• Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

Pradip Bhattacharya

Indologist, Mahabharata scholar

  • BOOKS
    • MAHABHARATA
      • The Mahabharata of Vyasa – Moksha Dharma Parva
      • The Jaiminiya Mahabharata
      • The Jaiminiya Ashvamedhaparva
      • The Secret of the Mahabharata
      • Themes & Structure in the Mahabharata
      • The Mahabharata TV film Script: A Long Critique
      • YAJNASENI: The Story Of Draupadi
      • Pancha Kanya: the five virgins of India’s Epics
      • Revisiting the Panchakanyas
      • Narrative Art in the Mahabharata—the Adi Parva
      • Prachin Bharatey ebong Mahabharatey Netritva O Kshamatar Byabahar
    • LITERATURE
      • Ruskin’s Unto This Last: A Critical Edition
      • TS Eliot – The Sacred Wood, A Dissertation
      • Bankimchandra Chatterjee’s Krishna Charitra
      • Shivaji Sawant’s Mrityunjaya: A Long Critique
      • Subodh Ghosh’s Bharat Prem Katha
      • Parashuram’s Puranic Tales for Cynical People
    • PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION & MANAGEMENT
      • Leadership & Power: Ethical Explorations
      • Human Values: The Tagorean Panorama
      • Edited Administrative Training Institute Monographs 1-20. Kolkata. 2005-9
      • Edited Samsad Series on Public Administration. Kolkata, 2007-8
    • COMICS
      • KARTTIKEYA
      • The Monkey Prince
    • HOMEOPATHY
      • A New Approach to Homoeopathic Treatment
  • BOOK REVIEWS
    • Reviews in The Statesman
      • Review : Rajesh M. Iyer: Evading the Shadows
      • Review : Bibek DebRoy: The Mahabharata, volume 7
      • Review :The Harivansha – The Significance of a Neglected Text
      • Review : Battle, Bards and Brahmins ed. John Brockington
      • Review : Heroic Krishna. Friendship in epic Mahabharata
      • Review : I Was Born for Valour, I Was Born to Achieve Glory
      • Review : The Complete Virata and Udyoga Parvas of the Mahabharata
      • Review : Revolutionizing Ancient History: The Case of Israel and Christianity
    • Reviews in BIBLIO
    • Reviews in INDIAN REVIEW OF BOOKS And THE BOOK REVIEW New Delhi
    • Reviews in INDIAN BOOK CHRONICLE (MONTHLY JOURNAL ABOUT BOOKS AND COMMUNICATION ARTS)
  • JOURNALS
    • MANUSHI
    • MOTHER INDIA
    • JOURNAL OF HUMAN VALUES
    • WEST BENGAL
    • BHANDAAR
    • THE ADMINSTRATOR
    • INDIAN RAILWAYS MAGAZINE
    • WORLD HEALTH FORUM, WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION, GENEVA
    • INDIA INTERNATIONAL CENTRE QUARTERLY
    • ACTUALITIES EN ANALYSE TRANSACTIONNELLE
    • THE HERITAGE
    • TASI DARSHAN
  • STORIES, ESSAYS & POSTS
    • Chakravyuha by Manoranjan Bhattacharya
    • The Head Clerk. A short story.
    • BANGLADESH NEW-BORN: A MEMOIR
  • GALLERY
  • PROFILE
    • About the Author
    • IN THE NEWS
      • Epic discovery: City scholars find lost Mahabharata in Chennai library – The Times of India (Kolkata)

Dr. Pradip Bhattacharya's profile

An Indian Administrative Officer, Dr. Pradip Bhattacharya has a PhD in Comparative Literature for his research on the Mahabharata, a Post Graduate Diploma with distinction in Public Service Training from Manchester. He is India’s only International HRD Fellow (awarded by Manchester University and the Institute of Training and Development, UK) and an MD in Homeopathy. He has been the West Bengal State Govt.'s nominee on the Board of Governors, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta for over 15 years and is on the editorial board of its Journal of Human Values. He has been Regional Editor (East) for the Mahabharata Encyclopaedia Project of the Mahabharata Samshodhana Pratishthanam, Bangalore, funded by the Ministry of HRD, Govt. of India. He is also Member of the governing board of the Rabindranath Tagore Centre for Human Values set up by Ambuja Realty in May 2011 to commemorate the 150th birth anniversary of Tagore. Dr. Bhattacharya initiated a Regional Mahabharatas Documentation Project by the Indira Gandhi National Centre of Arts, New Delhi, under the Ministry of Culture.

