Pradip Bhattacharya

Indologist, Mahabharata scholar

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Wendy Doniger: “The Ring of Truth—Myths of Sex and Jewelry,” Speaking Tiger, New Delhi, pp. 395, 2017, Rs. 899.

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“Though sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, a ring is almost never just a ring.”

Doniger’s great contribution to comparative mythology studies has been the elaboration of the Mobius strip nature of myth, where themes keep unravelling and doubling back on themselves, or interlock on semblances like a Venn diagram whose intersecting rings have no central ring. In The Implied Spider: Politics and Theology in Myth (1998) she set forth the proposition, continued the investigation with Splitting the Difference (1999) to reveal how myth-making can be used to overcome barriers of gender and culture. In The Bedtrick (2000) she examined the patterns we have created to deal with sexual fantasies. The Woman Who Pretended to Be Who She Was: Myths of Self-imitation (2005) dealt with multiple identities and love in Indo-European myths.

When we think of the ring, four names immediately spring to mind: Kalidasa, Wagner, Bro  wning and Tolkien. Rings are embedded in Doniger’s psyche beginning with the gimmel ring her father gave her mother inscribed, “REF to SHU”. Baffling! It referred to her favourite volume of the eleventh edition of the 1911 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica a signal edition which my grandfather also had. Then there is Doniger’s own wedding ring which she retained even after divorce. No wonder she returns to explore its symbolism at length a decade after completing her mythic quartet with The Woman who pretended to be Herself (2006). Her new book explores a symbol she had touched upon in The Bedtrick. Tolkien’s psyche-corrupting ring does not feature in the line-up while the rings of Kalidasa and Wagner receive detailed treatment.

In ten chapters Doniger brings to light different functions rings perform in myth, literature and, her particular speciality, cinema. To her, “rings are signifiers, semiotic objects.” She traces rings through time functioning as recognition clues. There are marriage (and adultery) rings, rings fished from the sea (Shakespeare), Rama’s ring, Shakuntala’s ring, rings of forgetfulness in medieval romances, the Siegfried Saga, clever wives who trick alienated husbands into getting them pregnant, the vexed issue of the rape of the clever wife (one of whom almost rapes her husband). After this the concept of the ring is enlarged to cover jewellery (the circular hollow variety) beginning with Marie Antoinette’s notorious necklace. The ninth chapter ventures into jewellery in English literature and the last investigates if diamonds are, indeed, a woman’s best friend. She shows how marriage, jewellery and faking both “are joined at the hip,” sprinkling the entire investigation with personal anecdotes that lend an engrossing intimate touch to the writing and with puns that enliven the reading. What she leaves out is rings that are just magical (e.g. Aladdin’s) or have secret recesses to hide passwords, microfilms or poison (as with Catherine de Medici).

Rings are a critical proof of identity, functioning often like today’s credit cards. Romans used it as a sign of love, using iron rings for betrothal. By the 13th century the Church was using the ring as a token of marriage. The Hebrew Bible has the ring as a person’s legal surrogate: “The signet ring is an extension of the hand, with its handwriting and, later, fingerprints.” Regarded as an extension of the heart, it is worn on the fourth finger supposedly linked to the heart by the vein of love as far back as the fifth century CE.

Diderot’s ring of truth, in his novel The Indiscreet Jewels, understands vagina monologues, keeping tally “of visitors and their orgasms,” but is silent regarding the woman’s feelings. Doniger seeks to give voice to this. She selects two contrasting types of rings: those which secure marriage before consummation (the Doris Day scenario) versus the indiscriminate pursuit of jewellery through coition (the Marilyn Monroe gold-digger paradigm). The slut assumption underlies both, i.e. jewellery must have been obtained through sex. In one case it validates the wife’s chastity, in the other the courtesan’s conquests. The problem occurs when a clever wife enters the courtesan’s arena to get a ring from her alienated husband to prove her chastity: “Jewellery and beauty play a game of doubles.” Men give beautiful women jewellery. Women crave jewellery to enhance their beauty so that men give them more, especially a wedding ring, “which magically transforms the Marilyn Monroe type into the Doris Day type.”

One of the recurring motifs is the recovery of a ring thrown into the water that often turns up inside a fish, as with Solomon’s and Shakuntala’s rings, which both loose thoughtlessly. Both need the ring to prove their identities. Solomon working as a cook in the kitchen of a king’s daughter after a demon has tricked him and changed his appearance resembles Nala tricked by a snake into losing his identity and cooking in Damayanti’s kitchen. At times it is a child who takes the place of the ring swallowed by the fish. It is not only Pradyumna who is found inside a fish as Doniger writes, but also Matsyagandha and her twin brother. Such tales incorporate the motif of a husband or wife disguised in animal skin. We find this in the tale of “Buddhu-Bhutum,” the Owl Prince and the Monkey Prince, found in Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumdar’s marvellous collection of Bengali grandmother’s tales, “Thakurmar Jhuli”.

Another motif is what Freud called the Family Romance where a mother abandons her child fearing scandal. The child is reared elsewhere but returns to claim his right. Doniger cites Oedipus as the prime example, but there is an example in Indian myth too. Mandodari, finding herself pregnant in Ravana’s absence after drinking the blood of sages he had stored, abandons her daughter in water. The child, Sita, is reared by Janaka and returns to cause the destruction of Lanka. In Jain, Egyptian and Jewish stories the ring serves to reveal incest involving siblings and parents. In Kalidasa’s Shakuntala story and its Buddhist variant (in the Katthaharijataka) the ring ensures that the king supports his son whom he has refused to acknowledge earlier. Doniger points out that Kalidasa combines three types of rings: the ring of identity taken from the Jatakas; the ring lost and found in a fish; and the ring that restores memory. This technique Doniger calls “bricolage”, whereby the myth-maker takes a piece of one story to add to another. To the ring Kalidasa adds a magical bracelet—another circular piece of jewellery—on Bharata’s arm. He turns the Mahabharata story of power and inheritance into one about desire and memory. The fish symbolises the recovery and persistence of memory. It does not blink and is deep under water. In children we and our memories survive. But very often the rings found in fish “are fishy excuses” that express repression and ambivalence, letting the man fulfil his secret polygamous desires.

In medieval romances (Yvain, Tristan, Arthur, Ogier) the ring has a triple function of identity, memory and invisibility. It can hide you from everyone. If lost, not only do others not recognise you, but you yourself do not either—a fascinating twist to the tale! A flower garland sometimes replaces the ring of forgetfulness. Doniger should have linked Keats’ re-imagining in “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” here. Shakespeare uses rings in plots about allegations of adultery.

The multiple functions played by the ring in the myths of Siegfried and of Wieland the smith are analysed at length. The naked sword in the bed between man and woman symbolises the impasse created by the man’s rejection of his wife and the desire for a son. Doniger overlooks the different meaning this has in Indian mythology where it is the “asipatra” vow the king observes during a horse-sacrifice. This enforced celibacy gets over only after the queen’s simulated intercourse with the throttled horse. The sexual symbolism is clear. Wagner rearranged elements from Indian and Norse cosmology, the myth of Brunnhilde the Valkyrie and added the conclusion of having her riding back through the fire to Siegfried. Thus he created a new myth, re-arranging “to re-invent a wheel of cosmic death and transfiguration.” Drawing upon the destructive power of the ring of Polycrates of Samos and Shakuntala’s wedding ring of love, Wagner showed that power and love are at odds with each other. This usually involves loss of memory and identity, providing the man with a convenient excuse for having deceived the woman. To Doniger, the ring acts like the hormone Oxytocin. When she asserts that a virgin having a baby was achieved only in Christian mythology she forgets the many kanyas of Indian myth who precede this by far: Madhavi, Satyavati, Kunti and Draupadi, each retaining virginity despite having sons.

One of the most fascinating chapters explores how clever wives use rings and children to win back their husbands who refuse to impregnate them. This is Stith Thompson’s folk theme “AT 891D”: the rejected wife as lover, exemplified in the Kathasaritsagara tale of Muladeva which passes into the Arabian Nights, Boccaccio’s Decameron, Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well and the Old Testament tale of Tamar tricking her father-in-law Judah to beget a child. Lot’s daughters get their father drunk to beget children by him. The Merchant of Venice has the same cross-dressing and play with rings. Variants include the plays of Menander and Terence whose plots reverse the clever wife tales and in which the ring identifies the abandoned child as well as its father. In a unique Arabian Nights tale, the abandoned Budur tracks down and stages a homosexual rape of her husband Qamar-al-Zaman with rings playing a key role. Surprisingly, Doniger, the Hollywood aficionado, does not refer to Gore Vidal’s Myra Breckinridge in this context. In a marvellous sentence Doniger provides a vignette of what happens: “This high-wire act, the self flying through the masquerade to catch the out-stretched hands of some other self, must be performed without any net but the narrative chain-mail made up of rings. And that chain-mail is what preserves these illogical stories.”

The historical scandal of Marie Antoinette’s necklace is drawn out at tedious length without dovetailing into the theme of the ring as it identifies no one. In the last chapter Doniger tries to remedy this by arguing that it is about the mis-recognition of the queen.  She describes it very evocatively as “a moment (that) came out of myth…and went back into it.” She finds parallels in Beaumarchais’ The Marriage of Figaro, Rossini’s and Mozart’s operas The Barber of Seville in which the necklace is not significant. As she draws extensively upon Alexandre Dumas, it is puzzling why the earlier incident of Queen Anne’s necklace is not covered, since here it was proof of her chastity (typically, although she was adulterous).

