Pradip Bhattacharya

Indologist, Mahabharata scholar

Archives for November 2017

The Last Kaurava

By

Re-imagining the Mahabharata

Kamesh Ramakrishna: The Last Kaurava, Frog Books, 2015, pp. 533, Rs. 525/-

Considerable control is called for while reimagining myth so that it does not degenerate into fantasy. The first successful attempt at this with the Mahabharata was by the Bengal civilian Nabin Chandra Sen in his Bengali epic trilogy, Raivatak, Kurukshetra, Prabhas (1887-1896). Gajendrakumar Mitra did so in the novel Panchajanya (1963), a trend continued today by Dipak Chandra. In Gujarati, K.M. Munshi recreated Vedic India and the Mahabharata in Bhagwan Parashuram and the unfinished octology Krishnavatara. In Hindi, Gurudutt, Acharya Chatursen and Narendra Kohli novelised Vedic and Puranic India. Marathi, Kannada and Malayalam fiction drew upon both mahakavyas. In English, in the 1980s came Maggi Lidchi-Grassi’s magnificent Mahabharata trilogy exploring the psychological quests of its characters. Ashok Banker started off a rediscovery of Indian myth as fiction with his Ramayana heptalogy. This stream has grown from a trickle in the late 1990s to a gushing river by 2015. What is particularly interesting is that now engineers and management executives are turning to this massive narrative heritage to create novels. Unfortunately, except for Krishna Udayasankar’s Aryavarta trilogy and Rajiv Menon’s Thundergod, the rest leave much to be desired in terms of language and style. Since most Indian publishers scrimp on editors, these flights of mythic fiction are riddled with errors of idiom, spelling and grammar. This is where Ramakrishna’s debut novel—the first of a trilogy—comes as a welcome surprise. A software architect with a doctorate in computer science from Carnegie-Mellon, reading him is a rare pleasure. He reimagines the events as occurring in 2000 BC. This is India north of the Vindhyas with a non-literate oral culture, bereft of iron, horses and chariots, with onager and cattle drawn carts, mud wattle cottages, bows, arrows and bronze weapons. There are no missiles, no aircraft, no huge gem-encrusted palaces and gleaming silken attire. But why are there no ornaments when archaeological evidence exists?

Beginning with the reminiscences of the dying Kuru patriarch Bhishma is not a new device. Pratibha Ray used it very dramatically, opening Yajnaseni with Draupadi’s life flashing before her dying eyes. In somewhat similar fashion, the dead Karna speaks to us in Shivaji Sawant’s Mrityunjaya. The Mahabharata is a series of extended flashbacks at several levels, beginning with Dhritarashtra’s plangent lament over past incidents that presaged no hope for victory—tada na shamse vijayaya sanjaya! However, Ramakrishna does start with a shock: Bhishma, ambushed by Shikhandin (his son by Amba), kills him and is shot by Arjun. Vengeful Amba drives the arrow deeper into him.

Ramakrishna creates the Kavi Sangha, a guild of bards, functioning as the memory of over 2000 matriarchal communities led by the Purus, trading with Mesopotamia, Persia and Egypt. Ramakrishna calls Egypt “Pitri-vihara-naad”, the land of temples to ancestors, although its original name still remains “Misra”, a mixed people, harking back to the Bhavishya Purana which speaks of sage Kashyapa with his son Misra going to that country and Brahminising the people. As the Sarasvati basin dried-up, the Purus migrated from Panchanad (Indus etc.) to the banks of the Yamuna and Ganga, establishing Hastinapur as a trading outpost to the east. In the process, they pushed out the slash-and-burn Naga culture and clashed with the hunter-gatherer Rakshasa tribes. A transition occurred from a matriarchal trading and forest-based life to a patriarchal urban society with an army of farmers. Ramakrishna is quite the geographer, drawing a clear picture of the how the changing courses of rivers brought about changes in prehistoric cultures. He is an ethnographer too, providing details of the matriarchal, matrilocal and matrilineal cultures at tedious length. He is also a linguist discoursing on the Phoenician alphabet used by the trading “Baoga” (Sanskritised “Bhargava”) and the development of a phonetic, metrical script (Sanskrit) by Vaishampayana, who is prejudiced against writing. He is persuaded to dictate the memorised archives to a Bhargava scribe, as narrated by Bhishma to the archivist Lomaharshana in the presence of the Vyasa named Shukla, Satyavati’s brother.