He has authored and edited 30 books and published numerous articles in India and abroad on Public Administration, Comparative Mythology, Mahabharata, Homeopathy, Management and Human Values. His latest books are: The Jaiminiya Mahabharata: Mairavanacaritam and Sahasramukharavanacaritam, A Critical Edition (National Mission for Manuscripts); The Mahabharata of Vyasa: Mokshadharma Parva, translated from the Sanskrit (Writers Workshop); “Love Stories from the Mahabharata” and “Puranic Tales for Cynical People” (both from Indialog, New Delhi) and “Pancha Kanya: the five virgins of Indian Epics” (Writers Workshop, Kolkata).

POLITICAL SCIENCE IN INDIAN TRADITION

February 17, 2022 By admin

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]

Filed Under: Arthashastra, BOOK REVIEWS, IN THE NEWS

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

January 20, 2022 By admin

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

Filed Under: BOOK REVIEWS, IN THE NEWS, MAHABHARATA Tagged With: Book Reviews, Mahabharata, McGrath

The Harivansha – The Significance of a Neglected Text

January 10, 2022 By admin

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

Filed Under: BOOK REVIEWS, IN THE NEWS, MAHABHARATA Tagged With: Couture, Harivansha

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

November 30, 2021 By admin

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.

Filed Under: BOOK REVIEWS, IN THE NEWS

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

January 21, 2021 By admin

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

Filed Under: BOOK REVIEWS, IN THE NEWS, MAHABHARATA Tagged With: Karna, Mahabharata

My Father’s Childhood Memories & Tales

December 25, 2020 By admin

CHILDHOOD MEMORIES & TALES[1]

GUNINDRA LAL BHATTACHARYA[2]

The Family Photograph
My parents and siblings. I am to my father’s left.

3.1.1978.        

Tales of my childhood? Well, so be it!

            However, I do not remember anything before the age of 3 years. I heard from mother that I was born at No. 10, Radhanath Bose Lane, Goabagan, at 20 minutes past 9 in the morning, Wednesday, (8th Phalgun, 1324 BS, English 20th February 1918). Then Calcutta time was 24 minutes in advance of the Railway Time which was called Indian Standard Time. At that time my grandfather (Motilal Bhattacharya) named me Gunindralal. At that time my father (Sindhu Lal) was employed in Meerut.

            After that my childhood was spent in Meerut. Here my father worked in Military Accounts. Father being transferred in service was to go to the Accountant General Burma, Rangoon. Of course, before this from 1913 to 1917 father and mother (Shibarani Debi) were in Rangoon.

            A scene of this travelling by ship is my first memory. I recall that on the wooden deck my younger sister Hemlata[3] and I were trying to walk but could not anyhow stand at one place. The ship was swaying and we were forced to clutch on to the railing; almost falling if we let go. There was no storm or rain. Father showed me the rear of the deck. Someone had died—he would be buried at sea. Some English people and some Indians were standing on both sides of a big coffin covered with a black cloth. A prayer was read from a book. Everyone silently bowing their heads showed respect. After that I saw that big coffin wrapped in black cloth was pulled up with a rope and from over the deck’s railing it was slowly, gradually lowered to the sea. Just a little later when everyone had left, I went to see the rear of the ship holding on to the railing. Then there was no rope and that coffin too had sunk. However, many sharks were following behind the ship. Father said earlier there were submarine ships in the sea and hitting ships from beneath, by making holes would sink them. Then to see submarine ships I held on to the railing and started thinking of that box covered with black cloth. The person who had died was a sailor of the ship. This is the first thing I remember of my childhood.

            I was in Rangoon till I was five years old. We used to stay with my second eldest paternal uncle[4] on the first floor of a wooden house. Below, a little to the side, was a hotel of Chinese food. Our cooking was done by Indra Thakur. He was my very dear friend. Only a few incidents of this time come to mind.

            I can see my father very clearly. In the evening, lying down, by the light of a hurricane lamp he would tunefully recite the Mahabharata and I, sitting near his head, used to listen and keep looking at the book, if I too could read it. The grave, distinct reading slowly, gradually I began to get memorized by me. I too began to recite some stories. My favourite was Bheem and Duryodhan’s mace-duel. Everyone used to be scared of father and if he got angry everyone would run away and hide. I too used to hide under a table. Only once father, as if in sport, catching me, as if for punishing, made as if to pull me up by my hair. I wasn’t beaten but the wish to scare me was successful.