In modern times Doniger discusses the slut assumption in literature (Jane Austen, George Eliot, Maupassant, Henry James, Maugham), i.e. a woman sporting costly jewellery has got it by immorality. She spices up her survey with revealing quotes from Mae West and Elizabeth Taylor confirming this. Movies are also analysed (Random Harvest, Vertigo, Gaslight, Gigi, The Earrings of Madame de…) to show how reality and fantasy merge, with the clever lady using it to convince both husband and lover that she is faithful to him alone and that passing off real jewellery in public as fake to put off theft is not a new gimmick clever women use.

The tenth chapter is about how De Beers launched a campaign to sell diamond rings commemorating divorce and apology (to head-off divorce). They even tried the gimmick of “Management Rings” for macho men, which did not catch on because of its innate femininity. The power of the ring lies not only in its emotional symbolism but also in its market value, particularly in case of a broken engagement or a divorce. The Anglican marriage ceremony’s “With all my worldly good I thee endow” used the ring as the symbol of the husband’s property that the wife was to preserve. The opposite is the legend of the diabolical diamond started by the Church. The Puritans in England tried to abolish wedding rings but people wanted them. The British Parliament even had legislation defending a woman’s right to throw the engagement ring into the river instead of returning it to her fiancé! 21st century women have broken free of the De Beers mythology by either selling diamond rings, buying their own (Doniger mentions Miss Universe Sushmita Sen sporting a 22-carat solitaire and challenging a man to match it or the size of her heart), buying other jewellery, going in for costume jewellery, or just not bothering about jewellery. Doniger laments a new trend in the USA of fathers giving daughters silver purity rings for abstinence (as in the Cinderella story). The girls simply take it off when they do not wish to abstain, and then put it back on, “losing it” temporarily as men do in myths. “Sex, if not love, will always find a way—out of…even the promise embodied in a ring.”

One of the themes that binds these stories together is the eternal triangle of jewellery, sex and money. They may be called love stories, but actually they are about “luxury” i.e. lust and opulence. A man broadcasts his command over wealth and sex by having a woman wear jewellery, while women “use jewellery to negotiate between the carat of sexual bargaining power and the stick of financial dependency.” The movie Sex and the City shows that nothing has changed except into something rich and strange. As Doniger writes so perceptively, “Myths endure precisely because people keep changing them into something that serves their present needs.”

If recognition through a ring is a genus, recognising the spouse through it is a species. Since the number of basic plots usable is limited, it enables the audience to experience delightful anticipation, knowing that it is watching something predictable. That is the secret of the success of movies ringing changes on the same series of plots. Willing suspension of disbelief is integral to it, as in the case of the Pandavas not being recognised despite their flimsy disguises in the kingdom of Virata. The myth-maker is like a rag-and-bones man making new stories out of scraps of old tales like a bricolage, what in Bengal is called a “kantha”, a patchwork quilt. Each culture chooses from among these scraps, of which the ring story has proved to be more popular. Story tellers and audiences collude in preserving myths. “It is the repetition that produces the immortality,” tales keep on returning, like rings thrown into the waters.

But why do myths work? Doniger proposes that they persist because they work at a very deep level, repairing the immoral universe, mitigating uneven relations between rich, lusty men and poor, weak women. Thus, they provide hope that the world can become more moral, meeting our personal emotional needs despite being irrationally romantic. An engrossing read indeed. But why such an inappropriate cover showing a woman holding a fruit when the book is not about woman as Eve? There is a Ravi Varma painting of Dushyant giving Shakuntala the ring that could have been used, as also a modern one showing the ring inside the fish flanked by the two.

As I wrote this, I was powerfully reminded of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets:

Yet, the river we step into is never the same:

we may not change, but we do learn

even while meeting apparently the same self again and again.

Insights into the Harivansha

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Couture HV-2

Andre Couture: Krishna in the Harivamsha, vol. 2—the greatest of all sovereigns and masters, DK Printworld, New Delhi.

In 1858 at the age of 18 when Kaliprasanna Singha embarked upon his massive project of translating the Mahabharata (MB) into Bengali, he omitted the Harivansha (HV) finding it patently later in language and style. MB refers to it as khila, appendix. Andre Couture, professor of Indology at the Universite Laval, Quebec, is the only scholar to have studied this neglected text in great detail showing that in order to appreciate the dimensions of Krishna’s character one has to read the HV. Like the sub-tales in the MB, the HV serves to complement the mahakavya.

Western Indologists have argued that the figure of Krishna conflates two separate persons: the child-god, a pastoral deity, and the warrior-hero. In Couture’s first volume he had shown how the childhood tales elaborate the nature of Krishna’s divinity. He is protector of the gopas, creator of a new world and destroyer of demons. Restoring stolen earrings to Aditi, mother of the devas, he also harries Swarga to snatch its Parijata tree. The present work takes this further to argue that instead of being a haphazard anthology of ancient tales of diverse origins the HV is a dextrous weaving of material to portray the universal sovereignty of Krishna. Looking at him merely as a hero fails to explain major elements in his life.

What is most satisfying is that Couture does not restrict himself to the Critical Edition—which leaves out huge swathes of material—but studies the vulgate’s rich repository. Comparing the later accounts of Krishna’s childhood in the Puranas he makes the very important point that the shortest version does not necessarily connote the oldest. Further, thematic content and literary structure remain the only means for studying the received text as its authorship cannot be pinned down. The HV is not an ancient relic. It was a living composition responding to questions from new listeners familiar with ritual practices. The episode about the destruction of the kapittha tree (rejected by the CE), for instance, explains the link between Krishna and Shiva. For Couture, “the various HV versions hide lingering questions…the traditional text adjusts to ever-changing environments while still speaking the same, unchanging mythic language.” These changes reveal what is underlying. Another good example is the fight with Bana. Instead of exemplifying how bards corrupted the text (as the CE editors hold), it shows how pauranikas reworked it to keep the audience interested and explain it to them. He finds that a passage (*1259 after HV 108.98) about Narada meeting Aniruddha and Usha has not been included in the CE although it occurs in all the key recensions. Another such passage (*435 after HV 28.12) is about the origin of the Syamantaka gem His research leads to the conclusion that “the logic underlying the reconstruction of the HV is not always evident. (p.145)”

Beginning with Krishna and Balarama’s initiation at Sandipani’s ashram, Couture shows that it marks stepping into adulthood leading to Krishna’s victory in Dvaraka. In the process he acts as a son in many ways: rescues his parents; resurrects Devaki’s six sons; restores the throne to Ugrasena; restores to his guru his lost son; restores to a Brahmin his four dead sons. Arjuna undergoes similar initiatory rites of passage vis-à-vis Drona and Shiva in the MB. MB and HV follow the same plan.

The paper on Dvaraka shows how it is built following procedures for constructing a temple. That indicates the later date of the HV because the MB does not know temples. Couture holds that HV took shape between 200 and 1200 or 1300 AD. Dvaravati is built as objectifying Vasudeva’s divine self. As Krishna-Balarama are the complementary sheshin and shesha, so is Dvaraka complemented by the sea which retreats to house it. Further, between the two brothers in the city stands their sister Ekanamsha, Krishna’s maya. Their combination in the court that replicates heavenly Sudharma shows that this is a city embodying dharma. Its destruction is wrought by ascetics representing nivritti, withdrawal from creation.

Couture draws a fascinating parallel between Madhuvana and Kushasthali. Shatrughna destroys the former and builds Mathura there. Yakshas and rakshasas destroy the latter and Krishna builds Dvaraka there. Before that, Krishna has abandoned Vraja, causing wolves to appear so that the gopas flee to Vrindavana, which is also abandoned after the brothers shift to Mathura. The Yadavas abandon these settlements as the avatara takes birth and dies. Couture proposes that the HV has moved beyond the earlier contrasting of the town with the forest to a new philosophy conscious of the ambiguities inherent in building a city. While it must be built following prescribed rituals, it must be destroyed like any ritual construction.

Couture is the only scholar to study in depth Krishna’s enthronement by kings in Kundinapura (rejected in the CE) to show how it replicates his childhood installation as Upendra/Govinda in the Govardhana episode. This new tale stresses Krishna’s status as universal sovereign. Unlike Shiva he is no renunciant but deals with riches all the time. All the foes he destroys are hoarders. Whatever wealth he recovers he does not hoard but redistributes among devotees. His use of wealth follows the tradition of yagyas in which the monarch distributed the tribute he received among the public. In Dvaraka he says, “I do not wish to see any more hungry, thin, dirty, poor people asking for alms in this city” (86. 60). His speech in the Govardhana episode is similar to that in the Gita in urging all to perform their svadhrma and surrender to the Supreme Purusha in self-sacrifice. The HV’s originality lies in modelling Krishna along the lines of Narayana the Yagya-Purusha to whom worldly goods must be surrendered so that he may redistribute them.

