Pradip Bhattacharya

Indologist, Mahabharata scholar

BOOK REVIEWS

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

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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

The Harivansha – The Significance of a Neglected Text

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The Harivansha – The Significance of a Neglected Text by Dr. Pradip Bhattacharya

Andre Couture: Krsna in the Harivamsha, vol. 1

—the wonderful play of a cosmic child,

DK Printworld, New Delhi, 2015, pp. 362, Rs. 990/-

Mahabharata (MB) scholars tend to dismiss the Harivansha (HV) as a superfluous “appendix” (as they interpret the word khila which the MB applies to it). When Kaliprasanna Singha got the MB translated into Bengali (1858-1866), he omitted the HV finding it to be obviously a later composition on the basis of its language besides being inferior in style. Possibly, because of this K.M. Ganguli did not include it in his English prose translation of the MB (1883-1896). The first English translation of the complete HV was done in prose in 1897 by Manmatha Nath Dutt, the Rector of Keshub Academy, Calcutta, who was the second translator of the MB (1895), besides the Ramayana and the Agni and Garuda Puranas. Dr. K.P.A. Menon’s translation (Nag Publishers 2008, of which Couture appears to be unaware), is of P.L. Vaidya’s “critical edition,” which drastically shortens the extant text from 18000 to 6073 slokas. Recently, an unfinished English prose translation of the complete HV (Chitrashala Press, 1936) by the late Desiraju Hanumanta Rao, A. Harindranath and A. Purushothaman is available online at a site maintained by the nuclear scientist Dr A. Harindranath of Calcutta.

It was left to the French scholar Andre Couture (professor at the Laval University, Quebec, Canada) to show that khila actually means “a complement, or supplement” essential for revealing the significance of the main work. This book collects updated versions of thirteen papers written over a period of three decades analyzing Krishna’s birth and childhood deeds. Usually dismissed as a hodge-podge of pastoral myths, Couture shows that the HV is a carefully crafted narrative with a definite goal. His investigation reveals the importance of Nilkantha Chaturdhara’s commentary, ignored by Indologists, for reaching a proper understanding of the work. Nilkantha explains khila as an addition to a Vedic corpus for a specific reason. The HV is added to the MB because it completes the glorification of Krishna’s deeds: “the meaning of the MB is not complete without the HV.” Couture is the first to state uncompromisingly, “the fact that its parts do not exactly fit the order Western Indologists would prefer is of little consequence…it is more constructive to try to understand the logic underlying the composition of the text as we now find it rather than to resort to radical surgery each time a narrative challenge arises.” Instead of a mechanical comparison of texts to arrive at an “Ur-Text” it is the contents that need to be analyzed to identify recurrent themes and how the episodes are sequenced. It is refreshing to find a Western scholar who dismisses the prevailing theory that Krishna was an ancient vegetation deity whose name “Damodara” refers to wheat sheaves tied with straw. Instead, writes Couture, “only the Indian explanations are worth consideration.”

Couture shows the error in Vaidya’s conception of the HV as a late and random collection of appendices, from which he shears away whatever he deems non-essential. Actually, the HV presents Vishnu as the only god who ensures the welfare of the three worlds, complementing the “Narayaniya” of the MB. His dark form is Shesha who, as Sankarshana, is Krishna’s necessary complement, the shesha (remnant) of Vishnu the shesin. Brahma is the form he takes when creating, Rudra when destroying. Both the HV and the MB regularly allude to the four forms of Vishnu: with one he performs ascesis on earth; another is a witness to all that happens; the third acts in the world; the fourth is in yogic sleep, awakening to emit the cosmos. Couture is critical of Vaidya’s unjustifiable omission of Vishnu’s invocation of the goddess Arya Vindhyavasini that occurs in all versions of the HV, except just three in Malayalam script, and is present in both the Sharada and Newari texts upon which Vaidya relies the most. The hymn is definitely pre-695 CE when it features in a Chinese translation of the Suvanabhassottama Sutra. This goddess plays a critical role in Krishna’s birth under the names Nidra and Ekanamsa, on whom there is a valuable discussion.