            At this time I began to learn to write and read Bengali from mother. One day I received a letter from my (paternal) grandmother Hearing it read out and after trying to read it I was reminded of her very much—her loving touch, her call, “Gunodhor!” Not saying anything to anyone, on a piece of paper I wrote to her my heart’s feelings. I had seen that someone, whom every called Postman, came with letters. So one day in the morning, the day after writing the letter, I kept standing waiting for him. Immediately on his coming up, before he called anyone, I went to him and giving him the paper on which I had written, in broken Hindi explained to him that he should give my letter to my grandmother in Calcutta. I was sure that it was he who had brought grandmother’s letter to me, therefore surely he goes to her and knows her. He looked at me astonished and was trying to say that it was difficult for him. So I explained in detail to him about that grandmother of mine who is in Calcutta, whose letter he had brought, it is to her that this must be given tomorrow. But now breaking into laughter he shouted out, “Babu! Mai–ji! Postman!” Then mother and all others, my elder uncle’s sons and daughters, came and hearing everything from the postman began to laugh. They began explaining to me that bags were sent by ship and so many more things. I understood this much that this postman does not know my grandmother or does not go to her. Other than this I was in no condition to hear anything else. My hidden, secret love for grandmother had got exposed and my little bit of writing was such a tiny expression of it—realising and thinking of this and finding proof of my ignorance and little ability I felt extremely small. Never again have I wished to reveal my mind so utterly with heart and soul and so briefly. And this had become a matter of mockery to others. I had felt that elders do not understand anything about children at all. Never again have I gone to that Postman. The child mind has a logic of its own which arises from his knowledge and imagination. So too for elders. Dreams have their own logic too. Perhaps one who can respect the child mind of children would be able to comprehend it and can enter the world of children; at least be respected by them, because with understanding comes friendship, not mockery.

7.1.1978.        

In the eye of memory I see myself a child. Along with writing Bengali and reading a little it was decided that I would go to school where the sons and daughters of my elder paternal uncle used to study. I have heard it was “Bengal Academy”. Be that as it may, mounted on Indra Thakur’s shoulders I had gone to school. The first day I sat on the last bench of a class next to an older sister. In front were three more benches and a person with a long white beard and prominent spectacles was teaching. I understood nothing of what he was saying, nor do I remember. I noticed that sometimes one student would go out. Enquiring I got to know that taking permission for drinking water they were able to go out of the class. At once I felt extremely thirsty. Irritated, my elder sister took me outside. As she would return, therefore I too, though unwilling, had to return inside. A little later I felt thirsty again, but my elder sister would not go again and told me to shut up. I asked her, “Then what will I do? I am so thirsty!” She told me to suck the sleeves of my shirt. I began to do so and by the time the class got over the right sleeve of my shirt was soaked—perhaps it was thirsty! I remember well how I had totally believed what my elder sister said and never thought that thirst for water would not be quenched by that.

            The next day just before going to school I was sitting in the bathroom. Everyone is calling and I am quiet, hoping very much that they would go away. But my mother did find me out. After that, wearing clothes, Indra Thakur took me away. I had agreed only at Indra Thakur’s words thinking I would be going for a stroll. Others, of course, had left before this. He took me to that same school. I would not enter by any means and would not let him go. Then a tall, lovely lady coming to the verandah called me. I liked her but she would hardly be teaching me. The class teacher would be that bearded dry gentleman. I felt no attraction for going. There was no fear, only rejection. The Headmistress of the school smiled and said, “Why are you leaving? Come!” I said, “But my tummy is aching!” Then she said, “Here there are bathrooms. There will be no difficulty.” I did not feel like objecting to this and blurted out, “But in that case I am feeling like vomiting!” Then she burst out laughing. Her laughter and her talk standing on the verandah I had liked and cannot forget even now. Perhaps if she had come near and said that she would sit near me and show pictures, or chat, then I would certainly have listened to her. Be that as it may, after that I returned home on Indra Thakur’s shoulders. Everyone at home began to say that I ran away from school. At that I did not feel any irritation or shame. I did not like school at all.

            After this I recall another scene. Indra Thakur and I are upon a boat. The boat was a little far from the shore and for some distance the boat slowly danced and swayed. I am looking where Indra Thakur is showing, “There is the sea!” Only water and water for so far away, waves after waves, I am watching amazed at where there is no end. While staring I must have fallen asleep because later I only remember getting down from the boat, I am sitting on Indra Thakur’s shoulders and he is holding on to both my hands. Resting my cheek on his head I am as if hearing his sweet voice in my sleep.

            After this at times I remember going to Tuktuki’s home. Tuktuki was a small girl like me, but I remember only her mother. She used to play the piano or organ or pedal harmonium. For listening to it there was no end to my eagerness to go up the steep stairs to the first floor. From there I did not even wish to go home. Only Indra Thakur could bring me back.

            After this, something I had heard of because I do not remember him. Shri Saratchandra Chattopadhyay[5] used to work in father’s office. He did not fancy working. Office work and his world were different, so he was somewhat of a peculiar sort of special creature. He would be talked about at times at home. I have heard that he had come home a few times and apparently had liked my name and my younger sister’s name. Later in his novel, Path-nirdesh his main character “Guni” and heroine “Hemnolini”—my and my sister’s names—may be an accident.

