Pradip Bhattacharya

Indologist, Mahabharata scholar

STORIES, ESSAYS & POSTS

Revising the Critical Edition of the Mahabharata: an approach through the attempt to strip Draupadi

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This paper was presented in the Mahabharata Manthan International Conference organised in July 2017 in New Delhi by the Draupadi Dream Trust, and published in volume 1, pages 119-140, of the 2 volume book of proceedings, “Mahabharata Manthan” (B.R. Publishing Corporation, Delhi-110052.

In his detailed review of the volumes, this is what Major General and Indologist Shekhar Kumar Sen writes: “It is a veritable storehouse of information. First he has discussed very thoroughly the need to take a “hard look” at the CE since it had not taken into consideration so many important versions extant at the time of its writing, e.g., the Nepali palm-leaf Mss, the Razmnama, the Arabic translation and so many others. Also, he reiterates, the inconsistencies, contradictions and repetitions that exist in the CE must be removed. He has listed out many of these, underlining the need for revision. One of these is the episode of stripping of Draupadi. And that is his second proposition – he has quoted incident after incident from the entire epic and cited collateral evidence from other works in Sanskrit literature to establish that Draupadi was dragged by the hair, insulted in the assembly in the Sabha Parva but never stripped by Duhshasana. Still the CE includes it. This view has given rise to a lot of controversy but the author’s well-laid arguments can hardly be ignored.  Other eminent scholars of the epic too have had serious reservations about the CE. Pradip has reproduced their views in support of his arguments. In short, this is a very comprehensive, informative and readable article. It also has three interesting plates depicting the disrobing of Draupadi.”

DESIRE UNDER THE KALPATARU

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“Man is born unto trouble,” says Job, “as the sparks fly upward,” and, he points out, this “affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the ground.” An engrossing study of the root cause of this “trouble” was made in the West, in this century, by Eugene O’Neill in Desire Under The Elms. But are we Indians aware of Vyasa’s fascinating portrayal of “Desire Under the Kalpataru” in the Mahabharata? Such a remorseless expose of the frailties that the flesh is heir to, spanning the entire gamut of human existence, is unrivalled in world literature. Leaving aside the sheer narrative brilliance of Vyasa, it is the perception of over-arching symbols, such as the Kalpataru, which gradually dawns on the readers, stirring the innermost depths of their psyche, as they voyage across the one hundred thousand verses of this ocean among epics; that fascinates them, compelling them to return, time and again, to the Mahabharata.

             To appreciate the thematic brilliance of this concept, it is first necessary to recount the story of the Kalpataru, the Wish-fulfilling Tree, described in eidetic detail by Krsna in the beginning of chapter 15 of the Gita. Its roots are in the heavens and its branches permeate the cosmos, paralleled in occidental mythology by the Norse Yggdrasill. The parable has been recounted by P. Lal in his introductory essay to Barbara Harrison’s Learning About India, and by Christopher Isherwood in Vedanta for the West.

Into a room full of children at play walks the proverbial “mama” (maternal uncle)” who invariably “knows better.” He tells them to lift up their eyes, look out of the window and see the huge Kalpataru outside. He tells them that they should cast aside their silly indoor games, and go to the tree which will grant them whatever they wish – the real stuff! The children rush out, stand under the all-encompassing branches, and ask. They ask for what all children crave: toys and sweets. The tree grants them their wishes. But with it, they also get a bonus: the built-in opposite of the wish! Along with the toys they get boredom; and with the sweets they get tummy-ache. Sure that something has gone wrong with their wishing, the children ask for bigger toys and sweeter sweets. The Tree obliges, along with greater boredom and more painful stomach-ache. Time passes. The children grow up into young men and women. Their wishes change with their age. Now they “know more”. They ask for wealth, fame, power and sex. Unquestioningly, the tree grants their desire, but also gifts them cupidity, insomnia, anxiety and frustration. Time passes. The askers are now old. They gather in three groups under the tree. The first group exclaims that all this is an illusion. They are fools and have learned nothing. The second group is “wiser” and decides to wish better next time. They are greater fools and have learned less than nothing. The third group, disgusted with everything, asks for death. The tree grants their desire and, with it, its opposite, re-birth, and under the same tree. For, where can one be born, or re-born, but within the cosmos! They are the most foolish of all.

All this while, one child has been unable to move out of the room. Being lame, he was pushed aside in the rush to the door as his playmates ran to get to the tree. He has been riveted to the window, watching the lila (the play) of the Kalpataru unfold itself. He has watched his friends make their wishes, get them along with their built-in opposites and suffer; yet, compulsively, continue to make more wishes. Transfixed by this fascinating play and counterplay of desire and its fruits, a profound swell of compassion wells up in the heart of this lame child, reaching out to his companions. In that process he forgets to wish for anything (not even remembering to forget). In that moment of spontaneous compassion for others, he has sliced through the roots of the cosmic tree with the sword of non-attachment, of nishkama karma. He, alone, is the liberated one, the mukta-purusha.

It is this parable of the Kalpataru, whose roots are upwards and whose branches pervade the cosmos, which is the over-arching symbol encompassing the Mahabharata.

Pururava, monarch of the lunar dynasty, is the first of those driven by desire, who believe “The world will be your wish- fulfilling cow” (Gita 3.10). Infatuated by the heavenly courtesan Urvashi, his desire to possess her is granted. However, it is inevitably accompanied with the penalty of losing the very object of his desire. In the agony of that loss, he even goes mad. This is not the only instance of the fruit desire bore for this king. Pururava once stole the wealth of some Brahmins out of greed, and refused to return it.

As smoke smothers fire,

as dust films glass,

as womb enfolds seed,

So greed destroys judgment.

Greed is a fierce fire.

It destroys judgment.

Greed is a fierce fire.

It destroys judgment.

It fools the wise.

It destroys the atman.  (Gita, 3.38-39)

He was cursed by the Brahmins with loss of his prosperity, the precise opposite of his desire.

Pururava’s grandson is Nahusa, who is crowned king of the gods in Indra’s absence, but then falls prey to desire for Saci, Indra’s wife. The result is that he is cursed by the sages, whom he forces to carry his palanquin to meet Saci, and turns into a python, crawling in the dust.

Nahusa’s son is Yayati, the most famous instance in world mythology of lust and its doom. Driven by lust, he possesses Sarmistha in secret, and is struck with senility. Those very sons, “children of his heart, ” whom he has fathered on Devayani and Sarmistha, scornfully turn away from his anguished plea to assume his decrepitude so that he can enjoy the pleasures of the flesh for some time more. Even when that wish is granted, he finds that lust only consumes and does not satisfy. Later, desiring heaven, he achieves it, only to be thrown down from there because of his overweening pride in his merit. Yayati is, indeed, the archetypal figure of desire and its fruits as given by this cosmos, which is the Wish-Fulfilling Tree.

Yayati’s wife, Devayani, is herself a telling example of this parable. Obsessed by the desire to avenge the humiliation suffered at the hands of Sarmistha, she achieves her goal of turning the princess into her hand-maiden. Eager to prove that despite being a Brahmin’s daughter she can best the daughter of the Danava King, she over-rules the objections of the reluctant Yayati to an inter-caste marriage, and compels him to marry her. Soon, thereafter, she loses her chosen husband to her hand-maid! Further, not only has she only she only two sons by him while Sarmistha has three, but also none of her sons inherit the throne, despite being elder. It is Sarmistha’s youngest son, Puru, who is chosen by Yayati as dynast for having willingly parted with his youth for his father’s sake. In a similar way, one of his descendants, Devavrata, will sacrifice his youth to subserve  his father’s sexual appetite.

It is in the same dynasty that Samvarana is born, who is so sun-struck by Tapati, daughter of Surya, that he neglects his kingdom. Significantly, as with his descendants Santanu and Pandu and his ancestor Pururava, desire seizes him in its constricting coils while he is engaged in hunting. Lust goes hand-in-hand with anger and cruelty:

Her body shone

Like a straight flame…

She stood, a black-

Eyed beauty on the hill-top,

Statuesque,

Like a golden girl.

The hill, its creepers,

Its bushes, all flamed

With the golden beauty

Of the golden girl…

She had trapped his mind

And his eyes. He stood

Transfixed, as if tied

With ropes, as if senseless. (Adi parva, 173.26-28, 31)

This is precisely the point that Krsna makes in the Gita, that lust, hiding in the senses, destroys judgment like an all-consuming flame. Samvarana’s  condition, when Tapati suddenly disappears, is like that of Pururava bereft of Urvashi:

Like a man crazed

He wandered in the woods

… the love smitten

king fell on the ground.

The imagery used by Samvarana in his appeals to Tapati revolves around raging fire, senselessness, fury, loss of self-control—all the typical signs associated with the madness desire is seen to inflict on its victims.

Then a fearful-faced messenger came

And shouted loudly, thrice:

Lost! Lost! Lost!

And I fell from Nandana.                               (Adi parva, 89. 17-20)

The fourth, Samvarana, gets his desire at the cost of his kingdom. Neither he, nor his descendant Shantanu, appear to have drawn any lessons from the tragic lives of their ancestors.

Ironically, Shantanu’s name means “the child of controlled passions,” as he was born to his parents in their old age. He seems to have a special penchant for unknown tribal women encountered by the riverside:

He stood there,

Entranced,

All his body

In horripilation.

With both eyes

He drank in her beauty

And wanted

To drink more.    (Adi Parva, 97.28)

Smitten by the sight of Ganga—who had wantonly solicited his father Pratipa and was politely rejected as not belonging to the same caste — he unthinkingly accepts all her conditions so that he can make her his own:

Captivated by her charms,

The king was not conscious of

The months, seasons, years that rolled by.

The lord of men enjoyed her whenever he wished. (Adi parva, 98.11,12)

The Kalpataru grants him that sexual gratification which he so passionately desires like Pururava, Yayati and Samvarana. But, along with it, he has to undergo the repeated experience of watching seven of his sons being consigned to the river, one after another, year after year, by that same object of his violent infatuation, Ganga. Well might we say,

“La Belle Dame sans Merci

Hath thee in thrall!”

In his old age, this “child of controlled passions” is infatuated with yet another maiden-by-the-river, Matsyagandha, fish-odorous, who has been transformed by the sage Parasara into Yojanagandha, lotus-fragrant-for-a-yojana (a unit of distance), in return for having enjoyed her body. Once again, Santanu has no regard for propriety, status, or the rights of Devavrata, his Crown Prince. He must have her:

She was fragrant,

Beautiful,

Santanu saw her,

And desired her…

The fire of desire

Ravaged his body

…desire maddened him.

He kept  thinking of

The daughter of the fisherman. (Adi parva, 100.49,56,75)

The symptoms could virtually be describing Samvarana’s state after Tapati vanishes. The same discrimination-destroying, judgment-clouding fire of desire afflicts both Samvarana and Santanu. In both cases, it is the kingdom which suffers. Santanu himself, having learned nothing from his experience with Ganga, dies, leaving behind two children, both weaklings. both die prematurely. The elder, Citrangada, dies unmarried. The younger, Vicitravirya, is another instance of the Kalpataru in action. Under the instructions of Satyavati (Santanu’s second wife), Bhishma (his son by Ganga) obtains not one, but two brides for his foster brother, so that the future of the dynasty is assured:

Both were tall.

black, wavy hair.

Fingernails and toe nails

Painted red, pointed.

Hips round and full.

Swelling and large breasts.

Vicitravirya,

driven by passion, became

A victim of his own lust.  (Adi parva, 102.65, 66)

He dies after seven years without any issue. Thus, the dynasty of Pururava comes to an end.

What has Satyavati got out of the Kalpataru? As a nubile maiden, her dearest desire was to rid herself of the powerful fishy odour. This she was granted, at the cost of her virginity. After Santanu met her, the desire of her father (or foster-father, if we accept the story that king Uparicara Vasu of Cedi was her real father) is that through her he should be the dynast of Hastinapura. The Kalpataru grants this wish through what becomes renowned as the most terrifying of all vows: Devavrata becomes Bhishma (one who has taken the vow of celibacy) so that Satyavati’s children alone succeed to Santanu’s throne. Santanu himself does not live long after this marriage, and Satyavati becomes the Queen Mother, with minor children. She sees one killed in a skirmish, and the other die of consumption, both without issue. Now, both the Dasa-king, her father, and she find that the greatest obstacle to perpetuating the dynasty of Santanu is precisely that very vow which they had demanded as the security for ensuring their hegemony over Hastinapura in perpetuity through their children! Bhishma stonily refuses to break his vow and father progeny on the widows of Vicitravirya by following the custom of niyoga (sexual union with another’s wife).

Satyavati, like the people clustered under the Kalpataru in the parable, has not learned anything from her experiences, so far, of desire and its fruits. “Hungry for grandsons,” she summons Vyasa, her illegitimate son by Parasara, and orders him to practice niyoga on Ambika and Ambalika. Vyasa advises a year-long vow on their so that they purify themselves of the lust they have been tainted with through seven years with his foster brother. Satyavati cannot wait. Her judgment is warped by her insensate desire to have grandsons immediately. She leads her daughters-in-law to believe that Bhishma will be coming to them. Hence, being wholly unprepared for the horrendous looks and malodorous body of Vyasa, they give birth to the blind Dhritarastra and the anaemic, jaundiced Pandu. Even now, Satyavati has learned nothing. She had wanted grandsons at any cost. The Tree fulfilled her desire; but, along with it, gave her offspring incapable of being proper monarchs. Yet, she again asks Ambika to like with Vyasa. Ambika deceives her, and sends in her maid instead, who is without fear and aversion, and has only profound respect for the sage. Their child is the virtuous Vidura, possibly the sole true grandson of Satyavati, born of her son and of a Sudra (low caste) maid like herself. He is the only one born whole in mind and in body, and is untouched by the craving to rush to the Kalpataru. He, too, however, dies childless. Her other grandson, Pandu, dies, like his putative father Vicitravirya, without having been able to father progeny.

Thus, in her lifetime, empire-hungry and progeny-hungry Satyavati sees her husband, her two sons and one grandson die; the eldest grandson born blind; the youngest one not qualified to be king, being base-born, despite being the only fully healthy and virtuous issue, (although by that argument her sons, too, should not be kings, as she is a fisherman’s daughter. Hence, probably, the legend of her having been fathered by the king of Cedi on an apsara-turned-fish).

Perhaps, after Pandu’s death, the coming of the Pandavas to the Hastina court and the sibling rivalry which breaks out, Satyavati might have come to realize what it means to ask of the Kalpataru. And, perhaps because of that realization, she meekly obeys her son Vyasa when he advises her to leave the court and retire to the forest with her daughters-in-law:

The green years of the earth

are gone. . . . .

Do not be a witness

to the suicide

of your own race.

Satyavati and her grand daughter-in-law Kunti share various similarities. Uparicara Vasu of Cedi sends off his fish-born daughter Matsyagandha to be brought up by a Dasa-chief among fishermen. Pritha is the daughter of King Sursasena of the Vrishnis who gifts her to his cousin Kuntibhoja, who renames her Kunti, respectively. Both Satyavati and Kunti have pre-marital sons. In both cases the issues are discarded and reappear full grown, as does Devavrata. One appears before us as the sage Krsna-Dvaipayana Vyasa, the Dark Island-born Arranger. The other comes as Vasusena, born with the wealth of skin-armour and ear rings, also called Karna. Both Parasara and Surya gift-armour and ear rings, also called Karna. Both Parasara and Surya gift Matsyagandha and Kunti with unimpaired virginity as the reward for becoming willing partners in their concupiscence. This virginity is not merely a physical attribute, but very much of a psychological quality with they share with Draupadi, who is said to regain her virginity before living in turn with each of her five husbands. In that respect, Draupadi is carrying on a special trait found long back in the ancestry of the family into which she marries.. Yayati’s daughter Madhavi also had this boon of regaining her virginity even after giving birth to a child. On the strength of that, Galava loaned her to Haryasva, Divodasa, Usinara and Visvamitra to fulfil his guri-daksina (graduation fee pad by pupil to teacher).

The precise opposite of this can be seen in the Madri type of woman, who is dependent on what others think, regardless of what her real opinions might be, and always acts as a female counterpart to a male and is not “one in herself.” The psychologically virgin woman is not, however, thus dependent. Dr M. Esther Harding writes in Women’s Mysteries (Rider, 1971), “as virgin, she is not influenced by the considerations that make the nonvirgin woman, whether married or not, trim her sails and adapt herself to expediency…she does what she does not because of any desire to please, not to be liked, or to be approved, even by herself; not because of any desire to gain power over another, to catch his interest or love, but because of any desire to gain power over another, to catch his interest or love, but because what she does is true. Her actions may, indeed, be unconventional. She is what she is because that is what she is.” (pp.125-6) such a personality is wholly integrated and autonomous-in-herself, defining herself in her terms and not dependant on others for finding and acting out her role in life.

Kunti is by no means the conventional wife typified in Madri. She is one found fit by Durvasa to be the custodian of the mighty spell which forces even gods to respond to her desires for progeny. It is she who, single-handed, provides Pandu with five foster-children through herself and through Madri, and guards them amid all the venal politics of the Kuru court till they can hold their own in life.

What did Kunti ask of the Tree? Her first desire was to test the efficacy of Durvasa’s mantra. This desire was granted promptly, swiftly followed by the anguish of having to abandon its fruit and , later by the excruciating agony of being forced to remain a silent spectator to this death at the hands of her fourth son. In abandoning her first born, she is akin not only to her “direct” grandmother-in-law Satyavati, but also to her grandfather-in-law’s first wife, Ganga, who threw into the river seven sons, one after another. Of course, Pritha herself is her father’s discarded offspring.

Kunti’s second desire is for Pandu. Pandu is the only one in the Kuru dynasty to go to a svayamvara (husband-choosing), and this is ere Kunti chooses him above everyone else. Immediately thereafter, she loses him to Madri, who is brought by Bhishma to Hastinapura after payment of heavy bride-price, in accordance with the Kuru tradition. So, the Tree granted her Pandu, but with it , gave her the opposite: the anguish of losing the object of her desire to another and, ultimately, seeing him die in the arms of that another:-

Princes of Vahlika! (she tells Madri)

You are fortunate indeed…

I never had the chance to see

his face radiant in intercourse. (Adi parva, 25.23)

Even in death, Kunti is not allowed by Madri to accompany her chosen beloved. It is Madri who immolates herself with Pandu’s body.

