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The Search of the Cradle of Civilization: New Light on Ancient India by Georg Feuerstein, Subhash Kak, David Frawley, MLBD 2005.
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The First Bengali Mahabharata in Verse and in Prose
Towards the end of the 13th century A.D. we notice a common literary feature emerging in eastern India that becomes very prominent by the 16th century not only in the east but also in the south. Vyasa’s Mahabharata was translated first into Bengali and then into Assamese, Oriya, Telegu and Kannada. The reasons for this remarkable synchronicity deserve further study. For the present, let us look at the picture in Bengal.
According to Dinesh Chandra Sen, the renowned historian of Bengali literature, it was a Muslim ruler of Bengal, Sultan Nusrat Khan or Nasir Khan (1285?-1325) who commissioned the first translation of Mahabharata in Bengali entitled “Bharat Panchali.”[1] The work is not traceable but Kabindra Parameshwar states in his Bengali Mahabharata: “The glorious leader Nasrat Khan had the panchali[2] composed, the ultimate in merit.” However, history is ignorant of any sultan of Bengal by this name ruling for forty years at that time. After examining the evidence, Major General S.K. Sen suggests that the reference might actually be to Nasiruddin Nusrat Shah (1519-1531 AD) who succeeded his father Sultan Alauddin Hussain Shah of Bengal (1493-1519 AD). Nusrat Shah went to Chattagram (Chittagong) with general Paragal Khan as the king’s representative in 1515-1516. Paragal became governor there and got the Mahabharata translated by Kabindra Parameshwar, which came to be known as the Paragali Mahabharat. Hussain Shah was a distant ruler while Nusrat, the crown prince, was a powerful patron at hand in Chittagong as is evident from the verses of Shrikara. Kabindra would be referring to this Nusrat and to Srikara’s panchali, not to a distant ruler. Paragal’s son Chhuti Khan succeeded him as governor and got the Jaiminiya Ashvamedhaparva translated by Shrikara or Shrikaran Nandi which came to be known as Chhuti Khaner Mahabharat. Part of it was included in Kashiram Das’ Bengali Mahabharata (composed 1604-1610) and Krittibas’ Ramayana (c. 1st half of 15th century).
Kabi Sanjay is the first translator of the complete Mahabharata into Bangla for regaling rustic audiences, composed in payar metre in the first half of the 15th century, prior to the rule of Sultan Hussain Shah in Bengal. He precedes Chaitanya (1486-1533), unlike most other vernacular renderings of the epic, as there is no trace of Vaishnava bhakti in his work. His date is uncertain, but he might be a contemporary of Krittibas, the translator of the Ramayana (not later than the 15th century).[3] However, on the basis of language and style some scholars place him in the 17th century AD.[4] A resident of Laur in the Sunamganj subdivision of Shrihatta district in East Bengal, he belonged to the Bharadvaja gotra. An interesting point is that he praises Bhagadatta as the ruler of Laur and also calls him ruler of Bengal, although Vyasa’s Mahabharata does not do so, because Shrihatta was at one time part of Pragjyotishpura, the capital of Bhagadatta. While his version is almost unaffected by the devotional movement, it contains several unusual Shakta-influenced episodes. He departs quite freely from the Sanskrit epic’s contents, unlike Kashiram Das a later translator. The narration is interspersed with laachari to be sung and various ragas and raginis are indicated in the text such as Vasant, Kamod, Bhatiyal (not a raga, but the typical boatman’s song of Bengal), Shri, Barari, Pathamanjari.
Kabi Sanjay created a new genre, the Pauranik fairytale in his translation of the epic. The key elements are given below:-
- Sanjay provides a novel start to the epic. Janamejaya (J) charges Vyasa with failure to prevent his ancestors from the fratricidal battle of Kurukshetra. Vyasa laughs and says that people do not listen to prohibitions. As an example he issues an injunction that to avoid misfortune J must not make Kantavati his chief queen, which is precisely what he proceeds to do. He also insults sage Rishyashringa who curses him to be afflicted with bhagapida, syphilitic sores, all over his body. Vyasa reappears and tells him that to be cured he should listen to the epic recited by Vaishampayana. That is why the recital begins. At the end of Svaragarohana parva, J is cured, rounding off the narrative.
- In Astika parva he adds a new story of Takshaka, pursued by Garuda, marrying his daughter Sarada to Parikshit and thus escaping death. A folktale of the ojha (curer of snake-bite) of Shankhapura is added and a novel treatment of J’s serpent sacrifice.
- The Shantanu-Ganga story is given a novel twist. Brahma curses Mahabhisha for his shameless ogling of Ganga’s nudity to be born a vanara. He worships Shiva who grants his wish to possess Ganga. Shiva commands Ganga who takes the vanara aside and tells him that first he must become hairless like her and can do so by entering fire. To persuade him she magically protects him when he tests a finger in a flame and remains unhurt. When he enters the fire she does not protect him and he dies. King Kuru is performing a sacrifice and finds a dry place overflowing with hot water which he and the sages cannot cross. The monkey’s corpse comes floating by and they use it as a bridge. Thereupon the vanara is liberated and is born as Kuru’s son, Shantanu. Shiva berates Ganga and forces her to wed Shantanu.
- Amba’s love for Bhishma is a creation of Sanjay’s who makes of it a long love-story.
- Chitrangad dies of TB. Vichitravirya violates Bhishma’s injunction against entering his palace in his absence and is crushed there by the elephant with which Bhishma used to wrestle daily to exercise.
- Dhritarashtra plots with Duryodhana to build the house of lac.
- In the Khandava conflagration the survivors are sage Lomasha, Surabhi the cow, Danavendra lord of demons and Vishvakarma.
- The Rajasuya yagya is held because Pandu, insulted in Swarga, sends Narada to urge his sons to hold this sacrifice so that he can regain status. During the conquests, on his return from Lanka Arjuna encounters Hanuman. This becomes an interesting folk-tale.
- Duryodhana and Drona send a band of fasting sages to Yudhishthira in exile but Krishna’s miracle saves the Pandavas.
- In Udyoga parva a folktale is added about Kakalilasura.
- In Bhishma parva the story of Brahmachandala is added and the beauty and valour of horses are elaborated at great length.
- In Drona parva after Abhimanyu’s death Draupadi leads an army of women against the Kauravas. Karna refuses to fight them. Duryodhana is routed.
- In Karna parva the story of Tarakaksha and Makaraksha is added.
- Ashvamedhaparva mostly follows the composition of Jaimini, Vyasa’s disciple, omitting the retelling of the Rama story. Sanjay adds Yadava and Pandava women fighting the enemy when the Pandavas are defeated. He has Surya give Vrishaketu a chariot during the battle with Anushalva. Jaimini’s Jvala is turned into Jana and glorified in particular. She dies and turns into an arrow that lies in Babhruvahana’s quiver with which he kills Arjuna. Girish Chandra Ghosh, the father of Bengali theatre, wrote an extremely popular play, Jana, about her in 1894. The battle descriptions surpass Vyasa’s. The stories of Jana, Sudhanva, Babhruvahana, Chandi, Chandrahasa are magnificently related. Chandrahasa’s story has been substantially changed, especially Vishaya’s subterfuge in replacing the word visha (poison) with her name, Vishaya. Jayadratha’s son does not die of fear but fights bravely with Arjuna. Jaimini’s Bakadalbhya has become Bakradanta and he steals the horse so that he can see Krishna. Viravarma becomes Virabrahma and his daughter Malini becomes Ratnavati. Uddalaka is renamed Udyana in the story of Chandi and the curse is dispelled when both the horse and Arjuna touch the stone. The remarkable story of the many-faced Brahmas is absent. Sanjaya describes Chitrangada as a veshya, a prostitute, while in Jaimini Arjuna says that Babhruvahana must be a son of a vaishya. The description of the horse required for the sacrifice is different too and the parva ends with Krishna’s return to Dvaraka with the Yadavas which is a departure from Jaimini.
- In Ashvamedhaparva Sanjay goes beyond Jaimini to invent the grand episode of Vivek, son of Sudhanva, who immediately after birth takes on Arjuna and Krishna to avenge his father’s death, routs Arjuna’s army, vanquishes Arjuna and Krishna, defeats Bhima, Nakula and Sahadeva and the combined army of Yadava and Pandava women. Finally, on his grandfather Hamsadhvaja’s request, Bibek surrenders to Krishna.
- Certain incidents are taken from Vyasa: the Pandavas go to Kailasa with Krishna to obtain the wealth of Marutta, the story of Parikshita’s birth, Arjuna’s horse goes to Kirata and Yavana lands, Trigartya, Pragjyotisha, Chedi, Magadha, Kashipura, Deshartha, Nishada, Kirata again, the kingdoms of Ugrasena, Kuntibhoja, Panchala, Gandhara, etc.
- Mausala parva has Arjuna accompany Krishna at the end and, as they rest together, Krishna is shot and killed.
- Svargarohana parva has new tirthas come up where each Pandava falls. The route is along the Ganga. Meghanada Daitya tries to abduct Draupadi and is slain by Bhima.
In Bengal the influence Jaimini’s Ashvamedhaparva was felt most powerfully. According to Dinesh Chandra Sen, Sanjaya, Kabindra Parameshwar, Shrikara Nandi and almost all the later translators have recorded that they translated the Mahabharata following the Jaimini-Samhita. Little is taken from Vyasa, except a few references. Jaimini was a leader among the revivalists of Hinduism (Shankara came later). His disciple, Bhattapada, defeated the Buddhists in King Sudhanva’s court. Many ancient Bengali books contain references to the Jaimini Bharata.