8.1.1978

            From Rangoon we came away towards the beginning of 1923. I remember nothing about coming back. We were in Calcutta till Durga Puja and the account of this time is of the house at Goabagan’s Radhanath Bose Lane.

            My grandfather loved to play chess. He was the Private Tutor of the Crown Prince of the kingdom of Udaipur in Rajputana and also the Director of Public Instruction of that place. Before that he used to teach Sanskrit and Philosophy in Agra College. There my father was born in the year 1888. We used to call grandfather, “Babu”. He used to write books and followed a strict regimen. Five sons, each one a gazetted officer, with their help and his own pension he lived very happily.

            On Sundays a get-together for playing chess used to be arranged. A brother of my grandmother used to come. We used to call him “Rejo-Mama”. The match of the two would be full of great excitement. Sitting at the side I used to watch hour after hour. I used to enjoy more the conversation and the occasional ululation, specially when Rejo-Mama would be forced to accept defeat at grandfather’s move. And when grandfather would enter the bathroom, when he was about to lose, how delighted would Rejo-Mama be and how he would mock! The match would be held in a big hall, Babu’s room.

            After this I remember the puja in the zamindar’s house in the neighbourhood. A huge, vast pandal within the house. The image above and a little below a large courtyard where sacrificing was done. Well-dressed, busy people, incense-smoke and music. Amidst all that indeed roaring tremendously a person with a big khanra (curved sword) ready for sacrificing. Two men would come, each bringing a goat. Their heads would be fixed in one place. After that with the priest’s waving of lamps, bells ringing, drums sounding and shouting “Joy Ma!” with a single blow the sacrifice was done. One man running with the bloody head would offer it at the image’s feet. On the day of “Maha-ashtami” there would be many sacrifices. Once day after that I did not like it very much and did not go any more, did not look for long. Grandfather said that he did not believe in this type of puja. It seems that Vedic Brahman pandits do not do such puja.

            After this, one day in the afternoon a photograph of ours was taken. Father wanted that before going to Delhi all of us should be photographed with his parents. The photo was taken on the roof of the house. Our new dress was khaki half-pant and shirt. We seven brothers and sisters, Grandfather, Grandmother, “Pishima/Thandidi” (father’s sister), father and mother. My elder brother used to live with Grandfather and studied in Calcutta, matriculated from Scottish Church. He was asleep then. I had gone down to call him. With a sulky face he came. I remember his frowning face. In the photo too it came out quite well.

            This roof was a place of great fun. In the late afternoon after removing the washed and dried clothes the women of the house—mother, elder brothers’ wives, pishima, elder sister, all would sit on a “madur” (reed mat) to dress their hair. One would dress another’s hair with many types of buns being made—braided, plaited etc. So many sorts of laughter and talk—I could understand nothing. But who had not brought hairpins, whose comb was lying in her room, and who wanted another ribbon—all these I had to bring. In the evening, cleaning up here itself, durries would be spread. And my elder uncle’s son would play a gramophone with a big horn. Many types of folk-plays would be played. Everyone listened with great joy. I used to always wonder that the one who used to sing from inside the box, how do I get to see him! At times looking into the horn I used to try to see. I was told that male and female singers lived inside. I believed that and used to wait so that in case they came out I would see.

            In this way the days would pass. One day I went with someone to Hedua crossing to hire a carriage. Those days there was a stand for horse-carriages there. Three carriages were booked for going to Howrah Station the next day. Then it took three days to reach Delhi. We left by the horse-carriages. At home I was amazed seeing the weeping of mother and grandmother. Grandmother caressed me a lot and gave me one rupee. After that it was going to the station, getting into the train and proceeding to Delhi.

            Many stations were there on the way. Father seemed to know all indeed: what food is good at which station—where hot puris,[6] where rabri,[7] where burfi! A small compartment was reserved for us—3rd class, but being reserved we were travelling quite comfortably. Only mother was irritated—father was buying a lot of food and she was saying it wasn’t necessary. Still he bought and we, eating up all that, embarrassed mother. Father praised his own intelligence and we had such great fun. Greedy for food, we left nothing at all to show father was right.

            In the daytime I recall from Bihar onwards on both sides dry, dusty fields and alongside the tracks innumerable spiny manasa trees. Far away some villages and large trees that were running along with us.

            On the third day in the morning we reached Delhi. There two assistants from father’s office had come to the station. Getting down there, on two-wheeled horse-tongas we reached Raisina. On 23rd October 1923 we first stayed in No. 9 Ridge Road. All arrangements for cooking were there in the house. A servant named Damodar had come with us. Mother arranging everything properly fed us. After that in the evening all of us fell asleep. The house was quite big, with a small garden inside and a dry toilet, and inexhaustible water supply. Right in front was a dairy and a small hill that used to called “Ridge”. These are my memories till reaching Delhi. My age was above 5 years and less than 6. We stayed in this house for almost five years.