The representation of the Kshatriya Akrura as a devotee, bhagavata, suggests a new social environment in which this class led bhakti movements seeking to subsume ritual Brahminism in their views. This a world of kings and of Brahmins visiting courts to make a living. These Brahmins represent Vishnu as the supreme sovereign over all monarchs, to whom total bhakti is due, as seen in the bhagavata Shesha who supports the world and serves as Narayana’s couch. To compete with the onset of Buddhism and Jainism, the concept of a Universal Divine was welcomed by the newly urbanized society which found that the traditional rituals had outlived their day. The period for this development is suggested as the closing centuries BCE. At this time, the Vedas were being enlarged by adding a fifth (the Chhandogya Upanishad’s itihasapuranam panchamam) from which legitimacy was sought. The tales in this fifth category relate to genealogies, royal conduct, gods and heroes. The reciters of this lore sought to re-establish the challenged social order on the basis of shruti and the puranas, as the MB clearly states at the beginning.

Correctly, Couture discounts the prevalent dating of the HV to the first or second century CE merely on the basis of the single occurrence of the word dinarika (Roman denarius). Vaidya argued that Kshemendra’s Bharatamanjari contains summaries of both the MB and the HV which, therefore, must have been completed by 1046 CE. Couture finds no cogent basis for Vaidya’s dating of the HV to 300 or 400 CE. The recent conclusions of scholars like Hiltebeitel, Bailey, Sutton, Biardeau and Fitzgerald that the MB was compiled between 200 BCE and 200 CE as a response to Buddhism, would apply equally to the HV. According to J.L. Masson and Ingalls, the language of the HV cannot be later than the 2nd or 3rd century CE and could go back to the 1st century CE. Ashvaghosha’s Buddhacharita (1st century CE) refers to a story found only in the HV about Bhishma killing Ugrayudha. Couture finds that several similes in it are paralleled only in the HV. Such is the epithet rathavistirnajaghana (chariot-like hips) describing gopis in the HV and shroniratha in Buddhacharita applied to lovely ladies. Further, Kushana iconography from the 2nd century CE reflects descriptions about the Man-Lion avatar and Sankarshana found in the HV. Moreover, only in India did the Kushana kings use the epithet devaputra which is used in the HV to describe Krishna and Balarama. However, on what evidence does Couture conclude that the Mathura described in the HV is evocative of cities of the Kushana era (1st to mid-3rd century CE) and not of the end of the Dvapara Yuga (for which we have no descriptions)?

It would be interesting to see Couture’s reaction to Bankimchandra Chatterjee’s clear opinion in his remarkable Bengali study of the Krishna corpus, Krishnacharitra (1892, available in English translation since 1991 [1]) that the HV is later than the Vishnu Purana. Couture’s bibliography is unaware of this work. It is intriguing that Couture has nothing much to say about the nocturnal sport of Krishna with the gopis. Bankimchandra’s Chapter 6 is “The Gopis of Vraja” as described in the HV. He points out that they are mentioned only in the 76th/77th chapter of its Vishnu Parva, just as they only occur in the 13th chapter of the 5th book of the Vishnu Purana. Instead of the famous raasa, it is the word hallisha that is used in the HV whose chapter-heading itself reads Hallishakridanam. Both words connote a type of dance and there are verses here identical with the Vishnu Purana. The HV account is shorter (usually it embellishes and expands the Vishnu Purana accounts). Bankim opines, “Comparing in detail the poetic quality, high seriousness, scholarship and magnificence of both works, it is clear that the Harivamsha is far inferior in these respects to the Vishnu Purana. The Harivamsha composer has been unable to comprehend the profound truth inhering in the Vishnu Purana’s description of raasa and the achieving of union with the divine Krishna through the bhakti-yoga practiced by the gopis…. The vivacious girl of the Vishnu Purana is restless with joy, while the Harivamsha’s gopis express the sensibility of wantons. In many places the Harivamsha composer is found to display a fondness for the sensual to an excessive degree.”[2] Kaliprasanna Singha must have had the same reaction, because of which he did not include the HV when he translated the MB into Bengali.

