Dhata, Vidhata and the Wheel of Seasons: A Mahabharata Teaching on Time - Adventures of Sage Utanka
The story of Utanka appears in the Poushya Parva, part of
the Adi Parva, the first book of the Mahabharata. Utanka, a young disciple, is
asked by his preceptor's wife to bring the earrings of Queen Suryabhasa, wife
of King Poushya, as guru dakshina. On his way back, Takshaka, king of the
Nagas, steals the earrings, forcing Utanka to descend into Nagaloka, the
world of the Nagas, to recover them. What he witnesses there is not a simple
adventure scene but a symbolic vision of the machinery of the universe, later
decoded for him by his guru.
What Utanka Sees
In the Naga world, Utanka observes two women seated at a
loom, weaving a cloth made of black and white threads. Nearby, a wheel with
twelve spokes turns continuously, pushed by six young men, under the direction
of a radiant, handsome man. The wheel itself is said to move through 360
divisions in its cycle. Utanka also sees an unusually large horse.
The Explanation of His Guru
When Utanka returns and narrates the vision, his preceptor
explains each element as a representation of cosmic time and order.
The two women are Dhata and Vidhata, forces associated with
creation and destiny, weaving the fabric of existence itself. The black and
white threads stand for night and day, the alternating rhythm that all beings
live within. The wheel with twelve spokes represents the year with its twelve
months, while the six young men turning it are the six seasons of the Indian
calendar. The 360 divisions correspond to the days of the year in the
traditional reckoning. The handsome man overseeing the wheel is identified as
Indra, and the great horse is Agni, the fire deity. The guru further tells
Utanka that it was Indra's friendship with him and grace that allowed him to succeed in
recovering the earrings.
Symbolism and Philosophy
This passage is a compact cosmology embedded within a
narrative episode. Time is shown as a woven, cyclical structure rather than a
straight line. The loom suggests that existence is fashioned thread by thread,
day by day, and that no single day stands apart from the whole cloth of a life
or a year. The wheel turning through seasons reflects the Hindu understanding
of kala, time, as cyclical and self-renewing, governed by cosmic forces rather
than random chance. Indra's presence as the one who sets the wheel in motion
links seasonal order to divine governance, while Agni as the horse suggests the
driving, transformative energy of fire that carries beings forward through
time.
Relevance and Life Lesson
The vision teaches that ordinary days are part of a larger, ordered design, and that human effort, like Utanka's own quest, unfolds within this larger weave of time. It encourages patience and trust that grace, symbolized by Indra's friendship, supports sincere effort. The Bhagavad Gita echoes this idea when Krishna states, "kalo asmi loka kshaya krit pravriddhah," I am time, the great destroyer of the worlds, showing that time itself is treated as a divine force to be respected, not merely measured.