Pradip Bhattacharya

Indologist, Mahabharata scholar

BOOK REVIEWS

DRAUPADI THE GODDESS VIRA-SHAKTI

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Alf Hiltebeitel: The Cult of Draupadi: Mythologies from Gingee to Kurukshetra Vol.1 (Motilal Banarasidass, Delhi, pp.487, Rs.200/-)

The 1980s witnessed a remarkable resurgence of Indian mythology in literary, theatrical and academic spheres. If in literature we saw the gripping Hindi dodecalogy of Ram Kumar Bhramar on the Mahabharata while novels on the epic came in Bengali from Kalkut and Dipak Chandra, in Oriya from Pratibha Ray, in Kannada from S.L. Bhyrappa, and in English from Maggi Lidchi Grassi and Elaine Aron, on the stage the agony of Draupadi, five-husbanded-yet-husbandless, was unforgettably brought home in Shaoli Mitra’s one-woman performance, Nathavati anathavat. In academia, Dr. Alf Hiltebeitel produced the first volume of his profound study of the cult of Draupadi in 1988 which is now finally available in an Indian edition from Motilal Banarsidass.

Tracing the South Indian cult of Draupadi to Gingee (it also exists in Sri Lanka, Fiji and Singapore), Hiltebeitel launches an elaborate investigation into how it incorporates dimensions of a multiplicity of cults relating to village goddesses, heroes, lineage/caste/boundary deities, possession and even those of the supreme triad of the Hindu pantheon: Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva. The Draupadi cult is a fascinating combination of the folk and the classical traditions, which the scholar investigates chiefly through the Terukkuttu dramas (street plays) reaching out to the classical and vernacular epic traditions as well as analogous cults for further insights. To provide a focus for this considerably involved phenomenon Hiltebeitel inspiredly seizes upon an 18 verse invocatory song sung at the beginning and the end of Draupadi festivals. It is the ramifications of these 18 verses that are brought out painstakingly in the study, of which this is only the first volume.  

Hiltebeitel finds that Draupadi is actually a multi-form of Durga and Kali as Vira Shakti/Vira Panchali with her virginity repeatedly stressed. In this aspect, her power is destructive and dangerous even to her husbands. Her children are born out of drops of blood pierced out of Bhima’s hand with her nails as she returns after nocturnal foraging. Like her sister-goddess Ankalamman, whose cult shares the same region, Draupadi roams Kali-like in forests and crematoria. The Telegu tradition has Krishna explain to Bhima that Draupadi is the primal Shakti whom he had promised to satiate with human flesh and that is why he has arranged the Kurukshetra War, during which she roams the battlefield at night consuming corpses. Sensing that Krishna has lent part of his energy to Bhima to solve his problem of satisfying her sexually, Draupadi demands that Krishna now marry her, which he promises to do in future as Jagannatha of Puri. To Hiltebeitel it remains a mystery how this promise is kept.

However, the answer is available in Charolette Vaudeville’s 1982 paper on ‘Krishna and the Great Goddess’ in The Divine Consort  which notes that Ekanamsa/Subhadra/Durga is found in the consort’s position, that is the left side, of Jagannatha when the icon of Baladeva is absent, and that the original temple in Puri was occupied by Maha-bhairavi Adishakti under the name Vimala-devi. Draupadi’s Shakti aspect is conclusively established at the end of the Terukkuttu cycle in the stance Draupadi takes atop Duryodhana’s thigh or chest, like Durga atop Mahishasura, pulling out his intestines while Krishna braids her hair. The 18-day war covered by the Terukkuttu cycle marks the end of a festival that can, therefore, be said to recapitulate the Navaratri or Vijayadashami festival of Durga. 

In Draupadi’s victory a critical role is played by the folk-figure of Pottu Raja/Pormannan, the Buffalo-demon/king turned devotee, who brings her the five instruments required for her victory. A unique feature of the cult is the icon of the Muslim devotee Muttal Ravuttan who is analogous to the Marathi Khandoba. Draupadi defeats Muttal is after he has imprisoned the Pandavas and becomes the guardian of the north. Another fascinating instance of local myth-making is the second birth of Draupadi invoked by King Cunitan (Sunitha), a descendant of the Pandavas, to save the kingdom from the hundred-headed demon Rochakan/Acalamman. As the demon has the boon that whoever cuts off his hundredth head will die if it touches the ground, Pottu Raja agrees to hold it forever. At the spot where Draupadi disappeared after killing the demon, the Gingee temple was built with a figure of Pottu Raja before it holding the demon’s head. Hiltebeitel perceptively notes how the cult splits into two the functions of Bhairava: the role of the dog who keeps the blood of Brahma’s head from touching the ground and the position of kshetrapala go to Muttal Ravuttan; the all-destroying Brahmic head stuck to his hand goes to Pottu Raja, keeping in hold the destructive power and reminding us of the severed head of the buffalo-demon Mahisha.  

The Terukkuttu cycle also reveals a different facet of Krishna. His overwhelming concern is that the Pandavas fulfil their war vows without being upstaged by their sons who are seen as rakshasic. Hence, he brings about the deaths of Aravan (Iravan), Ghatotkacha, Abhimanyu ‘ each of whom would have destroyed the Kaurava army in a day ‘ and of Draupadi’s five sons.

There are a couple of issues that remain unresolved in Hiltebeitel’s thesis. On page 323, he speaks of the coalescence of serpent and elephant in Aravan’s ancestry by making out that Ulupi belongs to the line of Airavata ‘the elephant mount of Indra.’ This is incorrect. This Airavata is the name of a serpent and is not identical with Indra’s mount, as the Adi Parva of the epic makes abundantly clear while listing the major serpents. On page 397, he expatiates on the theme of flawed caste-character of the five Kaurava generals, which certainly cannot apply to Bhishma and Shalya. He does not provide any evidence for the alleged rakshasic nature of Draupadi’s sons. Again, on page 288 he states that only Villi has the nelli (myrobalan) episode in which Draupadi’s desire for a sixth husband is exposed. However, this occurs also in the Bengali Mahabharata composed by Kashiram Das where, using a mango, Krishna gets Draupadi to confess her desire for Karna as her sixth husband. While elaborating the South Indian myths about Krishna’s role in Karna’s death he does not take into account the rich myths regarding the last moments of Karna prevalent in the vernacular traditions in western and eastern India which enhance his nobility to sublime heights as in the Bengali play Nara Narayana by Kshirodeprasad Bidyabinode and in Shivaji Sawant’s epic Marathi novel Mrityunjay. 

These, however, hardly detract from the major contribution made by Dr. Hiltebeitel to the understanding of our own mythic traditions ‘about which our own intelligentsia are criminally insouciant’, as kept alive even in the twenty first century through the folk theatre, which is swiftly dying out in the absence of financial support. Enriched with 34 invaluable plates recording key events in Terukkuttu performances and a number of maps laying out the cult territory, this thesis ought to awaken the South Zone Cultural Centre to the need of reviving our dying tradition by providing the necessary support. Otherwise Draupadi the goddess might again have to bewail her fate as nathavati anathavat, ‘many-husbanded yet husbandless’!

Book Review of Fr. Camille Bulcke’s THE RAMA STORY: ORIGINS AND GROWTH (2022)

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Trans. (from Hindi) by Pradip Bhattacharya. Delhi: Sahitya Akademi. Hardbound.

ISBN: 9789355481108

Oshin Vipra Sagar, Avinash Kumar

Kalākalpa, Vol. VII, No. 2(2023)

With some variation, the story of Rama is told not just across different parts of the Indian subcontinent but also in Southeast Asia with just as much fervour. Not to forget, Ram and his supposed birthplace have become a part of the politico-religious fabric of India over the last few decades. Therefore, a historical inquiry into the story of Rama is a pertinent endeavour now more than ever. However, no systematic historiographical work on Rama’s tales was available for general readers and academics alike until a Belgian Jesuit priest Father Camille Bulcke accomplished the task of comprehensively tracing the origin and development of the narratives around Rama in his magnum opus “Ramkatha: Utpatti Aur Vikas” published in 1950. The work, however, remained accessible only to readers and researchers proficient in Hindi. The translation by Pradip Bhattacharya bridges that gap for the anglophone public through his work ‘The Rama Story: Origins and Growth’, published by Sahitya Akademi in August 2022.

Pradip Bhattacharya’s ambitious translation has surveyed the major available editions of Father Bulcke’s original work. He has taken into cognisance the printer’s gremlins (in the 16th ed.) and tried his best to critically examine the errors and omissions before producing his translation based primarily on the third edition of Bulcke’s work published in 1971 by Hindi Parishad Prakashan, Allahabad University. Bhattacharya also acknowledges the original writer’s lack of awareness of his predecessors’ work relating to Ramayana at large such as those by Akshoy Kumar Maitreya, who, for example, has dealt with the subjects Bulcke deals with (say, Ramayana’s relationship with Greek and Buddhist stories) or Rajasekhara P.Basu’s ‘Surpanakha Reminiscences’ and ‘the Rule of Rama’ or Kumudini’s ‘Sita’s Letters.’

Father Bulcke’s omissions of the verse number and translation of Sanskrit verses too, have been supplemented in the translated work by Bhattacharya, making it fairly corroborated and accessible. Nonetheless, the translator has ensured that they stay true to the original and preserve its appearance while addressing the need to rectify some inconsistencies in referencing style.

