Pradip Bhattacharya

Indologist, Mahabharata scholar

Archives for September 2021

A Watershed in Epic Studies

By

Dr. Bibek Deb Roy: The Mahabharata, volumes 9-10, Penguin India, pages 718 and 683, 2014, 2015. Rs.499/- each.

In modern times it was Padma Shri P. Lal, poet and transcreator, who first took up translating the massive corpus of the Mahabharata (MB), publishing the first monthly instalment in December 1968.  It is “the only complete, strictly śloka-by-śloka rendering, not excepting enjambements, in any language”[1] He alone, faithfully following Vyasa, has used verse and prose as in the original, completing 16½ of the 18 books before his death. 1973 onwards the Chicago University Press published J.A.B. van Buitenen’s translation of the “critical edition” of the MB published by the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune. This is a good 12,000 verses shorter than the Southern, Bombay and Calcutta editions, the last being translated in the late 1890s and early 1900s by Kisari Mohon Ganguli of Howrah and by Manmatha Nath Dutt of Serampore. The Chicago project is not even halfway through despite engaging several scholars after van Buitenen’s death in 1979. The Clay Sanskrit Library translation of the longer Nilakantha “vulgate” edition by a battery of Indologists stopped halfway. The Chicago and the Clay translations are in prose, varying from the outlandish “barons” and “chivalry” of van Buitenen to the gripping in some Clay volumes. The completion by Padma Shri Bibek Deb Roy, economist and Niti Aayog member, of a prose translation of the “critical edition” marks a watershed in epic studies, all the more so because he finished the 73787 slokas within the amazingly short span of six years, which Penguin India published with admirable alacrity between 2010 and 2014. And it is certainly interesting—as he notes—that the only “complete” (sic.) translations so far are by Bengalis—Ganguli, Dutt and himself. Actually, Ganguli Latinised and Dutt omitted passages “for obvious reasons” (in view of Victorian sensibilities). Another Bengali, R.C.Dutt of the ICS, wrote a condensation of the MB in Locksley Hall couplets published in 1898.

Cunningly, Penguin have spread the text uniformly across ten volumes. None of the 18 books is available as a stand-alone volume. Thus, volume 9 opens with the 32nd chapter of the Mokshadharma sub-parva and ends with chapter 56 of the Anushasana Parva. Volume 10 contains the rest of it plus the remaining five books of the MB. In a monumental publication such as this one expects, besides a general introduction, parva-specific key insights. That has been the standard format for all translations since the Lal transcreation. Instead, here the very same general introduction features in every volume.

Deb Roy’s remarkable achievement does not excuse the errors Penguin have persisted with in the Introduction in all volumes despite these being flagged in reviews of the first and the seventh volumes. The genealogical tree contains grave errors and omissions. Who is “Ananta” shown alongside Devayani and why? Ganga is Pratipa’s descendant while Vichitravirya is married to Amba instead of Ambika! Draupadi has just one son, Prativindhya. There is no indication that Bhima was also married to Draupadi. Yuyutsu is missing as Dhritrarashtra’s son, despite being the sole survivor. Kuru is made the grandson of Bharata (p.xix), whereas he is seventh in descent from him. Lomaharshana’s name is not Ugrashrava (p.xxi), who is his son. The original “Jaya” did not have 8,800 slokas (p.xx). Those are the knotted (kuta) slokas Vyasa composed for Ganesha to mull over. The Bhandarkar edition does not “eliminate later interpolations” (p.xxii). It includes mechanically only what appears in most manuscripts, ignoring any hiatuses in continuity and meaning caused thereby. Deb Roy claims that the fighting in the Ramayana is more civilized because rocks and trees are not used, although that is precisely how the vanaras attack the rakshasas. The names of the four yugas are proper nouns, yet throughout the text—except in the Introduction—these are in the lower case. The Penguin editors have nodded off. They have also taken the easy way out by providing neither a glossary nor an index. In note 89 on page 602 of volume 10, he identifies Bhima’s chief wife as Shishupala’s daughter, whereas we know from the Adi Parva she was the Kashi king’s daughter Balandhara. Referring to Madhusraba Dasgupta’s Companion to the Mahabharata[2] would have prevented such errors. The king of Kashi was also an inveterate foe of Krishna, as Deb Roy will find in Harivansha. The departure from internationally accepted spelling of Sanskrit names makes for irritating reading experience, as Deb Roy replaces “au” for no justifiable reason by “ou”, as in “Droupadi”, “Kounteya”. Deb Roy is now translating Harivansha in which, hopefully, these defects will be rectified.

The dissertation on moksha is an extraordinary exegetical document recording the different doctrines existing simultaneously in the period 1st century BCE to 3rd century CE. The oldest MB manuscript (c.230 CE) in Brahmi script (found in the Kizil Caves of north-west China) as well Kshemendra’s Bharatamanjari (c.11th century CE) from Kashmir lack the Anushasana Parva but include the Shanti Parva. Therefore, right from the 3rd century CE the epic was disseminated with considerable doctrinal material, which is evidence of deliberate composition.

In the section on moksha, Vedic figures like Indra, Bali, Namuchi and Vritra are plucked out of their world and used to enunciate Buddhist (cf. Digha Nikaya) and Jain doctrines stressing the inexorability of karmic fruit. The emphasis is on renunciation and ahimsa, abandoning pride and samsara. The four ashramas are introduced: celibate study, domesticity, forest-life and wandering as a renunciant. As yet they are not successive stages of life. Any can be chosen by one at any time. The paths to liberation through Sankhya’s 26 principles, Yoga (breath-control and dhyana) and japa are described. Bhakti enters as another salvific way in the elaborate description of the White Isle of Narayana and the multiple names of Vishnu and Shiva (repeated in the Dana-dharma parva). It also includes Vyasa’s traumatic loss of his son Shuka. The narrative mode is that of dialogue emboxed within other dialogues, Russian doll fashion, which characterises the MB.

The Book of Instructions continues the karmic thread, discoursing at length on the benefits of donating, with fascinating tales like the origin of footwear and parasol, of trans-sexual Bhangasvana who prefers being a woman, of Uttanka foregoing his chance at immortality by refusing to drink a chandala’s urine when parched with thirst in the desert, of Vishvamitra justifying stealing dog-meat from an untouchable to survive, etc. The MB introduces as alternatives to expensive Vedic sacrifices doing puja with flowers and lighting of lamps. It proclaims that visiting tirthas and satisfying unexpected visitors (atithi) confer superior benefits. The latter extends even to the wife surrendering herself if a guest demands (the story of Oghavati). The supreme benefit, however, is obtained from hearing or studying the MB, which sought to establish itself as an alternative to the Vedas in the changed times. This was possibly in response to the imperial Mauryan patronage of Buddhism when the Brahminical Sungas replaced them.

Volume 10 contains an astonishing scene in the Ashramavasika section. Vyasa works the miracle of bringing forth the spirits of the dead heroes from the Bhagirathi (paralleled in Homer and Virgil). As the only other translation is by Prof. Lal, a comparison is instructive:-

“A tumultuous sound arose from inside the water, caused by those who had earlier been Kuru and Pandava soldiers.” (Deb Roy)

“What a tumultuous clamour

            sprang from the waters!

It resembled, O Janamejaya,

            the combined uproar

of the battling armies

            of the Kauravas and Pandavas.” (P. Lal)

The shock comes hereafter. Vyasa asks all wailing widows to plunge into the river in their thousands to join their dead husbands. Thus, as Hiltebeitel has pointed out,[3] he becomes the only author of a mahakavya to make a mass of his creations commit suicide. By doing so he rids Yudhishthira’s kingdom of the inauspicious sound of lamentation.

In these doctrinal books certain tales are re-told with very interesting variations. The story of Parashurama beheading his mother at his father’s behest is given a different spin. Incensed with Ahalya’s adultery, Gautama directs their son Chirakari to kill her. Chirakari ruminates long on the mother’s status vis-à-vis the father (providing us with several quotable quotes), affording Gautama enough time to regret his command and bless his son’s procrastination. When Shuka passes by, apsaras continue bathing unperturbed. But when Vyasa appears, seeking his son, they hastily cover up because he has not attained detachment. Uttanka’s tale from the Adi Parva is embellished in the Ashvamedha Parva with his lament at having grown silver-haired serving his guru without permission to leave—a sly dig at Brahmin gurus’ callousness and the exploitative institution of brahmacharya itself.