A very important contribution is the development of the theme of goddess Yoganidra-Ekanamsa (“one and indivisible”). She is Ekanamsa because by herself she protects Krishna after birth. Five papers explore the critical role she plays in ensuring the success of Krishna-Balarama’s exploits. Most interestingly, Couture shows that in HV (96) she stands between the two exactly as they are depicted in iconography today. They are avatars of Narayana, Nidra the cosmic night and Shesha-naga. She is sister to both Krishna and Indra, “mahendra-vishnu-bhagini”. She is given the name Kaushiki as Indra takes her as his sister (he is of the Kushika gotra). She is also called Katyayani, consort of Narayana who is worshipped in the Vindhyas and elsewhere with offerings of meat. Thus, when the HV was composed there were many places where the goddess was worshipped (c. 1st to 3rd centuries AD?). Couture equates her with Devi Kotavi who suddenly appears nude during Krishna’s attack on Bana to ensure his “svadharma” in honouring Shiva’s boon to the asura. The HV posits that Krishna as the Purushottama is one with Rudra. She is also related to “jrimbha” (yawn) which appears when demonic forces have to be destroyed, closely linked to fever (“jvara”). Pradyumna and his father Krishna exhibit similarities in childhood, with the devi playing a role in both. As Maya, she helps Pradyumna kill Shambara and as Kotavi she saves Aniruddha’s father-in-law Bana. In a valuable contribution Couture shows that the Pancharatra tetrad is foreshadowed in the HV. Aniruddha alone is not an avatar. He stands for the ego (“ahankara”) sunk in worldly life from which Krishna (kshetrajna, the knower-of-the-self), Balarama (the atman) and Pradyumna-Sanatkumara (“manas”) liberate him.

There is a peculiar cross-cousin marital custom prevalent among the Yadavas that Couture overlooks. Pradyumna marries his maternal uncle Rukmin’s daughter Subhangi. Their son Aniruddha marries Rukin’s granddaughter Rukmavati. In the MB Arjuna marries Subhadra, daughter of his maternal uncle Vasudeva. In Telegu folklore their son Abhimanyu marries his maternal uncle Balarama’s daughter Shashirekha or Vatsala.

Couture provides us with a detailed analysis of Sankarshana’s relations with Krishna—how they come together and move apart. Balarama is not a name given in the MB and the HV, which call him “halin/langalin” (plough-wielder), Sankarshana and Baladeva. Balarama’s plough is linked both to sacrificial rites and to the destruction of cleaving the earth. It is in Jain texts that he is called “Rama”. The MB refers to Sankarshana as the first born of all beings who at dissolution withdraws all into himself. Krishna is the spiritual principle “purusha” while he is the material principle, “pradhana”. The adult relationship of Balarama and Krishna is a vexed one although they complement each other. The episode of the Syamantak gem marks a break in trust, with Balarama moving away to Mithila presuming that Krishna is concealing his appropriation of the gem. Such separation always heralds some violence analogous to cosmic dissolution (pralaya). Couture makes a puzzling reference to Sankarshana being an avatar of the snake who consumes the earth during pralaya, as no such phenomenon is described. Their relationship is seen to evolve from the HV through the Vishnu and Bhagavata Puranas to the Brahmavaivarta Purana where Sankarshana fades out and Radha predominates.

Couture misses an important point the HV makes. Krishna’s conflict with his own clan is not limited to the Mausala Parva of the MB. He refers to having killed Ekalavya, who is a son of his paternal uncle Devashrava. He also kills his paternal aunt’s son Shishupala. Jara, who kills Krishna, is also a cousin of his. Thus, the fratricide that is the Kurukshetra holocaust is paralleled in Krishna’s life. The Syamantaka gem is at the centre of this conflict.

Challenging the editor of the Critical Edition who sets little store by the peculiar story of the Syamantaka gem, Couture shows that every element of it constitutes a carefully constructed narrative depicting the supreme sovereignty of Krishna. Indeed, he is the Yagya-Purusha, the lord of sacrifice (Agni and Soma), of the sun and the moon and through them of the two major royal lineages. It is as the Yagya-Purusha that he overcomes the three Vedic fires who confront him in the battle with Bana, an incident that makes no sense otherwise. Besides the MB, Yaska’s Nirukta refers to Syamantaka, showing its antiquity. Its appearance coincides with the founding of Dvaraka and it has a solar as well as an oceanic (i.e. lunar) origin. Krishna’s possession of it indicates his mastery of both these yagyic principles. Indeed, Janamejaya states that Vishnu contains both. Couture has not noticed that the Krishna-Jambavan duel inside a cave with Balarama posted outside is a clear parallel of the Vali-Mayavi duel with Sugriva standing guard in the Ramayana.

The concept of bhakti in the MB and the HV receives detailed attention. It denotes a two-way traffic. It is not just that the devotee depends upon the deity, but there is a reciprocity involved, an interdependence. The deity, too, has a duty towards his bhakta.

The concluding paper analyses the concept of avatar, finding that the devas’ descent upon earth is analogous to appearing on stage (ranga-avatarana), like the Greek deus-ex-machina. Earth is the arena (ranga) for Vishnu’s performance (lila, krida), in which he assumes many disguises (pradurbhava, kritrima rupa). Significantly, Krishna kills Kansa in an arena and both brothers are said to appear on the stage like the Ashvins descending from Swarga. Couture in an inspired observation links this to Krishna being named “Ranganatha,” lord of the stage.

There are a few misprints, a major one occurs on page 243 where instead of Jarasandha the text has “Janardana”. On page 393 Ugrashravas Sauti is called a Brahmin whereas he is a suta. While putting the papers together, Couture could have edited out the repetitions relating to Yoganidra-Ekanamsa. There is a very useful bibliography and an index. The front cover has a lovely Vishnu sculpture and the back has a bas relief of Krishna teaching Arjuna both from Tamil Nadu. Other than the minor lapses, this well-bound volume is essential reading for any Indologist interested in the HV, providing many new and valuable insights.

Pradip Bhattacharya

This was first published in The Sunday Statesman’s 8th Day Literary Supplement of 15th April 2018.

The “Lost” Mahabharata of Jaimini

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This paper features on pp. 33-67 of IGNCA’s journal of arts, KALAKALPA, Basant Panchami 2019, vol.III, No.2. The Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Sachchidanand Joshi, Member Secretary of the IGNCA, writes in his editorial, “Professor Pradip Bhattacharya is an acclaimed scholar on Mahabharata…Professor Bhattacharya’s contribution is stupendous.” The paper has been published with 3 colour plates of photographs I took of frescos on the walls of the Silver Pagoda in Phnom Penh, 3.65 metres high, illustrating the episodes contained in these 2 manuscripts of Jaimini which retell unknown episodes from the Ramayana in the Ashramavasika Parva of the Mahabharata.

 

Revising the Critical Edition of the Mahabharata: an approach through the attempt to strip Draupadi

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This paper was presented in the Mahabharata Manthan International Conference organised in July 2017 in New Delhi by the Draupadi Dream Trust, and published in volume 1, pages 119-140, of the 2 volume book of proceedings, “Mahabharata Manthan” (B.R. Publishing Corporation, Delhi-110052.

In his detailed review of the volumes, this is what Major General and Indologist Shekhar Kumar Sen writes: “It is a veritable storehouse of information. First he has discussed very thoroughly the need to take a “hard look” at the CE since it had not taken into consideration so many important versions extant at the time of its writing, e.g., the Nepali palm-leaf Mss, the Razmnama, the Arabic translation and so many others. Also, he reiterates, the inconsistencies, contradictions and repetitions that exist in the CE must be removed. He has listed out many of these, underlining the need for revision. One of these is the episode of stripping of Draupadi. And that is his second proposition – he has quoted incident after incident from the entire epic and cited collateral evidence from other works in Sanskrit literature to establish that Draupadi was dragged by the hair, insulted in the assembly in the Sabha Parva but never stripped by Duhshasana. Still the CE includes it. This view has given rise to a lot of controversy but the author’s well-laid arguments can hardly be ignored.  Other eminent scholars of the epic too have had serious reservations about the CE. Pradip has reproduced their views in support of his arguments. In short, this is a very comprehensive, informative and readable article. It also has three interesting plates depicting the disrobing of Draupadi.”

DESIRE UNDER THE KALPATARU

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“Man is born unto trouble,” says Job, “as the sparks fly upward,” and, he points out, this “affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the ground.” An engrossing study of the root cause of this “trouble” was made in the West, in this century, by Eugene O’Neill in Desire Under The Elms. But are we Indians aware of Vyasa’s fascinating portrayal of “Desire Under the Kalpataru” in the Mahabharata? Such a remorseless expose of the frailties that the flesh is heir to, spanning the entire gamut of human existence, is unrivalled in world literature. Leaving aside the sheer narrative brilliance of Vyasa, it is the perception of over-arching symbols, such as the Kalpataru, which gradually dawns on the readers, stirring the innermost depths of their psyche, as they voyage across the one hundred thousand verses of this ocean among epics; that fascinates them, compelling them to return, time and again, to the Mahabharata.

             To appreciate the thematic brilliance of this concept, it is first necessary to recount the story of the Kalpataru, the Wish-fulfilling Tree, described in eidetic detail by Krsna in the beginning of chapter 15 of the Gita. Its roots are in the heavens and its branches permeate the cosmos, paralleled in occidental mythology by the Norse Yggdrasill. The parable has been recounted by P. Lal in his introductory essay to Barbara Harrison’s Learning About India, and by Christopher Isherwood in Vedanta for the West.