Kunti’s sole desire now is to establish her sons as rulers of a kingdom. This desire, too, is granted. But in its wake she has to undergo a triple agony: first, she has to witness the enslavement of her children and the attempted stripping of her daughter-in-law in the royal court; then, she has to bear their exile to the forests for thirteen years; ultimately, she has to see her first-born slain, when defenceless, by her fourth-born, at the urging of her nephew, Krsna, who alone, besides herself and her first son, knows of the relationship. How tragically ironic it is that, by revealing the secret of this relationship on the eve of the battle to Karna, Kunti should have effectively ensured the death of Karna and the victory of her other sons. For, while they know only that they are fighting to slay the detested charioteer’s son, he knows that he is facing his cognate brothers, whom he has sworn not to harm!

Kunti desires that marriage should not sunder the unity of her five sons. Hence she strives to ensure that Draupadi does not belong only to Arjuna who won her. The Kalpataru grants her this too, with the consequence that Draupadi, though five-husbanded, is actually anathavat, without a husband, to protect her from molestation by Duhsasana, Jayadratha, Kirmira and Kicaka. None of the five husbands turns back to help her, let alone wait at her side, when she falls down, dying on the slopes of the Himalayas during their last journey together.

Like Kunti, Draupadi’s burning desire, born as she is full-grown out of the sacrificial fire, is to rule over the kingdom of Hastinapura and thus avenge the humiliation of her father at the hands of the Kauravas. It is worthwhile, at this point, to note that although it is the Pandavas who imprison Drupada at Drona’s command, his vengeance is directed against the throne of Hastinapura, of which Drona is a servant. This is a legacy of the ancient rivalry between the Pancalas and the Kurus which began when Samvarana left his kingdom defenceless in his infatuated pursuit of Tapati. Drupada arranges the contest for Draupadi’s hand in such a fashion that only an archer of Arjuna’s skill can succeed, and through that alliance he hopes to wreak his revenge.

Draupadi’s interaction with the Kalpataru is indeed an engrossing spectacle. Her desire for a kingdom is granted as Indraprastha comes into being, “a miracle of rare device.” Along with this she is granted her first taste of sweet revenge when she sees Duryodhana flounder into the pool created by illusion. The consequences are terrible: first, the kingdom is gambled away; then, she herself is unspeakably humiliated in public. Like Satyavati, Draupadi does not learn from these experiences. Her consuming passion remains revenge, now an intensely personal raging desire. That, too, is granted her by none other than the Kalpataru itself, incarnated in the person of Krsna (as he describes himself in the Gita.) She gets a field of ashes to rule over, with not a single son left alive to enjoy life with.

What of Draupadi’s desire for Arjuna— that desire which Yudhishthira coldly cites, without so much as a backward glance at her prone, dying form, as he cause of her inability to reach heaven in the physical body? By the time it was Arjuna’s time to live with her, he was away as an exile in the course of which he had no scruples in obliging the amorous Ulupi, wooing Citrangada and abducting Subhadra. This last he did only after obtaining the consent of Yudhishthira. Vyasa does not tell us that the eldest Pandava bothered not to pass on the information to Draupadi. He was, perhaps, pleased that Arjuna should have fallen in love elsewhere and ,particularly, that it should have cemented an alliance with the powerful Krsna  clan. So, when her beloved Arjuna returned to Indraprastha, it was with Subhadra, who had his heart. The greatest archer won her, but was never hers. Even in the thirteen-year exile, she was bereft of his company, for he was sent off by Yudhishthira to obtain celestial weapons. When he returned, it was as a eunuch, merely enquiring of her how she had managed to escape the murderous clutches of Kicaka’s henchmen, who had dragged her off to be burnt with his corpse. Never did Brihannala (Arjuna’s name during the period he had turned eunuch) raise a voice in her defence, either in the Kaurava court, or in the court of Virata (where the Pandavas had to live incognito).

Draupadi’s relationship with the Kalpataru goes back to her previous birth, as narrated by Vyasa to Drupada, Apparently, she had carried out severe penance and begged off Siva that he grant her a husband. The moment she wished this, it was granted, but with a five-fold bonus, because, it seems, she had said “husband” five times! Thus, the cosmos grants her intense desire, but also provides its built-in opposite by multiplying it five-fold.

In being five-husbanded, she resembles her mother-in-law Kunti, who has “known” five men or gods: Surya, Pandu, Dharma, Vayu and Indra. She is also like her great-grandmother-in-law Satyavati, in being of unknown parentage and brought up by foster parents. Both are famous for the enchanting odour emanating from their dark bodies. Satyavati is renowned as the dark (“kali”) “Yojanagandha” (whose scent extends for a yojana); while Draupadi-Krishna’s complexion is like that of the blue lotus and the sweet scent of her body wafts for a krosa. Both are left with no children. One (Satyavati) built up the huge Kaurava dynasty, while the other (Draupadi) annihilated it. Neither seems to have learnt anything from the experience of making wish after wish under Kalpataru.

The two handicapped brothers, Dhritarashtra and Pandu, themselves exemplify the Kalpataru syndrome. Pandu is one of the rare few in the epic who, like his ancestor Yayati, realizes how he has victimized himself. Not content with being the chosen of Kunti, he espouses Madri, and his inveterate appetites lead to the incurring of the fatal curse. We recall Shakespeare’s unforgettable lines describing lust as:

… murderous, bloody, full of blame

Savage, extreme, rude, cruel.

Perversely hunting down a deer-sage in the coital act, Pandu himself is cursed to die in the act of intercourse. Thus, his love of the hunt is duly gratified, but with what tragic consequences! Pandu exclaims bitterly:

Noble blood is of little help.

Deluded by passions, the best

Of men turn wicked, and reap

the evil that they sow.

My father was born noble,

his father was noble too.

Lust was his ruin, he died

While still a youth.

And in his lustful field

I was sown by Krsna Dvaipayana…

And I am a victim of the hunt!

My mind is full of killing…     (Adi parva, 119.2-5)

Obviously, despite all the ancestral praise-chanting by the sutas and magadhas, Yayati’s descendants have not learnt anything either from the history of their ancestors, or  from their own harrowing experiences. It is this fatal attraction of Desire, which people are aware of, yet deliberately give in to, which has been expressed so poignantly by Shakespeare in sonnet 129:

Mad in pursuit and in possession so. . .

A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe.  .   .

All this the world well knows; yet none knows well

To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

Pandu is perhaps the clearest instance of the ultimate end of Desire. Ironically, when Kunti initially refuses to accede to his requests for surrogate children, she cites the legend of Vyusitasva and Bhadra, with the telling words:

So strong was their passion,

So frequent their indulgence,

that he soon fell a victim

To consumption.                (Adi parva, 121.17,18)

Despite this, and although Pandu is fully aware of its fruits,

Passion overpowered him

it seemed that he wanted

To commit suicide, as it were.

First he lost his sense,

Then, clouded by lust,

he sought the loss of his life.  (Adi parva, 125. 121-3)

The tragedy of these desire-driven kings of the lunar dynasty is their compulsive refusal to heed the agony of generations of

“… pale kings, and princes too,

Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; ”

Whose

“starved lips in the gloam

With horrid warning gaped wide.”

That dire warning,

“La Belle Dame sans Merci

Hath thee in thrall!”

though voiced with desperate urgency by Yayati, and despite its destructive aftermath being exemplified repeatedly in the lives of Pururuva, Nahusa, Samvarana, Santanu, Vicitravirya and Pandu, goes unheeded by the hungry generations of their descendants.

How closely this exemplifies the warning of Krsna!~

Greed is a fierce fire.

It destroys judgment.

It fools the wise.

It hides in the mind,

The intellect and the senses.

It destroys the atman

By working through them.

Therefore, first control the senses      (Gita, 3.39-41)

As for Dhritarashtra, his intense craving for being king—- which he feels to be his birthright as the eldest—is duly obliged, but at the cost of his entire progeny. He is left alive to experience the fruits of desire after the Kurukshetra holocaust. His predicament is expressed in his own lament to Sanjaya:

“My own sons were impulsive, and disliked me for I was old and blind. I endured it, because I loved them, because my state was miserable. I was a fond old father to a son whose folly grew daily.” (Adi parva, 1.143)

Neither of the two brothers learns anything from his experiences of desire and its fruits. The same holds true for the unusual duo of Duryodhana and Karna.

The case of Duryodhana is so obvious as not to require elaboration. However, in Karna’s case it is easy to miss the finer shades of the play and counter-play of light-and-shade as the myriad leaves of the Kalpataru and its counless branches respond to his intense cravings. Karna is the egotistical sublime paralleling Bhishma in his own esteem. His consuming desire for public status is granted almost miraculously in the tournament arena, but did Karna ever perform the duties of a king with respect to Anga? Is not his kingship veritably but in name? Again, the craving to acquire supremacy in weapon-craft is granted; but, along with it, the curse that this precious knowledge will desert him in his greatest need. Perhaps it is Karna who experiences, in the most direct form possible, what it means to desire anything. The fruits come to him almost immediately. His triumphant obtaining of the infallible weapon from Indra in return for the slicing –off of skin-armour also turns out fruitless, as he is unable to use it against Arjuna. Karna’s intense desire for fame is gratified when he finds out that he is not only royal, but also half-god. Yet at what cost? He can never share the joy of kinship with his brothers, and must bear the recurrent whiplash of their contempt for the charioteer’s son. But, most of all, his life-long desire to know who he truly is becomes the root cause of his destruction. That knowledge brings in its wake the pledge not to slay his brothers, with the inevitable implication that he must die at their hands. And so we are presented with the heart-rending spectacle of the eldest Kaunteya being shot down, unarmed, by the fourth son of Kunti, at the behest of her nephew.

Perhaps, it is only Kunti who learns something about this Kalpataru-lila. Each of her three major choices bears soul-searing consequences: Each of her three major choices bears soul-searing consequences: calling Surya; choosing Pandu; insisting on her sons sharing Draupadi. Notice her peculiar predicament each time she is told by Pandu whom she must lie with. She has no choice in the matter. The only time she did choose, she had to abandon the fruit of that union: Karna. Yet, when she is made to pass on her power to Madri, Pandu does not impose on his second wife any similar directive. Madri is free to choose! Possibly, it is a result of the realization of the inexorable nature of desire and its fruits that , after the war, Kunti refuses to stay on with her children as Queen Mother. She insists on following Dhritarashtra and Gandhari into the forest. Unlike Satyavati, these three have witnessed the suicide of their progeny; Kunti has five sons but not a single grandson and no husband, despite the fathers of her three sons being alive. Gandhari and Draupadi have husbands, but nothing else left. It is Kunti who has learned. That is why Iravati Karve in Yuganta imagines Kunti telling Gandhari and Dhritarashtra that, instead of trying to escape from the forest fire, they should walk towards it with open arms as a liberator from this harsh world, where we draw our breath in pain, where, as King Lear said, we are bound

Upon a wheel of fire, that (our) own tears

Do scald like molten lead.

What of Gandhari? Yoked to a blind husband, she would have looked forward to giving birth to the first Kuru scion. Indeed, she conceived first, but carried the embryo for two years. By then Kunti had given birth to Yudhishthira and was pregnant with Bhima. Vyasa fulfilled her desire to be a mother, but this was followed by its opposite: her sons became wicked, arrogant, and disobedient. In open court, Duryodhana defied her commands to accept Krishna’s peace proposals. If Draupadi, though five-husbanded is without a husband, then Gandhari, despite having a hundred sons is sonless, much like her grandmother-in-law Satyavati who, despite having two sons, ended up having none. In both cases, the ambition to become Queen Mother is fulfilled, only to find the sweet fruition of an earthly crown turning into the bitter ashes of disillusionment.

Perhaps the most striking image of desire and attachment in its most intense and complex form, after Yayati, is Gangadatta-Devavrata-Bhisma. Bhishma and Krsna are two colossi bestriding the Mahabharatan universe, one as the mightiest bulwark of an age which does not wish to pass away; and the other as the herald of a new epoch. Bhisma’s dearest desire—and in this he parallels his ancestor Puru vis-à-vis Yayati—is to see his father happy; a father whom he has not known from birth; a father who has mutely witnessed Ganga consigning seven siblings of his to the river; a father to whom his mother hands him over in teenage and disappears. For the sake of fulfilling this desire, Devavrata sacrifices not only his paternal heritage but also his personal marital right and the right to receive the offerings of his progeny in death. But, beyond this, he also sacrifices the paramount, super-ordinate goal, the welfare of the kingdom and its people, which is the reason for the very appellative RAJA, one who looks after the general weal, not the welfare of only one father. The Tree grants his desire. Santanu is beside himself with joy, and grants his son what looks like a boon but is actually a curse: the power to hold death at bay, and to give in to its call only at will. Is it a boon at all to be not only a witness, like Gandhari and Kunti, to the suicide of one’s race, but be an active participant in it, fighting on the side which one knows to be in the wrong and against those whom one loves and knows to be in the right? Is it a boon to be able to hold death at bay and slay millions of innocent soldiers continuously over a period of ten days? The pangs of conscience multiplied over decades of silent witnessing of the poisoning of Bhima, the gutting of the lacquer house, the cheating in the dice-game, the stripping of Draupadi, the exiling of the Pandavas— are all these the scorpion-stings symbolized in the bed-of-arrows on which he like torturing himself, as if expiating his inaction, until the holocaust is over, and the suicide of the dynasty is complete?

Bhishma is also responsible for acting indiscriminately as the instrument of his stepmother for fulfilling her insensate longing for grandchildren. Instead of getting one bride for her son, he abducts all the three daughters of the king of Kasi. In doing so, he fulfils his desire to establish the supremacy of Hastinapura before all the kings. In that process, however, he also sows the seeds of his own destruction by arousing the fury of the woman scorned —-Amba. So strong is his attachment to his vow (the change of his name to Bhishma itself connotes that the two—man and vow—are one, knit together in an indissoluble bond) that it steels him against all human obligations. Caught up in that intense egotism, he destroys the lives of the three princesses of Kasi. His desire to please his father appears t have undergone a metamorphosis into an adamantine will to please himself. We find him turning into the egotistical Sublime of the epic. As for the fruits of his desire, they grow on the field of Kurukshetra, amid the quagmire of blood, sweat and gore, littered with grinning skulls and broken, bones. The Kalpataru granted his desire: his vow remained unbroken, but was it worth the cost of eighteen aksauhinis (a very large unit of counting) and a world bereft of youth, peopled by widows and infants, echoing to the sound of wailing women and lit up by the smoky flames of innumerable funeral pyres?

Between Krsna and Bhishma a strange parallelism exists. Both are the eighth-born and the only surviving sons of their parents. Each is the unquestioned leader of the opposing party in the fratricidal strife. Both are renowned not only as warriors par-excellence, but also as statesman and masters of the scriptures. Vyasa portrays two sublime moments in which these two similar, yet opposing, proponents of two dharmas, two ages, meet. One is in the Rajasuya yajna of Yudhishthira, where Bhishma explains why the arghya ought to be offered to Krsna as pre-eminent among all present. The other is on the battlefield, when Krsna, furious with Arjuna for failing to control Bhishma’s unremitting slaughter of the army, breaks his own vow and rushes to slay him. In words of exquisite beauty, Bhishma welcomes death at Krishna’s hands. But this is not granted him. The fruit of his desire is to be slain by the eunuch Shikhandi, whom he knows to be Amba reborn. But the real point is that Krsna has no hesitation in breaking his vow of remaining a non-combatant where lives need to be saved. This is where he differs totally from Bhishma’s enslavement to his vow, to his twisted dharma of loyalty to Dhritarashtra. Unlike Bhishma, Krsna never hesitates to root out wickedness, be it in the form of his kith and kin (Kamsa, Shishupala, Satadhanva), or otherwise.

Krsna appears to have had two major desires: the bringing together of carious clans such as the Vrsnis, Andhakas, Bhojas, Yadavas, Kukutas, etc. to form a single community at Dvaraka, safe from the depredations of the imperialistic ambitions of Magadha and Hastinapura. This was granted him. As its counterpoint, he witnessed his kith and kin destroy one another in a drunken orgy of senseless violence, with Krsna himself joining in that destructive spree.

His second desire, subsuming the first one, was the establishment of an empire based upon dharma, righteousness, doing away with warring petty kingdoms and bringing them all under a single sovereign of impeccable rectitude. This, too, was granted him. But what subjects were left for Dharmaraja Yudhishthira to rule over? A filed of ashes filled with millions of mourning widows! The Stri Parva is a merciless commentary on the fruit of Krishna’s desire and has found expression in words of unsurpassed poignancy voiced by Gandhari as she stands in Kurukshetra:

“See, Krsna, where Duryodhana, general of eleven aksauhinis, lies bloody-bodied, embracing his mace. His wife and Lakshmana’s mother lies fallen on his breast. My daughters-in-law, bereft of husbands and sons, are running about with hair unbound on this battlefield. Look, look there, the young bride of my Vikarna is desperately trying to drive away the flesh-greedy vultures, but is failing. Jackals have eaten away half of my Durmukha’s face. Kesava, that Abhimanyu, whom people used to describe as more valiant than even you or Arjuna, even he is slain; and mad with grief his bride, the adolescent Uttara, is crying, ” O hero, you were killed just six months after our union.” Alas, Karna’s wife has fallen unconscious on the ground, for the jackals are tearing at the body of Jayadratha, king of Sauvira, and my daughter Duhsala is trying to kill herself while abusing the Pandavas. Oh, oh, look! Duhsala, not finding her husband’s severed head, is running about madly in search of it. Krsna, see, Sakuni is surrounded by vultures, and even that wicked soul will attain heaven because he died in battle.”

What is the end of Krsna? The death of a hero, brought down in a duel of epic dimensions by an opponent of mighty prowess? Hardly, Leaving a Dvaraka filled with wailing widows and children, having seen his elder brother Balarama die, he lies down under a tree and dies of the injury caused by an arrow shot into his foot by a ere tribal hunter, a nisada, not even a warrior out on a hunt. So that is what gets from the Kalpataru along with the granting of his two desires.