            Now some stories about the time when we stayed at Ridge Road. Apparently now this road’s name is MANDIR MARG.

            At that time the real capital was in Simla. Raisina was being built. All around the huge pillars of the Legislative Assembly were huge wooden supports. Initial construction of the Viceroy’s house has begun. North Block was complete. South Block was not yet completed. In the distance the War Memorial Arch was coming up. On the road running straight from the Gol Post Office to Connaught Place, Regal Cinema had just opened and going from Ridge Road straight to Talkatora Park was a club of Bengalis.

            Alongside the front of our house then was a narrow railway line on which small and large engines used to go carrying broken stones straight via Talkatora and Alexandra Place, over Queen Victoria Road up to near the Purana Quila railway line. For making a stadium before Purana Quila many stones used to be taken there. The numbers on the small engines were 1, 3 and 11. The big one’s number was 7. Looking big, the line was metre gauge.

            In front of the house, on the other side of the road, was the hill (Ridge). Here at winter time there were many wild jujube trees with tasty sweet-and-sour berries. For quite some hours some of us would wander in sunlight and shade seeking where how many good, sweet berries could be found—wild sweet-and-sour jujubes. We would climb up the hill by footpaths or anywhere indeed. However, a little to the south, near the house at No. 3 Ridge Road, a road went over Ridge Road. Quite far off there was a big water-tank from where water used to be pumped to all the houses. Entry was prohibited into that water-tank at the right side of the road and at the left side was quite a thick jungle in which were many “palash” trees. I remember they were truly flame-of-the-forest—densely full with so many red flowers. Through them indeed there was a horse-riding track laid with wood-chips, quite a soft path. I used to hear that it runs straight to Roshanara Gardens to the north and on the other side to near Talkatora Park. From time to time I have seen one or two English ladies and men walking quite slowly. Apparently this Ridge was the final edge of the Aravalli Hills of Rajputana.

            At this time in summer it would be extremely hot in Raisina. As we were small, perhaps we did not feel the heat so much. In the afternoon under the fan, at night on the open ground in front or inside in the courtyard’s garden we used to sleep. But I remember about the “aandhi” (dust-storm).

            From about 4 to 6 in the afternoon, suddenly on the western horizon would rise a cloud-like reddish ochre filling the sky. Along with it was the loud cawing of crows and their flying about hither-thither restlessly. That dense cloud rising at high speed in the sky would reach overhead. After this would come a dust-storm. To stand outside would be extremely difficult. I used to try but the blast of the wind from the west would push me back. After that it would bring along plenty of dust. Mouth, eyes and ears would get filled with dust. If the house-doors were shut, it was difficult to open them because immediately after the storm began we would somehow flee inside the house. That wind would keep pushing against the bolted doors, as if saying, “Open up! Open up!” Nothing at all could be seen outside the glass windows, only a storm of red dust blowing, or it seemed like a cyclone. After about half an hour slowly, gradually, when the fury of the storm would lessen, then suddenly it would rain very hard and sometimes not even that. It would remain sullenly hot and till about midnight or 1 A.M. our bodies would burn from the heat. But there was plenty of water in the taps and we would bathe three to four times from the afternoon onwards. Another special problem was cleaning the dust in the rooms. However, the way in which the dust-storm like a red cloud would at swift speed overcast the western sky and below it crows, kites and other birds would fearfully fly about here and there and their outcries; the repeated banging on the doors, banging as if some invisible person were angry with the doors—these scenes and sounds still float in front of my eyes and it seems my ears can still hear.

19.1.1978

            Many years later in the year 1957 when I used to live alone in Jammu in the month of May then and was the Colonel in the Signals Regiment of 26 Division, then I went roaming after the evening to where I would take the troops to our grenade throwing range. There was sand all around. Suddenly, just like the old Raisina dust-storm, red dust clouds began to rise quite swiftly in the western sky. Along with it that cawing of crows and just a little later the current of dust-storm. Pushing myself forward in the face of it felt fun because the storm’s speed was pushing me. However, this storm did not last for more than half an hour. But seeing the manifestation of old memories of Raisina I did like it indeed. For, after Raisina in 1930, that type of dust-storm had not occurred. The adjoining village habitations and fields had become filled with crops and vegetable gardens.