The earlier Book of Peace contains statements such as, “the shastras are full of contradictions,” and “The Vedas do not cover everything” (section 109). While ascesis is extolled above sacrifices, it does not mean mortifying the flesh but connotes non-violence, truthfulness, self-control, compassion—reflecting Jain and Buddhist influence. The Vedas are only three in number. Clearly, the Atharva Veda is post-MB. It is stressed that conduct, not birth, determines class in society. The mokshadharma section consistentlys debunk traditional concepts of Brahminical superiority. Thus, Bodhya tells Nahusha that in achieving serenity through total indifference, “Piṅgalā the prostitute, the osprey, the snake, the bee searching in the woods, the arrow-maker and the virgin, these six are my gurus.” Women and animals, not Brahmins, are the role-models—a far cry from Manusmriti. It is the householder’s way of life, particularly hospitality, that is praised, the devotion of a shopkeeper (Tuladhara) to his parents, of a wife to her husband (Shandili), at the expense of elaborate austerities (Jajali). The seer-king Janaka, proud of having achieved serenity, is humbled by the female sanyasi Sulabha. Vishnu’s mount, almighty Garuda is shorn of his feathers by the female ascetic Shandili. However, the section on donation glorifies Brahmin superiority over kings and gods, showing the prevalent turmoil of ideas.

The glorification of sacrifices is undermined by the scornful laughter of the mongoose with the half-golden pelt closing the Book of Horse Sacrifice. Here the gift of food by a starving Brahmin living by gleaning is extolled as far superior to Yudhishthira’s manifold. Let us not forget that Yama-Dharma himself has to be born of a Shudra maidservant and remains an ineffectual angel beating in the void his luminous wings of dharma in vain. Time and again the concept of dharma is examined and re-examined. At times, it is said to be too subtle to unravel (as Bhishma mutters to the molested Draupadi) or, as Vyasa tells Kunti in the Ashramavasika Parva, it is whatever the powerful do.

Arjuna, Krishna’s chosen, is soundly berated for forgetting the Gita discourse. Krishna, unable to reproduce it, has to rest content with delivering the uninspired Anugita. Earlier, Krishna has lamented to Narada how miserable his life is in Dvaraka because of his relatives’ bitter words. The victorious Pandavas are devastated when their mother Kunti and guardian Vidura desert them, electing to accompany Dhritarashtra, the root of the war, into forest-life. There Vidura dies starving, running mad, naked and filthy through the woods (a variation on the digambara Jaina way of dying?). Kunti, Gandhari and Dhritarashtra are burnt alive in a forest fire. Strangely, the Pandavas made no arrangements for seeing to their welfare. Even the Purushottama, despite taking up arms, cannot prevent his own people from massacring one another and suffers an inglorious death. His impregnable city Dvaraka is submerged. In Punjab, staff-wielding Abhirs (ironically, cowherds, like the beloved friends of Krishna’s childhood and also his Narayani army of gopas) loot the refugee Vrishni women— many going with them willingly— from a helpless Arjuna. Yudhishthira cites moral failings as the cause of the deaths of Draupadi and his brothers on the Himalayan slopes. Taken to Swarga, Yudhishthira is furious to find Duryodhana enthroned and joins his loved ones in hell. Most intriguing, returning to Swarga, he is stopped by Indra from putting a question to Draupadi. We are left wondering what it was. Most ironic of all, at the very end of the “Ascent to Heaven” is the anguished cry of its mighty composer. Deb Roy’s translation of this “Bharata Savitri”, the MB’s core, is grossly erroneous:-

“I am without pleasure and have raised my arms, but no one is listening to me. If dharma and kama result from artha, why should not one pursue artha?”

Here is the correct version by P. Lal:-

“I raise my arms and I shout

            But no one listens!

From Dharma comes Artha and Kama—

            Why is Dharma not practised?”

Thus ends Sauti’s rendition of Vyasa’s account of his descendants recited by Vaishampayana, which is also his autobiography. Its tragic climax is not these lines of frustrated questioning. That occurs in volume 9 in the Mokshadharma section. It is his agony at losing his beloved son Shuka, who merges into the elements. When Vyasa calls out his name in anguish, all he hears in response is an echo from the mountains. The Mahabharata remains an intensely human, personal document on the existential predicament of humanity in the universe.

[1] P.Lal: Preface to The Complete Adi Parva, Writers Workshop, Kolkata, 2005, pp.5, 6.

[2] Madhusraba Dasgupta: Samsad Companion to the Mahabharata, Sahitya Samsad, Kolkata, 1999.

[3] A. Hiltebeitel: Rethinking the Mahabharata, University of Chicago Press, 2001.

LEADERSHIP AND POWER: ETHICAL EXPLORATIONS

By

Edited by S.K. Chakraborty and Pradip Bhattacharya (Oxford University Press, YMCA Library Building, Jai Singh Road, New Delhi 110 001. x + 453 pages. 2001. Rs. 595)

Ambitious.  Perceptive.  Timely. Academic. Unrealistic. Inspirational.  Hold-all.  One can relax in the easy chair mulling over ever so many epithets like this to describe Leadership and Power and yet fail to project its thrust.  Maybe Marcuse has to be invoked for an echo:  “In reality, evil triumphs, there are only islands of good to which one can escape only for short periods of time.”

But then, that has never been the way of the Indian ethos.  From times immemorial, we have sustained a positive, life-affirming philosophy of action.  And even when people  act as if they are deaf, the Spirit of India continues to speak as the Bharata Savitri, so gently noted by  Pradip Bhattacharya in the last page of the book:

“I raise my arms and I shout –

but no one listens!

From dharma comes success and pleasure:

why is dharma not practised?”

Dharma must be spoken, whether others react or not.  The subconscious mind of India has continued to react to Dharma, hence we are able to speak of a civilization that has flourished for several millennia as the Vedic stream and the Sangham culture.  The way of Dharma is undefinable, being sukshma.  Yet we strive to follow it thanks to the garnered experiences of all our yesterdays.  Mark the recurring phrase in our ancient texts:  esha dharma sanatanah.  One had to rise above the “me” all the time and work for the good of others, giving precedence to the Way as the Rishis said:  dharmamaahu pradhaanam. The secular legends of our ancient past have all sought to define our day to day life by presenting the crisis that comes upon people as dharma-sankata and analysing how each person solves the problem in a different manner though all of them move within the broad framework of the sanatana dharma, the Ancient Way.

Though it is often said that today we are living in a highly competitive, complicated world, nothing has really changed when it comes to a man’s personal decision to act in a particular manner.  Our ancients were helped by a crystalline faith in the phrase esha dharma sanatanah, and this Ancient Way continues to be a living guide.  

S.K. Chakraborty and Pradip Bhattacharya have done well to rely heavily on the ancients for guidelines  when power devolves in our hands and leadership is thrust upon us by the forces of history.  Apart from independent essays on the Ramayana (C. Panduranga Bhatta) and the Mahabharata (Pradip Bhattacharya), the volume echoes to the itihasas quite often.  Again we are never a page or two away from four gifted children of this Vedic-Upanishadic-Itihasic stream, Swami Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo and Mahatma Gandhi.   Even Hiren Mukherjee goes on record with an unambiguous statement:

“…though I am an unbeliever, an atheist, for over sixty years now an unrepentant communist, somewhat allergic towards `spiritual’ themes, I believe the four great `illuminates’:  Rabindranath Tagore, Swami Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi and Sri Aurobindo, whom the MCHV (Management Centre for Human Values) salutes, have been among the `makers’ of our civilization, `God-gifted organ-voices’ of our land, builders in different fashion, bridge between our immense past and the incalculable future.” (p. 90)