This, then, is the picture of “Desire under the Kalpataru”: that desire, if powerful, does get fulfilled, but brings in its wake a price to be paid which, more often than not, outweighs the gratification experienced through fulfilment of the desire. In a way, it is very much like Stevenson’s bottle imp. It is Yayati who sums it up in words of deceptive simplicity that go straight to the mark:

Desire never ends,

Desire grows with feeding,

Like sacrificial flames

Lapping up ghee.

Become the sole lord of

The world’s paddy fields, wheat-fields,

Precious stones, beasts, women…

Still not enough.

Discard desire.

This disease kills. The wicked

Cannot give it up, old age

Cannot lessen it. True happiness

Lies in controlling it.   (Adi parva, 85.12-14)

The experience of Vyasa’s Yayati is echoes by a great epic poet of the occident, John Milton in Paradise Lost:

…They, fondly thinking to allay

Their appetite with lust, instead of fruit

Chewed bitter ashes.

This is the existential experience with pervades the Mahabharata and which Vyasa, the oriental seer-poet, envisions as an outcome of man’s fascination with the Kalpataru. Vyasa creates a marvellously eidetic picture of this symbol in the words of Krsna in the Gita (15.1-3):

Mention is made of a cosmic fig-tree

Rooted above,

whose leaves are said to be the Vedas;

the knower of this fig-tree

is the knower of the Vedas.

Its branches reach out below and above,

its flowers are the objects of the senses;

below the ground flourish more roots,

giving birth to action.

You may not see its real shape,

nor its end, birth and existence.

Slice this fig-tree with non-attachment.

 N.B. The extracts from the Mahabharata and the Gita are from the P. Lal transcreation (Writers Workshop, Calcutta, 1969).

LIMERENCE AND LUST AS ANANKE IN THE MAHABHARATA

By

This paper was published in The International Journal of Cultural Studies & Social Sciences, Vol. IX, No. XII released on 8th September 2018 in the ICCR, Kolkata. The comments of the editors, Bryan Reynolds and Amitava Roy, on the paper are reproduced below.

ABSTRACT[1]

[Vyāsa, master raconteur, creates a many-splendoured web from which there was no escape then nor is there any now. The millennia separating us from Vyāsa have not, surprisingly, dimmed the magic of his art that had entranced commoner, king and sage.

The Mahabharata articulates several themes: Time, Fate, the Quest for the Secret of Immortality and Eternal Youth, Dharma, Blindness, the Disqualified Eldest, the Royal Vices (Desire with its subsets Lust, Greed, Pride and Anger) etc.

In Greek mythology Ananke (Destiny/Daiva), caught in the serpentine coils of Kronos (Time/ Kāla) encompasses the universe and is the mother of the Moirae,[2] the three fates. In the Mahabharata lust and limerence shape the destinies of men. Beginning with Uparichara Vasu, the paper traces how the mortal coils of lust crush generations of Kurus and strangle the Yādavas, virtually decimating the Kshatriyas.

Today humanity is no less enraptured with the erotic, psychedelic mirages created by lust and limerence. We may not be driven to our destruction like the Kurus if we heed Vyāsa’s warning.]

He holds him with his glittering eye

Vyāsa, master raconteur, weaves together a bewildering skein of threads to create a many-splendoured web from which there is no escape, whether then or now. The millennia separating us from Vyāsa have not, surprisingly, dimmed the magic of his art that had entranced Janamejaya the king and Shaunaka the sage:

“Shells were exploding over Leningrad. Enemy bombs were falling on the streets stirring up clouds of dust. On one of those spring days during the siege, Sanscrit language was being heard in the building of the Academy of Sciences on the Neva River embankment, in a room overlooking the side that was safer during the artillery strikes. First, in the original, and then in translation, Vladimir Kalyanov, a specialist on India, was reading Mahabharata, a wonderful monument of Indian literature, to his colleagues, who remained in the besieged city. He had started the translation before the war. He translated during the hard winter of 1941, with no light, no fuel and no bread in the city. Two volumes of books—one published in Bombay and the other in Calcutta—were lying on the table in the room. In the dim light of a wick lamp, he was comparing these two editions of Mahabharata, trying to find the best and the most accurate translation of the Sanscrit into Russian.

“When, after the war the first book of Mahabharata—Ādi Parva was published in Leningrad, Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India, noted with great satisfaction that, even during the hardest times, the translation of the Indian epic into Russian was never interrupted.”[3]

Indubitably, “the story’s the thing, catching conscience of commoner and king.”[4] But what is it in this epic-of-epics, eight times larger than the Iliad and the Odyssey combined, denounced by Winternitz as “a literary monster” and by Oldenberg as “monstrous chaos”, that appeals so irresistibly to modern man in search of his soul, when its immediate audience—the enthroned monarch and the forest-dwelling sage—has long since sunk into the dark backward and abysm of time?

Seeking answers to questions such as these, I find a storyteller par excellence pitilessly laying bare the existential predicament of man in the universe. If, later in the epic, Vyāsa shows us what man has made of man, in the very first book he plumbs the depths of the humiliatingly petty pre-occupations of the Creator’s noblest creation. Indeed, the dilemmas the characters find themselves enmeshed in cannot even be glorified as “tragic”. Perhaps, that is why we find the epic so fascinating—for, how many of us are cast in the heroic mould? We do not have to strain the imagination to reach out and identify with Yayāti or Shāntanu. We need no willing suspension of disbelief to understand why the Brahmin Drona should sell his knowledge to the highest bidder, or why Drupada does not protest too much when his daughter is parcelled out among brothers who had routed him in a skirmish. Passions do, indeed, spin the plot and we are betrayed by what is false within; then, as now, one need not to look for a villain manoeuvring without.[5]

If we resonate in empathy with sunt lacrimae rerum (the sense of tears in human things), we also thrill with joy on meeting the indomitable spirit of woman in an epic that many misconceive as a paradigm of male chauvinism. Whether it is Shakuntalā proudly asserting her integrity and berating mealy-mouthed Dushyanta in his court; or Devayānī passionately demanding that Kacha return her love and imperiously brushing aside a cheating husband; or Kuntī refusing to pervert herself into a mindless son-producing machine to gratify her husband’s twisted desires— time and again it is woman standing forth in all the splendour of her spirited autonomy as a complete human being that rivets our attention and evokes our admiration.

The Mahabharata articulates several themes: Time, Fate, the Quest for Immortality and Eternal Youth, Dharma, Blindness, the Disqualified Eldest, Desire with its sub-sets Limerence, Lust, Greed, Pride and Anger, etc. In Greek mythology Ananke (Destiny or Daiva) entwined in the serpentine coils of Kronos (Time or Kāla) encompasses the universe and is the mother of the Moirae (the three Fates). In the Mahabharata, we find Ananke manifesting as Lust and Limerence[6] in the Lunar Dynasty.

The Beginnings

Sauti the rhapsode tells Shaunaka and his followers that Vyāsa’s kāvya (poem)—which is also an itihāsa (‘thus it happened’)—has three beginnings: “Some read the Mahabharata from the first mantra, others begin   with   the   story of Āstīka; others begin with Uparichara” (Anukramanikā, sloka 53). Section 63 of the Book of Beginnings (Ādi Parva) tells the story of Uparichara Vasu, whom Indra made king of Chedi. Why begin with him? Well, having introduced the poem (Sauti does so too at the beginning of section 60), Vaishampāyana is providing Janamejaya with an introduction to his ancestor Vyāsa whose maternal grandfather Uparichara Vasu fathered fish-odorous Matsyagandhā  on Adrikā, an apsara-turned-fish, in the dark waters of the Yamuna:-

“Desire stirred in him.

Girikā was not near.

Desire maddened him.

Maddened with visions of Girikā…

the semen fell in the waters of the Yamuna…

Adrikā rushed to Vasu’s semen…and swallowed it.”[7]— I.63.46, 50, 57, 59

Girikā, his queen, is herself the product of Kolāhala’s rape of Shuktimatī. Thus, romantic and sexual obsession, the keynote of Limerence, is struck and its maddening impact voiced. Catching but a glimpse of fish-odorous[8] Matsyagandhā such lust inflames rishi Parāshara that he needs must rape her in a boat mid-stream in the Yamuna, in public view, at daytime. Yojanagandhā, now made lotus-fragrant and a virgin again by the satiated sage’s boon, keeps secret the birth of their son Vyāsa. Later, her granddaughter-in-law Kuntī, raped by Surya, is left holding the baby with the cold comfort of that same boon of virgo intacta. With no family support, she has to consign Karna to the mercy of the waters of Ashvanadī. Indeed, the story of the Lunar dynasty is a series of seductions, abductions and rapes: Tārā, Urvashī, Sharmishthā, Shakuntalā, Tapatī, Ganga, Shuktimatī, Satyavatī, Ambā, Ambikā, Ambālikā, Kuntī, Mādri, Ulūpī, Subhadrā.[9]

The seeds of lust were sown much farther back, the first instance being recounted by that paradigm of misogyny Bhīshma to Satyavatī, herself a fruit and a victim of this compulsive, obsessive passion. Brihaspati, guru of the Devas, rapes his elder brother Utathya’s pregnant wife Mamatā.[10] Brihaspati’s disciple Chandra or Soma elopes with his wife Tārā. As with Helen’s abduction, this results in a terrible war between Devas and Asuras, the titans espousing the cause of Chandra. Chandra, like his descendant Vichitravīrya, falls victim to consumption because of being obsessed with Rohiṇī. Chandra and Tārā’s son Budha is the first Chandravanshī, a branch of which comes to be known later as the Kurus or Kauravas.

In ancient times, Pāndu tells Kuntī, women were free:-

“They slept with any men they liked

from the age of puberty;…

for the dharma of those times

was promiscuous intercourse.”— I.122.5,8

Kuntī then recounts the story of Vyusitāshva and Bhadrā (section121) pointing out that Bhadrā was able to have seven sons by lying with the corpse of her husband and therefore she might well have Pāndu’s sons despite his curse of coital death. The irony lies in the close parallels between that king’s life and that of Pāndu’s putative father Vichitravīrya. For both sexual over-indulgence resulted in death:-

“So strong was their passion,

So frequent their indulgence,

that he soon fell a victim

to consumption;”— I.121.17-18

A cardinal feature of the worm of Limerence is obsession, which makes its host oblivious of his duties. Budha’s son Pururavā, the first king of the Lunar dynasty, neglecting his royal responsibilities chases after the apsara Urvashī and meets his end at the hands of sages when, greed-driven, he tries to snatch their golden vessels. His grandson Nahusha, the first mortal to be chosen as king of the Devas, lusts after Indra’s wife Shachi and falls to perdition.[11] Nahusha’s son Yayāti, learning nothing from his forefathers’ tragic flaw, becomes an archetype of desire-driven man, never satiated with sensual pleasure, ever thirsting for more. Limerence baits the hook with Sharmishthā and he is cursed by his father-in-law Shukra with senility. That is when a profound realisation dawns upon him that speaks to all humanity:-

“Kāma never ends,

Kāma grows with feeding,

Like sacrificial flames

Lapping up ghee.

Become the sole lord of

The world’s paddy-fields, wheat-fields,

Precious stones, beasts, women–

Still not enough.

Discard desire.

This disease kills. The wicked

Cannot give it up, old age

Cannot lessen it. True happiness

Lies in controlling it.

For one thousand years,

My mind lusted for pleasures.

Now, instead of resting,

I lust for more pleasure”— I.85.12-15

The exhortation is followed more in the breach. Rejuvenated by his vampiric assumption of his youngest son Puru’s youth, Yayāti dallies with the apsara Vishvāchī, although he had begged Shukra to restore his vigour because he was still infatuated with the sage’s daughter Devayānī. Like his father Nahusha, doomed by lust, he is thrust down from Swarga. Only then does he realise that craving only brings the “bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit”[12] and exclaims:-

“The wise say: Seven massive gates,

Tapasyā, charity, serenity,

Self-control, modesty, simplicity,

and compassion for all creatures

lead to heaven.

Pride cancels all these….

I gave so much,

I performed many yajñas,

I am learned,

I keep my vows’—

All vanity, all pride.

Fearful.

Give it up, absolutely.”— I.90.22, 26

His descendant Krishna repeats this lesson later to Arjuna:-

‘“I am rich, I am high-born,

There is none like me.

I sacrifice, I give, I rejoice.”

Deluded by such ignorance…

They fall into a foul hell….

Hell has three gates:

Lust, anger and greed.

They ruin the ātman.

Therefore, give up these three.’— Gita 16.15, 16, 21.

Limerence and lust hound the Lunar dynasts down the generations like the Furies because they are doubly doomed. Their ancestress Devayānī was obsessed with Kacha who cursed her that no Brahmin would wed her. That is why she seizes upon Yayāti the Kshatriya ruler and browbeats him into marrying her. Her eldest son Yadu is disinherited and it is his descendants, the redoubtable Yādavas, who give in to lust and liquor and end up slaughtering one another in a drunken frenzy with the participation of Krishna himself.

Samvarana, Kuru’s father, is so possessed by the craze for hunting that his horse dies under him. Then he glimpses Tapatī:-

She stood, a black-eyed beauty

on the hill-top,

statuesque;

like a golden girl.

The hill, its creepers,

its bushes, all flamed

with the golden beauty

of the golden girl.”— I.173.27-28

Like Pururavā with Urvashī, Samvarana exhibits the classic symptoms of Limerence:-

“his heart aflame with kāma,…

Like one possessed, he kept repeating

his love for her…

Like a man crazed

he wandered in the woods,

desperately searching…

the foe-chastising, love-smitten king

fell on the ground…

the king seemed to have shrivelled

into ashes”— I.173.41-43; 174.1; 174.4

Like Antony with Cleopatra, lost to the world in Tapatī’s arms on the banks of the Sindhu, Samvarana remains oblivious of the twelve-year-long drought afflicting his kingdom. Taking advantage of this, the Pānchālas take it over and Samvarana’s priest Vashishtha has to win it back (I.94.38-46). Samvarana and Tapatī’s son is Kuru, the dynast, who ploughs the field called Kurukshetra after him that becomes the scene of the bloodiest of battles in our annals.

Vyāsa pitilessly lays bare the tainted generations of Kauravas from Shāntanu onwards, all afflicted with the same disease, Limerence and lust, that speeds them on inexorably to their doom, bringing home to us that,

“The expense of spirit in a waste of shame

Is Lust in action…

Mad in pursuit and in possession so…

A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe.”— Shakespeare, Sonnet 129

Kuru’s descendant Shāntanu is so infatuated with strange riverside women that he remains a mute spectator to Ganga drowning their seven sons, and approves his surviving heir abdicating his right to obtain Satyavatī for him. In Shāntanu’s earlier birth as Mahābhīsha his lust got the better of him in Brahmā’s court where Ganga did a Marilyn Monroe as “gusty winds uplifted her moon-white dress” (96.4) while he leered and she gazed back. Both are thrust down to earth. Ganga herself is sexually promiscuous—only in the Puranas will she become Shiva’s wife—seating herself wantonly on the right thigh of Pratīpa while he is engaged in austerities and says, “I love you. Take me, my lord.” He, however, is untainted with the lust that overwhelms Ganga and Mahābhīsha:

“Beautiful one,” said Pratīpa,

“I have never lusted for another’s wife,

or for women outside my caste.

This is dharma, this is my vow.”— I.97.6

Ganga persists:-

“I am not ugly”, she said,

“I do not bring ill fortune, O rājā

No one has cast a slur on me,

I am not unfit for sexual enjoyment.

I am celestial, I am beautiful,

I love you. Take me, my lord.”— I.97.7

She has no problem in shifting her “love” from father to son. Significantly, the limerent object for Pratīpa’s son Shāntanu is women who are not of his class. Both Ganga and Satyavatī are non-kshatriya river women, one celestial, the other a fisher-girl; one far superior, the other much inferior. Of his father, Devavrata might well say, echoing Rama, “I think kāma is much more potent than either artha or dharma. For what man, even an idiot like father, would give up a good son like me for the sake of a pretty woman?”[13] It is Devavrata who sets up a unique and utterly different paradigm at the opposite extreme of Yayātian lust. He attains the acme of misogyny, abjuring women wholly, earning the sobriquet “Bhīshma, the terrible”.

The origin of Devavrata, however, is also rooted in Limerence. Dyau, eldest of the eight Vasus, was so obsessed with his wife that without a second thought he stole rishi Vashishtha’s cow to please her, calling down upon the Vasus the rishi’s curse of mortal birth.

According to Wendy Doniger, “the four major addictions (are often called) the vices of lust…gambling, drinking, fornicating, hunting…the royal vices…were also associated with violence, in the double sense of releasing pent-up violent impulses and being themselves the violent form of otherwise normal human tendencies (to search for food, take risks, drink, and procreate).”[14] The other facet of Kuru character that goes hand-in-hand with Limerence is lust for blood. It is while hunting to the point of exhaustion that Dushyanta, Uparichara and Samvarana fall victims to Limerence. Shāntanu, too, spends most of his time hunting. It is while feeding this blood-lust that he meets Ganga and, swept away by Limerence as his ancestor Dushyanta was with Shakuntalā, accepts her conditions unquestioningly. It is not, however, a one-sided affair. Ganga, the limerent object, is similarly afflicted:

“He stood there,

Entranced,

All his body

In horripilation.

With both eyes

He drank in her beauty,

And wanted

To drink more.

She saw the rājā,

In shining splendour.

She was moved

With tenderness and affection.

She kept gazing

and gazing

and longed to gaze

even more.”— 97.28-29

Excess is the key word. At the entrance to the Delphic oracle two phrases were inscribed: gnothi seauton “Know yourself” and meden agan “Nothing in excess”. These principles ensure a meaningful life. To ignore them is to invite Ananke to step in.

It is ironic that Shāntanu, whose name means “the child of controlled passions” (97.18), should be such a slave to Limerence:

 

“Captivated by her skilful love-making,

the raja was not conscious of

the months, seasons, years that rolled by.

He enjoyed her sexually in every possible way.”—I.98.12-13

Ganga is like the celestial nymphs who discard their offspring. Urvashī makes this clear to Kukutstha when he reproaches her for deserting their daughter:-

“O King, my body does not change

when offspring are born.

