Pradip Bhattacharya

Indologist, Mahabharata scholar

MAHABHARATA

               

               

          

 

 

 

The Harivansha – The Significance of a Neglected Text

By

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

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.

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

By

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Breaking Away from Two Centuries of Western Indology

By

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

sūkṣmo dharmo mahārāja nāsya vidmo vayaṃ gatim/

pūrveṣāmānupūrvyeṇa yātaṃ vartmānuyāmahe//

“Dharma, maharaja, is subtle

who knows how it works?

Safer for us to follow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I WAS BORN FOR VALOUR, I WAS BORN TO ACHIEVE GLORY”

By

The Mahabharata of Vyasa: The Complete Karna Parva transcreated from Sanskrit by Padma Shri Prof. P. Lal, Writers Workshop, 2007, pp. 1036, Rs.1000 (hardback). Special edition of 50 copies each with an original hand-painted frontispiece Rs.2000/-

The Battle of Kurukshetra has a double climax: the Karna-Arjuna duel and the final Bhima-Duryodhana confrontation. By the time we come to the third book of battle, the elder generations have fallen; along with them their obsessions. Drupada’s craving for revenge on Bhishma and Drona has been achieved through two sons, each engendered for that purpose. Before decapitation, Drona kills the Pandavas’ two major allies: Drupada and Virata. Ancient Bahlika, Bhagadatta, Bhurishrava —all are slain. Nothing stands in the way of Duryodhana’s eagerness to have Karna command his forces, a desire that he has had to put off twice over. Despite Karna having fled the field at least thrice during Drona’s generalship, Duryodhana holds fast to a blind faith in his invincibility with a drowning man’s desperation. 

The reader will notice a unique feature about Prof. Lal’s style of transcreation: the use of doublets wherever Vyasa does not use the usual name of a character. Thereby, with masterly skill he interweaves explanations obviating the need for annotations. Thus, “river-born Apageya-Bhishma” explains the original’s “Apageya”, simultaneously indicating that it is another name for Bhishma. He does so for technical terms too: Aksha-axles, Kubara-poles, Isha-shafts, Varutha-fenders. Where explanations of weaponry are needed, e.g. the fourfold science of weaponry, the transcreation provides it in rhythmic free verse [2.16]:

The free

Those released by the hand

Like arrows;

The unfree

Those clutched by the hand

Like swords;

The machine-free

Those shot by machines

Like fire-balls;

The free-and-unfree

Those which return after released

Like Indra’s thunderbolt.

Doublets make abstruse weapons self-explanatory: prasa-barbed darts, risti-swords, bhushundi-firearms, tanutra-armour. So, too, for ornaments: angada-armlets, keyura-bracelets, hara-necklaces. However, “33-lord Indra” (p.237) is hardly mellifluous!

The images in this book have a distinction of their own. With Arjuna’s arrow stuck in his forehead Ashvatthama looks “like the rising sun/with its rays shooting upward”. An elephant struck with 100 arrows glows like a mountain with its trees and plants aflame in a forest-fire at dead of night. Warriors target Arjuna like countless bulls attacking a single one to mount a cow in season. The battlefield blossoms like a lake lovely with white lily and blue lotus faces of beheaded warriors, glowing with splendour as if decorated with garlands of constellations in autumn. Bloodied faces are as lovely as split pomegranates, their teeth the seeds. Like a monsoon field with red shakragopa-beetles, or a young dark-skinned girl’s white dress dyed with red turmeric, or a free-roving courtesan flaunting a crimson dress, crimson garland and gold ornaments—such was the earth. Karna’s snake-arrow blazes in the sky “like the centre parting/in a woman’s hair”.

The book begins with the Kauravas ruminating over how they dragged and demeaned Draupadi. Then in just five verses it wraps up the death of Vrisha (Karna). Although Dhritarashtra, Bhima, Duhshasana, Krishna all recall the dragging and insulting of Draupadi at different stages in the battle, none refers to any attempt to strip her. That episode was interpolated to accentuate the wickedness of the Kauravas and exalt the divinity of Krishna.