            Then there was only one market. Its name was “Gol Market”. Inside were some vegetable and fruit shops and a Mussulman’s meat shop. Outside where there were shops of atta, rice, ghee etc. Near that in a small shop a Sikh used to sell meat. The Mussalmans used to cut the meat after halal and Sikhs did exactly the opposite—“jhatka” (beheading with one stroke) without halal. Be that as it may, good meat was 8 annas a seer.[8] Even better meat was available at Ajmeri Gate. As we were a big family, father used to bring 3 seers of meat. On Christmas it would be gram-fed or “dumba”[9] meat. On cooling it would congeal, full of ghee or fat. But eating it with hot rotis tasted like amrita (ambrosia). Also, one felt extremely hungry. We brothers used to eat 12 to 18 rotis. Ferrying fish from Okhla, a Mussulman named “Sadhu” used to insist on supplying almost daily. The head of the fish was free. Fish, too, was 8 annas a seer. Excellent atta was 8 seers a rupee. Fine Basmati rice was 7 rupees a maund[10] and ghee 2 rupees a seer. Father would bring monthly provisions from the city. I used to go with him on a tonga. Then the fixed official rate for a tonga was 12 annas. 6 annas for the first and the next hour. From Lal Kuan and Khari Baoli atta, rice, masala, ghee etc., and right next door from big vegetable shops about ½ maund potatoes and other vegetables. Later from Chandni Chowk sweets: Sohan Halwa, laddu, and for mother many types of fried dal from Ghantewala’s shop. After that via the fountain in Chandni Chowk by Nai Sarak, Chawri Bazar, Ajmeri Gate and a dusty road that later became Minto Road, by that straight west from the Gol Post Office after Havelock Square, Dalhousie Square and Ranjit Place, our house on Ridge Road. During the journey father would buy a Hindustan Times newspaper. At home we used to read Pioneer. As father was born and studied in Agra and while working in Kanpur, Kanauj and other places he was used to reading The Pioneer. At that time in Delhi no other English daily had come out.

            On the Ridge, a little north from our house higher up on that road, a lot of the hill was being broken down and flattened. Daily in the morning groups of Delhi village women would come singing. At summer time at noon one or two of them would sit to eat on the verandah of our house. Two or three dry thick rotis (almost half an inch thick), raw onion and red chillies—this was their food. If spoken to they would laugh a lot because they did not speak proper Hindi. They were Gujar tribe, speaking broken Hindi, sounding quite sweet. Be that as it may, I heard they were working because a temple would be built. Birla was getting this temple built. The women workers got 6 annas a day and the men got 8 annas. From this, however, each had to donate daily one anna for the temple! Even at that young age I felt bad about this. I had heard Birla was a wealthy man. To deduct money forcibly in this fashion I felt was unjust and I felt no respect for this temple. However, in the evening when the men and women in separate bands would go southwards by the road in front singing away, then it felt extremely nice –the words of their songs and the way they walked. Somewhat like a dance and swaying away. On their heads they carried iron pans in which they used to take broken stones for spreading. They came from quite far away. I had not seen exactly from where.

            In the year 1924, probably in the month of March, father decided that we would all get admitted to school. Then where Willingdon Nursing Home is now there was MB School and a school of Bengalis had started. We would be admitted in the Bengali school and were all going with father one day. On the way someone came and said something to father. I heard the wife of someone of father’s office had committed suicide in the morning setting fire to kerosene possibly in Tughlak Place. Father told me to return home because he was going to help there. So at the very beginning my going to a regular school having been prevented I was not sad at all. I have already said that in Rangoon I did not like school at all.

            To the north of our house was Ranjit Place. In house No. 1 there lived Subrata Chakrabarti, an assistant in father’s office. As taught by father, we used to call everyone “Kaka-babu” (Uncle) and their wives were our “Kakima” (Aunt). On the day of Bijoya we would do pranam to all kakas and kakimas. Father did not believe in Brahman and non-Brahman distinction and had instructed us accordingly too.

            At this No. 1 Ranjit Place Subrata Babu’s son Dulu or Sukumar became my intimate friend. Subrata Babu’s relative was Ajit-da. He was possibly in class 8 of that Bengali school. Then the Headmaster was Mr. Ganguli.

            At father’s bidding after one or two days it was Ajit-da who got me admitted to school in class 4. The exams were just a few days later. About attending classes I only remember the grave and calm Mr. Ganguli’s class. I used to sit on the rear bench and listen, understanding nothing at all. No one used to ask me any question.

            Of the exams I only remember the day of Arithmetic. Then I knew only addition and subtraction. On the day of the test, father saw that we also had multiplication and division. On the morning of that very same day father taught me to multiply and divide. I learnt with tearful eyes with some slaps. At the time of the test however there was no simple addition, subtraction or multiplication and division at all. In the question paper were rupees, annas, pie additions and some simple or problematic calculations. I could not tackle a single one. I remember I was writing in the copybook when I saw tht one or two boys asked for and got more paper. I thought this must be the rule, so I too asked for an extra paper and actually got it. But I could only write my name.