Couture analyzes the HV account of the birth and childhood of Krishna in conjunction with the versions in the allied puranas. Couture contends that these are not a hotchpotch of legends taken from pastoral tribes like Abhiras, nor are they purely symbolic, but draw upon Brahminic Vedic tradition to address concerns of their audience. The Bhagavatas (formerly called smaarta) played the major role in constructing a coherent mythic narrative of a hagiography based upon a specific religious ideology. The murder of Devaki’s six new-born sons and her aborted seventh pregnancy leading to the birth of Sankarshana follow precedents of the birth of Martanda in the Rigveda and the Maitrayani and Taittiriya Samhitas, and the births of Bhishma, Aruna and Garuda in the MB. The device presages the birth of a deity or a semi-divine being.

Couture has a very interesting discussion on the place of Sankarshana in Krishna’s birth-story. He is the remnant (shesha) after the pralaya (universal destruction) symbolized by the killing of Devaki’s six sons at birth, which is followed by the supreme divinity, as is the pattern after cosmic dissolution. Recreation is not possible without the collaboration of Yoganidra, who emerges from Rohini in this case, and is named Ekanamsa, to whom Couture devotes a separate chapter. Couture argues that since her birth follows Sankarshana’s and is coterminous with Krishna’s, this evokes the union of Purusha-Spirit and Prakriti-Matter. Thus, no detail in the birth-story is arbitrary.

Similarly, after seven years in the cow-settlement (vraja), wolves emerge from Krishna’s pores, causing destruction. Therefore, they move to Vrindavana, to a new life with the miracle of the Govardhana-lifting to save it from a deluge. Again, this is the pattern of gestation and a new birth. Couture has not noticed that the reasons Krishna gives to his brother for the move are similar to those advanced by Krishna-Dvaipayana-Vyasa to Yudhishthira for moving from Dvaitavana to Kamyaka forest (MB.3.36.37). The black and white hairs Vishnu plucks, manifesting as Krishna and Sankarshana, are, Couture suggests, from the antelope skin used in rites of rebirth for the patron of the sacrifice, not his head. Krishna being the cosmic Purusha and his brother the remnant of the cosmic sacrifice, what is being symbolized in this myth is the cosmic sacrifice. Moreover, at the end of the MB, Jara shoots Krishna taking him to be an antelope. Balarama gets reabsorbed into the ocean as a white snake. The manner of their deaths completes the circle that began with the white and black hairs plucked by Vishnu.

Couture’s research reveals a very important finding: gokula, used so often in the HV and in puranas, is not the name of a particular village but designates a cow-settlement, a synonym for vraja, ghosha, and goshtha. Nanda heads the cow-settlement, which moves from one forest to another. Vrindavana is not a particular forest but simply another great forest like the mahavana in which gokula was first located.

The MB is familiar with some of the childhood deeds and the names Damodara, Govinda and Keshava (cf. Bhishma and Shishupala’s speeches in the Sabha Parva, Dhritarashtra’s in the Drona Parva). In the HV, when Indra names Krishna “Govinda,” he begs him to protect Arjuna, thus linking to the Kurukshetra holocaust beyond the re-establishment of dharma in Mathura by killing Kansa (the asura Kalanemi) and his band of re-born demons. Akrura forecasts that the dying Yadava line will be revived by Krishna whose childhood narrative has local as well as cosmic dimensions. That is why Krishna is the gopa, the herder who protects Earth, the cow. Hence, he is Gopala the cosmic cowherd, who replicates Narayana’s killing of Kalanemi by destroying Kansa. Leading up to this is his breaking a cart as an infant, accompanied by his crying (rud, referring to Rudra the destroyer), emitting wolves who devour all (like Kala-Time of the Gita) and breaking the great bow of the Mathura festival. These signify “the inevitable destruction preceding all renewal.”

In a challenging interpretation, Couture equates Vidura’s parable of the man in the well with the taming of Kaliya naga. Krishna is also walking through the forest of samsara. The pool of the Yamuna in which the five-headed snake Kaliya resides is the world threatened by Kala-Time. Unlike the Brahmin, Krishna is not lost, nor dangling helplessly upside-down from a vine, oblivious of the gaping maw of the serpent, engrossed in the honey dripping down. From the fragrant kadamba tree, not distracted by its scent and the bees, Krishna dives into the pool, gets free of the serpentine coils and dances on the five hoods of the senses. Kaliya reverts to the ocean, just as Indra, defeated at Govardhana, returns to Swarga. The cowherd settlement is preserved by the supreme divinity making all perform their svadharma instead of brutalizing others.