An intriguing feature of the battle is that attacking and even killing weaponless charioteers draws no criticism. Even Krishna is wounded by Ashvatthama and Karna. Satyasena’s javelin pierces through his left arm making him drop the whip and reins. The charioteer’s role as advisor is well brought out where he advises Dhrishtadyumna who is bewildered by Kripa’s assault. Section 26 provides a rare picture of Kripa in irresistible full flow.

In the beginning, Janamejaya questions Vaishampayana about Dhritarashtra’s reaction on hearing of Drona and Karna’s deaths. After Karna was killed Sanjaya rushed at night to Dhritarashtra and related the aftermath of Drona’s death till the fall of Karna, his sons and brothers and how Bhima slew Duhshasana and drank his blood. His very marrow horripilating, the blind king wants to know what is left of both armies. From the reply a pattern emerges: the inhabitants of Krishna’s birthplace and youth—Surasenis and Narayanas of Mathura and Gokula—chose to fight against him alongside the kings of the east and north-east (Kalingas, Bangas, Angas, Nishadas) who led elephant armies against the Pandavas. Satyaki killed the Banga, Sahadeva the Pundra and Nakula the Anga ruler. Those from the south, west and north-west suffered annihilation at Arjuna’s hands. Among southerners, Pandya alone was pro-Pandava, whom Sanjaya calls “world-renowned”. When Dhritarashtra asks him to justify this, we have a sudden description of his savage attack on the Kauravas in section 20 in 44 verses, till he is killed by Ashvatthama, which appears to be very much of a command performance. It is interesting that in the southern recension of the epic Chitrangada is a Pandya princess.

We are given new information in 2.13 that Parashurama taught Drona from early childhood. Confirmation regarding the relative novelty of the Mahishamardini myth comes in 5.56 where, as in the Vana Parva, it is Skanda, not Durga, who is the buffalo-demon’s slayer. A typical epic exaggeration occurs in 5.4 where Sanjaya says that Bishma slew an “arbuda” (a crore) of soldiers in ten days. As he slew ten thousand daily, the total is a lakh and not “ten crores” as translated (p.24). In 5.14 Sanjaya says that Draupadi’s son (unnamed) slew Duhsasana’s son—possibly Abhimanyu’s nameless killer—but there is no other account of this. Paurava, a Kaurava ally whom Van Buitenen regards as a historical reference to Poros, had been defeated by Abhimanyu and now falls victim to Arjuna (5.35). We usually overlook the fact that Kunti too was a loser in the battle. Kuntibhoja’s descendants were all slain by Bhishma, who also accounted for the Narayanas and Balabhadras (6.22). Drona slew both brothers of Kunti, Virata, Drupada and their sons and most of the notable kings in just five days. Bhishma in ten days mostly concentrated on reducing the Pandava army.

The Karna-Arjuna battle is obviously the high point since Sanjaya describes its carnage as rivalling the mythical duels of Indra-Vritra, Rama-Ravana, Naraka-Mura-Krishna, Kartavirya-Parashurama, Mahisha-Skanda, Andhaka-Rudra, Indra-Bali, Indra-Namuchi, Vasava-Shambara, Mahendra-Jambha. Karna, of course, has been possessed by Naraka by now. Underlying the duel is the puzzling Rigvedic myth of Indra routing Surya and taking his wheel. A reverse epic parallel is Sugriva (born of Surya) defeating Bali (Indra’s son) in the Ramayana.