True to my nature as a courtesan,

I do not rear children I give birth to.”[15]

Shāntanu is so besotted that he ignores one of his primary duties as a king: ensuring an heir to the throne. Instead, lest she abandon him, he lets Ganga drown seven sons in succession. It is only when his sexual addiction is conquered by his concern for the fate of his eighth son that the spell cast by la belle dame sans merci is broken. Like the ensnared knights-at-arms, Shāntanu is left wan and forlorn, the dry husk of a hero, a hollow man, his heroism sucked out by Ganga like a succubus. Inevitably, in his late middle age he cannot control yet another grande amour, this time for a fisher-girl. Shāntanu’s reaction to Gandhakālī parallels that of Parāshara:

“She was fragrant,

beautiful,

smiling.

Shāntanu saw her,

and desired her.” (100.49)

The king differs from the sage in his desire to possess for himself this beauty, unable simply to enjoy and pass on. The flaw in Shāntanu’s character is stressed again:-

“the fire of desire

ravaged his body…

Desire maddened him

He kept thinking

of the daughter of the Dāsa chief.”—I.100.56-57

Limerence maddens. Yayāti’s warning has fallen on deaf ears.

Herself a child of sexual incontinence and a victim of it as well, Satyavatī sees her adolescent son die as Vichitravīrya, like Agnivarna the last of the Raghus,[16]

“driven by passion, became a kāmātmā,

a victim of his own lust.”— I.102.64

She,  “hungry for grandsons/but whose words/strayed from Dharma” (I.103.24) overrules Vyāsa’s advice that the widowed queens observe a year long vow to purify themselves of the dregs of seven years of sensuality and insists that he impregnate them immediately. Ananke strikes. Expecting Bhīshma, shocked by the forbidding looks and piscean odour of the sage, they give birth to blind Dhritarāshtra and sickly Pāndu.

Like Yayāti and Shāntanu, his lustful ancestors, Pāndu is addicted to the indiscriminate slaughter of animals, for, lust is

“murderous, bloody, full of blame,

Savage, extreme, rude, cruel…”— Shakespeare, sonnet 129

Perversely killing a copulating deer-sage, he is cursed with coital death.[17]

It is now that Vyāsa explicitly voices the underlying theme through Pāndu’s lament that he has learnt too late that,

“Noble blood is of little help.

Deluded by passions, the best

of men turn wicked, and reap

the punishment of their karma…

My father was deep in dharma,

his father was too,

But kāma was his ruin, he died

while still a youth.

And in the field of his lust

I was sown…

And I am a victim of the hunt!

My mind is full of killing,”— I.119.2-5

The tragedy of the diabolic fascination Limerence exercises is precisely what Shakespeare put so memorably:-

“All this the world well knows; yet none knows well

To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.”

The misery—it is no longer tragedy on a heroic scale—of the Kuru kings Shāntanu, Vichitravīrya and Pāndu is that of all men, whether prince or pauper.

Pāndu himself, despite his desperate resolve to seek moksha by renouncing all pleasures, is overtaken by his karma. Clotho spins the thread of life; Lachesis measures it out and Atropos decides Limerence will cut it:-

“passion overpowered him,

it seemed that he wanted

to commit suicide, as it were.

First he lost his senses,

then, clouded by lust,

he sought the loss of his life.

Kāla-dharma ordained it…

Perished in the act of intercourse”— I.125.12-14

He falls victim to mort d’amour while raping Mādrī who “fought against him fiercely” (125.10).

Of these generations of Kauravas we can say with Milton,

“…they, fondly thinking to allay

Their appetite with gust, instead of fruit

Chewed bitter ashes.”— Paradise Lost, X.564-566

When Karna shouts in the dice-game hall about Draupadī,

“The gods have ordained one husband only

for a woman; she has many;

that’s proof enough she’s a harlot…

…strip her naked.”— II.68.37, 40

And when, encouraging Karna, Duryodhana lewdly bares his left thigh to Draupadī (II.71.11-13) it is lust that becomes Ananke. The retribution is terrifying: of eighteen armies only ten men survive.

Draupadī is the mysterious femme fatale in the Ādi Parva (I.196), weeping tears that turn into golden lotuses in the Ganga, who leads the infatuated Indra away from Yama’s yajna into the presence of Shiva playing dice with his consort. His discrimination overcast by Limerence, Indra does not recognise Shiva, arrogantly berates him and is imprisoned in a cave with four earlier lustful, arrogant Indras (Vishvabhuk, Bhutadhāmā, Shibi, Shānti and Tejasvi). All are sentenced to earthly life as the Pāndavas accompanied by the cherchez la femme Shrī who becomes Draupadī. Limerence has determined their destiny.

Draupadī, in particular, is a locus of Limerence. She is the only woman to be described in some physical detail in the epic as she emerges gratuitously from the yajna-altar, full-grown:-

“eye-ravishing Pānchālī,

Large-black-eyed,

Dark-skinned Pānchālī,

Lotus-eyed lady,

Wavy-haired Pānchālī,

Hair like dark-blue clouds,

Shining coppery carved nails,

Soft eyelashes,

Swelling breasts

Shapely thighs…

…        Blue lotus

Fragrance for a full krosha

Flowed from her body.”— I.169.44-46

A skyey announcement proclaims her as the cause of the destruction of the Kshatriyas and the terror of the Kauravas (I.169.49).

The second occasion is when Yudhishthira describes her before staking her in the gambling match:-

“…neither short nor tall,

neither dark nor pale,

who has wavy dark-blue hair,

Eyes like autumn lotus-leaves,

fragrant like the autumn lotus,

lovely like autumn itself,…

never offending anyone,

graceful and patient and gentle,

Gifted with all the gunas,

soft-spoken and sweet-speaking,

the ideal wife for the pursuit

of dharma, artha and kāma.

She is the last to sleep,

The first to wake,

even earlier than the early-rising

cowherds and shepherds…

Her sweat-bathed face is lovely

Like the lotus, like the jasmine;

She is slim-waisted

Like the middle of the sacred vedi,

Long-haired, pink-lipped,

With not excessive body-hair…”— II.65.33-37

Jatāsura, who abducts her, is warned by Yudhishthira,

“You will be like one who drinks poison

after shaking the vessel.”— III.157.27

Bhīma voices the interlinking of Ananke, Kronos and Limerence:-

“…today wonder-working Kāla

Has possessed your mind

to ravish Krishnā-Draupadī.

You have swallowed the bait

on Kāla’s hook—

you are caught like a fish,

you will die like one.”— III.157.44-45

Like Helen of Troy, she is fully conscious of her sexual power but is never a slave of her libido. Satyabhāmā begs for the secrets of female sexuality by which she keeps her husbands at her beck and call (III.222.7), but finds she does not need any drugs or mantras to do so.  We see telling examples of how she gets her way with Bhīma in Virāta’s kitchen (IV.20) and succeeds with Krishna in turning his peace-embassy into a declaration of war (V.82).[18] The captivating pose she strikes when alone in Kāmyaka forest that so enchants Jayadratha is another instance. Leaning against a kadamba tree, holding a branch with an upraised hand, her upper garment displaced, she flashes like lightning against clouds, or like the flame of a lamp quivering in the night-breeze (III.264.1). Jayadratha craves her because,

“…women and jewels

are meant for frivolous enjoyment…

Jayadratha attempted

To remove her breast-garment…”— III.267.27; 268.24

She condemns him as a “lustful rascal” (III.271.45) whose libido only brings utter humiliation crashing down upon his head.

Next it is Kīchaka for whom Draupadī becomes the limerent object:-

“The fire of my passion consumes me

like a merciless forest-blaze;

all it desires is to be one with you,

O lovely one…

I am driven wild

By the arrows of Manmatha

and the hope of intercourse with you.”— IV.14.24,26

Limerence takes away even the basic instinct of self-preservation. Kīchaka was

“Lust-maddened, adulterous-minded

though aware of the consequences”.— IV.14.44

His sister Sudeshnā’s warning falls on deaf ears:

“You have completely forgotten

what is good for you.

You have allowed yourself to become

a slave of kāma.

Your end is near. That is why kāma

grips you so strongly….”

The absolute fool had a single obsession:

intercourse with Draupadī.”—IV.15.17-18; 28

The end Ananke visits upon him is horrifying: Bhīma pounds him into a shapeless lump of flesh.

Why should Draupadī be such a locus of Limerence? Clues are found in the kathas of her previous births. The Kumbakonam edition of the epic records that in an earlier birth as Nālāyanī-Indrasenā (daughter of Nala and Damayantī?)[19] she was married to Maudgalya, an irascible, leprous sage. Her devotion to him was so absolute that even when his thumb dropped into their meal, she took it out and calmly ate the food without revulsion. Pleased by this, Maudgalya offered her a boon, and she asked him to make love to her in five lovely forms. He obliged, but as she was insatiable, he reverted to ascesis. When she remonstrated and insisted that he continue their love-making, he cursed her to be reborn and have five husbands to satisfy her sexual craving. Thereupon she practised severe penance and pleased Shiva who blessed her with five husbands and the boon of regaining virginity after being with each husband.[20] The Jaina Nayadhammakahao tells of suitorless Sukumarikā reborn first as a celestial courtesan because of her sexual craving and then as Draupadī.[21] In the Brahmavaivarta Purana[22] we find that she was the reincarnation of the shadow-Sita who, in turn, was Vedavatī reborn after being molested by Rāvaṇa. This Chāyā-Sita became the Lakshmī of the fourteen Mahendras in Svarga, five of whom incarnated as the Pāndavas. After the fire ordeal, the lovely and youthful shadow-Sītā was advised by Rama and Agni to worship Shiva. While doing so, kāmātura pativyāgrā prārthayanti punah punah (tormented by sexual desire and eager for a husband), she prayed again and again, asking the three-eyed god five times for a husband (14.57). In each of her many origins, therefore, Draupadī’s nature is characterised by high libido.

However, as with the previous generations of the lunar dynasts, no lesson has been learnt about the deadly coils Limerence winds about its victims while immobilising them with its basilisk stare. Even Krishna, the Purushottama, cannot save his kith and kin from self-sought annihilation. Thirty-six years after the Kurukshetra holocaust, the Yādavas, Bhojas, Kukuras, Vrishṇis and Andhakas (all descendants of that archetype of pride and lust, Yayāti and his lustful queen Devayānī) rush like mindless lemmings into mass suicide. The extreme penalty Krishna and Balarāma impose to prohibit manufacture of liquor (impalement of the violator and his entire family) fails. In their very presence at Prabhāsa the clans plunge into a drunken orgy. The cardinal flaw in the character of the Vrishnis, as with Yayāti, is arrogance which blinds discrimination:-

“They mocked Brahmins

and pitris and gods.

They insulted gurus and elders…

Pouring wine in the food

prepared for mahātmā Brahmins,

the Yādavas fed the wine-flavoured dishes

to vānara-monkeys.”— XVI.2.10; 3.14

With arrogance and drunkenness went lust hand in hand:-

“Wives cheated on husbands,

and husbands

cheated on wives.”— XVI.2.11

To this deadly combination was added the explosive spark of anger as Satyabhāmā, learning who had killed her father,

“burst into angry tears.

She sat in Keshava-Krishna’s lap,

and instigated Janārdana-Krishna.”—XVI.3.24

As Krishna glanced angrily at Kritavarmā, the murderer of his wife’s father, Sātyaki lopped off his head. The carnage exploded:-

“Demented with drink,

the warriors butchered one another…

falling like fleas in a flame.

Not one of them had the good sense

to flee the carnage.”— XVI.3.42-43

The roots of man’s doom are revealed in the parable Vidura narrates to solace-seeking Dhritarāshtra in the Strī Parva which travelled to the West to feature as the story of “The Man in the Well” in the tale of Barlaam and Josaphat:-[23]

“Take a certain Brahmin who loses himself in a dense jungle filled with wild beasts. Lions and tigers, elephants and bears…Yelling and trumpeting and roaring…a dismal scene to frighten even the god of death, Yama. The Brahmin is terror-stricken. He horripilates. His mind is a bundle of fears. He begins to run, helter-skelter; he looks right and left, hoping to find someone who will save him. But the fierce beasts—they are everywhere—the jungle echoes with their weird roaring—wherever he goes, they are there, ahead of him.

“Suddenly he notices that the fearful forest is swathed in a massive net. In front of him, with open arms, is a horrendous-looking female. Also, five-headed snakes hiss at him—tall snakes, their hill-huge bodies slithering up to the sky.

“In the middle of the forest is a well covered with grass and intertwining creepers. He falls in that well and dangles there, clutched by a creeper, like a jackfruit ripe for plucking. He hangs there, feet up, head down.

“Horror upon horror! In the bottom of the well he sees a monstrous snake. On the edge of the well is a huge black elephant with six heads and twelve feet hovering at the well’s mouth. And, buzzing in and out of the clutch of creepers, are giant, repulsive bees surrounding a honeycomb. They are trying to sip the deliciously sweet honey, the honey all creatures love, the honey whose real taste only children know.

“The honey drips out of the comb, and the honey drops fall on the hanging Brahmin’s tongue. Helpless he dangles, relishing the honey drops. The more the drops fall, the greater his pleasure. But his thirst is not quenched. More! Still more! ‘I am alive!’ he says, ‘I am enjoying life!’

“Even as he says this, black and white rats are gnawing the roots of the creeper. Fears encircle him. Fear of the carnivores, fear of the fierce female, fear of the monstrous snake, fear of the giant elephant, fear of the rat-devoured creeper about to snap, fear of the large buzzing bees…In that flux and flow of fear he dangles, hanging on to hope, craving the honey, surviving in the jungle of samsara.

“The jungle is the universe; the dark area around the well is an individual life span. The wild beasts are diseases. The fierce female is decay. The well is the material world. The huge snake at the bottom of the well is Kala, all-consuming time, the ultimate and unquestioned annihilator. The clutch of the creeper from which the man dangles is the self-preserving life-instinct found in all creatures. The six-headed elephant trampling the tree at the well’s mouth is the Year—six faces, six seasons; twelve feet, twelve months. The rats nibbling at the creeper are day and night gnawing at the life span of all creatures. The bees are desires. The drops of honey are pleasures that come from desires indulged. They are the rasa of Kama, the juice of the senses in which all men drown.”[24]

Dhritarashtra, of course, misses the point Vidura is making: man, literally hanging on to life by a thread and enveloped in multitudinous fears, is yet engrossed in the drops of the honey of the senses, exclaiming, “More! Still more! I am alive! I am enjoying life!” And, like the blind king, we tend to miss the point too. Ignoring the law of karma, taking that other road, we fall into the pit and rale; yet inveterately, compulsively, perversely, strain every sinew to lick the honey of Limerence. The Buddha figured it forth in a characteristically pungent image:

“Craving is like a creeper,

it strangles the fool.

He bounds like a monkey, from one birth to another,

looking for fruit.”[25]

In a marvellously eidetic image Vyāsa portrays the secret:-

“A wondrous kāmavriksha grows in the heart,

a tree of desire, born of attachment.

Anger and arrogance its trunk,

impulse to act its irrigating channel.

Ignorance its root; negligence nourishes it.

fault-finding its leaves, past misdeeds its pith.

Grief, worry and delusion its branches,

fear its seed.

Vines of craving clasp it around

creating delusion.

All around this fruit-giving mighty tree of desire

sit greedy men,

shackled in iron chains of desire,

craving its fruit.

He who snaps these bonds of desire

slices this tree

with the sword of non-attachment.

He transcends grief-giving age and death.

But the fool who climbs this tree

greedy for fruit,

it destroys him;

even as poison pills destroy the sick.

The roots of this tree reach far and wide.

Only the wise can hew it down

with the yoga-gifted

sword of equanimity.

One who knows

how to rein in desires,

and knows study of desire itself binds,

he transcends all sorrow.”— Shānti Parva 255. 1-8 (my transcreation)

In an analogous image, the cosmic fig tree itself is figured forth by Krishna in the Gita (15.1-3) along with the remedy:-

“Mention is made of an eternal ashvattha

whose roots are above, whose branches are below

whose leaves are said to be the Vedas.

The knower of this tree

is the knower of the Vedas.

Its branches reach out below and above,

nourished by the gunas.

Its flowers are sense-pleasures.

Below the tree in the human world

flourish more roots

binding man to karma.

You may not see its real shape,

nor its end, birth and presence.

Slice this firm-rooted ashvattha

with the sharp sword of non-attachment.” [26]

Despite this, Bhishma’s lengthy discourse on Dharma and Krishna’s Anugītā what does the creator of this greatest of epics cry out at the very end?

“I raise my hands and I shout

but no one listens!

From Dharma come Artha and Kama–

Why is Dharma not practised?”— Svargārohana Parva, 62

A question that does indeed tease us out of thought into eternity. But, is anybody listening? Is there anybody there? Or, are we a host of phantom listeners, kin to the decimated Kurus, who listen but do not answer Draupadī’s question in the dyūta-sabhā? 

[1] Sanskrit words occurring in the OED have not been italicized.

[2]  “Alottted Portions”. The three females were Clotho “the Spinner,” who spun the thread of life, Lachesis “the Apportioner of Lots”, who measured it, and Atropos (or Aisa) “Who cannot be turned,” who cut it short.

[3] http://www.300.years.spb.ru/eng/3_spb_3.html?id=5

[4] P.Lal, Preface to The Complete Ādi Parva, Writers Workshop, Kolkata, 2005, p.6. All extracts from the Mahabharata are from the P. Lal transcreation unless indicated otherwise.

[5] cf. George Meredith’s “Modern Love”.

[6] Coined by Dorothy Tennov in 1977: an obsessive need to have one’s romantic feelings and sexual attraction for another reciprocated, the state of being completely carried away by unreasoned passion or love, even to the point of addictive-type behaviour. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limerence#Limerent_reaction

[7] P. Lal, The Complete Adi Parva, Writers Workshop, Kolkata, 2005.

[8] The medical term is “trimethylaminuria”, a syndrome associated with psychosocial reactions including social isolation.

[9] Wendy Doniger, The Hindus, Penguin Books, India, 2009, p. 295, which I have amplified.

[10] Adi Parva 104.9-15. Mamatā’s son is the blind Dīrghatamas, ostracised for publicly following the practices of the cow-race, i.e. indiscriminate sexual intercourse. He makes a living out of insemination. He looks forward to sightless Dhritarāshtra, father of a hundred and one sons.