In the early 16th century AD Kabindra Parameshwar translated the Mahabharata in brief (so that it could be heard in a single day) up to Stri Parva[5] under the patronage of Paragal Khan. This came to be known as the Paragali Mahabharata and also as Pandab Bijoy.[6] This includes basically the battle stories, especially in the Ashvamedhaparva which, as in Sanjaya, is taken from Jaimini. Most of the stories of the original epic are omitted.
Dinesh Chandra Sen states that after this there are many translations of which the important ones are Dvija Abhirama’s Ashvamedhaparva, Ananta Mishra’s Ashvamedhaparva, Nityananda Ghosh’s Mahabharat, Dvija Ramchandra Khan’s Ashvamedhaparva, Kabichandra’s Mahabharat, Shashthibar Sen’s Bharat, Gangadas Sen’s Adi and Ashvamedhaparva, Rameshwar Nandi’s Mahabharata, Kashiram Das’s Mahabharat, Trilochan Chakravarty’s Mahabharat, Nimai Das’s Mahabharat, Dvija Krishnaram’s Ashvamedhaparva, Dvija Raghunath’s Ashvamedhaparva, Bhriguram Das’s Bharat, Dvija Ramkrishnadas’ Ashvamedhaparva and Bharat Pandit’s Ashvamedhaparva.[7] W.L. Smith[8] mentions complete Bengali versions of Ashvamedhaparva by Ghanashyam Das and Dvija Premananda and more recent versions by Rajaram Dutt (19th century), Kaliprasanna Vidyaratna (Jaiminibharata in verse, 1884). Chandranath Basu’s Ashvamedhaparva in free prose came out in 1317 B.S. i.e. 1910-11 AD.[9] Munindra Kumar Ghosh mentions Nandaram Das, Dvija Govardhan, Bhabani Das and Dvija Srinath among others. Asit Kumar Bandyopadhyay mentions the name of Dvija Haridas too. It is not clear whether these works are based on Vyasa or on Jaimini.
The most popular Bengali verse translation remains Kashiram Das’ Mahabharat which follows Jaimini’s Ashvamedhaparva. In him the influence of Chaitanya’s Vaishnavism is overwhelmingly perceptible. The work was a major influence on Bengali literature.
Kaliprasanna Singha (1840 or 1841 to 24 July 1870) authored the first prose translation of the Mahabharata. Educated in Sanskrit, Bengali and English, he left school in 1857 at the age of 16 and established the Vidyotsahini Theatre in his own house where he enacted Venisamhara. Encouraged by its success, in the same year he translated Kalidasa’s Vikramorvashiya. In 1858 he wrote the play Savitri-Satyavan and in 1859 Malati-Madhava. These plays were staged in his theatre with him in the main roles. Purana-sangraha, a collection of Puranic stories from the Mahabharata was published between1860-66. His greatest literary feat was translating the Mahabharata into Bangla in 17 volumes, for the first time in Bangla literature. The work was begun in 1858 with a team of seven pandits and completed in 1866, omitting and adding nothing. 3000 copies of each parva were printed, being unsure of the reception. He excluded Harivamsha as he found its composition to be plainly later than the epic. However, he had a plan to publish its translation along with those of the Puranas, as the title page indicates.
What the BORI editors of the critical text of the Mahabharata have done now, Kaliprasanna began at the age of 18 in 1858 all by himself, collating manuscripts from the Asiatic Society, Shobhabazar Palace, the collections of Asutosh Deb, Jatindramohon Thakur and his own great-grandfather Shantiram Singha’s collection in Kashi. He acknowledges with gratitude the help he received in resolving contradictions in the texts and making out the meaning of knotty Vyasakuta verses from Taranath Tarkavacaspati teacher at the Calcutta Sanskrit Vidyamandir. He records with profound gratitude that Ishvarchandra Vidyasagar began a translation of the epic and had published some parts of it in the Brahmo Samaj’s Tattavabodhini magazine, but stopped the work on hearing of Kaliprasanna’s project. Vidyasagar not only went through Kaliprasanna’s translation but supervised the printing and the work of translation in his absence. Kaliprasanna writes that he has no words to express the benefits Vidyasagar showered upon him. Apparently, Vidyasagar provided him seven pandits for the project.[10] Kaliprasanna gives special thanks to several friends viz. the famous poet Michael Madhusudan Dutt for promising to turn the best parts of the translation into Amritakshar metre and a play; the Purana expert Gangadhar Tarkabagish, Raja Kamalkrishna Bahadur, Jatindramohon Thakur, Rajendralal Mitra, Dvarkanath Vidyabhushan (editor of Somprakash), Rajkrishna Bandopadhyay (professor of Bengali literature in Presidency College), Nabinkrishna Bandopadhyay (former editor of Tattvabodhini), Dinabandhu Mitra (the playwright of Nil Darpan) and Kshetramohon Vidyaratan (editor of Bhaskar). Deploring the death of ten members of his team of translators, he thanks by name those engaged till the end and the proof readers (mentioning all their names).
Daily in the evening the translation, as it progressed, was read out to Raja Radhakanta Deb and other prominent leaders of Hindu society like Raja Kamalkrishna Bahadur and Rajkrishna Mitra. In villages, he writes, the translation is read out in important gatherings morning and evening. He pays a fulsome tribute to Kashiram Das’ translation in Bengali verse, regretting that details of his life and dates are not recorded anywhere. He leaves out discussion and summaries of Sanskrit literature based on Asiatic researches and Max Muller’s edition of texts to avoid any controversy that might harm the unrestricted acceptance of his translation.
The work took eight years to complete and was printed at his Tattvabodhini Press. It was provided to readers who wrote in, free of charge. Readers were advised not to send any postage stamps. In every district an agent was appointed to distribute the book so that it could be obtained without spending anything. It was and remains a unique project of making wisdom literature available without charging anything for it.
Many laughed his herculean effort to scorn, ascribing it to a quest for immortal fame by buying up pandits to translate. In response he merely stated that he had no craving for public fame, but only that should, by the grace of God, the Bengali language exist anywhere and this book fall into someone’s hands who might be able to make out its meaning and understand the pillar of glory of the Hindu race that was the Bharat, then all his labour would have been successful.[11]
Kaliprasanna dedicated his translation to Empress Victoria in gratitude for the British rescuing Bharatavarsha from the mortal clutches of the Mughals. He compared his offering to the gods offering the Parijat flower churned out of the ocean to Purandara-Indra. The intention behind the translation was a faith that it would redound to the country’s good. He hoped that Hindusthan would be lit up during her reign by hundreds of lamps of Sanskrit literature as it was during Vikramaditya’s reign by Kalidas etc. and in Queen Elizabeth’s reign by Shakespeare etc. to make her reign unforgettable.
Today one is surprised that there is no mention of the 1857 Mutiny although the translation was started the next year. The elite of Bengal were not enamoured of the aborted effort, preferring to proclaim their loyalty to the British Empress as vociferously as possible.
* This article draws heavily on the research by Maj.Gen. S.K.Sen VSM whose generous assistance is acknowledged with gratitude.
[1] Dinesh Chandra Sen, Bangabhasha O Sahitya, Gurudas Chattopadhyaya & Sons, Kolkata, 7th edn, 1st edn. 1896
[2] Rhyming verse that can be sung.
[3] Sen op.cit. and Munindra Kumar Ghosh, Kabi Sanjaya birachita Mahabharata, Calcutta University, 1969, p. 153
[4] Asit Kumar Bandyopadhyay, Bangla Sahityer Itivritta, Vol 1, Modern Book Agency, Kolkata, 2006, p. 462
[5] According to Munindra Kumar Ghosh up to Ashvamedhaparva, the later parvas being interpolations.
[6] Asit Kumar Bandyopadhyay, op. cit. p. 441-2
[7] Dinesh Chandra Sen, ibid, p. 455-456
[8] W.L. Smith, “The Jaiminibharata and Its Eastern Vernacular Versions,” Studia Orientalia, The Finnish Oriental Society, Vol 85, Helsinki, 1999, p. 402
[9] Asit Kumar Bandyopadhyay, op. cit. p. 434
[10] Binod Ghoshal, “Kaliprasannar Katha Amrita Saman,” Binodon supplement to Ananda Bazar Patrika, 20.8.2016, pp. 10-4.
[11] Binod Ghoshal, op.cit.
THE MAHABHARATA IN ARABIC AND PERSIAN
| The record of foreign invasions in India’s own itihasa is not available in any systematic form. However, the references to foreign tribes are several, as in the Vashishtha-Vishvamitra conflict, Sagara’s conquests, the Rajasuya sacrifice, the Kurukshetra war and Kalayavana’s attack. What we do not find is accounts of foreign rulers except in the cryptic statements regarding the descendants of Yayati’s four sons, Yadu, Turvasu, Anu, Druhyu. In historical times when the Arabs and Mughals invaded and settled down here, they found that to understand Indians it was necessary to comprehend the two poetic compositions that appeared to wield overpowering influence over the population. The unfortunate fact is that in modern India there has been no effort to study what these foreigners made of the Ramayana and theMahabharata. The only papers available are quite old: R.G. Harshe’s on the Arabic version of the Mahabharata (Bulletin of the Deccan College Research Institute, Pune, Vol.2), and the studies by M.A. Chaghatai (BDCRI, vol.5) and J.J. Modi (ABORI, vol.6) on Akbar’s illustrated edition of the Persian Razm Nama (the Book of War, as Akbar named the Mahabharata).
