Archives for December 2019

Dharmakshetre Kurukshetre
– On the field of righteousness, on the field of the Kurus –

What are the joyous fruits of victory?

 Ah! hapless wives of those mail-clad sons of Troy!
Ah! poor maidens, luckless brides, come weep,
for Ilium is now but a ruin; and I,
like some mother-bird that o’er her fledglings screams,
will begin the strain.

These words that fell from the lips of Hecuba, queen of Troy, on the Athenian stage when Euripides staged it in 416 BC (the Mahabharata took shape around the same time) could as well have been spoken by Vyasa’s Gandhari. Aeschylus’ The Trojan Women has been celebrated as the greatest piece of anti-war literature by those not familiar with Vyasa’s Stri Parva.

The Kurukshetra holocaust is over. Of the 18 armies only 10 warriors survive. The immense scale of slaughter is recounted by Yudhishthira to Dhritarashtra as numbering ten arbuda, sixty six crores and twenty thousand dead (1,660,020,000). A huge cremation rite is held for all of them. It is here that for the first time, in the Lal version, we come across the name of Abhimanyu’s slayer: Duhshasana’s son Sudarshana (the critical edition leaves him nameless).
Indian scholars have overlooked Vyasa’s repeated use of the image of war as a ritual sacrifice, which sets the Kurukshetra war well apart from the Trojan. It was Alf Hiltebeitel who highlighted this in The Ritual of Battle. James Fitzgerald has further elaborated it in his translation of the Stri Parva.

The Book of Women takes us back to the Book of Effort where Karna, imaging the ensuing war to Krishna as Duryodhana’s massive weapons-yajna, foretold:

When the wives of Dhritarashtra’s grandsons huddle together,
Keshava-Krishna, having lost their protectors, their sons, and their husbands,
And lament in the presence of Gandhari,
with dogs and vultures roaming the battlefield, that will be the yajna’s final bath,
Janardana-Krishna. – Udyoga 141.50-51, the Lal transcreation.

Sanjaya, consoling Dhritarashtra, makes this even more clear:

Into the sacred fire
Of the sacrificed bodies
Of the heroes, were poured
The ghee oblations
Of the arrows
Of their enemies – Stri 2.17

Ladies never seen outdoors now stream forth, clad in single white garments (as Draupadi had cursed after the dice-sabha), like screeching ospreys onto the corpse-strewn field, their complexion turned copper-brown by the sun as they frantically seek to match limbs to bodies and heads – often fruitlessly. Repeatedly Vyasa says that the scene resembled doomsday, yuganta. There is wailing and gnashing of teeth. David’s anguished lament rings in our ears:

Thy glory, O Israel, is slain upon thy high places!
How are the mighty fallen!
Tell it not in Gath,
Publish it not in the streets of Ashkelon;’
Ye daughters of Israel,
weep ‘

How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle!
And the weapons of war perished!

The previous translations of the Stri Parva are all in prose, the latest being James Fitzgerald’s in 2004. The anguish captured in the anushtubh shloka (from shoka came shloka said Valmiki) cannot, however, be conveyed thus. It is like couching David’s lament and Hecuba’s grieving in prose. The poetic Lal transcreation communicates it with great sensitivity, the mood set by the Preface itself. It is an extract from his remarkable long poem, The Man of Dharma and the Rasa of Silence recreating the stunning parable about the meaning of life that Vidura relates in response to Dhritarashtra’s frantic question: “But what is the way?…How does an un-winged bird like me fly? How does an unsonned sun like me shine?” The very unusual dedication that follows reinforces the tone:

“to the kanyas, devis, apsaras, dharma-patnis, kinnaris and other ladies in the Mahabharata whose shakti energises the kala-chakra of the Kshatriyan cosmos.”

Vyasa never proceeds along expected lines. He is the narrator par excellence who always has a surprise in store. The incidents of this parva are set in-between the murder of the sleepers and the capture of Ashvatthama in the preceding Sauptika Parva. Abruptly, with Duryodhana’s death, the heroic aura disappears and the survivors stand before us as ordinary men, terrified of the victors. Dhritarashtra and the widows, en route the battlefield, are met by Kripa, Ashvatthama and Kritavarma who give him the news and flee on horseback, splitting up lest the Pandavas catch them. Yudhishthira leads his brothers and sorrowing women to meet his blind uncle and aunt on the banks of the Ganga. The Kuru widows put to him a rhetorical question which he will echo later, wishing to abdicate:

You have killed father,
brothers, gurus,
sons and friends’
What good
is this kingdom to you
without fathers, brothers, without
valiant Abhimanyu,
And Draupadi’s sons?  (12.7, 9)

Dhritarashtra dissimulates, asking to embrace Bhima. Krishna’s brilliant prescience saves the Pandavas once again by substituting a metal image that the blind king crushes in rage, shedding crocodile tears. The two Krishnas, Vyasa and Vasudeva, bluntly point out to Dhritarashtra and Gandhari their responsibility for the war by not controlling Duryodhana and persuade them to cast aside vengeful thoughts. Dhritarashtra then calls for “Pandu’s second son, Bhima (not Arjuna as translated)” to caress him (13.15). Bhima, terrified, lies to Gandhari that he did not drink Duhshasana’s blood, justifying his other acts by citing the outrage committed on Draupadi. There is no mention of any attempt to strip her, only to her being dragged by the hair. But Gandhari’s fury has to have an outlet. As Yudhishthira, stooping to touch her feet, begs her to punish him, her glance from below the blindfold deforms his lovely fingernails. Section 15, shloka 30 is mistranslated as: “toe-nails of the king/instantly became black.”

Yudhishthira is stooping, or falling prone, at Gandhari’s feet; her glance would naturally fall on his finger-nails not his toes which are beyond her lowered glance. The original is angulyagrani, finger-tips, with no reference to pada (feet). Vyasa presents a lovely vignette here: seeing Yudhishthira’s plight, invincible Arjuna scurries to hide behind Krishna. Noticing this, Gandhari’s anger is quenched.

Besides Gandhari, we would have expected Draupadi to lament at length. Instead, it is limited to two verses addressed to Kunti who helps up the prone Draupadi and takes her to Gandhari who greets her coldly:

What good is grieving?
All dead. Grief is useless.
You and I are the same-
victims of grief’ (15.44)

There is none of the loathing that throbs in Hecuba’s reference to Helen: “A thing of loathing, of shame to husband, to brother, to home. She slew Priam, the king, father of fifty sons, she wrecked me upon the reef of destruction.” Shloka 44 of section 15 has Gandhari telling Draupadi that both are “rejected by all”, which ought to read “who will comfort us?” Gandhari ends with, “I am responsible for the slaughter of my family,” hinting that so is Draupadi because of her inveterate vengefulness.

Prior to all this, Vidura’s interaction with the grief-stricken king contains gems of philosophical insights: cosmic time is unavoidable, impartial, loving or hating none, merely cooking all creatures indiscriminately. The image of the body as chariot, the senses the horses, rational acts the reins recurs side by side with that of the world as the chariot of Yama. The sense-controller is free of the world-wheel, “He moves in the world./The world/does not move him. (7.16)” Grief can be cured only by not indulging in it. You are your own friend and your own enemy: do good, be happy; do bad, suffer, for “Always, everywhere,/ your deeds bring fruits-/ nothing else does.” The Gita’s image of discarding bodies like old clothes and that of the potter’s wheel are repeated as the sole eternal reality. In section 5 comes the wonderful image of the world as a wilderness in which man (named Samaraditya in Haribhadra’s Jain text) is lost that became so well known in medieval Europe – via Persian, Arabic and Greek – as the parable of the man in the well told by Saint Barlaam to prince Josaphat (Bodhisatva). Towards the end of section 7 Vidura stresses character as the pre-requisite for a sorrow-free mind, dependant on discipline (dama), detachment (tyaga), alertness (apramada). Interestingly enough, this same triad features on the Besnagar Garuda pillar of Heliodorus and forms a critical part of Buddhist teaching.

It is extremely rare that the author should himself appear within his own composition. Vyasa does so in section 8 specifically to bring the narrative full circle, taking us back to the Adi Parva to reveal to Dhritarashtra “the eternal secret of the gods”, providing an eye-witness account of the plan for this carnage drawn up by Vishnu at the over-burdened Earth’s request to the gods. He reminds us also that Duryodhana was a partial incarnation of Kali and that Shakuni (Dvapara) and Karna were born to assist in the carnage. This raises a puzzling issue over Surya fathering Karna who is ranged on the side of evil. Undoubtedly, to reconcile his affiliation with the anti-god Kauravas, some redactor added on the passage in the Vana Parva that Narakasura would possess Karna. Vyasa informs that during the Rajasuya ritual he had told Yudhishthira of this and Narada too had warned him of the impending destruction. The Sabha Parva, however, has no such warning by Narada, though after Shishupala has been beheaded Vyasa does foretell doom. This may well indicate a missing passage.

Vyasa now rings a marvellous change by replacing Sanjaya’s special gift of omniscience with that of Gandhari who paints for Krishna – appropriately called here “Janardana, crusher-of-people” – a heartbreaking picture of the battlefield spanning as many as ten sections (16 to 25). In it we find instances of erotic horror, as in Bhurishravas’ queen’s cradling his severed arm and recalling intimate caresses. Speaking of her brother Shakuni, Gandhari suddenly shifts to juxtaposing opposites: he won a kingdom by trick – and lost his own life; once soothed by the breeze of golden fans, today he is fanned by flapping birds; Shakuni has become the feast of shakunta-birds. Her mounting anguish is again transformed into rage directed at Krishna as Janardana, persecutor of people, for deliberately destroying the Kaurava dynasty. She curses him to become the doom of his own people after thirty six years and to die a shameful, disgusting death while his women weep like the Bharata ladies. Imperturbable Krishna acknowledges that this doom is inevitable. Thus, the Mausala Parva is anticipated.

When least expected, as Yudhishthira is offering water oblations to the dead in the Ganga, Kunti suddenly erupts with grief and stuns her sons with the truth about Karna’s birth. What a climactic scene Vyasa creates in the midst of the sea of tears! To Yudhishthira, this revelation is more agonising than the death of the Pandava children and the Panchalas. The agony of being responsible for his eldest brother’s death finds expression, as with Gandhari, in a curse pronounced by the dharma-king with which the Book of Women ends:

“Let no woman
from today keep a secret.”

 

Pitamaha Bhishma suspended on a bed of arrows; guru Drona beheaded; son Lakshmana slain; favorite brother Duhshasana’s breast ripped open – none struck Duryodhana so much to the heart as did the death of Karna. Always keen that Karna lead the army, he had had to settle for ancient Bhishma and old Drona, biting his nails over their divided loyalties. With Karna in charge, victory seemed certain. But, multa cadunt inter calicem supremaque labra (“many things fall between the cup and the last lips”), pace Erasmus’ Adagia (1.5.1). It is with Duryodhana’s anguish over Karna’s death that the Shalya Parva begins.

For the first time we hear of fear in the context of Duryodhana who, Vaishampayana tells Janamejaya, “fled terrified” after Shalya’s death and hid himself in a lake. We are surprised to find Dhrishtadyumna too trembling with fear on seeing Shalva’s huge elephant charging him. The morning after the deaths of Shalya (after fighting for half a day), Duryodhana and the sleeping Panchalas (the Pandava sons are not mentioned in Vaishampayana’s summary) Sanjaya reports to Hastinapura that:

In this world caught
in the clutches of Kala,
only the women are left-
and seven from the side
of the Pandavas, and three
of your chariot-heroes. (1.35)

There is a clear decline in the prowess of the successive Kaurava commanders-in-chief that is reflected in each leading the army for half his predecessor’s term. Shalya hardly qualifies to stand with them, devoid of superhuman qualities and prone to seduction by luxury. That is why S.L. Bhyrappa’s epic novel Parva, daringly beginning with Shalya, deserves acclaim all the more. After Karna’s death when Duryodhana turns to Ashvatthama, Vyasa paints him in such heroic colours that we are led to presume that he will be the next general. Instead, Ashvatthama advises that since Shalya left his nephews to join their enemies, he should command the army. Actually, like Bhishma and Drona, Shalya has been serving Pandava interests by discouraging Karna and directing his fury away from his nephews. From the very inception Duryodhana has continuously been betrayed. Even his most trusted general Karna did not kill a single Pandava, despite having four of them in his grasp, because of his promise to Kunti.

This last of the battle-books falls into 3 parts: the death of Shalya; the pilgrimage of Balarama; and the death of Duryodhana. Section 2 contains the deeply moving lament of the blind king:

O my son! Come to me! Come to me,
O maha-muscled Indra-among-rajas!
I am helpless!
What will happen to me without you?…
I am a wingless bird.

He recounts Duryodhana enumerating his allies as outnumbering the Pandavas and his supreme confidence that, should everything fail, Karna would be the final answer. That is why, Dhritarashtra says, he went along with his son’s decision. He attributes his plight to ill-luck in a lament of 17 verses which contains an interesting contradiction. First he wonders how a jackal like Shikhandi could lay leonine Bhishma low; 27 verses later he says Arjuna killed Bhishma. He wishes to retire to the forest rather than listen to Bhima’s bitter words (repeated in the Stri Parva) but ironically bears this humiliation for many years. Blindness and perception alternate in him. He will not take responsibility for his actions: “Fooled by fate I rejected his (Vidura’s) words.” Yet he also says, “There are fools in this world who have eyes but do not see. You see one such fool in front of you.”

There are fascinating variations following Shalya’s investiture in the 12th century Indonesian Kakawin, Bharatayuddha: Ashvatthama storms off the field, refusing to fight under Shalya’s command, holding him responsible for Karna’s death-surely a very logical development. On Krishna’s advice Nakula visits Shalya who tells him of Pashupati’s decree that he can only be slain by Yudhishthira. Shalya spends the night with his wife Satyavati, stealing off at dawn, cutting off with his sword the part of his cloth on which she lies asleep (inspired by Nala-Damayanti). She seeks out his body and stabs herself, as does her maid, turning epic into melodrama.
It is interesting that Bhima responds to an infantry attack by alighting from his chariot for hand-to-hand combat while Arjuna never fights except from his chariot. After Karna’s death and again after Shalya’s Duryodhana strains to rally his fleeing soldiers (sections 3 and 19) in identical words. In the first instance, Kripa advises him to make peace. Duryodhana refuses and the reasons he cites reveal he is no dreamer: he tricked Yudhishthira out of his kingdom and so will never be trusted; he tricked Krishna too during his visit, who will never forget the treatment of Draupadi and the killing of Abhimanyu; Arjuna burns over Abhimanyu’s murder; Bhima will not forget his terrible vow; the twins and Drupada’s sons hate him; the Pandavas cannot forget how menstruating Draupadi was abused and stripped in public. Finally, “How can I shuffle behind Yudhishthira like a cowering slave?” He then sums up his glorious achievements, which he will repeat after being struck down, and decides to fight to the death. For the night of Karna’s death they retreat to the banks of the Sarasvati, “the river of dawn-pink waters”, at the Himalayan foothills. This is where Shalya, son of Ritayana, is appointed commander.

Krishna now adopts a curious stance. He extols Shalya’s prowess above all and tells Yudhishthira that none but he can face him. But the truth is soon out. Till now, the eldest Pandava has no feat of battle to his credit. The conquering monarch needs to show the army his worth-at least one major kill is required. Therefore, Krishna urges him,

“You have survived the ocean
of Drona and Bhishma,
the sea of Karna.
Shalya is a water-hole
the size of a cow’s hoof print.
Don’t drown in it.”

He responds, “Only my share of valour remains”, recalling that Shalya was his allotted share in the Udyoga Parva (section 57). Finally, only handsome Nakula is left with no major kill, his “share” Uluka being dispatched by Sahadeva in addition to his own, Shakuni. There is a deliberate effort by the poet to build up Yudhishthira’s skills at arms, especially with the shakti (spear), by comparing him with Skanda.

Shalya adopts a new strategy: no warrior will face the Pandavas singly; all will fight collectively as one. Even after his death, there is no let-up and Shakuni decimates the Pandava cavalry. At this point Vyasa introduces a sudden lowering of pitch and change of tone. Arjuna addresses Krishna, puzzled at the unremitting bloodshed even after Bhishma’s fall:

“I do not know why,
but the war went on
and on and on.” (24.21).

It becomes the recurring refrain in this plangent passage of 30 verses on the meaninglessness of war. It is only now that Arjuna realizes the truth of Vidura’s warning that, come what may, Duryodhana will never share the kingdom and therefore war is the only solution.

Unable to remain a passive spectator as the Kaurava army is decimated, on this last day Sanjaya joins four warriors fighting alongside Kripa against the Panchala army (25.52). Routed by Dhrishtadyumna, he flees, is attacked by Satyaki, knocked unconscious and taken prisoner. Satyaki is about to behead him when Vyasa materializes and grants Sanjaya immunity. Laying aside his weapons, bleeding all over, that 18th evening Sanjaya leaves for Hastinapura. En route he is appalled to see Duryodhana grievously wounded,

“All alone.
No soldier.
No vehicle’
standing all alone
on five footsteps of land’
Such a Jagannatha reduced to such misfortune”.

Duryodhana’s eyes fill; he cannot speak, nor look straight at him. It is from Sanjaya that Kripa, Ashvatthama and Kritavarma get to know that Duryodhana is hiding in a lake. Yuyutsu comes into his own now, escorting the wives of the slain into Hastinapura, winning high praise from Vidura which brings him no peace, no delight in the palace:

“No joy here, no glory, no solace.
Desolate like a forsaken garden.”

Duryodhana’s reply to Yudhishthira’s challenge is in prophetic words:

“I give this empty earth to you.
She is all yours.
Which raja wants a kingdom
with no one in it?…
enjoy this husband-less earth
without wealth and warriors.
Be happy with this pathetic, life-less girl.”

Ironically, later the victor will repeat these very sentiments and wish to abdicate. At this moment, for once Yudhishthira refuses to compromise because

“If you live,
and I live,
the world will be confused:
Who won the war?…
Stand up!
And fight!”