[11] Indra himself suffers serious consequences after his adulterous union with Ahalyā (losing his testicles and being covered with marks of the vulva). His attempt at another liaison with Ruchi, wife of the sage Devasharmā, is foiled by the disciple Vipula.This is where Indra’s “fate” differs markedly from that of the Greek Zeus and the Norse Odin who are also lusty kings of the gods but do not suffer for their adultery unlike the tragic Norse hero Siegmund and the Greek Paris.

[12] T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding” in Four Quartets http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=435714070

[13] Rāmāyana 2.47.8-10, Wendy Doniger, The Hindus, Penguin, New Delhi, 2009, p.225.

[14] Doniger op.cit. p. 320-321. Laws of Manu  Book 7 states: “[47] Hunting, gambling, sleeping by day, malicious gossip, women, drunkenness, music, singing, dancing, and aimless wandering are the group of ten (vices) born of desire. [48] Slander, physical violence, malice, envy, resentment, destruction of property, verbal abuse, and assault are the group of eight (vices) born of anger.” Vikarna addressing the Kauravas in the Sabha Parva says, “Kings have four major vices—hunting, drinking, gambling and womanizing.” (II.68.20) (personal communication from Doniger)

[15] Kālikā Purāna, 49.67, Nababharat Publishers, Calcutta, 1384 BS, p.462, my translation.

[16] Kālidāsa paints a detailed portrait of this voluptuary ruler, the last of the dynasty of Raghu: “it was the disease resulting from sexual excess which consumed him…paying no heed to the doctors’ advice, he did not give it up.” The Dynasty of Raghu, XIX.48-49, translated by R. Antoine, Writers Workshop, Kolkata, 1972, p.216.

[17] Saudāsa Kalmāshpāda who killed a copulating hermit was cursed similarly by his wife— coitus interruptus with a vengeance!

[18] P. Bhattacharya, Pancha-kanya, Writers Workshop, Kolkata, 2005, pp. 73, 77-78.

[19] In the Rig Veda X.10.2 there is an Indrasenā-Mudgalānī, a heroic lady who bravely drives her chariot and helps her husband to win numerous cattle (cf. H.C.Chakladar, “Some Aspects of Social Life in Ancient India”, The Cultural Heritage of India, vol.2, 1962, 2nd ed., Kolkata.

[20] Satya Chaitanya’s translation of the Kumbakonam edition of the Mahabharata, Ādi Parva, sections 212-213 http://vyasabharata.blogspot.com/2010/12/nalayani-past-life-of-draupadi.html . Vettam Mani, Puranic Encyclopaedia (Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1975, p. 549) and M.V. Subramaniam, The Mahabharata Story: Vyasa & Variations (Higginbothams, Madras, 1967, pp. 46-47) mention this story without providing the source.

[21] B.N. Sumitra Bai, “The Jaina Mahabharata” in Essays on the Mahabharata ed. A. Sharma, Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1991, p.253.

[22] Prakriti khanda, 14.54 and Krishna Janma khanda 116.22-23.

[23] The Golden Legend, http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/golden329.htm

[24] P. Lal: The Mahabharata (condensed & transcreated) Vikas Publishing House, New Delhi, 1980, p. 286-7.

[25] P. Lal: The Dhammapada, op.cit. Farrar Straus & Giroux, New York, 1967, p.157

[26] Conflating the P. Lal transcreation, Writers Workshop, Calcutta, 1969 and P.Lal, The Complete Bhishma Parva, Writers Workshop, Kolkata, 2006, p.261.

The Date of the Mahabharata War

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In Vyasa and Valmiki Sri Aurobindo refers to a “recent article of the Indian Review” on the date of the Mahabharata war praising it as “an unusually able and searching (or almost conclusive) paper”.  It was Velandai Gopala Aiyer’s “The Date of the Mahabharata War” published in Vol. II, January-December 1901 of this monthly journal (Indian Review) edited by G.A.Natesan. Sri Aurobindo was obviously fully convinced by Aiyer’s arguments, because elsewhere he writes, “It is now known beyond reasonable doubt that the Mahabharata war was fought out in or about 1190 B.C.”

Aiyer had published a previous paper in the same journal fixing the date of the beginning of the Kaliyuga from four different sources:

  1. Vedanga Jyotisha — 1173 B.C.
  2. Gargacharya — a few years prior to 1165 B.C.
  3. Classical historians — 851 years before Alexander’s stay in India, viz. 1177-76 B.C.
  4. which is confirmed by the Malabar Kollam Andu commencing in August/September 1176 B.C.

Aiyer concluded that the Kaliyuga began with the winter solstice immediately preceding the commencement of the Kollam Andu, or at the end of 1177 B.C. The Mahabharata War, he proposes, was fought a few years before the beginning of the Kaliyuga.

One would like to know if any reactions to Aiyar’s research were published in the “Indian Review”. Libraries in Chennai might yield the information. An abridgement is presented in Aiyer’s own words as far as possible.] – Pradip Bhattacharya

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According to the Mahaprasthanika Parva and the Vishnu Purana, the Kali age would not affect the earth so long as it was touched by Sri Krishna’s holy feet. When the Pandavas abdicated, Parikshit must have been about 16 years old (the age of majority according to Hindu lawyers). If Kali began in 1177 B.C., Parikshit would have probably been born in 1193 B.C. and the war should have occurred towards the end of 1194 B.C.

Again, the Mausala Parva says that the Yadava race was destroyed 36 years after the war and the Pandavas left soon thereafter at the beginning of Kaliyuga. On the other hand, the Bhagavatayana Parva states that Kali began at the time of the war itself. The Ashramavasika Parva states that when 15 years had expired after the war, Dhritarashtra, Gandhari and Kunti left for the forest. In the 16th year after the war, the Pandavas visited them along with Uttara who had recently become a mother and had her child in her lap. Now, Parikshit was in the womb during the war (Sauptika Parva), hence he could not have been an infant in the 16th year after the war. Therefore, this statement in the Ashramavasika is incorrect. Rather, in the 16th year after the war the Pandavas started not on a visit to the old people, but on their last journey. There is no mention of Parikshit’s marriage, which would have occurred later. If Parikshit were really 36 years of age when the Pandavas left, why should he be placed under the tutelage of Kripacharya as stated in Mausala Parva? It would be more consistent if Parikshit was about 16 when he was crowned, and the war took place 16 years before the beginning of the Kaliyuga. This conclusion is supported by other evidence.

Kalhana Pandit’s Rajatarangini, the well-known history of Kashmir written in 1148 A.D., is the only indigenous work in India that can pass for history. Verses 48-49 of the first Taranga state:

“Misled by the tradition that the Bharata war took place at the end of the Dwapara, some have considered as wrong the sum of years (contained in the statement that) in the Kaliyuga the kings beginning with Gonanda I (and ending with Andha Yudhishthira) ruled of the Kasmiras for 2268 years.”

This Gonanda I was, says Kalhana, the contemporary of the Pandavas. The 52nd in descent from him was Abhimanyu, son of Kanishka, whose successor Gonanda III was the first of a new dynasty “which came to power 2330 years before Kalhana’s time” (1st Taranga, verses 52 and 49). In the Rajatarangini the total for the reigns from the end of Andha Yudhishthira—the last of Gonanda III’s dynasty—to Kalhana’s own time is 1329 years, 3 months, 28 days, say roughly 1330 years. Kalhana would have presumed that the interval between the end of Abhimanyu’s reign and that of Andha Yudhishthira was 2330-1330 = 1000 years.

Clearly, in Kalhana’s time it was believed that 2268 years had elapsed from the time of Pandava Yudhishthira to that of Andha Yudhishthira. Hence, Kalhana gives 2268-1000 or 1268 years for the reigns of the first 52 kings from Gonanda I to Abhimanyu and 1000 years for the 21 kings of the dynasty of Gonanda III. This was the “tradition” Kalhana refers to in the excerpt above. The latter portion may well be a later addition because Kalhana himself says it is “thought” that the 52 kings down to Abhimanyu reigned in all “for 1266 years” (verse 54, Taranga I—obviously an error for 1268 years).

However, Kalhana accepts only part of the old “tradition”, namely that 2268 years elapsed from the time of Pandava Yudhishthira to that of Andha Yudhishthira. He does not accept the part that Pandava Yudhishthira lived at the end of the Dwapara Yuga because in Kalhana’s time, as now, the Dwapara was supposed to have ended and the Kali to have begun in 3102 B.C. Kalhana relied on Garga’s verse (quoted in Varahamihira’s Brihatsamhita, XIII. 3-4) which he erroneously interpreted as meaning that Yudhishthira commenced to reign 2526 years before the era of Salivahana, in 2428 B.C. As Abhimanyu lived 1268 years after Pandava Yudhishthira, Kalhana placed him in 2448-1268 = 1180 B.C. Since Kanishka and his successor Abhimanyu lived in the 1st century after Christ, the false figures given by Kalhana for Abhimanyu and all the subsequent kings down to the 6th century A.D. can be traced to his mistaken interpretation of Garga’s verse.

Almost all Sanskrit scholars agree that Kanishka lived in the 1st century A.D., though Cunningham thought that the Vikrama era from 57 B.C. began with Kanishka, and the Saka era beginning on 3rd March 78 A.D. dates from him. Coins show that Kanishka reigned down to 40 A.D. Irrespective of whether the era of Salivahana dates from Kanishka, clearly Abhimanyu must have been reigning about the commencement of this era in 78 A.D. If so, Yudhishthira, who lived 1268 years earlier, must have begun to reign about 1268-78 = 1190 B.C. Since his coronation took place soon after the war, it must also have been fought around 1190 B.C.

Aryabhatta — whose fame spread to Arabia as Arjabahr and Constantinople’s vast empire as Andubarius or Ardubarius — was born in 476 A.D. and the first to promulgate the theory that the earth revolved round the sun, calculate the circumference of the earth and explain the eclipses. According to him, “the line of the Saptarshis intersected the middle of Magha Nakshatra in the year of Kaliyuga 1910”, i.e. 1192 B.C. According to the Vishnu Purana, the Sapatarshis were in that very same position at the birth of Parikshit who was, therefore, born about 1192 B.C. Since the war occurred at the most a few months earlier than his birth, it might have taken place about 1193 B.C.

The same result is arrived at if we consider the number of kings who occupied the throne of Magadha from the time of the war to the accession of Chandragupta. According to the Vishnu Purana — which is mostly agreed to by the other Puranas — the 9 Nandas reigned for 100 years; the 10 Saisunagas of the next previous dynasty for 362 years; the 5 kings of the still previous Pradyota dynasty for 138 years succeeding the famous Barhadratha dynasty whose 22 kings sat on the throne since the date of the war. Thus, we get 100 years for the Nanda and 500 years for the 2 previous dynasties. Very probably the same number was reported to Megasthenes. However, what strikes one most is the large average for each reign. The same Vishnu Purana gives 137 years for the 10 kings of the later Maurya dynasty, 112 years for the 10 kings of the Sunga dynasty and 45 years for the 4 kings of the Kanwa line, i.e. an average of about 12 years against 28 for the Pradyota dynasty and 36 for the Saisunaga! For the Nandas, it is scarcely probable that a father and his sons could have reigned for 100 years, especially when the last sons did not die naturally but were extirpated by Chandragupta with the help of Chanakya. The Puranas may have left out insignificant reigns, or these ancient kings may have been longer-lived than those of the post-Chandragupta period, but even then the averages are too large. It would be unsafe to deduce therefrom the probable date of the war.

In England, from the Norman invasion to the 20th century, 35 monarchs had ruled for 835 years, the average being about 23 years. From Hugh Capet to the execution of Louis XVI, France was ruled by 33 kings for 1793-987 = 806 years, yielding an average of about 24 years. 8 kings ruled Prussia from Ivan III @ 23 years. In Russia 22 monarchs up to the present Emperor Nicholas II for 1894-1462 = 432 years giving an average of about 19 years. In Japan, the present Emperor Musu Hito is the 123rd, his ancestor Jimmu Tenno having established the dynasty lasting unbroken for 2500 years, which gives an average of 21 years for this long-lived dynasty. Thus, the averages for each of the 5 foremost powers of our hemisphere are 23 for England, 24 for France, 23 for Germany, 19 for Russia and 21 for Japan. The average of these, about 22 years, may be taken as the probable duration of each reign of the pre-Chandragupta dynasties. There were 22 Barhadrathas, 5 Pradyotas and 10 Saisunagas = 37 in all from the time of the war to the Nandas, and they might therefore have reigned for 37 x 22 = 814 years.

Moreover, according to the Buddhist Mahavamso, composed by Mahanama around 460 A.D., Mahapadma Nanda, called Kalasoka in the chronicle, reigned for 20 years and had 10 sons who conjointly ruled for 22 years. Then there were 9 brothers who reigned for 22 years. Thus, the Nandas reigned in all for 20+22+22 = 64 years, a figure more likely to be correct than the Puranic round figure of 100 years. Thus, the war must have happened about 814+64 = 878 years before Chandragupta, at 878+315 = 1193 B.C.

Against our reckoning of 814 years between the war and Mahapadma Nanda’s accession, the Vishnu Purana (IV.24) gives 1015 years. This seems based on supposing a round period of 100 years from the start of the Kaliyuga to the time of Nanda’s accession and presuming that the Kali began 15 years after the war. If so, the genuineness of an interval of a round period of 1000 years between the beginning of the Kali and the coronation of Nanda is suspect. The Purana period of 1015 years for the 37 kings between the war and the coronation of Nanda yields an improbable average of over 27 years. The author of the Vishnu Purana deals vaguely in round figures, giving 100 for the Nandas, 500 for the Pradyotas and Saisunagas and 1000 years (IV.23) for the Barhadrathas, the last figure directly conflicting with the statement about 1015 years intervening between the war and the end of the Saisunaga dynasty.

This Purana also states that the Saptarshis, which are supposed to move @ one Nakshatra for every 100 years (IV.24) had moved 10 Nakshatras from Magha to Purvashada during this interval, which therefore comes to 10×100 = 1000 years. Obviously, this supposed movement was arrived at by the author not by actual observation, for such a movement is astronomically impossible, but by his deducing it from the other statement in the preceding verse that 1015 years had elapsed during this interval. The author seems first to have had in mind that the Kali began 15 years after the war and that 1000 year elapsed from the beginning of the Kali era to the accession of Nanda, and then to havae deduced therefrom the proposition that the Saptarshis which were in Magha at the time of the war had moved on to Purvashada at the coronation of Mahapadma Nanda.

In Chapter XIII of the Brihatsamhita, Varahamihira, born in 505 A.D., deals with the Saptarshi cycles and quotes Vriddha Garga: “When king Yudhishthira ruled the earth, the seven seers were in Magha; the Saka era is 2526 years after the commencement of his reign.” The translator, Dr. Hultzsch (Indian Antiquary VIII, p.66) comments, “The coronation of Yudhishthira took place 2526 years before the commencement of the Saka era, or at the expiration of the Kaliyuga-Samvat 653 and in B.C. 2448.” This agrees with Kalhana in thinking that the Yudhishthira era is different from the Kali era.

On the other hand, Jyotirvidabharana, an astronomical work attributed to Kalidasa, but which scholars place in the 16th century A.D., states that in the Kaliyuga six different eras will flourish one after another: the Yudhishthira to last 3044 years from the beginning of Kali; the Vikrama to last for 135 years afterwards; the Salivahana for 1800 years thereafter; and the Vijaya, Nagarjuna and Bali ears to be current in the rest of the Kaliyuga. The three last are fictitious. This shows that Hindus have all along thought that the Yudhishthira era commenced with the Kali. So also Aryabhatta computes by the era of Yudhishthira, which corresponds to the Kaliyuga. Therefore, it is not possible to concur with Kalhana and Dr. Hultzsch in placing the beginning of the Yudhishthira era “at the expiration of the Kaliyuga-samvat 653 and in B.C. 2448.”

What does “Sakakala” really mean? It has been proved that Garga, the author of the shloka, lived about 165 B.C. Even granting Dr.Kern’s contention that Garga lived in the 1st century B.C., it is not possible that Garga could have meant by “Sakakala” either the Vikrama samvat, which began later in 57 B.C., or the Salivahana Sakabda, which commenced still later in 78 A.D. It has not yet been proven that the Vikramasamvat era had been in use ever since 57 B.C. Fergusson, Max Muller and Weber opine otherwise. Besides the Kali or the Saptarshi era, there was in the days of Garga only one other prominent era in existence, namely, the era of Nirvana, “which,” says Fergusson (in History of Indian and Eastern Architecture, p. 46), “was the only one that had existed previously in India.” The era of Mahavira beginning in 527 B.C. might have been then in existence, but the Jain religion was only confined comparatively to a few and its era was not much in evidence before the public. The era of Buddha’s Nirvana was, on the other hand, very widely known (being the State Religion during Asoka’s time). A Tibetan work records a schism having occurred under a “Thera Nagasena” 137 years after the Nirvana’ Chandragupta is recorded to have ascended the throne 162 years after the Nirvana; the inauguration of Asoka is stated to have taken place 218 years after the Nirvana; and the Dipawanso, a history of Ceylon written in Pali verse about the 4th century A.D., makes use of the era of Nirvana in its computations. Therefore, the era of Buddha’s Nirvana, which was in current use in the time of Garga, might have been probably referred to by him.

Gautama Buddha was known by the name of “Sakya Muni” and his paternal grandfather was also known by the name of “Sakya”. The race to which Gautama belonged was often called by the name of Sakyas. R.C. Dutt says, “A little to the east of the Kosala kingdom, two kindred clans, the Sakyas and the Koliyans, lived on the opposite banks of the small stream Rohini …Kapilavastu was the capital of the Sakyas.” The followers of Gautama Buddha were often spoken of as “Sakyaputriya Sramanas” in contradistinction possibly to the Sramanas of other sects. We may therefore infer that the era of Gautama Buddha was probably known as “Sakya Kala” in those times. The era could not have been called “Nirvana Kala” as the term might equally apply to the Nirvana of Mahavira.