‘The Rama Story: Origins and Growth’ wholeheartedly follows the structure of Bulcke’s “Ramkatha: Utpatti Aur Vikas”, wherein the work is divided into four main parts, each corresponding to the four major stages of the evolution and expansion of the Rama story. The first part (consisting of chapters 1 to 5) concerns itself with the extant ancient literature such as the Vedic, Buddhist and Jain corpus – scrutinising the references to the Rama story they present. The first chapter reviews the Vedic literature for the presence of characters like Iksvaku, Dasaratha, Janaka, and Sita as the presiding deity of agriculture while also presenting an apparent absence of Rama in the corpus. The second chapter examines the three recensions of Valmiki’s Ramayana and attempts to gauge the time of its composition historically. It also disambiguates the identity of the author of Ramayana, the poet Valmiki and sheds light on the various Valmikis. The third chapter brings some fascinating insights to the table regarding the timeline of Valmiki’s Ramayana with reference to the other epic of the subcontinent, i.e., the Mahabharata (hence, Mb). Verses from the primary text of Mb have been used to illustrate how the composers of Mb were aware of Valmiki and his work – while maintaining a distinction between the stories of Bharata and the Mahabharata. At the same time, the readers are also provided with quantitative cues to the popularity of the Rama story: for example, how approximately fifty references to Rama or characters related to his story are found in Mb.

In part two of the work, chapter 6 critically examines the origins of the story of Rama: addressing the problematic nature of “Dasaratha Jataka” and the question of the authenticity of the Pali “Jatakakathavannana.” In the consecutive chapter, the discussion follows through on the matter by taking into consideration the views of scholars such as Dr. Weber, Jacobi and Dineshchandra Sen. Chapter 8 and 9 remarks on the main interpolations in Valmiki’s Ramayana and how the concept of the ‘avatar’ contributed to its wide dispersal.

The third part of the book provides an overview of the wide and deep penetration of the Rama story across medieval literature from the subcontinent across Sanskrit, modern Indian languages, and other Asian languages. In this part, chapter 10 elucidates on the development of Rama-bhakti and the Rama stories in Puranic literature (Harivamsa, the Mahapuranas and the minor Purana) as well as the sectarian Ramayanas and other religious literature from the period. The subsequent chapter 11 traces and maps the Rama story across an elaborate list of Sanskrit belle letters beginning with Raghuvamsa, Setubandha and covering about 17 major works, including epic poetry and plays, while further covering some minor works. Chapter 12 of the work is divided into two parts: the first discusses the Ramayana across Southern languages of Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada, including the tribal tales related to Rama from the region; the second discusses the Rama story in the literary works produced in northern Indian languages as well as Sinhalese. The two parts of this chapter correspond to Bulcke’s rough categorisation of linguistic groups as Dravidian and Aaryan, which could be better titled in the translation to be technically more accurate and not appear anachronistic. The last part, chapter 14, discusses the Rama story abroad in the Tibeto-Khotanese, Indonesian, Indo-Chinese (Vietnamese), Siamese and Burmese traditions while briefly touching upon the Western narratives.

The fourth and final part of the book expounds on the growth of the Rama story spread over seven Kandas (Bālakāṇḍa, Ayodhyakāṇḍa, Araṇyakāṇḍa, Kiṣkindakāṇḍa, Sundarākāṇḍa, Yuddhakāṇḍa, Uttarakāṇḍa) in chapters 14-20. It ends with concluding remarks in the 21st and the last chapter of the volume. This part of the book, from pg. 341 to pg. 892 amounts for the bulk of the volume that closely engages in dissecting the minutest details of themes and episodes of each Kanda and the variations of each, if any, across the three recensions of Valmiki’s Ramayana.

As for relevant original additions, Bhattacharya (supplementing Bulcke’s original list) brings to the readers an organised exhaustive bibliography comprising ancient texts as well as modern works across Indian and foreign languages in Appendix I. Appendix II sheds light on the story wherein Rama had to shoot an arrow at Hanuman on Viswamitra’s command, an intriguing episode relating to Rama that Bulcke skipped in his almost encyclopaedic work. In Appendix III, Bhattacharya elucidates on the large yet relatively less-known Ramayana frescoes in the Silver Pagoda at Phnom Penh, Cambodia, commissioned between 1903-04. The frescoes depict the Khmer story of Rama being abducted by Ravana’s nephew Waireab and his rescue by Hanuman. Finally, in Appendix IV, he reviews Paula Richman’s ‘Questioning Ramayana’ and Amreeta Syam’s ‘Kaikeyi.’

Overall, the book is worth all the attention at present and for times to come. Priced at INR 1500/- this 990-page book is a comprehensive wellspring of information on the narratives surrounding the character of Rama, which historically traces their antiquity while critically examining its growth through the ages.

Freud, Bose and the Mahabharata

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Alf Hiltebeitel: Freud’s Mahabharata. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, pp. xxiii+298, Rs. 650.

The cover of Hiltebeitel’s “Freud’s Mahabharata” has an interesting personal involvement on my part. Alf had emailed me in desperation having failed to trace this sketch drawn from a portrait of Freud (sent by Freud to Bose in 1926) by a Bengali artist Jatindra Kumar Sen commissioned by Dr. Girindrashekhar Bose which he used as the cover of the first edition of his Bengali work, “Swapna” (1928). With some difficulty Smt. Sunita Arora of the National Library (who had been put on the job by my young colleague Shri Raghavendra Singh IAS, its Director) traced it to a very fragile copy, repaired their high-resolution camera for taking a good photograph and sent that to me which I emailed Alf. That is how a Bengali artist’s sketch ended up on a work published abroad and in India. Bose removed the sketch from subsequent editions of “Swapna” possibly because he fell out with Freud around 1931. Dr Bose had sent Freud an icon of Vishnu seated on Ananta which Freud kept on his desk. This features as the cover of Hiltebeitel’s “Freud’s India”.

Hiltebeitel’s new work follows up on his “Freud’s India” where he explored personal experiences following his father’s death and his divorce that recalled Freud’s life. The cover of the book has an interesting story. Hiltebeitel had emailed me for help having failed to trace this sketch drawn from a portrait of Freud by a Bengali artist, Jatindra Kumar Sen commissioned by Dr. Girindrashekhar Bose, founder of the Indian Psychoanalytic Society, from a portrait Freud had sent him in 1926. Bose used it as the cover of the first edition of his Bengali work, “Swapna” (1928). With some difficulty Smt. Sunita Arora of the National Library (who had been put on the job by its Director, my young colleague Shri Raghavendra Singh IAS) traced it to a very fragile copy, repaired their high-resolution camera and sent me a photograph which I emailed Hiltebeitel. Bose had sent Freud an icon of Vishnu seated on the serpent Ananta, which Freud kept on his desk. This features as the cover of Hiltebeitel’s book, “Freud’s India”. Bose removed the sketch of Freud from subsequent editions of “Swapna” possibly because he fell out with Freud around 1931. Freud had referred to Bose in 1922 as an extraordinary professor who had founded a local psychoanalytic group in Calcutta.

The book immediately stimulates interest by its intriguing title since Freud never mentions the Mahabharata (MB). Dipping into it we find that it is in three parts of which the middle portion consists of chapters 2 through 5. Chapters one and six are the first and third parts. Beginning with Freud’s essay, “Das Unheimliche” (The Uncanny, as translated by James Strachey), Hiltebeitel links the MB by arguing that its dominant flavor (“rasa”) is the uncanny, as Sheldon Pollock translates “adbhuta”, and not the heroic (“vira”). He interprets the story of the five Indras immured in a cave as a pre-Oedipal intra-uterine fantasy of being buried alive, which Freud called “the most uncanny thing of all”. Hiltebeitel misses out Edgar Allan Poe’s terrifying take on this in “Tomb of Ligeia”.

In an elaborate examination of the myth of Aravan/Iravat/Kuttantavar, Hiltebeitel links his overhearing in the womb about Krishna’s wish to kill him and then emerging feet first to kick Krishna into the ocean with Freud’s theory about the return to the womb in sleep. Hiltebeitel sees in this ocean a reflection of “the oceanic feeling” that Romain Rolland wrote to Freud about, troubling him no end. There are analogous stories about Ahiravana in the Bengali Ramayana of Krittibas and Vivek in the Bengali Mahabharata of Kavi Sanjay which would have added grist to Hiltebeitel’s mill.

Influenced by Freud’s “Moses and Monotheism”, Hiltebeitel theorizes that the MB’s core myth of the divine plan to unburden the Earth reflects the trauma experienced by rural Vedic Brahmin communities of foreign invasions and the impact of “India’s second urbanization” after 500 BCE in the Gangetic plain, the first having been the Harappan civilization. This is the “urban unconscious” of Brahmanism, like Freud’s Judaism. Interestingly, the demons-on-earth (Jarasandha, Kamsa etc.) occupy the chief cities (Rajagriha, Mathura etc.). Hence, the extolling of forest-living gleaners.

It is surprising to find Hiltebeitel supporting the long discredited theory, revived by F. Wulff Alonso, of Indian epics drawing upon the Greek mythic corpus for their matter of the divine plan to relieve Earth’s burden. He does admit, however, that the MB’s myth is apocalyptic unlike the Homeric. This myth that is practically the frame story is repeated five times. First by Vaishampayana in his genealogical account, next twice by Vyasa narrating the five Indras myth and while consoling Dhritarashtra after the war, the fourth time by Narada during the rajasuya yajna and finally at the end by Vaishampayana.

Hiltebeitel finds a parallel to Freud’s “phylogenetic myth-making” with the MB’s combining myths of genealogy, cosmology, sacrifice and war in the ontogenesis of its divine plan. Freud’s assertion that the primal patriarch drove his sons out when they came of age, virtually castrating them, whereafter they could remain in the horde as harmless labourers (a stage corresponding to dementia praecox), is paralleled in the MB’s myth of Yayati disinheriting and banishing all but one of his sons. Hiltebeitel even suggests that at 23 volumes Freud’s work is larger than the MB, both texts looking to forge a new consciousness of a civilization, both heterogenous in relating myth to narrative, stylistically varied , dialogical, propounding a heroic persona with a prominent role for women.

