Pradip Bhattacharya

Indologist, Mahabharata scholar

IN THE NEWS

The Face of Ashoka

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H.G. Wells in his A Short History of the World (1922) called Asoka, “greatest of kings…His reign for eight-and-twenty years was one of the brightest interludes in the troubled history of mankind.” (https://www.bartleby.com/86/29.html) However, despite his numerous rock edicts scattered all over the Indian peninsula, no sculpture had been found depicting his features.

As the Kalinga war led to Ashoka’s transformation to the Dhamma King, it is only befitting that finally a unique bust of Ashoka should be discovered in Orissa at Langudi Hill near Jajpur district. The Orissan Institute of Maritime and South East Asia Studies has unearthed this remarkable find in 2000-2001at Langudi Hill which has been identified as Pushpagiri Vihara mentioned by Xuanzang, the Chinese pilgrim (c. 700 CE).[1]

The Prakrit inscription on the back of the bust has been deciphered as “chhikarenarāñjaaśokhena” that is, “śrīkarenarāñjaaśokhena” in Sanskrit, meaning “by the doer of prosperity King Ashoka”.[2] The writing has been dated to the 2nd century BCE. The bust is made of khandolite stone and was found in the stupa region. Its size is 34 x 29 x 14 cms. Ashoka is shown seated with earrings, necklace.

Another find was a stone sculpture 52 x 50 x 12 cms showing a seated male with a crown flanked by two women of whom the one on the left was a broken image. Here the inscription reads “rāñjoaśoka” and is dated to the 2nd century BCE as well.[3] The royal figure wears a turban or crown with earrings and an upper garment on neck and shoulder. There is a belt and armlets as well.

So now we know what Ashoka looked like.[4]

Ashoka Seated

The Face of Ashoka

chhikarenarāñjaaśokhena

rāñjoaśoka

[1]Dr. B.N. Mukherjee, “An Early Inscription from the Langudi Hill Area”, in UtkalPradip, vol. II, No.1, June 1998, Utkal University, Vani Vihar, Bhubaneswar.

[2]Dr. B. N. Mukherjee, letter of 22.7.2000 to Dr. D.R. Pradhan, Secretary, Orissan Institute of Maritime and South East Asian Studies, Bhuvaneswar, Orissa.

[3]N. N. Swamy, Dy. Superintending Epigraphist, Archaeological Survey of India, Mysore, letter of 1.6.2001 to Dr. D.R. Pradhan op.cit.

[4]The photographs and other details were made available by Shri R. Balakrishnan, IAS, Commissioner, Tourism & Culture Department, Govt. of Orissa.Also see Dr. D.R. Pradhan’s “Two Rare Statues of Aśoka Discovered at Langudi Hill” in the CIAA Newsletter, Issue #13, SOAS, London, June 2001.

POLITICAL SCIENCE IN INDIAN TRADITION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Harivansha – The Significance of a Neglected Text

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

Andre Couture: Krsna in the Harivamsha, vol. 1

—the wonderful play of a cosmic child,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

References

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

[2] Ibid. pp. 120-121

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

By

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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