The shloka is written in the usual Arya metre. Similarly, the first 2 slokas of the chapter are in faultless rhythm, but the third shloka under discussion satisfies the rhythmic requirements in only the first three quarters. The last quarter, shakakalastasya… is short by one “matra”. It is inexplicable how Kalhana and other scholars could overlook such a glaring slip. As the Rajatarangini also makes this mistake, we may infer that the error might have been in existence from a very long time. The only way of correcting the error is by insertion of the letter “Y” which has been somehow omitted, between the letter “K” and “A” in the word “Saka”, correcting “Sakakala” to “Sakyakala” which makes the shloka perfect and then we have the best of reasons to suppose that Garga refers to the era of Nirvana, the epoch of the Sakyas, or of the Sakya prince Gautama, or of the Buddha called Sakya Muni. Some early copyist, better acquainted with “Sakakala” than with “Sakyakala” changed the latter into the former, which he might have thought to be the corrector form. Even without such a correction, “Sakakala” may be considered a corruption of “Sakyakala”. Thus, in any case, the era of Buddha’s Nirvana is the one most undoubtedly referred to.

The expression shadadvikpancadvi means “twenty-six times twenty-five” or 650 and not “six two five two” denoting 2526 as Dr. Hultzsch interprets. The termination “ka” denotes “so many times”, and is not an expletive that a precise mathematician like Garga may be expected to use unnecessarily. Garga computed here by the Saptarshi cycle, which denoted the lapse of every 100 years by a new Nakshatra and gave 25 years for each Nakshatrapada, into four of which a Nakshatra was then usually divided. If the Saptarshis had moved 6 ½ Nakshatras from the time of Yudhishthira’s coronation to the Nirvana of Buddha, that would be more appropriately expressed as the movement of the Rishis through 26 padas and the period denoted thereby would be put down as twenty-six times twenty-five years.

Though Max Muller offers very fair reasons for fixing the date of the Nirvana in 477 B.C., yet as Bigandet points out in his life of Buddha, both the chronicles of Ceylon and Further India unanimously agree that Buddha attained Nirvana at the age of 80 in 543 B.C. The Dipawanso computes by the era of Nirvana beginning in 544-3 B.C. Burma, Siam and Ceylon are all unanimous in giving this date and such widespread unanimity of opinion cannot be expected unless the era of 544-3 B.C. had existed from a very long time.

Garga’s statement now indicates to us that the coronation of Yudhishthira, and therefore the Mahabharata War, took place in the year 544 or 543 + 650 = 1194-3 B.C.

Almost in all parts of India the Brihaspati 60 year cycle prevails from a very long time. In commenting on Taittiriya Brahmana, I.4.10, Sayana says that this cycle comprised 12 of the ancient 5 cycles, which are so often referred to in the Vedic works and in the Vedanga Jyotisha. The sun and the moon take about 5 years to return to the same position at the beginning of a year, which gave rise to the cycle of the 5 years known as Samvatsara, Parivatsara, Idavatsara, Anuvatsara and Idvatsara respectively. As Brihaspati makes a complete circuit of the heavens in about 12 years, all the 3 heavenly bodies were expected to return to the same celestial region on the expiry of every 60 years. Because of a corrector knowledge of Brihaspati’s motions, Northern India has been expunging 1 year of the cycle in every 85-and-65/211 years so that after one such period the name of the next year is left out and the name of the one following the next year is taken to be the next year’s name. As no such practice prevails in Southern India, the current year (April 1901 to April 1902) which is the year “Pramadicha” in the North, is the year “Plava” in the South.

When the names were invented, the year of the Mahabharata War, the only famous epoch in the history of Ancient India, was named “Prabhava”, the name of the 1st year of the cycle. But the dates given by the orthodox for the war or for the beginning of the Kaliyuga do not correspond to the 1st year of the cycle. But, if we adopt the date given by Garga for the epoch of Yudhishthira, i.e. 1194-3 B.C., we find that the corresponding year of the Brihaspati cycle for that date is “Prabhava”, the name of its very 1st year.

We have suggested that the Kaliyuga began at the winter solstice of 1177 B.C. We have also seen that, barring the argument based on Rajatarangini, which gives us about 1190 B.C. for the war, our other lines of discussion point to 1194-3 B.C. as the probable date of the war. This date is further confirmed by the application of the principles of the Vedanga Jyotisha to certain statements contained in the Mahabharata itself. We may here observe that these statements are not to be explained by the astronomical calculations of modern times, for these were unknown in the days of the War, but rather by the calculations of the Vedanga Jyotisha, which, though cruder, are better applicable to them, inasmuch as it is the oldest Hindu astronomical treatise known to us and its astronomical details, as we have seen, relate to the beginning of Kaliyuga.

In the Swargarohanika Parva of the Mahabharata, we are told that Yudhishthira having observed “that the sun ceasing to go southwards had begun to proceed in his northward course” set out to where Bhishma lay on his bed of arrows. After telling Yudhishthira that the winter solstice had set in, Bhishma said, “Yudhishthira, the lunar month of Magha has come. This is again the lighted fortnight and a fourth part of it ought by this be over.” Whatever historical weight may be attached to these statements, they may be at least taken to mean that the winter solstice then occurred on the expiry of the fourth part of the bright fortnight in the month of Magha, that is, on the fourth or the fifth day after new moon. Nilakantha, the commentator, thinks that the expression tribhagashesha pakshah denotes ‘Magha Sukla Panchami’ or the fifth lunar day in the month of Magha after Amavasya, the new moon.

As according to the Vedanga the winter solstice always occurred with the sun in Dhanishtha the Amavasya referred to by the Mahabharata must have occurred with the sun and the moon in Sravana Nakshatra; and as the winter solstice occurred on the fifth day after this, the moon must have been, on the solstitial day, in or near Revati Nakshatra. According to the Jyotisha, this position could have occurred only at the beginning of the fourth year of a five-year cycle, for it was then that the moon was in Aswayuja, next to Revati Nakshatra. The difference of this one Nakshatra is due to the imperfections of the elements of the Jyotisha. Thus we may infer that the winter solstice following the Mahabharata war, and just preceding Bhishma’s death, was the fourth of the five winter solstices of a five-year cycle. The particular five-year cycle in which the Mahabharata war took place appears to have been the fourth cycle previous to the beginning of the Kaliyuga in 1177 inasmuch as we have found that the Rajatarangini points to1190 B.C., and that all other lines of discussion lead to 1194-3 B.C. as the probable date of the War. Consequently, the winter solstice shortly following the War was the fourth of the fourth five-year cycle preceding the commencement of the Kaliyuga, which began, like the five-year cycle, with a winter solstice and with the sun and the moon in Dhanishtha Nakshatra. In other words, the Mahabharata war took place a little before the seventeenth winter solstice preceding the commencement of the Kaliyuga or towards the end of1194 B.C.

To summarize the arguments above set forth:

  1. We were first enabled by the Vedanga Jyotisha to place the beginning the Kali era approximately at about 1173 B.C.
  2. After enquiring into the date of Garga and of the Yavana invasion he spoke of, we noted that he fixed “the end of the Yuga” for the retirement of the Greeks from Hindustan. From this statement we inferred that the Yuga, which ended sometime before 165 B.C, must have begun a few years before 1165 B.C.
  3. In explaining the figures given by the classical historians, we concluded that the Kaliyuga must have begun in 1177-6 B.C.
  4. The Malabar era furnished us with another authority for fixing the commencement of the Kali era in1176 B.C.
  5. We found that if the Kali commenced at the winter solstice immediately preceding the year 1176 B.C., the details of the Mahabharata would lead us to place the war at the end of the year 1194 B.C.
  6. The Tradition recorded in the Rajatarangini, enabled us to fix the date of the war about 1190 B.C.
  7. From a statement made by Aryabhatta that the Rishis were in Magha in 1192 B.C., we inferred that the war might have taken place at about1195 B.C.
  8. The average duration of the reigns of the monarchs of the five foremost powers of our hemisphere served to assist us in fixing the date of the war at about1198 B.C.
  9. From a shloka of Garga quoted in the Brihatsamhita, we inferred that the war occurred in1194-3 B.C.
  10. We also found that the first year of the Brihaspati cycle of 60 years actually corresponds, as might naturally be expected, to the date of the war as given by Garga, i.e. 1194-3 B.C.
  11. We applied the elements of the Vedanga Jyotisha to a shloka contained in the Mahabharata, which fixes the day of the winter solstice occurring soon after the war, and concluded that the war should have taken place in the latter part of 1194 B.C.

Thus we find all this cumulative evidence derived from different sources converging to the result that the Kali era began at the winter solstice occurring at the end of 1177 B.C., and that the Mahabharata war took place at about the end of 1194 B.C. In arriving at these conclusions, we had the testimony of the only historian that India can boast of who lived in the twelfth century A.D., of the greatest of the astronomers of India who flourished at the end of the fifth century A.D., of another brilliant astronomer who shone in the second century B.C., and of a versatile Greek historian who was also an ambassador at the court of the first great historic Emperor of India who reigned in the fourth century B.C. We had also the authority of the oldest astronomical work of India which claims to be a supplement to the Vedas, of an ancient era which “forms such a “splendid bridge from the old world to the new”, and of the famous sixty-year cycle. We tested these conclusions by what we may call the common-sense process based on the lists of kings contained in the Puranas. We have met and disposed of the arguments of those that give an earlier date.

So far we have been treading on more or less firm ground. But if we attempt to fix the actual days of the year 1194 B.C. when the War may be supposed to have been fought, our authority will have to be the epic itself, by itself an unsafe guide. The Mahabharata is unfortunately neither the work of one author, nor of one age. It has been recently proposed to start an Indian Epic Society mainly for sifting out the older portions of our incomparable epic. But the labors of such a Society, when brought to a successful termination, will not militate against the authenticity of the texts we are presently to discuss. Most of these belong to the war portion of the Mahabharata, which, according to Weber, is recognizable as the original basis of the epic.

We have already referred to a shloka of the epic, which states that the winter solstice, which took place soon after the war, happened on the fifth day after new moon in the month of Magha. In the very next preceding shloka, Bhishma tells Yudhishthira that he has been lying on his ‘spiky’ bed for the previous fifty-eight nights. Among Hindus it has for long been considered good for one’s future state, for death to occur in the period between the winter and summer solstices. The grand old Bhishma did not allow the arrows sticking into his body to be removed lest he might die before the commencement of the auspicious period, but rather preferred to suffer the excruciating pain, to which one with a less magnificent physique would have speedily succumbed.

The war is expressly stated in the epic (Ashramavasika Parva X.30) to have lasted for eighteen consecutive days. Moreover, in the Dronabhisheka Parva (Sections II and V), Karna is said to have refrained from taking part in the war for the ten days during which Bhishma was the generalissimo of the Kaurava army. In the last chapter of Drona Parva it is stated that Drona, who was the next Commander-in- chief, was slain after having fought dreadfully for five days. Karna led the army for the succeeding two days (Karna Parva I.15), and on the night of the next day (Shalya Parva I.10-13) after Karna’s death, the war was brought to an end. When Yudhishthira was lamenting the death of Ghatotkacha on the fourteenth night of the war, Vyasa told him that in five days the earth would fall under his sway (Drona Parva CLXXXIV.65). From these references also it is clear that the war continued for eighteen consecutive days. As Bhishma was mortally wounded on the tenth day of the war, as the war lasted for eight days more, and as Bhishma is reported to have stated (Anushasana Parva CLXVII.26-27) on the day of the winter solstice that he remained on his bed of arrows for fully fifty-eight nights, the interval between the end of the war and the solstitial day was fifty days. As a matter of fact, this very number of days (ibid. 6) is stated as the period of the stay of the Pandavas in the city of Hastinapura which they entered on the next day after the war (Stri Parva XXVII, Shanti Parva XLI and XLV. Though the Pandavas desired to pass the period of mourning which extended for a month outside Hastinapura vide Shanti Parva I.2, their intention seems not to have been carried out) until they set out on their last visit to Bhishma on the day of the winter solstice. The epic says:

“The blessed monarch (Yudhishthira) having passed fifty nights in Hastinapura recollected the time indicated by his grandsire (Bhishma) as the hour of his departure from this world. Accompanied by a number of priests, he then set out of the city, having seen that the sun ceasing to go southwards had begun to proceed in his northward course” (Anushasanika Parva CLXVII. 5-6).

After Yudhishthira reached Bhishma, the latter addressed him in these words, “The thousand-rayed maker of the day has begun his northward course. I have been lying on my bed here for eight and fifty nights” (ibid. 26-27). We may therefore conclude that the winter solstice took place on the fifty-first day from the close of the war.

On the next day after the close of war, Sri Krishna and the Pandavas paid a visit to the dying Bhishma, whom Sri Krishna addressed in the following words: “Fifty-six days more, 0 Kuru Warrior, art thou going to live” (Stri Parva XXVII; Shanti ParvaXLI, XLV and LII). One need not be misled by the prophetic nature of this expression and declare it to be of no historic value. It might well have been a fact and put in the form of a prophecy by the compiler of the epic. But it may be asked how Bhishma could have lived fifty-six days after the close of the war, if only fifty days had elapsed from that time to the winter solstice when Bhishma hoped to give up his life-breath. But the explanation appears to me to be simple enough; though the winter solstice occurred fifty days after the close of the war, Bhishma does not seem to have died on the solstitial day, when the arrows were extracted from his body but appears rather to have lingered on till the sixth day after the winter solstice. We have seen that the solstice took place then on the fifth lunar day after new moon in the month of Magha. It was on the sixth day from this, that is, on Magha Sukla Ekadasi, that Bhishma, “that pillar of Bharata’s race,” seems to have “united himself with eternity.” Tradition asserts that Bhishma died on this very day, and our almanacs even now make note of the fact and call the day by name of “Bhishma Ekadasi.” To this day, death on the eleventh lunar day of the bright fortnight of the month of Magha is held in great esteem, and next to that, death on such a day of any other month. Possibly the supposed religious efficacy rests on the memory of the day of the royal sage’s death.

As the fifty-ninth day after Bhishma’s fall corresponded to Magha Sukla Panchami, Revati or Aswini Nakshatra, the day of Bhishma’s overthrow, which took place on the tenth day of the war, happened, in accordance with the 84 principles of the Vedanga, on Margasirsha Sukla Panchami, in Dhanishtha Nakshatra; and the Amavasya preceding it happened on the fifth day of the war in Jyeshtha Nakshatra. As a matter of fact, Dr. G. Thibaut gives this very Nakshatra for the last Amavasya but two of the third year of a five-year cycle, which particular new moon our Amavasya actually is. We may therefore conclude that the war began on the fourth Nakshatra preceding Jyeshtha or in Chitra of the month of Kartica and ended in Rohini Nakshatra in Margasirsa-month.

The Pandavas tried many milder means before they at last resorted to the arbitratement of war; they even proposed to sacrifice their interests to some extent, if war could thereby be averted. Shri Krishna was the last to be sent on a mission of mediation and he started for Hastinapura (Udyoga Parva, LXXXIII.7) “in the month of Kaumuda, under the constellation Revati at the end of the Sarad (autumn) season and at the approach of the Hemanta (dewy season).” According to the commentator and also to the translator, Kaumuda is the Kartica month. As the latter half of autumn corresponds to the month of Kartica, we may be certain that the statement means that Sri Krishna left for Hastinapura in the Revati Nakshatra of the month of Kartica. His efforts at reconciliation having been of no avail, he seems to have returned to the Pandava camp in Pushya Nakshatra for, as soon as he left Hastinapura, Duryodhana asked his warriors immediately to march the army to Kurukshetra (Udyoga Parva CXLII.18), “For to-day the moon is in the constellation of Pushya”. A little before Sri Krishna’s departure from Hastinapura, he proposed to Karna, “In seven days will there be new moon; let the war be begun on that day which, they say, is presided over by Indra.” As the commentator says, “Sakradevatam” denotes the Jyeshtha Nakshatra, which is presided over by Indra. The verse, therefore, indicates that the approaching Amavasya was to happen in Jyeshtha Nakshatra. This serves to confirm our inference drawn from other texts that the Amavasya, which occurred on the fifth day of the war, took place in Jyeshtha Nakshatra. But, to say that the new moon would occur on the seventh day seems to be certainly wrong, for Krishna was speaking to Karna in Pushya Nakshatra and the Amavasya was said to occur in Jyeshtha, the tenth Nakshatra from Pushya. Probably saptamat is an error for dashamat.

The war, however, did not begin in Amavasya as suggested by Sri Krishna for, Duryodhana moved out his army to Kurukshetra on Pushya Nakshatra. The Pandavas too seem to have marched out of Upaplavya on the very same Pushya. Both the contending parties were in such a hurry to march their armies to the battlefield, because Pushya Nakshatra was considered auspicious for such purposes. Yet, it was not possible to begin the actual fighting on the very same day. Much remained to be done before the armies could meet each other in battle array. If Sri Krishna returned from Hastinapura with the answer of Duryodhana on Pushya Nakshatra it is reasonable to allow some time for the marching of troops, for the ground to be cleared, for the pitching of tents, for the divisions of the armies to be properly effected, and most of all, for the allied princes to bring on their respective divisions to the field of battle. It appears to me that all these preliminary arrangements were gone through during the interval of the five days between Pushya and Chitra, in which Nakshatra the fighting actually began. But our epic says that both the parties were prepared for battle on the day when the moon had gone to the region of Magha (Bhishma Parva XVII). The natural interpretation of the expression is that on that day the moon was in Magha Nakshatra. In that case we have to suppose that though the armies were almost ready for war in Magha Nakshatra, the first shot was not fired till after the lapse of three more days. The armies began their march to Kurukshetra in Pusha, were organized in effective divisions in Magha, and actually engaged in battle in Chitra. Or, it may be that ‘Magha’ is an error for ‘Maghava’. The expression then would mean that the moon had entered the region of Indra, that is the star Chitra presided over by Indra. If the emendation proves to be correct we have here another testimony to the correctness of our conclusion that the war began in Chitra Nakshatra.

It must be borne in mind that the epic was cast into its present form more than a thousand years after the date of the war. There are many statements in the epic which conflict with one another, a circumstance which can be accounted for only on this historic basis. One such conflicting statement occurs in the Gadayudha Parva. On the last day of the war Balarama returned to Kurukshetra from his pilgrimage to the banks of the Sarasvati, whither he had gone on the eve of the war in utter disgust with this horrible fratricidal war. He said (Shalya Parva XXXIV.6), “Forty-two days have elapsed since I proceeded forth; I left on Pushya, I have returned in Sravana.” The Epic states expressly that the Pushya Nakshatra on which Balarama went away on pilgrimage was the one (Shalya Parva XXXV.10-15; Udyoga Parva CLVII.16-35) on which the Pandavas set out of Upaplavya to the field of battle. It also certainly implies that the Sravana Nakshatra on which Balarama returned happened on the last day of the war (Shalya Parva LIV.32). If these statements are to be taken as authentic, the obvious inference is that the war, which began with the marching of armies to Kurukshetra on Pushya, came to an end in Shravana forty-two days later.