            I remember the results of the exam in the class. The teacher, Noni-babu, was calling out names and announcing the marks. Hearing that my mark was zero I was not surprised, but out of shame my face had become hot. In other subjects I heard I had passed. Be that as it may, at home I was not beaten by father.

            Immediately after this test we came to Calcutta during father’s holidays. On both sides those fields and running along with the railway line big, large thorny manasa trees. On the way my father’s eldest brother boarded, probably from Aligarh. He too was going. His youngest daughter’s marriage was in Calcutta. Everyone used to get together. Grandfather used to enjoy a lot with sons and grandchildren who were living outside Bengal.

            Be that as it may, I remember in the train my father’s eldest brother asked about my studies. Very innocently I told him that I had scored zero in Arithmetic. He was very grave, with a white beard. All of us were in great awe of him. Hearing of my getting zero in Arithmetic he said at once, “Then what else now—eat gur-muri (molasses and puffed rice)!” At first I understood nothing. Later I felt perhaps he had mocked my mother’s parents, because my maternal grandfather belonged to the village Geedhgram in Burdwan district. Molasses, puffed rice, kheer etc., were his favourites. He used to cultivate a lot of land himself. Thinking of this I felt that eldest uncle had decided that my studies could not improve at all. And all this mockery on telling the truth I did not like at all. At such a tender age (almost 7) somehow I lost all respect for him at these words.

            Returning from Calcutta I began to go to school again, possibly in class 4 itself. My younger brother Robi[11] also got admitted in class 1. He was about 2 ½ years younger to me. As he was not good in studies, father engaged a private tutor. He used to come to teach me and my younger sister Hemlata in the evening. I remember that I used to get only the smell of milk and sugar from his mouth. At that time I had a fixed idea that my intelligence was very little.[12] Somehow I began to study in class, but I got many friends—Sukumar, Biraj, Shitangshu, Satyabrata, etc.

            From the year 1926 I began to get a lot of Malaria fever. There was terrible shivering, one quilt atop another, and upon them some younger brother or sister would lie down. I remember the fever rose to 108.2 degrees once. Immediately after the shivering stopped the fever would shoot up very much and often after an hour would become normal. I had become quite weak. I had a lot of Quinine mixture and from Harsha-Babu homeopathic medicines. By no means would this fever leave me. It would come almost every week.

            At the time of this fever I remember about one night. All were sleeping. We brothers and sisters were lying within a large mosquito net. A low powered electric light was on. My sleep was broken. I do not why I took off the mosquito net. After that I kept it in a corner and saw the light and fan switches. In those days the surface of the fan-regulator used to be uncovered. By turning its knob the fan could be slowed or speeded up. I felt as if I must put my finger inside the hole of the regulator, curious to see what would happen. I remember getting a severe shock. Being quite contented, curiosity satisfied, I lay down and fell asleep again.

            Harsha kakababu (uncle) lived at Ranjit Place, probably at No. 15. Every morning he used to give homeopathic medicine to all. My duty was to get medicines from him for myself and my brothers and sisters before going to school. One day, after asking many people many types of questions, he prepared small paper packets. I was his last patient. He was preparing medicines and saying how good homeopathic medicine was—could do all types of treatment. I remember asking him, “Kaka-babu, is there any medicine to increase intelligence?” Remaining silent a little he said, “Yes, of course there is!” Going home after that one day finding my father alone I had said, “Harsha kakababu has said there is medicine for increasing intelligence too. Wouldn’t it be good if I take it?” Father did not give any reply to this at all. I felt, “Alas, no one at all wants that my intelligence should increase a little and I do a little better in school studies!”

            In the year 1926/27 father decided that he would send me on a change of climate. My elder uncle’s son Moni-dada and my elder brother Noni-dada had come from Calcutta. My elder brother was studying in a college in Calcutta, studying M.A. in Philosophy to become a professor. He did not like government work or clerkship. Be that as it may, it was being decided that I go to Calcutta with them. Father was talking with them about me. I was outside the room, listening. On my lap was my younger brother Amarendra.[13] I was keeping him quiet, very curious about what father would decide. I heard I would have to go with them. And father spoke about my weakness in arithmetic and simultaneously said that I was quite ‘intelligent”. I knew that in English “intelligent” meant clever or sharp. This was the first time I heard something a little good about myself—that too from my father’s mouth. Hearing this I felt very happy. And to prove that I was good began to make great efforts to keep my little brother—who was on my lap—quiet and moved away from there. This was my first prize, I felt, that too from my father!