Couture analyzes the Govardhana episode at length, bringing out its replication of several Vedic myths about Indra clipping mountains of their wings and Vishnu as the boar uplifting the submerged earth. However, he is less persuasive when arguing that in tearing off the giant (bird) Putana’s breast Krishna is replicating Indra cutting off the wings of mountains to stabilize the earth and that Govardhana becomes a “mountain bird” sheltering all in its belly. In that feat, Krishna literally becomes a pillar of the earth. Thus, the childhood narrative up to Kansa’s death follows the pattern of the mythic deeds of an avatar and is not a mere entertainment. Like black Agni, Krishna swirls up to engulf Kansa on the throne and ploughs the soil with him. He is, thus, a sacrifice and Krishna’s childhood in the forest is an initiation (manushi diksha, HV 58.8) for this. For making the meaning of the manifestation of Vishnu as the Kshatriya Krishna clear, the Brahminical tradition composed this narrative which brings together the cosmic acts of the deity as creator, preserver and destroyer in the human world. It is not a borrowing from primitive pastoral myths.

In translating the Brahmavaivarta Purana passage about the hunchback woman cured by Krishna, Couture translates kanya as “a twelve-year old virgin” (p. 231), whereas it ought to be “ten-year old virgin”. The discussion provides an interesting nugget of information: in the Brahmavaivarta Purana, the hunchback is Shurpanakha reborn, her disfigurement removed by Rama reborn as Krishna, who also fulfils her unrequited love for Rama. By straightening her back, Krishna is replicating Prithu, the archetypal king, levelling the uneven earth. The curvaceous, fragrant Earth (kubja carries unguents for the king) is the handmaiden (sairandhri in the Bhagavata Purana) to the Raja, but Kansa’s adharmic rule has deformed her. Her breasts are sunk into her belly, her back is a hump, so that though young she appears old. The stinking, gigantic Putana is another symbol of this malformed, aged, infertile earth. Both resemble the sunken, submerged Earth rescued by Vishnu as the boar. In the HV the Earth is a woman who complains to Vishnu that after Parashurama’s slaughters she is stinking with gore (like the dead Putana), impure like a menstruating woman. This is the Earth Krishna rescues by becoming a pillar (Govardhana) upholding her in a deluge, straightening her hump to make her high-breasted and heavy-hipped, fertile, and by sucking out the poison in her (Putana). As Vishnu-the-boar had coupled with the Earth, so Krishna later makes love to kubja, which the Brahmavaivarta Purana typically describes in erotic detail. Their son is Upashloka, according to Ezhuttacchan’s Malayalam re-telling of Bhagavata Purana and the Sanskrit Naryaniyam (a summary of Bhagavata) by his contemporary Melputhur Narayana Bhattathiri, as pointed out by Harindranath and Purushothaman on their Harivamsha resources page. Couture also points to a possible connection with the tantric goddess Kubjika who is young, attractive, dark and hunched and presages the kundalini that has to be uplifted from the base of the spine to join the purusha atop the skull. He suggests that Shaiva tantrism may have appropriated this Vaishnava figure of Earth.

The rope tied around the child Krishna’s belly, Couture shows, is part of the Puranic tradition and not a foreign vegetation myth. It evokes Shesha, Krishna’s inseparable brother Sankarshana. The splitting of the two arjuna trees refer to the twin trees of dharma and adharma (Pandavas and Dhartarashtras) that Krishna refers to in the Udyoga Parva (29.45-46), an image that the MB begins with (1.1.65-66). Krishna is the supreme divine who cannot be bound, who is at play shattering both dharma and adharma, inextricably linked to the remnant of creation.

There is a very interesting chapter on how the winged mountains are a variation on a Vedic theme, with which Couture compares Hanuman’s flight to Lanka and his encounter with the submerged winged mountain Mainaka. Further, he shows how the Govardhana episode mirrors cosmic deluge, preservation of the earth and restoration. Shesha and Vishnu, Sankarshana and Krishna, replace the Vedic mountains as pillars of the earth. Couture even draws in the Buddhist aspect contemporary to the HV, pointing out how Buddha preached Mahayana from the summit of Gridhrakuta, dominating the peak wholly and enlightening the universe.