Then once again he displays his complete lack of good sense, promising Duryodhana the kingdom should he kill any of the Pandavas. Krishna administers a sound tongue-lashing for his inveterate gambling instinct that, with just a single enemy left, stakes the kingdom in a perilous wager against one who cannot be defeated in a fair fight. Exasperated, Krishna exclaims,

“Pandu’s and Kunti’s children
don’t deserve the kingdom.
They were born to live
in forest-exile,
and go about as beggars.”

Duryodhana has been practicing with the mace for 13 years, while Bhima is out of practice. Krishna reminds Bhima to be true to his vow and smash his thighs. In the challenge Bhima roars out there is a very interesting detail in verse 49 where, while enumerating all those dead because of Duryodhana’s wickedness, he suddenly mentions that the sinful Pratikamin who made Draupadi suffer is also dead. This attendant merely carried Duryodhana’s insulting summons to her, so the reference is a puzzle-unless he is using it as an epithet for Duhshasana.

As the duel is about to begin, Vyasa deliberately lowers the tension by having Balarama stride in, back from the pilgrimage that he started 42 days ago just before the war began. If he has returned after 42 days, how has the battle lasted for only 18 days? This has led Vasudev Poddar to argue that the battle was not continuous but had intervals. Here and at two other places in Shalya Parva astronomical data appear that have been used to hazard dating the war. Janamejaya, in no hurry to have the story end, presses Vaishampayana to narrate the 43 pilgrim spots Balarama visited. By the time this ends, the audience’s frazzled nerves are relaxed, refreshed and prepared for the gory violence of the climactic battle.

Vyasa paints a lovely word-portrait of Narada in 54.18-20 as he comes to meet Balarama, ending with the wry comment: prakarta kalahana’ca nitya’ca kalahapriya, “He loved provoking people./He was a mischief maker.” Balarama’s pilgrimage is an adjunct to the elaborate itinerary of 350 holy fords that Lomasha guides the Pandavas through in the Vana Parva. Balarama’s includes two spots giving contradictory messages. Section 52 celebrates sage Kunigarga’s aged daughter who cannot attain heaven until she gets married. Section 54 immortalises Shandilya’s daughter who gains svarga by remaining celibate. The plurality of the Indian tradition that embraces opposites so felicitously is eminently in evidence.

By this time the river Sarasvati had already got lost at Vinasana because of tectonic upheavals hinted at in the myth of Dhundhumara. The river has seven names: Suprabha at Pushkara, Kanchanakshi at Naimisha, Vishala at Gaya, Manorama in north Kosala, Surenu and Oghavati at Kurukshetra and Gangadvara and Vimaloda in the Himalayas where the seven mingle at the Sarasvati-tirtha. In its waters spilled the semen of sage Mankanaka on seeing a naked girl bathing. Put in a pot, it produced 7 sages from whom sprang the forty-nine Marut wind-gods.

So here we not only have a myth paralleling the birth of Drona, but a variation on the origin of the Maruts who are otherwise Diti’s embryo that Indra cuts into 49 parts. We learn of a new cause of the destruction of Dhritarashtra’s kingdom: sage Baka’s destructive sacrifice when the king gave him animal carcasses instead of cattle. Two episodes in the Vashishtha-Vishvamitra conflict are described in connection with two tirthas. The story of the Aruna tirtha hints that a horrific war invariably follows a Rajasuya sacrifice (the first, Soma’s, was followed by the war against Taraka). This was the fate of Yudhishthira’s Rajasuya too. Vyasa tells Janamejaya as much in the Harivamsa. The birth and feats of Skanda form an important part of the account of pilgrimages. Among his attendants is the goblin Ghantakarna, an important figure Krishna meets during his tapasya for obtaining a son. Skanda’s investiture, the fearsome mother goddesses in his retinue and his killing the demon Mahisha are appropriated in the Shakta Puranas for Durga.

The reason for the special holiness of Kurukshetra-Samantapanchaka is revealed here. Eager to stop the inveterate tilling of the field by Kuru, Indra agreed that whoever died here by fasting or in battle would reach heaven. Hence the choice of the battlefield lying between Tarantuka, Arantuka, Ramahrda and Machakurka by the Dhartarashtras and Pandavas.

As the duel proceeds, Krishna tells Arjuna that Bhima will lose if he fights righteously, which calls to mind the parallel episode of Jarasandha’s killing. The predicament is all Yudhishthira’s fault. Krishna quotes from the lost treatise on governance by Ushana-Shukra that has been splendidly transcreated in gnomic verse:

“If an enemy routed
an enemy fled,
returns to fight you,
be filled with dread,
for his sole aim
is to see you dead” (58.15).

Like a seasoned bureaucrat, Krishna quotes precedents: Indra using deceit to destroy Virochana and Vritra (and Namuchi, Trishira). Moreover, Bhima is obliged to honour his oath. Once Duryodhana is down, Bhima proclaims the successful avenging of Draupadi’s molestation, attributing the Pandavas’ victory to “the strength of the tapasya of Yajnaseni” and shrugs off all criticism with “If this takes us to heaven, or takes us to hell’what do we care?” He then kicks prone Duryodhana’s head to the disapproval of all and is rebuked by Yudhishthira who tearfully attempts a closure by echoing Duryodhana’s own prophecy:

“It’s we who
should be mourning;
We must pass our days now
without all
who were near and dear to us’
You alone are the happy one,
heaven truly is yours.
we will suffer a fearful hell
on earth.”

As furious Balarama rushes with upraised plough to kill Bhima, Krishna grips him in his arms. The inimitable poet in Vyasa instantly paints a lovely portrait:

“The two Yadava brothers,
one dark, the other fair,
shone like sun and moon at day-end,
like white Kailasa
beside a black mountain.”

Krishna advances several justifications: imagine Kali Yuga has set in; Bhima had to fulfil his vow; Bhima has destroyed a disgrace to the family; Duryodhana was air-borne and not on the ground when Bhima hit his thighs. Vyasa does not scruple in recording that Balarama was “displeased with the crooked dharma of Keshava”. Through his lips Vyasa also heralds closure to the theme of war as a ritual sacrifice in which Duryodhana took initiation, offered up his life as oblation and attained glory completing the yajna.

Krishna reprimands Yudhishthira for not interfering when Bhima was stamping on Duryodhana’s head. Yudhishthira explains that knowing Bhima’s deep grudge he looked the other way, as did Arjuna though neither liked what was done. These verses conflict with what has gone before, where Bhima was promptly rebuked. One of the two sets is a later addition. Yudhishthira now tells Bhima that his debt to mother Kunti and to his own wrath stands discharged.

Duryodhana, roused to fury by the adulation offered to Bhima by all and their insults, now rears up

“like an angry venomous snake
with its tail sliced in half’
in excruciating pain”

to abuse Krishna, enumerating the many tricks he played to defeat the Kauravas. Later, he exclaims to Sanjaya,

“How does it profit
a good man
to win by wicked means?”

Krishna spares no words in hitting back with a list of Duryodhana’s crimes for which he is now paying. Duryodhana’s last words are majestic indeed, repeating much of what he said before the duel:

“I have studied, given gifts,
ruled the sea-girt earth,
Placed my foot on the heads
of my enemies’
I have achieved the peak of power.
Who is there more fortunate than me?
O Achyuta-Krishna,
I go to heaven
with my friends and followers,
And all of you stay back here
with grieving minds
and shattered hearts.”

Vyasa cannot be accused of pro-Pandava bias. In sections 33, 54 and 61 he records the applause greeting Duryodhana’s responses. Krishna and the Pandavas are dismayed, disconcerted and ashamed to find his speech greeted with a shower of celestial flowers and music. To raise their spirits, in a booming voice Krishna justifies his use of trickery for ensuring their victory. Duryodhana, in his speech to Sanjaya, wanders into make-believe, claiming that he never won by unfair means, never poisoned anyone or killed a sleeping enemy, drawing a convenient veil over Varanavata, Pramankoti and Abhimanyu’s murder. He hopes that the wandering mendicant Charvaka, expert orator, will avenge his death. That attempt is, indeed, made later. When the three surviving heroes of his army meet him, Duryodhana states that though he grants Krishna’s glory, it never blinded him. This is why Bankimchandra argued that Vyasa portrays Krishna not as God but as a human being of outstanding genius.

When the victors repair to the camp of the vanquished, a significant incident occurs.
Krishna directs Arjuna to descend first. The moment Krishna steps down, the great chariot is consumed in flames. Hit by many celestial weapons, it had held together so long as Krishna drove it. It is an ominous hint of the passing of superhuman prowess, which the subsequent books elaborate. Krishna advises them to spend the night outside this camp. Yudhishthira, terrified of Gandhari’s fury because of the unfair killing of Duryodhana, begs Krishna and Vyasa to go in advance to pacify her. This is stated cryptically in section 62. Section 63 is a typical elaboration by a later redacteur where Yudhishthira again addresses Krishna, praising him at length, urging him to the same task. Krishna’s tells Dhritarashtra that he has only his own karma to blame for his plight and not the Pandavas on whom he has now to depend. To Gandhari he says that what she had foretold has happened, so she should not curse the Pandavas. Krishna announces that he has intuited Ashvatthama’s plot to murder the Pandavas that night and therefore he must hurry back. Ashvatthama vows to Duryodhana to exterminate the Panchalas, not mentioning the Pandavas, which shows that what drives him is taking revenge on his father’s killers. With Duryodhana lustrating Ashvatthama as the last commander-in-chief, the Shalya Parva ends.

The unremitting carnage of this book is lit up by iridescent flashes of images that forcibly unite completely disparate ideas. It is Prof. Lal’s inimitable transcreation that brings home the realization that centuries before the much acclaimed English Metaphysical poets Vyasa’s poetry was replete with such images:

“Beautiful the field of battle,
struck by the hoof-beats of horses,
like a girl
scratched by the nails
of her lover.”
Or,
“The battlefield, O raja
covered over
with lifeless, mangled heads
with staring eyes
looked like a spread
of red pundarika-lotuses.”
Or,
“Under their onslaught,
your warriors teetered
and tottered,
like a young girl besotted with wine.”
Or, Bhima’s mace is,
“Indeed like a fragrant sandal-
paste-and-agaru-unguent
anointed sexually desirable girl,
it was smeared instead
with fat and marrow and blood.”
When Shalya falls,
“the earth
lovingly clasped
that bull-brave hero/to herself,
Like a lovelorn girl
embracing her lover
to her breasts. Long did he lie there,
passionately enjoying the earth,
covering her with all his limbs,
sleeping with her peacefully.”

The Mahabharata of Vyasa: The Complete Karna Parva transcreated from Sanskrit by Padma Shri Prof. P. Lal, Writers Workshop, 2007, pp. 1036, Rs.1000 (hardback). Special edition of 50 copies each with an original hand-painted frontispiece Rs.2000/-

The Battle of Kurukshetra has a double climax: the Karna-Arjuna duel and the final confrontation between Bhima and Duryodhana. By the time we come to the third book of battle, the elder generations have fallen, and along with them their obsessions. Drupada’s craving for vengeance against Bhishma and Drona has been achieved through his two sons, each specifically engendered for that purpose. Before he is beheaded, Drona lays low the two major allies of the Pandavas: Drupada and Virata. Ancient Bahlika, Bhagadatta, Bhurishrava —all are gone. Nothing stands in the way of Duryodhana’s eagerness to have Karna command his forces, a desire that he has had to put off twice over. Despite Karna having fled the field at least thrice during Drona’s generalship, Duryodhana holds fast to a blind faith in his invincibility with a drowning man’s desperation.

Karna’s undying appeal as a heroic Aryan ideal is reflected in Tagore’s poem on Karna and Kunti composed in response to Jagadish Chandra Bose’s request to adopt Karna as a mythic paradigm for the modern Indian. Earlier, Bankimchandra had sought to do the same with Krishna in “Krishnacharitra”. The typology was carried onto the Bengali stage with famous plays like “Karnarjun”, “Nara-Narayan” and in many an Indian film, both mythological and modern. The trait for which Karna is celebrated is his unparalleled greatness as an undiscriminating donor, never refusing anything to anyone, even butchering his son to provide a Brahmin (Krishna disguised) with his chosen meal. Songs about Karna in Gujarat celebrate him as a hero who brings water and fertility to the community. The Western Indologist is understandably fascinated by Karna who, like Homer’s Achilles, has divine armour, a godly parent, initially sulks away from the battle and is ultimately struck down by an archer.

The reader will notice a unique feature about Prof. Lal’s style of transcreation: the use of doublets in proper nouns. Thereby, with masterly skill he interweaves explanations doing away with the need for annotations. Thus, “river-born Apageya-Bhishma” explains the original’s “Apageya”, simultaneously indicating that this is another name for Bhishma. In all cases where Vyasa does not use the usual name, Lal provides the doublet. He does so for technical terms too: “Aksha-axles”, “Kubara-poles”, “Isha-shafts”, “varutha-fenders”. Where explanations of weaponry are needed e.g. the fourfold science of weaponry, this is provided in the transcreation itself in rhythmic free verse [2.16]:

The free
Those released by the hand
Like arrows;
The unfree
Those clutched by the hand
Like swords;
The machine-free
Those shot by machines
Like fire-balls;
The free-and-unfree
Those which return after released
Like Indra’s thunderbolt.

Doublets make abstruse weapons self-explanatory: prasa-barbed darts, risti-swords, parigha-spiked iron clubs, shakti-spears, tomara-javelins, pattisha-pointed spears, bhushundi-firearms tanutra-armour. So, too, for ornaments: angada-armlets, keyura-bracelets, hara-necklaces, nishka-gold coins,. However, “33-lord Indra” (p.237) is hardly mellifluous!

The images used in this book have a distinction of their own. With Arjuna’s arrow stuck in his forehead Ashvatthama looks “like the rising son/with its rays shooting upward” (17.3). Shikhandi, with three arrows in his forehead, is like a triple-peaked silvery mountain (61.18). An elephant struck with 100 arrows glows like a mountain with its trees and plants aflame in a forest-fire at dead of night (18.14). Like countless bulls attacking a single one to mount a cow in season, warriors target Arjuna (19.5). The battlefield blossoms like a lake lovely with white lily and blue lotus faces of beheaded warriors, glowing with splendour as if decorated with garlands of constellations in autumn. Bloodied faces are as lovely as split pomegranates, their teeth the seeds. Headless bodies stand erect in bloody uniforms and armour like crimson pieces of cloth dyed red and drying (28.43). Like a monsoon field with red shakragopa-beetles, or a young dark-skinned girl’s white dress dyed with red turmeric (52.9), or a free-roving courtesan flaunting a crimson dress, crimson garland and gold ornaments—such was the earth (94.26). Arrows pierce like snakes burrowing into an ant hill (59.54). Fallen soldiers look as lovely as pollen-filled kadamba blossoms (81.39). Karna’s snake-arrow blazes in the sky “like the centre parting/in a woman’s hair” (90.30).

The parva begins with the Kauravas musing over how they dragged and demeaned Draupadi. Although, at different stages in the battle, Dhritarashtra, Bhima, Duhshasana, Krishna all recall the dragging and insulting of Draupadi, none refers to any attempt to strip her. That episode could be an interpolation to accentuate the wickedness of the Kauravas and exalt the divinity of Krishna.

An intriguing feature of the battle is that attacking and even killing weaponless charioteers draws no criticism. Even Krishna is wounded by Ashvatthama, Karna and Satyasena whose javelin pierces through his left arm making him drop the whip and reins. The charioteer’s role as advisor is well brought out where he advises Dhrishtadyumna who is bewildered by Kripa’s assault. Section 26 is a rare picture of Kripa in irresistible full flow.

In the beginning, in just five verses the death of Vrisha (Karna) is wrapped up. Janamejaya questions Vaishampayana about Dhritarashtra’s reaction on hearing of the deaths of Drona and Karna. In section 2 we learn that the night after Karna was killed, Sanjaya rushed to Dhritarashtra and related the aftermath of Drona’s death till the fall of Karna, his sons and brothers and how Bhima slew Duhshasana and drank his blood. Struck to his very marrow with horror, the blind king wants to know what is left of both armies. From the reply a pattern emerges: the inhabitants of regions where Krishna was born and brought up—Surasenis and Narayanas of Mathura and Gokul—chose to fight against him alongside the kings of the east and north-east (Kalingas, Bangas, Angas, Nishadas) who were anti-Pandava and led elephant armies. Satyaki killed the Banga ruler, Sahadeva the Pundra ruler, Nakula the Anga ruler. Those from the south, west and north-west suffer annihilation at Arjuna’s hands. Among southerners, Pandya alone is pro-Pandava and Sanjaya calls him world-renowned. Dhritarashtra asks him to justify this and we have a sudden description of his savage attack on the Kauravas in section 20 in 44 verses, till he is killed by Ashvatthama. This looks very much like a command performance. It is interesting that Chitrangada is a Pandya princess in the southern recension of the epic.

We are given new information in 2.13 that Parashurama had taught Drona from early childhood. Confirmation regarding the relative novelty of the Mahishamardini myth is found in 5.56 where, as in the Vana Parva, it is Skanda, not Durga, who is the buffalo-demon’s slayer. A typical epic exaggeration occurs in 5.4 where Sanjaya says that Bishma slew an “arbuda” (a crore) of soldiers in ten days. As he slew ten thousand daily, the total is a lakh and not “ten crores” as translated (p.24). In 5.14 Sanjaya says that Draupadi’s son (unnamed) slew Duhsasana’s son—possibly the nameless killer of Abhimanyu—but there is no other account of this. Paurava, a Kaurava ally whom Van Buitenen regards as a historical reference to Poros, had been defeated by Abhimanyu and now falls victim to Arjuna (5.35). We usually overlook the fact that Kunti too was a loser in the battle. All Kuntibhoja’s descendants were slain by Bhishma who also accounted for the Narayanas and Balabhadras (6.22). Drona slew both brothers of Kunti, Virata, Drupada and their sons and most of the notable kings in just five days. Bhishma in ten days mostly concentrated on reducing the Pandava army.