Into a room full of children at play walks the proverbial “mama” (maternal uncle)” who invariably “knows better.” He tells them to lift up their eyes, look out of the window and see the huge Kalpataru outside. He tells them that they should cast aside their silly indoor games, and go to the tree which will grant them whatever they wish – the real stuff! The children rush out, stand under the all-encompassing branches, and ask. They ask for what all children crave: toys and sweets. The tree grants them their wishes. But with it, they also get a bonus: the built-in opposite of the wish! Along with the toys they get boredom; and with the sweets they get tummy-ache. Sure that something has gone wrong with their wishing, the children ask for bigger toys and sweeter sweets. The Tree obliges, along with greater boredom and more painful stomach-ache. Time passes. The children grow up into young men and women. Their wishes change with their age. Now they “know more”. They ask for wealth, fame, power and sex. Unquestioningly, the tree grants their desire, but also gifts them cupidity, insomnia, anxiety and frustration. Time passes. The askers are now old. They gather in three groups under the tree. The first group exclaims that all this is an illusion. They are fools and have learned nothing. The second group is “wiser” and decides to wish better next time. They are greater fools and have learned less than nothing. The third group, disgusted with everything, asks for death. The tree grants their desire and, with it, its opposite, re-birth, and under the same tree. For, where can one be born, or re-born, but within the cosmos! They are the most foolish of all.

All this while, one child has been unable to move out of the room. Being lame, he was pushed aside in the rush to the door as his playmates ran to get to the tree. He has been riveted to the window, watching the lila (the play) of the Kalpataru unfold itself. He has watched his friends make their wishes, get them along with their built-in opposites and suffer; yet, compulsively, continue to make more wishes. Transfixed by this fascinating play and counterplay of desire and its fruits, a profound swell of compassion wells up in the heart of this lame child, reaching out to his companions. In that process he forgets to wish for anything (not even remembering to forget). In that moment of spontaneous compassion for others, he has sliced through the roots of the cosmic tree with the sword of non-attachment, of nishkama karma. He, alone, is the liberated one, the mukta-purusha.

It is this parable of the Kalpataru, whose roots are upwards and whose branches pervade the cosmos, which is the over-arching symbol encompassing the Mahabharata.

Pururava, monarch of the lunar dynasty, is the first of those driven by desire, who believe “The world will be your wish- fulfilling cow” (Gita 3.10). Infatuated by the heavenly courtesan Urvashi, his desire to possess her is granted. However, it is inevitably accompanied with the penalty of losing the very object of his desire. In the agony of that loss, he even goes mad. This is not the only instance of the fruit desire bore for this king. Pururava once stole the wealth of some Brahmins out of greed, and refused to return it.

As smoke smothers fire,

as dust films glass,

as womb enfolds seed,

So greed destroys judgment.

Greed is a fierce fire.

It destroys judgment.

Greed is a fierce fire.

It destroys judgment.

It fools the wise.

It destroys the atman.  (Gita, 3.38-39)

He was cursed by the Brahmins with loss of his prosperity, the precise opposite of his desire.

Pururava’s grandson is Nahusa, who is crowned king of the gods in Indra’s absence, but then falls prey to desire for Saci, Indra’s wife. The result is that he is cursed by the sages, whom he forces to carry his palanquin to meet Saci, and turns into a python, crawling in the dust.

Nahusa’s son is Yayati, the most famous instance in world mythology of lust and its doom. Driven by lust, he possesses Sarmistha in secret, and is struck with senility. Those very sons, “children of his heart, ” whom he has fathered on Devayani and Sarmistha, scornfully turn away from his anguished plea to assume his decrepitude so that he can enjoy the pleasures of the flesh for some time more. Even when that wish is granted, he finds that lust only consumes and does not satisfy. Later, desiring heaven, he achieves it, only to be thrown down from there because of his overweening pride in his merit. Yayati is, indeed, the archetypal figure of desire and its fruits as given by this cosmos, which is the Wish-Fulfilling Tree.

Yayati’s wife, Devayani, is herself a telling example of this parable. Obsessed by the desire to avenge the humiliation suffered at the hands of Sarmistha, she achieves her goal of turning the princess into her hand-maiden. Eager to prove that despite being a Brahmin’s daughter she can best the daughter of the Danava King, she over-rules the objections of the reluctant Yayati to an inter-caste marriage, and compels him to marry her. Soon, thereafter, she loses her chosen husband to her hand-maid! Further, not only has she only she only two sons by him while Sarmistha has three, but also none of her sons inherit the throne, despite being elder. It is Sarmistha’s youngest son, Puru, who is chosen by Yayati as dynast for having willingly parted with his youth for his father’s sake. In a similar way, one of his descendants, Devavrata, will sacrifice his youth to subserve  his father’s sexual appetite.

It is in the same dynasty that Samvarana is born, who is so sun-struck by Tapati, daughter of Surya, that he neglects his kingdom. Significantly, as with his descendants Santanu and Pandu and his ancestor Pururava, desire seizes him in its constricting coils while he is engaged in hunting. Lust goes hand-in-hand with anger and cruelty:

Her body shone

Like a straight flame…

She stood, a black-

Eyed beauty on the hill-top,

Statuesque,

Like a golden girl.

The hill, its creepers,

Its bushes, all flamed

With the golden beauty

Of the golden girl…

She had trapped his mind

And his eyes. He stood

Transfixed, as if tied

With ropes, as if senseless. (Adi parva, 173.26-28, 31)

This is precisely the point that Krsna makes in the Gita, that lust, hiding in the senses, destroys judgment like an all-consuming flame. Samvarana’s  condition, when Tapati suddenly disappears, is like that of Pururava bereft of Urvashi:

Like a man crazed

He wandered in the woods

… the love smitten

king fell on the ground.

The imagery used by Samvarana in his appeals to Tapati revolves around raging fire, senselessness, fury, loss of self-control—all the typical signs associated with the madness desire is seen to inflict on its victims.

Then a fearful-faced messenger came

And shouted loudly, thrice:

Lost! Lost! Lost!

And I fell from Nandana.                               (Adi parva, 89. 17-20)

The fourth, Samvarana, gets his desire at the cost of his kingdom. Neither he, nor his descendant Shantanu, appear to have drawn any lessons from the tragic lives of their ancestors.

Ironically, Shantanu’s name means “the child of controlled passions,” as he was born to his parents in their old age. He seems to have a special penchant for unknown tribal women encountered by the riverside:

He stood there,

Entranced,

All his body

In horripilation.

With both eyes

He drank in her beauty

And wanted

To drink more.    (Adi Parva, 97.28)

Smitten by the sight of Ganga—who had wantonly solicited his father Pratipa and was politely rejected as not belonging to the same caste — he unthinkingly accepts all her conditions so that he can make her his own:

Captivated by her charms,

The king was not conscious of

The months, seasons, years that rolled by.

The lord of men enjoyed her whenever he wished. (Adi parva, 98.11,12)

The Kalpataru grants him that sexual gratification which he so passionately desires like Pururava, Yayati and Samvarana. But, along with it, he has to undergo the repeated experience of watching seven of his sons being consigned to the river, one after another, year after year, by that same object of his violent infatuation, Ganga. Well might we say,

“La Belle Dame sans Merci

Hath thee in thrall!”

In his old age, this “child of controlled passions” is infatuated with yet another maiden-by-the-river, Matsyagandha, fish-odorous, who has been transformed by the sage Parasara into Yojanagandha, lotus-fragrant-for-a-yojana (a unit of distance), in return for having enjoyed her body. Once again, Santanu has no regard for propriety, status, or the rights of Devavrata, his Crown Prince. He must have her:

She was fragrant,

Beautiful,

Santanu saw her,

And desired her…

The fire of desire

Ravaged his body

…desire maddened him.

He kept  thinking of

The daughter of the fisherman. (Adi parva, 100.49,56,75)

The symptoms could virtually be describing Samvarana’s state after Tapati vanishes. The same discrimination-destroying, judgment-clouding fire of desire afflicts both Samvarana and Santanu. In both cases, it is the kingdom which suffers. Santanu himself, having learned nothing from his experience with Ganga, dies, leaving behind two children, both weaklings. both die prematurely. The elder, Citrangada, dies unmarried. The younger, Vicitravirya, is another instance of the Kalpataru in action. Under the instructions of Satyavati (Santanu’s second wife), Bhishma (his son by Ganga) obtains not one, but two brides for his foster brother, so that the future of the dynasty is assured:

Both were tall.

black, wavy hair.

Fingernails and toe nails

Painted red, pointed.

Hips round and full.

Swelling and large breasts.

Vicitravirya,

driven by passion, became

A victim of his own lust.  (Adi parva, 102.65, 66)

He dies after seven years without any issue. Thus, the dynasty of Pururava comes to an end.