In discussing the presentation of Vishnu as hamsa, Couture renders it as “goose” whereas “swoose” (a swan-goose hybrid) would be more appropriate. Cowherds are like the freely roaming migratory swoose, as are yogis in the Pushkarapradurbhava section of the HV. Vishnu in human form said roams all the worlds as a master. Krishna is the perfect yogi, the cowherd of the cosmos, Gopala. The simple cowherd Krishna by yoga transforms Govardhana into a vraja (cow settlement) to shelter all. He is seen as the mountain itself, just as Markandeya first saw Narayana in the cosmic ocean, and then saw him as an infant at play on a banyan leaf. The HV reverses the sequence: Krishna is first the child cowherd and then the huge mountain sheltering all. The uplifted mountain peak touched by clouds resembles a swoose, which is the nature of Narayana. This is a passage from the chaos of deluge to ordered svadharma. In the HV, “a Vishnu first described as a goose but who appears as a gopa; a marvelous young cowherd who changes into a winged mountain; cowherds and ascetics who are compared to birds,” form a web of symbols representing total freedom of the supreme divinity that underpins the HV stories.

In sum, Couture’s position is against making a distinction between the cowherd god and the Kshatriya hero. The Rigveda calls Vishnu gopa; the HV refers to the cosmic gopa Vishnu, and the cowherd boy of gokula and vrindavana. The book is valuable for the lengthy excerpts translated from the HV and allied puranas that show how well they are parts of the same tradition. There is a valuable bibliography and an excellent index. There are some errors of idiom in translating from French into English. These, however, are few and far between. One hopes that Couture’s research will prompt a new English translation of the complete HV in verse. We await his exciting revelations about the adult Krishna in the second volume.

A shorter version was published in the 8th Day Literary Supplement of The Sunday Statesman dated 3rd July, 2016.

References

[1] Pradip Bhattacharya: Bankimchandra Chatterjee’s Krishnacharitra, M.P. Birla Foundation, Calcutta, 1991

[2] Ibid. pp. 120-121

An Equestrienne on “Horsey Culture” in Indian Myth and History

By

Wendy Doniger: Winged Stallions and Wicked Mares, Speaking Tiger Books, 2021, pp. 332, Rs. 699/-

A passionate lover of equus cabalus, Doniger’s latest book brings together several of her past writings with fresh research focussed on how horses feature in Indian life and imagination, past and present. Serendipitously, horses and India cantered simultaneously into her life when she was 22. How that happened is related in her Preface dedicated to Penelope Chetwode Betjeman, a true-born equestrienne, Field Marshal Chetwode’s daughter, after whom the main hall of the IMA is named. The book is split into 13 chapters, including a study of the “Ashvashastra”, embellished with as many as 42 illustrations, many in colour for creating the desired impact.

Doniger clarifies her position with the dramatic aplomb so characteristic of her writing: “No Indus horse whinnied in the night.” The predominant position of the horse in the Rig Veda is completely missing from the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) which, she states, was “neither invented nor destroyed (by) Indo-European (IE) speakers.” On the other hand, wherever there are IE speakers, there are horses. The earliest book dealing with horses is composed by a Mittannian named Kukkulis, Master of the Horse of the Hittite king Suppilulliumas around 1360 BCE. Simultaneously she admits that there is evidence in megalithic burial mounds in the Deccan and in the Bhimbetka caves near Bhopal of pre-IE domestication of horses ante-dating the IVC. She also admits the existence of horse-bits in Maharashtra and south of the Narmada during the IVC period suggesting “an extensive network of horse trade from northwest India” from the Middle-East. Incidentally, horses are also said to be unknown in Africa till the Hyksos conquered Egypt in mid-2nd millennium BCE, which leaves the puzzle of the drowning of the Pharaoh’s army of chariots in the parting of the Red Sea.

Without citing supporting evidence Doniger accepts Witzel’s assertion that commoners rode horses while nobility drove chariots. The earliest Babylonian friezes and the ancient epics depict horse-drawn chariots and not horses being ridden. The common European icon of St. George on horseback killing a dragon is also found in a 10th century image in Tamil Nadu of a winged horse stamping upon a five-headed serpent, recalling the Rig Vedic myth of the Ashvins gifting Pedu a snake-destroying horse. Other than the myth of the birth of the Ashvins from Saranyu as mare and Martanda as stallion, Doniger does not explore the “horsey-ness” of these archetypal physicians and why, despite divine birth they are deprived of drinking Soma until Cyavana compels Indra to agree.

