The phrase, now commonly used when one wishes to cleverly confuse the listener while not uttering a falsehood, comes to us from an incident in the Mahabharata.
It was the fifteenth day of the battle of Kurukshetra, with Drona as the commander-in-chief of the Kaurava forces. The forces of the Pandavas were reeling under Drona's relentless onslaught. Even the devas in their heavens watched in horror the spectacle of the furious Brahmin- the upholder of sacred knowledge- upending all rules of varna dharma and behaving like a vengeful Kshatriya.
Kings Virata and Drupada, both lions among men, were slain by Drona on that fateful day as he looked poised to guide the armies of Hastinapura to a certain victory. This worried Krishna, the charioteer of Arjuna and the Pandavas' principal strategist.
"For as long as Drona holds a weapon in his hands, he is undefeatable," Krishna observed rather pointedly. He had called for a huddle among all the five Pandavas brothers so that they could gather to chart out their next steps.
"But none of us can disarm him," said Yudhisthira, well acquainted with his teacher's peerlessness.
"Then must we not ensure that he lays down his arms willingly?" nudged Krishna.
"Why would he do that?" asked Arjuna, reluctant to deliberate on how to kill his beloved guru.
"The one person Drona cares for more than anyone else is his son," said Krishna. "If he believes that his son has come to harm, he would lose interest in the war."
Krishna's suggestion was insightful. The Pandavas knew about Drona's attachment to his son Ashwaththama. But the question was how could possibly they affect Drona's giving up of arms in the belief that Ashwaththama had been harmed. The answer presented itself in the form of the loud trumpeting sound of a ferocious elephant.
Bheema's eyes lit up. He recognized the elephant, one of their own. "That elephant is a terror among the enemy's horses. He has repelled many riders. He is our Ashwaththama!"
Saying so, Bheema swung a particularly heavy mace and flung it at the great tusker with all his might. It hit the beast's skull so hard that the bones cracked open, killing the elephant instantly.
"Ashwaththama is dead! I killed him!" proclaimed Bheema, his voice growing louder each time he repeated this statement. He instructed his charioteer to drive toward Drona so that his boast could reach his guru's ears. Bheema's mission succeeded as Drona's hands trembled with dread upon hearing Bheema's words. "No," Drona told himself. "Ashwaththama cannot die. Not at the hands of Bheema."
But Bheema kept repeating his achievement. There was naked, wild glee in his eyes, and that disconcerted Drona.
"Could it be true?" he thought. No longer could he hold his bow with steady hands. His knees began to buckle. He could not see his son anywhere. So occupied had he been with the attack strategy that he had not realized how deep into the enemy lines he had penetrated, leaving his armies quite far behind. Drona suddenly felt isolated and vulnerable. He could not ascertain the veracity of Bheema's audacious claim.
He closed his eyes and gathered himself. There was yet a way to find out the truth- he would simply ask Yudhisthira, who spoke nothing but the truth. If Bheema had indeed killed his son, Yudhisthira would tell him. So Drona took his chariot to Yudhisthira. "Is it true?" he demanded, not as an opponent, but as a guru. "Has Bheema killed Ashwaththama?"
"Ashwaththama hathah," replied Yudhisthira. Ashwaththama was slain. "Iti". It is true.
Drona dropped his bow. His eyes closed. He shut himself off the world, now that the son he loved so dearly and for whose sake he had taken up arms had left it. Yudhisthira had said it, and that meant that it was.
However, Yudhisthira had also uttered, "Naro va kunjaro va," to absolve himself of the sin of lying. Either a man or an elephant. He had chosen to broaden the zone of truthfulness and to blur the distinction between nobility and ignoble dishonesty.
Drona never heard it. He disembarked from his chariot and took up samadhi on the battlefield. Dhrishtadyumna, the commander-in-chief of the Pandavas, despite the protests from Arjuna and others, seized the opportunity to behead the man who had slain his father Drupada. Krishna's plan was successful.
Yudhisthira's chariot, which until then would always hover a few inches above the ground buoyed by its rider's steadfast commitment to truthfulness, came thudding to the ground because of the deliberate ambiguity engineered into his reply. The Kauravas lost their most skilled warrior. The Pandavas lost their moral upper ground- Bheema had violated dharma by killing an animal unprovoked (one on his side, at that) and Yudhisthira had shrouded truth in an equivocal reply to a direct question. Both sides lost a teacher.
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