The first Arabic text on the Mahabharata belongs to the 11th century AD. In 1845 M. Reinaud, Membre de l’Institut, Paris, published a book containing French translations of Arabic and Persian fragments about India with a chapter entitled, “History of the kings of India and their chronological order according to the information which has come to our knowledge”. This was a translation thrice removed, being a French version of the Persian work Modjmel-altevarykh (1125 AD) by Abul-Hasan-Ali, keeper of the city library of Jurjan located near the Caspian seashore, written for a chieftain of the Dilemites. This Persian work was itself a translation of the Arabic “Instruction of the Princes” (1026 AD) by Abu-Saleh who had translated it from the Sanskrit. The first Arab invasion was of Sind in the early 9th century AD, co-terminus with the Umayyad invasion of Spain. Kunti’s narration of the Vidula’s fiery exhortation to her son Sanjaya in the Udyoga Parva of theMahabharata could have this in the background. Abu-Saleh’s work contains not only the Mahabharata story but also others that have not been identified. A summary, based on Harshe’s paper, is given below of what is found in the French translation pertaining to the Mahabharata. Typically, it begins with Sind.
This version is veritably Hamlet without the prince of Denmark, for where is Krishna? His absence is, indeed, most intriguing. In the early 9th century AD Khalifa Al-Mamun, son of Haroun-al-Rashid, who had two Hindu doctors in his court, used to hold religious conferences like Akbar in which Sanskrit knowing scholars were included. Indian medical works of Charaka and Sushruta were translated into Arabic in the court of the Pahlavi Gajashta Abalis (c. 825 AD). The Tarikh-i-Ferishta records that Feroze Shah Tughlaq got some Sanskrit works lying in a Hindu temple in Nagarkote (Nagrota in Kangra valley) translated into Persian. According to the local legend Alexander had placed an image of his wife Nowshaba here, which was worshipped by the Brahmins as Jwalamukhi. Akbar got as many as 15 Sanskrit texts translated into Persian. These were: Atharbedby Badaoni and others; Bhagwad Gita by Faizi and another; Gangadhar by Abul Fazl; Haribans by Maulana Sheri; Jog-Bashishta by Maulana Faraniuli; Katha Sarit Sagara by Badaoni; Kishen Joshi by Abul Fazl; Lilavati and Nal Daman by Faizi;Mahesh Mohanand by Abul Fazl; Singhasana Battisi by Badaoni, called “Nama-i-Khird Afza”; Tajak on astronomy by Muhammad Khan; treatise on elephants by Mulla Sheri; Ramayana and Mahabharata by Badaoni and others. Abdul Qadir Badaoni records that in 1582 AD Akbar felt that instead of translating fictitious narratives like Ferishta’s it would be worthwhile to get translated into Persian the rich material of philosophy and history in the Mahabharata for the edification of his nobles. Badaoni states that it narrates the wars of the tribes of Kurus and Pandus who ruled in Hind more than 4000 years ago, which the people commonly say is over 80,000 years ago. Akbar took personal interest in the enterprise, explaining the meaning to Naqib Khan the first few nights so that he could make a Persian summary. Some of the Sanskrit scholars who were called in to assist were: Debi Misra, Satavadana, Madhusudana Misra, Rudra Bhattacaraj, Chaturbhuja, Sheikh Bhawan (a Dakhini Brahmin converted into Islam). Of these Debi Misra (author of Bharata artha dipika), Chaturbhuja Misra (author of Bharata upaya prakasaka bharata tatparya prakashika) are from Bengal, well known for their commentaries on the epic. Madhusudana Misra edited the play Mahanatakam. They assisted Naqib Khan, Shaikh Sultan (Haji) Thanesari, Mulla Sheri and Abdul Qadir Badauni who wrote the text in Persian. Razmnama is not an exact translation but a free Persian adaptation, as Badaoni states. Badaoni translated two of the 18 books. In 1588 he finished translating the Ramayana for which he received 150 Ashrafis and 10,000 tangahs, the Singhasan Battisi as “Nameh-i Khirad-Afza” and the Atharva Veda in which he found that Hindus eat beef, bury their dead and that it has a passage guaranteeing salvation that resembles the Muslim “La-illah illa ‘llah”. Mulla Sheri (who also translated the Harivamsa asHaribans, which Albiruni says is an authority on Indian matters) and Naqib Khan did a part. The rest was finished by Sultan Haji of Thanessar. Faizi, Abul Fazl’s brother and Akbar’s personal friend, converted two books into elegant language. Sultan Haji further revised these two and his own portion for over four years, carefully checking against the original, saying, “I render into modern language the knowledge of 10,000 years.” Badaoni, on the other hand, calls it as “puerile absurdities, of which the 18000 creations may well be amazed…Two parts were written. Such discussions as one never heard! As, Shall I eat forbidden things? Shall I eat turnips? But such is my fate to be employed on such works…But the Emperor took exception to my translation and called me a Haramkhur and a turnip-eater, as if that was my share of the book.” He felt that all the translators were destined for hell. Akbar suspected him of importing his bigoted ideas into the translation and Badaoni had to defend himself at length over a passage in the Shanti Parva dealing with rebirth. The first draft of the text was completed in August-September 1584 and contained translations of one lakh verses of the epic. It was then copied by expert calligraphists. Abul Fazl wrote a lengthy preface. According to him, recital of the Harivamsha was known to cure sterility. After the text was prepared, Akbar asked his court artists to illustrate it. Prominent among these master artists were Daswant, Basawan, Lal, Mukund, Kesav, Muhammad Sharif and Farrukh Chella who produced some of the finest specimens of Mughal miniature painting. There are 168 paintings in Akbar’s copy (the Ramayana translation has 176). It was bound in four lavish volumes and presented to the emperor who named it Razmnama, The Book of War. The Sanskrit word “bhaara” means “war”, as in the play Karnabhaara. Akbar asked his nobles to get copies made for their own study. Akbar’s own copy, acquired by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh of Jaipur in the 1740s, is in the Maharaja Sawai Mansingh-II Museum in Jaipur City Palace, unavailable for study owing to court cases. Jai Singh ripped off the gold-embroidered goat-skin covers of the original like a vandal on religious grounds. Another copy of lesser quality was produced in 1598-1599. Most of the other illustrated Razmnama are lost or scattered all over the world in museums and personal collections. One was prepared for Jahangir’s commander-in-chief, Abdur Rahim Khankhanan, in 1616-17, which too has been dispersed across the world. In 1602 AD Tahir Muhammad prepared an abridgement of the Persian translation including the Harivamsha. Firishta states in the introduction to his history of India and Hindus that he used the Razmnama as his source. Unfortunately, the editors of the critical edition of the Mahabharata did not study the Razmnama to check what episodes featured in the epic in the 16th century, which would have enabled us to determine what, if any, has been interpolated since then. The parva-wise summary of contents of the Persian adaptation are given below as stated by the translators, indicating the number of verses in the original (southern recension) and the Persian separately as in Chaghatai’s paper. The differences in names of characters of the later parvas show Thanesari’s correction of Naqib Khan and others’ errors in the earlier parts.
Recently Mapin Publishing has brought out the Birla Razmnama edited by Prof. Asok Kumar Das (formerly curator of the Sawai Man Singh museum in Jaipur) containing the paintings. This Birla Razmnama, kept in the Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Kolkata, is a signed work of Mir Sayyid Ali Tabrizi Judai in three volumes with 629 folios including 84 full-size miniatures by the court artists of Akbar. Its scribe is Pir Muhammad bin Muhammad Hafiz and it is dated the year of Akbar’s death, 1605 AD. Das has pointed out that when compared to the Jaipur Razmnama, “the subjects vary widely.” Some stories chosen are not common and some others that are depicted in more than one miniature in the Jaipur copy have been condensed into one in the Birla copy. The Ashvamedhaparva is of particular interest because, as Das writes, “The exploits of the sacrificial horse—related in the Ashvamedhika parva—are shown in 47 illustrations in the Jaipur copy, 22 in the 1598-99 copy against only four in the Birla copy.” In fact, as Shekhar Sen has pointed out, there are five illustrations, not four. Das has missed the fifth one, plate 79. In the Razmnama this particular parva is taken from Jaimini, not Vyasa. The episodes depicted in the Birla copy are those of Babhruvahana, Yudhisthira’s yajna, Anushalva, Hamsadhvaja and the demon Bhishana. Why did the authors of most of the medieval vernaculars, especially the eastern, prefer Jaimini to Vyasa? Vyasa had asked each of his four disciples to compose their versions of his work. Of these, only Jaimini’s single parva exists today. This version is much more sensational. Vyasa’s parva is full of philosophical issues that do not appeal to the ordinary reader and the tour of the horse is very brief. Arjuna runs through the opposition, stumbling only once at Manipura (also called Manalura, located near Madurai). After the tumultuous war books the story of these battles comes as a damp squib. Jaimini, however, is full of action, variety, color and a series of absorbing stories with few philosophical outpourings. It celebrates the exploits of the children of the heroes slain in the great war and Arjuna comes off quite poorly. In addition, it is liberally spiked with Krishna-bhakti, which must have appealed particularly to the sensibilities of medieval readers and re-tellers. For these reasons, perhaps, the Jaimini parva almost invariably replaced Vyasa’s Ashvamedhika Parva in later renderings of the Mahabharata. Jaimini has not been accessible to the English reading public so far. The first shloka-by-shloka English translation by Major General Shekhar Sen has now been published by Writers Workshop, Kolkata to sate the curiosity of Indologists. |
Bankimchandra’s “Ananda Math”–the inspiration from Lalgola