The Karna-Arjuna battle is obviously the high point since Sanjay compares its carnage as rivalling the mythical duels of Indra-Vritra, Rama-Ravana, Kartavirya-Parashurama, Mahisha-Skanda, Andhaka-Rudra, Indra-Bali, Indra-Namuchi, Vasava-Shambara, Mahendra-Jambha and Krishna-Naraka-Mura. Karna becomes infused with the Naraka following Duryodhana’s capture by the Gandharvas. In the Tullal songs of Kerala he is the demon Sashrakavacha (thousand-armoured) reincarnated. Underlying the Arjuna-Karna duel lies the Vedic myth of Indra routing Surya and taking his wheel (Rig Veda 1.175.4; 4.30.4; 10.43.5). Its epic reversal occurs in the Ramayana where Surya’s son Sugriva brings about the death of Indra’s son Vali. On both occasions, it is Vishnu’s avatara who plays the decisive role in ensuring the death.

Ironically, Dhritarashtra’s lament (9.21):

“You plan something
Fate plans differently.
Aho!
Fate is all-powerful.
Kala
cannot be questioned.”

is no different from what Krishna had told Yudhishthira before the peace embassy: “What is possible for man, I can exert to the utmost; but over fate I have no control.” Dhritarashtra makes the telling point (9.39) that both Bhishma and Drona were killed by exceptional deceit: Shikhandi shot down Bhishma who was not fighting him and Drona was beheaded when in yoga, weaponless. Significantly, Dhritarashtra points to the Panchalas as responsible for both heinous deeds, exposing what underlies the Pandava-Dhartarashtra rivalry. Often he mentions the awe in which the Pandavas held Karna, especially Yudhishthira who went sleepless for 13 years, reminiscent of Lakshmana in the Ramayana (for a different reason). Fear of Karna haunts Yudhishthira wherever he goes. Even Bhishma, Kripa, Drona have never shamed him in battle like Karna (66.22). Twice Dhritarashtra recalls Karna taunting Draupadi that she is husbandless in the very presence of the Pandavas—such was his self-confidence. He calls Karna “the never-retreating hero”, overlooking how he was routed from the field several times.

Arjuna’s laxity is a recurring phenomenon here, lending support to the argument that the Gita is a later addition. In section 16 Ashvatthama’s feats wax, Pinaki-like, while Arjuna’s wane, enraging Krishna who berates Arjuna for being sentimental about fighting his guru’s son. Arjuna flares up only after Krishna, with blood streaming from his body, asks him not to spare Ashvatthama. In section 19 Krishna has to exhort him to stop playing games with the suicide squad of Samsaptakas and to proceed to fight Karna. The suicide squad even catches hold of them. Susharma succeeds in making Arjuna slump down (53.15, 36). Keshava fells them bare-handed while Arjuna displays his unique skill in repulsing the enemy with arrows at extreme close quarters. In section 56 Ashvatthama nonplusses Arjuna again, infuriating Krishna who exhorts:

“very strange, Partha-Arjuna
Very strange—what I am seeing now.
…Drona’s son
Seems to be the better man today….
Is your fist
a little flabby or what?” (56. 135-138).

The carnage after Arjuna has been tongue-lashed becomes the occasion for a survey of the field by Krishna (19.28-53), repeated in 58.10-41, as after Jayadratha’s death in the Drona Parva (section 148). This anticipates Gandhari’s heart-wrenching lament in the Stri Parva and ends with Krishna praising Arjuna’s performance as worthy of the king of the gods. The field becomes such a morass that even Arjuna’s chariot-wheels get stuck (27.40-41)—a doublet of Karna’s plight later. In 90.57 Krishna lifts the embedded chariot wheels out of ground with both hands, which Shalya later fails to replicate. Indeed, he does not even make the attempt and leaves it to Karna to fight and extricate the wheel. Karna is also called Bibhatsu (49.25) after he recovers having been knocked unconscious by Yudhishthira’s arrow, deliberately equating him with Arjuna.

Section 29 has a rare duel between the rivals for the throne. The normally diffident eldest Pandava knocks Duryodhana unconscious but, surprisingly, Bhima stops him from administering the coup de grace because that would nullify his vow. Similarly, when Bhima knocks Karna unconscious in section 50 and rushes to slice his tongue for his insults, Shalya stops him, reminding him of Arjuna’s vow. Shalya does a fine job as a double-agent by saving Yudhishthira from being captured twice (sections 49, 63): once by warning Karna not to touch him as he may be reduced to ashes and then exhorting him not to be diverted from the goal of slaying Arjuna who is the main danger. Strangely enough, Dhritarashtra does not ask Sanjaya why, despite defeating Yudhishthira, Karna did not take him captive, which would have ended the war as Drona had realised. To comprehend Karna’s complicated psyche we have to recall what he told Krishna in the Udyoga Parva. Karna is a man at war with himself, so memorably portrayed in Shivaji Sawant’s  epic novel Mrityunjaya. One part of him knows that the victor has to be Yudhishthira, the righteous ruler; the other’s very life is bound by gratitude to Duryodhana. Every Kaurava general suffers from the same dilemma, but in Karna it has been portrayed in extremis.

We discover that following Jarasandha’s death, Girivraja and Magadha have separate rulers. Arjuna kills Dandadhara of Girivraja. Jayatsena, king of Magadha, was killed by Abhimanyu. There is an interesting exchange of roles: in section 18 Arjuna emerges as elephant-killer while elsewhere Bhima shows off mastery of archery. Just as six had surrounded Abhimanyu, so Dhristadymna, Draupadi’s 5 sons, the twins and Satyaki attack Karna jointly. He successively routs them, looping his bow round the Pandavas’ necks and, to their profound chagrin, letting them go, as he had promised Kunti. Dhrishtadyumna berates Ashvatthama who is routing Pandava forces as Bhima had done Drona: “You have no love, no gratitude, you are a fake Brahmin” (55.33). Not only does Ashvatthama make Yudhishthira turn tail but, when Arjuna topples his charioteer, he continues fighting while holding the reins (64.30).

Prof. Lal succeeds admirably in conveying the variety in battle descriptions as in 28.36-40—an excursion into vigorous vivid description of fist-fights compellingly Englished:

Hands raised high
Brought crashing down
On the foe!
A battle of tugged
And ripped hair-tufts!
A battle of bodies
grappling and wrestling!
Smell, touch, rasa-taste—
Stench of blood!
Feel of blood
sight of blood,
gush of blood,
Everywhere crimson blood (49.104).

Like Valkyries, Apsaras take the dead soldiers in chariots to heaven (49.93). Alongside this, Vyasa repeatedly stresses the horrific meaninglessness of war: the soldiers who died, killing friend and foe, did not know who and what weapons killed them (28.41).

The greatest challenge Duryodhana faces is Karna’s request for a charioteer who will equal Krishna, for he finds that he cannot equal Arjuna without this. Duryodhana lays flattery on with a trowel to persuade Shalya, extolling him as superior to Karna and comparing him to Brahma whom the gods considered Shiva’s superior and therefore chose as his charioteer in the Tripura war. In his lengthy exhortation we find a mini-myth in section 34 of Shiva engaging Parashurama to annihilate the Daityas. Shalya finally succumbs when Duryodhana declares that he considers Shalya Krishna’s superior and that, should Karna die, the Kaurava army will be in his hands.

Sections 40-45 contain Karna’s lengthy diatribe against Shalya’s people, the Madras, for being wicked like the mlecchas, promiscuous, utterly untrustworthy. He particularly condemns the women (tall, fair, dressed in soft blankets and deer skin) for urinating while standing like camels and donkeys and being indiscriminately lustful, gluttonous and drunk. He tars the people of Gandhara and Aratta/Bahika (those in the land of five rivers) with the same brush. It is curious that Bhishma should have paid heavy bride-price for a Madra princess for Pandu and a Gandhara one for Dhritarashtra! Karna voices the prevailing prejudices: the Kauravas, Panchalas, Shalvas, Matsyas, Naimishas, Koshalas, Kashis, Angas, Kalingas, Magadhas and Chedis are the civilized peoples, while the Bahikas/Madras are the filth of the earth, located along Vipasa (Beas) and Sakala (Sialkot); the easterners are servants, the southerners bastards, the Saurashtrans miscegenous. Shalya’s retort is far less violent and throws into relief the bitter gall spewing from Karna. No wonder his sword is said to be his tongue.

It is in the course of the exchange of abuse with Shalya that Karna recalls the two curses that alone trouble him and is confident that unless his chariot wheel gets stuck, Arjuna’s death is assured (42.35). In this context he voices the sentiment that sums up his goal:

“I was born for valour, I was born
to achieve glory” (43.6).

Krishna, wanting Karna to tire himself out fighting before he meets Arjuna, drives to meet the demoralised Yudhishthira, leading to Arjuna’s peculiar attack on Yudhishthira reprimanding him for insulting him from the comfort of Draupadi’s bed. Do we notice suppressed jealousy peeking out here? The clash also reveals the high-pitched tension that war has brought about. It is not only in the Kaurava camp that Kripa, Bhishma, Drona and Ashvatthama revile Karna and Duryodhana insults them. In the Drona Parva the crackling tension in the Pandava camp was first exposed in the clash between Satyaki and Dhrishtadyumna after the killing of Drona. Now the tension has bored deeper, wearing thin the unity between the brothers. Bhima’s sudden loss of morale on finding himself all alone facing the enemy army is another indication of this. In resolving the issue between Arjuna—who won Draupadi—and Yudhishthira—who appropriated her—Krishna makes a signal pronouncement that is quite distinct from the philosophy of the Gita: to lie (anrita) is better than to kill (69.23) because ahimsa is the supreme virtue (69.57). It is a childish vow that is taken without going into the subtleties of dharma and prompts the killing of the elder brother. The secret of dharma, he says, is known to very few such as Bhishma, Yudhishthira, Vidura and, most unexpectedly and significantly, Kunti. He enumerates the occasions on which lying is permissible: marriage, love making, to save life, when all one’s wealth is being stolen, to benefit a Brahmin or when joking (69.33, 62). It is childish to think that truth should be spoken no matter what:

“He knows dharma who knows
when to speak the truth
and when to lie” (69.35).

This is no Kantian categorical imperative. To illustrate, he narrates the stories of the hunter Balaka and of the learned hermit Kaushika, vowed to truth-speaking, but lacking knowledge of practical dharma:

“shruti is not everything.
The precepts of dharma
are meant for the welfare
of all creatures” (69.56).

Dharma is so called because it supports and protects—this is incontestable (69.58) hence lying to protect dharma is not a lie (69.65).

Section 72 is a long harangue by Krishna to lift Arjuna out of the morass of depression following this encounter. Krishna provides a fascinating reason why Karna must be killed: because his hatred of Pandavas is not motivated by self-interest (72.34). Krishna tells Arjuna that Karna is possibly his superior, has all the qualities of a warrior, is 168 finger-lengths tall, long armed, broad-chested, proud, very strong. Like a wall of water shivering into rivulets when striking a mountain, the Pandava army disperses before Karna’s might. His sword is his tongue, his mouth the bow, arrows his teeth (72.38). Dhritarashtra too mentions his acid tongue. It is his profound sense of injured merit that fuels this vomiting of poisonous speech.

In section 73 Krishna states that the massive massacre had continued for 17 days now. He burns with fury recalling that Karna—so mangled and dazed by Abhimanyu’s arrows that he wanted to flee—caused the boy’s death by slicing his bow on Drona’s advice so that 5 others could kill him (there is no mention of Duhshasana’s son smashing his head). Krishna has frequently to provoke Arjuna by reminding him how Karna abused Draupadi and the Pandavas vilely. He bids him kill Karna’s son to demoralise him. Arjuna now abandons his self-flagellation saying, as in the Gita: “Govinda, you are my lord and master” (74.1-3). When Karna’s Bhargava missile counters Arjuna’s Indra missile and decimates the Panchalas, Arjuna needs to be enthused first by Bhima and then by Krishna who reminds him that in every era he has killed demons specially Dambodhbhava (whose overweening pride Krishna narrated in the Kuru court). The Arthashastra VI.3 also cites him as one of those monarchs who perished due to arrogance. Krishna even bids Arjuna use the razor-edged Sudarshana discus. Again, as in the Gita, Arjuna awakens to his life’s mission and uses the Brahma missile—which Karna promptly neutralises! In disgust, Bhima advises him to try some other weapon. Never have we seen Arjuna thus foiled.

Characteristically, Arjuna is the true hero who always admires his opponent, as in 79.9,11: how splendid raja Duryodhana looks beside Karna with Shalya urging the horses! Shalya encourages Karna repeatedly to kill Arjuna who is alone with no protectors, reminding him of his great feats. Karna acknowledges that Shalya seems finally to have found himself (79.51). After Duhshasana’s death, Shalya encourages Karna in true heroic style: “Win and gain glory, lose and gain heaven” (84.16).

Section 76 paints a unique picture of a demoralised Bhima. “I am troubled”, he says, being all alone, surrounded by enemies. He seeks encouragement from his charioteer Vishoka, who re-inspires him and is gifted 14 villages, 100 slave girls, 20 chariots. Bhima creates a river of blood. Shakuni suddenly emerges as a mighty warrior who kills Bhima’s charioteer, destroys his flag and umbrella, catches Bhima’s lance in mid-flight and flings it back, piercing his left arm. Bhima knocks him down but does not kill him, because he is Sahadeva’s portion.

However, in section 82 all Karna’s prowess cannot prevent Duhshasana’s horrific death, or that of his son Vrishasena whom Arjuna kills at the behest of Nakula who has been humiliated by him. Unrepentant Duhshasana mocks Bhima, reminding him how the Pandavas fearfully lived in the lac house, scrounged for food in the forest obsessed with fear, hiding in caves and deceived Draupadi “to choose as husband Phalguna” (82.39). Then he hits hard:

“Then you scoundrels
did something similar
to what your mother did.
Draupadi chose only one,
but all five of you
shamelessly enjoyed her.” (39-40).

It is another matter that Draupadi did not even murmur a protest. Her silence, like her origin and her unanswered question in the Kuru assembly, remains an unresolved enigma. Duhshasana even fells Bhima, who is temporarily unable to hit back. Finally, Bhima strikes him down and invites Karna, Duryodhana, Kripa, Ashvatthama, Kritavarma to try to stop him from killing Duhshasana. Though laid low, Duhshasana smiles with fury and proudly displays the hand by which he dragged Draupadi by her hair in public. Bhima rips out that arm, pummels Duhshasana with it, rips open his chest, drinks the blood, beheads him and roars that nothing is as sweet—not mother’s milk, honey, ghee, flower-wine, sweet curd, butter, nectar. Sipping the blood he dances, terrifying onlookers who flee. One vow fulfilled, he looks forward to offering the yajna-beast Duryodhana as sacrifice, crushing his head with his foot before all Kauravas (83.50). This image of war as a sacrifice, repeated at critical intervals, is rooted in the panchagni vidya celebrated in the Brahmanas as a symbol of Prajapati the Creator’s self-devouring to create the cosmos, another symbol of which is the serpent biting its tail.

Krishna paints a lovely picture of Karna advancing (86.6-10) and encourages Arjuna by reminding him that he has Shiva’s blessings. As in the Gita Arjuna says that he will win “Because you, the guru of all the worlds are pleased with me” (86.17). Karna and Arjuna are both like Kartavirya Ajruna, Dasharathi Rama, Vishnu, Shiva, with the finest chariots and best charioteers driving white horses. While warriors watch,

“the two heroes
played the dice-game of war,
for victory/or defeat.” (87.36).

The sky goddess Dyau and the Adityas favour Karna, born of Surya, while the earth Bhumi (symbolised in Pritha the wide one), Agni, Indra, Soma and Pavana favour Arjuna—a curious split among the Adityas indeed. Karna, the hero of “the other”, is backed by Asuras, Yatudhanas, Guhyakas, Pishacas, Rakshasas, minor serpents, Vaishyas, Shudras, Sutas and the mixed castes. Brahma and Shiva jointly foretell Arjuna’s victory. The line-up of celestial beings shows clear evidence of repetitive interpolation from shlokas 39 to 63 and again from verses 64 to 99 in section 87. Shalya boasts that if Karna falls, he will alone slay Krishna-Arjuna. Krishna-Janardana (transcreated appropriately as “punisher of the people” in 87.119) announces that if Arjuna falls, which is impossible, he will crush them barehanded. When Arjuna routs the finest of Shaka, Tushara, Yavana and Kamboja cavalry Ashvatthama pleads with Duryodhana to make peace and rule jointly, undertaking to persuade Arjuna, as the whole world will benefit from renewed friendship.  Duryodhana refuses as the Pandavas will never trust him, for he has heaped too many insults on them. He believes that Arjuna is tired and Karna can kill him.

Suddenly, Arjuna’s bowstring snaps and Karna pierces him and Krishna. The Pandavas are ripped apart like a pack of dogs by a lion: “invulnerable the bow/of Karna and tremendously/strong its bowstring” whereby he pulverises all of Arjuna’s missiles (90.3). Arjuna slices off Shalya’s armour, wounds him and Karna severely. Bathed in blood, resembling Rudra dancing in a cremation ground, Karna pierces Krishna’s armour with arrows that are the five sons of Takshaka’s son Ashvasena whose mother Arjuna killed at Khandava. Infuriated, Arjuna riddles Karna’s vulnerable parts so that he is in agony, yet he stands straight. Unable to excel Arjuna, he uses the snake-mouthed arrow which Ashvasena enters by yogic powers. Shalya tries to disturb Karna at the critical moment by urging him to re-aim the arrow. Krishna saves Arjuna from being beheaded by pressing down the chariot so that only his diadem is knocked off. Karna arrogantly refuses to re-shoot the same arrow even if it could kill a hundred Arjunas. His armour shredded with arrows, Karna faints, glowing like a hill “covered with a wealth of blossoming ashoka, palasha,/shalmali and sandalwood”, dazzling like a mountain “bursting with the beauty/of entire forests/of blossoming karnikaras” (90.77-78). As Arjuna does not press the advantage despite Krishna’s repeated urging, Karna recovers. Suddenly his morale plummets as fails to recall Parashurama’s missile. Simultaneously his chariot wheel gets stuck. Raising his arms, he laments repeatedly that though dharma-knowers proclaim that dharma protects its cherishers and he has always cherished dharma, it is not protecting him—it protects none (90.88). This is a remarkable echo of Vyasa’s Bharata-Savitri at the end of the epic: “I raise my arms and I shout/but no one listens! From Dharma flows wealth and pleasure–/ why is Dharma not practised?” Vyasa urges not giving up dharma up for the sake of pleasure, out of fear, for greed, or to save one’s life—which is precisely what Karna is doing.