An unbeliever, perhaps, but Dr. Mukherjee is deeply immerged in the Indian pantheon to wonder why we lack in charity, “that we can weigh the sun and the stars but cannot weigh out bread to the hungry.”  This is because of the mistaken notion that wealth is to be shunned (he quotes Shankara).   The Ancient Way, however, did not reject money but wanted us to earn more, produce more (“Annnam bahu kurveeta”, says the Taittiriya) and simultaneously share it with all (the Tamil poet Tiruvalluvar calls this “oppuravu”).  It is the “sharing” part which becomes a matter for argument.  Do we ask for sharing in the manner of Tiruvalluvar’s Oppuravu or through bureaucratic mediation as in Socialism? Prof. Mukherjee writes:

“I have recently read in New Delhi’s weekly, Mainstream a piece by a former High Commissioner of India in London, Kuldip Nayar, now a member of Rajya Sabha, relating how when abroad he heard from knowledgeable people that there was no dearth of Non-Resident Indians who could, if they wished, finance out of their own hoarded resources half-a-dozen Five Year Plans!” (p. 97)

Have we not had enough of such Planning looking for models from other countries for a socialist heaven that speedily ended in a Permit-License Raj?  No more of that, thank you.  Better get back to the ingrained humanitarian values and have faith in ourselves instead of taking the hat around elsewhere.  For this we have a reliable guide in Prof. Mukherjee himself, who expresses a lambent faith “that our youth, whatever fascination the frills and frivolities of modernity may hold, will not cease to dream dreams and see visions” and quotes young Dhruva to prove his point:  swatstyastu vishvasya, varam na yachey (let the world have well-being, I ask for no boon).

Indeed almost all the contributors are confident of India’s yesterdays being the guiding lights of the nation’s tomorrows.  R.K. Dasgupta who is not inspired by  the “the managerial revolution” votes for soul power and assures us that “Vedantic monism is going to be the philosophy of the future for the whole world”, reminding one of  Chakravarti Rajagopalachari who said:  “The good in every man is an atom too, of measureless potential.”;  Shashi Mishra leaps to the Feminine Principle and plunges into the Bhakti Movement and comes up with the hladini shakti of Radha to consider work and leisure as  worship (Radha is in aradhana too);  Guttorum Floistead puts the focus on family power which is in essence woman-power, like Dr. Dasgupta’s grandmother wielding the family finances;  Arabinda Basu speaks of the secular nature of India’s sacred idiom as in the concept of the Purusharthas and the sacred/secular divide in the West (“Egoistic sacredness leads to abuse of power.  Secularism is egoistic anyway.”); and M.V. Kamath expounds Swami Vivekananda’s maxim that power is generated through renunciation.

Since many of the contributors are well-known, there is nothing that is sharply new in their perspectives.  But when there are surprises, it is a great pleasure to savour them.  Rose McDonald discoursing on `The Anarchic Power of Money’ writes about the John Frum Movement in Tanna.  The Tannese who had been colonised and forced to conform to a Christian theocracy and an imposed plantation economy rebelled after four decades of such rigorous transformatory practices.  They abandoned the Church, withdrew from the schools and the plantations.  Enough is enough they seemed to think as they went back en masse to their traditional ways of living and morality.  The ultimate insult to the angry whites was when “the Tannese were to be seen all over the island throwing money into the sea.”  The inspiration for this return to their paradisal past (though it was considered chaos by the whites) came from the prophet, John Frum.  Christianity was not rejected but Christ was redefined as a Tannese by Frum:

“The ten commandments too were reinterprerted as having existed in customary belief long before the arrival of the white man bearing this supposedly `new’ message.  But as John Frum encouraged acceptance of the whites’ rhetoric of integrity, the whites themselves, and their economic order, were to be wholeheartedly rejected.  Money would not be the measure of man or the shaper of society in the new world.” (p. 253)

While   Leadership and Power is busy exploring the past experiences and the present considerations to programme new ways  to give the best of both for the good of mankind,  necessarily the authors are overcome by memories of their professional lives.  Never a dull moment here!  Reading Hiten Bhaya, one could lose faith in the T-shirt one is wearing.  Ah, the chicaneries of trade union leaders for a free plane ticket!  According to Bhaya, corruption in Indian administration has a face of its own:

“…I was surprised to find some people whose very appearance betrayed them as political agents – touts to be more blunt.  The chairman introduced them as the local office-bearers of the ruling party in the district where one of our plants was situated, and asked them to discuss their problem with me.  What they were after was some contract that would enable the contractor to contribute to the party fund for a forthcoming election.”

Having never been a member of the Planning Commission or a Chairperson of any of those huge “new temples of India” and having done nothing more managerial than haggling over the price of vegetables in the local market as a thrifty housewife, I would love to get a description of the sartorial and other appurtenances that betrayed the face of corruption to Bhaya.  Were they like the warped Dwarf-Titan in Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri, I wonder.  Bhaya has a lot to reveal (without mentioning names) before coming to the conclusion that the right management of power  lies is “strength of character to resist pressure for doing the wrong things, courage to support the right action, strength of will to control one’s own temporal desires and compassion for one’s colleagues and subordinates.”  To put it pithily in the words of Tiruvalluvar: 

“What determines the worth of the worthy?

The Light within, nothing else!”[i]

The shakti that rises from the “light within” is underscored by M.V. Kamath (Swami Vivekananda), Rajmohan Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi), S.K. Chakraborty (Sri Aurobindo and Rabindranath Tagore) and Manoj Das (Sri Aurobindo), while contributors like C.R. Irani note that managing power in independent India is not all that easy.  Where is the hero who can resist temptation?  We are understandably unnerved by the manner in which Rajiv Gandhi tried to keep his vote banks intact, and how one had to show scant courtesy to law for one’s survival. 

“Whether you have a particular kind of schooling, whether you have a phone or a ration card, almost everything depends on some grace and favour because the kind of socialism we have practised all these years, from Indira Gandhi downwards, meant two things:  first create an artificial scarcity of every essential item and then exploit that scarcity.”

If a few survived, it was thanks to the “light within” emitting a soft glow in the words of a poor old airport loader, in the action of a harried customs officer.  Judges, businessmen, politicians, aye, even newspapermen seem to possess such ugly feet of crumbly clay!  And Irani can sentence somebody to life-long squirming by just a sentence: “Of course, Sonia Gandhi was protecting him.”  The Italian connection. Power in the hands of such leaders, eh?

Yet another revelation from Irani is the difference in approach practised by the blocks (judiciary, business, government).  They are all in it for the grabs but look at the way business is run.  Biren Mukherjee is the exception that proves the style of business that thrives on tipping the essence of power in its favour:

“You want to evoke a response, you persuade people to do it.  You don’t do it, like Indira Gandhi, pukdo, bandh kardo, grab him, lock him up!  That is not the way to do it.  But at the end of the day, if the law is not enforced, there is bound to be more crime and more breaches of laws.” (pp. 269-270)

But who cares?  Ah, we do, say Chakraborty and Bhattacharya, giving out reasons for this compilation at a time when materialism, commercialisation of education and research have devoured almost the whole of traditional wisdom.  Theirs is an attempt to examine the problem, make a list of the diseases and suggest remedies in the light of earlier experiences.  The contributors were given wide freedom, and since they come from a variety of work-areas, Leadership and Power has shaped itself into a double-jointed inter-disciplinary tool.  There is a charming variety of subjects and style.  While Dasgupta is all Eliot and Goldsmith, Ambirajan peppers his paper on the private business organizations of India with R.H. Coase and Alfred Chandler, Champaka Basu and Francis Fukayama.  Sugita Yoneyuki and Marie Thorston deal with the very difficult problem of “managing power among the vanquished” when cultural values have to be reformatted in terms of a “situational ethics”.

When seen in balance, the twenty-nine papers in the collection usually zero in on either political power or corporate power and discuss the tremendous pressure upon a leader in either of these areas.  Lord Acton casts his shadow everywhere: “Power tends to corrupt”.  So we should be careful lest we handover absolute power into a single person’s hand. If those who are leaders realise that “all power is a trust” (Disraeli) all should be well.  V.R. Krishna Iyer’s language is ever a delight and his eloquent advocacy of Case-flow management in judiciary points to making India “a social justice nation”.

Primarily about corporate power, William Miller has pumped in a lot of inputs about the use of spiritual power in business.  Rather, he attempts to bring business into spirituality and would have us view our work as a “spiritual autobahn”.  In short his philosophy is one of “job-satisfaction” which can be achieved by following Gibran’s advice, quoted by Miller himself: “Work is love made visible.  When you work with love, you bind yourself, and to one another, and to God.”