This conflicts directly with the natural inferences we have drawn from the other statements,namely, that the winter solstice occurred on Magha Shukla Panchami fifty days after the close of the war, that the war lasted for eighteen consecutive days, that the Amavasya which occurred on the fifth day of the war took place in Jyeshtha Nakshatra, and that Sri Krishna left for Hastinapura on his errand of peace on Revati Nakshatra of Kartica month and returned to Upaplavya on the next following Pushya. To avoid such a contingency two explanations of this manifestly corrupt text are possible. We have either to suppose that the statements about Balarama’s departure on the eve of the war and about his return on the last day thereof are spurious as being opposed to the united testimony of other texts, or that the verse under discussion requires a little emendation. In the former case the inference to be drawn from the shloka is that Balarama left for the Sarasvati in Pushya Nakshatra twenty-seven days before the march of troops on the next Pushya Nakshatra to the battle field and that he returned to Kurukshetra in Sravana some days before the close of the war. If, however, the shloka is incorrect, we may best correct it by changing ‘forty-two’ into ‘twenty-four’. If Balarama had left on pilgrimage in Pushya and returned on the last day of the war, that being the twenty-fourth from the day of his departure, the last day of the war would happen in Rohini, a result which is identical with the one we have already deduced from other texts.

There is one other conflicting verse which we shall briefly discuss. On the fourteenth night of the war there was a tremendous battle between the contending parties. It is hinted in the epic (Salya Parva LIV.32) that the moon rose up on that night after three-fourths part of it had expired. This is certainly a mistake; for the new moon having taken place on the fifth day of the war, the moon should have disappeared below the western horizon about an hour and a half before three-fourths of the night was over. On the evening of the fourteenth day of the war, Arjuna’s vow to kill Jayadratha having been fulfilled, the Kurus, burning with revengeful thoughts, continued the strife far into the night. The epic would have us believe that during the first half of the night a tremendous battle raged in total darkness resulting in the death of Ghatotkacha, that both the armies therefore lay down to sleep for some time, and that on the rise of the moon at about three o’clock in the morning, both the sides recommenced their fighting. It is more probable that the war continued for as long as the moon was shining and that the armies rested when the moon had set. The poet was perhaps led to make this mistake by his anxiety to render the night sufficiently horrible for Rakshasa heroes to fight with their powers of illusion.

But, barring these two conflicting statements which too may be explained away, all other texts serve to support our conclusion. We are told that:-

  1. the winter solstice happened on Magha Shukla Panchami;
  2. the tenth day battle happened fifty-eight days before it;
  3. Bhishma, who died on Magha Shukla Ekadasi, gave up the ghost fifty-six days after the close of the war;
  4. a period of fifty days intervened between the end of the war and the winter solstice;
  5. the war lasted for eighteen consecutive days;
  6. the Amavasya, which occurred soon after the commencement of the war, happened in Jyeshtha Nakshatra;
  7. the armies began their departure to the field of battle in Pushya Nakshatra; and
  8. Krishna had proceeded to Hastinapura on his mission of mediation on the preceding Revati Nakshatra in the month of Kartica.

All these point but to one conclusion, namely, that the war, which lasted for eighteen consecutive days, concluded on the fifty-first night before the winter solstice.

At present the winter solstice falls on the 21st of December. The Gregorian system, which is the basis of the calendars of all Europe except Russia, Greece and Turkey, involves an error of less than a day in 3524 years. As the war took place in 1194 B.C., or 3094 years ago or 2776 years before the calendar was last corrected by Pope Gregory XIII, we may be certain that the winter solstice which occurred on the fifty-first day after the close of the war, would have happened, as now on the 21st of December (New Style). We may, therefore, conclude that the War commenced on the 14th of October, and was brought to a close on the night of the 31st of October, 1194 B.C. Whether or not this precise date, based as it is on data furnished by the Mahabharata alone, proves to be acceptable to the critical eye of a historian, we may at least be sure that the war took place in the latter part of the year 1194 B.C.

THE CURIOUS TALE OF BARBAREEK

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Other than the sons of Bhima, Arjuna and the Draupadeyas Vyasa does not mention names of Pandava progeny. In Jaimini’s Ashvamedha parva a new character is introduced: Bhima’s grandson Meghavarna, the son of Ghatotkacha. But there is yet another son of Ghatotkacha whose story is told in the Skanda Purana, Kumarika Khanda, chapters 59-66 by Suta Ugrashrava to Shaunaka and other sages performing a great sacrificial ritual in the forest of Naimisha. Suta narrates what he had heard from Dvaipayana (island-born) Vyasa.

When the Pandavas were dwelling in Indraprastha under Vasudeva’s protection, one day Ghatotkacha arrived in the court and was welcomed with warm embraces and blessings. He informed them that since the death of his wicked maternal uncle Hidimb he was ruling the kingdom righteously and that his mother was engaged in austerities. At her urging, he had left the foothills and come to offer his respects, requesting them to engage him in some noble cause. Yudhishthira was delighted and praised Hidimba for rejecting the splendour of her husband’s royal palace for ascesis and having overcome all desire. 

Turning to Krishna, Yudhishthira expressed his anxiety over finding a proper bride for Ghatotkacha. Krishna thought a little and stated that the proper spouse was waiting for him in the city of Praagjyotisha. She was the daughter of the Daitya Mura of amazing feats, intimate friend of the Daitya Naraka, both of whom Krishna had slain. After Mura fell, his valiant daughter Kamakatankata  attacked Krishna and, cutting through his shower of arrows, struck Garuda’s head with her sword, felling him unconscious. When Krishna lifted the discus to slay her, the goddess Kamakhya  appeared and announced that she had granted Mura’s daughter the boon of invincibility in battle and gifted her the sword, shield, spear and incomparable intelligence. Therefore, honouring her boon, Krishna ought not to fight the daanavi. The goddess made peace between Kamakatankata and Krishna. She directed the Daitya amazon that as she was to become the daughter-in-law of Krishna’s cousin Bhima, she ought to touch her future father-in-law’s feet. Krishna blessed her and asked her to continue living there, looked after honourably by Naraka’s son Bhagadatta. 

Kamakatankata vowed to wed only that man who could baffle her with a riddle and defeat her in a duel. Everyone who attempted lost his life. Yudhishthira refused to permit their grandson to undertake such an enterprise, howsoever wonderful the prospective bride’s talents might be and preferred to search elsewhere. Bhima, however, insisted that the valiant must attempt the impossible, otherwise how would fame be theirs? He advised that his son proceed alone immediately to win Mura’s daughter. Arjuna supported him, pointing out that success had already been foretold by the goddess Kamakhya. Krishna approved but asked Ghatotkacha what was his own wish.  He responded, “I do not boast, but I wish to assure my elders that you will not have to be ashamed of me.” With their blessings, he left. As he left Krishna told him, “When you speak to her, think of me. I will ensure your victory by making your intelligence and your prowess invincible.”

Ghatotkacha reached the outskirts of Praagjyotisha city and approached the gates of a huge palace with a thousand golden spires. From within it arose the music of flutes and veenas and thousands of maidservants could be seen scurrying about. Bhagadatta’s retainers were rushing back and forth enquiring, “What is the sister’s wish?” Approaching a maid named Karnapravarna  he spoke softly to her, “Lady, where is Mura’s daughter? I come from afar to meet her.” “Mighty-armed one,” she responded, “Why do you seek the daughter of Mura? Crores of lusting men like you have met with death at her hands. Your appearance I find most amusing, like a pot and all the hair sticking up. Valiant one, I touch your feet and am at your disposal. Lusty one, stay here with me and enjoy yourself. I shall provide you three attendants with wives.” Ghatotkacha replied, “Auspicious lady, you have only proved what I have heard about all of you. But my heart does not accept your words. Once desire fastens upon a goal it is not diverted elsewhere—so what can I do? Today I shall either defeat your mistress and sport with her or, being defeated, follow the path of the other suitors. Hence, O Karnapravarna, swiftly carry my words to your mistress. May she grant audience immediately and welcome the guest.”

The night-foraging maiden ran at once to where Kamakatankata sat within the palace and said, “Devi, a youth of appearance unique in the three worlds is at your door wishing to meet you. Command what is to be done.” Kamakatankata said, “Let him come in at once! Why the delay? Perhaps finally, after so long, through divine intervention my time has come.” Hearing this, Karnapravarna returned to Ghatotkacha and said, “Lust-crazed one, without delay rush to that death-incarnate.” 

Thereupon Bhima’s son entered the city like a lion striding into a mountain cave. He saw Kamakatankata reclining on a swing surrounded by doves, parrots and beautiful maids. In beauty and youth she seemed like the goddess of love Rati. Decked in ornaments, she flashed like lightning. Ghatotkacha thought, “Uncle Krishna has truly chosen the right partner for me. So what if previous suitors have been destroyed? The body, after all, is subject to decay. If the bodies of lusting men get destroyed because of such women, let it be so.” He said, “Adamantine-hearted one, I come to you as a guest. Therefore, greet me appropriately.” Kamakatankata was surprised to hear this and noticing Ghatotkacha’s appearance cursed herself, “Alas! If I had not sworn such a vow already, he would certainly have been my husband.” She said, “Sir, you have come in vain. Depart with your life. And should you desire me, put forward some proposition immediately. If you can throw me in doubt, I shall be yours to command. Otherwise you shall die at my hands.”

Ghatotkacha called on Krishna, lord of all, and began to tell a story.

“The wife of a man who had no control over his senses died after giving birth to a daughter. When she bloomed into a woman, that lustful man was crazed with desire and one day embracing her said, ‘Dearest, you are the daughter of one of my neighbours. I have looked after you so long to make you my wife. Therefore, now fulfil my desire.’ The daughter thought it was the truth and accepted him as her husband. Thereafter, she gave birth to a daughter. Now tell me, is that girl that lustful man’s granddaughter or daughter? Answer me if you can.”

Kamakatankata thought over the riddle for a long time but could not arrive at an answer. Then she rang the golden shackles of the swing and immediately crores of Rakshasas, lions, tigers, boars, buffalos and leopards appeared and rushed to devour Ghatotkacha. Seeing this, he laughed and from his nails produced double the number who ate up those Rakshasas and others in an instant. 

Then Kamakatankata sprang up from her swing to take up her sword. Bhima’s son at once seized her hair with his left hand and threw her on the ground. Pressing his foot on her throat he threatened to slice off her nose with the knife in his right hand. Mura’s daughter was unable to move and said, “Lord, in riddle, prowess and physical strength—in all three you have defeated me. I salute you as your servant. Free me and command me what you will, I shall obey.” Ghatotkacha said, “If that be so, then you are free. You are welcome to try again.” Kamakatankata replied, “O mighty warrior, I know who you are. You are the first among the powerful, lord of all night-roamers, the lord of guhyakas Kalanaabha and have taken birth on earth to protect the Yakshas. Goddess Kamakhya has revealed this to me. I surrender myself, my attendants, this palace, everything to you. O Lord of my life, command me, what I should do.” Ghatotkacha said, “Daughter of Mura, one whose parents are alive ought not to marry in secret. Therefore, take me now to Indraprastha. It is our custom that the bride carries the groom. There, with my elders’ permission, I shall marry you.”

Mura’s daughter then informed her guardian Bhagadatta of everything and with a host of gifts from him carried Ghatotkacha on her back to Indraprastha where they were married to the great delight of Kunti and Draupadi. The Pandavas were glad to receive all the wealth. Thereafter the couple returned to Hidimba forest where the Rakshasas held great celebrations to the clash of cymbals. In due course a son was born who achieved youth immediately after birth, as Rakshasas do. Dark of complexion like blue clouds, his face was like a pot, eyes large, hair all standing up. Touching his parents’ feet he requested them to name him and advise him about what he ought to do. Embracing him Ghatotkacha said, “Son, since your hair is curled, I name you Barbareek. About your future course of action, I shall enquire of Vasudeva after reaching Dvaraka.”

Leaving his wife there, Ghatotkacha took to the skies with his son and reached Dvaraka where the guards raised an uproar warning everyone about the arrival of two Rakshasas. Ghatotkacha announced their identity and requested audience with Krishna who immediately had them admitted into the court. Barbareek then enquired of Krishna how to achieve excellence in keeping with his birth. Krishna said, “Maurveya, you are born in a Kshatriya family, hence acquire immense prowess whereby you may punish the wicked and protect the virtuous. Thereby you shall win heaven. It is by the grace of goddesses that illimitable strength can be obtained. Hence, go the secret spot located at Mahisagara on the seashore where sage Narada has brought together all the goddesses. Worship the four goddesses of the directions and the nine Durgas. Finding them all in one place is a unique opportunity. If they are pleased, there is nothing—power, wealth, fame, sons, wife, heaven, even liberation—that you cannot obtain.” Turning to Ghatotkacha, Krishna said, “Your son is extremely righteous, therefore I name him ‘Suhridaya’, the good-hearted one.” 

Ghatotkacha returned to his forest, while his son departed for the secret teertha Guptakshetra. For three years he lived in the place named Dagdhasthali, worshiping the goddesses who appeared before him and blessed him with incomparable prowess. They advised him to wait there for some more time to meet Vijaya, which would be to his advantage. A Brahmin of Magadha named Vijaya arrived there after some time having learned in Kaashi a special kind of worship by which for a long time he had worshipped the seven lingas and the goddesses to gain knowledge. In a dream the goddesses told him to continue the ritual with the help of Barbareek. On the fourteenth night of the dark fortnight Vijaya and Barbareek, having fasted, created a devi-mandala in front of the Siddhaambikaa temple, fixing a mantra-sanctified sword in its midst and eight wooden posts bound with thread around the mandala. Vijaya asked Barbareek to keep awake praying to Devi and to guard him from all harm. He proceeded first to pray to Ganesha, then the Kshetrapalas, then the Yakshi Sunanda who was in the form of a banyan tree on the shore, and began to repeat the Aparajita Mantra from “Om namo bhagavate” till “namohastu te svaha”. 

In the first hour of the night a woman manifested there, clad in a single bloody cloth, hair flying wildly, terrifying eyes, gleaming white teeth—an image that would terrify terror itself. She was weeping loudly. Vijaya was frightened but Barbareek went up to her and embracing her neck began to weep even more loudly. Surprised, that woman tried to smite him with a sword, but Barbareek seized her by the throat and immobilised her. After roaring in pain for some time, she begged to be released and, when he let go, fell at his feet. “I am the shape-shifting rakshasi Mahaajihvaa and live in the cremation grounds of Kaashi. If you spare me, I shall engage in austerities that will benefit all creatures. If I do not do so, may I be reduced to ashes.” Barbareek then let her go and continued to stand guard. 

At midnight a terrible roaring was heard and a huge hill became visible from which trees and rocks began to rain along with hail and blood. Not at all fearful, Barbareek took up a hill twice that size and jumped upon that hill so hard that it shattered to pieces. Repalendra then assumed a hundred-headed form, spitting fire from its many mouths. Barbareek did the like and attacked it with bow and arrows, then with sword and, when both got broken, they fought with fists. Finally, Barbareek suddenly lifted up the demon and spinning him round, flung him on the ground, killing him and threw his body afar. The place where he fell became a village named Repalendra. This terror of sadhus was the lord of the cremation ground of Avanti.

After the next hour again from the west a thunderous sound was heard and the earth quaked. Then, like lightning falling from the clouds, a she-mule arrived. Bhima’s grandson laughed, jumped upon that mule and tried to stop it by hitting it on its snout repeatedly. Instead it grew furious and with a mighty neigh leaped threw Barbareek on the ground. He then seized its legs and threw it on the ground. As it rose up, he again hit it so hard that its teeth fell out. He began wringing its neck and throttled it to death. Thus that demoness leader of Shaakinis met her end. The village at the place where Barbareek threw her became known as Duhadruha.

At the fourth hour a peculiar shaven headed naked mendicant wearing peacock feathers appeared, exclaiming, “Alas, non-violence is the supreme dharma. So how can fire be lit? For to light fire many tiny creatures have to be slain.” Hearing this Barbareek laughed and said, “Agni is the mouth of all gods, therefore the proper ritual is to place offerings in it. You speak falsely, therefore, wicked one, you need to be taught a lesson.” With a leap, Barbareek seized him and with a blow on his mouth that broke his teeth threw him on the ground unconscious. On regaining consciousness, he assumed a terrifying demon’s form and fled into a cave within which a city named Bahuprabhaa existed. Barbareek followed him and was attacked by many Palaashi Daityas with arms. Like a musth elephant entering a forest of reeds he trampled them all to death. Then Vasuki and other Nagas came and soothed him with sweet praise for killing the demons who used to torment them. They asked him to choose a boon. Barbareek requested that Vijaya should obtain what he was praying for. “So be it,” they said gladly.

On his way back through the tunnel Barbareek saw at the foot of a banyan tree a bejewelled linga being worshipped by many Naga maidens. Surprised he enquired of them who had established this dazzling linga and where the paths seen around it led. One of the heavy hipped, large breasted women shyly glanced at him and smilingly said that lord of the Nagas, noble Shesha had established this linga and to the east the path led to the Shri mountain on earth. The path had been made by Elapatra Naga. The path to the south led to Shurparaka teertha and was made by Karkotaka Naga. To the west the path led to the glorious pilgrimage spot of Prabhasa and was made by Airavata Naga. The path Barbareek was taking was to the north and led to the secret spot where the Siddha linga existed. That tunnel was known as Shakti cave and was made by Takshaka. Saying this the maidens all wished to know who he was and begged him to wed them and stay there. Barbareek announced his identity and refused their offer as he had opted for celibacy. Prostrating before the linga in salutation, he came out of the cave to find dawn breaking. Vijaya greeted him happily having completed the entire worship. Soon he began to rise upwards, greeted by showers of flowers by gods, music and dance by gandharvas and apsaras. Vijaya blessed Barbareek with victory, joy and immortality, advising him to take the crimson ashes from the sacred fire he had lit and to fling it against the enemy in war. It would destroy all foes and ensure his victory. Barbareek, however, refused the gift because the virtuous man performs service without selfish motives. The gods then told him that should the Kauravas obtain these ashes, it would lead to great evil for the Pandavas. Therefore, he ought to collect them. He complied and continued to live there worshipping the goddesses.