Arjuna’s arrows had bewildered Karna and Shalya; his mutilated body refused his bidding. Here an interpolation occurs. In verse 90.82 Arjuna readies the Raudra missile and Karna’s wheel sinks in the next shloka. This happens again in verse 106. In-between is a passage in which Karna succeeds in wounding Krishna and Arjuna, cutting Arjuna’s bowstring 11 times. Failing to extricate the wheel (Shalya does nothing), Karna weeps in frustration and begs for time from Arjuna appealing to his heroic code. It is Krishna who responds, knowing Arjuna’s weakness where the heroic code is concerned. Thrice he recalls the insult to Draupadi and other un-dharmic deeds of Karna, who is shamed into silence. Krishna’s words arouse Arjuna’s fury, but Karna successfully continues countering whatever he shoots and simultaneously tries to free the wheel. Hit hard, Arjuna lets slip the Gandiva and Karna tries with both hands to free wheel. This is exactly what Krishna had done earlier successfully. Krishna commands Arjuna to behead Karna before he climbs back into his chariot. Here shlokas 34-40 are interpolated because, instead of beheading Karna, Arjuna shatters his flag. The death-dealing dart is described as charged with Atharva-angiras energy. From Karna’s body a radiance shoots into the solar orb and his headless corpse blazes like the sun. Vyasa specifically identifies Karna with Surya, saying,

“The arrow-rayed Karna-sun,
after scorching its enemies,
was forced to set
by valiant Arjuna-Kala.” (91.62)

In a later parva Kunti celebrates Karna as “A hero, ear-ringed, armoured, splendid like the Sun”, a solar hero whom Yudhishthira sees attended by twelve suns. Karna lies headless, hundreds of arrows sticking in him like Bhishma:

“He was all adazzle,
like molten gold,
like fire, like the sun.” (94.34)

Spectators wonderingly exclaim, as for Shakespeare’s Cleopatra,

“But he is alive!…
he looked
so alive!
To whoever asked,
he gave;
he never said no …
always the giver” (94.34, 36, 45, 47).

Yudhishthira feels reborn and able to sleep in peace that night.

Like the Indo-European hero, Karna is the eternal solitary who can make the Senecan tragic hero’s motto his own: “I am myself, alone!”

After Karna’s death Shalya, who had boasted he would slaughter Krishna and Arjuna should this happen, flees. Duryodhana takes a stand behind an army of 25000 which Bhima decimates. Failing to rally his troops, Duryodhana all alone faces the Pandavas and Dhrishtadyumna. Shalya paints a dismal picture of the battlefield for Duryodhana in section 94 in 20 shlokas. The end is impending.

The Complete Bhishma & Drona Parvas transcreated from Sanskrit by Padma Sri P.Lal, Writers Workshop, Calcutta.  

The publication of the P. Lal transcreation of the first two of the five battle-books is an important event. After K.M. Ganguli’s prose translation in the late 1890s, followed by M.N. Dutt’s replication, the world has not had access to an English version of these in their entirety. J.A.B. van Buitenen passed away without touching them and his successors have, so far, published part of the Shanti Parva. The Clay Sanskrit Library’s diglot edition has brought out half of the Drona Parva. The Lal transcreation stands apart from all others particularly because of none of them dare to set the translations to poetic rhythm, something that comes so naturally to Prof. Lal, who brings to the work a unique Indian flavour by working into the transcreation many Sanskrit words. The great Ganguli had a P.C. Ray to take care of the manifold problems of publishing such a gargantuan work; van Buitenen had the University of Chicago Press; the Clay series has the New York University Press—all well established institutions with trained manpower. Here is another Abhimanyu taking on the awesome challenge of transcreating-and-publishing Vyasa’s hundred thousand verses, working through the epic-of-epics steadily, relentlessly.

Reading the first two battle-books together is rewarding because of the varied insights such an approach provides. In the first place, the second book, despite covering half of the duration of the first, is longer by half because the battle is far more sanguinary and varied. Both the Kaurava commanders-in-chief’appointed by Duryodhana reluctantly because of Karna’s refusal’are Vyasa’s expose of deeply flawed elders and their narrow dharma. We have here a patriarch who signally fails to provide protection to his foster brother’s wife and sons from murderous attacks in childhood and youth. Later, he and the two gurus of the grandnephews remain silent onlookers to the spectacle of a granddaughter-in-law being molested publicly by their employer, the heir-apparent. It is supremely ironic that the prince who earned the sobriquet of ‘Bhishma’ and came to be renowned as the greatest of renouncers should be so hopelessly bound to his father’s throne as not only to preside over the suicide of the dynasty, but to actually participate in it on the side he knows to be in the wrong! Indeed, Devavrata-Gangadatta-Bhishma is another Prometheus, bound in adamantine chains to the icy Caucasian peaks of the Hastinapura throne, wracked in immortal agony as the Dhartarashtra-Pandava fratricidal strife eats into his vitals endlessly. For, perversely, he cannot, or will not, die till liberation comes in the form of mortal arrows showered by a grandchild who loves him. And the person whom the Indian government holds up as the model of a guru is one who unhesitatingly indulges in sharp practice to ensure that his son gets exclusive tuition and his favourite pupil is not outdone by a talented tribal; who abandons his calling as a non-violent Brahmin to take up arms to acquire power and pelf for his son’no different from the blind king of Hastinapura in his paternal obsession.

It is in the first war book that both patriarch and guru acknowledge, ‘I am tied to the Kauravas by need.’ Bearing out Gandhari’s warning to her son in the Udyoga Parva, Bhishma and Drona fight for Duryodhana, but not with their hearts, announcing that they will not kill any of the five Pandavas. Duryodhana is caught in a zero-sum game: he has no option but to appoint them as the commanders-in-chief. His best bet, Karna, sulks Achilles-like in his tents, determined not fight so long as the patriarch is in command. Yet, this same Karna rushes to the fallen Bhishma begging his permission and blessings to fight against his brothers’what a marvellous vignette Vyasa presents us with! Even thereafter, aware that everyone is unlikely to accept his overlordship and for once letting his discrimination prevail over his egotism, he advises that Drona be made supreme commander. Fifteen days pass and every other day Duryodhana’s desperation mounts and he berates first Bhishma, then Drona for not killing the Pandavas’all to no avail. He directly indicts the guru (VII.94.14) in gravely insulting terms:

‘We ensure your livelihood
Yet you harm us.

I did not know
You are a honey coated razor.’

Drona’s flawed character is exposed as Sanjaya tells Dhritrashtra that in order to impress Duryodhana (VII.94.40) Drona encased him in golden armour made impervious mantrically. In the duel that follows, Arjuna, unable to pierce this armour, displays his unique bowcraft by wounding Duryodhana’s palms and underneath his finger-nails, forcing him to retreat (VII.103.31-32). However, this incident of encasing in magical armour seems to be an interpolation because in sections 116 and 120 Satyaki and in section 124 even Yudhishthira have no problem in wounding his chest so grievously that he is forced to flee the field.

Dhritarashtra’s perplexity over the failure of his army provides the reader with interesting information about how it was administered (VII.114): ‘We treat our soldiers well’Only after passing extensive tests’has their pay been determined, Not because of family connections, personal favour or nepotism. None is conscripted, none is unpaid’we spoke to them sweetly. Not one’has been unfairly treated. Each, according to his ability, gets paid and receives rations’we give presents, we honour them with the best of seats. Even these veteran warriors face defeat.’

In the duels with Dhrishtadyumna we are treated to martial acrobatics of a special type as he jumps on to the guru’s chariot and rapidly shifts position, foiling all Drona’s attacks (VII.97.26-28). Bhima’s duel with the guru is also memorable as he overturns Drona’s chariot repeatedly’as much as eight times! If he is defeated and spared by Karna (VII.139), he also succeeds in forcing the latter to retreat twice (VII.131, 145) and after Drona’s death Karna flees the battlefield out of fear (VII.193.10). The battle for Jayadratha reaches a high point with Arjuna single-handedly holding back the entire army while Krishna refreshes the horses in a hall-of-arrows. Sanjaya exclaims (VII.100.12, 21):

‘O Bharata! Krishna, smiling,
stood gracefully in the arrow-hall
created by Arjuna,
as if he was in the midst of women’
In a single chariot, clad in armour,
facing the Kshatriyas,
the two played with our warriors
like children with toys.’

As we wade through rivers of blood and gore these 15 days, we notice a gradual breaking down of codes of conduct as the stress mounts steeply. Chariot, cavalry and elephant divisions no longer refrain from attacking infantry and even unarmed charioteers and fleeing soldiers or from killing the charioteer to perplex the chariot-rider. After Bhishma’s fall, the battle even carries beyond midnight first by torchlight, then by moonlight, with warriors killing their comrades in the confusion:

‘And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.’

As in Shakespeare’s Henry VI, fathers slay sons, maternal uncles kill nephews and vice-versa. Warriors intervene in duels, attack from behind, many encircle a lone fighter: ‘Dignity was lost/In that crazed clash’ (VII.169.50).

The Udyoga Parva had closed with Yudhishthira taking a measure of his strength after hearing from his spies that Bhishma and Drona had announced that each could wipe out the Pandava army in a month, Kripa in two months, Ashvatthama in ten days, Karna in five. He puts the question specifically to Arjuna who claims that using Shiva’s weapon he can annihilate all opposition in a flash, but adds that its use is improper against humans. He avoids declaring how many days of normal warfare he would take to defeat the opponents. It is Arjuna’s initial assurance that constitutes the backbone of Yudhishthira’s morale because he knows full well that Arjuna’s fulsome estimate of Virata and Drupada equaling Bhishma and Drona is nothing but bombast. The former was cowed down by Kichaka and routed by the Trigartas, as was the latter by the teenaged Pandavas. Sanjaya exclaims to Dhritarashtra:

O raja! Then erupted the battle
Between the Kauravas and Pandavas
Whose origin was the dice-game,
Whose end was all-embracing doom. ‘VI.103.44

Planning for a war is one thing; coming face-to-face with the imperative of killing a beloved patriarch and a revered guru is quite another. It is this existential angst that pierces through Arjuna’s moral armour, effectively unmanning him and becoming the occasion for the recital of Krishna’s Gita transcreated by Prof. Lal in 1947 in rhymed verse, in 1952 in prose, in free verse in 1965, revised in 1968. Intrigued by Arjuna’s uncharacteristic collapse and not finding answers in theGita, he embarked upon the epic journey of transcreating the entirety of Vyasa’s composition verse-by-verse. I will skirt this much-commented-upon text and deal with the rest of the parva. Both in VI.51.6 and in the Gita (1.10) there is a verse that remains intriguing. Duryodhana tells Drona that his forces led by Bhishma are ‘aparyapta’, inadequate, while the Pandava army led by Bhima is ‘paryapta’. This has been transcreated as ‘vast’ and ‘limited’, which is to twist the natural meaning of the word. If Duryodhana feels his army is innumerable, why should it be necessary for Bhishma to revive his spirit in the very next verse?

Prof. Lal’s Preface to the first war-book deals only with the Gita, seeing it as the core of the Bhishma Parva. Reading it is a gripping experience as the reader follows a sensitive and incisive modern mind grappling with Krishna’s recital to extract meaning, savours the delight of the memorably retold parable of the Kalpataru and is surprised by joy to come across gems of insight through a spectrum spanning Vyasa, Dante, T.S. Eliot and Ramprasad Sen. The Preface to the Drona Parva is another scintillating piece teasing out the many shades of the guru-chela relationship: neither will harm the other, yet ‘both must face each other, courtesy of Mahakala’. Against the ideal of the guru-shishya bond given in the Bhagavata Purana, here Vyasa shows us the ground reality of excruciating dilemmas: Drona trying to balance Arjuna-Ekalavya-Ashvatthama; Bhishma caught between Duryodhana-Karna-Pandavas-Krishna. And was Vyasa himself not the greatest victim of this, asks Prof. Lal, when his son almost drove him to suicide by not following his wishes?

Section 1, verse 7’describing the vast empty field of battle’is virtually identical to verse 25. The critical edition overlooks this duplication. Historically, Vyasa’s reference to icons of gods in 2.26 is of interest, as prior to the epic such references are almost absent.

For making sense of the divya drishti gifted by Vyasa to Sanjaya we need not conjure up theories of India having television cameras recording the war. The secret of the supranormal vision is revealed in Vyasa’s announcement at the very beginning that none will harm Sanjaya and his access to everything and everyone will be unfettered. In sections 4-12, Sanjaya gives the king a cosmography that the Vishnu Purana copies. There is a detailed description of 7 continents (dvipa, i.e. land with seas on two sides) with their mountains, the countries (varsha) in-between the mountains, 6 oceans. Man is associated with Bharatavarsha, which has 7 ranges, 161 rivers and 228 peoples among whom there is an intriguing reference in 9.56 to Romanah people in the northern region. In 6.14-15 we find a mini-myth of Garuda leaving Meru because all birds there are golden plumaged like him. 8.10 mentions Shandili living at Shringavat, winging us back to Garuda’s traumatic meeting with her in the Udyoga Parva. However, in 8.16 the reference to Hari’s golden chariot of eight wheels has no puranic correspondence. There is a moving reference in 9.5-8 introducing Bharata as a land loved by Indra and 16 famous kings, ‘all these kings and other powerful Kshatriyas/Have deeply loved the territory of Bharata.’ Astronomical data provided in these parvas are hopelessly garbled and have led to a wide variety of dates being fixed by scholars keen to pin down the date of the war, each claiming to have interpreted the dubious references correctly. Deliberate changes appear to have been made in the data around the time of Devabodha’s commentary (mid-18th century CE), each statement conflicting with the others.

Section 13 is virtually a new beginning of the Bhishma Parva as though the lesson on geography had not occurred at all. Reverting to the original narrative pattern of the epic, we find Vaishampayana stating that Sanjaya rushed back to the king to announce that Bhishma ‘lies dead, sprawled on a bed of arrows’. This is repeated in section 1 of the Drona Parva. In both cases, as well as in Dhritarashtra’s extended laments, the references are quite plainly to death and not to awaiting death. Therefore, it is in later times that the concept of Bhishma waiting for the auspicious stellar conjunctions for giving up life was added along with the elaborate Shanti and Anushasana Parvas. From Day 1 to Day 10, from the 11th day till the death Abhimanyu, then till the 15th evening and from Day 16 till the end of the 17th day, Dhritarashtra had no news till Sanjaya rushed back to report that Abhimanyu, Drona, Karna and Shalya had fallen. Sanjaya’s narration begins from VI.15 stating that ‘this long-distance hearing and vision, this insight into people’s mind and into past and future, this power of flaying in space, this immunity to war-weapons’ are his by Vyasa’s grace. His presence on the battlefield is testified to in VI.94.46 where he says, ‘though I and Devavrata kept shouting’ at the soldiers not to flee from Ghatotkacha’s illusions, they paid no heed. In section 30 of the Drona Parva he mentions hearing the twang of the Gandiva to his right and speaks of joining Drona’s division as the Kauravas are beaten back, of facing Chekitana in the field and in section 200 of witnessing Bhima’s incredible tackling of Ashvatthama’s attack. He is one of the five (the others being Arjuna, Kripa, Krishna and Yudhishthira) who alone saw the ascent of Drona’s soul to Brahma’s abode (VII.192.57-58). An intriguing bit of information contained in theDrona Parva is usually overlooked amid the welter of action: the blind king was not closeted in Hastinapura but was at least sometimes in Kurukshetra. After Abhimanyu’s death Dhritarashtra’s enquires of Sanjaya why he cannot hear any joyous sounds of dancers, bards and minstrels from the Kaurava camp as he used to while sitting in Somadatta’s camp.

Before the battle begins, we are given detailed descriptions of the Kaurava array led by Bhishma in a white helmet, white armour, under a white umbrella, in a silver chariot with his white palm-tree-symbolled flag fluttering. It is not Arjuna but Yudhishthira who is demoralised, vishadamagamad, at the sight of Duryodhana’s huge army and, as with Uttara, it is Arjuna who restores his morale, drawing upon on an ancient god-vs-demon battle narrative whose lesson is, ‘Victory is where Krishna is’ (VI.23). The next section is abruptly cut off at the seventh stanza with the exultant adversaries about to clash and the Gita begins, continuing till the fifth stanza of section 43. In the sixth shloka we find armies surging forward, as though the 20 sections in-between had not occurred, and are treated to a unique spectacle: Yudhishthira steps down armourless and weaponless from his chariot and proceeds on foot to the Kuru elders! Were Arjuna’s vishada and laying down the bow suggested by this? Each patriarch repeats a formulaic phrase: ‘a man is the slave of need’I am tied to the Kauravas by need’I say this like a eunuch.’ Later Drona and Bhishma recall the bread eaten in Duryodhana’s house (VI.77.71; 109.29). As with Krishna and Kunti’s master stroke of strategy that succeeded in weakening Karna’s animosity, this action of Yudhishthira’s wins him a signal moral advantage. By obtaining the blessings of the elders for victory, Yudhishthira fulfils Gandhari’s prophetic warning to her son in theUdyoga Parva that though the elders may fight for him with their bodies, their hearts and good wishes will ever be with the Pandavas. At this stage Krishna once again approaches Karna, trying to persuade him that since he will not fight so long as Bhishma is alive, he might as well fight on the Pandava side. Karna resolutely refuses to be part of such sophistry and undermine his friend in any way. Then, in a final master stroke aiming at demoralising the enemy, Yudhishthira openly invites defection and succeeds with Yuyutsu, born of a Vaishya handmaid to the blind king, of whom we have not heard anything till now. The reader would expect Vikarna, who spoke up so powerfully against his elders in the dicing match, to have responded instead, but his fraternal loyalty obviously holds, ending finally when Bhima reluctantly kills him. In the Drona Parva we suddenly find Dhritarashtra revealing a heroic feature about Yuyutsu that is never mentioned elsewhere: there was a bitter six-month-long battle in Varanavata where he remained undefeated and slew the Kashi king’s son, a notorious philanderer (VII.10.58-60). He is specifically mentioned by Krishna as severely rebuking the Kauravas for rejoicing after killing a boy (VII.72.63-67).