Hiltebeitel juxtaposes the MB’s three tales about dead mothers (Madri, the Nishada woman, the corpse supposedly of their 180 year old mother strung up on a tree by the Pandavas) with Freud’s three texts dealing with the dead mother complex. Kunti is seen in the role of a dead mother to Yudhishthira, staying aloof from him and finally abandoning her sons, just as Gandhari never looks upon her children and finds Duryodhana rejecting her in open court. Hiltebeitel posits that it is Satyavati or even her fishy mother Adrika (Acchoda in the Harivamsha) to whom the Pandavas refer, as the corpse of their 180 year old “mother”, its stink being linked to her fishy birth. The dead mothers stack up over five generations (5 x 36 years per generation = 180) beginning with Satyavati (from the Yamuna) and Ganga, ending with Draupadi’s ultimate sonlessness. Satyavati is known by her fishy odour inherited by Vyasa. She is dark like the river Yamuna across which she plies a ferry, as contrasted with the pellucid celestial river, the Ganga. That she is originally called “Kali” is very significant. In iconography, Vishnu’s two wives are the Earth goddess and Shri-Lakshmi, both of whom are at the core of the MB’s divine plan.

Hiltebeitel devotes considerable space to examining how Freud’s interests are paralleled by the knowledge about Indian goddesses of Dr. Girindrashekhar Bose (who sent Freud an icon of Vishnu and had his portrait sketched which forms the cover of this book). Differing from Freud, Bose said that in India the wish for castration occurs early in childhood when, identifying with the mother, he wishes to be female. Dread of castration comes later in the Oedipal identification with the father. Hiltebeitel posits that Kali fits the profile of Bose’s “Oedipus mother”. Issues of castration come up in the cult of Aravan/Kuttantavar who sacrifices himself to Kali before the MB war.

Bose theorized that the wish to be hit always accompanies a wish to hit. In “Freud’s India” Hiltebeitel had wondered whether this wish to be struck characterizes snakes. Aravan’s mother is the female serpent Ulupi. Snakes who “infest the MB”, argues Hiltebeitel, largely represent not tribals but the unconscious, “basic raw wishes, hostilities, or desires” of the unconscious. Analysing three versions of the Aravan/Iravat/Kuttantavar tale, Hiltebeitel finally admits that his self-sacrifice before the war (“kalappali”) cannot be said to involve a wish to be struck. However, this Tamil cult, much celebrated by Hijras, has evidence of a link between the castration wish and a desire to be female that Bose posited as occurring in the pre-Oedipal stage. In this phase the “Oedipus mother” has a powerful role, as seen in Aravan’s multiple mother figures (Ulupi, Draupadi, Kali). Hiltebeitel concludes that Bose’s theory explains these Indian cults which Freud’s does not.

Examining Freud’s work on Moses and on Jokes, Hiltebeitel links the discussion to the tales of gleaners in MB, claiming that the epic was the composition of “a committee of ‘out of sorts Brahmins’” (hence the extolling of gleaners) in the 2nd century BCE in Kurukshetra. Vyasa’s stink and disagreeable appearance makes him “the consummate out-of-sorts Brahmin.” This period of second urbanization (600-300 BCE) saw the rise of towns vis-à-vis forest life. Gleaners in the Naimisheya grove near Kurukshetra complete a twelve-year yajna during which, because of the numerous rishis, the tirthas got urbanized (“tirthani nagarayante”). Hiltebeitel imagines them traumatized by foreign invasions (hence the prominence of the north-west in MB) and the challenge of heterodox movements backed by royal patronage (Chandragupta and Jainism, Bimbisara and Ajivikas, Ashoka and Buddhism). He argues that they “projected features of current second-or first-century urban architecture back into” the Vedic world whose memories lay in their subconscious. They developed the Rig Veda’s ten mandalas (16th to 11th century BCE) into the ritualistic three other Vedas (11th to 9th century BCE) and then their branches (8th to 3rd century BCE) climaxing in the encyclopaedic MB in the fourth stage in the 2nd century BCE. The references in MB to Greeks, Chinese and Shakas, but not the Pahlavas or Kushanas, indicates a completion of composition before the end of the pre-Common Era, by the late Shunga or Kanva times. Support is found in the MB’s reference to the land being dotted with “edukas” (Buddhist mounds of relics). In the Book of the Forest, one Shaunaka discourses to the Pandavas on the Buddhist eight-fold path; a butcher speaks the Jain version of ahimsa and in the Shanti Parva Bali lays out the Jain doctrine of six “leshyas” (colours) of matter.

Seeking to find correspondences in MB with Freud’s theory about jokes, Hiltebeitel makes a laboured argument that Vyasa’s levirate episode with Ambika and Ambalika contains an innuendo: the two “mahishis” (chief queens/female buffaloes) unite with the smelly, unkempt Vyasa in the role of the horse of the ashvamedha rite. In the “Narayaniya” narrative Vyasa reveals that he is born of Harimedhas, the essence of the Horse-headed avatar. The year-long vow Vyasa wanted them to observe parallels the horse-sacrifice’s prescription of abstinence for a year. By rejecting this, Satyavati renders the queens impure for the rite. Hiltebeitel hazards a bad joke of his own: “Vyasa’s shaggy-dog story has turned out to be a shaggy-horse or a talking-horse story.”

A very rewarding read is Hiltebeitel’s analysis of the narrative structure of the “Narayaniya” identifying how the dialogue level shifts thrice from the inner frame (Janamejaya querying Vaishampayana, within which Vyasa speaks to the former too across six generations) to the outermost (Vyasa discoursing to his five pupils) through the outer frame (Rishi Shaunaka querying Ugrashravas Sauti) via the intermediate dialogues (Yudhishthira querying Bhishma). Ultimately, Hiltebeitel sees the MB as “the recovered memory” of a Vedic past replete with “partially unconscious and forgotten meanings about that past”. —Pradip Bhattacharya

‘“This is not Heaven,” said Yudhishthira. He reviled the gods and dharma.’

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Wendy Doniger: After the War—The Last Books of the Mahabharata. Speaking Tiger, 2022, pp. 221. Rs. 499/-

Doniger’s “After the War” immediately brings to mind Mahashweta Devi’s three brilliant short stories entitled “After Kurukshetra,” a unique imagining of the post-war scenario that, strangely, does not feature in Doniger’s bibliography. Doniger’s latest work is an exciting prospect for Mahabharata aficionados. English translations of these short closing “parvas” of the Mahabharata are limited to the turgid Victorian prose of K.M. Ganguly and M.N. Dutt of the Vulgate and Bibek Deb Roy’s pedestrian version of the Critical Edition which drops many passages. The far superior rendering, and the only one in verse and in prose faithfully following the Vulgate text, of Padma Shri Professor P. Lal is surprisingly, is missing from Doniger’s bibliography as well. The succinct and insightful prefaces of Prof. Lal to each volume are not to be missed. While Doniger’s is a prose translation, the language flows and her style is most engaging.

This book is practically her lecture-notes to the last class she taught at the University of Chicago to second year Sanskrit students translating Books 15-18: the Ashramavasika (Forest Life), Mausala (Clubs), Mahaprasthana (Great Departure) and Svargarohana (Ascent to Heaven) Parvas drawing upon the commentator Nilakantha whose edition is the Vulgate and adding passages from various manuscripts as she wishes, possibly to make the narrative more complete. She omits the 6th and final chapter of the last book which details the benefits of listening to the Mahabharata and how it is to be recited and heard, specifically including the Harivamsha. So this is Doniger’s Wikipedia-text of the last four books, not adopting the Critical Edition which she considers “misguided” and as leaving “the patient in a critical condition…Like Frankenstein’s monster…”  Her omission of the frame story in every case deprives us of the interaction between Janamejaya the audience and Vaishampayana the narrator as well as the outermost frame where Ugrashravas Sauti recites the epic in the Naimisha forest.  It is Sauti who brings the narration to a full circle stating that when Vaishampayana’s recital ended so did the snake-holocaust and Janamejaya returned from Taxila to Hastinapura. Repeating from the opening chapter (Anukramanika), Sauti calls it “Jaya-Victory,” explains why it is called Mahabharata (it narrates the great birth of the Bharatas and is highly profound), that it outweighs the four Vedas and the 18 Puranas and took Vyasa three years to compose. He repeats the claim: “Whatever there is here—about dharma, politics, pleasure and liberation—you can also find elsewhere; but what is not here is nowhere.”

A very illuminating and provocative Introduction running to 60 pages teases out implications of the narrative that we generally overlook. Appendices provide cross-references to the Critical Edition, explain Sanskrit adjectives qualifying characters, list the names of major and minor players, provide a summary of the earlier books and a valuable bibliography. However, there is no index. The cover of this Indian edition of her book is somewhat pedestrian compared to that of the Oxford University Press edition which is a full-colour reproduction of a medieval illustration of Yudhishthira’s vision of hell.

Doniger sees the book split into three parts, each beginning with the arrival of Narada. Therefore, she chooses to begin with chapter 26 (chapter 20 of the Vulgate) in Book 15, omitting the Pandavas’ futile arguments to dissuade their old, grief-stricken uncle who insists on retiring from royal life to live out his last days in the forest and his lengthy advice to Yudhishthira on good governance. Left out also is Bhima’s unremitting assault on Dhritarashtra’s sentiments by repeated loud mentions in his hearing of killing all his sons. When Dhritarashtra needs wealth for the shraddha of the slain, Bhima refuses to part with any. Then Yudhishthira and Arjuna who share their personal riches. Dhritarashtra donates gold, gems, slaves, sheep, goats, cows, blankets, villages, fields, horses, elephants and lovely virgins in the names of Bhishma, Drona, Somadatta, Bahlika, all his sons and Jayadratha:-

                        All the four castes,

            one after another, were gratified

                        with abundant food and drink.