So many authors leading us on Himalayan treks helping us look at the blossoms and thorny bushes on the pathway, the gurgling stream flowing close by, the strips of water-falls that make you blink, the dangerous gorges on the sides and the beckoning peaks of achievement beyond.  This elevating and practical adventure has been given a visual kick-start by Pradeep Nayak who has placed the leaders and their instruments of power in a capsule and whirled it into the space on the cover. Indeed, “Leadership and Power” sets a-whirl significant ideas and makes us think that transformation is possible. 

Transformation of a misused present into a worthy future.  Yad bhaavam tad bhavati.

Dr. Prema Nandakumar

[i] Translated by K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar

“Calm of mind, all passion spent” or “the bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit”?

By

P. Lal: The Complete Ashramavasika Parva of the Mahabharata transcreated from Sanskrit, Writers Workshop, Calcutta, 2007, pp. 158. Rs. 100 hardback

The brotherly butchery is over; kin-killing has been expiated by a horse-sacrifice; Yudhishthira has been persuaded not to abdicate. The stage seems to be set for “And they reigned happily ever after”. But Vyasa’s vision is existential. With remorseless precision he lays bare,

        “the gifts reserved for age…offering no promise
     But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit
     …the conscious impotence of rage
     At human folly, and the laceration
     Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.
And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
     Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
     Of motives late revealed, and the awareness
Of things ill done and done to others’ harm
     Which once you took for exercise of virtue.
     Then fools’ approval stings, and honour stains.”—T.S.Eliot, “Little Gidding”

Just as Bhishma was frozen in a perpetual “brahmacharya-ashrama”, the old royal couple blindly continue in the “grihastha-ashrama” instead of retiring to the forest despite having lost all. Dhritarashtra lives royally, enjoying earning popularity by granting gifts generously in the process of funerary rites for his sons for years on end. None dares protest out of fear of Yudhishthira’s displeasure. Kunti, Draupadi and the other wives of the Pandavas—Arjuna’s three, Nakula’s Karenumati of Chedi and Jarasandha’s daughter Vijaya married to Sahadeva [Bhima’s wife Balandhara of Kashi, and Yudhishthira’s wife Devika of Shibi are not mentioned]—diligently serve Gandhari. Bhima alone openly expresses his rancour within hearing of Dhritarashtra who, after bearing this for 15 years, decides to enter the third phase of life, “vaanaprastha” and retire to the forest. The Pandavas and the subjects are shocked. They give in with extreme reluctance, compelled by Dhritarashtra and Gandhari having taken to eating only every fourth day to exert moral pressure—a strategy rediscovered and used so effectively by Gandhi and being tried out now by Anna Hazare.

But then comes Vyasa’s master-stroke: the brothers—and we—are thunderstruck by their mother’s announcement that she will also depart. When the anguished Bhima asks why, then, did she enthuse them to wade into the sea of blood she tells them that, hurt most of all by Draupadi being dragged by her hair (there is no reference to attempted disrobing, which could well be an interpolation), she got them to win back their birthright. Having succeeded, her duty was done and she had no desire to remain in the world. In renouncing the fruits of the pyrrhic victory—for which she had coached her sons all along— and spending the rest of her life serving the architects of her suffering, Kunti exemplifies the sthitaprajna Krishna extolled, that “Calm of mind, all passion spent” that none else in the epic achieves, least of all the recipient of the Gita. 

As they take leave of the subjects, the people give us the interesting information that Duryodhana had been a good king to them and they have not the slightest complaint against him and his father. They attribute the holocaust to the will of the gods, pronouncing Duryodhana and his advisors blameless, echoing what Vyasa has said in the Adi Parva.

For three years Dhritarashtra and Gandhari, accompanied by Kunti, Sanjaya and Vidura (but not their wives—had they predeceased them?), mortify their bodies on the banks of the Ganga. It is Sahadeva who motivates his brothers to visit them and we have a unique scene of the special bond between him and Kunti as he sprints ahead to fall at her feet and she embraces him tearfully. Yudhishthira says that she loved him most of all. It is here (section 25) that Vyasa provides some description of the Pandava wives through Sanjaya, all except Devika. During this visit Yudhishthira seeks out Vidura and we are shocked once more. The avatara of Dharma roams the forest naked, smeared with filth, starving himself to death in the non-Vedic Jain way. While dying, he infuses his spirit into Yudhishthira, as a father does to his son. Dharma was the first deity Pandu got Kunti to summon. The “devara” is the first to be called to perform “niyoga” and beget progeny on his childless brother’s wife. Vidura’s corpse is not cremated. He was ever an outsider, on the fringes of royalty and strife, remaining even in death outside the Vedic dharma.  

At Gandhari’s request, followed by Kunti’s who aches to see her first-born, Vyasa brings up the spirits of all the dead warriors from the Bhagirathi that night, a scene paralleled in the Odyssey and the Aenied. Here reconciliation takes place with Karna and the others, all grief is dispelled, all hatred wiped out. As we can well appreciate, Janamejaya cannot believe this. He requests that Vyasa show him his father Parikshit, and this is granted. That ends the snake-sacrifice, ironically with the assassin Takshaka going scot-free. 

Now occurs a remarkable incident: Vyasa, presumably wanting to free the new regime of the large band of grieving widows, encourages them to plunge into the river to join their departed husbands. No other epic poet is so active an actor in his own composition, not only tendering advice but engineering mass suicide. Vyasa also proffers consolation by reiterating that the bloodletting had been decided by the gods—just as in the Cypria Zeus decided to lighten the burden of over-populated Gaia by bringing about the Trojan carnage. He also enlightens them about the deities incarnated as various heroes of Kurukshetra. Here there are a few differences from the Adivamshavatarana account. Puzzlingly, the sun-god incarnates as Karna “to foment friction and conflict” and, curiously, Shikhandi is said to be a rakshasa like the sons of Dhritarashtra. Arjuna, though born of Indra, is named as the seer Nara while Krishna is Narayana—the two invoked at the opening of the epic along with goddess Sarasvati. 

Two years after this visit Narada informs Yudhishthira that Dhritarashtra, Gandhari and Kunti were burnt alive in a forest fire, while Sanjaya escaped to the Himalayas and died there. We can see in this the result of Kunti’s karma of burning to death a Nishada woman and her five sons. In her inspired short-story “After Kurukshetra”, Mahashweta Devi has that Nishada woman’s daughter-in-law watch Kunti hemmed in by flames, satisfied with the poetic justice that overtakes her.

“What a terrible way to die…getting burnt to death!” we exclaim with Yudhishthira and ask with him, “I am completely mystified—how could the mother of Yudhishthira, Bhima and Vijaya perish helpless in a forest-fire? What was the point of Savyasachi gratifying the fire-god in the Khandava forest?… Skin-and-bones Pritha must have shuddered and cried: ‘Hari! Tata! Dear Dharmaraja!’ in the terror of her maha-trauma. ‘Save me, Bhima! Save me!’ Shrieking out her fear…” Vyasa provides no answers. It is Yuyutsu, the only son of Dhritarashtra left alive, born of a Vaishya maidservant, who leads the Pandavas in the funeral obsequies at Gangadwar. 

Never one to flinch from portraying reality, Vyasa ends the fifteenth book of the epic with this telling verse: “Without his relatives and friends, king Yudhishthira, afflicted with mental unease, ruled the kingdom, somehow.” The transcreation is, as ever, mellifluous and contemporary, while retaining the spirit of Bharat.

Breaking Away from Two Centuries of Western Indology

By

Vishwa Adluri & Joydeep Bagchee (ed.): Essays by Alf Hiltebeitel— Reading the Fifth Veda, Vol. 1, pp.646+xlviii, $240. When the Goddess was a Woman, vol. 2, Brill, Leiden, pp. 624+xlvii, $232.