Sanjaya, in VI.9.74-75, uses an image that recurs at significant points of the epic, spoken by different protagonists: ‘Like dogs snarling over a chunk of meat,/These rajas are squabbling over this earth./And they cannot be satiated.’ The dice-game image is brought in towards the end (VI.115.45): ‘It was victory or defeat, with Bhishma as the stake,/It was a game of dice played by two armies.’ Drona shows Duryodhana the battle in terms of the dice-game (VII.130.20-21) with warriors as gamblers, arrows the dice, Jayadratha the pawn.

As with Abhimanyu later, Arjuna is unaware of his son Iravat’s death till informed by Bhima and then he tells Krishna that though he may be branded a weakling (VI.96.5, 11):

‘This has been a heinous war’
all for the sake of wealth’
we have killed for property!
Dhik! Shame on the wealth that comes
from killing kinsmen!…
But this killing of my kinsmen
is not to my liking.’

This could be referring to Krishna’s reprimand in the Gita. He curses the Kshatriya code and himself again in abject disillusionment after knocking Kripa unconscious:

‘Is there anyone
Like me
Hating a Brahmin and an acharya?…
My karma today deserves that hell’ (VII.147.16-27).

Following Drona’s death, he laments that the little of life left to them will be stained permanently because they killed their guru

‘to enjoy briefly a kingdom’
Because I too
Lusted for a kingdom
I failed to prevent
The murder of my guru.
Head lowered in shame,
I will go to hell’ (VII.196.46, 53).

This is hardly the Gita’s ‘sthitaprajna’ in practice! Arjuna will repeat this sentiment to Duhshala in the Ashvamedhika Parva blaming the warrior’s way of life in the same terms. In its 15th verse the Drona Parva states that the cousins re-examined Kshatriya dharma after Bhishma died, each condemning his sva-dharma. This introspection recurs after Abhimanyu’s death with Dhritarashtra exclaiming (VII.33.23), ‘How terrible is this war-code called Kshatriya dharma/that makes power-hungry men kill a small boy!’

In section 23, at Krishna’s instance, Arjuna invokes Durga for blessing him with victory, a passage occurring only in the Bengali and Devanagari manuscripts. The episode is repeated at greater length in the Mahabhagavata Purana where Krishna is an incarnation of Kali or Bhadrakali (the first appellatives by which Arjuna invokes Durga in the epic passage). Arjuna’s invocation resembles that in the Devi Mahatmya and markedly differs from Yudhishthira’s to Durga in the Virata Parva, where she is addressed as Krishna’s sister and of Nandagopa’s family.

Day 1 goes in favour of Duryodhana. We, who usually shrug the eldest Pandava away as a pacifist, are surprised to find Yudhishthira complaining to Krishna that Arjuna fights like uninvolved spectator (possibly following the letter, not the spirit of detached karma!), indifferently watching the destruction of own forces. That is when he announces that Dhrishtyadumna will command the Pandava forces and all ponder the meaning of the announcement till he explains that Dhrishtyadyumna is ordained by Shambhu to slay Drona. We now come to know that Drupada’s black-magic abhichara rite had invoked Shambhu, producing Dhrishtadyumna and Draupadi. Similarly, in the Drona Parva we are told that Shikhandi was the result of Shiva’s boon to Drupada for a Bhishma-killing son as was Bhurishrava to Somadatta to take revenge on Shini. The shadow of destructive Rudra looms over Kurukshetra. Bhima is specifically compared to Shankar, Rudra, and trident wielding Shiva during his grisly exploits, as is Arjuna repeatedly in his destructive fury. Significantly, Ashvatthama is identified with Rudra, looking forward to the horrific carnage he perpetrates in the Sauptika Parva. The climactic touch comes at the end of the Drona Parva where Arjuna tells Vyasa that though the opponents thought they were being routed by him, it was really a dazzling male form, trident in hand, who preceded him and created havoc whichever way he turned. Vyasa reveals that this was the primal lord, Ishana-Shankara, carried by Durga in her arms in the form of a babe with five tufts of hair. The myth of Barbarika rings a change on this when his bodiless head tells the Pandavas’who are disputing over who routed the enemies’that he saw the Sudarshana discuss whizzing through the battlefield, beheading thousands, and Draupadi in Kali form running behind, drinking up all the blood.

The first major casualty is Virata’s son Shveta who, due to some differences with his father, sought refuge with Pandavas (VI.49.4-5). Shveta must have had some connection with eastern India as the episode is not known beyond a few Bengali and Devanagari mss and the 11th century Old Javanese recension. On the second day there is an interesting elaboration on the charioteer’s role and on Bhima’s grisly swordsmanship. We learn that eastern India was renowned for its war elephants and had no liking for Krishna and his instruments the Pandavas. The Kalinga and Vanga kings and Bhagadatta of Pragjyotishpura (Assam) are important allies of Duryodhana. The Tamraliptas (today’s Tamluk in West Bengal) are clubbed along with mlecchas like Shakas, Kiratas, Daradas, Barbaras’all on the Kaurava side. Finding Satyaki unstoppable, Duryodhana finally turns loose the hill-tribes (Daradas, Tanganas, Khasas, Lampakas, Kulindas) expert in stone-warfare, of which both armies are ignorant (section 121), but Satyaki routs them. Indeed, this parva becomes a celebration of Yadava prowess, represented by Abhimanyu and Satyaki who equal Arjuna and Krishna in their battlecraft. Krishna, seeing Satyaki chariotless and about to face Karna, provides him his own chariot driven by Daruka.

On Day 2 Yudhishthira advises adopting the krauncha formation, a never before used vyuha, and the day goes to the Pandavas. This is the only occasion on which all the conches of the Pandavas are named (VI.51.26-27): Krishna’s Panchajanya, Arjuna’s Devadatta, Bhima’s Paundra, Yudhishthira’s Anantavijaya, Nakula’s Sughosha, Sahadeva’s Manipushpaka. Day 3 sees a breakdown of the codes of battle, which recurs on the 10th day, with confusion prevailing and no quarter given regardless of the status of the opponent. Arjuna uses a celestial missile for the first time: Mahendra, followed by Vayavya and then Aindra. The reason is that Krishna, losing patience with Arjuna’s half-hearted fighting, leaps off the chariot and rushes to kill Bhishma, the discuss miraculously appearing in his hand. Without turning a hair, the patriarch welcomes him, glorying in dying at the hands of the Lord of all:

ehyehi devesa jagannivasa namohastu te madhava cakrapa’e
prashya ma’ pataye lokanatha rathottama’ sarvasara’ya sa’khye

The incident is repeated on Day 9, where the description is less elaborate and more realistic with Krishna flourishing his charioteer’s whip. Bhishma’s welcome to Krishna is less exaggerated:

ehyehi pundarikak’a devadeva namohastu te
mamadya satvatasre’ha patayasva mahahave

This later incident must have been the inspiration for a later Vaishanavite composer to insert the episode, with miraculous embellishments, into the third day. Krishna breaks his vow again in the Drona Parva when, to save Arjuna, he receives Bhagadatta’s Vaishnava missile on his chest, where it turns into a celestial garland. To assuage Arjuna’s bruised ego, he recounts the vyuha doctrine of his four-fold existence’ a sure indication of interpolation. Following Drona’s murder, the infuriated Ashvatthama releases the invincible Narayana missile which is neutralised by Krishna. The name of the weapon and Krishna’s intervention bereft of any miraculous transformation indicates that this was the incident on which the Vaishnava missile incident was modelled subsequently to introduce a miraculous element and deify Krishna.  

On Day 4 Bhima makes his first kill of the Dhartarashtras: Senapati, followed by seven more. When Duryodhana asks Bhishma to explain the secret behind the Pandavas’ success, he is told about the Pancharatra cult. Bhishma’s account of the creation of the four varnas harks back to the hymn to Purusha in theRig Veda. An intriguing reference is made to Vishnu killing only Madhu, with no mention of Kaitava, and being called Janardana, the people-churner (it could be a reference to the wielding of the rod of punishment to control the wicked, which Arjuna later celebrates as the foundation of dharma). Duryodhana is uncharacteristically impressed and thinks highly of Krishna and the Pandavas’again a sure sign of interpolation..  The 3rd day incident, Bhishma’s discourse to Duryodhana, Dhritarashtra extolling Krishna’s divinity in VII.11 and, at the end of this book, Ashvatthama being similarly impressed by Vyasa’s explanation that Krishna is Narayana who is Rudra are obvious Vaishnavite interpolations.

Sanjaya minces no words in telling home truths to Dhritarashtra, reading him a lecture (VI.65.22-26) in the law of karma’ reaping as he has sown, suffering the fruits of his own misdeeds, tasting the fruit in this life and later. Often he repeats his admonition that the king is like a dying man refusing medicine and that he ought not to blame his son now for his own sins of commission and omission. He also explains that Krishna decided war was the only option on finding that despite his proposing peace the blind king was devious in dharma and, motivated by envy of the Pandavas, persisted in making crooked plans against them (VII.114.51-53).

In the battle descriptions certain formulaic metaphors occur frequently, such as of son and father, brothers, nephew and maternal uncle non-recognition and mutual slaughter, the horrific river of blood, wounded warriors looking like flames-of-the-forest etc. The reader is often taken aback by Vyasa’s use of conceits where two completely different objects are brought into violent conjunction: an arrow stuck in the forehead is like a lotus on a long stem; elephants drag chariots as if uprooting lotuses in a lake, the Kaurava army is vulnerable as a tipsy girl on a highway or standing senseless like a lovely limbed weak willed girl, the battlefield is as beautiful as the autumn sky flecked with red sunset clouds, or a haunting sight, glowing everywhere with softly flaming fires of blood stained armour and gold ornaments; littered with handsome faces with well-trimmed beards and ornamented, the earth looks like the sky scintillating with stars or like a lovely girl adorned with multiple jewels, strewn with golden girdles, glittering necklaces, gold-plated darts, golden breastplates. Arrows speed gracefully like flocks of birds settling on a tree with delicious fruit or slide into a body like swans gliding into the waters of a lake, or shoot up like birds from trees at early dawn. The princes slain by Abhimanyu are like five-year-old mango trees about to fruit shattered by a severe storm. Warriors pierced with golden-feathered arrows are like trees full of glow-worms. The transcreator lends a fine Shakespearean touch to the description of supine heroes who, ‘though dead, looked as if they were alive’ (VI.96.54). An unusual image surfaces on Day-9 of the Pandavas chasing Bhishma like the Asuras attacking Indra and, conversely, like the gods staring at Danava Vipracitti, facing Bhishma who is Death (VI.108.34, 39). The ineffable beauty of the description of exhausted warriors lying asleep and of the rising moon spreading its radiance over the battlefield (VII.184) is brought into violent clash with the blood-letting that follows. There is the unique passage of pathos embedded in the narrative when Duryodhana recalls the sweet childhood days Satyaki and he shared when he faces him in battle.

In VI.110.31 we come across a lost myth of Indra fighting the Asura Maya. The duel with Shrutayudha becomes the occasion for recounting the mini-myth of Varuna’s wondrous mace (Krishna’s Kaumodaki mace and Sudarshana chakra are also Varuna’s gifts). The brief battle with Shrutayu that follows has one of those extremely rare instances of Arjuna fainting (VII.93.12-19). VI.90 supplements the account of the Arjuna-Ulupi romance in the Sabha Parva. In recounting Iravat’s history, Sanjaya states that Garuda having killed Ulupi’s husband, she was in despair. Her father Airavata gave her to Arjuna, whom she desired. Iravat, abandoned by his wicked maternal uncle who hated Arjuna (possibly Takshaka), met his father in Indra’s realm and was requested to join the war. Curiously, Babhruvahana does not join his father in the battle. Iravat is the first Pandava scion to die, killed by the rakshasa Alambusha in the form of a garuda. Iravat is a very important figure in the south Indian cult of Draupadi, where, because his body carries all the auspicious signs, he becomes a willing sacrifice prior to the war to ensure the victory of the Pandavas. In the Drona Parva first Arjuna and then Bhima lose their sons, while Ghatotkacha loses his son Anjanaparva to Ashvatthama.

There is a misconception that Abhimanyu fighting six warriors alone is a unique situation. We find Bhurishravas taking on Satyaki’s ten sons simultaneously and beheading the lot. Bhishma is attacked by 6 or 7 warriors together frequently. In VI.86.16 there is a circular stranglehold of chariots around Bhishma, similar to what Abhimanyu faces. The difference is that where, in the Bhishma Parva, Abhimanyu pierces through the Kaurava ranks, leading Draupadi’s sons, the five Kekayas (sons of Kunti’s sister) and Dhrishtaketu in a needle-point formation to rescue Bhima, the latter is unable to replicate this in the Drona Parva where Jayadratha frustrates all attempts to aid Abhimanyu.

The special regard Krishna has for Arjuna is brought out more than once in these two books. In VI.107.36 Krishna tells Yudhishthira:

‘Arjuna is my sakha
my love-and-loving friend,
my relative and pupil.
I will cut off my flesh
for Phalguna.’

In VII.79 he tells Daruka that the world means nothing to him without Arjuna and whoever injures him, harms Krishna, for Arjuna is half of him. In VII.182.43-44 he tells Satyaki that his parents, brothers, his own life are less dear to him than Arjuna, and that he would not want to possess at the cost of losing Arjuna something more precious than all the three worlds. An interesting parallel to this duo (often called the two Krishnas on one chariot, as in VI.81.41) occurs when Dhrishtadyumna exclaims (VI.77.31-34) that life is meaningless without Bhima, ‘my sakha, my loved-and-loving friend, my devoted bhakta as I am his’. Like Arjuna in the Virata Parva, Dhristadyumna uses a special weapon to make the Kauravas fall senseless (VI.77.48).

At the end of Day 8, which goes very badly for Duryodhana, with many of his brothers slaughtered, he reproaches Karna for standing aside. Defying the much-touted virtue of undying loyalty to his friend, Karna’s pride takes precedence and he stands firm on not joining so long as Bhishma fights. It is this egotistical obduracy that erodes whatever chances Duryodhana has to win the war in the first ten days. Karna’s much-vaunted heroism stands exposed as he has to flee the field several times. Even Dhritarashtra exclaims that he has lost every battle fought against the Pandavas, ‘But my stupid son seems to be unaware of this’ (VII.133.9). Kripa mocks him for his empty bombast and when he insults Kripa, Ashvatthama pounces on him with drawn sword recounting how he has often been routed (VII.158).

Bhishma is truly a man at war with himself: he will neither kill any Pandava, nor will he stand aside from fighting for Duryodhana. He insults Karna grossly, ensuring that he opts out of battle. It is as if he were hoping to cause so much slaughter that, exhausted, both sides will agree to disengage. Otherwise why should he go on killing for the longest period among any of the Kaurava generals? Day 10 is a deeply moving narrative, with Bhishma repeatedly urging Yudhishthira to kill him as he has lost the desire to live (VI.115.15). The battle rages around him as if the patriarch were the stake in a dice-game. Turning away from Shikhandi, Bhishma smiles and tells Duhshasana that the arrows wounding him mortally must be Arjuna’s and cannot be Shikhandi’s for they strike his weakest spots deep, ‘Like baby-crabs emerging/after cannibalizing their mother/they are devouring me’ (VI.119.66). Ultimately, there is not even two-fingers-breadth of exposed skin left on his body!

Curiously, Dhritarashtra and Gandhari make no move to meet the fallen patriarch until the war gets over, which argues for his having been killed as indeed is often stated quite bluntly. At the end of the Bhishma Parva and again at the beginning of the Drona Parva Sanjaya describes Karna rushing to meet the fallen Bhishma to get his permission to fight. The patriarch unveils for him the secret of his parentage which Karna already knows from Krishna. Bhishma considers his birth adharmika,jatohasi dharmalopena. It may very well indicate that the story of the god Surya engendering him was not believed by the patriarch who frowned upon this instance of unwed motherhood. Bhishma tells Karna that such a birth warped his discrimination so that he chose to mix with the mean and was jealous of the noble (VI.122.12-13). Though Arjuna’s equal, these undermined him. This is substantiated in the Drona Parva when Arjuna berates Karna for his ignoble conduct in abusing Bhima although the latter had never spoken a harsh word to him despite uncharioting him repeatedly:

‘You must have a low mind
To speak as you do.
You say things
That should never be said.’ (VII.148.19-23)

Karna’s response to Bhishma is that of a tragic hero: fate is inevitable, struggle cannot overcome it, but he is obliged to pay with his life for the favours received. When Duryodhana complains about Drona’s failures, Karna’s reply sounds surprisingly like Krishna’s to Arjuna on performing kartavyam karma:

‘Do your duty,
And do it fearlessly.
Whether what you do
Succeeds or fails’
That’s in the hands of fate.’ (VII.152.31)

Envy of the much younger Arjuna is the driving force of his being and he remains obsessively true to his ‘sva-dharma’ of being the egotistical sublime till the bitter end. We recall that Duryodhana had declared him ruler of Anga, but here we come across Bhima killing the ruler of Anga who is called a ‘mleccha’ (VII.26.17).