What has Satyavati got out of the Kalpataru? As a nubile maiden, her dearest desire was to rid herself of the powerful fishy odour. This she was granted, at the cost of her virginity. After Santanu met her, the desire of her father (or foster-father, if we accept the story that king Uparicara Vasu of Cedi was her real father) is that through her he should be the dynast of Hastinapura. The Kalpataru grants this wish through what becomes renowned as the most terrifying of all vows: Devavrata becomes Bhishma (one who has taken the vow of celibacy) so that Satyavati’s children alone succeed to Santanu’s throne. Santanu himself does not live long after this marriage, and Satyavati becomes the Queen Mother, with minor children. She sees one killed in a skirmish, and the other die of consumption, both without issue. Now, both the Dasa-king, her father, and she find that the greatest obstacle to perpetuating the dynasty of Santanu is precisely that very vow which they had demanded as the security for ensuring their hegemony over Hastinapura in perpetuity through their children! Bhishma stonily refuses to break his vow and father progeny on the widows of Vicitravirya by following the custom of niyoga (sexual union with another’s wife).

Satyavati, like the people clustered under the Kalpataru in the parable, has not learned anything from her experiences, so far, of desire and its fruits. “Hungry for grandsons,” she summons Vyasa, her illegitimate son by Parasara, and orders him to practice niyoga on Ambika and Ambalika. Vyasa advises a year-long vow on their so that they purify themselves of the lust they have been tainted with through seven years with his foster brother. Satyavati cannot wait. Her judgment is warped by her insensate desire to have grandsons immediately. She leads her daughters-in-law to believe that Bhishma will be coming to them. Hence, being wholly unprepared for the horrendous looks and malodorous body of Vyasa, they give birth to the blind Dhritarastra and the anaemic, jaundiced Pandu. Even now, Satyavati has learned nothing. She had wanted grandsons at any cost. The Tree fulfilled her desire; but, along with it, gave her offspring incapable of being proper monarchs. Yet, she again asks Ambika to like with Vyasa. Ambika deceives her, and sends in her maid instead, who is without fear and aversion, and has only profound respect for the sage. Their child is the virtuous Vidura, possibly the sole true grandson of Satyavati, born of her son and of a Sudra (low caste) maid like herself. He is the only one born whole in mind and in body, and is untouched by the craving to rush to the Kalpataru. He, too, however, dies childless. Her other grandson, Pandu, dies, like his putative father Vicitravirya, without having been able to father progeny.

Thus, in her lifetime, empire-hungry and progeny-hungry Satyavati sees her husband, her two sons and one grandson die; the eldest grandson born blind; the youngest one not qualified to be king, being base-born, despite being the only fully healthy and virtuous issue, (although by that argument her sons, too, should not be kings, as she is a fisherman’s daughter. Hence, probably, the legend of her having been fathered by the king of Cedi on an apsara-turned-fish).

Perhaps, after Pandu’s death, the coming of the Pandavas to the Hastina court and the sibling rivalry which breaks out, Satyavati might have come to realize what it means to ask of the Kalpataru. And, perhaps because of that realization, she meekly obeys her son Vyasa when he advises her to leave the court and retire to the forest with her daughters-in-law:

The green years of the earth

are gone. . . . .

Do not be a witness

to the suicide

of your own race.

Satyavati and her grand daughter-in-law Kunti share various similarities. Uparicara Vasu of Cedi sends off his fish-born daughter Matsyagandha to be brought up by a Dasa-chief among fishermen. Pritha is the daughter of King Sursasena of the Vrishnis who gifts her to his cousin Kuntibhoja, who renames her Kunti, respectively. Both Satyavati and Kunti have pre-marital sons. In both cases the issues are discarded and reappear full grown, as does Devavrata. One appears before us as the sage Krsna-Dvaipayana Vyasa, the Dark Island-born Arranger. The other comes as Vasusena, born with the wealth of skin-armour and ear rings, also called Karna. Both Parasara and Surya gift-armour and ear rings, also called Karna. Both Parasara and Surya gift Matsyagandha and Kunti with unimpaired virginity as the reward for becoming willing partners in their concupiscence. This virginity is not merely a physical attribute, but very much of a psychological quality with they share with Draupadi, who is said to regain her virginity before living in turn with each of her five husbands. In that respect, Draupadi is carrying on a special trait found long back in the ancestry of the family into which she marries.. Yayati’s daughter Madhavi also had this boon of regaining her virginity even after giving birth to a child. On the strength of that, Galava loaned her to Haryasva, Divodasa, Usinara and Visvamitra to fulfil his guri-daksina (graduation fee pad by pupil to teacher).

The precise opposite of this can be seen in the Madri type of woman, who is dependent on what others think, regardless of what her real opinions might be, and always acts as a female counterpart to a male and is not “one in herself.” The psychologically virgin woman is not, however, thus dependent. Dr M. Esther Harding writes in Women’s Mysteries (Rider, 1971), “as virgin, she is not influenced by the considerations that make the nonvirgin woman, whether married or not, trim her sails and adapt herself to expediency…she does what she does not because of any desire to please, not to be liked, or to be approved, even by herself; not because of any desire to gain power over another, to catch his interest or love, but because of any desire to gain power over another, to catch his interest or love, but because what she does is true. Her actions may, indeed, be unconventional. She is what she is because that is what she is.” (pp.125-6) such a personality is wholly integrated and autonomous-in-herself, defining herself in her terms and not dependant on others for finding and acting out her role in life.

Kunti is by no means the conventional wife typified in Madri. She is one found fit by Durvasa to be the custodian of the mighty spell which forces even gods to respond to her desires for progeny. It is she who, single-handed, provides Pandu with five foster-children through herself and through Madri, and guards them amid all the venal politics of the Kuru court till they can hold their own in life.

What did Kunti ask of the Tree? Her first desire was to test the efficacy of Durvasa’s mantra. This desire was granted promptly, swiftly followed by the anguish of having to abandon its fruit and , later by the excruciating agony of being forced to remain a silent spectator to this death at the hands of her fourth son. In abandoning her first born, she is akin not only to her “direct” grandmother-in-law Satyavati, but also to her grandfather-in-law’s first wife, Ganga, who threw into the river seven sons, one after another. Of course, Pritha herself is her father’s discarded offspring.

Kunti’s second desire is for Pandu. Pandu is the only one in the Kuru dynasty to go to a svayamvara (husband-choosing), and this is ere Kunti chooses him above everyone else. Immediately thereafter, she loses him to Madri, who is brought by Bhishma to Hastinapura after payment of heavy bride-price, in accordance with the Kuru tradition. So, the Tree granted her Pandu, but with it , gave her the opposite: the anguish of losing the object of her desire to another and, ultimately, seeing him die in the arms of that another:-

Princes of Vahlika! (she tells Madri)

You are fortunate indeed…

I never had the chance to see

his face radiant in intercourse. (Adi parva, 25.23)

Even in death, Kunti is not allowed by Madri to accompany her chosen beloved. It is Madri who immolates herself with Pandu’s body.

Kunti’s sole desire now is to establish her sons as rulers of a kingdom. This desire, too, is granted. But in its wake she has to undergo a triple agony: first, she has to witness the enslavement of her children and the attempted stripping of her daughter-in-law in the royal court; then, she has to bear their exile to the forests for thirteen years; ultimately, she has to see her first-born slain, when defenceless, by her fourth-born, at the urging of her nephew, Krsna, who alone, besides herself and her first son, knows of the relationship. How tragically ironic it is that, by revealing the secret of this relationship on the eve of the battle to Karna, Kunti should have effectively ensured the death of Karna and the victory of her other sons. For, while they know only that they are fighting to slay the detested charioteer’s son, he knows that he is facing his cognate brothers, whom he has sworn not to harm!

Kunti desires that marriage should not sunder the unity of her five sons. Hence she strives to ensure that Draupadi does not belong only to Arjuna who won her. The Kalpataru grants her this too, with the consequence that Draupadi, though five-husbanded, is actually anathavat, without a husband, to protect her from molestation by Duhsasana, Jayadratha, Kirmira and Kicaka. None of the five husbands turns back to help her, let alone wait at her side, when she falls down, dying on the slopes of the Himalayas during their last journey together.

Like Kunti, Draupadi’s burning desire, born as she is full-grown out of the sacrificial fire, is to rule over the kingdom of Hastinapura and thus avenge the humiliation of her father at the hands of the Kauravas. It is worthwhile, at this point, to note that although it is the Pandavas who imprison Drupada at Drona’s command, his vengeance is directed against the throne of Hastinapura, of which Drona is a servant. This is a legacy of the ancient rivalry between the Pancalas and the Kurus which began when Samvarana left his kingdom defenceless in his infatuated pursuit of Tapati. Drupada arranges the contest for Draupadi’s hand in such a fashion that only an archer of Arjuna’s skill can succeed, and through that alliance he hopes to wreak his revenge.

Draupadi’s interaction with the Kalpataru is indeed an engrossing spectacle. Her desire for a kingdom is granted as Indraprastha comes into being, “a miracle of rare device.” Along with this she is granted her first taste of sweet revenge when she sees Duryodhana flounder into the pool created by illusion. The consequences are terrible: first, the kingdom is gambled away; then, she herself is unspeakably humiliated in public. Like Satyavati, Draupadi does not learn from these experiences. Her consuming passion remains revenge, now an intensely personal raging desire. That, too, is granted her by none other than the Kalpataru itself, incarnated in the person of Krsna (as he describes himself in the Gita.) She gets a field of ashes to rule over, with not a single son left alive to enjoy life with.