Vestures and wealth and jewels

                        were its billows,

            the mridanga-drumbeats

                        its maha-reverberations,

            cows and elephants its makara-creatures

                        various gems its whirlpools,

            Villages and gifted lands

                        were its islands,

            diamonds and gold

                        were its rippling waves,–

            such was the plenitude

                        of the cornucopious Dhritarashtra-ocean. 14.12-14 (P. Lal).

Vyasa sees poetic justice here, comparing the departure of the aged royal couple to that of the exiled Pandavas. The Pandavas’ shock when their mother decides to accompany Dhritarashtra and Gandhi to the forest and the reason Kunti gives for her decision are part of this omitted portion revealing the emotional backlash suffered by the victors. Her directive to Yudhishthira to respect Sahadeva, to remember Karna always by donating generously in his honour and always to please Draupadi is also omitted. Having enjoyed the kingdom with her husband, Kunti does not desire that of her sons. This remarkable heroine never desired anything for herself—a true parallel to her nephew Krishna. Sanjaya and Vidura accompany the three.

Dhritarashtra is instructed in the way of forest-life by the royal rishi Shatayupa, former king of Kekaya, at Kurukshetra. Gandhari, Kunti and he, wearing bark-cloth and deerskin, mortify their bodies, attended by Vidura and Sanjaya. Narada visits them and assures him and Gandhari of going to the world of gandharvas and rakshasas after three years, of Kunti joining Pandu who is with Indra, of Vidura entering Yudhishthira’s body and Sanjaya attaining Svarga. Narada mentions one king Shailalaya as the grandfather of Bhagiratha. However, it is Asamanjasa who is the grandfather in the puranic lineage.

All joy is driven from the lives of the Pandavas, Draupadi and Subhadra, their sole consolation being Parikshit. They are unable to carry out royal duties, immersed in grief for their mother, uncle and aunt. Finally, importuned by Sahadeva and Draupadi, Yudhishthira decides to visit them in the Kurukshetra ashram of Shatayupa. Leaving Yuyutsut and the priest Dhaumya in the city, the Pandavas wait outside their capital for five days for citizens to join. Kripa leads the army, crossing the Yamuna to reach Kurukshetra. The meeting of Sahadeva and Kunti brims over with pathos. Yudhishthira runs after Vidura into the dense forest. Vidura is skeletal, naked, filthy, matted-haired, pebbles in his mouth, starving himself to death like a Digambara Jain. By yogic power Vidura joins his self to Yudhishthira’s, as a father does to his son, and dies standing against a tree, proceeding to the Santanika world. There is no mention of Vidura merging into Dharma. A skyey voice prohibits his cremation as he was a world-renouncing “yati”.

Book 15 begins with three questions put to Vaishampayana by Janamejaya: how did his victorious forefathers treat vanquished, forlorn Dhritarashtra; how did Gandhari behave; how long did his ancestors rule. Yudhishthira never objected to the old king pardoning condemned people, going on pleasure trips, spared no expense and ordered his brothers to ensure that the son-less monarch never felt desolate. The Pandavas (except Bhima) were apprehensive that Dhritarashtra might die of despair. The Pandava ladies, Kunti, Draupadi, Subhadra, Ulupi, Chitrangada along with the daughters of Shishupala and Jarasandha, attended on Gandhari. After bearing 15 years of Bhima’s boasting about how he killed the Dhartarashtras, the old king and queen take to eating on alternate days and then twice a week, sleeping on a grass mat on the ground (of which, strangely, Yudhishthira was ignorant). Vyasa urges Yudhishthira to accept their decision. Dhritarashtra discourses to Yudhishthira over three chapters on how to govern. The material is drawn, quite appropriately, from Bhishma’s lectures on raja-dharma lying on his bed-of-arrows, to Yudhishthira. When Dhritarashtra bids farewell to the citizens, they declare how well they had been governed by him and by Duryodhana.

At the request of the ashramites, Sanjaya describes the appearance of the Pandava men and women (Chapter 32; 25 Vulgate), a very rare glimpse indeed. Yudhishthira is golden, lion-like, long-nosed, eyes large and copper-bright. Bhima’s complexion is like molten gold; he is broad-shouldered, massive-armed, wolf-waisted. Ajuna is dark-skinned with leonine shoulders and eyes like lotus leaves. Nakula and Sahadeva are innocuous—simply good looking. Draupadi is middle-aged, dark as a blue-lotus, lotus-eyed. Krishna’s sister (Subhadra) has golden skin shining like the moon. Ulupi’s complexion is like pure gold while Chitrangada’s is like the madhuka blossom. Blue lotus-like in colour is Bhima’s unnamed chief wife (Balandhara), sister of Krishna’s inveterate foe who is left nameless (Shishupala or the Kashi king?). Sahadeva’s wife is the champak-complexioned daughter of Jarasandha. Nakula’s wife with large lotus-leaf eyes has blue lotus-like complexion. With skin like molten gold is Virata’s daughter (Uttara), her son in her lap. Yudhishthira’s wife Devika of Shaibya, mother of Yaudheya, is not mentioned and remains just a name in the Mahabharata.

Vyasa’s appearance in this ashram is a narrative tour-de-force. At Janamejaya’s snake-holocaust at Taxila, it is at his request and on Vyasa’s bidding that Vaishampayana narrates the Mahabharata in which its author himself appears as an actor at critical junctures. Here Vyasa makes some crucial observations regarding the births of Vidura and Yudhishthira. Doniger’s mistranslates “Ordered by Brahma” as “through the Levirate arrangement with a Brahmin,” he fathered Vidura. Vyasa conclusively states that Vidura procreated Yudhishthira “by the power of his yoga,” that “Dharma is Vidura / and Vidura is Pandava Yudhishthira,” and that again “by the power of his maha-yoga” Vidura has entered Yudhishthira’s body.

At this point the narrative re-starts (chapter 36; 29 in the Vulgate) and Doniger inserts a passage from one manuscript to begin that tale afresh with Yudhishthira arriving in the forest-ashram with his entourage. The frame-story passage she omits provides the rationale for this re-telling in questions Janamejaya puts to Vaishampayana about what they subsisted upon and for how long. He is then informed that the Pandavas stayed for a month in that forest-ashram living on varied food and drink. This time several Gandharvas are mentioned by name as being present. Why is Doniger baffled (in a footnote) by the presence of such celestials when celestial sages are also present? After all, celestial beings and humans rub shoulders throughout the epic.

Gandhari begs Vyasa to grant peace of mind to them all. Kunti confesses to him about Karna’s birth, adding that she gave in to Surya only when he threatened to consume both her and Durvasa, as she wished to protect the sage. In earlier accounts she is virtually raped by Surya. Vyasa absolves her of guilt making this astonishing statement, made earlier by Bhishma to Draupadi when she was molested in the assembly:-

“Everything is within bounds for those who have brute power; everything is pure for those who have power. Everything is dharma for those who have power; everything of those who have power is their own.”—Doniger 15.38.23

“The path of the powerful

            is always right.

Everything connected with the powerful

            is pure.

Everything the powerful do,

            is dharma.

Everything there is,

            belongs to the powerful.” 15.30.24—P. Lal

In other words, might is right.

Vyasa then informs them of the celestial origins of the protagonists. Doniger gratuitously makes Pandu Indra, which is nowhere in the text. An unexplained, intriguing feature is that the god Surya is Karna on earth, yet he is aligned with rakshasa-Duhshasana, Kali-Duryodhana and Dvapara-Shakuni. Conversely, rakshasa-Shikhandin is on the Pandava side with Agni-Dhrishtadyumna. It is clearly not clean-cut black and white, good and bad. Shades of grey prevail. Both celestial bodies, Surya and Soma, split themselves in half, one part staying in the sky, the other becoming Karna and Abhimanyu respectively.

Now occurs a stunning miracle. Vyasa causes all the dead to appear before the assembly out of the river Bhagirathi, a scene similar to Odysseus seeing the dead appear in Book 11 across a trench full of sheep-blood:

“What a tumultuous clamour

sprang from the waters!

It resembled, O Janamejaya,

the combined uproar

of the battling armies

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

“Then the sound of a great commotion arose from within the waters, like the sound when the two armies of the Kurus and Pandavas met in the past.” (Doniger)

The point is that there was,

“No more bitterness,

no more ahamkara-ego,

no more hatred,

no more jealousy.” (P. Lal)

“They were free from enmity and free from egoism, and they had lost their rage and their vengeful pride.” (Doniger)

This is repeated a few slokas later. As he had done with Sanjaya for the war, Vyasa grants Gandhari and Dhritarashtra divine sight to enjoy the sight. Reconciliation takes place and all spend the night in amity, as if in Svarga. Then they vanish in a trice in the waters of the Bhagirathi.

At this juncture an event occurs that is unique in literature. As Hiltebeitel has pointed out, no author has ever become a character in his own work, killing off his own characters. Here Vyasa urges widows who wish to join their husbands to commit suicide in the river. Believing him, they all do so. The chapter (41; 33 Vulgate) concludes with a recital of the benefits accruing to the listener, which always ends a book. Doniger feels that this is where the second part of this “parva” originally ended. She does not translate the subsequent two chapters in which Janamejaya questions how the bodiless can be seen in the same bodies and then obtains a vision of his father Parikshit. In this narration, twice it is Sauti who narrates, thus reminding us of the original setting of the epic’s recital. Delighted, Parikshit tells Astika (thus the narrative recalls how the snake holocaust began in the first book) that his grief is gone. Astika tells him that the snakes who perished, save Takshaka, have attained the state of his father.