Duryodhana’s soldiers can only imagine Karna as Bhishma’s replacement, not Drona. Karna discerns that he may not be universally acceptable as the commander and, for once swallowing his pride and listening to reason, advises the reluctant Duryodhana to install as Bhishma’s successor the guru: ‘Ear-long white hair,/shyama-dark the complexion, eighty-five years old,/Drona moved like a boy of sixteen’ (VII.125.73)’a description Sanjaya repeats when he is beheaded (VII.192.64-65). With this the horrors of war abruptly exacerbate. The first warning bell is rung with Satyaki beheading the armless, meditating Bhurishrava, presaging the manner of Drona’s death. That incident reveals that strong opposing views prevailed about the Vrishnis. When Arjuna suddenly intervenes in the duel and slices off his arm, Bhurishravas is astonished at his uncharacteristic conduct and attributes it to his keeping company with the Vrishnis and Adhakas who ‘are mean and vicious’ and making them his models (VII.143.16). Sanjaya counters this by extolling the nobility and virtue of the Vrishnis to explain their invincibility to Dhritarashtra (VII.144.26-32). Then there is the horrendous battle at night, fought by lamp-torch-and-moon-light. Next, six heroes combine to kill a sixteen year old. One cannot believe one’s ears when the revered guru advises Karna to cut Abhimanyu’s bow and armour from behind so that he can be killed. We recall how he played favourites, disabling Ekalavya and giving his own son special coaching, used his pupils to grab half of Drupada’s kingdom (if he was such a mighty hero, why did he not do this by himself?), uttered no protest when Draupadi was abused. Bhima brutally tells him to his face that, obsessed by love for his son, he forgot his dharma of ahimsa to chase after wealth and killed thousands (VII.192.38-40). Drona is no different from Dhritarashtra in this respect. This is the person after whom India has named the award for its best sports coach! His brother-in-law Kripa (a foundling reared by Shantanu) is no better. Despite being the first guru of the family, not only does he join in the killing of the youth, but assists Ashvatthama in the horrific carnage of sleeping combatants. Strangely, Vyasa has not a single word to say against Kripa!

After Jayadratha is killed, a gruesome picture of the battlefield is described to Arjuna by Krishna (VII.148) which is comparable to that in the Stri Parva. Ghatotkacha and Alambusha’s chariots are in a class apart, made of iron, of huge size, drawn by massive beasts and their duels are truly horripilating. Sauti may seem to be nodding when Alambusha, who has already been pummelled to death Bhima-style by Ghatotkacha (VII.109) is again beheaded by Satyaki (VII.140). However, in the latter instance, the rakshasa killed is ‘Alabala’ according to the Critical Edition.

There is no epic evidence for the popular tale of Abhimanyu learning the secret of penetrating the discus formation while in Subhadra’s womb. Arjuna’s behaviour is most curious. He knows that his primary responsibility is to prevent Yudhishthira from being captured by Drona, yet when the Trigarta suicide-squad challenges him, he suddenly announces his vow never to refuse a challenge and follows them far away, resulting in Abhimanyu’s death. Not only does Krishna remain silent, but later he praises Arjuna, as never elsewhere, for surpassing the gods in killing, single-handed, innumerable samshaptakas. Satyaki, Arjuna’s disciple, similarly suddenly recalls a vow to justify killing the meditating Bhurishrava. However, when Arjuna announces his vow to kill Jayadratha before sunset, Krishna does reprimand him for the rash decision taken without consulting him. In his dreams, Arjuna himself becomes apprehensive that he will fail and must commit suicide. This becomes the occasion for Krishna taking him to Shiva to obtain the Pashupata weapon. Once again at a critical juncture Shiva intervenes. However, it is a weapon never used except by Drona and is then ineffective! Similarly, when Ghatotkacha flings the spike-studded Rudra weapon at Karna, he throws it back at him incinerating the rakshasa’s chariot.

Then comes the gut-churning killing of Abhimanyu, grandfather of the yajamana of the snake-holocaust during which the epic is recited. The reader should note that there has been no lamentation earlier when Abhimanyu killed Duryodhana’s son Lakshmana. On Drona’s advice, Karna slices the youth’s bow from behind, Kritavarma kills his horses, Kripa slays his two escorts, Drona slices his sword, Karna shreds his shield, all jointly splinter the wheel he wields. Undeterred, Abhimanyu’Bhishma-like resembling a porcupine’attacks Ashvatthama who leaps away from his mace that pulverises his horses and both escorts. It is particularly puzzling that Duhshasana’s son, who smashes to pulp the recumbent Abhimanyu’s skull, should remain nameless and Vyasa never tells us what happened to him. One of the opponents Abhimanyu routs is of interest because of a possible historical reference: Paurava, whom van Buitenen links to Alexander’s Poros. Another instance is when Satyaki routs the Shurasenas referred to by Megasthenes (VII.141.9). In a rare instance of puranic irony, the Surya dynasty of Ayodhya is wiped out by Abhimanyu, incarnation of Chandra’s son, when he slays its last descendant Brihadbala. If we keep in mind theAmsavatarana, several conundrums surface where divinities clash, reminding us of the Iliad: Indra-Arjuna kills Vasu-Bhishma and Surya-Karna; Agni-Dhrishtadyumna kills Brihaspati-Drona and is killed by Shiva-Ashvatthama. Dhritarashtra’s lament over Abhimanyu’s death contains a cryptic statement in which lies the seed of a wonderful tale to be told later by Vidura to console the king that travelled over continents to be known in the Occident as the story of the man in the well told by Barlaam to Josephat: ‘In my eagerness to lick honey/I failed to foresee the fall from the tree.’ (VII.51.15)

The other major incident is Krishna getting Karna to expend his infallible missile on Ghatotkacha. Following this, Vyasa paints for us a picture that is literally horripilating. Krishna roars with joy, hugs Arjuna repeatedly, thumps his back and dances about ‘like a tree swaying in the wind.’ Arjuna is shocked and the explanation provided needs to be read carefully. With his skin-armour and earrings and then with Indra’s weapon, not even Krishna and Arjuna together could have defeated Karna. That is why Krishna did not allow Arjuna to face Karna so far (VII.147.34-35). In that context, section 148 is clearly inconsistent where, hearing Bhima’s complaint of being abused by Karna, Arjuna goes up to him and reads him a lecture on his meanness of mind.  Perceptively, the blind monarch exclaims,

‘When a dog and a boar fight
It’s the hunter who gains.
In the clash between Karna
And Hidimba’s son Ghatotkaca,
The winner was Vasudeva-Krishna.’ (VII.182.8)

To his question as to why Karna never used the infallible missile against Arjuna, Sanjaya responds that night after night he, Duryodhana, Shakuni and Duhshasana used to advise Karna to use it against Krishna, ‘the root of the Pandavas’. But, during battle Krishna invariably confused them by making others face Karna. Sanjaya goes on to narrate that Satyaki also asked Krishna the same question and was told ‘It was I who confused/The son of Radha’ (VII.182.40). Krishna now reveals (VII.181) that in order to lighten the balance of forces against Arjuna, he had systematically got rid of Jarasandha (who could be killed because Balarama destroyed his infallible mace), Shishupala and Ekalavya (this remains an untold tale) and would have killed Ghatotkacha one day since he was a dharma-destroyer:

‘I will destroy all
Who destroy dharma’
Brahma-sacred texts, truth, self-
Control, purity, dharma, humility,
Shri-prosperity, patience, constancy’
Where these are,
There I am.’ (VII.181.28-30)

Krishna’s clarity of focus becomes unnerving at times, as when he urges Arjuna to kill Kritavarma’a Yadava’without consideration of the relationship. At such times we need to recollect that his career began with killing his maternal uncle, then his cousin Shishupala and that Ekalavya who is another cousin of his. Moreover, Kritavarma was a rival of Krishna for the hand of Satyabhama in the Syamantaka gem affair and was one of Abhimanyu’s killers.

As we read the parva it becomes clear that stoking the flames of the Pandava-Dhartarashtra rivalry is the animosity between two classmates, Drona and Drupada, fed by the smouldering embers of the ancient Brahmin-Kshatriya conflict that Parashurama had drowned in lakes of kshatriya blood. When pressed to use his celestial weapons for victory, Drona agrees to do so, though aware that this is ignoble because the warriors are ignorant of these, to please Duryodhana. As he assures Duryodhana (VII.185.12), Parashurama’s disciple Drona gives no quarter to the Panchalas. He kills his arch-enemy Drupada, the three sons of Dhristadyumna and Virata. The major allies of the Pandavas, two of their sons and one grandson are, thus, slaughtered by their guru and his son who will finally exterminate the entire Panchala clan. Curiously enough, none of the Pandavas mention Duhshasana’s son as Abhimanyu’s killer, not even Yudhishthira in his extremely significant complaint to Krishna that instead of attacking Drona, the architect of his son’s death, Arjuna targeted Jayadratha who merely prevented help from reaching the youth. Yudhishthira is so infuriated that he sets out to kill Karna and has to be restrained by no less a person than Vyasa. Thereupon he commands Dhrishtadyumna to kill Drona whom Arjuna always bypasses. It is as though Krishna’s sermon had not happened (which, indeed, may very well be the case in the Ur-text).

Sanjaya has a very revealing comment about the Pandavas when they jointly attack Drona. Bhima and the twins were ‘crooked-minded’ and separated the Kauravas from the guru so that the Panchalas could kill him. Dhrishtadyumna cuts off the head of the meditating preceptor, just as Satyaki had beheaded Bhurishrava. Here it is important to dispel the popular misconception that following Yudhishthira’s lie (it is interesting that Arjuna refused to do so), Drona laid down his weapons. Bankimchandra Chatterjee analysed the text at length in Krishnacharitra (1892) to show that Drona did not stop fighting but began using the Brahmastra unethically. When Drona was rebuked by seers for the heinous act of using celestial weapons against those not conversant with them and directed to discard his weapons, he continued to destroy thirty thousand soldiers and even defeated Dhrishtadyumna who had to be rescued by Bhima. It is only after Bhima abused him for abandoning his dharma out of greed for the sake of his son that he discarded weapons. There was, therefore, no impact of the false news of Ashvatthama’s death. Neither theAnukramanika nor the Parvasamgraha refer to it. Krishna’s narrative to his father in the Ashvamedhika states that the guru was worn out by the strain of battle. On a very sound basis, therefore, Bankimchandra classified it as an interpolation. After his father’s death, Ashvatthama erupts in fury but, disorientated at Arjuna foiling his Agneya missile, he flees to Vyasa for an explanation. Hearing that Narayana, who is Krishna, is one with Rudra (whose devotee Ashvatthama is), he retreats with his army. The parva ends, ominously, with an elaborate paean to Rudra, the shatarudriya chant.

Bhishma’s fall had not led to any acrimony, but now Arjuna bitterly berates his brother-in-law for killing the guru and is soundly reprimanded in return. The Pandava camp now erupts in violence, bursting through the lid of compromise Krishna repeatedly weighs down over the seething cauldron of hidden agenda. Arjuna blames Yudhishthira and Dhristhadyumna who retorts and then Satyaki and the Panchala prince trade insults and come to blows, having to be restrained by Bhima and Sahadeva with great difficulty. Dhrishtadyumna bluntly states that both sides have used adharma as convenient for the sake of victory. Worse is to come in the Karna Parva where the smouldering resentment among the brothers, only a spark of which emerged during the game of dice, bursts out into the open.

The Complete Virata and Udyoga Parvas of the Mahabharata: transcreated from Sanskrit by Padma Shri Prof. P.Lal, Writers Workshop, Kolkata pp.407 and 962. Hardback Rs.400 and 1000, flexiback Rs.300 and 600 with 80 and 130 pages respectively of facsimile reproductions showing the extensive revisions and additions; special limited edition, numbered and signed, with original hand-painted pata-chitra Rs.800 and 1500.

Change of scenario, shifting of the spotlight from one protagonist to another, a sudden speeding up of pace— all these come to the fore in Vyasa’s narrative art in the Virata and Udyoga Parvas, the fourth and fifth books of the Mahabharata. In the Sambhava sub-parva of the first book, Arjuna took over centre stage from Bhima-the-rescuer till the focus shifted to Yudhishthira in the shattering climax of the gambling match. In the forest exile, the prime attention swayed between Bhima and Arjuna with the eldest brother and Draupadi anchoring the centre. When we come to the incognito phase, the spotlight stays on Bhima, turning only at the end to highlight the grotesque figure of Brihannala laying low Duryodhana’s forces.

 

It has become fashionable, since van buitenen’s translation and Peter Brook’s dramatisation, to label the fourth book of the Mahabharata as Vyasa’s udyoga at burlesque— all because the brothers and their wife assume low class disguises followed by a theatrical victory over enemy forces. On study, however, patterns emerge that continue and reiterate themes articulated in the earlier books. There is much anguish, considerable trauma and little of fun-and-games (Kichaka caressing Bhima disguised as a woman; Brihannala, skirts flapping and braid flying, chasing the fleeing Uttara— but in both cases the momentary hilarity is transformed into brutal blood-letting). In this fourth book, Vyasa looks before and after; there are interesting parallels and contrasts.

The attack by the forces of Hastinapura, with which the fourth book of the epic climaxes, is a reiteration of a see-saw conflict over succession between the cousins—one set whose parentage is unquestioned and the other who suffer from dubious fatherhood—that began with the mountain-dwelling Pandavas finding a royal home but having to escape the flaming house-of-lac and live disguised as wandering Brahmins, as they have to again years later. Their fortunes turned with Arjuna first obtaining a gift of wondrous horses from a Gandharva and then winning Draupadi. A skirmish followed with the frustrated princely suitors, prefiguring Kurukshetra, that was beaten back by Bhima (who threw Shalya down) and Arjuna (from whom the awed Karna withdrew) and was dissipated by Krishna who, in his very first appearance, commanded immediate compliance. The glory of Indraprastha and the royal Rajasuya sacrifice crowned the restoration through the removal of two major obstacles—Jarasandha and Shishupala—and the creation of the fateful Maya-sabha that fed Duryodhana’s envy afresh, leading directly to the gambling hall.

 

A second reversal of fortunes occurred in two stages: Arjuna enjoying a long self-imposed exile in which Krishna played a major role at the end; and the gambling away of Indraprastha twice over, with Krishna absent (in the Vana Parva he says that had he been present none of this would have occurred). These and the outraging of Draupadi’s modesty sowed the seeds of inevitable fratricide.

The next reversal occurred in the forest, with the advantage going to the Pandavas in rescuing Duryodhana from the Gandharvas while Karna fled the scene, as he does again in the Virata Parva. Krishna had no role. In this incident Vyasa replicates a Vedic motif absent in Valmiki—cattle as prime wealth—repeating it in the Virata Parva once again with Duryodhana who assumes the role of the Panis vis-a-vis the Indra-Pandavas.

There is a graded shift from encounters with demonic beings in the forest starting with Hidimb the cannibal, then the terrifying Kirmira, both strongly reminiscent of Valmiki’s Rakshasas, followed by Draupadi—the “Shri” (good fortune) of the Pandavas—being abducted first by Jatasura disguised Ravana-like as a Brahmin, and again by the human Jayadratha. The Pandavas win her back promptly, with even Yudhishthira fighting for the first time in the second event. In Kurukshetra, Jayadratha, released magnanimously by Yudhishthira, will defeat all of them and cause Abhimanyu’s death. Krishna continues to be off-scene. The mysterious mythic worlds of the forest—where lakes bloom with supernal blossoms guarded by demons; where an ape and a python can immobilise invincible Bhima—now give way to the rough-and-tumble of urban life in Virata’s city.

In Virata’s court they assume the disguises of a Brahmin gambler, a cook-cum-wrestler, a dance-and-music tutor with “a long reed”, a groom, a cowherd, and a chambermaid, which Dumezil tried hard to fit into his tri-functional Indo-European paradigm. Arjuna’s eunuch-hood and its verification by young women inversely parallels Shikhandi’s, while his sex-reversal parallels the Yaksha Sthunakarna’s. Draupadi’s modesty is outraged for the fourth time and she is even kicked in the court, with two of her husbands and the king remaining silent— a parallel of the Hastinapura scene. As this occurs during the Brahma festival, van Buitenen equates it with Saturnalia and Holi, which socially sanction the licentiousness that he finds inspiring the parva. Draupadi succeeds in getting Kichaka killed, but is abducted yet again to be burnt alive with his corpse. She calls out the secret names of the Pandavas, all of which are linked to the “Jaya” that is a synonym for Vyasa’s composition. Of these only “Vijaya” is a real name, being Arjuna’s, who does not respond. It is Bhima who, once more, saves Draupadi.

Now Duryodhana launches a full-scale attack featuring all the heroes who later figure in Kurukshetra. The entire lot is knocked unconscious, except Bhishma, by Brihannala (presaging Shikhandi in the Great War). Krishna is absent. Indeed, the disguised Arjuna is to the terrified and demoralised Bhuminjaya-Uttara what sakha Krishna becomes for him in dharmakshetre-kurukshetre, even to the extent of the significances of the many names/vibhutis of Arjuna/Krishna and the words in which Uttara begs pardon for having addressed Brihannala lightly. To believe that without Krishna the Pandavas are nothing is to reveal an extremely superficial reading of Vyasa’s complicated epic narrative.

A remarkable feature of this book, brought out in the transcreator’s insightful preface, is the breathtaking speed at which the narration proceeds. Prof. Lal’s effort to provide an English approximation of Sauti’s recitation is most satisfying. After the slow-moving, elaborate descriptions of forest life and holy pilgrimages in the preceding book, the complete change of scenario to the cut-and-thrust of court life is so well transcreated that the orality of the epic comes through forcefully. Vividly we listen to different voices speaking, the exchanges between apprehensive Sudeshna and pleading Sairandhri, the gossiping maids and humiliated Draupadi, lustful Kichaka and desperate Panchali, boastful Uttara and flustered Brihannala, sobbing Draupadi, unmoved Kanka, timid Virata and furious Ballava, the giggling girls and pig-tailed Brihannala.

In contrast, the Udyoga Parva presents a “heady mix of sincerity and duplicity”, with the spoken word holding us in thrall. “Nowhere”, writes Prof. Lal, “(is it) more charming and cunning, more straight and double-edged, more selfish and altruistic…A wonderful exercise in public relations and double-speak.” In this “Vyasan U.N. of sorts” each speaker is a mouthpiece, exploiting language to the maximum for pushing a case, irrespective of his personal beliefs, both sides bent on war. Such posturing can only result in the Ragnarok of Kurukshetra. As the fulminations die down, Vyasa introduces a wondrous vignette: Krishna-Karna-Kunti face-to-face, leaving it to us, Prof. Lal points out, to figure out where the moral rectitude lies. Is Karna right or Kunti; is Kunti the “real” mother or Radha; is Krishna right in tempting Karna with Draupadi? Buddhadeb Bose, in Pratham Partha, added another layer to the scenario by making Draupadi approach Karna in person.