What of Draupadi’s desire for Arjuna— that desire which Yudhishthira coldly cites, without so much as a backward glance at her prone, dying form, as he cause of her inability to reach heaven in the physical body? By the time it was Arjuna’s time to live with her, he was away as an exile in the course of which he had no scruples in obliging the amorous Ulupi, wooing Citrangada and abducting Subhadra. This last he did only after obtaining the consent of Yudhishthira. Vyasa does not tell us that the eldest Pandava bothered not to pass on the information to Draupadi. He was, perhaps, pleased that Arjuna should have fallen in love elsewhere and ,particularly, that it should have cemented an alliance with the powerful Krsna  clan. So, when her beloved Arjuna returned to Indraprastha, it was with Subhadra, who had his heart. The greatest archer won her, but was never hers. Even in the thirteen-year exile, she was bereft of his company, for he was sent off by Yudhishthira to obtain celestial weapons. When he returned, it was as a eunuch, merely enquiring of her how she had managed to escape the murderous clutches of Kicaka’s henchmen, who had dragged her off to be burnt with his corpse. Never did Brihannala (Arjuna’s name during the period he had turned eunuch) raise a voice in her defence, either in the Kaurava court, or in the court of Virata (where the Pandavas had to live incognito).

Draupadi’s relationship with the Kalpataru goes back to her previous birth, as narrated by Vyasa to Drupada, Apparently, she had carried out severe penance and begged off Siva that he grant her a husband. The moment she wished this, it was granted, but with a five-fold bonus, because, it seems, she had said “husband” five times! Thus, the cosmos grants her intense desire, but also provides its built-in opposite by multiplying it five-fold.

In being five-husbanded, she resembles her mother-in-law Kunti, who has “known” five men or gods: Surya, Pandu, Dharma, Vayu and Indra. She is also like her great-grandmother-in-law Satyavati, in being of unknown parentage and brought up by foster parents. Both are famous for the enchanting odour emanating from their dark bodies. Satyavati is renowned as the dark (“kali”) “Yojanagandha” (whose scent extends for a yojana); while Draupadi-Krishna’s complexion is like that of the blue lotus and the sweet scent of her body wafts for a krosa. Both are left with no children. One (Satyavati) built up the huge Kaurava dynasty, while the other (Draupadi) annihilated it. Neither seems to have learnt anything from the experience of making wish after wish under Kalpataru.

The two handicapped brothers, Dhritarashtra and Pandu, themselves exemplify the Kalpataru syndrome. Pandu is one of the rare few in the epic who, like his ancestor Yayati, realizes how he has victimized himself. Not content with being the chosen of Kunti, he espouses Madri, and his inveterate appetites lead to the incurring of the fatal curse. We recall Shakespeare’s unforgettable lines describing lust as:

… murderous, bloody, full of blame

Savage, extreme, rude, cruel.

Perversely hunting down a deer-sage in the coital act, Pandu himself is cursed to die in the act of intercourse. Thus, his love of the hunt is duly gratified, but with what tragic consequences! Pandu exclaims bitterly:

Noble blood is of little help.

Deluded by passions, the best

Of men turn wicked, and reap

the evil that they sow.

My father was born noble,

his father was noble too.

Lust was his ruin, he died

While still a youth.

And in his lustful field

I was sown by Krsna Dvaipayana…

And I am a victim of the hunt!

My mind is full of killing…     (Adi parva, 119.2-5)

Obviously, despite all the ancestral praise-chanting by the sutas and magadhas, Yayati’s descendants have not learnt anything either from the history of their ancestors, or  from their own harrowing experiences. It is this fatal attraction of Desire, which people are aware of, yet deliberately give in to, which has been expressed so poignantly by Shakespeare in sonnet 129:

Mad in pursuit and in possession so. . .

A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe.  .   .

All this the world well knows; yet none knows well

To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

Pandu is perhaps the clearest instance of the ultimate end of Desire. Ironically, when Kunti initially refuses to accede to his requests for surrogate children, she cites the legend of Vyusitasva and Bhadra, with the telling words:

So strong was their passion,

So frequent their indulgence,

that he soon fell a victim

To consumption.                (Adi parva, 121.17,18)

Despite this, and although Pandu is fully aware of its fruits,

Passion overpowered him

it seemed that he wanted

To commit suicide, as it were.

First he lost his sense,

Then, clouded by lust,

he sought the loss of his life.  (Adi parva, 125. 121-3)

The tragedy of these desire-driven kings of the lunar dynasty is their compulsive refusal to heed the agony of generations of

“… pale kings, and princes too,

Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; ”

Whose

“starved lips in the gloam

With horrid warning gaped wide.”

That dire warning,

“La Belle Dame sans Merci

Hath thee in thrall!”

though voiced with desperate urgency by Yayati, and despite its destructive aftermath being exemplified repeatedly in the lives of Pururuva, Nahusa, Samvarana, Santanu, Vicitravirya and Pandu, goes unheeded by the hungry generations of their descendants.

How closely this exemplifies the warning of Krsna!~

Greed is a fierce fire.

It destroys judgment.

It fools the wise.

It hides in the mind,

The intellect and the senses.

It destroys the atman

By working through them.

Therefore, first control the senses      (Gita, 3.39-41)

As for Dhritarashtra, his intense craving for being king—- which he feels to be his birthright as the eldest—is duly obliged, but at the cost of his entire progeny. He is left alive to experience the fruits of desire after the Kurukshetra holocaust. His predicament is expressed in his own lament to Sanjaya:

“My own sons were impulsive, and disliked me for I was old and blind. I endured it, because I loved them, because my state was miserable. I was a fond old father to a son whose folly grew daily.” (Adi parva, 1.143)

Neither of the two brothers learns anything from his experiences of desire and its fruits. The same holds true for the unusual duo of Duryodhana and Karna.

The case of Duryodhana is so obvious as not to require elaboration. However, in Karna’s case it is easy to miss the finer shades of the play and counter-play of light-and-shade as the myriad leaves of the Kalpataru and its counless branches respond to his intense cravings. Karna is the egotistical sublime paralleling Bhishma in his own esteem. His consuming desire for public status is granted almost miraculously in the tournament arena, but did Karna ever perform the duties of a king with respect to Anga? Is not his kingship veritably but in name? Again, the craving to acquire supremacy in weapon-craft is granted; but, along with it, the curse that this precious knowledge will desert him in his greatest need. Perhaps it is Karna who experiences, in the most direct form possible, what it means to desire anything. The fruits come to him almost immediately. His triumphant obtaining of the infallible weapon from Indra in return for the slicing –off of skin-armour also turns out fruitless, as he is unable to use it against Arjuna. Karna’s intense desire for fame is gratified when he finds out that he is not only royal, but also half-god. Yet at what cost? He can never share the joy of kinship with his brothers, and must bear the recurrent whiplash of their contempt for the charioteer’s son. But, most of all, his life-long desire to know who he truly is becomes the root cause of his destruction. That knowledge brings in its wake the pledge not to slay his brothers, with the inevitable implication that he must die at their hands. And so we are presented with the heart-rending spectacle of the eldest Kaunteya being shot down, unarmed, by the fourth son of Kunti, at the behest of her nephew.

Perhaps, it is only Kunti who learns something about this Kalpataru-lila. Each of her three major choices bears soul-searing consequences: Each of her three major choices bears soul-searing consequences: calling Surya; choosing Pandu; insisting on her sons sharing Draupadi. Notice her peculiar predicament each time she is told by Pandu whom she must lie with. She has no choice in the matter. The only time she did choose, she had to abandon the fruit of that union: Karna. Yet, when she is made to pass on her power to Madri, Pandu does not impose on his second wife any similar directive. Madri is free to choose! Possibly, it is a result of the realization of the inexorable nature of desire and its fruits that , after the war, Kunti refuses to stay on with her children as Queen Mother. She insists on following Dhritarashtra and Gandhari into the forest. Unlike Satyavati, these three have witnessed the suicide of their progeny; Kunti has five sons but not a single grandson and no husband, despite the fathers of her three sons being alive. Gandhari and Draupadi have husbands, but nothing else left. It is Kunti who has learned. That is why Iravati Karve in Yuganta imagines Kunti telling Gandhari and Dhritarashtra that, instead of trying to escape from the forest fire, they should walk towards it with open arms as a liberator from this harsh world, where we draw our breath in pain, where, as King Lear said, we are bound

Upon a wheel of fire, that (our) own tears

Do scald like molten lead.

What of Gandhari? Yoked to a blind husband, she would have looked forward to giving birth to the first Kuru scion. Indeed, she conceived first, but carried the embryo for two years. By then Kunti had given birth to Yudhishthira and was pregnant with Bhima. Vyasa fulfilled her desire to be a mother, but this was followed by its opposite: her sons became wicked, arrogant, and disobedient. In open court, Duryodhana defied her commands to accept Krishna’s peace proposals. If Draupadi, though five-husbanded is without a husband, then Gandhari, despite having a hundred sons is sonless, much like her grandmother-in-law Satyavati who, despite having two sons, ended up having none. In both cases, the ambition to become Queen Mother is fulfilled, only to find the sweet fruition of an earthly crown turning into the bitter ashes of disillusionment.