Despite the epiphany, Yudhishthira’s depression persists and he tells Kunti:-

            “Hollow is this earth now,

devoid of delight.

            Kinsmen dead, strength sapped.” (P. Lal)

“This whole earth is empty and gives me no pleasure…Our relatives have been decimated and our power is not what it used to be.” (Doniger)

Sahadeva too (Yudhishthira says Kunti loved him the most) pleads to be allowed to remain. Once again it is Kunti who persuades him and the others to leave as their staying back will hinder her ascesis. Her’s is the role unexceptionable.

Two years later Narada arrives with news of their mother, uncle and aunt being consumed in a random fire as they were wandering in the forest at Haridwar, with no fixed habitation. Kunti, who had burnt a Nishada woman and her five sons alive in the house-of-lac, meets with poetic justice, as does Dhritarashtra who had consented to its construction to consume the Pandavas. Like Vidura, Dhritrashtra starved, pebbles in his mouth. Their tragic death occurs eighteen years after the War (the epic has 18 books; the war lasts 18 days; the Gita has 18 chapters; Krishna dies 18 x 2 = 36 years after the war). Why the sons and daughters-in-law maintained no surveillance, with their fervid protestations of devotion, remains a puzzle. Sanjaya escapes and departs for the Himalayas. What mystifies Yudhishthira most is why they should have been consumed in an unconsecrated fire, not a holocaust, specially when Arjuna had granted Agni a favour long back. Narada offers consolation by spinning a yarn about this forest-fire having arisen from Dhritarashtra’s own sacrificial fire. People are sent to perform rituals with the bones of the dead at Haridwar, while the Pandavas and Yuyutsut do the same at the Ganga outside Hastinapura. Yudhishthira somehow continues to rule, bereft of pleasure. Strangely enough, in their misery they do not turn to Krishna as they always used to.

Years pass. Again, it is the 18th year (36 years after the war as Gandhari had cursed) that sees ominous portents and Yudhishthira receives news of Krishna’s death and how his people slaughtered one another. There is a problem with translating “vimukta” here as applied to Krishna and Balarama. “Freed” or “escaped” cannot be correct, as Ganguly, Dutt and Lal have rendered it. Doniger correctly translates as “finally freed”, i.e. “dead”. Again we wonder why the Pandavas were not in touch with their beloved “sakha” and mentor and the growing social disorder in Dvaraka. Doniger glosses Jambavati as “the daughter of a monkey chief” (fn. p. 116) whereas she was the bear-chief Jambavan’s daughter. She translates Krishna’s killer Jara as “Old Age” although he was his step-brother born to Vasudeva’s fourth wife and was brought up by the Nishadas. By order of the raja (Doniger’s naming him Ahuka is wrong, for he was never king of Dvaraka) the iron club Samba delivers is pulverized and flung into the sea. Prohibition for the first time is imposed on pain of impalement of the brewer and his family, which still prevails in Gujarat. The society begins to degenerate in morals. A lunar eclipse occurs duplicating the Kurukshetra War. Krishna makes a puzzling reference to what Yudhishthira had said on that occasion. Doniger fills in the gap from a manuscript, viz. the best course is to donate, offer oblations to pacify and act righteously. Wishing to fulfil Gandhari’s curse, Krishna orders a pilgrimage to Prabhasa on the seaside. Instead, the citizens pack food and drink for a picnic. The Sudarshana discus and the standards of Balarama and Krishna disappear into the sky. Krishna’s chariot is taken by the four steeds to the sea. At Prabhasa the first to depart is Uddhava who divines the impending carnage.

Once again it is an instance of cherchez la femme. As Draupadi was the immediate cause of the great war, here it is Satyabhama in tears hugging Krishna, reminded by Satyaki of Kritavarma’s role in her father’s murder, infuriating him. To avenge her, Satyaki beheads Kritavarma, setting off a mad frenzy of killing. It is Krishna who, furious at Pradyumna and Satyaki being killed, seizes a handful of reeds that transmute into adamantine clubs and lays about him indiscriminately. Then seeing his other sons and grandson Aniruddha killed, he uses his mace, bow and discus to kill everyone except Daruka his charioteer and Babhru. Balarama does not engage, as he had not at Kurukshetra. Daruka is despatched to summon Arjuna and Krishna rushes to his father in Dvaraka asking him to protect the women. Then he returns to join Balarama only to find him merging with the ocean as the serpent Shesha. Krishna withdraws into yoga and, fulfilling Durvasa’s prophecy of only the soles of his feet being vulnerable, is shot by his step-brother Jara precisely there, as Achilles was by Paris. Doniger is mistaken in her footnote (p.130) that Krishna is the only avatar of Vishnu who dies. Rama dies too as is mentioned twice in the Mahabharata in the account of sixteen great rajas who died and also in the Ramayana. Unnecessarily Doniger inserts at the end of chapter 5 a long passage occurring only in a couple of manuscripts incongruously having four-armed Vani (Speech) asking Krishna to join her in Bhanu the sun where gods cannot enter.

According to the Bhagavata Purana (III.3.15), Krishna realised the earth’s burden persisted even after the great war because of the massive Yadava forces guarded by Pradyumna. None but they could destroy themselves in drunken frenzy. Hence, he organised what follows. In this version Krishna does not engage but rests under a tree. The Jain Bhagavati Sutra (7.9) describes two battles in Mahavira’s time (6th century BCE?) involving King Kuniya/Ajatashatru. One is “the battle of thorns like great stones” in which the touch of thorns was like blows of great stones. The other was “the battle of chariot and club”, Kuniya’s automated chariot with club that killed. The manic violence is as in the Vrishni massacre. The time of composition of the Mausala Parva might be the same.

Krishna refers to Arjuna as “Vibhatsu” which Doniger translates as “the Disdainful” whereas it connotes both “dreadful-deed-doer,” (P. Lal) and “not acting dreadfully”. Vasudeva tells Arjuna about Krishna foretelling that immediately following Arjuna’s departure for Indraprastha Dvaraka will be submerged. Arjuna announces that the Pandavas have realised it is time to move on. Vasudeva’s four wives join his corpse on the pyre. Although Arjuna locates the bodies of Balarama and Krishna, strangely enough there is no account of what he saw. After seven days he leaves the city with all Krishna’s widows, other women, children, youths and the aged in carriages led by Krishna’s great-grandson Vajra. Here Doniger unaccountably introduces a speech by the sea that is found in just one manuscript declaring that it will protect the city with all the people’s treasures for the next avatar in the Krita Yuga.

Now we face a shock. In Punjab invincible Arjuna, unable to summon his special weapons, strings the Gandiva with great difficulty and fails to prevent staff-wielding Abhira dacoits from looting the wealth and abducting the women.

            “His divine weapons nullified,

                        his physical strength sapped,

            his bow refusing to nock,

                        his inexhaustible quiver empty…

            O raja, in frustration he said:

                        ‘All is uncertain. Nothing lasts.’” –P. Lal

“The loss of his magical weapons and the waning of the manly power of his arms and the uselessness of his bow and the exhaustion of his arrows broke the heart of Kunti’s son Arjuna…said, ‘This no longer exists.’” –Doniger

Arjuna settles the surviving old men, women and children in Indraprastha with Vajra as ruler; Kritavarma’s son in Martikavat with the women and others of the Bhojas and Satyaki’s son on the banks of the river Sarasvati with old men, women and children. It is not Babhru’s widows as Doniger translates but Akrura’s who retire to the forest. Nor is Rukmini of Gandhara, rather it is Shaibya of Gandhara who, along with Haimavati and Jambavati, enter the funeral pyre. Satyabhama and other women of Krishna enter the forest for ascesis (in the village of Kalapa beyond the Himalayas, as Doniger adds from three manuscripts).

Arjuna approaches Vyasa and reports of five hundred thousand Yadavas perishing and his own humiliating defeat. Vyasa consoles him that Krishna has lightened earth’s burden and that Arjuna has accomplished his divine mission with the help of Bhima and the twins. It is significant that he does not include Yudhishthira here. The time has come for them to leave for the final destination. The inexorable end is at hand.

            “The root of all

                        is Cosmic time Kala.

            Cosmic time Kala

                        is the seed

            of the universe.

                        Kala is the giver,

            and Kala is the taker.

                        That which is strong

            is that which becomes weak.

                        He who rules

            becomes he who is ruled.” –P. Lal

“All of this has Time as its root. time is the seed of the universe. And it is Time that once again draws things together into annihilation, spontaneously. Someone who becomes powerful once again becomes powerless; someone who becomes a ruler here once again is commanded by others.” –Doniger

The Book of the Great Departure is profoundly ironic. Abdicating, the Pandavas leave the kingdom in the hands of their nemesis Dhritarashtra’s sole surviving son Yuyutsu, born of a Vaishya maid as regent, installing Parikshit as raja in Hastinapura with Kripa as guru. Note that Parikshit is 36 years of age at this point and should need no regent. Yudhishthira warns Subhadra not to consider taking over Indraprastha where Vajra rules, but to protect him. As once before, the six leave dressed in bark-cloth, followed by a dog. Ulupi enters the Ganges, Chitrangada returns to Manipura. Arjuna cannot let go of his bow and quivers, although they have failed him. When they reach the surging red sea (Lauhitya-Brahmaputra?) Agni appears in human form and takes back the weapons which belong to Varuna. From the east they go south till the salty sea, then turn west to Dvaraka, and thence northwards, thus circumambulating the earth. Doniger needlessly adds passages from a solitary manuscript elongating the journey. Approaching Meru, starting with Draupadi, one by one each collapses. Bhima alone is shocked and enquires—not any of the others. Yudhishthira cites reasons for their fall. His jealousy of Draupadi’s fondness for Arjuna is blatantly exposed. Never once does he look back at his fallen wife and brothers. Vaishampayana for the only time refers to himself in the first person, saying that he has often mentioned the dog following Yudhishthira. When Indra invites him to board the chariot, Yudhishthira begs that his brothers and lovely Draupadi accompany him. Indra assures that having discarded their bodies they are already in Svarga, but he will enter there with his body.