Ironically, Dhritarashtra’s lament (9.21): “you plan something/Fate plans differently./Aho!/ Fate is all-powerful./Kala/cannot be questioned” is no different from what Krishna had told Yudhishthira: “What is possible for man, I can exert to the utmost; but over fate I have no control.” Dhritarashtra makes the telling point (9.39) that both Bhishma and Drona were killed through exceptional deceit: Shikhandi shot down Bhishma who was not fighting him and Drona was beheaded when in yoga. Significantly, Dhritarashtra points to the Panchalas as responsible for both heinous deeds, exposing what underlay the Pandava-Dhartarashtra rivalry. He mentions often the awe in which the Pandavas held Karna, especially Yudhishthira who went sleepless for 13 years, haunted by fear of Karna. Even Bhishma, Kripa, Drona have never shamed him in battle like Karna. Twice Dhritarashtra recalls Karna taunting Draupadi that she is husbandless in the very presence of the Pandavas—such was his self-confidence. He calls Karna “the never-retreating hero”, overlooking how he was routed from the field several times. Interestingly, Karna is called Bibhatsu (49.25) when he recovers after having been knocked unconscious by Yudhishthira’s arrow, deliberately equating him with Arjuna.

Arjuna’s recurrent laxityin this parva lends support to the Gita being a later addition. In section 16 Ashvatthama’s feats wax, Pinaki-like, while Arjuna’s wane, enraging Krishna who berates Arjuna for being sentimental about fighting his guru’s son. Arjuna flares up only after Krishna, blood streaming from his body, asks him not to spare Ashvatthama. In section 19 Krishna has to exhort him to stop playing games with the Samsaptaka kamikaze squad which even catches hold of them and Keshava fells them bare-handed. Susharma succeeds in making Arjuna slump down. When Ashvatthama nonplusses Arjuna again, Krishna exclaims: “very strange, Partha-Arjuna/Very strange—what I am seeing now./…Drona’s son/Seems to be the better man today….Is your fist/a little flabby or what?” (56.135-138).

The carnage after Arjuna has been tongue-lashed becomes the occasion for a survey of the field by Krishna (19.28-53, repeated in 58.10-41), as he had done after Jayadratha’s death in the Drona Parva (section 148), ending with him praising Arjuna’s performance as worthy of the king of the gods. The field becomes such a morass that even Arjuna’s chariot-wheels get stuck (27.40-41)—a doublet of Karna’s plight later. In 90.57 Krishna heaves the embedded chariot wheels out of the ground with both hands, unlike Shalya who does not even make an attempt.

Section 29 depicts a rare duel between the rivals for the throne. The normally diffident eldest Pandava knocks Duryodhana unconscious. Surprisingly, Bhima prevents him from administering the coup de grace because that would nullify his vow. Similarly, when Bhima knocks Karna unconscious in section 50 and rushes to slice his tongue for his insults, Shalya stops him, reminding him of Arjuna’s vow. Shalya does a fine job as a double-agent by saving Yudhishthira twice from being captured (sections 49, 63). Strangely enough, Dhritarashtra never asks Sanjaya why Karna did not capture Yudhishthira after defeating him, which would have ended the war, as Drona had planned. To comprehend Karna’s complicated psyche we have to recall what he told Krishna in the Udyoga Parva. Karna is a man at war with himself, so memorably portrayed in Shivaji Sawant’s epic novel Mrityunjaya. One part of him knows that the victor has to be Yudhishthira, the righteous ruler; the other’s very life is chained by gratitude to Duryodhana.

Prof. Lal succeeds admirably in conveying the variety in battle descriptions as in 28.36-40—an excursion into vivid description of fist-fights compellingly Englished:

Hands raised high

Brought crashing down

On the foe!

A battle of tugged

And ripped hair-tufts!

A battle of bodies

grappling and wrestling!

Smell, touch, rasa-taste—

            Stench of blood!

Feel of blood

            sight of blood,

gush of blood,

            Everywhere crimson blood (49.104).

Like the Valkyries, Apsaras take the dead soldiers in chariots to heaven (49.93). Alongside this, Vyasa repeatedly stresses the horrific meaninglessness of war: the soldiers who died, killing friend and foe, did not know who and what weapons killed them (28.41).

The greatest challenge Duryodhana faces is Karna’s request for a charioteer equalling Krishna, for he finds that otherwise he cannot match Arjuna. Duryodhana lays on flattery with a trowel to persuade Shalya, comparing him to Brahma whom the gods considered Shiva’s superior and therefore chose as his charioteer. His lengthy exhortation contains a mini-myth of Shiva engaging Parashurama to annihilate the Daityas (section 34). Shalya finally succumbs when Duryodhana praises him as Krishna’s superior and declares that, if Karna dies, the Kaurava army will be in his hands.

