently. As often happens with men, the excessive use of his genitals made him lose his intelligence, and thus he left home, taking all valuables with him to live with this woman. He didn't care he had a young wife and elderly parents who depended on him.

Different from his legal wife, this woman was not with Ajamila because of love and was not duty-bound to him. She was hanging out with him just because he was giving her facilities, in the form of presents and so on. After they went to live together he was also maintaining a house with a good standard of living, which resulted in mounting expenses.

The valuables Ajamila took with him quickly ran out, and thus he started getting money by all possible means. He somehow learned to gamble, and when even that didn't prove sufficient, he resorted to stealing, kidnapping and even killing. Money was a necessity because if the money ran out the woman would leave him.

This is of course very condemnable, but that's another field where we may not have the high moral ground we may like to think. Most of the available jobs nowadays would be classified as ugra-karma by Vedic standards. We work for companies that are literally destroying the planet and killing millions of animals and people due to pollution and other issues. We may not be the ones doing the killing, but we are participating in it indirectly. Apart from that, most investments nowadays are a form of gambling.

Apparently, Ajamila still had some vestige of religious consciousness, because he married this woman and started begetting children. He had 10 children, so apparently he was not using contraceptives or resorting to abortions. This is actually quite pious by modern standards. Many of us do worse in this regard.

The maidservant also seems to not be so bad by modern standards. At least she was cooking for him and taking care of the children, things that not all modern women accept to do. It's also not mentioned that she continued to have affairs with other men, therefore we can reasonably presume that once they got married they worked as a regular couple, with a growing family.

The conclusion is that we shouldn't look down on Ajamila, because most of us may have similar stories. Ajamila was, in some areas, still quite pious by modern standards, raising 10 children and keeping his second marriage until the end. Taking everything into account, they were not very different from many modern couples. In some ways, they can be even described as relatively pious compared to modern standards.

The lesson I take from this story is the testament to the potency of the holy names. Just like chanting the holy names, even if not completely purely saved Ajamila from hell and gave him a second chance, allowing him to break with his bad habits at the final stage of his life and move to a temple of Lord Vishnu where he was chanting and performing service in his last years, attaining eventually liberation, I hope that my chanting, although also not pure may save me from hell and also give me a chance of eventually becoming serious in spiritual life at some point.