The problem is one of verisimilitude. Nowhere in Indian myth are the Nagas depicted as matriarchal. Ramakrishna could easily have kept to the original Nishada descent of Satyavati without any problem. The Nagas were an ethnic group living in and around the original kingdom of Yayati at Khandavprastha which the Pandavas reclaimed as Indraprastha. Ramakrishna creates a siege of this city by Suyodhan who cuts off the water supply, foolishly allowing the Pandavas to escape into the forest. He goes to great lengths to set up Bhishma as the dynast of a trading family who builds an army to establish a comity of communities along the Himalayan foothills against Saka inroads. The proposition may not be difficult to swallow for readers unfamiliar with the Mahabharata.

The Kavi Sangha’s chief is called “Vyasa”. Anachronistically, Ramakrishna makes Vasishtha and Vishvamitra precede Bhrigu as Vyasas. This guild functions as the Chanakya-like advisor to the ruler, imposing a one-child norm on migrants from Panchanad to the Kuru habitation and upon the Nagas who are the crop-growers. To set an example, Shantanu has to do away with all his sons from Ganga born after Devavrat. Ganga commits suicide in despair. Devavrat, though taken with Satyavati of the Meena-Nagas (also called “Matsya”), sacrifices his desires for his father’s sake. Satyavati’s brother Shukla spins the plot whereby her sons get the throne instead of Devavrat—an interesting twist. Another innovation is in the death of her son Chitrangad, rashly attacking marauding horse-riding Sakas. Ramakrishna paints a gruesome scene in which Devavrat, finding that the Sakas have blinded Chitrangad and torn out his tongue, secretly cuts his throat to spare him further agony and spreads the tale that he was killed by Gandharvas. Devavrat acquires the sobriquet “Bhishma—Terrible” because of his horrific torture of captured Saka families in revenge. From the Sakas he rescues the Naga maiden Amba, falls in love with her and brings her with her two sisters to Hastinapur. Satyavati constantly upstages her co-regent Bhishma, even forcing him to have the widowed queens live in his palace so that they imbibe the true Kuru aura, pleading that physicians have so advised! Bhishma is shown to be clueless about what was happening within the palace, always busy with constructing water-works and building an army to establish an empire. There is no mention of the levirate custom. Amba, driven away Satyavati when pregnant with Devavrat’s child, delivers Shikhandi among the Panchals, the traditional foes of the Kurus. Ramakrishna’s Panchals are a standing Naga army set up to tackle the rogue Naga band led by Takshaka. Draupadi is the matriarch of the Panchals, Krishnaa Agnijyotsna, the Dark Lady. Whatever happened to King Drupada and what is gained by naming Drona “Kutaja”?

Unaccountably, Ramakrishna makes Dhritarashtra the son of the younger Ambalika instead of Ambika, whose son he names Mahendra, called “Pandu” being an albino. Disagreeing with Bhishma’s policies, Mahendra exiles himself. Duryodhan repeatedly shouting “Shut up!” at his father jars because in the Mahabharata he does not insult Dhritarashtra, as he draws all his authority from him. The grand heroic scale of Devavrat’s vow is diminished drastically. There is an incongruous reference to the Roman deity Saturn as arbiter of fate on page 415.

The novel ends with Bhishma’s shock at discovering from the Vyasa Shukla that Dhritarashtra and Pandu were not of Vichitravirya’s blood, but are progeny of the son of Parashara, the earlier Vyasa, and Satyavati. This is a signal departure from the original where it is Bhishma who advises resorting to levirate by an eminent Brahmin and assents to Satyavati summoning her illegitimate son Vyasa. However, Ramakrishna’s insight is correct, that neither of the contending cousins had any Kuru blood in them. At least Dhritarashtra was Satyavati’s grandson, while the Pandavas are not her grandchildren, each having a different, unknown father. Thus, the Kavi Sangha, guild of bards, came to wrest the throne from the trading dynasty of Purus. Ramakrishna may have drawn inspiration from the Brahmin Pushyamitra Sunga wresting the throne of Pataliputra from his Mauryan master.

The book has an excellent map, a helpful family tree and a descriptive glossary of names. For a welcome change, there are practically no typos and the novel reads very well, except that it could have been tighter by omitting the excursions into geography, linguistics and ethnography which the appendices cover in detail. We certainly look forward to the sequels.