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THE INSPIRATION OF “ANANDA MATH” Historians like Jadunath Sarkar, R.C. Majumdar and literary critics have generally held that Ananda Math was a product of Bankimchandra’s imagination. The painstaking research of Kishanchand Bhakat, assistant teacher of mathematics in the M.N. Academy High School, Lalgola, in the district of Murshidabad, spanning over two decades seems to have proved otherwise. Having been District Magistrate of Murshidabad at one time and later the Divisional Commissioner, I was impelled to verify the claims. To do so I visited the ruins of the Lalgola Raj Palace, now West Bengal’s sole open-air jail, and this is what I found. The seeds of Bankimchandra’s anti-British sentiments were sown in Berhampore, the district headquarters of Murshidabad district where he was posted as a Deputy Magistrate [he was the first Bengali to be offered a job in the civil service after he graduated with grace marks in Bengali, his examiner having been none other than Iswarchandra Vidyasagar who did not give him pass marks!]. It was the 15th of December 1873 when Bankimchandra was, as usual, crossing the Barrack Square field opposite the Collectorate in his palanquin while some Englishmen were playing cricket. Suddenly one Lt. Colonel Duffin stopped the palanquin with some abusive remarks and insisted that it should be taken out of the field. When Bankim refused to abandon his customary route, Duffin apparently forced him to alight from the palanquin and pushed him violently (as reported in the Amrita Bazar Patrika of 8.1.1974). Witnesses to the incident included the Raja of Lalgola Jogindranarain Roy, Durgashankar Bhattacharji of Berhampur, Judge Bacebridge, Reverend Barlow, Principal Robert Hand and some others. Furious at the insult, Bankimchandra filed a criminal case against the Colonel, with the Lalgola Raja, Durgashankar Bhattacharji and Hand cited as witnesses. Duffin had to get a lawyer from Krishnagar in Nadia district, as no one in Berhampore was willing to appear for him, while all the local lawyers had signed vakalatnamas for Bankimchandra. On 12th January 1874 the Magistrate, Mr. Winter, summoned Duffin and had just begun to question him when Judge Bacebridge entered and requested a few words in his chamber. After a little while they called in Bankimchandra and Duffin. Apparently they told Bankimchandra that Duffin had not recognized that Bankim was a Deputy Magistrate and regretted the incident. They requested Bankimchandra to withdraw the case. This he was not prepared to do and after much persuasion agreed, provided Duffin offered a formal apology in open court. Reluctantly, Duffin agreed. Winter took his chair in the court thereafter and in his presence, before a packed court, Lt. Col. Duffin offered an unconditional apology to Bankimchandra. The Amrita Bazar Patrika of 15.1.1874 reports: ‘It appears that the colonel and the Babu were perfect strangers to each other and he did not know who he was when he affronted him. On being informed afterwards of the position of the Babu, Col. Duffin expressed deep contrition and a desire to apologise. The apology was made in due form in open court where about a thousand spectators, native and Europeans, were assembled.’ Almost immediately thereafter we find Bankimchandra taking three months leave. After this incident there must have been considerable resentment in the Berhampore Cantonment among the British militia and, apprehending bodily harm, Rao Jogindranarain Roy took Bankimchandra away to stay with him in Lalgola. In Lalgola the Guru of the raja’s family was Pandit Kali Brahma Bhattacharya who practised tantrik sadhana. Kishanchand Bhakat has obtained an excerpt of seven slokas from a book in the family of Kali Brahma Bhattacharya whose rhythm, sense and even some words bear an uncanny resemblance to Bankim’s song. It is most probable that Bankimchandra took the first few lines of his immortal ‘Bande Mataram’ (up to ripudalabarining) from here because in the first edition of the novel in Banga Darshan (Chaitra 1287, pp. 555-556), these lines are given within quotation marks and the spelling is most ungrammatically retained as ‘matarang’. Bankim faced considerable criticism on this account from Haraprasad Shastri, Rajkrishna Muhopadhyay, and others. In the later editions he removed the quotation marks and changed the spelling to the proper Sanskrit ‘mataram’, wiping out all trace of the borrowing.
‘The Brahmacharin said, ‘Yes, Kali enveloped in darkness, full of blackness and gloom. She is stripped of all, therefore naked. Today the whole country is a burial ground, therefore is the Mother garlanded with skulls. Her own God she tramples under her feet. Alas my Mother!’ (Sri Aurobindo’s translation, 1909). It is extremely significant that on either side of this unusual Kali we find Lakshmi, Sarasvati, Kartik and Ganesh, who are never represented with this goddess. It is in this Kali that Bankim envisioned Mother as she will be and that is why he wrote, ‘tvam hi durga dashapraharana dharini, Thou, indeed, art Durga, ten-armed, weapon-wielding’. It is this temple that is the source of Bankimchandra’s ‘Monastery of Bliss’. To reach this temple a tunnel existed, whose vestiges are still visible, from another temple that is now in ruins and covered up with jungle. This ruined edifice was the Jagaddhatri temple that Bankim would have seen and described in his novel thus:
A little to the east is another temple in which the image of goddess Durga was worshipped by Kali Brahma Bhattacharya – ‘Mother as she will be’: ‘The ascetic’ began to ascend another underground passage’. In a wide temple built in stone of marble they saw a beautifully fashioned image of the ten-armed Goddess made in gold, laughing and radiant in the light of the early sun’Her ten arms are extended towards the ten regions and they bear many a force imaged in her manifold weapons; her enemies are trampled under her feet and the lion on which her foot rests is busy destroying the foe’on her right Lakshmi as Prosperity, on her left Speech, giver of learning and science, Kartikeya with her as Strength, Ganesh as Success.’ In the tenth chapter of Ananda Math there is an elaborate description of an extremely opulent building housing a dazzling image of four-armed Vishnu with two huge demons, beheaded, lying in front, Lakshmi garlanded with lotuses on the left with flowing hair, as though terrified, and on the right Sarasvati with book and musical instrument, surrounded with incarnate raga-raginis and on his lap one lovelier than either goddess, more opulent and more majestic: the Mother. The dynastic deity of the Lalgola Raja family was Vishnu and the image was worshipped inside the huge palace. Underground chambers can still be seen here and it is possible that the Kali icon was originally housed in one of these, reached through the tunnels. A little further on is the ruin of an ancient Buddhist Vihara where the Buddhist goddess Kalkali was worshipped. The stream that flows by is named after her, and is mentioned in the novel. In chapter 5 of the novel he describes this ‘great monastery engirt with ruined masses of stones. Archaeologists would tell us that this was formerly a monastic retreat of the Buddhists and afterwards became a Hindu monastery.’ This is where Kalyani first sees the noble, white-bodied, white-haired, white-bearded, white-robed ascetic. Is Kali Brahma Bhattacharya the inspiration for this figure? To the north of the palace, through what was then a dense forest, one reaches the confluence of Kalkali, Padma and Bhairav rivers known as ‘Sati-maar thaan (sthaan, place)’. Here, under a massive banyan tree, groups of Bir and Shri sects of violent Tantriks used to meet. Kali Brahma used to tutor them in opposing British rule to free the shackled Mother. One tunnel from the Kali temple goes straight to the Kalkali river, whose banks were dotted with a number of small temples in which these tantriks used to take shelter. It is said that in this Kali temple Bankim witnessed a very old tantrik offering a red hibiscus to the goddess, shouting ‘Jaya ma danujdalani, bande bandini matarang‘. Is it mere coincidence that if ‘bandini’ is dropped from this tantrik’s exclamation we get exactly Bankim’s ‘bande matarang‘? Bhakat hazards a guess that this may have occurred on the full moon night of Maagh, 1280 B.S. (Jan-Feb 1874) when the death anniversary of Rao Ramshankar Roy used to be observed in the Lalgola family. This occasion occurred very soon after the court case in Berhampur and Bankimchandra’s taking leave. On this anniversary, sadhus from Benares used to arrive at this Kali temple. Repeatedly Bankim refers to ‘Maghi purnima’ in the novel. The inspiration Bankim received from all this is reflected first in his essay ‘Aamaar Durgotsab’ (1874). In the same area we find the Raghunath temple with icons of Rama, Sita, Lakshmana, Hanuman, Radha and Krishna, with 51 Shiva lingas and 34 Saalgraams. It is said that these were kept here from the time of the Sanyasi Revolt of 1772-73. Bhakat points out that near the Lalgola zamindari was the estate of Rani Bhawani of Natore who used to distribute food freely to the ascetics and was therefore renowned as goddess Annapurna herself. Her patronage extended right up to Benares. In 1772-3 Warren Hastings, the Governor General, forfeited a large portion of the Rani’s estate. This lead to stoppage of the supplies to the Sanyasis. The famine that followed in Bengal fanned the flames and the Sanyasis attacked the British. Led by the tantrik Mahant Ramdas of Dinajpur’s Kanchan Mashida monastery, they deposited the icons of their deities with Rao Atmaram Roy, the Lalgola zamindar, and left on their mission. Bhakat has identified Bankimchandra’s ‘Padachinnha’ village with Dewan Sarai village which tallies with all the data in the novel: north to south beside Padachinnha the earthern embankment built by the Nawab runs through ‘to Murshidabad, Cossimbazar or Calcutta’ where Kalyani urges Mohendra to go and also mentions ‘town’ which could be a reference to ‘nagar/Rajnagar’ in Birbhum which can also be reached by this embankment. (chapter 1 of Ananda Math). On either side of the embankment there used to be dense forest, and at the confluence, at Basumati (located in Nashipur, now washed into the river was a burning ghat frequented by Bhojpuri Tantriks. All the temples mentioned in the novel are also here, as also the tunnels, the Vishnu temple, Kalkali river. Bhojpuri speaking looters and sepoys feature in the novel who tally with the fact of such people having been brought into Lalgola by the zamindar to act as sepoys and servants. Bhakat himself is a scion of such a family of staff-wielding guards and servants. They used to live in the ‘Deshwali’ area in the jungle adjacent the palace on the banks of the Kalkali and Padma with surnames like Mishra, Pande, Rai and used to receive initiation in tantric worship from Kali Brahma. The guru was addressed as ‘maharaj’. Bhakat proposes that Satyananda of the novel is none other than Kali Brahma Bhattacharya; that Dhirananda is based on the court-poet and priest of Lalgola, Trailokyanath Smritibhushan; that Bhabananda is based on the character of Raja Jogindranarain Roy (himself a tantric sadhak), who stood by Bankim and helped him get away from the wrath of the British militia; that Jibananda reflects much of Bankim himself. Bankim would have lived in the first floor room that still exists in the Kali temple courtyard. In the ground floor room lived Dr. Parry who had spent nearly Rs.10,000 in 1873 to make a medical library for the Lalgola palace. He is said to have worshipped Kali and could be the original for the physician in the novel who is loyal to the British. On the basis of these findings, it can now be asserted that Ananda Math was not just a figment of the novelist’s imagination, but was rooted in a personal insult suffered by Bankimchandra and in the experiences he had in Lalgola as a guest of Rao Jogindranarain Roy. But a fascinating puzzle remains. Before the images of the Mother are shown, there is reference to worshipping the country itself as Mother, quoting the Sanskrit half-sloka, janani janmabhumisca svargadapi gariyasi. Where did Bankim get this from? Considerable research by me has failed to pinpoint where it occurs. Several Tamil and Malayali Sanskritists recite it with aplomb and attribute it to Rama who is supposed to have responded in these words to Lakshmana when requested to stay on in Lanka, the city-of-gold, instead of returning to Ayodhya. Robert Goldman, the translator of the critical text of the epic, informs that it occurs in some version in the Yuddhakanda as follows:
Unfortunately, neither the Valmiki Ramayana, nor the Adhyatma and Ananda Ramayanas, nor the version in the Mahabharata feature the sloka. So it remains a puzzle like the panchakanya sloka. |
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| 3-Aug-2002 |
There is an image of Kali in the Lalgola palace temple that is unique. Its four hands are bereft of any weapon. The two lower hands are folded in front (karabadhha), the palm of one covered by that of the other, just as a prisoner’s hands are shackled. From behind, the image is shackled to the wall with numerous iron chains. Kali is black, of terrifying mien, naked, a serpent between her feet, and Shiva a supine corpse before her. This represented to Bankim what Bhaarat, the Mother, had become:Raja Yudhishthira by Kevin McGrath
“Because he ranjita-delighted
all his people,
he was called a raja.”