Among modern scholars of the Mahabharata (MB) none has been as prolific, varied and intense in his research as Alf Hiltebeitel, Columbian Professor of Religion, History and Human Sciences at The George Washington University. Since 1976, besides several books breaking new ground, he has numerous papers covering an astonishing variety of topics stretching from Indus Valley seals to Tamil street plays and festivals of the third sex, all with MB connections. Currently he is translating the Shalya and Sauptika Parvas for the Chicago MB translation project. Adluri and Bagchee have grouped 41 of these articles under two themes with excellent introductions, bibliographies and indices in two handsomely produced hardbound volumes covering 1365 pages. Within the tight compass of a review it will only be possible to mention highlights.

The editors point out the major influence of Madeline Biardeau in turning Hiltebeitel from theorizing about the epic to the composition itself, i.e. what it meant for the reader in philosophical, narrative and literary terms, showing that it “had to be read from the outside inwards”, that it transmits the Indian tradition “without the need for Western ‘critical’ surgeries”. Instead of being Oldenberg’s “monstrous chaos” or Winternitz’s “literary monster,” it is “a product of conscious literary and artistic design,” a proposition that constitutes a radical break from two centuries of Western scholarship.

The 21 papers of the first volume largely focus on Hiltebeitel’s proposition that MB is a deliberate literary composition written around 150-100 BCE (a period first suggested in 1901 by E.W.Hopkins, but ignored) when the Sungas reasserted Brahminism against the spread of Buddhism under the Mauryas. This flies in the teeth of the prevalent theory of it being orally transmitted and finalized in the Gupta period. Further, he holds that the Ramayana (RM) is somewhat later (pace Madeline Biardeau). The references to heretics (nastika) cover all non-Vedic movements (Budhists, Jains, Charvakas, Ajivikas) and the north-west (Greeks, Pathians, Sakas, Kushanas) with debauched dharma. He gets around the problem of Panini mentioning MB characters much earlier (mid-4th century BCE) merely by suggesting that these may be interpolations. Yudhishthira, he proposes, was possibly modelled on Ashoka whose making of dharma the imperial concern led to the composition of MB and RM seeking to interpret dharma in terms of new bhakti ideology. No reasons are advanced for disagreeing with Biardeau’s proposition that MB was written during Ashoka’s time, that Jarasandha was modelled on Ashoka (pre-conversion?), as a brahminical manifesto against Ashokan diktats. For Hiltebeitel, Jarasandha represents the Buddhist tempter Mara (death, Jara). Rajagriha and Magadha were centres of Buddhism which revived in the Mathura region under Kanishka pushing out Brahminism (Krishna having to leave Mathura). Asti and Prapti, Jarasandha’s daughters, are non-Vedic names but prominent terms in Saravastivadin Buddhism. Thus, MB represents a contest between Brahminical and Buddhist ideas. In the account of the svayamvara of the Kalinga princess (Shanti Parva), Jarasandha and a king named Ashoka are present, besides rulers from the north (Sakas etc. symbolized in Kalayavana, Jarasandha’s ally) and the Buddhist dominated east. Shaunaka’s advice to Yudhishthira in the Vana Parva echoes Buddhist terms, contradicting the Buddhist eightfold path by a Vedic presentation of eight-limbed yoga. The picture of Kali Yuga Markandeya draws echoes Ashoka’s prohibition of religious assemblies, the worship of edukas (Buddhist reliquaries) instead of temples of gods and the subordination of Brahmins to Kshatriyas. The reversal of this by a militant Brahmin, Kalki, is foretold, paralleling what Pushyamitra Sunga did.

Hiltebeitel argues against the traditional stand that MB is a Kshatriya epic remoulded by resurgent Brahminism and proposes that it was written by Brahmins over a couple of generations (but can the specific statement that Vyasa composed it daily for three years be just ignored?). They used bardic transmission as a literary device to portray what the svadharma of a dharmic king should be, struggling to reconcile the violence inherent in a life of action, pravrittidharma, with the ideal of liberation through a life of withdrawal, nivrittidharma. The solution Hiltebeitel proffers is the concept of non-cruelty, anrishamsya, though many would argue that it is ahimsa, non-violence.

A major contribution of his is to pursue T.P. Mahadevan’s discovery that the southern recension of MB extensively revised the northern one before the Kalabhra interregnum (350-550 CE). Mahadevan has shown that around 25 BCE, the invading Sakas having supplanted the Mitras, Purvashikha Brahmins from Mathura moved to Tamil areas carrying MB with them. The problem is that in 57 BCE the Sakas had been routed by Vikramaditya, a contradiction Mahadevan does not resolve. Anyhow, this MB was written by a “tri-Vedic axis” of Purvashikha Shrauta Brahmins with cooperation from “branches” of the three Vedas around 300-100 BCE. This would be the text underlying the Sharada and Kashmiri manuscripts that are the core of the Critical Edition. Ashvaghosha (Buddhacarita) was familiar in the 1st or 2nd century CE with an MB that included the Mokshadharma Parva, so far was presumed to be a late addition. Taking his cue from the Buddhist Councils’ committees that edited the Suttas and the Vinaya, Hiltebeitel suggests that this model is applicable to MB, particularly for the Shanti and Anushasana Parvas.

In other articles he discusses the case of Nahusha, the first human ruler of the gods, in astronomical terms, as depicting an overturning of celestial order, disrupting devayana, the way of the gods, and pitriyana, the path of the manes. He translates with commentary the death of Karna bringing out the artistry, the representation of authorship, audience and character and showing that Krishna’s divinity is not an after-thought. A Rigvedic parallel exists where Indra shatters Surya’s chariot wheel to benefit Kutsa Arjuneya (son of Arjuna). Hiltebeitel does not notice that in RM the reverse occurs: Sugriva, Surya’s son, has Rama (Vishnu) kill Vali, son of Indra.

Fascinating parallels are drawn between Karna and Naraka who possesses him. The Vana Parva (3.240.33-34) declares that Bhishma, Drona and Kripa are possessed by Danavas, but only Karna is possessed by a demon Krishna has killed, so he is particularly concerned with him. A fine piece of comparative mythology is seen in the discussion on the Irish myth of Cuchulainn’s battle with Fer Diad in the Tain Bo Cuailnge and the Arjuna-Karna duel. Both are duels between foster brothers and share the theme of friendship involving the charioteer (Laeg for Cuchulainn; unnnamed for Fer Diad; Krishna and Shalya).

The Upanishadic image of the chariot-warrior driven by buddhi the charioteer is the theme of a paper rich in insights that teases out the significance of the symbolism of the many Krishnas in MB. For instance, Krishna, Arjuna and Draupadi represent the triad of Vishnu, Shiva (with whom Arjuna has many affinities) and Devi. The other Krishna, Vyasa, has affinities with Brahma. The monkey-bannered Kapidhvaja chariot bearing the two Krishnas harks back to the cosmic chariot fashioned for Shiva, driven by Brahma, for destroying Tripura (in this episode alone is Shiva called Jishnu, one of Arjuna’s names).

While warning against reading history into MB and RM, Hiltebeitel has no hesitation in saying they “seem” to be reflections of Brahmin poets on samrajya, both internal imperialism (Magadhan, Satavahanan,) and invasion by mleccha barbarians (Persian, Greek, Kushana), celebrating kingdoms they eclipsed. Does Kalayavana stand for Alexander’s failed invasion, as Guy Vincent argues in his lecture at the University of Aix-Marseille? A.Holtzman Jr. proposed in the 1890s that MB was originally a Buddhist epic with Duryodhana modelled on Ashoka representing national resistance against Greek invasion, which was subsequently inverted by Brahmins.

For Hiltebeitel MB “attempts a great synthesis of Indian civilization in the name of Hinduism” emerging out of and influencing, in turn, a culture. Except that ancient Sanskrit literature does not know the word “Hinduism”. This implies that to understand the epic the approach has to be both textual and ethnographic, finding out the connections between mythic and ritual exegesis. That is why, he argues, at key points in the narrative myths are told to deepen awareness of the layers of meaning underlying the text.

In arguing for the epic being, from inception, a written text performed orally (pace V.N. Rao), he articulates 19 propositions, marshalling evidence for each. The Karna Parva, in particular, is cited as an example of deliberate literary style drawing on Vedic images. In addition, pointing out the emphasis laid on Brahmins living by gleaning (uncchavritti) he suggests this is the self-image of the composer(s). Further, that the story of Shuka being imparted MB on the “back (prishtha) of the mountain” is “an image for the mise en scene of writing.” For the latter he depends on an account of Vyasa teaching MB to his son and four disciples before the birth of Dhritarashtra. This, however, contradicts Vyasa’s assurance to Dhritarashtra that he will immortalise the dynasty in his composition after the war.