Doniger asserts that the Vedic horse symbolizing the swiftness of force came to represent unbridled passions in the Upanishads. She has the horse representing “Aryas” ranged against the indigenous Indians called “dasyus” associated with the serpent Vritra. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad envisages the cosmos in the form of a horse. It is Vishnu as horse-headed Hayagriva who rescues the Vedas and Dadhichi who reveals to the Ashvins the secret of Soma through the head of a horse that they implant on him. Alongside these we have the horse-headed men and women (“kimpurusha/kinnara”). The “Shishupalavadha”, however, specifies that while the “kimpurusha” is a horse-headed human, the “kinnara” is like the Greek Centaur, a human head upon a horse’s body. The “Mahavamsa” tells of a mare-headed “Yakkhi” who eats travellers and shuts up a Brahmin she loves in her cave, like Odysseus and the Cyclops Polyphemus.

Whereas the Vedic stallion is virile and sacred, its wanderings signifying imperial ambitions of the owner, the mare was seen as insatiable and evil, the archetype being Saranyu who abandons husband and children. In the Mahabharata she becomes the underwater doomsday fire, “vadava-mukha”, the mare’s mouth. Significantly, the “Kamasutra” has a sexual position called the “mare’s trap”. Through the simulated intercourse with the sacrificed stallion in the Ashvamedha yajna the chief queen supposedly transfers its virility to the raja. The obscenity may have led to its discontinuance as recorded in the Harivamsha, revived by Pushyamitra Sunga in the 2nd century BCE.

In the Mahabharata, much more than the Ramayana, horses, birds and snakes are interlinked right from the wager between snake-mother Kadru and bird-mother Vinata on the divine steed Ucchaihsravas that emerges from the churning of the ocean. Later there is the myth of 800 horses each with one black ear emerging from the sea sought for as guru-dakshina by Vishvamitra from Galava. It is Agni as a horse who rescues Uttanka from the underground world of snakes who have stolen the divine earrings he was carrying as his guru-dakshina. In analysing this tale (p.62) she describes him as seeing a black horse with a white tail whereas the text states that he saw a splendid steed with a man dressed in black cloth. Nor is it the queen in the underworld who gives him the earrings (p.63), but Paushya’s queen. Doniger recounts a Maharashtran myth of Kalbhairi who finds a similar horse in the underworld.Sagara’s sacrificial horse ends up at Kapila’s ashram which becomes the sea when flooded by the Ganga. The horses drawing the chariots of Krishna and Arjuna are special too like those of Achilles and Cuchulainn. A little-known myth in the “Ashvashastra” states that horses were originally winged, like the Greek Pegasus, and Indra, envious of their power, had the sage Shalihotra cut off their wings. The Ramayana has a similar myth about Indra cutting off the wings of flying mountains. Like Buddha’s horse Kanthaka and Pabuji’s magical black mare Kesar Kalmi, we have Rustam’s horse Rakhsh, Hussain’s Zuljenah (celebrated by Shias alone), Buraq that carried the Prophet to heaven, and Roland’s Veillantif. In historical times there is Rani Lakshmi Bai’s Baadal. Strangely enough, despite all the knight-errantry, the Arthurian cycle does not provide a special horse for its hero. Puzzling is Doniger’s statement that in India Karbala may represent the persecution of Muslims not only by Sunnis but by Hindus also with Zuljenah possibly shedding tears for them too (p. 133). Besides the Marathi Khandoba (Shiva mounted a horse to kill the demons Mani and Malla), there are Muslim equestrian saints like Alam Sayyid of Baroda (“Ghore ka pir”) and Satyapir and Dharma Thakur in Bengal to whom Hindus offer clay horses. Doniger overlooks the unique giraffe-necked terracotta Bankura horse that is the motto of the Cottage Industries of India.

In an inspired insight, Doniger points out that the only deity to ride a horse is Kalki (from ‘kalka’, filth of the Kali Era). He is simultaneously the invading barbarian on horseback and the Indian horseman repelling the foreigners, “fighting horses with horses”. She overlooks the fact that Kalki is not a deity but an avatar and none of the avatars, unlike the devas and devis, have “vahanas” (mounts).