Yudhishthira now refuses to go without the faithful dog despite Indra’s repeated urging that dogs are prohibited in heaven. He explains that he left the others only after their death, but cannot desert a faithful living companion. The dog assumes his true form as the god Dharma and blesses Yudhishthira to reach Svarga in his physical body, which, however, does not happen. Yudhishthira has to give up his physical form by bathing in the heavenly river and only then is he escorted to Svarga by the divine fathers of the Pandavas—Dharma, Indra, Maruts and the Ashvins.

We recall that it all began with the bitch Sarama cursing Janamejaya’s yajna in Book 1. Curiously, Indra is associated with a dog elsewhere. In the Ashvamedha Parva he appears as a Chandala with dogs before Uttanka. Again, In the Anushasana Parva, chapter 93, Indra appears to the primordial Seven Rishis disguised as a wandering mendicant named Sunahsakha accompanied by a dog and saves them from a demoness. Doniger has not commented on this peculiar feature.

Reaching Svarga, Yudhishthira is furious at finding Duryodhana gloriously ensconced and no sign of his brothers and Draupadi and allies there, insists on joining them wherever they might be. He waxes eloquent about his guilt over Karna, whose feet always reminded him of Kunti’s. “This is not Svarga in my view,” he says.

“I want to go there where my brothers have gone and where big, dark Draupadi has gone, a woman of intelligence, goodness and virtue, the best of women, the woman I love.” –Doniger

“I want to be

            where my brothers are.

I want to be where Draupadi is—

            the lovely ample-bodied lady,

the dark-blue-cloud-complexioned lady,

            the sattva-guna-endowed lady,

the lady who is youthful.

            Take me to my Draupadi.” –P. Lal  

Yudhishthira is then ushered into horrendous hell where he finds them. Enraged, he reviles the gods and dharma, insisting on remaining there, rejecting Svarga once again. In this condemnation of dharma he is echoing his elder sibling Karna who, when his chariot-wheel got stuck, censured dharma repeatedly for not protecting its devotee. This is a stunning reversal of the entire ethic he has represented and defended stubbornly against all odds throughout, which readers mostly overlook. Vyasa rectifies the balance immediately as Dharma re-appears and the horrors vanish. Truly, as Milton’s Satan proclaimed,

“The mind is its own place and in itself

 Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.”

This is Dharma’s third test (the first was Dharma as a crane during the forest-exile) and expiation of the lie Yudhishthira told to trick Drona. Now he has to give up his physical body in the skyey Ganga, abandoning which his vengeful pride also disappears. Entering Svarga, he sees Draupadi and is about to question her when Indra stops him. There are no questions in heaven. Each hero merges into a divinity, except Shikhandi who is not mentioned, while Pradyumna, who was supposed to be Kama reborn, here enters Sanatkumara. Krishna’s 16000 wives commit suicide in the Sarasvati and become apsaras staying with him. But here Kunti and Madri are not given any celestial origin (in the Adi Parva they are Siddhi-Success and Kriti-Action, while Gandhari is Dhriti-Constancy). They simply accompany Pandu to Indra’s realm.

But the narration has a stinging shock at the end—the Bharata Savitri. Sauti says that having taught his composition to his son Shuka, Vyasa exclaimed,

“I myself cry out with my arms up, but no one hears me. From dharma comes politics and also pleasure; why is it not practised?”—Doniger

“I raise my arms and I shout

            but no one listens.

From Dharma comes Artha and Kama—

            why is Dharma not practised?” –P. Lal

Is anyone listening? Or is it a host of phantom listeners?

POLITICAL SCIENCE IN INDIAN TRADITION

By

Vasanthi Srinivasan: Virtue and Human Ends: Political Ideas from Indian Classics. Orient Blackswan, 2021, pp.202, Rs. 685/-

Studies abound of Arthashastra, Mudrarakshasa, Panchatantra and Hitopadesha; not so many of Dasakumaracharita, Vetala Panchavimshati and Simhasana Dvatrimshika, (2nd century BCE to 13th century CE). Srinivasan is the first to study them together vis-a-vis Western political thought. It is the first study based upon Telegu translations which provide different versions of some tales.

Dasakumaracarita is unique for its unstinted praise for niti–shastra that is not found even in the Arthashastra. However, this is undercut by a parody mocking Kautilya’s tenets as too demanding and urging study of other disciplines because statecraft is uncertain, is the root of all anxiety and a hindrance to pleasures like hunting, gambling, drinking and women which bolster manhood and enlarge the circle of friends. In Mudrarakshasa the king’s orders about a festival are countermanded by Chanakya. Both Panchatantra and Dasakumaracarita depict counsellors losing favour because kings suspected powerful ministers. Srinivasan mentions how Plato failed with Dionysus of Syracuse whereas Chanakya succeeded with Chandragupta. Real politik, however, is often found to support tyranny and sophistry.

Panchatantra teaches that practical wisdom must govern power. It specially celebrates friendship, embracing allies (mitra), well-wishers (suhrid) and personal friends (sakhya with a sakha). It not only depicts political situations where deception by inferiors subverts the stronger, but also the bonding of heart to heart. Friendship is possible only between equals, with dharma hardly playing a role. Any wide gap militates against friendship e.g. with kings and gods. The instance of Prince Hal abandoning Falstaff is an excellent example that Srinivasan cites. She appropriately compares with what our epics depict. However, instead of the Sugriva-Rama alliance, she selects the Rama-Hanuman relationship, which is more of master and devoted servant. The Drona-Drupada relationship focuses on equality as the basis of friendship, further explored in the Duryodhana-Karna pair. Again, instead of Krishna-Arjuna, Srinivasan includes Krishna-Sudama where classmates change into bhakta and Bhagwan.

In Panchatantra, Damanaka represents the amoral politician; Karataka the prudent statesman. Virtue is no guarantee against harm (Indra treacherously kills Vritra after swearing oaths of friendship). A good friend surpasses blood relatives. Wives and sons should not be trusted. The touchstone of friendship is help extended in danger. However, Francis Bacon pointed out how princes endanger themselves by promoting their inferiors to become close friends, as with Sulla and Pompey and Caesar and Brutus.

Srinivasan notes how Aristotle extols friendship as the best means of using practical reason as it requires bravery in speaking one’s mind, moderation, justice etc. Although justice is not a pre-requisite for friendship, it is needed where the former exists. Law-makers need to stress friendship between citizens more than justice because friends meet the demands of justice without the need for punishment or persuasion. The superiority of Panchatantra/Hitopadesha to Aristotle, Cicero and Bacon lies in conveying teachings through highly entertaining tales instead of lecturing on morality or policy.

Poverty is seen as the root of all evils and mendicancy is as terrible as death, thus denigrating Jain and Buddhist bhikshus. Srinivasan asserts that charity is considered dreadful and a door to death, but fails to cite any instance of this. Hitopadesha conversely condemns hoarding without donating. Donation, dana, is extolled in the Mahabharata as the sure path to heaven. There is a fascinating debate on individual enterprise and dependence on fate, with karma determining what is one’s due. The texts are scornful of Brahmins but extol merchants as wise, righteous and ambitious, indicating the social perspective. Caste is not a social barrier. A weaver seduces a princess and gets the kingdom.

The discourse of the turtle Manthara incorporates both secular adages on policy and spiritual advice from the Gita, revealing how decisions are reached. Maxims are not to be followed mechanically, specially where an enemy approaches as a friend. The story of an owl raiding crows’ nests should have reminded Srinivasan of that scene witnessed by Ashvatthama in the Sauptika Parva of the Mahabharata. There are many depictions of women as foolish, greedy, selfish and lustful. However, they are also shown as intelligent, practical, contented and interested in discussing morality. Feminine friendship is featured besides male bonding.

Srinivasan expands the ethical dimension in Arthashastra which is usually neglected by academicians. War is only the last resort. Instead of abstract morality, it is practical steps for survival and winning wealth that are advocated, including using spies and occult practices, not hankering after glory and honour. However, if Kautilya were to be followed, the weaker Pandavas would not have fought the stronger Kauravas, Alexander would not have attacked Darius’ and Porus’ superior forces and invaders would not have fought at Panipat.

Where power-drunk rulers ignore rational decision-making, what is to be done? Panchatantra and Hitopadesha stress Kautilya’s policy of negotiating peace while preparing for war, and note how wars may be arise from trifles because of meddlers. In the story of the owls and crows, Stirajivin’s suggestion of staging a mock-quarrel and withdrawing out of sight echoes how the Achaeans deceived the Trojans. Srinivasan cites Pakistan’s use of the “double policy” of having bilateral agreements while fostering armed intrusions and terrorist strikes.

Hitopadesha specifically warns against simplistic action based just on courage and strength and text-book maxims without practical experience. It advocates tempering strength with prudence, recommends that the good ally with one another and shows that displaying indiscriminate good will to all brings destruction. It upholds not peace at any cost, but peace with honour as the goal. Goodness is understood as consisting of trust, honesty and friendship with one’s ally.