Indraprastha Revisited

By

Neera Misra, Rajesh Lal ed.: Indraprastha Revisited, B.R. Publishing Corporation, Delhi, 2017, pp. 264

The Draupadi Dream Trust founded and chaired by Smt. Neera Misra of Kampilya—Panchali’s birthplace—organized the first Indraprastha Festival in November 2016 to highlight the need for recovering and showcasing evidence of this millennia old city. Besides a performance of the Indonesian “Wayang Kulit” depicting how Indraprastha was built according to the legend in Bali, an international conference was held covering a variety of topics centred on Indraprastha. 23 of these papers have been published in this large format volume along with a host of sketches and plates that make it an important book for anyone interested in the heritage of ancient India.

There are several papers by eminent archaeologists led by their doyen Dr B.B. Lal who was the first to locate and excavate both Hastinapur (in Meerut district) and Indraprastha (in Purana Quila) 60 years back. Unfortunately, since then only desultory digging has taken place. So far nothing earlier than Painted Grey Ware pottery (around 1000 BCE) has been found at sites associated with the Mahabharata. It is puzzling why there is no reference to Dr. Gauri Lad’s thesis on the archaeology of the Mahabharata for which the renowned Dr. H.D. Sankali was the guide.

However, J.N. Ravi’s extremely valuable study of Balarama’s pilgrimage along the Sarasvati reveals the links that would have existed between Harappan culture along this river (e.g. Rakhigarhi, Bhirrana dated around 3000 to 2000 BCE), Hastinapur on the Yamuna and Indraprastha on the Ganga. That is why it is puzzling why no excavation has been carried out at Kurukshetra, the site of the bloodiest of all carnages where eleven armies were decimated. Surely some metal artefacts ought to turn up if there is any historical basis to the “itihasa”. Ravi’s paper unaccountably omits the tirthas named after the Vriddhakanya (old woman) who could attained Swarga only after marrying and the Kanya who went to heaven remaining a virgin throughout. The latter half of his paper is an excursion in Euhemerism with Yayati’s sons migrating to become Danaans, the Irish (Danavas), Avestans (Daityas), only missing out on linking Ila with Elam in ancient Iran! Acharya Chatursen had presented a far more evocative picture in his great Hindi novel, Vayam Rakshamah.

“Archaeo-astronomy” is a new term coined by those dating the Mahabharata war by using astronomical data from the text. This book exposes the mutually contradictory dates arrived at. Narhari Achar fixes it in 3067 BCE, along with precise dates for Draupadi’s birth, marriage and the lacquer house episode. As the editors have not provided the bibliography for his paper, the references cannot be verified. A.K. Bhatnagar decides upon 14 October 1793 BCE for the start of the war, besides fixing dates for Varanavat, Krishna’s embassy, the deaths of Bhishma, Drona, Karna and Duryodhan. Besides interpreting the same data differently, Koenraad Elst favours post-1900 BCE because the Sarasvati “must have” (?) dried up around that time and as S.R. Rao dates Dwarka to 1700-1500 BCE. They are all unaware of Dr. Sita Nath Pradhan’s research finding that the war occurred in 1150 BCE. Clearly, no firm date upon which twelve good people and true agree can emerge!

A.D. Mathur draws only upon the Shanti Parva for the principles of governance instead of linking it to what is found elsewhere, e.g. the Machiavellian advice Kunika tenders to Dhritarashtra for getting rid of the Pandavas, or the questions Narada puts to Yudhishthira at Indraprastha. Come Carpentier skips all over the immense span of comparative mythology, compares Indraprastha to Angkor and can come to no conclusion about the historicity of the city. In asserting the existence of copper weapons for the war he is mistaken as no such weapons have been found in any site of that antiquity in this region. Shashi Tiwari’s account of Kaliyuga dynasties with reference to Indraprastha is disappointing as it merely paraphrases Pargiter’s research instead of looking at the different findings of Sita Nath Pradhan in his Chronology of Ancient India (1927) and Kunwar Lal Jain’s Chronology of India in the Puranas (1993). She even mis-attributes a list of puranas to the Mahabharata. She assigns the last date for them to 7th century AD whereas the Bhavishya Purana includes references to the British, the Brahmavaivarta Purana is of the 16th century and the Linga and Shiva Puranas are 10th to 11th century. The most flagrant error is her assertion that Yudhishthira’s line ruled in Indraprastha whereas it is Arjuna’s dynasty that ruled in Hastinapura while Krishna’s great grandson Vajra (and his descendants?) ruled in Indraprastha. What the Kurukshetra War achieved was the establishment of the hegemony of the Yadavas in the heartland of Northern India. The bloodline of Puru/Kuru died with celibate Bhishma. Actually, even Kuru is not a Bharata by blood because King Bharata disinherited all his sons, adopted the Brahmin Bharadvaja re-naming him Vitatha and put him on the throne. It is this Brahmin’s lineage that ends with Bhishma.