Historically, Ashoka is the first ruler to depict a stallion on his lion pillar at Sarnath, and the Buddhist Jatakas describe horse dealers from the north bringing horses to Varanasi. Sindh horses were particularly prized. Horses possibly came late into eastern and north-eastern India where serpent worship prevailed. That is why it is surprising to find in the first Bengali Mahabharata composed by Kavi Sanjaya (c. early 15th century) entire chapters devoted to descriptions of horses of every possible colour.

The horse was brought to India by Arabs by sea and overland by Turks and Mughals. Polo was possibly introduced by the Turks. The Chalukya monarch Someshvara has an entire chapter on it in his “Manasollasa” (12th c. CE). Akbar had “balls of fire” for playing at night according to Abul Fazl. Horses were imported in vast numbers from the Middle East and Central Asia and Arab horses were prizes gifted by the Tughlaqs and Moghuls. In time, horses of Punjab, Rajasthan and even Bengal (called “tanghan” breed) were regarded as the best, with those from Kutch equalling the Arabs. Doniger corrects the misconception that stirrups and horseshoes were introduced to the Delhi Sultanate by Persians and Central Asian Truks in the 12th century as these are seen in sculptures from the 1st century BCE in Sanchi and in c. 950 CE at Khajuraho. The most skilled equestrians were, of course, the Rajputs and their ballads (Pabuji, Devnarayan, Desingh, Gugga) replace epic chariot warriors by mare-riding heroes, often with a Muslim side-kick like Muttal Ravuttan, paralleled by the American Lone Ranger with his Red Indian companion Tonto. But there is also the Telegu Palnadu epic recording the bloody cruelty perpetrated on a recalcitrant colt by Pedanna to tame it. In Tamil Nadu giant figures of horses are dedicated to Aiyanar and there is even a horse-temple known as the Gauripulla Thevar Kovil temple with a brick horse thirty feet long and thirty-five feet high. Tribal myths recount the world as populated with horses first who trample the first human couple till a dog is created to keep them at bay.

The British assigned the failure of Indians to breed good horses to the absence of a caste of breeders and the wrong type of diet, including a lot of ghee, fed to them. The British invented the concept of the thoroughbred from three Arab horses they brought to England. In general Indians did not ride horses, but Doniger overlooks the District Collectors who toured on horseback. Doniger discusses in detail the writings about horses of the father-son duo of the Kiplings. She devotes a full chapter to horses in modern India covering M.F. Husain’s paintings, especially the 12 panel mural, “Lightning” and the breeding of Manipuri polo ponies and Marwari horses who feature in Hollywood and Indian movies.

The very attractive front and back covers carry reproductions of warriors astride fully accoutred steeds, white on black and black on white in full colour, complemented by a beautiful picture of the author petting a jet-black horse, possibly in a Pune stud farm. What one misses is a picture of the memorial to the most famous horse in Indian history, Rana Pratap’s Chetak. The printing is excellent and easy on the eyes with hardly any typographical errors. However, in the bibliography on p. 297 the reference to her book “On Hinduism” is printed as pp.473-74 of instead of pp. 473-87 and in note 29 on p. 263 “Hyksos” is misspelt as “Hyskos”. There is also an unsubstantiated claim that at Fort Chunar tales are told about a “Gun Major” which is a British variant of the name Janamejaya (p. 60).

Pradip Bhattacharya retired as Additional Chief Secretary, West Bengal and specialises in comparative mythology.

A Watershed in Epic Studies

By

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What a tumultuous clamour

            sprang from the waters!

It resembled, O Janamejaya,

            the combined uproar

of the battling armies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is the correct version by P. Lal:-

“I raise my arms and I shout

            But no one listens!

From Dharma comes Artha and Kama—

            Why is Dharma not practised?”

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

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

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

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

LEADERSHIP AND POWER: ETHICAL EXPLORATIONS

By

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

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

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

“I raise my arms and I shout –

but no one listens!

From dharma comes success and pleasure:

why is dharma not practised?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What determines the worth of the worthy?

The Light within, nothing else!”[i]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Prema Nandakumar

[i] Translated by K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar

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

By

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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