Perhaps the most striking image of desire and attachment in its most intense and complex form, after Yayati, is Gangadatta-Devavrata-Bhisma. Bhishma and Krsna are two colossi bestriding the Mahabharatan universe, one as the mightiest bulwark of an age which does not wish to pass away; and the other as the herald of a new epoch. Bhisma’s dearest desire—and in this he parallels his ancestor Puru vis-à-vis Yayati—is to see his father happy; a father whom he has not known from birth; a father who has mutely witnessed Ganga consigning seven siblings of his to the river; a father to whom his mother hands him over in teenage and disappears. For the sake of fulfilling this desire, Devavrata sacrifices not only his paternal heritage but also his personal marital right and the right to receive the offerings of his progeny in death. But, beyond this, he also sacrifices the paramount, super-ordinate goal, the welfare of the kingdom and its people, which is the reason for the very appellative RAJA, one who looks after the general weal, not the welfare of only one father. The Tree grants his desire. Santanu is beside himself with joy, and grants his son what looks like a boon but is actually a curse: the power to hold death at bay, and to give in to its call only at will. Is it a boon at all to be not only a witness, like Gandhari and Kunti, to the suicide of one’s race, but be an active participant in it, fighting on the side which one knows to be in the wrong and against those whom one loves and knows to be in the right? Is it a boon to be able to hold death at bay and slay millions of innocent soldiers continuously over a period of ten days? The pangs of conscience multiplied over decades of silent witnessing of the poisoning of Bhima, the gutting of the lacquer house, the cheating in the dice-game, the stripping of Draupadi, the exiling of the Pandavas— are all these the scorpion-stings symbolized in the bed-of-arrows on which he like torturing himself, as if expiating his inaction, until the holocaust is over, and the suicide of the dynasty is complete?

Bhishma is also responsible for acting indiscriminately as the instrument of his stepmother for fulfilling her insensate longing for grandchildren. Instead of getting one bride for her son, he abducts all the three daughters of the king of Kasi. In doing so, he fulfils his desire to establish the supremacy of Hastinapura before all the kings. In that process, however, he also sows the seeds of his own destruction by arousing the fury of the woman scorned —-Amba. So strong is his attachment to his vow (the change of his name to Bhishma itself connotes that the two—man and vow—are one, knit together in an indissoluble bond) that it steels him against all human obligations. Caught up in that intense egotism, he destroys the lives of the three princesses of Kasi. His desire to please his father appears t have undergone a metamorphosis into an adamantine will to please himself. We find him turning into the egotistical Sublime of the epic. As for the fruits of his desire, they grow on the field of Kurukshetra, amid the quagmire of blood, sweat and gore, littered with grinning skulls and broken, bones. The Kalpataru granted his desire: his vow remained unbroken, but was it worth the cost of eighteen aksauhinis (a very large unit of counting) and a world bereft of youth, peopled by widows and infants, echoing to the sound of wailing women and lit up by the smoky flames of innumerable funeral pyres?

Between Krsna and Bhishma a strange parallelism exists. Both are the eighth-born and the only surviving sons of their parents. Each is the unquestioned leader of the opposing party in the fratricidal strife. Both are renowned not only as warriors par-excellence, but also as statesman and masters of the scriptures. Vyasa portrays two sublime moments in which these two similar, yet opposing, proponents of two dharmas, two ages, meet. One is in the Rajasuya yajna of Yudhishthira, where Bhishma explains why the arghya ought to be offered to Krsna as pre-eminent among all present. The other is on the battlefield, when Krsna, furious with Arjuna for failing to control Bhishma’s unremitting slaughter of the army, breaks his own vow and rushes to slay him. In words of exquisite beauty, Bhishma welcomes death at Krishna’s hands. But this is not granted him. The fruit of his desire is to be slain by the eunuch Shikhandi, whom he knows to be Amba reborn. But the real point is that Krsna has no hesitation in breaking his vow of remaining a non-combatant where lives need to be saved. This is where he differs totally from Bhishma’s enslavement to his vow, to his twisted dharma of loyalty to Dhritarashtra. Unlike Bhishma, Krsna never hesitates to root out wickedness, be it in the form of his kith and kin (Kamsa, Shishupala, Satadhanva), or otherwise.

Krsna appears to have had two major desires: the bringing together of carious clans such as the Vrsnis, Andhakas, Bhojas, Yadavas, Kukutas, etc. to form a single community at Dvaraka, safe from the depredations of the imperialistic ambitions of Magadha and Hastinapura. This was granted him. As its counterpoint, he witnessed his kith and kin destroy one another in a drunken orgy of senseless violence, with Krsna himself joining in that destructive spree.

His second desire, subsuming the first one, was the establishment of an empire based upon dharma, righteousness, doing away with warring petty kingdoms and bringing them all under a single sovereign of impeccable rectitude. This, too, was granted him. But what subjects were left for Dharmaraja Yudhishthira to rule over? A filed of ashes filled with millions of mourning widows! The Stri Parva is a merciless commentary on the fruit of Krishna’s desire and has found expression in words of unsurpassed poignancy voiced by Gandhari as she stands in Kurukshetra:

“See, Krsna, where Duryodhana, general of eleven aksauhinis, lies bloody-bodied, embracing his mace. His wife and Lakshmana’s mother lies fallen on his breast. My daughters-in-law, bereft of husbands and sons, are running about with hair unbound on this battlefield. Look, look there, the young bride of my Vikarna is desperately trying to drive away the flesh-greedy vultures, but is failing. Jackals have eaten away half of my Durmukha’s face. Kesava, that Abhimanyu, whom people used to describe as more valiant than even you or Arjuna, even he is slain; and mad with grief his bride, the adolescent Uttara, is crying, ” O hero, you were killed just six months after our union.” Alas, Karna’s wife has fallen unconscious on the ground, for the jackals are tearing at the body of Jayadratha, king of Sauvira, and my daughter Duhsala is trying to kill herself while abusing the Pandavas. Oh, oh, look! Duhsala, not finding her husband’s severed head, is running about madly in search of it. Krsna, see, Sakuni is surrounded by vultures, and even that wicked soul will attain heaven because he died in battle.”

What is the end of Krsna? The death of a hero, brought down in a duel of epic dimensions by an opponent of mighty prowess? Hardly, Leaving a Dvaraka filled with wailing widows and children, having seen his elder brother Balarama die, he lies down under a tree and dies of the injury caused by an arrow shot into his foot by a ere tribal hunter, a nisada, not even a warrior out on a hunt. So that is what gets from the Kalpataru along with the granting of his two desires.

This, then, is the picture of “Desire under the Kalpataru”: that desire, if powerful, does get fulfilled, but brings in its wake a price to be paid which, more often than not, outweighs the gratification experienced through fulfilment of the desire. In a way, it is very much like Stevenson’s bottle imp. It is Yayati who sums it up in words of deceptive simplicity that go straight to the mark:

Desire never ends,

Desire grows with feeding,

Like sacrificial flames

Lapping up ghee.

Become the sole lord of

The world’s paddy fields, wheat-fields,

Precious stones, beasts, women…

Still not enough.

Discard desire.

This disease kills. The wicked

Cannot give it up, old age

Cannot lessen it. True happiness

Lies in controlling it.   (Adi parva, 85.12-14)

The experience of Vyasa’s Yayati is echoes by a great epic poet of the occident, John Milton in Paradise Lost:

…They, fondly thinking to allay

Their appetite with lust, instead of fruit

Chewed bitter ashes.

This is the existential experience with pervades the Mahabharata and which Vyasa, the oriental seer-poet, envisions as an outcome of man’s fascination with the Kalpataru. Vyasa creates a marvellously eidetic picture of this symbol in the words of Krsna in the Gita (15.1-3):

Mention is made of a cosmic fig-tree

Rooted above,

whose leaves are said to be the Vedas;

the knower of this fig-tree

is the knower of the Vedas.

Its branches reach out below and above,

its flowers are the objects of the senses;

below the ground flourish more roots,

giving birth to action.

You may not see its real shape,

nor its end, birth and existence.

Slice this fig-tree with non-attachment.

 N.B. The extracts from the Mahabharata and the Gita are from the P. Lal transcreation (Writers Workshop, Calcutta, 1969).

AGENCY IN THE MAHABHARATA

By

S.C.Bhattacharya, V.Dalmiya, G.Mukherji (ed): Exploring Agency in the Mahabharata —ethical and political dimensions of Dharma. Routledge, 2018, 253 pages, Rs. 895/-

This collection of 16 papers is a sequel to 2014 publication from the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies exploring the perennial relevance of the Mahabharata (MB). The 12 papers in it provided meaningful insights into the contemporaneity of the epic. The current book has as its central theme the age-old face-off between “daiva” (fate) and “purushartha” (free will) as seen in the MB. In its first chapter, Anukramanika, Dhritarashtra laments that he is the helpless victim of circumstances. If all is pre-determined, why should Arjuna struggle in the throes of a dilemma and why does Krishna need to extricate him? If Fate is final, why do Kunti, Draupadi, Arjuna and Bhima berate Yudhishthira in exile, urging him to fight? The book examines these questions in three parts of four essays each: Action, Actor and Epic Agency and Retellings.

Sibesh Bhattacharya explores how “itihasa” in the MB is passive, setting an example or clarifying, not an active agent shaping current lives and events. He examines Karna as an example of an independent agent despite appearing doomed like Duryodhana (the tree of which the former is the trunk). Their lives seem to substantiate the Manusmriti’s epigram: dharma killed kills; dharma protected protects. The irony lies in Karna’s despairing protest that although he has always (as he thinks) protected dharma, it does not protect him! The converse lies in Duryodhana’s defiant dying declaration that he is going to Svarga while the Pandavas live on miserable. When Yudhishthira finally reaches Svarga, he is shocked to find Duryodhana already there resplendent on a golden throne!