Models of Monarchy in the Mahabharata[1]
“There was a raja named Uparicara, a dharma-following monarch, fond of hunting,”[2] is how Vaishampayana begins the detailed recital of his guru Vyasa’s Mahabharata (MB) at Janamejaya’s request, striking what McGrath regards as the keynote of the epic: kingship. Buddhadeb Basu was the first to argue that Yudhishthira, not Krishna or Arjuna, was the protagonist of the MB in Mohabharoter Kotha (1974), Englished by Sujit Mukherjee as The Story of Yudhishthira (1986). McGrath’s sixth book on the MB studies Yudhishthira as a model of dualistic monarchy, shared with Krishna and his brothers, in a “pre-Hindu,” pre-monetary, pre-literate Bronze Age society of the first millennium BC. This monarchy, based upon agreement of the family, the clan and the people, is juxtaposed with the Shanti Parva’s paradigm of autarchy (“more classical, early Hinduism”). McGrath strongly feels that it is Mauryan and, even more so, Gupta epitomes of kingship that are represented here. Vaishampayana ends saying that this “itihasa” named Jaya is to be heard by one who desires to rule the earth. The epic, therefore, is focussed on kingship.
McGrath also explores how pre-literacy is portrayed, again dually. Externally, there is the drama of recitation before an audience; internally, the narrative of Yudhishthira’s kinship group which is the foundation for preliterate poetry. The great variations in style are evidence of different poetic traditions that are amalgamated into a single vast poem: Vedic, pre-Hindu, Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist. McGrath believes that MB became a written text in the time of Samudragupta, which is why a coin of that king features on the cover. However, he falls into the trap of believing that one person could not have composed the MB. What about the enormous output of Isaac Asimov in almost all branches of knowledge in modern times and of Shakespeare in the past with wide stylistic variations?
In a time long long ago north of the Vindhyas lived communities who for protection chose from among Kshatriya families a ruler. The Shanti Parva chapters 57, 59, 67 have this to say:-
tena dharmottaraś cāyaṁ kr̥to loko mahātmanā /
rañjitāś ca prajāḥ sarvās tena rājeti śabdyate //
That mahatma ensured
the sway of dharma
in the world.
Because he ranjita-delighted
all his people,
he was called a raja.
First find a raja.
Then get a wife.
Then wealth, they say.
Without a raja—
Your wife and wealth,
What good are they?
There is only one Sanatana Dharma
for a raja
who wishes to rule a kingdom:
the welfare of his subjects.
Such welfare
preserves the world.
The raja drew his authority from the people who, in return for his protection, gave him one fiftieth of their animals and gold, a tenth of their grain and the loveliest of their daughters (Shanti Parva, 67.23-24). It was a time when money did not exist and writing was unknown. Wealth acquired by the raja consisting of precious metals, gems, cattle, but not land, was distributed by him during yagyas and other ceremonies. Succession to the throne was not by primogeniture alone and needed ratification by the people.
For instance, Bharata disinherited his nine sons finding them unfit to rule and adopted the Brahmin Bharadvaja as his successor, naming him Vitatha. Yati, Nahusha’s eldest son, was not his successor but the younger Yayati. Yayati had to explain to the people why he gave the throne to his youngest son Puru. Brahmins did not agree to enthrone Pratipa’s eldest son Devapi who became a sanyasi. So the youngest, Shantanu, became king. Again, it was Vichitravirya’s younger son Pandu who was made king.
McGrath makes out a strong case for the MB being about the establishment of Yadava hegemony ( pointed out in 2002 in my paper “Leadership and Managing Power: Insights from the Mahabharata”). The displacement of Yayati’s eldest son Yadu in favour of the youngest Puru comes full circle. However, it is not “a son of Krishna” (an error repeated twice) who becomes king at Indraprastha, but his great grandson Vajra, while his sister’s grandson rules at Hastinapura. McGrath expands this idea to envisage a conflict in which a matriline defeats a patriline. Actually, it is Satyavati’s line that is displaced by her daughter-in-law Kunti’s. McGrath appears to be supporting the idea that the matriline represents “indigenous” Dravidian traditions that defeat “intrusive” Indo-Aryans. Thankfully, he refrains from stepping further into this morass.
We find here a new insight: royal authority is portrayed as dualistic, being shared by Yudhishthira with Krishna in both the major rituals of rajasuya and ashvamedha. Before that, authority is shared between Satyavati, Bhishma and Vyasa. Royal power depends upon support of the community who are represented in the group of ministers chosen from all four classes. Yudhishthira’s is also a fraternal kingship shared with his brothers and even with Dhritarashtra. Thus, after Karna is dead, Yudhishthira tells Krishna that now he is raja of the world along with his brothers. McGrath pertinently points out that “kingdom” has its origins in the Old English “cyn” standing for “kin” and means “the situation or location of kinship” which does not connote rule by one person, which is the model Bhishma presents in the Shanti Parva.
When Vyasa is called “brahmarshi kavih” McGrath has problems finding an English equivalent for “rishi”. Not happy with “wizard” he leans towards “shaman”. The Oxford English Dictionary glosses “rishi” as “A Hindu sage or saint”. The exact equivalent would be “seer” in the sense that MB uses it. The “kavi” is a seer-poet.
Shantanu is the only one called “adhiraja”, superior monarch. This is significant because it is the dynasty of his step-father with which Vyasa is concerned, having been inserted into it by his mother to carry it forward. The royalty of the bloodline, therefore, becomes dubious, particularly when Pandu’s wives gets sons from multiple devas. It is interesting that McGrath does not examine this aspect of Yudhishthira’s claim, despite Duryodhana questioning it bluntly. The need for the people’s acquiescence to legitimise the kingship seems to be more implicit than voiced explicitly. McGrath overlooks that Yayati has to explain to the people why he is choosing his youngest son. However, we do not see Shantanu doing the same in the case of Devavrata, nor do the people protest. They only object vociferously when the Pandavas are exiled, but this carries no weight with Duryodhana who appears to represent the “later” type of autocrat, though not a tyrant since the people tell Dhritarashtra they were happy under his reign. The installing of Yudhishthira as crown-prince requires no consent from the public. Their applauding him is not evidence of public opinion featuring as a crucial element in making that decision as McGrath asserts. When he refers to Krishna in his peace-embassy appealing to the kings in the assembly to speak as evidence that Dhritarashtra has to heed the “sangha”, this would be because that is the mode of governance obtaining among the Yadavas. No one in the court responds to this appeal, because the modality of Hastinapura’s monarchy does not envisage such consultative rule. Duryodhana is not bothered about Krishna’s exhortation to behave so that the great warriors install him as crown-prince. He successfully asserts his right singly.
The dharma of a raja had three qualities: punishing, protecting, donating. He rules, as Kunti tells Krishna, by conciliation, giving gifts, causing division, using force and strategy. Yudhishthira always speaks in terms of not just himself but always including his brothers (the most significant being sharing a wife). All decision-making is fraternal for him, except for the game of dice twice over.
Krishna is referred to as sanghamukhyo, leader of the association. According to V.S. Agrawala, in Panini’s time the Bharatas’ profession was ayudhajivin (weaponry) and they lived as a sangha. The MB seems to be showing political systems changing from an oligarchic sangha and a kinship type of rule to absolute monarchy. Neither Parikshit as full-fledged monarch nor Janamejaya shares power with anyone. The Yadavas end up with Krishna’s great grandson Vajra ruling in Indraprastha, and the sons of Satyaki and Kritavarma ruling in nearby kingdoms.
