Idam te natapaskaya nabhaktaya kadachana. Near the end of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna who may hear the teaching he has just given. In the translation by Swami Mukundananda: “This instruction should never be explained to those who are not austere or to those who are not devoted. It should also not be spoken to those who are averse to listening (to spiritual topics), and especially not to those who are envious of Me.” This is verse 18.67.
The Weapon Karna Forgot
In the Mahabharata, Karna learns the use of weapons from the sage Parashurama. To be accepted, he says he is a Brahmin. “It was for this that I introduced myself to thee as a person of thy own race,” he admits in the Ganguli translation.
When Parashurama discovers the deception, he curses him. Karna will forget the secret of the Brahmastra, the most powerful weapon, at the critical moment when he needs it against his enemy.
The Last Lesson
In Kalaripayattu, the martial art of Kerala, knowledge of the body’s vital spots is “the most secretive and last-taught part of a student’s training.” An account of the art on a University of Exeter site says it is “given only to students in whom the master has complete trust.” It is “seldom given completely to any one student even within a family.”
One practitioner quoted there puts it simply: “no one parts with this knowledge completely.”
The Fish Medicine
Every year since 1845, the Bathini family of Hyderabad has given out a fish remedy for asthma on Mrigasira Karthi, the day that marks the onset of the monsoon. Patients are given a live murrel fish stuffed with a “secret herbal paste.” Many people believe it to be a traditional remedy for asthma and other breathing problems.
The family’s story is that on a stormy night in 1845 a holy man from the Himalayas knocked on their door. The next morning, as he was leaving, he “whispered the secret formula of the fish cure” to Veeranna Goud. The formula has stayed in the family. His great-grandsons continued to give out the fish.
No Other Disciples
The singer Kesarbai Kerkar began to train under Ustad Alladiya Khan in 1921. According to Wikipedia, she reportedly set a condition that he “should not train other disciples except them.” Alladiya Khan died in 1946.
The Family Registers
In Haridwar, around 2,000 pandas, priests of the holy city, “preserve the lineages of their clients in the ‘Bahi khatas’,” the registers they keep. “The clientele of a particular panda is decided on the basis of the village, district and the state they come from,” DT Next reported in 2021.
Before written records, the pandas “used to memorise the names, clans and places of origin, and pass down the information orally to their next generations.”
Cistern or Channel
“Are you a cistern or a channel?” This is the title of a study by Jatinder Kumar Jha and Biju Varkkey of IIM Ahmedabad in the Journal of Knowledge Management. They interviewed research and development professionals in Indian pharmaceutical firms about why they hide knowledge from colleagues.
They found six triggers: distrust, a competitive work environment, perceived career insecurity, lack of recognition, lack of reciprocation and lack of confidence in one’s own knowledge. The hiding took forms such as “playing innocent” and “counterquestioning.”
A Hundred and Sixty Spices
Tunday Kababi opened in Lucknow in 1905. According to Wikipedia, its kebab “is said to incorporate 160 different spices.” Esquire India reports that the recipe “still remains a family secret.”
Accounts of the number differ. Others speak of at least 100 spices, or of 125 ingredients.
The Vocabulary of Secrets
Raaz: a secret. The Rekhta dictionary gives “mystery, secret, confidential, clandestine.”
Bhed ki baat: a matter of secrets. Rekhta defines it as a secret, a mystery, a thing to be hidden.
Hidden Wealth
Vidya nama narasya rupam adhikam prachchhanna-guptam dhanam. Knowledge is a person’s greater beauty, a hidden and guarded wealth. These are the opening words of verse 20 of the Nitishataka, the hundred verses on conduct by the poet Bhartrihari.
The verse appeared in the Sanskrit paper of the Maharashtra Class X board examination in 2023.