An interesting distinction Hiltebeitel makes between the two epics is in the context of their common concern: grounding a brahminical conception of royal rule and stratified society in bhakti. Where MB “grounds its politics of bhakti in a politics of friendship and the enemy” (Krishna-Arjuna-Karna), RM bases its politics of bhakti on a politics of kingship. Hiltebeitel argues that RM’s design is based on MB, both having divine plans and showing the great Vedic rishis delighting in witnessing the implementation. Vyasa is not the traditional brahminic text-compiler but an author (or a “composing committee”) enforcing tight connections in his composition and repeatedly appearing in it. In this connection, he links together the Shuka story, the Narayaniya, the “many doors to heaven” section that follows and accounts about gleaners and the Naimisha forest concluding the Shanti Parva.

Hiltebeitel is the first to suggest an answer to the puzzle of why MB uses the term itihasa, namely,“to construct an alternate Vedic history of the people of a total land.” He tracks the eight usages of itihasa in MB to describe itself: cosmogony to genealogy as Ganga leaves Shantanu, time cooking everything, Parashurama’s massacres at the Treta-Dvapara cusp, the Kurukshetra battle as Dvapara fades into Kali, and finally the benefits of hearing this “so it was”.

MB tells us that the “Bharata” devoid of upakhyanas (subtales) was of 24000 couplets. Hiltebeitel analyses what functions the 67 subtales serve. He provides very interesting data that by way of describing itself, MB uses most frequently akhyana (narrative) 14 times, itihasa (history) 8 times, purana (ancient lore), samhita (collection), fifth Veda twice and Krishna’s Veda twice each, katha (story), mahagyana (great knowledge), shastra (treatise), upanishad, charita (biography or adventure), jaya (victory), upakhyana (subtale—first used by the MB) and kavya (poem) once each (the last allegedly interpolated). Besides these, it is actually a samvada (dialogue) between a multitude of speakers. Thus, MB is a multi-genre work while RM is only kavya, a single literary genre. The subtales make up at most 14.9% of MB (the critical edition) which ought to be 76% (100,000 couplets less 24,000), which tells us a lot about the danger of applying a statement made in a particular verse about the unedited composition to the considerably reduced compass of the critical edition. Hiltebeitel’s thesis is that without the subtales—all concerned with dharma—the grand design of MB cannot possibly emerge. In making his point he creates a sentence of Vyasan dimensions running to 28 lines non-stop (p.156). No wonder that in the course of this breathless rush he should call Bhishma the “ninth and sole surviving son” and refer to Ganga having “drowned the first eight”! The implications of both Bhishma and Krishna being the eighth son whose elder brothers are slain at birth are overlooked. He makes out a strong case for the huge Shanti and Anushasana parvas being part of the MB’s original design, based upon the nature of the subtales, with the interlocutors relaxing more and more after the war, delighting in teasing out the significances of stories. Even where they recur, the angle is different (e.g. the Vishvamitra tale in Book 13). Vyasa declares that this shastra, which is the secret of the Vedas, has been produced by churning the wealth inhering in the tales, as amrita was churned out of the ocean (Shanti Parva 238). Narayana is its foundation and its essence is advice on how truth and dharma lead to liberation.

The RM subtales are also analysed and their significance brought out. Hiltebeitel proposes that Valmiki went beyond the Ramopakhyana of MB to explore new values about bhakti-centred dharma of servant and master and between subjects and a divine ruler. While doing so, Hiltebeitel points out several corrections needed in the critical edition (footnotes on p.182). Similar observations occur quite a few times (e.g. p.192) regarding the “Narayaniya” portion of the Shanti Parva, usually considered as later bhakti padding, but important because it speaks of benefiting Shudras and women. Hiltebeitel calls in question the hallowed Sharada manuscript’s completeness, points out that merely four Malayalam manuscripts were consulted by the editor (p.195) and posits the existence of “a fuller and more meaningful text” (p.203) than what the editors produced. That makes out a strong case for revising the critical edition that has been the subject of papers by several other scholars—all foreign. It appears that Indian Indologists are unable to engage with such critical issues.

Hiltebeitel makes a very interesting connection between Dharma-Yama-Yudhishthira. It is during Yama’s sacrifice when death is at bay in the world that the five Indras are cursed by Shiva to be reborn as the Pandavas. Yudhishthira as Dharma-Yama’s son will complete his father’s death-dealing work at Kurukshetra. This is how the subtale provides the background of the divine strategy for the main action.

These upakhayanas form the context for a fascinating exploration of gender construction, probing the fringe areas of female sexuality, specially the unique sakhi-sakha relationship of Draupadi and Krishna, the Mandapala-Jarita-Lapita triangle (Hiltebeitel fancies the wives of Janamejaya and Shaunaka et al. as listeners) and the question of friendship between king Brahmadatta and a bird. Is it not surprising that after the discourse on moksha Yudhishthira should suddenly ask Bhishma whether it is the man or the woman who derives greater pleasure from coition? Not if we realise that he is reconciled to ruling and is returning to concerns of home life. Draupadi listens to these subtales and approves of Yudhishthira’s decision not to turn to ascetisicm (Anushasana Parva 57).

 In the unique sakhi-sakha relationship of Draupadi and Krishna there is the quirky joke Krishna cracks when Yudhishthira enquires whether Arjuna bears some inauspicious mark. Krishna responds that he has overdeveloped pindika, which Hiltebeitel translates as “cheekbones”. That would hardly provoke Draupadi’s indignant glance. Monier-Williams’ dictionary gives the meaning as, “the penis,” with an analogous meaning of, “swelling in the calf of the leg”, constituting a double entendre that explains Draupadi’s indignation. One suspects that Yudhishthira’s “So it is, Lord” is said with a smile that appreciates the double entendre, which is also the cause of the amusement of Bhima and others. When Hiltebeitel argues that the swollen cheekbones also refer to those of the sacrificial horse that makes little sense. The other meaning is more applicable, particularly because Draupadi has to lie beside the horse in simulated copulation. Nowhere is Krishna shown—as Hiltebeitel claims— mitigating Draupadi’s supposed embarrassment at this.

Hiltebeitel draws a comparison between the sakhi-sakha duo and the Vedic image of the two birds on one tree, the upanishadic sayuja sakhaya, companions and friends, and extends the Arjuna-Krishna duo to include Draupadi (brihati shyama, the great dark lady) completing the trifold symbol of jivatma-purusha-prakriti individual soul, witness soul and primal nature that is still seen in the triple Jagannatha image.

Possibly the most challenging paper in this collection is that on the horse sacrifice seeking to prove that Vyasa’s impregnating Ambika and Ambalika parallels the Ashvamedha rites, repeating much of the special pleading regarding Krishna mitigating Draupadi’s “humiliation”. Every queen was well aware of the ritual requiring her to simulate copulation with the suffocated horse. Kaushalya, Kaikeyi and Sumitra do so in RM. The names Amba, Ambika, Ambalika are invoked in the ritual to represent the chief queen and the co-wives approaching the horse. As in that ritual, Vyasa wants the two widows to observe a year-long vow of abstinence, but is over-ruled by Satyavati. Hiltebeitel likens Vyasa to the horse, as he has an overpowering odour that the queens have to bear. In RM, Rishyashringa of the phallic horn is ushered into the women’s quarters by Dasharatha, followed after some time by the horse sacrifice and the birth of the sons. The vehicle of Kama, god of erotic love, is the fish; Satyavati is fish-born; Vyasa carries his mother’s piscean odour along with her strong sexuality (because of which bathing apsaras cover themselves in his presence but do not do so before his son Shuka). Significantly, Pushyamitra Sunga revived the horse-sacrifice, and Hiltebeitel proposes that MB was written in this context.