McGrath argues that three forms of time coalesce in the MB. There is the recalled pre-monetary, pre-literate time of sanghas; the time poetry creates representing an ideal; and both are conveyed through the time of actual performance. Thus there is “a compounding of the historical, the mythical and the performative which coalesce into a single instance or event that has been simply transmitted and then recorded in our present text of the poem.” An impressive thesis indeed.
A very interesting proposition in the book is that Parashurama’s genocide of Kshatriyas might represent destruction of Buddhist kingdoms east of the Ganga-Yamuna doab. But where is the evidence for this? J. Bronkhorst proposed that the MB’s earliest written text is from the time when Brahmanism was imposing itself on eastern regions viz. Magadha. The Bhargava Brahmins, whose tales feature prominently in the MB, would have been linked to this expansion.
It is not clear why the MB should be recalling “an imagined former era” of war-chariots, when Persian armies used them against Alexander. Nor is there a shift away from the Rigvedic sacrifice which remains central to the MB. In the Shanti Parva, however, other ways of achieving liberation are described such as Sankhya and Yoga. Ritual sacrifice is even shown as of no consequence compared to the life of unchavritti (gleaning). These, as McGrath writes, could certainly be a response to Buddhism and Jainism. There are references to caityas (funeral monuments) and edukas (ossuaries) in the kingdom of Gaya. Bhurishrava is said to be meditating on mahopanishadam and engaged in yoga. The earliest Upanishads are dated to the middle of the first millennium BC. McGrath points out that Arjuna’s sword is described as akashanibham (blue like the sky). This is the wootz steel which was produced in North India in the 3rd century BC. Further, prior to the battle Uluka refers to the rite of weapon-worship (lohabhihara). Loha means “coppery, red.” McGrath interprets this as indicating bronze weaponry, thus bolstering his thesis about this being a bronze-age heroic culture.
A significant point is that the term chakravartin, turner-of-the-wheel, is only applied to ancient rulers, never to Yudhishthira, who, therefore, was never given the status of an emperor despite the rajasuya yagya. When finally installed at Hastinapura, he is called patim prithvyah, lord of the earth. Other terms used are mahipati, nripa, bhumipa, narendra, nareshvara, synonymous with “raja”. Chakravartin is a term that was used by Buddhists and Jains, particularly in the Andhra region along the Krishna River.
There is a curious incident usually overlooked which McGrath points out as an indication that kingship was oligarchic. After the Pandavas have been exiled, Duryodhana, Karna and Shakuni offer the kingdom to Drona considering him as protector, ignoring Dhritarashtra and Bhishma who appears nowhere at the close of the Sabha Parva. Where is the consent of the public? This recurs when Duryodhana, rescued by Pandavas from the Gandharvas, offers the kingship to Duhshasana. McGrath proposes that this is the consequence of the rajasuya having gone wrong so that royal authority seems to have become mobile. The Udyoga Parva has the subjects discussing Duryodhana’s destructive thoughtlessness (as citizens do in Shakespeare’s plays), a feature that never occurs in the type of kingdom Bhishma describes in the Shanti Parva. The mobile nature of kingship is seen when Karna tells Krishna that Yudhishthira would not accept the kingdom were he to know about Karna’s birth. Gandhari, however, is quite categorical that the Kuru kingdom passes by succession. The rajasuya instead of making kingship permanent for Yudhishthira completely upsets it. The MB seems to be presenting different claims to kingship without projecting a single model. It is subject to family, kinship, the clan, the public etc.
The king’s primary duty is as a sacrificer, which McGrath analyses at length. The primary model is Indra, shatakratu (performer of a hundred sacrifices) the rain-bringer, promoting fertility. Satyavati urges Vyasa to provide a successor to the throne as a kingless kingdom gets no rain. As an offshoot of this, in old age the king finally takes to the forest as a renunciant, which does not form part of the paradigm of the later “classical” model of monarchy where he rules till death.
Besides the pattern of the displaced eldest son in the line of succession, there is the feature of sons being born to queens not from their husbands (Ambika, Ambalika, Kunti, Madri). Further, the earliest kings did not take princesses as wives. Yayati has sons from Brahmin and Asura women; Uparichara from Girika, a riverine woman; Shantanu from Ganga and Satyavati, both riverine women. Only in subsequent times we find the practice of restricting the choice to royal families.
McGrath is mistaken in stating that during Pandu’s rule Dhritarashtra declares Yudhishthira’s right of succession. By the time Duryodhana is born—which is the context of Dhritarashtra’s comment—Pandu has long given up the throne to his elder brother, retreated to the Himalayas, been cursed by the deer-sage and has persuaded Kunti to beget a son by the god Dharma. It is interesting that Yudhishthira is referred to as “ajatashatru” (whose foes are unborn), since this is name of Bimbisara’s son (491 BC) who killed his father and founded Pataliputra. It is not a name shared with Ashoka’s father, as McGrath states, who was Bindusara. Both expanded the Magadha kingdom considerably. Without conquering Magadha, Yudhishthira cannot become samraj (emperor). There is a historical memory here.
Regarding the dice game, McGrath quotes Yudhishthira as having vowed never to refuse a challenge, which overturns the “fraternal kingship” paradigm. He seeks to cover this in a footnote pointing out that on the second occasion all the Pandavas were invited, not just Yudhishthira. He observes that while Draupadi was treated contemptuously, “there is no overt violence and a certain etiquette is observed.” What about being dragged by the hair and sought to be stripped naked?
McGrath points out a fact that has been overlooked by others: Krishna’s report to Yudhishthira about what Dhritarashtra and Gandhari said supporting his rightful claim to the throne do not tally with what we have heard in the Hastinapura court! Similarly, Krishna’s report to Uttanka and to Vasudeva about the events of the war differ significantly from what Sanjaya has reported. Why?
Another interesting sidelight is provided: Karna tells Krishna that Brahmins will recount the Mahabharata sacrifice. Why not the half-kshatriya sutas? This hints at the Bhargava redaction of the epic.
Yudhishthira is said to have been guilty of lying only once although there is a series of lies all the brothers tell Virata. A very rare example of the fury Yudhishthira is capable of even against his own family is the curse he lays upon all women after finding out that Karna was his elder brother. In his aversion for the kingdom his parallel is Balarama who avoids the war. Yudhishthira’s renunciant bent has parallels in Buddhism and Jainism. In the Shanti Parva he uses a metaphor to describe worldly predicament which Shakespeare’s King Lear repeats: “Thus on this various wheel of samsara, like a chariot wheel…” A similar disgust for the kingdom won by slaughtering kinfolk is voiced by Arjuna the perfect kshatriya in the Ashvamedha Parva.
McGrath holds that Vyasa is older than Bhishma and is not mortal. The timeline does not indicate that. Devavrata is returned to Shantanu as a teenager. Four years after that Shantanu weds Matsyagandha who has given birth to Vyasa earlier. Vyasa would be around the same age as Bhishma. Further, he is definitely mortal, not chiranjivi like Ashvatthama and Kripa. He is divine only in the sense that much later he tells his disciples that he is an avatara of Narayana.
On page 107 there is a curious error: “Shalya’s driver is killed by Kripa”. This is a good example of the sort of mistake the editors of the critical edition made by ignoring logic to follow blindly the maximum manuscripts agreeing with the Sharada script version. It is Bhima who does this, following up by killing the horses and cutting away Shalya’s breastplate. Further, though displeased, Yudhishthira does not reprimand Bhima for kicking prone Duryodhana’s head, despite being urged by Krishna who does not justify this act as McGrath has it (p.108). Rather, Yudhishthira justifies Bhima’s kicking.
It is good to find McGrath speculating about why the movement of the narrative was impeded by introducing the didacticism of the Shanti, Anushasana and Anugita portions instead of peremptorily rejecting them as interpolations. It is necessary to find out what possibly motivated the redacteurs to do this, and how it happened. Why stitch together such widely divergent types of poetry? This could only happen in a literate period.
The manner in which Vyasa exhorts Yudhishthira to be king-like and emerge from depression by drawing upon traditions of ancient monarchy can be seen in the Old English poems “Deor’s Lament” and “The Wanderer”. McGrath compares this to the Gupta dynasty seeking to revive the ashvamedha rite to legitimise power and using the MB recital for this purpose. Why should we not see this as valid for the revival five centuries before that by Pushyamitra Shunga, a Brahmin general who assassinated his king and attacked Buddhists? The wrongs a raja commits are said to be removed by performing such yagyas and distributing donations.
The archaic nature of MB culture is further exemplified by the absence of icons of deities. There is just a solitary mention of images of devas shaking, laughing, dancing, weeping before Bhishma’s fall. Yet, McGrath mentions Yudhishthira offering puja to deities before entering his palace after investiture. The first statues come in Ashoka’s time and are of animals and yakshas. In the late Shunga period (the closing years BCE), we find decorative sculptures depicting human and mythical figures. The MB makes no references to worship of deities in homes or temples or to building of memorials. McGrath opines, “This is because stone sculpture at that time was a solely Buddhist or Jaina phenomenon.”
McGrath points out what is seldom realised, viz. that the warrior’s way, kshatradharma, is first spoken of by Hanuman and is similar to the catalogue in Arthashastra. The raja’s dharma is first enunciated by Narada at the beginning of the Sabha Parva. The Gita does not touch upon this, being directed solely at the hero. McGrath examines three instances when Yudhishthira is advised in practical terms how to function as a raja. Arjuna propounds practical tenets of governance; Draupadi holds forth on what is to be done in crisis; Yudhishthira has his own craving for liberation of the spirit. There is no mention of any ministers counselling him in Hastinapura. This characterises Bhishma’s picture of kingship. However, it overlooks the episode in the Adi Parva where the Machiavellian counsellor Kanika expounds his niti to Dhritarashtra for getting rid of the Pandavas.