Amita Chatterjee examines the concept of self-determination and finds the MB suggesting that alternative paths exist from the present to the future. The story of Gautami and her son dying of snake-bite depicts this at length. The serpent, Yama, Time are all agents but the boy’s own intentional acts make him responsible for his acts and their result.

Christopher Framarin studies the theory of karma and finds that Markandeya fails to answer Yudhishthira’s questions about rebirth and how acts produce corresponding consequences for the actor. All only establishes that karma alone determines the human lot. How past acts determine future births remains a mystery that neither the virtuous butcher nor Vidura, nor Brihaspati explain when asked. Framarin concludes that in the MB the theory of karma is underdeveloped, put aside as “the secrets of the gods”. The only clue offered is in the Gita: desires lead to rebirth.

Arti Dhand’s paper on karmayoga is a good example of blinkered vision quite unexpected from the author of Woman as Fire, Woman as Sage (2008). She sees karmayoga as an ingenious Brahminical response to heterodoxy “deftly packaging a philosophy of world renunciation in the garb of worldly engagement,” charting a middle path between renouncing samsara and falling victim to worldly passions. Karmayoga benefits both the self and society, which sanyasa does not. Dhand argues that by linking it to the doctrine of svadharma it perpetuates oppression of the have-nots by enslaving them, blindly adhering to traditional roles which perpetuate noxious practices. Svadharma, she argues, “obviates moral reflection” as seen in Rama beheading the Shudra ascetic. Dhand finds that while the epic’s soteriology upholds ahimsa, this is undermined by its commitment to the hierarchical model of society so that karmayoga provides a justification for social injustice. Dhand makes the common mistake of understanding karmayoga to connote “acquiescence to one’s lot in life—however unjust, however debased”. She bewails that the wisest of Vyasa’s sons, Vidura, was not made king because he was born to a servant maid. She condemns the concept of Stridharma which lauds the wife’s enslavement, killing her agency. She overlooks several pronouncements clarifying that character and conduct determine a person’s caste, not his birth. There is no “smothering” of resistance to social situations. King Trishanku becomes an outcaste because of his reprehensible conduct, and regains his station for his subsequent good deeds. The Kshatriya Vishvamitra becomes a great rishi, as does Matanga, a barber’s son. Yuyutsu, born to a Vaishya maid-servant, becomes the regent of Hastinapura. None of the epic heroines—Satyavati, Kunti, Gandhari, Draupadi, Damayanti, Savitri—can be described as devoid of moral agency.

Gangeya Mukherji focuses on agency and violence. After all, the genocide against nagas is what the epic begins with. Yet, the tale is retold after a non-venomous snake speaks of ahimsa being the supreme dharma. However, the question of non-violence remains unresolved in the Dyumatsena-Satyavat debate. Violence is certainly not the last resort, as Mukherji argues, where Nahusha’s descendants are concerned. All are addicted to hunting to sate blood lust. Key events shaping the epic narrative occur during a hunt. Mukherji suggests that Arjuna depicts “judicious violence” as opposed to Ashvatthama’s nocturnal massacre. But the latter is sanctioned by Rudra, while the former’s destruction of Khandava  forest and its denizens is at Agni’s behest. Further, what do we make of Vishnu’s avatar Parashurama’s genocide against Kshatriyas which Ashvatthama seems to replicate? The dharmic butcher points out that violence is unavoidable in life, as does Krishna in the Gita. The beauty of the MB lies in its conflation of opposites: Agastya argues that in yajnas grains and not animals are the sacrifice, whereas the devas insist on the opposite. Mukherji argues that the war results from the overweening ambition of “two Brahmins.” This is puzzling as he names Dhritarashtra and Drona. The former is not a Brahmin at all! The justification for war as dharmic is completely undercut when Yudhishthira finds Duryodhana seated in Svarga with no sign of his brothers, and in rage exclaims, “This is not heaven!”

Shirshendu Chakrabarti examines Yudhishthira as the prime example of true human agency based on hovering between readiness for violence, living as a householder, and becoming a sanyasi. He is constantly conscious of manifold dharmic possibilities and their consequences—disastrous and otherwise. His irresolution vanishes en route Svarga when he is alone. Chakrabarti misses the similar situation at the end of the Vana Parva where Yudhishthira is tested with the corpses of his four brothers around him and similarly shows no signs of hesitancy. In his quest for humanity he is distinct from the West’s Faustian man seeking to be superhuman. It is interesting that he chooses no guru and remains the genuine agent, ever questioning the self.

MB is a rare epic that also features animal fables. These form Arindam Chakrabarti’s fascinating exposition of non-human agency. After all, if dharma is Vyasa’s core concern, he has a lizard first state that ahimsa is the supreme dharma, has a naga-raja expound dharma to a Brahmin, a mongoose laugh to scorn the Ashvamedha yajna, and embodies the deity first as a crane and finally as a dog. The narrative is thus “de-centred” from the anthropocentric to a parallel track of animal life whose moral agency occurs through speech. But it seems to culminate in silence, for, as the bird Pujani says, only one who has not known intimately the pain of others can hold forth in public.

Winning brides is one of the recurrent motifs in the MB. Uma Chakravarti focuses on the use of abduction for this, the rakshasa mode of marriage which, strangely, Kshatriyas celebrate. The reason is never stated. The other form they prefer is the “gandharva” i.e. love marriage for which no sanction of elders is required. In Amba she sees the problem of male violence against women represented. Her subsequent ascesis is for regaining the lost autonomy in choosing a spouse. Bhishma’s agony on the bed of arrows mirrors her physical and psychological anguish: “the distortions of an enforced sexual control over women are a fundamental factor in the Mahabharata narrative of war.” Presciently she notes that even svayamvara, the bridegroom-choice ceremony, is fraught with violence as in the cases of the Kashi princesses, Draupadi and Duryodhana’s wife the Kalinga princess. Marriage, therefore, is not uncontested among Kshatriyas. Indeed, it is a motif that persists to recur in the legend of Prithviraj and Samyukta centuries later.

Sundar Sarukkai examines the Ekalavya episode as “the first, most important theory of learning,” though prior to it we have the MB tell the stories of three disciples in the early Paushya Parva, each learning by a different method. As in the case of Ekalavya later, Aruni, Upamanyu and Utanka show that learning occurs “in and through the student.” No less than the tribal youth, these three are “allegorical figure(s) for education.” One can hardly agree with Sarukkai that the slicing off the thumb represents “the act of dissolution of a student into the teacher.”

B.N.Patnaik’s study of Sarala’s Oriya version of the Ekalavya episode shows how the regional imagination transformed epic narrative. He analyses Drona’s justification at length. Drona asks for no “dakshina”. Rather, Ekalavya insists he accept it—much as Utanka did with his guru Veda. By agreeing, Drona ritually accepts him as pupil. Krishna has Kunti take as “dakshina” from Karna his two invincible weapons. Krishna asks Kiratasen for his head as a donation. In Sarala, therefore, Ekalavya’s “dakshina” is not unique. In Ekalavya, Kiratsena and Jara Patnaik sees Sarala’s attempt to integrate the tribal culture with the urban “civilized” world.

Sudipta Kaviraj studies Rabindranath Thakur’s reading of the MB by stating he will discuss two poems but analyses only the Karna-Kunti encounter. His finding—which is well known—is that here the inner springs of action are revealed, and Karna’s tragedy in the epic is turned into Kunti’s tragedy too. The other poem that deserved close study is the Kacha-Devayani interaction which is so very cryptic in the MB.

Lakshmi Bandlamudi uses a striking image to describe her engagement with the MB: it is like “entering a hall of mirrors where we see ourselves seeing ourselves…an opportunity to find the Self in the self.” Dialogic interaction characterizes the MB throughout. While dharma in the Ramayana is fixed, the MB shows it as context-dependent. It exemplifies Nietzsche: “the ambiguous character of our modern world—the very same symptoms could point to decline and to strength.” Paradox is the central theme of the epic. She is mistaken, however, in going along with J.L. Mehta’s opinion that Vyasa’s work carries no signature and that he is a “strange absentee author.” He enters at critical junctures in the action to mould events and his poetic style is quite distinctive. Her reading is flawed in referring to Draupadi laughing at Duryodhana—which she never did—and in stating that in the Treta Yuga Narayana manifests as Nara.  Bandlamudi unnecessarily uses jargon e.g. “unfinalizability and unsystematizability”. What is valuable is her insight that despite being the great story of Bharat, the MB speaks to different lands, peoples and times including contemporary issues: “the centripetal and centrifugal forces in the MB demand answerability from lived life as a form of rhythmic closure.”

What is surprising in this anthology is the absence of awareness regarding Duryodhana as an agent with Shakuni behind him, just as Arjuna is an agent impelled by Krishna. A study investigating this area would be beneficial indeed.

(A shorter version was published on 17.2.2019 in the 8th Day supplement of The Sunday Statesman) at http://epaper.thestatesman.com/2024758/8th-Day/17TH-FEBRUARY-2019#page/2/2