 Ever since E.W. Hopkins there have been comparisons between RM and MB. Hiltebeitel shifts the perspective to trace the common design and vocabulary, concentrating on how the author is placed with reference to other sages and the heroine. As an example, he traces the heroines’ paths in their forest exiles. It is Draupadi-Krishnaa’s dark path that the text follows right till the end in heaven. Hiltebeitel points out that both in MB’s Ramopakhyana and Virata Parva, Sita and Draupadi appear in a single dirty, black garment. Valmiki defines her path through a group of sages who, in succession, get Rama to carry out the divine plan of wiping out the demonic menace in the forests: Vasishtha, Rishyashringa, Vishvamitra, Gautama, Parashurama, Bharadvaja, Atri, Sharabhanga, Sutikshna, and Agastya. Thereafter, Rama has to follow signs Sita has left and news from vultures and monkeys. Hiltebeitel hazards a rather fanciful guess that Valmiki might have been an apprentice-contributor to the composition of MB, both works addressing the same communities. Because of the competition, Hiltebeitel suggests, the myth of Brahma declaring MB to be a kavya was interpolated pre-4th century AD to keep pace with RM, the declared kavya.

A new approach Hiltebeitel adopts is to map the treatment of bhakti in the two epics through the voices of their heroines, picking out instances where each has suffered the deepest outrage. Both realise that their husbands choose dharma instead of protecting them. Draupadi emerges as a philosopher and a materialist. Sita voices the emotional side of bhakti addressing her absent spouse and God, while also involving the audience in that engagement with Rama/the Divine.

Hiltebeitel’s long review of Fitzgerald’s translation of the Shanti Parva voices the important warning of not stressing the opposition of didactic vs. narrative. He disputes the translator’s assertion regarding absence of a deliberate literary construction. The four themes of duties as a ruler, duties in emergencies, the way of liberation and the way of donation covered in it and the succeeding Anushasana Parva reinforce the corner-stone of Yudhishthira’s character: straightforwardness.

An intriguing proposition Hiltebeitel makes is that the source of most of Bhishma’s encyclopaedic expounding is “his time with his mother,” during his sojourn in celestial regions where he was instructed by the great rishis. What he does not explain, however, is that after Ganga agreed to beget the Vasus through Shantanu, why should she make flagrantly sexual advances to his father Pratipa?

 In reviewing the research on the connections between the epics and the themes of empire and invasion, Hiltebeitel states that he is unable to find the verse in which Yudhishthira speaks of their family custom of polyandry. This is the 29th shloka in chapter 194 of the Adi Parva:

sūkṣmo dharmo mahārāja nāsya vidmo vayaṃ gatim/

pūrveṣāmānupūrvyeṇa yātaṃ vartmānuyāmahe//

“Dharma, maharaja, is subtle

who knows how it works?

Safer for us to follow

the examples of the ancient past.” (The P.Lal transcreation, p.1010).

It is interesting that both epics do not mention Pataliputra but refer to Rajagriha and Girivraja, and both are the first texts to name Saketa “Ayodhya”, the unconquerable.

MB and RM were a new genre in Sanskrit literature introducing novel concepts like sanatana (eternal) dharma, raja-dharma, dharma-yuddha (war to uphold dharma), purushartha (meanings of human life), karma-yoga and explored these by exposing the protagonists to opposed dualities: paurusha (heroism)-daiva (fate), nivritti (withdrawal)-pravritti (action), astikya (theism)-nastikya (atheism), arya (nobility)-mleccha (barbarism). Junior heroes advocate heroism (Lakshmana, Bhima) while the seniors stand for submission to fate (Rama, Yudhishthira). Hiltebeitel senses nostalgia for pre-imperial independent kingdoms. The original Kshatriyas were annihilated by Parashurama and had to be re-created by Brahmins, thereby no longer being true descendants of the sun or the moon. This could be a reflection on how the poets looked upon contemporary Kshatriyas following the repeated invasions by Persians, Greeks, Parthians Sakas, Kushanas, Huns etc. In the medieval oral epics (Alha, Pabuji etc.), composed not by Brahmins but by Dalit bards, the heroes are reincarnations of MB and RM figures with Muslim and Dalit helpers. As against the Kshatriya role model constructed in the epics, there is nothing similar for Brahmins and the other classes: there are flawed martial Brahmins; remote Brahmin authors; Brahmins who appear in some episodes but, “There is no sustained treatment”.

The second volume takes a different tack, studying how the text is reflected in ethnography. Hiltebeitel is the first scholar to highlight the significant role of the mythologies of Shiva and of the Goddess, particularly the cult of the Devi, in regional epics and festival rituals. This is a major departure from traditional Indology that ignored regional Shudra or tribal versions of the epic believing that these could have nothing to do with royal heroes celebrated by the Brahmin redacteurs. It was Dr K.S. Singh, Census Commissioner, who was the first to document these folk versions.

Hiltebeitel offers intensive analysis of how MB was and is being re-interpreted for non-Brahmin live audiences in villages through street drama, festival-rituals of Draupadi and of Aravan/Kuttantavar with great significance for the third sex, oral performances of vernacular epics (Alha, Pabuji) and South Indian folklore. Through these a rare theme of MB is explored: “its analysis of the four ‘genera of becoming’ (sacrifice, cosmology, genealogy and war or agon)’”. This expands the epic tradition significantly beyond the Indo-European or “Aryan” to include ritual and performance, suggesting the existence of a parallel “underground Mahabharata” running alongside the Critical Edition’s Sanskrit text. Hiltebeitel is the first to explore the epic as a stri-shudra-veda, knowledge meant for all categories instead of being merely brahminical religious rhetoric.

Hiltebeitel’s great importance in MB studies lies in his highlighting various aspects of Draupadi hitherto unseen. Ten of the twenty essays collected in the second volume are concerned with her hair, garments, disguise, purity, cult and, lastly, her question that remains unanswered till the very end. Remarkable depths of insight are revealed through these investigations. It is her associations with Kalaratri, the night of time, or death—the dishevelled hair, black dirty garment, black complexion, vengefulness—that are taken over into her cult as the terrifying Vira Shakti, virgin goddess, the Primal Prakriti who forages in Kurukshetra at night.

In these explorations it is puzzling why Hiltebeitel does not examine the plays of the earliest Sanskrit dramatist Bhasa while discussing Bhatta Narayana’s Venisamhara. According to him, Venisamhara was reworked by Subramania Bharati into a “play”, whereas it is an epyllion, best translated into English by Dr.Prema Nandakumar for UNESCO and the Sahitya Akademi.

Four studies deal with the South Indian story and cult of Aravan/Kuttantavar, son of Arjuna, whose northern counterpart is Barbareek, son of Bhima or Ghatotkacha, who goes by the name “Khatu Shyam” in Rajasthan. Both are born of serpent maidens and their severed heads watch the entire battle of Kurukshetra. Just as Krishna brought about Ghatotkacha’s death, so is he responsible for the death of Aravan/Barbareek. This head declares that the cause of victory was Krishna’s discus and Draupadi as goddess Kali. The major difference is that in South India crossed gender is a major theme, where Krishna as Mohini marries Aravan before his decapitation. The Kuttantavar cult is a major festival for transsexuals and the third sex. A number of fascinating photographs of the performances have been included. Hiltebeitel is mistaken in saying that Barbareek’s mother is nameless. In the Hindi chapbook from Khatu she is Ahilyavati, daughter of Vasuki, king of snakes, who marries Bhima by the grace of Shiva. In the Skanda Purana’s Kumarika Khanda account she is Kamakatankata, daughter of demon Mura of Pragjyotishpura whom Ghatotkacha wins by defeating her in a duel.

The remaining six papers are a miscellaneous lot exploring the significance of the animals in the Proto-Shiva Indus seal, suggesting that it has links with the buffalo-and-the-Goddess myth, the mythology of Sati from the Puranas to the Rajput lay of Alha, comparing that lay’s battle-story with MB, comparing the Tulu myth of the killing of a boar by twin brothers Koti and Cennaya (parallels of Bhima and Arjuna) with the Tamil “Elder Brothers Story” and the Telegu folk epic Palnadu and an account of two South Indian buffalo sacrifices The volume includes a shocking expose of Peter Brook’s atrocious behaviour with the street-play (terukkuttu) while he was conceiving his MB drama.