Some issues need to be raised: why does the transcreator begin with an invocation saluting Vyasa that is not in the Mahabharata? The original runs: “Bowing to Narayana, and Nara, the best of men, and to the goddess Saraswati, utter Jaya.” A baffling incident in the Virata Parva is Brihannala assuring Uttara that he will not be defiled by climbing up the Sami tree to bring down the weapons because “There is no corpse on this tree” (41.4) although one specifically described as “foul smelling” was tied there by the Pandavas. Incidentally, this is the only place (section 43) where the bows, arrows and swords of the Pandavas are described lovingly in detail. Uttara’s description of a “bee-headed and bee-symbolled” sword (42.11 & 20) is a mistranslation of “shili prishtha shili mukha” which connotes “frog”. The translation of “Bibhatsu” as “the Loathsome One” (44.18) is also questionable, “horrific deed-doer” or “the Horrifier” being more appropriate. Curiously, Arjuna explains it as the opposite: “one who never commits any horror”, just as “Janardana” means “grinder of the people” but signifies the opposite for Krishna. The transcreation of 53.21 contradicts this by reversing Arjuna’s explanation in his announcement to the Kaurava host, “I am dreadful-deed-doer Bibhatsu” (53.21). It is difficult to make out the meaning he gives of being named “Krishna”. According to Lal and Ganguli, Pandu gave it out of affection, as he was “the dark boy of great purity”. Van Buitenen translates, “out of love for that little boy of the dazzling complexion” which provides an interesting link with his soul-mate, Krishna. In 66.13, victorious Arjuna can hardly ask Uttara, “Escape from the field!” The correct translation is “go out through the middle while they are unconscious”, collecting their upper garments, which avenges the Pandavas’ loss of their uttariyas in the gambling hall. When the Hastinapura army departs, Arjuna does not stand “still silently” (66.25). Rather, he follows them momentarily to pay his respects silently (the mode is described in the next two verses). In introducing Draupadi to his father, Uttara does not refer to her as “golden-skinned beauty” (71.18), but as kanakottamangi…nilotpalabha, “bedecked with gold ornaments…glowing like a blue-lotus”.

In the Udyoga Parva, on page 408, verse 19 of section 89 has not been translated. Instead, the last two lines repeat the preceding verse. This should run: “Then Dhritarashtra’s priests greeted Janardana as was proper with offerings of cow, honey-curds and water.” On page 724 verse 9 of section 171, the reference is not to Shishupala, who is long dead, but to Dhrishtaketu. The puzzle of why the sons of Draupadi are not considered for Uttara is answered in the Udyoga Parva where Draupadi speaks of her five sons led by Abhimanyu avenging her. This means they were all born later, which casts an interesting sidelight on what did not happen in Indraprastha during Arjuna’s exile. But Vidura’s prescription that cooked food, salt, honey, milk, curd, ghee, oil, meat, sesame seeds, roots, fruits, red cloth, molasses and perfumes should not be sold is puzzling and unglossed.

Before the incognito exile begins, the priest Dhaumya’s advice on how to behave with kings depicts the ruler as a self-willed tyrant— precisely the converse of the dharma-raja and giving us some idea about the Kshatriyas whom Parashurama destroyed and who are infesting the land once again. It is at the beginning of this book that, for the first time, we find a description of what the ominous dice looked like. Yudhishthira carries golden dice set with sapphires instead of the traditional vibhitaka nuts. Prof. Lal’s transcreation (red and black dice and ivory, blue, yellow, red and white pawns) is more correct than van Buitenen’s dice made of beryl, gold, ivory, phosphorescent nuts and black and red dice. The disguise he chooses is that of a royal sabhastarah, one who spreads the rug for dicing, for which Lal’s “courtier” is hardly adequate. Yudhishthira’s invocation to Durga for protecting them— hailing her first as Yashoda and Nandagopa’s daughter— is clearly a late interpolation coterminous with the Shakta puranas, as is the later prayer to her by Arjuna in the Bhishma Parva.

Curiously, Virata’s capital remains nameless (surmised to be Bairat near Jaipur) and the only place-name we have in his kingdom is Upaplavya where the action of the Udyoga Parva is located. Bhima undertakes to wrestle but not to kill any challenger, yet that is precisely what he does with Jimuta in the Brahma festival that becomes the occasion for Kichaka’s assault on Draupadi whose appearance is described more often in this book than anywhere else by Yudhishthira, Sudeshna and Kichaka. When the attack by the Trigartas is beaten back and Bhima drags Susharma to Yudhishthira addressing him as their slave—as he had done with Jayadratha—the eldest Pandava repeats the mistake by releasing him with foolish magnanimity. Jayadratha and Susharma become the causes of Abhimanyu’s death, one by preventing help from reaching him; the other by keeping Arjuna fully engaged elsewhere.

A hitherto unknown aspect of Draupadi comes to the fore in this book— her ability to use her sexual appeal to get her way. She approaches not Arjuna, knowing his total subservience to Yudhishthira, but the emotional Bhima who has not given a second thought to risking his life on several occasions in the forest to please her fancy. How succinctly yet memorably Vyasa paints the scene: “The room was ablaze with her beauty/and mahatma Bhima’s splendour.” Her seduction of Bhima is an elaborate affair spanning over 200 verses spread over five sections beginning with twining herself around him as he sleeps. The images Vyasa uses are all from the wild, evocative of primal passion: mating forest-born heifer and bull, female and male cranes, lioness and lion, she-elephant and tusker. Beginning with a plangent lament that plays skilfully on his psychology, she administers the coup-de-grace by holding out to him her hands chapped by grinding ointments for the queen. Simple Bhima’s reaction is all that she had hoped for: he covers his face with her hands and weeps in anguish.

Bhima’s attempt at consoling her by quoting examples of five renowned satis of the past includes a reference to Indrasena-Narayani that is of great interest because it looks back to the account Vyasa gives Drupada of Draupadi’s previous birth. Incidentally, Indrasena is also the name of Nala and Damayanti’s daughter who married Mudgala the eldest of five sons of Brhamyashva who founded the Panchalas. A number of manuscripts contain the account of Indrasena-Narayani’s remarkable devotion to her husband, the irascible and leprous sage Maudgalya, which led to her being cursed to have five husbands in the next birth. In the Rig-Veda (10.102) she is valiant Mudgalani, driving her husband Mudgala’s chariot, acting like “Indra’s dart” to win back stolen cattle. A passage in one of the manuscripts refers to yet another previous birth of Draupadi that links her to the Matsyas too. As Shaibya, daughter of Bhumashva, she wedded in a svyamvara the five sons of king Nitantu named Salveya, Shurasena, Shrutasena, Tindusara and Atisara who founded five branches of the Matsyas paralleling the five of the Panchalas.

What finally forces Bhima’s hand, however, is her threat of committing suicide, saying,

“Where will your maha-dharma be then
O my dharma-seeking husbands?
You will keep your word,
but you will lose your wife.”

It is a tactic she repeats with him at the end of the war for avenging the murder of her brothers and sons by Ashvatthama. We are given an extremely rare glimpse into Arjuna’s heart, most sensitively transcreated, when he tells Sairandhri, who reproaches him with enjoying himself in the women’s quarters while she suffers:

“Brihannala has griefs too, terrible ones,
She is fallen into the womb
of an animal.
You will not understand anything of this,
my good girl…
No one can look into the deepest places
of another’s heart.
You don’t know me,
you don’t know what I feel.”

But nowhere does Draupadi ever recall an attempt at stripping her. Even when Ashvatthama berates Duryodhana he mentions her being dragged in her period in a single cloth into the gaming hall, but nothing more. When Arjuna rebukes Karna, it is only for letting a “wicked rascal” drag Panchali into the sabha. In his peace embassy, Krishna accuses the Kauravas of this same dragging by the hair only. Was the attempt to strip added later?

Despite all her fulminations against her eldest husband, the complexity of Draupadi’s relationship is instructive indeed. When Virata gives Yudhisthira a nose-bleed—the first ever physical wound he has suffered—he has only to glance at Sairandhri for her to understand immediately and catch the blood in a vessel so that it does not drop on the ground to cause famine and to hide it from Arjuna’s eyes.

This parva provides a rare chronological clue when Brihannala tells Uttara that Arjuna carried the Gandiva for 65 years (43.7), which could be stated only by someone who knew the end of the epic and has to be an interpolation. In the Udyoga Parva (52.10) Dhritarashtra says that 33 years ago Arjuna burnt the Khandava forest, which provides another indicator.

An information of interest is that a special area was set apart to be ruled by Suta chiefs like Kekaya whose children were Kichaka and Sudeshna. The Suta Karna’s conduct vis-à-vis Draupadi is paralleled here by Suta Kichaka, whose unrestrained passion conflates Duryodhana and Duhshasana, his brothers being like the Dhartarashtras. The Udyoga Parva presents another parallel in Nahusha’s lust for Indrani, recounted by Shalya to the eldest Pandava. Similarly, the laying low of the Kaurava heroes by Brihannala, including the knocking down of Bhishma without his losing consciousness, anticipates Shikhandi’s role in the fall of Bhishma. Arjuna defeating a joint attack by six heroes anticipates the similar attack by them on his son. Arjuna’s double sex change (man-eunuch-man) parallels the conflation of Shikhandi (woman-man) and Sthunakarna (man-woman). Virata’s bewilderment when Arjuna refuses to wed his daughter parallels Drupada’s when faced with the opposite demand regarding Draupadi. Arjuna’s reaction reveals not just his sensitivity to social mores but also Virata’s insensitivity—the exact reverse of the Pandavas’ attitude to Panchali’s polyandric marriage.

Krishna pours Yadava wealth into Pandava coffers thrice over: when they marry Draupadi; when Arjuna marries Subhadra; and at Abhimanyu’s marriage. There might be a patron-bard issue involved in shaping the narration since Janamejaya, to whom the epic is being recited, is Abhimanyu’s grandson.

Shiva plays a crucial role in these critical events: he grants Drupada the boon of getting a Bhishma-killing son and gives Amba the boon of killing Bhishma as a man. It is the leader of his hosts, Kubera, whose attendant bestows his manhood upon Shikhandi. Draupadi’s five husbands are Shiva’s boon, and it is he who curses five Indras to be born as the Pandavas. It is by Shiva’s boon that Jayadratha is able to defeat the Pandavas and get Abhimanyu killed.Shiva blesses Chitravahan’s ancestor with one son per generation because of which Chitrangada is brought up like a son (paralleling Shikhandi), whom Arjuna weds and is killed by his son from her. The gem by virtue of which Ulupi resurrects Arjuna is Shiva’s gift to Shesha-naga. By Shiva’s grace Krishna obtains his son Shamba who becomes the nemesis of the Yadavas.

The peculiar conduct of Bhishma anticipates what he will do in Kurukshetra. He provides Duryodhana with clues to track down the Pandavas and marshals his forces to oppose Arjuna, with no scruples in aiding Duryodhana in rustling cattle! The picture he paints of the kingdom where Yudhishthira resides is a virtual Rama–rajya. The battle with the Trigartas continues into the night as will happen in the Drona Parva. Kripa advises that six of them should jointly attack Arjuna, as Drona will do with Abhimanyu. Uttara’s vainglorious boasting contains an apocryphal reference to his defeating “Surya’s son Karna” (36.6) which is a mistranslation of “Karnam vaikartanam”, the reference being to his slicing off his skin-armour which is shown when Arjuna’s arrow rips through his coat of mail into his flesh (60.26). The same mistake in translation occurred in the passage describing the skirmish between Karna and Arjuna after Draupadi was won in the Adi Parva (192.10) where “Vaikartana” was translated as “Vikartana’s son”.

In the dice-game, Yudhishthira’s response to the assault on Draupadi had been silence. Her independent thinking was never to his liking. Here the gambler Kanka’s response to Kichaka’s kick contains the notorious verse:

“A woman is never free.
As a girl, she is protected by her father;
as wife, by husband;
in old age, by her son.”

He adds a sly dig at Sairandhri, stating that a devoted wife, whatever her sufferings, “never criticises her husband”. What this reveals of his attitude helps us to make sense of his callous explanation at the end of the epic about why Draupadi cannot make it to heaven.

After the Brahma festivities comes the gathering storm. Post-wedding, the Pandavas marshal their allies: Satvata-Vrishnis (Kritavarma and the Bhoja-Andhakas are with Duryodhana), Matsyas, Ushinaras, Chedi, Panchalas, Magadha, Kashi, Kekaya princes (whose forces are with Duryodhana). The southern Pandya king is an intriguing addition till we find that in southern recensions Chitrangada is the Pandya princess, a detail that van Buitenen misses out and hence finds this inexplicable. The split among the Yadavas is now open as Balarama’s sympathies lie with the Dhartarashtras whom he praises and blames Yudhishthira for walking into disaster with open eyes. It becomes quite clear that the Panchalas are the real force behind the anti-Hastinapura alliance, which is why Dhrishtadyumna is designated commander-in-chief. Bhishma’s long account of Amba mentions that much before Drupada organised the ritual for obtaining a Drona-killing son, he had propitiated Shiva demanding a son who would kill Bhishma. Duryodhana does not ask Bhishma why and van Buitenen annotates “there is no reason for Drupada to hate Bhishma.” The reason is given in the Harivansha, appropriately styled the appendix to the epic. After Shantanu’s death, the Panchala usurper Ugrayudha had demanded that Satyavati be handed over to him in exchange for a handsome bride-price. Bhishma slew him; hence the enmity.

Van Buitenen presciently notes that the Pandava alliance stretches from Mathura in the north to Magadha in the east, all along the right banks of the Yamuna and the Ganga. The five villages asked for are also located here. The Kauravas range from the northwest to the southeast along the left bank of the Ganga (Gandhara, Kamboja, Sindhu-Sauvira, Shalva, Madra, Trigarta, Pragjyotisha, and Avanti and Mahishmati near the Vindhyas, southwest of the Pandava coalition). They clash at Kurukshetra on the right bank of the Yamuna. Interestingly, the last scion of Rama’s dynasty, Brihadbala of Koshala, fights against the Pandavas and dies at the hands of Krishna’s nephew.

Besides the geographical conglomeration there is a deeper political impetus that ranges these kingdoms on either side. Sri Aurobindo has pointed out that with the Kauravas are those who refuse to accept Krishna’s new concept of a samrat, an overlord who will bring disparate chiefs under a single umbrella of righteous rule. In Indian history it is these areas which always remained recalcitrant to any type of unification, efforts for which were invariably articulated from the lower reaches of the Ganga.

This parva gives us a unique scene of Krishna and Arjuna with their wives in the inner apartments (section 59.7) when Sanjaya visits them, where even Abhimanyu and the twins do not enter. A preliminary glimpse of this was given before the burning of the forest in the first book when they retired with the women for a riverside picnic. Sanjaya finds them reclining, drinking,

“Keshava’s feet rested in Arjuna’s lap
and mahatma’s Arjuna’s feet
reposed in the laps of Krishnaa
and Satyabhama.”

Krishna makes a significant comment: he is yet to repay the debt owed to Draupadi for not aiding her in distress. There was, therefore, no miraculous supply of garments in the gaming hall and the attempt to disrobe Draupadi is most likely a subsequent addition.

The gathering storm reveals the Kautilyan side of Yudhishthira once he knows that Duryodhana has beaten him to obtaining the alliance of Shalya (a parallel to Arjuna and Duryodhana vying for Krishna as ally). The dharma-raja asks him to betray Karna. He repeats this, after listening to his lengthy account of how Indra regained his throne by perfidy, till he obtains the promise. The story of Nahusha’s fall as a python that Shalya recounts links up with Bhima’s encounter in the Vana Parva and with Yayati’s fall because of overweening pride in the first book. Quite uncharacteristically we find Yudhishthira telling Krishna that artha, wealth, is the basic dharma (72.29), anticipating Arjuna’s celebration of this in the Shanti Parva.

The message Drupada’s priest conveys contains the intriguing assertion that the Pandavas are stronger despite having a smaller army, an unexplained statement that Duryodhana repeats to Bhishma at the beginning of the Gita. Dhritarashtra’s discourse to Sanjaya tells us that Shishupala had a chariot-duel with Krishna and it was no miraculous decapitation inside the Rajasuya sabha. Several manuscripts contain lengthy passages describing this duel at the end of which Krishna uses the chakra.

Sanjaya’s embassy to the Pandavas contains a bitter truth, “neither winning nor losing/will bring any good…what joy will you get/after you have killed (elders and cousins)”. This strikes home at the end of the war when Yudhishthira repeats this realisation and wishes to abdicate. Yudhishthira himself echoes this while urging Krishna’s peace-embassy. This speech includes ominous forecasts about many jointly killing one (Abhimanyu), of survivors grouping to wipe out victors (Ashvatthama). He even uses the image of dogs fighting which Arjuna repeats in the Ashvamedha Parva when lamenting before Duhshala over the loss of kin. It is supremely ironic that Yudhishthira’s reply to Sanjaya repeats his ancestor Yayati’s warning, “kama-and-artha/feed upon desires/like fire upon ghee,” but directs it at the Kauravas, oblivious of his own admission in the Vana Parva that he had gambled hoping to win Hastinapura.

Sanjaya’s reply and Krishna’s—both here and in response to Yudhishthira’s plea to undertake the peace-embassy and in reply to Bhima—state doctrines regarding dharma and karma that anticipate the Gita. Krishna also uses the Anukramanika Parva’s image of two massive trees for the two sides. Sanjaya’s report to Dhritarashtra contains several passages regarding the atman that anticipate the Gita as does Vidura’s advice and the oft-repeated verse,

“Where dharma, truth, simplicity
and humility are,
Govinda-Krishna is.
And where Krishna is, victory is.”

Vidura speaks the famous verse that Krishna repeats in the Hastinapura court:

“For the family, sacrifice a man;
for the village, a family;
for the country, a village;
for the atman,
the world.”

He warns to curb craving, repeating Yayati’s advice from the Adi Parva. Sanata-Sujata, like Krishna, declares that the Vedas and sacrifices cannot liberate men, but knowledge, ascesis and renunciation of attachment can. He also celebrates the thumb-sized, heart-dwelling eternal Purusha.