There is an important paper by Chahan and Pachauri on the role NGOs and citizens can play in preserving and promoting our cultural heritage. This deserves wide dissemination for implementation. Renu Khanna contributes an architect’s vision with pictures on showcasing Indraprastha as a tourist destination. She refers to having studied “the detailed English illustration of the Mahabharata” which does not exist. The editors should have corrected this to “translation” and provided the reference.

Swapna Liddle’s paper is a valuable presentation of how local builders introduced traditional Hindu motifs even while constructing Muslim edifices, e.g. the Kirtimukha, the lotus and the water pot but did not adopt the true arch till 1280 (cf. Balban’s tomb). She shows a picture of the invocation to Vishvakarma and the name of the Hindu architect inscribed on the Qutub Minar. Unfortunately these fascinating aspects are not highlighted in the ASI plaques, although these provide excellent instances of communal harmony. Sudha Satyawadi contributes an illuminating paper on art and architecture in the Janapada period while Arundhati Dasgupta summarises how modern art depicts the Mahabharata. Rupali Yadav describes the dice-game scene in a mural of the Chattar Mahal of Kota Palace, Rajasthan. Unfortunately, the plate only shows the full mural with no enlargement showing the detail of Duryodhana consulting an astrologer. The editors should have ensured this.

Somnath Chakraverty writes on the ethnography of the epic. He draws upon B.S. Upadhyaya and H.D. Sankalia without citing the references and asserts that names of nagas are drawn from Assyrian kings and therefore they came from that region. Without citing any evidence he asserts that the Yadavas were from Western Asia and Iran. He also says that “there are enormous evidences” from Indus towns of serpent worship, again without supporting reference. It is disconcerting to find him claiming that rock art at Bhimbetka and elsewhere records “mass genocide and battle” that is replicated throughout India. While he states that these belong at least to the Gupta period if not earlier, actually rock art is dated much earlier (10,000 BCE at Bhimbetka).

Major General G.D. Bakshi’s paper on the geo-politics of that time is a superb analysis showing that the autocratic royalty banded together to crush the nascent “democratic” (actually oligarchic) government of the Yadavas. Krishna kept the Yadavas out of the war so that when the field was swept clear, they could take over Indraprastha under Krishna’s great grandson Vajra. Kritavarma’s son and the Bhoja women were given Marttikavat (unknown) while Satyaki’s son was settled on the banks of the Sarasvati, both nearby. K.T.S. Sarao’s very interesting paper describes little known data from Buddhist sources regarding Indraprastha, e.g. that Buddha’s razor and needle were deposited there and its ruler was Dhananjaya Koravya of the Yudhitthila gotra.

Several of the contributors make the common error—not expected from Indologists—of asserting that initially the Mahabharata consisted of only 8,800 verses. This is the number of riddling, knotty slokas Vyasa composed to gain time to compose more while Ganesh scratched his head trying to understand them. The “Jaya” version was 24,000 slokas without ancillary tales, which Vyasa expanded to several lakhs of which one lakh verses were recited to Janamejaya by Vaishampayana in his guru’s presence during the snake-sacrifice in Takshasila.

Neera Misra’s paper presents an overview of the archaeological and other data on the subject, most of which has been featured in individual papers. Hers is a fervent plea for opening up the Purana Quila site for displaying the excavations which ought to be taken further and making it a tourist destination. The editors should have added a line or two about each contributor instead of merely providing their e-mail addresses. The large number of colour plates and sketches of archaeological finds, maps and paintings make this volume a collector’s item. Hopefully the publication will stimulate excavations in key sites mentioned in the Mahabharata and lead to the setting up of a Mahabharata tourist circuit.

Pradip Bhattacharya