Sections 40-45 contain Karna’s lengthy diatribe against Shalya’s people, the Madras, for being wicked like mlecchas, promiscuous, utterly untrustworthy. He particularly condemns the women (tall, fair, dressed in soft blankets and deer skin) for urinating while standing like camels and donkeys and being indiscriminately lustful, gluttonous and drunk. He tars the people of Gandhara and Aratta/Bahika (the land of five rivers) with the same brush. It is curious that Bhishma should have paid heavy bride-price for Gandhara and Madra princesses! Karna voices the prevailing prejudices: the Kauravas, Panchalas, Shalvas, Matsyas, Naimishas, Koshalas, Kashis, Angas, Kalingas, Magadhas and Chedis are the civilized peoples (no mention of Bangas), while the Bahikas/Madras are the filth of the earth, located along Vipasa (Beas) and Sakala (Sialkot). The easterners are servants, the southerners bastards, the Saurashtrans miscegenous. Shalya’s retort is gentlemanly, showing up the bitter gall spewing from Karna. Dhritarashtra, too, mentions his acid tongue. It is his profound sense of injured merit that fuels this vomiting of poisonous speech. No wonder his tongue is said to be his sword!

During this abusive exchange Karna recalls the two curses that alone trouble him and is confident that unless his chariot wheel gets stuck, Arjuna’s death is assured. In this context he voices his life’s goal: “I was born for valour, I was born/to achieve glory” (43.6).

Krishna, wanting Karna to tire himself out fighting before he meets Arjuna, diverts to meet the demoralised Yudhishthira and brilliantly tackles Arjuna’s peculiar attack on Yudhishthira. In resolving the issue, Krishna makes a signal pronouncement that is quite distinct from the philosophy of the Gita: to lie is better than to kill (69.23) because ahimsa is the supreme virtue (69.57). He enumerates when lying is permissible: in marriage, love making, to save life, when all one’s wealth is being stolen, to benefit a Brahmin or when joking (69.33 & 62). It is childish to think that truth should be spoken no matter what: “He knows dharma who knows/when to speak the truth/and when to lie” (69.35). This is no Kantian categorical imperative, nor is it clever sophistry. To illustrate, he narrates the stories of the uneducated hunter Balaka and of the learned hermit Kaushika, vowed to truth-speaking, but lacking knowledge of practical dharma. Dharma is so called because it supports and protects. Hence lying to protect dharma is not a lie (69.65).

Section 72 is a long harangue by Krishna to extricate Arjuna from the morass of depression following this encounter. Urging why Karna must be killed, Krishna cites a fascinating reason: because his hatred of Pandavas is not motivated by self-interest. Krishna tells Arjuna that Karna is possibly his superior, has all the qualities of a warrior, is 168 finger-lengths tall, long armed, broad chested, proud, very strong. His sword is his tongue, his mouth the bow, arrows his teeth. Like a wall of water shivering into rivulets when striking a mountain, the Pandava army disperses before Karna’s might. Vyasa deliberately builds up Karna’s prowess hereafter.

In section 73 Krishna burns with fury recalling how Karna, so mangled and dazed by Abhimanyu’s arrows that he wanted to flee, caused the boy’s death by slicing his bow on Drona’s advice so that five others could kill him (there is no mention of Duhshasana’s son smashing his head). Frequently Krishna has to provoke Arjuna by reminding him how Karna abused Draupadi and the Pandavas vilely. He bids him kill Karna’s son to demoralise him. Arjuna now abandons his self-flagellation saying, as in the Gita, “Govinda, you are my lord and master” (74.1-3). Yet, when Karna’s Bhargava missile counters Arjuna’s Indra missile and decimates the Panchalas, Arjuna needs to be enthused first by Bhima and then by Krishna who reminds him that in every era he has killed demons, specially Dambodhbhava (whose overweening pride Krishna narrated in the Kuru court). The Arthashastra VI.3 also cites him as one of those monarchs who perished due to arrogance. Krishna even bids Arjuna use his razor-edged Sudarshana discus. Again, as in the Gita, Arjuna awakens to his life’s mission and uses the Brahma missile, which Karna promptly neutralises! In disgust, Bhima advises him to try some other weapon. Never have we seen Arjuna thus foiled.

