01Dharma born as a man
The rishi Animandavya was sitting in silent tapas when thieves hid their loot in his ashrama, and the king’s men had him impaled with them. He lived on the stake, and when he was freed he went to Dharma, the lord of justice, to ask what he had done to earn it. As a child, said Dharma, you pierced an insect with a blade of grass. Animandavya laid down a new law, that nothing a child does before the age of fourteen shall count as sin, and cursed Dharma to be born a man, of a shudra mother. So Dharma came as Vidura, son of Vyasa and a maid of the palace.
02Counsel that went unheeded
At Duryodhana’s birth, among the evil omens, Vidura told Dhritarashtra to give the child up for the sake of the family. He was not heard. When the Pandavas set out for Varanavata, he warned Yudhishthira in a riddling speech that only the two of them understood, about a fire that does not burn those who live in holes, and later sent a trusted miner to dig the tunnel under the house of lac. He called the dice game the root of quarrel, and was made to carry the invitation all the same. In the hall he was the one voice that kept speaking for Draupadi.
03A night of counsel
On the night before Sanjaya returned with Yudhishthira’s answer, Dhritarashtra could not sleep and sent for Vidura. What Vidura told him through that night fills eight chapters of the Udyoga Parva and is read today on its own as the Vidura Niti: who is wise and who a fool, the six faults a man must give up, why a king who will not hear hard truth is lost. When Krishna came as envoy, he passed by Duryodhana’s feast and ate in Vidura’s house. The katha of Vidura’s wife feeding Krishna banana skins in her joy comes from later bhakti tellings, not from Vyasa’s text.
04Passing into Yudhishthira
Vidura went to the forest with his brother and took on the hardest tapas, living on air, so thin that he could hardly be seen. When Yudhishthira came to visit, Vidura turned and went off into the forest, and the king followed him calling his name. At last Vidura stopped against a tree, fixed his eyes on Yudhishthira, and by yoga entered him, limb into limb and breath into breath. His body stood lifeless against the tree. Yudhishthira felt himself grow stronger. As he was about to cremate it, a voice from the sky told him not to; Vidura had gone to the worlds of the yatis.
Famous verses
न सा सभा यत्र न सन्ति वृद्धा न ते वृद्धा ये न वदन्ति धर्मम् । नासौ धर्मो यत्र न सत्यमस्ति न तत्सत्यं यच्छलेनानुविद्धम् ॥
That is no assembly where there are no elders; they are no elders who do not speak dharma. That is no dharma in which there is no truth; that is no truth which is shot through with deceit.Mahabharata 5.35.49 (BORI CE), Vidura Niti