The tales of the ten princes detail acquiring wealth and women regardless of dharma. Only two stories (Arthapala and Vishruta) praise dharma above kama. The rest tell of acquiring princesses and kingdom through daring and immoral means. In Dandin love is exclusively sexual, rivals spiritual bliss and demands immediate consummation, spurning all obstacles. All becomes commendable when used by the talented. This recalls Bhishma telling Draupadi when she is being molested in the court that whatever the mighty do is dharma. Conveniently, Ganesha is introduced to sanction fraud, and examples are cited of Shiva seducing rishis’ wives, Brahma lusting after his daughter, Brihaspati violating his pregnant sister-in-law, Parashara forcing Matsyagandha, Indra’s adultery with Ahalya, Vyasa impregnating his brother’s wives and Atri having coitus with a doe.

Women are as complicit as men in these intrigues. Prostitutes and rogues abound in Dasakumaracharita. Monarchy depends on the ruler’s ability to succeed, not just on intelligence, courage and morality. The tale of Vikatavarman being deceived by a female sanyasi to participate in a yajna to acquire beauty, only to be murdered, recalls Euripedes’ Medea. Kamamanjiri seducing the sage Marichi and bringing him into town recalls the tale of Rishyashringa’s seduction by courtesans in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. The training of courtesans and princes is very similar.

Dandin’s women are clever, murderous, worldly-wise and enterprising, e.g. Dhumini and Gomini. The latter resembles the Jataka tale’s mouse-trader. The story of Nimbavati winning back her husband is like Shakespeare’s “All’s Well that Ends Well.” Srinivasan points out how it resembles Silappatikaram with trader husbands neglecting chaste wives for prostitutes and how wives strive to win back their love. She notes that Dandin’s world is akin to Machiavelli’s play Mandragola, both showing up the fragmentation of virtue in corrupt society and advocating practical compromises, apad-dharma (the ethics of emergencies). The chaste wife succeeds by her wits, not by undergoing a fire-ordeal like Sita. The redeeming feature is that Dandin gets all his heroes married, like Shakespeare in his Dark Comedies.

Pointing out the “doubling motif” in these texts (Chanakya-Rakshasa, Damanaka-Karataka, Chakravaka-Doordarshi and Vishruta-Aryaketu), Srinivasan shows that the loyalty and humanity shown by one in each pair prevents him from ruthless acts of self-interest. Such qualities are needed in normal times for establishing legitimacy and trust. By reconciling the characters finally, the texts show their understanding of “the chameleon-like nature of political prudence.” One may do wrong for restoring order, but that is preferable to being weak in niti-policy in emergencies. Srinivasan has overlooked Krishna doing precisely that in the Mahabharata, where he also specifies when not being truthful is justified.

The tales of Vikrama-Vetala are also erotic escapades but are distinguished by the importance accorded to morality. The text targets the urbane, cultured aesthete with ample leisure to indulge in wine, women and song. Vikrama is usually asked to decide who is nobler. Srinivasan concentrates on five tales about outstanding nobility and how they relate to proper conduct in terms of caste, family tradition, duty and the stage of life. This is not the Kantian categorical imperative, but is situational and community-based. This is complicated further by the dharma of crises. Here too women are regarded as more prone to commit evil, lacking instruction in morals. Vikrama’s decisions about nobility are quite sexist, extolling the husband who gives up his faithful wife Madanasena to save himself or suspecting her chastity. There is no concern about building up the state. Srinivasan surmises that the ruler needed to be educated about how to deal with forest people outside the pale of “civilized” society. Vikrama chooses as more noble not those eminent figures who follow their “svadharma,” but ordinary people who forego self-interest to help strangers, acting without any thought of reward. Matters become complicated for us when in Jambhaladatta’s version different persons are chosen as superior from Shivadasa’s. It is all about how to act nobly where traditional duty is ambiguous or unpleasant.

Srinivasan has an illuminating discussion of Boccaccio’s Decameron which also presents models of greatness in intelligence, generosity and patience and reveals the limits of traditional moral standards in evaluating excellence. She finds that Vikrama’s tales go further by exploring the challenges posed by having to retain power when faced with competition. The king cannot assume he is safe because he is good, but needs must remain alert about hidden dangers.

This prudence is, however, disregarded in the 32 tales about Vikrama’s throne. Here the pattern is of a king adventuring in dangerous places to obtain occult powers, which a poor Brahman then takes away. They also stress on nurturing the atman. Here Vikrama neglects royal duties in pursuing adventures and even gifts his occult powers to the resurrected dead sorcerer. King Bhoja is able to ascend this throne only after he asks for no boon.

The post-Arthashastra texts do not just extol self-interest, power and prudence, but add the benefits accruing from friendship. Kautilya’s sixfold strategy is not applied mechanically but after considering the counsel of wise ministers and friends. Bravado has to be reined in by rational counsel. As Hitopadesha stresses, true success is achieving peace between weak and equal powers. Intrigue can be used to forge such peace. Srinivasan feels that feminists can learn much from these texts about women as sexual agents to become more sophisticated about sexual harassment, though she does not elaborate this. They also show how politicians can behave as though they were omniscient, using others as means to their ends. In crises, it is difficult to distinguish statecraft from tyranny and “only the most subtle experts of niti can gauge what is apad–dharma at all.” Although the audience was royalty and the urbane man, the insights on friendship, war and peace, morality and political necessity are remarkable and still relevant.

This slim volume carries a striking cover sketched by “14-year-old Amrit” and a fine bibliography. While the Indian texts are well presented interestingly, the discussions on Western scholarship are rather tedious and too pedantic. The printing is excellent with only one error: on p. 71 Jayadratha is misspelled as “Jayadrata”. The price is disproportionate to the book’s slender dimensions. It is puzzling why Srinivasan left out Tiruvallauvar’s Tirukkural, the earliest didactic treatise to deal with Aram (dharma-virtue), Porul (artha-wealth) and Inbam (kama-love), available in Dr. K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar’s excellent verse translation. She would have benefitted from consulting the splendid English translations of Arthashastra by Dr. Pratap Chandra Chunder (1995), of Hitopadesa (1989) and the Kathasaritsagara (1994) with the Vetala tales by V. Balasubrahmanyan in the M.P. Birla Foundation’s “Classics of the East” series. Kanika-niti, Vidura-niti, Narada’s discourse on statecraft in the Mahabharata and Bhartrihari’s Nitishatakam (translated by Sri Aurobindo as “The Century of Life”) could also have been discussed.

[A slightly different version was published in The Statesman of 17th February 2020 on page 11]

Vyasa a Polymorphic, Multi-textual, Omni-dimensional Persona

By

Kevin McGrath: Vyasa Redux—Narrative in Epic Mahabharata, Anthem Press, London, 2020, pp.121

This is the 8th book by Dr. McGrath of Harvard University investigating different aspects of the Mahabharata, supplementing his 2011 book, Jaya: Performance in Epic Mahabharata. Intriguingly titled, it studies in detail the multiple roles played by this seer-poet who composes and participates in this autobiography which is also the biography of his descendants, turning the narrative into “a facsimile of (human) consciousness.”

Vyasa and Sanjaya are the only two dramatic persons who are also creative poets. It is true that Bhishma displays no dramatic persona in the two Books of Peace and Instruction (Shanti and Anushasana). In the former, however, McGrath overlooks the tragic persona of Vyasa himself desperately seeking his beloved son Shuka in vain.

It is Vyasa who gifts Sanjaya supernatural sight, inspires Bhishma to instruct, grants Gandhari sight of the corpses in Kurukshetra and shows blind Dhritarashtra his slaughtered kith and kin (akin to Odysseus’ viewing of the dead heroes, with Achilles silently turning away from him, whereas the Pandavas are reconciled with Karna). Yudhishthira will encounter them again twice over in Naraka and Svarga. Vyasa’s sudden appearances and disappearances always direct the plot and impact the emotions of characters. Sanjaya explicitly attributes his audio-visual experience of the Gita to Vyasa’s grace. Bhishma’s hymn to Krishna repeats what he had heard from Vyasa. The interlinking of Dvaipayana-Krishna and Vasudeva-Krishna is profoundly significant, as is that of Ganga-born Bhishma and Yamuna-island-born Vyasa. Vyasa is the only epic poet to move even to Svarga. In the Stri Parva he hears Vishnu telling the Earth how the kings would slaughter one another at Kurukshetra (it is not the Earth who forecasts this, as McGrath writes on p. 62), lending a cosmic inevitability to the happenings. In McGrath’s words, he is “a literary super-catalyst affecting the plot variously” and functions like Athena in the Odyssey, virtually like a director-cum-script-writer-cum-actor. Adept at flashbacks as well as flash-forwards, he is gifted with both foresight and hindsight. His absence from the crucial Sabha Parva (and Krishna’s during the dice-game), Virata Parva (Krishna is absent too) and the Udyoga Parva (but for two by-the-way interjections) is a feature that needed further. Vyasa also presides at four (not three vide p. 81) critical rituals: the royal anointing; the war as yajna; the horse-sacrifice and the snake-holocaust.

While Vyasa is “an acutely polymorphic and multi-textual figure” whose personal is only approximated by Homer’s Athena, both the Mahabharata and the Odyssey are polytronic. The unity is not of time but of narrative structure. Human time is quite vague in both except for the 18 days of the Kurukshetra War. The forest exile and the Shanti and Anushasana Parvas seem to be timeless. By ending with the snake-sacrifice where the epic was first recited, the poem creates cyclical “poetic time”. Both epics are also “multi-texts”, made up of numerous traditions (historical, geographical, social, mythological etc.) that are different yet coherent.