Characteristically, Arjuna is the true hero who always admires his opponent, as in 79.9,11: how splendid raja Duryodhana looks beside Karna with Shalya urging the horses! After Duhshasana’s death, Shalya encourages Karna in true heroic style: “Win and gain glory, lose and gain heaven” (84.16).

Section 76 paints a unique picture of a demoralised Bhima. “I am troubled”, he says, being all alone, surrounded by enemies. He seeks encouragement from his charioteer Vishoka, who re-inspires him and is gifted 14 villages, 100 slave girls, 20 chariots. Bhima creates a river of blood. Shakuni suddenly emerges as a mighty warrior who kills Bhima’s charioteer, catches his lance in mid-flight and flings it back, piercing his left arm. Bhima knocks him down but does not kill him, because he is Sahadeva’s portion.

However, in section 82 all Karna’s prowess cannot prevent Duhshasana’s horrific death, or that of his son Vrishasena. Duhshasana mocks Bhima, reminding him how the Pandavas fearfully lived in the lac house, scrounged for food in the forest obsessed with fear, hiding in caves and deceived Draupadi “to choose as husband Phalguna”. Then he hits very hard: “Then you scoundrels/ did something similar/ to what your mother did./ Draupadi chose only one,/ but all five of you/ shamelessly enjoyed her” (82.39-40). He even fells Bhima, who is temporarily unable to hit back. Finally, Bhima strikes him down and invites Karna, Duryodhana, Kripa, Ashvatthama, Kritavarma to try to stop him from killing Duhshasana. Though laid low, Duhshasana smiles with fury and proudly displays the hand with which he dragged Draupadi by her hair in public. Bhima rips out that arm, pummels Duhshasana with it, rips open his chest, drinks the blood, beheads him and roars that nothing is as sweet—not mother’s milk, honey, ghee, flower-wine, sweet curd, butter, nectar. Sipping the blood he dances, terrifying onlookers who flee thinking him to be a rakshasa. One vow fulfilled, he looks forward to offering the yajna-beast Duryodhana as sacrifice, crushing his head with his foot before all Kauravas (83.50). This image of war as a sacrifice, repeated at critical intervals, is rooted in the panchagni vidya celebrated in the Brahmanas as a symbol of Prajapati the Creator’s self-devouring to create the cosmos, the serpent biting its tail.

At Nakula’s urging—humiliated by Vrishasena—Arjuna slays Vrishasena before Karna’s eyes. Krishna paints a lovely picture of Karna advancing (86.6-10). As in the Gita, Arjuna says that he will win “Because you, the guru of all the worlds are pleased with me” (86.17). Karna-Arjuna are both compared to Kartavirya Ajruna, Dasharathi Rama, Vishnu, Shiva, with finest chariots and best charioteers driving white horses. While warriors watch, “the two heroes/played the dice-game of war,/for victory/or defeat.” (87.36).Karna, the hero of “the other”, is backed byAsuras, Yatudhanas, Guhyakas, Pishacas, Rakshasas, minor serpents, Vaishyas, Shudras, Sutas and the mixed castes. Brahma and Shiva jointly foretell Arjuna’s victory. The line-up of celestial beings shows clear evidence of interpolation from shlokas 39 to 63 and again from verses 64 to 99 in section 87. Shalya boasts that if Karna falls, he will alone slay Krishna-Arjuna. Krishna-Janardana (transcreated appropriately as “punisher of the people” in 87.119) announces that if Arjuna falls, which is impossible, he will crush them barehanded.