McGrath argues that the shift in oligarchic monarchy of the earlier books to a single person’s rule in the Shanti Parva is matched by development of a pre-monetary barter economy into one where currency is exchanged for goods. This is the time dominated by Jain and Buddhist merchant classes when fraternal kingship is replaced by autarchic rule. It is also the time of urbanisation when coins gradually replace land, agricultural produce and cattle as mediums of exchange. The lack of mention of coinage in the Shanti Parva is explained away as because it is describing a mythical time, “blurring historic and poetic reality.” That is not a satisfactory explanation and undermines the argument.
When McGrath believes that the culture MB depicts is primarily a pre-monetary, pre-literate Bronze Age one as Homer’s epics do, why does he contradict himself by saying that it is only “an idealised old world” and “not a portrait of an historical reality, but a pictured heroic time”? Hasn’t evidence of the Homeric world turned up?
The peculiar incident of the Brahmin Charvaka condemning Yudhishthira, which McGrath finds so puzzling, becomes clearer if we look at Duryodhana’s dying speech. Here he says that if the ascetic Charvaka, master of eloquence, hears how he has been killed in unfair combat, he will definitely avenge him. Even more intriguing is how Kripa, despite his role in the massacre of the Panchalas and Draupadi’s sons, goes unpunished and continues as guru to Parikshit. McGrath proposes that perhaps Sauptika Parva was a later phase of the epic’s growth featuring Kripa in assisting in the massacre.
Vidura’s precepts and Bhishma’s discourses on kingship come to be collected in Kautilya’s Arthashastra, which is also an action-less monologue. This picture is an urban one of a classical king and his entourage. What is particularly shocking is Bhishma’s advice that Yudhishthira ought to fear kinsmen like death, because Yudhishthira’s is all along a familial kingship. But why is the use of spies Bhishma advocates “a new practice” (p. 156) when Duryodhana had all along been using them to track the Pandavas in exile? The two parvas are concerned with the king’s morals and are devoid of dramatic effect on either Bhishma or Yudhishthira. Only at the very end the Anushasana Parva says that Yudhishthira was anointed having obtained the kingdom. The heroic epic re-starts with the Ashvamedha Parva. These two books surely belong to a radically different poetic tradition, being upanishadic, not heroic.
In sum, Yudhishthira is not the king Bhishma describes, for he shares his power with Krishna and with his brothers, with approval of his public. He is incredibly gentle and intensely humane. The only instance in which he does not involve his brothers is the disastrous decision to participate in the game of dice. Only twice he displays anger: against Arjuna and Kunti. He is unique for the world-renouncing remorse he feels, unwilling to be king even after the horse sacrifice. Curiously, he shows no signs of spiritual liberation despite the massive discourses of Bhishma. As McGrath pertinently writes, “dharma for him concerns praxis, and it is in no way a medium of enlightenment. He is a moralist, not a mystic.” This is tellingly brought out in his encounters with Dharma-as-crane and Nahusha-as-python. His counterpoint Duryodhana might have been drawn from a different tradition because of the paradoxical presentation of his death. Why McGrath feels this could be Buddhist or Jain is not clear, nor why “his truculence and minatory belligerence…have been laid upon another kind of earlier character.”
Vyasa presents us with three portraits of kingship: Dhritarashtra, Duryodhana and Yudhishthira. All display a dependence upon public opinion and the subjects appear to have been happy under the rule of all three. When Yudhishthira exits, he hands over the throne to the dual authority of Yuyutsu and Parikshit (the courtiers surround the former; the women the latter). He advises Subhadra to protect Vajra in Indraprastha and not follow adharma (i.e. seek to supplant him by her own grandson Parikshit). Like Arjuna much earlier, Yudhishthira enters heaven in his mortal frame—and yet he does not, because he has to experience hell. He is said to be filled with bitter rage here. He will not accept heaven without his brothers, just as he shared earthly power in their company. Only thereafter, having discarded his mortality, is he taken to Swarga.
McGrath makes the very interesting point that the MB is recited at Takshashila, the capital of Gandhara (Kandahar), the land of Gandhari and Shakuni. Kautilya composed his Arthashastra here. Ashoka was viceroy here. The oldest manuscripts of the MB are from Kashmir. In his conclusion McGrath puts forward a very important suggestion for studying how the commentator Nilakantha prepared his edition of the text. While McGrath very rightly points out the puzzling omission of the Sindhu-Sarasvati civilization’s urban heritage in one place, in another he asserts it is “obviously recalled” without citing evidence.
Just as in late 6th century BC Athens, in the Panathenaia festival, brought a re-conceived Bronze Age epic poetry into a single Pan-Hellenic form, so the MB integrated all available material on social living in a single collection. McGrath sees it depicting a religion of hero-worship which continues today. He is certain that the war books and parts of the Virata Parva are older, depicting an ancient Bronze Age warrior tradition, than the Shanti–Anushasana Parvas. Does the poem hark back only to the older world of Vedic deities? Does it not stress repeatedly the primacy of the Nara-Narayana duo and the underlying presence of Rudra-Shiva? Nor does it elide all Buddhist and Jain experience. There are negative references to kshapanaka (naked Jaina mendicant) and pashanda (Jains/Buddhists). The Mokshadharma Parva incorporates much of their concept of world-abandonment for the sake of individual salvation, quite contrary to the stance of the Gita and the kingship the MB portrays. The very concept of the supreme value of yagya is completely undercut at the end of the horse-sacrifice where the half-golden mongoose shows it is much inferior to what is achieved by those living by gleaning. The archetypal seer-king, rajarshi Janaka is thoroughly debunked by the female sanyasi Sulabha! In Yudhishthira’s intense remorse and obsession with dharma much of Ashoka is surely assimilated.
Despite the MB’s final message that in Swarga there is no animosity, the entire epic has presented mutually destructive rivalry between cousins for the throne. Its message is dualistic like the model of monarchy it presents of a ruler making decisions in consultation with kin and with implicit, if not explicit, approval of the public. This portrait undergoes a development summarising “all the historical possibilities, if not temporal developments, of kingship in Northwestern India” around 950 BCE onwards.
There are two appendices on epic time and on epic pre-literacy. McGrath suggests that the war books plus the Sauptika Parva amounting to 23,795 stanzas are the 24000 slokas constituting the Jaya that is mentioned by Ugrashrava Sauti. The archaic Bharata legends were combined with Bhargava myths of the classical period. This stitching together occurs within a ring structure: Sanjaya recites to Dhritarashtra; Vaishampayana recites this to Janamejaya; Sauti recites all this and more to Shaunaka. Sanjaya’s recital uniquely combines past and present, always beginning with death of a general and then going back to describe how it happened. Time is projected triply: Dhritarashtra’s lament summaries most of the action in 56 verses; the anukramanika gives a digest of 100 mini-tales; the parvasangraha lists the books and chapters. There is the crucial importance of fertilising women at the right time that is reiterated repeatedly, and it is the violent disturbance of this in the assault on Draupadi that engenders the sterility of war and of the Kuru and Yadava lineages. Narrative time, chronological time and mythical time are “compounded in one unitary sequence of worlds or poetic montage.”
McGrath’s description of the krita yuga as a timeless, changeless, deathless utopia is not correct because monarchs and sages of that period are shown as dying. It is the passage of time that leads to the onset of the treta yuga. While acknowledging that no dates with full astrological data are supplied, McGrath seems to accept A.N. Chandra’s date for the battle as 3137 BCE. Based upon the same data, widely different dates have been arrived at by a range of scholars, showing that interpretation is highly dubious. McGrath estimates the time-span for the core narrative as spanning fifty years from the infancy of the Pandavas to the investiture of Parikshit. Into it are interwoven tales from the past featuring Vedic divinities as well as the ethos of early Gupta monarchy. The poem oscillates between the microcosm and the macrocosm. Centripetal in form, the stories are narrated in manifold voices creating a tapestry of coruscating brilliance that evokes willing suspension of disbelief.
Just as time in the MB is an illusion, so is space. There is very little description of interiors and topography except in very general terms. It is place-names that feature, not details of terrain. Similarly, details of physique are elided. Individuals are made out mostly by their speech, for it is a world of drama. It is not a poetry of realism but of emotional theatre and didacticism. There is no reference to plastic and visual arts (except a single mention of Shikhandini being adept at “lekhya” i.e. writing or painting), which might be because the first statuary is Buddhist, mention of which the MB seems to avoid.
In the appendix on epic pre-literacy McGrath takes the position that the MB was first written during Samudragupta’s reign combining the pre-literate and literate. Writing is dateable to Mauryan times. The different parvas exhibit great stylistic differences, incorporating popular songs about heroes, folklore and formulaic compositions of professional poets. Sanjaya’s inspiration, which is visual, differs from Vaishampayana’s which is a recital of remembered text. Sanjaya’s is filled with formulaic terms and comparatively little narrative. An excellent example of such epic inspiration is found in the Russian bylina recorded in 1925 by N. Misheyev.[3] Different periods of theological and political thought have been combined along with varied cultural strands. Preliterate narrative is not chronological but proceeds structurally, which we see in the MB. Further, it is based upon the functions of kinship, and its performance is dramatic and metaphorical. Preliterate poetry is also characterised by a pattern of duality (as seen in the Iliad too) which is a function of pre-monetary culture where no single currency existed. Society functioned on exchanging services and loyalties defined by rites. Value depended upon kinship. Wealth was distributed in great yagyas and weddings in the form of jewels, weapons, cattle, servants, but not land (gambling is the exception). Writing and coinage seem to have occurred together. This, of course, begs the question about Harappan culture which had seals and a specific system of weights, neither of which the MB mentions despite featuring Jayadratha as king of the Sindhu area.