These ten studies are an incredible treasure trove of ethnographic material as much for anthropologists as for Indologists. Going through the two volumes is an exhausting but richly rewarding and exceptionally stimulating experience. The production is excellent, but one is surprised to come across errors in cross-references in a few footnotes that have escaped the editors’ notice. The bulk could have been reduced significantly by omitting repetitive material.

TKC: Till Khatiya Comes—a variation on the ‘Never Say Die’ motto

By

P.C. Alexander: Through the Corridors of Power, Harper Collins, 2004, pp.480

The last couple of years have witnessed an unusual rash of unburdening by Indian civil servants which is of particular interest because of the posts held by them: Cabinet Secretaries to the union government—the highest post in the bureaucracy—of whom two have gone on, after retirement, to be principal secretary to the prime minister. The revelations they provide are put in perspective by the confessional account of a former joint director of the Intelligence Bureau, Maloy Dhar’s Open Secret. What sets P.C. Alexander’s Through the corridors of power apart from Deshmukh’s A cabinet secretary looks back and Subramanian’s Journeys through Babudom and Netaland is his considerable experience as an international bureaucrat and his little field experience. With considerably less than a decade in the field, he opted for the central pool and never came back to serve in a state. It speaks volumes about the highest echelons of decision making in Indian government that Smt. Gandhi made a deliberate choice to appoint him as the prime minister’s principal secretary to function significantly in the political arena, both within the country and without. Alexander shares with us a treasure: facsimiles of the little notes and delightful doodles Smt. Gandhi used to pass on to him during meetings for his scribbled responses and details of her penchant for punctuality, her expertise in packing for international jaunts, her behaviour like “an empress”, her swift clearing of files and her deep concern for her three grandchildren because of which the refusal to allow Varun to meet her even once in a while left a deep emotional scar. Unlike Deshmukh who struggled to mask his attachment to Rajiv Gandhi behind the façade of a proper civil servant, Alexander is quite open regarding his unqualified devotion to the Gandhi pariwar, whether in power or out of it. Much of his earlier book, My years with Indira Gandhi has been included in this work. Of particular value is his detailed account of the events following the assassination of Smt. Gandhi and the crucial role he played in persuading Rajiv Gandhi to wait till the President arrived for being sworn in as prime minister, overruling the intense pressure of the Arun Nehru cabal for getting this done by the Vice President. Alexander gives us a deeply moving picture of this traumatic scene in the AIIMS cabin with Smt. Gandhi’s corpse where Rajiv Gandhi was being begged by his wife not to accept the post. There was no one else present, except Alexander.

True to the nature of an autobiography, Alexander does not hide his lacerated ego behind a mask. Like many high profile civil servants of the TKC (till khatiya comes) breed, he cannot rest content with retirement, but eagerly accepts one post after another: high commissioner in London (that assuages the humbling his pride suffered after the spy scandal that made him resign as principal secretary to the prime minister), governor of Tamil Nadu and then of Maharashtra, tentative candidate for President of India settling for becoming one of many Rajya Sabha MPs. Alexander is curiously akin to another bureaucrat whom he, Deshmukh and Dhar roundly criticise for his megalomania and open kow-towing to Rajiv Gandhi. Nothing sets him apart from T.N. Seshan in craving to become President of India and seeking political support for it, only to be grossly let down, exposing the political naiveté of both.

The book flaunts encomiums from Venkataraman on his professional competence, from Vajpayee who calls him not just a rajyapal but also a rajguru (which must have fanned the dream of occupying Rashtrapati Bhavan), from Palkhivala who calls his talk on Gandhiji “the greatest talk ever delivered”. There are nearly a dozen photographs of the author with VVIPs. After these to be faced with the bitterness permeating the first 50 pages (Alexander begins at the end, with how he was led up the garden path and then let down by the NDA regarding Rashtrapati Bhavan because of the Congress machinations and the ambitions of K.R. Narayanan for a second term) leaves a bad taste in the mouth. It is, of course, valuable because it tears away the entire façade of decency to expose the slavering ambition of bureaucrats-turned-politicians even when they rise to become the President of India, fuelled by the “never say die” syndrome.

To civil servants the book is of interest because of the evidence that out of turn promotion is possible even in the IAS. Alexander superseded many to become development commissioner of small-scale industries as many as three years before he was eligible. How the appointments committee of the cabinet bent the rules just because Lal Bahadur Shastri insisted is a telling commentary on the power of the political executive even in the so-called heydays of our fledgling democracy. This is a post he held again ten years later after reverting prematurely from a UN posting, sacrificing a UN pension because he was not finding job satisfaction in it. He again got promoted as secretary to the union government ahead of several seniors at the behest of Smt. Gandhi who overruled the cabinet secretary’s objections. During the Janata regime, Alexander stood up to Morarji Desai valiantly as commerce secretary and, when relieved of the post, took up an assignment with the UNITC. In a similar fashion, V.P. Singh peremptorily removed him as governor of Tamil Nadu despite their earlier good relations. Years later when Singh was his guest in Bombay, Alexander mentioned this to him and had the satisfaction of hearing the former prime minister confess that it had been a mistake. Alexander was quite thoroughly involved as go-between in negotiations between various political parties and factions within the Congress when Narsimha Rao’s candidature for prime ministership came up. He smoothly made the transition from an aloof bureaucrat to a politician, almost king-maker, playing an important role in helping Smt. Gandhi through her tense relations with Sanjiva Reddy, Zail Singh, MGR, N.T. Rama Rao and others, even recommending how the AICC should be reconstituted. Despite his recommendation in favour of Swaran Singh as presidential candidate, for reasons which he could not plumb, she chose Zail Singh with unfortunate results.

The coverage of the emergency is disappointingly sketchy. The post-emergency witch-hunt launched by the Janata government covered civil servants too. Alexander mentions the arrest of B.B.Vohra, petroleum secretary, but has not a word to say about the insults to which another secretary was subjected by a local police station. The abdication of the home secretary and even the cabinet secretary, Nirmal Mukherji, who did not intervene in any way, severely demoralised the bureaucracy. This was the time when everyone needed to come together to take a stand.

The book provides a detailed account of the Punjab imbroglio and raises questions about the inadequacy of military intelligence regarding the extent to which the terrorists inside the golden temple were armed which led to severe damage to the building as the army had to change their plans completely and bring him heavy armour. The inner wheeling dealing between the terrorists and the prime minister’s house that Alexander does not reveal (he cannot explain why Smt. Gandhi kept president Zail Singh in the dark) has been narrated in detail in Dhar’s Open Secret. The IPKF involvement in Sri Lanka is not covered satisfactorily, possibly because he did not have access to the inner goings-on of the prime minister’s office at that time.

One is surprised not to find any pen-portraits of Alexander’s batch-mates in the IAS. He has nothing to say about one of the most illustrious of them, Sushital Banerjee, who died in office as defence secretary when the Jaguar aircraft deal scandal erupted. Nor does he mention Rajeshwar Prasad who influenced so many batches of IAS trainees in the National Academy of Administration and got it renamed after Lal Bahadur Shastri. The book, with its focus on international and national politics, completely ignores another event that badly shook the bureaucracy: the resignation of the director of the national academy of administration over government’s soft-pedalling of exemplary action against a trainee who had attempted to molest a lady colleague. Alexander, as the prime minister’s secretary, did not support the principled stand of the director of the national academy nor had a word to say about its aftermath which severely damaged the integrity of the civil service. Ironically, after the spy scandal in the PMO erupted, Alexander’s own resignation was accepted, as that of Appu had been! Proudly he reproduces the editorial in the Hindustan Times commending his “excellent work” and recommending that government reject his resignation.

Actually, Alexander is so lost in himself, that nothing which does not directly affect him is of consequence. When the cabinet secretary writes asking for his concurrence to join the national security advisory board, he is offended because he feels the prime minister himself should have done so as the cabinet secretary had been a joint secretary under him. Alexander even quotes the written response he elicited after “gently chastising him”—its exaggerated tone makes one suspect it is tongue in cheek—: “you are undoubtedly one of the greatest civil servants of India.”

The book becomes, in the ultimate analysis, an account of his and his wife’s grand achievements in India and abroad, and his griping about having been taken for a ride by politicians who dangled before him the juicy carrot of Rashtrapati Bhavan.

–Pradip Bhattacharya

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