The Udyoga contains fascinating myths that hark back to the Rig Veda (Indra treacherously murdering Trishira and Vritra), and the Adi (a different version of Vishvamitra’s attainment of Brahminhood; Yayati’s fall from heaven and his daughter Madhavi’s polyandry, the subject of plays by Bhisham Sahni and Girish Karnad and novels by V.S.Khandekar and Chitra Chaturvedi). It creates new myths like that of omnipotent Garuda being foiled in his prey (the theme of Subodh Ghose’s brilliant creation, “Sumukha and Gunakeshi”) and humbled by the female ascetic Shandili; Amba’s sex change (the theme of Chitra Chaturvedi’s recent novel); folk-tales like the mice (Kauravas) and the hermit-cat (Yudhishthira). We also come across lost myths, like the reference to Divodasa making love to Madhavi as Narada did to Satyavati, Shukra to Shataparva and Pulastya to Pratichya.

Duryodhana is the only Kaurava clear-sighted enough to realise that it is Krishna who seeks to destroy them and make Yudhishthira the samrat. Krishna, like Rama, has no pretensions to divinity and tells Arjuna plainly that he does all that is humanly possible but cannot alter what destiny (daiva) dictates (79.5-6). It is quite a surprise to discover that the only husband of Panchali to urge war is not Bhima, as one would expect, but Sahadeva, the youngest. No wonder Draupadi, feeling let down, says that her old father, brothers and adolescent sons will avenge her. That is when Krishna declares his vow in implacable terms recalling Devavrata’s:

“The Himavant hills may move,
the earth shatter
in a hundred pieces, heaven collapse;
my promise stands.”

Yet he undertakes the embassy so that none may say that he never tried to stop the world-destroying war. Unfortunately, despite this, that is precisely what Gandhari accuses him of and curses him.

The two Krishna-Kunti meetings expose the anguish behind Pritha’s iron façade. She blames her father most of all for her misfortunes, beginning with giving her away in childhood “like money squandered by a rich man”, and also holds her father-in-law responsible for her griefs of which the greatest is the insult to Draupadi. The message she conveys through her nephew to her sons is an elaborately structured rhetorical exercise that moves deeply while trumpeting a resounding call to arms. Its highlight is the exhortation of Vidula to her defeated son Sanjaya that Sri Aurobindo translated into English for rousing the martial spirit in Indian youth against foreign domination.

Duryodhana’s response to the embassy via Uluka has interesting convoluted logic: he refused to compromise so that the Pandavas would be motivated to wipe their mother’s tears with a victory and to prove that they were true Kshatriyas, not mere loud-mouths! He is not in the least impressed with Krishna’s cosmic manifestation (for which we have been prepared in the Vana Parva by Lomasha’s description of Parashurama seeing the cosmos in Rama and Bhima seeing it in Hanuman, as Dr.Vasudev Poddar has pointed out), which he dismisses as magic that he himself can replicate. His words even echo the message Kunti sent her sons (“the reason for which a kshatriya lady gives birth to a son is here”). But, in the allies he enumerates he makes a slip by including the Matsyas who are on the other side (160.103). His words fly straight to the mark as he points out that the Pandavas were saved from slavery not by Bhima’s mace and Arjuna’s Gandiva but by Parshati-Panchali.

Krishna’s embassy contains quite a few surprises. He announces that the Pandavas are willing to have Duryodhana as the crown-prince and his father as the ruler if they get back Indraprastha (124.60). There has been no mention of this in the consultations in Upaplavya. Similarly, he offers Karna overlordship with the added attraction of bedding Draupadi. Her reaction, had she got to know of this, offers rich scope for a creative writer.

Most unexpected is Karna’s foreknowledge about his own death and the annihilation of the Kauravas. He paints a vivid picture of the war in terms of a ritual sacrifice and narrates a dream that is an exact parallel of Avindhya’s portentous dream in the Rama-katha (Vana Parva) of Lakshmana seated on a heap of bones, gulping boiled milk-and-honey rice. Buddhadeb Bose’s play, The First Partha is a gripping recreation of the Karna-Krishna-Draupadi and Karna-Kunti encounters with fascinating innovations offering new insights going well beyond Tagore and Vyasa.

As the book ends, the Kaurava ranks split wide open. Bhishma succeeds in exploiting Karna’s hubris so that his pride overcomes his concern for Duryodhana and, Achilles-like he sulks in his tents, opting out of the war, warning that the army’s morale is being sapped by Bhishma who ought to be dismissed.

This fifth book is unique because of two possible historical references. Vidura’s warning about an angry Brahmin destroying a kingdom could be a reference to Chanakya and the Nandas and dates the final text of the epic as post-Mauryan, tallying with Hiltebeitel’s thesis in Rethinking the Mahabharata. There is also a great chariot-hero Paurava named by Drupada with the kings of northwestern India recommending him as an ally, whom Arjuna defeated along with the Kashmir chieftains in the Sabha Parva. Paurava becomes Duryodhana’s ally and there is no record of his death in Kurukshetra. Van Buitenen argues that this is a reference to the Poros of Arrian’s Indica whom Alexander honoured. Gilles Schaufelberger has noted that Guy Vincent in his lecture on the 21st May 2005 at the University de Provence identified Kalayavana and Alexander. We have, therefore, at least three identifiable historical figures, both denoting the same historical period.

The Complete Vana Parva translated by Prof. P. Lal

The forest in Bharatavarsha is not just a savage jungle where man reverts to the bestial. On the other hand, the very fountainhead of our civilization lies here, its helmsmen being the seers and sages, a place where man lives in harmony with nature. We stumble across hermitages resonant with the chanting of mantras, fragrant with the smoke of yajnic fires, holy teerthas to purify oneself. Yet, it is a mysterious world peopled not just by the usual denizens. Suddenly the blood freezes, accosted by terrifying shape-shifting demons and pythons hissing human speech, enchanting lakes guarded by Yakshas and Rakshasas, deceptively pellucid waters on whose banks lie corpses. Here woman faces down immutable, inexorable Death itself. That is why Tagore saw in ‘tapovan’, the forest of ascesis, the very soul of Bharata.

In Vyasa’s creation, the twelve years exile of the five brothers and their wife is not simply a period of inaction. It is an interval providing an opportunity for turning away from the external world and the extrovert personality to look within. The only one who does so is Yudhishthira, so ill at ease on a throne in a tumultuous capital city. He may well say with Andrew Marvell:

Fair Quiet, have I found thee here,
And Innocence thy sister dear?
Mistaken long, I sought you then
In busy companies of men’
Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less
Withdraws into its happiness;’
Annihilating all that’s made
To a green thought in a green shade.

More mature than when they suffered their first exile in the forest of Hidimba, anguished by the incidents in the royal court, Yudhishthira repeatedly seeks guidance from seers and sages, eager to reach that state of which the Rig Veda and the Svetashvatara Upanishad speak:

Casting the body’s vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide;
There, like a bird, it sits and sings,
Then whets and combs its silver wings,
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.

By the end of the Vana Parva, when he has satisfied the disguised Yaksha and won resurrection for his brothers, it seems that he may have approached it.

However, the forest exile is not a blissful sylvan break for the Pandavas. At Yudhishthira’s command, they have to take up arms to rescue their tormentor Duryodhana from the Gandharvas. Twice Draupadi is abducted’once along with three of her husbands who are helpless till Bhima turns up’and then by Jayadratha. Twice Draupadi inveigles Bhima into reckless confrontations with Yakshas and Rakshasas to satisfy her fancies. During their journey to meet Arjuna, Draupadi is first to collapse on the slopes of Gandhamadana, presaging the scene of the final departure, with the difference that her husbands rush to her rescue. Twice the story of Rama is brought before them: once to Bhima alone by Hanuman and then to Yudhishthira by Markandeya as an example of an exiled prince. Twice Bhima is taught the limits of his strength: once by his ancestor Nahusha-turned-python and next by his stepbrother Hanuman. Death is confronted twice, and on both occasions he gives in to the integrity of the human being. Yudhishthira is groomed for his final confrontation with the deadly Dharma-crane through the questions Nahusha puts to him, the dialogue between Savitri and the lord of death, and the many stories that he hears from the sages, notably those of Rama-Sita and of Nala-Damayanti in which the themes of dicing, exile in the forest, battle and restoration are repeated. The exile itself is doubled for the audience: the story of Rama’s fourteen year exile is recounted as a parallel to the Pandavas’ thirteen year ordeal.

The Vana Parva consists of eighteen chapters—a significant number in this epic of eighteen books whose climax is the eighteen days war. Much of it is taken up by a description of pilgrimage spots, as many as 350, related by Pulastya (235), Dhaumya (53) and Lomasha (60) in over 2400 verses. Similar accounts are found later in the Shalya Parva (43 spots in 77 verses) and the Anushasana Parva (81 in 66 verses). The interesting point is that these are not just magically cleansing lakes or river-crossings. Pulastya clarifies that visiting them is of value only if the visitor has faith and is pure of heart. It is here that for the first time we find a deliberate attempt to describe pilgrimage as an institution which became a feature of the Puranas. These descriptions came to dominate Indian cultural geography, covering practically the entire country with the idea that encouraging people to visit these in a circuit would foster cultural mingling and unity. Tagore points out that through the rivers the consciousness of the receptive human being touches the Supreme Consciousness, cleansing him of the layer of illusion.

The first chapter begins with the hermit Shaunaka (again a parallel to the sage to whom Sauti narrates the epic) reading the Pandavas a lesson in desire being the root of all misery, which reiterates the realisations of Yayati in the Adi Parva. He also provides Yudhishthira the core teaching of Karma Yoga by saying that the message of the Vedas is to do karma, but renounce its fruit; perform dharma, but take no pride in doing so.

In the second chapter, where Krishna visits the Pandavas, we find him explaining his absence. This is the first clue that his miraculous rescuing of Draupadi from being stripped is a later interpolation. When Draupadi upbraids Krishna, her ‘grief-rich tears’ drenching ‘her heavy, round, lovely breasts’, she does not refer to the attempted disrobing, only to being dragged while menstruating but specifically mentions being mocked by Karna. The transcreation captures the anguish in simple words flying straight to the mark:

‘Husbands, sons. Relatives, brothers, father,
I have no one. No one. No one.
Not even you, Madhusudana-Krishna’
Keshava, Krishna,
There are four reasons you must help me.
Am I not related to you?
Don’t you respect me as a woman?
Am I not your loved-and-loving sakhi?
Haven’t you vowed to protect me?’

How true the first two lines are about her situation at the end of the war! In response, Krishna makes his famous vow in words that echo those of Devavrata making his ‘Bhishma’ vow:

‘You will be rani of rajas!
The skies will fall,
The Himalayas shatter,
The earth split in two,
The ocean’s waters dry up’
But what I promise you, Krishna-Draupadi,
Will not fail to happen.’

In the process, ironically, he dooms himself and his entire clan.

The Parva provides a veritable cliff-hanger with its account of Karna deliberately giving away his impenetrable armour and celestial earrings for the sake of fame. This account also provides one of the several accounts of his birth, with a detailed narration of how Surya browbeat the adolescent Kunti into giving in to his demands. There is an interesting hint here of a shared identity between Durvasa and Surya, both described as being madhupingala in complexion.

In Puranic accounts, Shri leaves the demons and goes over to the gods to become Indra’s ‘good fortune and prosperity’. Draupadi’s insistence on accompanying the Pandavas into exile is, therefore, doubly significant: their Shri has not abandoned them. Throughout the exile she constantly badgers Yudhishthira, desperately and tirelessly labouring to arouse in him a desire to win back what she symbolises and which he has gambled away. When Jatasura abducts Draupadi along with the twins and Yudhishthira, her eldest husband’s warning to the Rakshasa contains a significant revelation of her destructiveness:

‘In touching this woman you have drunk a jar of well-stirred poison.’ (III.157.26)

While she is like a boat to her husbands, saving them from drowning in the sea of distress, to the wicked she is death itself. Throughout the thirteen years of exile she never allows her husbands and her sakha to forget how she was outraged and they were cheated of their kingdom. The marital relationship between Draupadi and the Pandavas is constantly that of a mahout goading an elephant into the fray. Krishna’s urging Yudhishthira in the forest that karma and individual enterprise, purushartha, are indispensable to preserve society and one’s integrity anticipates her sakha Krishna’s discourse to Arjuna on the battlefield. She is the only one among the Pandavas and Kauravas who assumes the atheistic stance in a violent outburst, exclaiming (III.30.23, III.32) that creatures are like wooden dolls (darumayi yosha) in the hands of a whimsical creator, recalling the significance of her own name Panchali, anticipating King Lear’s heart-wrenching ‘As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods/They kill us for their sport’ and Hardy’s ‘the President of the Immortals had ended his sport with Tess.’ This is part of the political science she learned, listening to a learned Brahmin discoursing to her father and brothers (III.30.60-61). It calls forth Yudhishthira’s plea to abandon such nastika heresy She gives this back in full measure after the war when he wishes to become a hermit, by saying that were his brothers not equally crazy, they would have tied him up as an atheist and ruled the kingdom themselves (XII.14.33).

The complete account of income and expenditure of her husbands was in her grasp and she alone knew the extent of their wealth. She kept track of what each of the many maidservants attending on her husband was doing. It is she who used to make all the arrangements for Yudhishthira’s tours, keeping count of the large retinue of horses and elephants and their quartering, laying aside her own comfort (III.233.458).

Another piquant passage is the conversation between Satyabhama and Draupadi. Krishna’s favourite wife is insecure and worried stiff over how to keep his interest active. Draupadi gives her a long lecture on wifely duties, which has the marks of a later interpolation all over it. However, it has some very interesting insights such as that she took care never to complain about her mother-in-law, whatever the aggravation; never surpassed her in ornaments, dress and even the food taken. The healthy respect the Pandavas had for her has been well brought out in Rajshekhar Basu’s delightful take-off, ‘Panchali, beloved of the five‘^[i].

We come across interesting insights such as the duel between Bhima and the Rakshasa Kirmira being compared to Vali and Sugriva clashing over a woman. In the Ramakatha that follows later, Vali suspects that Tara is dissuading him from responding to Sugriva’s challenge because she favours him. Valmiki’s epic is innocent of this hint, which was part of the older tradition. The Ramakatha has many other interesting differences from the Ramayana, such as Manthara being the gandharvi Dundubhi reborn sent by Brahma to bring about Rama’s exile, Sita being consoled by a Rakshasa named Avindhya who is richly rewarded by Rama. Lakshmana is seen, in a dream, to be licking boiled milk and honey rice on a heap of bones, precisely the image applied by Karna to Yudhishthira in his discourse with Krishna in the Udyoga Parva. There is no burning of Lanka by Hanuman, nor does he carry Rama’s signet ring to Sita, no fire-ordeal. The story ends with the return to Ayodhya.

Besides these major kathas, there are shorter stories about Agastya’s feats, Rishyashringa (again a link with the Ramayana), thousand-armed Kartavirya Arjuna, Mandhata, Dhundhumara, the hair-raising account of Somaka sacrificing his only son Jantu to beget a hundred sons, the self-sacrificing generosity of Shibi, Ashtavakra, the unusual story of Yavakrita which Girish Karnad turned into a remarkable play Agnivarsha, Chyavana-Sukanya and Parikshit-Sushobhana the heartbreaking frog-princess (turned into wonderful love stories by Subodh Ghose), the peculiar story of Indradyumna’s search for someone who remembers him, the birth and victory of Skanda that inspired Kumarasambhava.

There are some unusually ‘subaltern’ didactic stories that show the superiority of dedication to duty over asceticism (the devoted wife, the righteous butcher, the householder Brahmin Mudgala).

The climax of the Parva comes in the questioning of Yudhishthira by the Yaksha, where the depth of the Pandava’s wisdom is plumbed and not found wanting. It his dedication to anrishamsya, non-injury, that wins him the favour. That is when he is found fit to regain his kingdom in future and given the boon of not being recognised in disguise during the incognito exile period. The interaction contains some gems of insight that encapsulate in just a shloka the most profound truths of existence, such as:

‘That man is happy who,
Nor in debt and not in a foreign land,
In his own home, in the fifth or sixth part of the day,
Cooks a vegetarian meal and eats it.
Every day creatures die. They go to the realm of Yama
Yet everyone thinks he will live for ever.
What is more wonderful than this?’

This is also where the famous epigram, ‘Dharma violated destroys; Dharma cherished protects’ is spoken by Yudhishthira.

The transcreation is all through extremely reader-friendly, in rhythmic free verse. There are few errors, one of which is in the Ramakatha where in a dream (280.71) Sita is said to be proceeding south, the deathly direction, whereas the original has north. The volume is enriched with 123 facsimile reproductions showing the extensive revisions and note made by Prof. Lal to his original version for his weekly readings that began in October 1999. 4 pages of errata to the Adi and Sabha parva volumes are added.

The Introduction to the Mahabharata is a reproduction of what introduced the single volume condensation of the epic published in 1980 that remains unparalleled in English for its masterly selection of material and is the only one that effortlessly shifts to poetry where necessary. It is Prof. Lal who first called it ‘the Doomsday Epic’ and this introduction shows why the epithet is deserved. Besides the hard-core narrative, there are excellent thumbnail sketches of the major characters concentrating on the psychological mainsprings of action, and an insightful section on the message of the epic which contains a superb retelling of the Kalpataru parable. His conclusion is that the meaning of life lies in compassion, without which you end up with doomsday. It ends with a valuable discourse on the challenges of translating Vyasa.

The portfolio of Mahabharata paintings makes available paintings from Ramananda Chatterjee’s edition of Kashiram Das’ version of the epic in Bangla verse. Most artists belong to the Bengal Renaissance school, but there is Ravi Varma as well and some miniatures. One Ravi Varma painting depicts Simhika leading Draupadi, an incident known in the South but absent in Vyasa. In addition to these, the book provides the text of Prof. Lal’s brilliant valedictory address to Sahitya Akademi’s 1990 international seminar on the Mahabharata. To read it is to realise the profundity of insights hidden in the simplest of stories. Prof. Lal takes up four, some of which travelled all the way to the West to become famous as ‘Barlaam and Josaphat’, the tale of the man in the well. A veritable cornucopia indeed!