The structure of the Mahabharata is possibly the most complicated of any epic. Ugrashrava Sauti narrates to rishi Shaunaka and his monks what he heard Vaishampayana recite at Janamejaya’s snake-sacrifice at Takshashila as Vyasa had taught him (McGrath erroneously places it in Afghanistan, vide pp. 23, 46, instead of Northwest Pakistan). Sauti had also heard it from his father Lomaharshana. Further, we hear all this from a nameless rhapsode. So we have: anonymous rhapsode-> Sauti-> Lomaharshana-> Vaishampayana-> Vyasa. In the Odyssey it is: poet-> Muse-> Zeus-> Athena (who, unlike Vyasa, is a shape-shifting narrator and actor)-> Odysseus. Within these concentric circles there are numerous other narrators: Sanjaya in the Udyoga and the war books; Markandeya and Lomasha in the forest-exile; Bhishma primarily in the Udyoga, Shanti and Anushasana Parvas; Narada and Vyasa himself. The entire narrative is an extended flashback, artistically so rendered that the events acquire an immediacy. The narrative repeatedly moves back and forth. For instance, the tale of Shakuntala and her son the eponymous Bharata precedes the chronologically anterior account of Yayati and his sons.  Again, despite prophesies, protagonists lose awareness of these and proceed to take decisions that are character-driven, yet fulfil what has been foretold. Beginning with Yayati the great ancestor of the clans, this persists right up to Janamejaya’s sacrifice that was foretold to remain incomplete.

McGrath makes the very interesting point that Sauti’s summary (Parvasangraha) mentions 23,783 slokas for the war books including the Sauptika, approximating the 24,000 of the Jaya that Vyasa composed first. Sanjaya narrating the War Books is akin to the Greek aoidos, a poet of preliterate Bronze Age times, while Vaishampayana is a rhapsode of the literate period. The archaic war books became the Maha-Bharata through Vyasa’s act of supreme dhyana. It is very interesting that for this act of poetic inspiration McGrath should find an analogy in Bob Dylan who felt that his songs came to him from somewhere else. Sri Aurobindo has documented at length the process of poetic inspiration for his Savitri. Dhyana is also an act Bhishma performs before instructing Yudhishthira. Krishna’s Gita is divine afflatus. The evolution of the epic’s plot seems to be through meditative experiences of these three. Added to this is Krishna’s theophany in the Hastinapura court and on the battlefield. These, argues McGrath, “supply the core narrative poem with its ethical and spiritual force.” In enumerating Krishna’s strategies he overlooks the pains taken over Drona’s killing. He claims there is no solemn ritual (p. 27) despite the repeated extolling of yajnas.

The preliterate traditions that were compiled into one epic in classical times covered a vast geography to supersede specific locales and regimes for appealing to the commonalty, becoming “geopolitically uniform”. McGrath ascribes to this the absence of references to Buddhism, that was surely contemporary, to the heritage of the Harappan Civilization, to idol-worship and to money. The epic world is artificial, not reflecting material reality. Even the weather and physical details about characters are left vague. There are five places that are particularly important: Hastinapura, Indraprastha (curiously unoccupied by the Pandavas post-war, as Rama’s sons abandoned Ayodhya), the forest, Matsya and Kurukshetra. Although the last features as a field of blood (beginning with Parashurama celebrating his massacre of Kshatriyas in five pools called samantapanchaka), its initial fame is because Brahma performed a yajna there. Later Raja Kuru obtained the boon that Svarga was assured to anyone dying there, Krishna recited the Gita and Bhishma instructed Yudhishthira from the bed-of-arrows. Dvaraka should be added as significant because Krishna commutes between it and wherever the Pandavas are.

Despite the rivers of blood that flow, Homer and Vyasa’s poetry encapsulates it in similes and metaphors that invest death with beauty (note that Sauti begins with the tree image for the epic and the warring fraternities). Vyasa goes further than Homer and shows us the heroes beyond death glorious in Svarga. Neither does Homer have the very powerful moral dimension that Vyasa stresses repeatedly as his poem’s efficacy. Again, although the Iliad covers forty days and the Odyssey decades, there is little significance day-wise in either.

McGrath makes the very important point that Kshatriya lineages found in the Mahabharata are actually of matrilineal descent as all males had been killed by Parashurama and the women approached Brahmins for progeny. Vyasa’s direct descendants through Dhritarashtra are wiped out too. Janamejaya, descended from Yayati’s eldest son Yadu’s lineage through Subhadra, rules in Hastinapura and Indraprastha is given to Vajra, Yadava Krishna’s descendant. Thus, the bheda, division, that started when the youngest son Puru replaced the eldest Yadu is ended, lending another cyclical dimension to the epic.

McGrath argues that till the war ends the type of governance portrayed is fraternal (he cites the modern example of Saudi Arabia), what Romila Thapar calls “a lineage society”, whereas the Shanti Parva features a later development: the classic monarchic state instead of oligarchic rule.  However, if in the Iliad Agamemnon’s word is final, is that not true for Duryodhana and Yudhishthira as well? In both the Homeric and Indian epics, it is women who drive the plot: Helen, Chryseis, Briseis, Circe, Calypso, Penelope, Kaikeyi, Sita, Satyavati, Kunti, Gandhari. McGrath erroneously states that Draupadi, Sita and Penelope conduct svayamvaras to select a husband. It is actually viryashulka: the bride is the prize to be won in an archery contest. Helen’s marriage is an exception.

Bhishma’s lengthy discourse on peace and donating does not preclude war. Immediately thereafter, preceding the horse-sacrifice, is the Anugita by Krishna to Arjuna and then Arjuna’s battles accompanying the roving steed, paralleling the Gita and the Kurukshetra war. As McGrath points out, the vision of the Anugita and the society pictured in the Shanti and Anushasana Parvas is far from the Vyasan weltanschauung of the Gita and the Sabha Parva.

There is a very significant transition that usually goes unnoticed which McGrath mentions. Hearing of the living meeting the dead who emerge from the Bhagirathi, Janamejaya wishes to see his dead father. Suddenly, the narrator is no longer Vaishampayana. The anonymous reciter states, Sauti reporting that through dhyana (misspelled as “mediation” on p. 67 instead of “meditation”) Vyasa produced Parikshit.

In the very first book Sauti flashed forward to report Dhananjaya’s plangent lament to Sanjaya listing the key events of the plot even before the Mahabharata had begun to be recited. As McGrath writes, “it is absolutely proleptic.” On the basis of these first two books being largely in prose, McGrath feels that they are “editorial addition” setting the stage for the recitation at Takshashila. However, that is not where Vyasa composed and declaimed it as McGrath states on p.73. We are never told where Vyasa composed it, only that it took him three years. The Pauloma Parva is a fresh beginning, reporting Sauti’s arrival at Bhargava Shaunaka’s ashram, where he launches into a recital of the Bhrigu lineage (whence Sukthankar’s theory about the Bhargava Brahmins being the editors of the Mahabharata). Sauti further states having heard the story of Astika, composed by Vyasa, from his father Lomaharshana, Vyasa’s disciple, as he recited it to sages in the Naimisha forest. Thus, yet another concentric circle of narration is added. Although, initially, Sauti stated that its first public declamation was by Vaishampayana at Vyasa’s bidding to recite the poem of bheda (division), after the Astika Parva he states that during intervals of the snake-sacrifice Brahmins told Vedic tales while Vyasa recited the Bharata. Vaishampayana tells Janamejaya that he will tell how the bheda arose out of the dice-game for sake of the kingdom, the forest-exile and the war—the three crucial stages of the epic—and provides a summary (a fifth one) that, curiously, omitting the rajasuya yajna, ends with Duryodhana’s death and the Pandavas’ jaya (victory) that completes the tale of bheda. Vaishampayana’s own beginning is with the tale of Uparicara Vasu, father of Matsyagandha. These several beginnings are evidence of “editorial bricolage”, writes McGrath, seeking to include all possible traditions. The narrative repeatedly moves back and forth. For instance, the tale of Shakuntala and her son, the eponymous Bharata, precedes the chronologically anterior account of Yayati and his sons.

Janamejaya puts several questions to Vaishampayana before the recital begins: why the mighty Pandavas tolerated the misery inflicted; why Bhima controlled his rage; why Draupadi did not consume the Dhartarashtras; why the brothers obeyed Yudhisthira though cheated; why Yudhishthira bore undeserved wretchedness; why invincible Arjuna, with Krishna as charioteer, suffered so much? McGrath does not examine why these six questions are never answered. Surely, this is a moot question.

McGrath mentions with admiration the retellings by Shashi Tharoor (The Great Indian Novel) and Karthika Nair (Until the Lions). Amreeta Syam’s long poem “Kurukshetra” should be added to these. While quoting approvingly from Girja Kumar’s study The Mahabharatans, he could also have referred to Krishna Chaitanya (K.K. Nair)’s superb work The Mahabharata—a literary study. McGrath ends with a splendid discussion of the Odyssey (and a brief but insightful overview of the Iliad celebrating the Karna-like Achilles intent upon earning fame) drawing out the similarities in theme and structure with the Mahabharata. In all three epics the deaths of the heroes are foretold, but the Homeric poems do not include their deaths. Both are concerned not merely with a multi-dimensional narrator and a hero but also with family dynamics and divine agency. The template they follow is similar. McGrath’s work of just 104 pages with a striking cover and beautifully printed is densely packed with rich insights and is an immensely rewarding read.

cf. https://epaper.thestatesman.com/3357170/Kolkata-The-Statesman/20TH-JANUARY-2022#page/11/1