            Before this I used to hear from my mother in the afternoon the poem, “Meghnad-Bodh.”[14] Mother used to read books father had bought. Besides this, two volumes of the Kashidasi Mahabharata I had read many times and several passages had got committed to memory by themselves. At home a portrait of Satyanarayana was very dear to me. It seemed as if the portrait were smeared with wealth, beauty and friendship. Besides this mother would observe “broto” (vows) and a book titled “Meyeder Brotokotha”[15] that mother used to read I liked very much. Father had bought me some Bengali books like Asutosh’s autobiography[16] in Bengali. I used to be full of respect reading about such great people. Be that as it may, leaving my friends to go to Calcutta I was suffering a lot. But on coming to Calcutta my fever really stopped. After Pyrex at first I had taken Arsenic Album 30 given by my “mejda” (second eldest brother).

            For one year I lived with my grandfather and grandmother in Harinabhi and during the monsoons in Calcutta. Some matters of that time that affected me a lot I am writing down.

Rangoon Uncle and Grandmother and us
Gold Medal To GLB for standing 6th in High School Board Exam
Raisina Bengali High School New Delhi
The Patriarch Nyayaratna Motilal Bhattacharya of Harinabhi

[1] Translated from Bengali by his son Pradip Bhattacharya.

[2] 20.2.1918-4.9.1988. Lt. Col. (Retd) Corp of Signals, 1942 commission.

[3] Married to Satish Chandra Mahapatra of Baripada, Orissa.

[4] Sindhu Lal was the 3rd son of Motilal. He was conferred the title of “Rai Sahib” and was Assistant Accountant General in Delhi when he died.

[5] The renowned novelist of Bengal.

[6] Deep-fried puffed pancake.

[7] Sweet condensed milk.

[8] 0.9 kg.

[9] fat-tailed sheep

[10] 37 kg.

[11] Rabindra Lal Bhattacharya who retired from the Indian Air Force.

[12] Later this changed. Raisina Bengali High School gave him a medal for standing 6th in the H.S. Board exam 1933. In ISc he stood 1st in the University 1935; in BSc 1st in the University 1937 despite losing his father suddenly on 4th January 1936 at 6.15 AM. He shifted to Arts and took his MA in English in the II class in 1939 from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, where he also lectured 1938-40. In 1968 he got the LLB degree from Calcutta University and practised law.

[13] Amarendra Lal Bhattacharya who retired from the Indian Meteorological Department.

[14] An epic by Michael Madhusudan Dutt on the killing of Ravana’s son Meghnad or Indrajit.

[15] Tales of vows/fasts for women.

[16] Sir Asutosh Mukherjee, Vice-Chancellor, Calcutta University for five terms.

Filed Under: IN THE NEWS, STORIES, ESSAYS & POSTS

  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to page 3
  • Go to page 4
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 10
  • Go to Next Page »

Footer

Recent Posts

  • ‘“This is not Heaven,” said Yudhishthira. He reviled the gods and dharma.’
  • WHEN THE EIGHT VAJRAS ASSEMBLED
  • The Rama Story

Tags

Bangladesh Bankimchandra Barbareek Bengali Bhima Bhishma boloji Book Reviews Critical Edition Desire Dharma Draupadi Draupadi Dream Trust Drona Essays Ghatotkacha Grantha script Harivansha Indraprastha Jaimini Jaiminiya Mahabharata. Journal Kalpataru Karna krishna Mahabharata McGrath memoir Mokshadharma Murshidabad News novel P. Lal Panchakanya Panchala popularity Ramayana refugee Satya Chaitanya shakuni Sri Aurobindo Statesman Vande Mataram video Yudhishthira

Follow Me

  • Facebook
  • Linked In
  • Twitter

CONTACT ME

Search

Archives

  • January 2023 (1)
  • September 2022 (1)
  • August 2022 (2)
  • July 2022 (1)
  • June 2022 (2)
  • February 2022 (1)
  • January 2022 (2)
  • November 2021 (1)
  • September 2021 (5)
  • January 2021 (2)
  • December 2020 (1)
  • September 2020 (1)
  • July 2020 (3)
  • June 2020 (1)
  • March 2020 (1)
  • January 2020 (2)
  • December 2019 (13)
  • October 2019 (1)
  • September 2019 (1)
  • August 2019 (2)
  • April 2019 (2)
  • March 2019 (4)
  • February 2019 (1)
  • January 2019 (2)
  • December 2018 (1)
  • November 2018 (4)
  • October 2018 (2)
  • September 2018 (2)
  • August 2018 (4)
  • July 2018 (4)
  • June 2018 (5)
  • April 2018 (3)
  • March 2018 (2)
  • February 2018 (1)
  • January 2018 (1)
  • November 2017 (2)
  • October 2017 (7)
  • August 2017 (1)
  • July 2017 (2)
  • June 2017 (11)
  • May 2017 (19)

Copyright © 2023 Dr. Pradip Bhattacharya