McGrath’s slim volume is a densely written book offering new and rich insights into an aspect of the MB that has not been researched so thoroughly in the past. No one interested in the MB can afford not to read it.
Pradip Bhattacharya
[1] Kevin McGrath: Raja Yudhishthira—Kingship in Epic Mahabharata, Orient Blackswan, 246 pages, Rs.1050. A shorter version of this review was published on 14.1.2018 in the 8th Day literary supplement of The Sunday Statesman.
[2] All quotations are from the P. Lal transcreation (www.writersworkshopindia.com )
[3]A woman of 80 in the far north of Russia in an out-of-the-way village suddenly created a new lay, “How the Holy Mountains let out of their deep caves the mighty Heroes of Russia” after reciting the traditional tale of “Why the heroes have vanished from Holy Russia.” http://www.boloji.com/articles/49556/a-modern-russian-bylina
The Last Kaurava
Re-imagining the Mahabharata
Kamesh Ramakrishna: The Last Kaurava, Frog Books, 2015, pp. 533, Rs. 525/-
Considerable control is called for while reimagining myth so that it does not degenerate into fantasy. The first successful attempt at this with the Mahabharata was by the Bengal civilian Nabin Chandra Sen in his Bengali epic trilogy, Raivatak, Kurukshetra, Prabhas (1887-1896). Gajendrakumar Mitra did so in the novel Panchajanya (1963), a trend continued today by Dipak Chandra. In Gujarati, K.M. Munshi recreated Vedic India and the Mahabharata in Bhagwan Parashuram and the unfinished octology Krishnavatara. In Hindi, Gurudutt, Acharya Chatursen and Narendra Kohli novelised Vedic and Puranic India. Marathi, Kannada and Malayalam fiction drew upon both mahakavyas. In English, in the 1980s came Maggi Lidchi-Grassi’s magnificent Mahabharata trilogy exploring the psychological quests of its characters. Ashok Banker started off a rediscovery of Indian myth as fiction with his Ramayana heptalogy. This stream has grown from a trickle in the late 1990s to a gushing river by 2015. What is particularly interesting is that now engineers and management executives are turning to this massive narrative heritage to create novels. Unfortunately, except for Krishna Udayasankar’s Aryavarta trilogy and Rajiv Menon’s Thundergod, the rest leave much to be desired in terms of language and style. Since most Indian publishers scrimp on editors, these flights of mythic fiction are riddled with errors of idiom, spelling and grammar. This is where Ramakrishna’s debut novel—the first of a trilogy—comes as a welcome surprise. A software architect with a doctorate in computer science from Carnegie-Mellon, reading him is a rare pleasure. He reimagines the events as occurring in 2000 BC. This is India north of the Vindhyas with a non-literate oral culture, bereft of iron, horses and chariots, with onager and cattle drawn carts, mud wattle cottages, bows, arrows and bronze weapons. There are no missiles, no aircraft, no huge gem-encrusted palaces and gleaming silken attire. But why are there no ornaments when archaeological evidence exists?
Beginning with the reminiscences of the dying Kuru patriarch Bhishma is not a new device. Pratibha Ray used it very dramatically, opening Yajnaseni with Draupadi’s life flashing before her dying eyes. In somewhat similar fashion, the dead Karna speaks to us in Shivaji Sawant’s Mrityunjaya. The Mahabharata is a series of extended flashbacks at several levels, beginning with Dhritarashtra’s plangent lament over past incidents that presaged no hope for victory—tada na shamse vijayaya sanjaya! However, Ramakrishna does start with a shock: Bhishma, ambushed by Shikhandin (his son by Amba), kills him and is shot by Arjun. Vengeful Amba drives the arrow deeper into him.
Ramakrishna creates the Kavi Sangha, a guild of bards, functioning as the memory of over 2000 matriarchal communities led by the Purus, trading with Mesopotamia, Persia and Egypt. Ramakrishna calls Egypt “Pitri-vihara-naad”, the land of temples to ancestors, although its original name still remains “Misra”, a mixed people, harking back to the Bhavishya Purana which speaks of sage Kashyapa with his son Misra going to that country and Brahminising the people. As the Sarasvati basin dried-up, the Purus migrated from Panchanad (Indus etc.) to the banks of the Yamuna and Ganga, establishing Hastinapur as a trading outpost to the east. In the process, they pushed out the slash-and-burn Naga culture and clashed with the hunter-gatherer Rakshasa tribes. A transition occurred from a matriarchal trading and forest-based life to a patriarchal urban society with an army of farmers. Ramakrishna is quite the geographer, drawing a clear picture of the how the changing courses of rivers brought about changes in prehistoric cultures. He is an ethnographer too, providing details of the matriarchal, matrilocal and matrilineal cultures at tedious length. He is also a linguist discoursing on the Phoenician alphabet used by the trading “Baoga” (Sanskritised “Bhargava”) and the development of a phonetic, metrical script (Sanskrit) by Vaishampayana, who is prejudiced against writing. He is persuaded to dictate the memorised archives to a Bhargava scribe, as narrated by Bhishma to the archivist Lomaharshana in the presence of the Vyasa named Shukla, Satyavati’s brother.
The problem is one of verisimilitude. Nowhere in Indian myth are the Nagas depicted as matriarchal. Ramakrishna could easily have kept to the original Nishada descent of Satyavati without any problem. The Nagas were an ethnic group living in and around the original kingdom of Yayati at Khandavprastha which the Pandavas reclaimed as Indraprastha. Ramakrishna creates a siege of this city by Suyodhan who cuts off the water supply, foolishly allowing the Pandavas to escape into the forest. He goes to great lengths to set up Bhishma as the dynast of a trading family who builds an army to establish a comity of communities along the Himalayan foothills against Saka inroads. The proposition may not be difficult to swallow for readers unfamiliar with the Mahabharata.
The Kavi Sangha’s chief is called “Vyasa”. Anachronistically, Ramakrishna makes Vasishtha and Vishvamitra precede Bhrigu as Vyasas. This guild functions as the Chanakya-like advisor to the ruler, imposing a one-child norm on migrants from Panchanad to the Kuru habitation and upon the Nagas who are the crop-growers. To set an example, Shantanu has to do away with all his sons from Ganga born after Devavrat. Ganga commits suicide in despair. Devavrat, though taken with Satyavati of the Meena-Nagas (also called “Matsya”), sacrifices his desires for his father’s sake. Satyavati’s brother Shukla spins the plot whereby her sons get the throne instead of Devavrat—an interesting twist. Another innovation is in the death of her son Chitrangad, rashly attacking marauding horse-riding Sakas. Ramakrishna paints a gruesome scene in which Devavrat, finding that the Sakas have blinded Chitrangad and torn out his tongue, secretly cuts his throat to spare him further agony and spreads the tale that he was killed by Gandharvas. Devavrat acquires the sobriquet “Bhishma—Terrible” because of his horrific torture of captured Saka families in revenge. From the Sakas he rescues the Naga maiden Amba, falls in love with her and brings her with her two sisters to Hastinapur. Satyavati constantly upstages her co-regent Bhishma, even forcing him to have the widowed queens live in his palace so that they imbibe the true Kuru aura, pleading that physicians have so advised! Bhishma is shown to be clueless about what was happening within the palace, always busy with constructing water-works and building an army to establish an empire. There is no mention of the levirate custom. Amba, driven away Satyavati when pregnant with Devavrat’s child, delivers Shikhandi among the Panchals, the traditional foes of the Kurus. Ramakrishna’s Panchals are a standing Naga army set up to tackle the rogue Naga band led by Takshaka. Draupadi is the matriarch of the Panchals, Krishnaa Agnijyotsna, the Dark Lady. Whatever happened to King Drupada and what is gained by naming Drona “Kutaja”?
Unaccountably, Ramakrishna makes Dhritarashtra the son of the younger Ambalika instead of Ambika, whose son he names Mahendra, called “Pandu” being an albino. Disagreeing with Bhishma’s policies, Mahendra exiles himself. Duryodhan repeatedly shouting “Shut up!” at his father jars because in the Mahabharata he does not insult Dhritarashtra, as he draws all his authority from him. The grand heroic scale of Devavrat’s vow is diminished drastically. There is an incongruous reference to the Roman deity Saturn as arbiter of fate on page 415.
The novel ends with Bhishma’s shock at discovering from the Vyasa Shukla that Dhritarashtra and Pandu were not of Vichitravirya’s blood, but are progeny of the son of Parashara, the earlier Vyasa, and Satyavati. This is a signal departure from the original where it is Bhishma who advises resorting to levirate by an eminent Brahmin and assents to Satyavati summoning her illegitimate son Vyasa. However, Ramakrishna’s insight is correct, that neither of the contending cousins had any Kuru blood in them. At least Dhritarashtra was Satyavati’s grandson, while the Pandavas are not her grandchildren, each having a different, unknown father. Thus, the Kavi Sangha, guild of bards, came to wrest the throne from the trading dynasty of Purus. Ramakrishna may have drawn inspiration from the Brahmin Pushyamitra Sunga wresting the throne of Pataliputra from his Mauryan master.
The book has an excellent map, a helpful family tree and a descriptive glossary of names. For a welcome change, there are practically no typos and the novel reads very well, except that it could have been tighter by omitting the excursions into geography, linguistics and ethnography which the appendices cover in detail. We certainly look forward to the sequels.