Arjuna’s bowstring snaps, Karna pierces him and Krishna, ripping apart the Pandavas like a lion does a pack of dogs. “Invulnerable the bow/of Karna and tremendously/strong its bowstring” whereby he pulverises all of Arjuna’s missiles (90.3). Arjuna slices off Shalya’s armour, wounding him and Karna severely. Bathed in blood, resembling Rudra dancing in a cremation ground, Karna pierces Krishna’s armour with arrows that are the five sons of Takshaka’s son Ashvasena whose mother Arjuna killed at Khandava. Infuriated, Arjuna riddles Karna’s vulnerable parts so that he is in agony. Yet he stands straight. Unable to excel Arjuna, he uses the snake-mouthed arrow which Ashvasena enters yogically. Krishna saves Arjuna by pressing down the chariot so that only his diadem is knocked off. Hubris-ridden Karna arrogantly refuses to re-shoot the same arrow, just as he refused to re-aim when urged by Shalya, even if it could kill a hundred Arjunas. Karna, his armour shredded with arrows, faints, glowing like a hill “covered with a wealth of blossoming ashoka, palasha,/shalmali and sandalwood”, dazzling like a mountain “bursting with the beauty/of entire forests/of blossoming karnikaras” (90.77-78). When Arjuna does not press his advantage despite Krishna’s repeated urging, Karna recovers, his morale plummeting as fails to recall Parashurama’s missile. Simultaneously his chariot wheel gets stuck. Raising his arms he laments, “Dharma knowers proclaim that dharma protects its cherishers. I have always cherished dharma, but it is not protecting me—it protects none.” This is a remarkable anticipation of Vyasa’s Bharata-Savitri Gayatri: “I raise my arms and I shout/but no one listens! From Dharma flows wealth and pleasure–/why is Dharma not practised?” Vyasa urges not giving up dharma up for pleasure, fear, greed, or to save one’s life, which is precisely what Karna is doing. Arjuna’s arrows have bewildered him and Shalya; his mutilated body refuses his bidding.

Here an interpolation occurs. In verse 82 Arjuna readies the Raudra missile and Karna’s wheel sinks in shloka 83. This recurs in verse 106. In-between are 23 verses in which Karna wounds Krishna and Arjuna, cutting Arjuna’s bowstring 11 times. Failing to extricate the wheel—Shalya doing nothing—Karna weeps in frustration and begs Arjuna for time, appealing to his heroic code. It is Krishna who responds, knowing Arjuna’s weakness where the heroic code is concerned. Thrice he recalls the insult to Draupadi and other un-dharmic deeds of Karna, who is shamed into silence. Krishna’s words arouse Arjuna’s fury, but Karna successfully counters whatever he shoots and simultaneously tries to free the wheel. Hit hard, Arjuna lets slip the Gandiva and Karna now tries to free wheel with both hands (which Krishna had done successfully earlier). Krishna commands Arjuna to behead Karna before he climbs back into his chariot. Here verses 34-40 are interpolated because, instead of beheading Karna, Arjuna shatters his flag! The death-dealing dart is described as charged with Atharva-angiras energy.

Karna lies headless, hundreds of arrows sticking in him like Bhishma. His body, is “all adazzle,/like molten gold,/like fire, like the sun,” and spectators wonderingly exclaim, as with Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, “but he is alive!… To whoever asked,/he gave;/he never said no… always the giver” (93.45, 47). Yudhishthira feels that he is reborn and will be able to sleep in peace that night. We never get to know why Vasusena was named Karna. He is Vyasa’s only character conforming to the Indo-European hero prototype: the eternal solitary with the motto of the Senecan tragic hero, “I am myself, alone!”

 After Karna’s death Shalya, who had boasted he would slaughter Krishna and Arjuna should this happen, flees. Duryodhana takes a stand behind an army of 25000 which Bhima decimates. Having failed to rally fleeing troops, Duryodhana all alone faces the Pandavas and Dhrishtadyumna. The end is impending.

Pradip Bhattacharya retired as Additonal Chief Secretary and specialises in comparative mythology