Yavakrita Questions How Raibhya Slew Him
After being revived, Yavakrita asks the gods — with Agni at the forefront — how Raibhya was able to slay him, a learned ascetic who had accomplished the vow of knowing the brahman. He cannot understand how he, who mastered the Vedas easily, could be killed by Raibhya, who studied with such difficulty.
Yavakrita stood again among the living. He had been dead — slain by Raibhya, the same sage whose son Paravasu had killed his own father, the same sage whose other son Arvavasu had just brought him back.
But Yavakrita had a question.
He spoke to the gods, with Agni at the forefront. "I have observed and accomplished the vow of knowing the brahman. O supreme among the immortals! Using that particular rite, how was it that Raibhya was capable of slaying a learned ascetic like me?"
The question was not idle. Yavakrita had been a prodigy. He had learned the Vedas without effort, without a preceptor, through sheer force of will and austerity. He had mastered what took others a lifetime in what seemed like no time at all. Raibhya, by contrast, had studied with difficulty, laboring over every syllable, serving his teachers with patience and suffering.
How could the one who struggled overcome the one who soared?
The gods answered him directly.
"O Yavakrita! O sage! Do not think it is the way you have spoken. Earlier, you have learned the Vedas in an easy way, without resorting to a preceptor. But he studied it with a great deal of difficulty, after satisfying his preceptors with his own deeds. He learnt about the supreme brahman over a long period of time and after tolerating suffering."
The knowledge that comes easily is not the same as the knowledge that is earned. Raibhya had paid for every syllable. Yavakrita had not.
Having revived all of them, the gods returned to heaven. Aranyaka Parva, Chapter 436