Thereafter when the Pandavas went into exile, they arrived at this spot while touring the sacred teerthas. Entering the temple of Chandikaa in the north for resting, they met Barbareek there. Neither knew one another because since his birth they had not met. Parched, Bhima was about to enter the pond when Yudhishthira cautioned him to wash his feet first outside it and then drink, otherwise he would be committing a serious fault. Bhima, unsettled with thirst, paid no heed, walked into the pond and washed himself there. Seeing this Barbareek shouted, “Sinful wretch, you washed yourself in the goddess’ pond! Daily I bathe her with this water and you have dirtied it. Even human beings will not touch such water, what of deities! Come out at once and then drink. If you are such an imbecile how are you visiting sacred teerthas?” 

Bhima: “Brutal Rakshasa! Why are you abusing me? All water is for the enjoyment of all creatures. Sages have prescribed bathing in teerthas, which means cleaning the body. So why are you blaming me?”
Suhridaya: “True, bathing in teerthas is one’s duty, but its procedure is to bathe entering a flowing stream and in still waters from the outside unless its waters are not used to bathe deities. Violating this is sinful. Therefore, wicked fool, come out at once. If you are such a slave of your senses, why are you on a pilgrimage at all?”
Bhima: “Whether it be dharma or adharma I cannot step out. Never have I been able to bear hunger and thirst.”
Suhridaya: “Have you not heard king Shibi’s saying that it is better to live but for a moment doing a pure act than to live for an eon committing sins.”
Bhima: “Your cawing is deafening. Lament as much as you wish and die, but I am definitely going to quench my thirst here.”
Suhridaya: “Born in a dharma-protecting Kshatriya family I will not permit you to do evil. Either you come out now, or I will shatter your head with this stone.” Saying this, he threw a stone at Bhima’s head. Avoiding it, Bhima jumped out of the pond and engaged Barbareek. 

After fighting for some time Bhima weakened and Barbareek began to throttle him, throwing him to the ground. Bhima fell unconscious and Barbareek began to drag him to the sea to throw him into it. Lord Rudra addressed Barbareek from the sky and asked him to release Bhima for he was his grandfather, whatever he might have done. Hearing this, Barbareek released Bhima and cursed himself repeatedly. Throwing himself at Bhima’s feet he begged forgiveness repeatedly, beating his head on the ground and weeping. Bhima embraced him and said, “Son, we have never met you, nor have you seen us since birth. We heard from Krishna and Ghatotkacha that you live here but our sorrows had made us oblivious of that. Do not grieve, for you are not at fault. The Kshatriya must punish all wrong-doers. I am very pleased and we and our ancestors are blessed that we have so virtuous a grandson.” Barbareek said, “No penance has been prescribed for progeny who do not respect parents. Therefore I shall drown this sinful body that has pained my grandfather in the sea.” Saying this, Barbareek gave a mighty leap and reached the sea shore. Siddhaambikaa and the fourteen goddesses then manifested there with Rudra and embracing Barbareek said, “Valiant one, what is done in ignorance is not sinful. Look, your grandfather is running this way shouting your name. If you give up your body now, so will Bhima and that will lead to your incurring great sin. And if you are bent upon dying, then listen to my words: soon your death is fated at Krishna’s hands. Wait until then. For, being killed by Vishnu brings great fortune.” Barbareek refrained from suicide but complained, “Devi, you know well that Shri Krishna always protects the Pandavas in the interest of getting his work done on earth. You too came to save this Vrikodara.” Devi said, “I shall surely protect my devotee from Krishna. To accomplish my work, Barbareek will undertake a mighty battle and be renowned throughout the world as Chandil.” Saying this, all the deities vanished. Bhima took Barbareek to the Pandavas and narrated everything. Bhima established a linga named Bhimeshvara at the spot where he had been rescued by Rudra. Worshipping it at night after fasting on the fourteenth day of the dark fortnight of Jaishtha liberates one from all sins.  

After halting for seven nights there the Pandavas decided to leave. In the morning after bathing in the sacred waters and worshipping the goddesses and the seven lingas, Yudhishthira recited the hymn to the Devi composed by Krishna that must be recited before commencing a journey: “O dear sister of Krishna, Mahashakti Devi, I take refuge in you with body, mind, heart and spirit. You have gifted Sankarshana freedom from fear. You dazzle like Krishna. O Mahadevi Ekanamsha , Shivey, nurture me as your son. You are formless, it is you who create this world. Knowing this I take shelter with you. Auspicious One, rescue me. Before starting all work I with my followers surrender our souls in you. Knowing this, shower your grace on me.”

As Yudhishthira said all this with folded hands Bhima, irritated, said, “O king, I see that people are wrong in pointing you out as ‘Yudhishthira the all-knowing’. For, you know nothing at all. Despite being the first among the wise and expert in all branches of knowledge will a person ever take shelter with a foolish female? You know very well, and it is so stated in all scriptures, that Prakriti who shrouds the world in illusion is inanimate and stupid. The wise call Prakriti ignorant and Purusha conscious. Prakriti is Purusha’s wife. Vain is your learning, Partha, for despite being yourself a purusha you are bowing down to that Prakriti. It makes me laugh. Sandals are not fit to cover the head. Rather, the foolish person who worships a goddess is like the man who places sandals on his head. If you needs must endlessly chant paeans like bards, then why not do so in honour of triple-city destroyer Mahadeva? Or, if you cannot praise him as he cannot be seen, why not chant a paean to the perfect purusha Dasharha  Krishna by whose grace we have obtained Draupadi, you have ruled in Indraprastha and conducted the Rajasuya, Arjuna has obtained the Gandiva bow, I have slain Jarasandha and even now we wish to recover our lost kingdom from the Kauravas? Instead of that Krishna a god-like one like you is singing another’s praises! How terrible! And if you feel that being born in the superior Kuru dynasty you cannot chant the praises of the lower in status Yadava, then why don’t you praise Arjuna who has pierced the target in Draupadi’s svayamvara, defeated heroes like Karna, burnt Khandava forest, defeated kings for the Rajasuya sacrifice, by his prowess won over Mahesha and even lived in heaven? Or, if you are unwilling to praise him because you feel that despite being able to do so Arjuna did not win back the kingdom for you, then why not sing my praises, who rescued you from the flaming house of lac, felled the Madra king with a log and threw him into a dry river bed, killed the king-of-kings Jarasandha, conquered the East, killed the mighty Rakshasas Hidimb and Baka earlier and recently Kirmira. All the time it is I who constantly protect you, so why not chant my praises? Never have I seen her, whom you were praising, protect you. And should you not wish to praise me, considering me a glutton, cruel and reckless, then proceed uttering the Pranava ‘Om’ punctiliously. Wasteful speech is a fault and invites evil spirits into the body because of which that person is repeatedly prompted to talk irrelevantly. Whatever such a person eats or does goes to satisfy evil spirits, so say the scriptures. He cannot gain comfort in this world, let alone the next. I am reminding you that the wise always avoid unnecessary speech. Should you still continue talking irrelevantly, it will be our duty to treat you with various medicines.”

Having listened to Bhima’s huge speech—spread out like a bale of cloth—Yudhishthira laughed and said, “Definitely you are without intelligence and have studied the Vedas in vain, for you are not respecting Ambikaa the mother of all creatures. Why are you slighting her for being a woman? Our mother Kunti is a woman too. In what way does she not deserve respect? If Mahamaya, worshipped even by Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, were not there, how could this body of yours be formed? Even the Supreme Lord cannot do without her, for even he depends on her. Vasudeva too worships that transcendent Shakti daily. If I need medical treatment, then so does he. Out of stupidity, do not repeat such words about Maheshvari. If you have any desire at all for happiness, then fall supine on the ground and take refuge in her.”

Bhima said, “Flatterers use every means to bring men under their influence and in such cases not to converse with them is the best medicine. Everyone strives to achieve his own goal. Therefore we too will do only what we wish. With the strength of a thousand elephants, son of Pavana, this Bhimasena will never take refuge with any woman.” Saying this, he began to follow Yudhishthira who went ahead muttering, “This is not good, this is not good.”

After a while Bhima began to stagger and called out, “O best of kings, most wise Dharmaraja! See, I cannot see anymore. What has happened to me?” The king replied, “Bhima, definitely the goddess Maheshvari is angry with you and that is why your sight is destroyed. Therefore, mentally take refuge in her at once. Then, being pleased, she might restore your sight.” Bhima said, “O great king, I know that none can compare to the Devi, but it is to obtain sight of her that I abuse her constantly. Therefore I am now witnessing her power and lying supine, with heart, mind, speech I take refuge in that mother and sing her praises.”

Pleased by the paean he chanted, the goddess who was as dark as Krishna and lovely, appeared before Bhima holding sword, shield, pike and cup in her four hands. Bhima regained his sight and worshipped her, begging her to be pleased with him. The goddess placed Yudhishthira and Bhima in her lap and said, “Do not abuse me again. I know why you did it and although Krishna does not like my expressing anger, I did so because it was necessary. Whenever dharma declines, Hari manifests on earth and so do I to help him. At present he has taken birth as Vasudeva’s son and I have appeared as Nandagopa’s daughter Ekanamsha. Since you brothers represent Krishna’s spirit, you are also my brothers and I shall be known as “Bhima-bhagini,” Bhima’s sister. When you fight in the great war, I will dwell in your arms to destroy the Dhartarashtras. After ruling for thirty-six years you shall leave the world. Then at this pilgrimage spot a mighty demon named Loha will try to kill you, noticing that you are unarmed. I will then blind him while you will proceed to cross the snows and finally sink into the sands. Yudhishthira alone will reach heaven with his body. Where Loha falls a city named Lohana  will come up and a portion of me shall dwell there restoring sight to the blind if they worship me on the seventh day of the bright fortnight. In Kali Yuga a devotee of mine named Kela will be born and I shall be called Keleshvari after him. Another excellent devotee of mine named Bailaaka will appear and because of him I shall be renowned in that era in particular. It is here that I shall destroy the demon Durgama and therefore be known as Durgaa. To protect you all I shall dwell in the eastern side of Dharmaaranya. In Kali Yuga one of your descendants, the king of Vatsa shall please me and I shall be known after him as Vatseshvari. By my grace that king shall slay a demoness named Attalaya  and a village named Attaalaja shall come up at that spot. There an image of Vatseshvari shall be established. Later Loha shall be reborn and be invincible. Then Vishnu shall incarnate as Budha and destroy him. At that spot a village named Lohaati shall be founded. Another demon named Gaya will be made into a eunuch by me and a village named Gayataada will come up with an image of mine so named worshipped there by eunuchs. Remember me as your sister whenever you face danger. You are as dear to me as Krishna Now proceed to visit all the sacred pilgrimage spots.” Saying this, the goddess vanished. Telling Barbareek to meet them after the exile was over, the Pandavas left to visit the teerthas.

After the exile was over and the armies assembled at Kurukshetra, Arjuna was boasting to apprehensive Yudhishthira that by himself he could rout the enemies in a single day when Barbareek spoke. He said, “One who has performed ascesis and pleased the goddesses in their secret abode Guptakshetra, hear of that person’s incomparable prowess. O kings, not out of mere arrogance, but speaking the truth about my valour, I say that I am not satisfied with the time-span that worshipful Arjuna has mentioned, for it is an unnecessary waste of time. All of you stay here with Arjuna and Keshava while I alone will despatch Bhishma and all the Kauravas in a moment to Yama’s abode. When I am present, no other warrior need take up arms. Should I die, then let others fight. Look upon the might I have obtained by worshipping the goddess and realise the greatness of Guptakshetra and my devotion towards the Pandavas. See, here are my terrible bow, inexhaustible twin quivers and sword gifted by the goddess, because of which I have spoken thus.”

All the warriors present were amazed. Somewhat embarrassed, Arjuna glanced at Krishna who supported Barbareek, “He has spoken justly. In the past, one hears that he had destroyed innumerable demons along with the danava Palaashi in but a moment. But tell us, grandson of Bhima, exactly how do you propose to demolish the Kauravas in a moment, protected as they are by Bhishma, Drona, Kripa, Ashvatthama, Karna, Duryodhana and others, so that we can repose faith in your words.” 

“O heroes, if you wish to witness the means, I shall show you. Let Keshava and all present watch.” Saying this, Barbareek swiftly placed one of the vermillion-tinted arrows on his bowstring and shot it. From the arrow-tip crimson ash fell on the fatal spots of both armies—Bhishma’s hair-follicles, Drona, Karna, Shakuni, Dhrishtadyumna and Bhagadatta’s necks, Duryodhana’s thighs, Shalya’s chest, the soles of Krishna’s feet, Shikhandi’s waist, and so on. Only Ashvatthama and the five Pandavas were left untouched. “Now,” said Barbareek, “you have all seen that I have marked the mortal spot of everyone. Next I shall shoot sharp arrows at those spots and by those infallible goddess-gifted arrows they shall fall into the maw of death in a trice. None of you should take up arms. In but a moment I shall demolish all these enemies.” 

Amazed, Yudhishthira and all the kings present loudly applauded. But Vasudeva was angered and forthwith beheaded Barbareek with his razor-sharp discuss, to the horror of all present. The Pandavas lamented. Ghatotkacha, crying out, “Alas my son!” collapsed unconscious on the corpse. Meanwhile fourteen goddesses manifested there: Siddhaambikaa, Krodamaataa, Kapaalee, Taaraa, Suvarnaa, Trailokyavijayaa, Bhaaneshvaree, Charchikaa, Ekaveeraa, Yogeshvaree, Chandikaa, Tripuraa, Bhutaambikaa and Harasiddhi. Consoling Ghatotkacha, Chandikaa said, “O Kings! Hear why omniscient Krishna has slain Barbareek. In the past, the earth had approached the gods on Mount Meru complaining of being unbearably burdened. Then at Brahma’s request Vishnu agreed to descend on earth along with the gods to remove Prithvi’s burden. At that time the Yaksha chief Suryavarchaa had lifted up his arms and said, ‘Listen, O gods, I am the storehouse of many flaws, hence when I exist, why should any of you descend on earth? Remain here with Vishnu while I by myself relieve the earth of its burden. I swear in the name of Dharma that there is no need for any of you to incarnate on earth.’ At this, Brahma said in anger, ‘Wicked Yaksha chieftain! What is difficult even for the gods you have boasted arrogantly as achievable by you alone. Fool, because of this you deserve to be cursed. He who boasts of his prowess before his superiors without judging his own and others’ strength and weakness deserves punishment. Therefore, at the time of the commencement of the war to relieve the earth’s burden, Krishna will kill you.’ Thus cursed by Brahma, that Yaksha chief prayed to Vishnu that from birth his mind be set on ascesis for achieving salvation. Keshava granted this and said, ‘Worshippers of the goddess will adore your head as well.’ That Suryavarchaa is this slain Barbareek, you all are the gods, and Krishna is that Hari who has merely fructified Brahma’s curse. Therefore, Krishna should not be held guilty by you for this act.” Krishna confirmed the goddess’ words, adding that he had advised Barbareek in Guptakshetra to worship the goddess because that is the boon he had been given in the presence of the gods. 

Chandikaa then poured the nectar of immortality on her devotee’s skull, whereby it became unaging and immortal for all time. That Rahu-like head then saluted everyone and said, “I wish to witness this war. Kindly permit that.” In a thunderous voice Krishna roared, “So long as this earth, the constellations, the sun and the moon exist, you, dear one, will be worshipped in the three worlds. In all the realms of the goddesses you shall be honoured like them. The illnesses suffered by children will disappear on worshipping you. Now be placed atop this hill and witness the war.”

Barbareek’s body was cremated, but his head remained on top of the hill. After the war was over, Yudhishthira praised Krishna for having enabled them to be victorious. This irritated Bhima who said, “It is I, Bhima, who has destroyed the Dhartarashtras. Ignoring me, like a fool why you are singing paeans to Krishna calling him ‘Purushottama’. O Pandava, Dhrishtadyumna, Arjuna, Satyaki, myself—ignoring us you are praising a charioteer. Shame on you!” Arjuna replied, “No, Bhima, do not say this. You do not know Janardana. Neither you, nor I nor anyone else has slain the enemy. During battle I always noticed that before me some person was advancing slaying the enemy. I do not know who that man was.” Bhima said, “There was no other enemy-killer, Partha. Surely you are hallucinating. However, if you do not believe me, let us ask my grandson on the hill who killed the enemy.” Bhima put this question to Barbareek who answered, “I saw but one man fight. On his left he had five faces and on his right only one. The left side of his body had ten hands holding weapons and the right side had four with the discus etc. The heads on the left were crowned with matted hair; that on the right had a glowing crown. The left body was covered in ashes; the right was smeared with sandal paste. The left had a crescent moon, the right the Kaustabha gem. I was terrified. I have never seen such a man.” A shower of flowers fell from the sky with shouts of “Excellent, excellent!” Astounded, the Pandavas touched Krishna’s feet. Bhima hung his head in embarrassment. Krishna said to Barbareek, “O Suhridaya, roam the worlds, fulfilling the prayers of all. Everyone shall worship you. Never abandon this Guptakshetra for it is the best among all sacred places. And also stay in Dehasthali, freeing your worshippers from sin.”

Ashamed, Bhima drew deep painful sighs. Krishna seized his hand and saying, “O Kuru-tiger, come!” took him up on Garuda’s back and flew southwards. Crossing the southern sea and Suvela (Trikuta) mountain, they reached Lanka. Pointing out a lake there, Krishna said to Bhima, “O Kuru-tiger, see this twelve yojanas span of water. If you are a hero, bring up earth from its bottom.” Valiant Bhima immediately jumped from Garuda’s back into the lake and with wind-like speed dove beyond a yojana but failed to find its bottom. Rising from the lake frustrated, he said, “O Krishna, this vast lake is bottomless. Several mighty beasts in it tried to devour me and I have escaped somehow with great difficulty.” Hearing this, Krishna laughed and with his toe upturned that huge lake and told the astonished Bhima, “In the past there was a rakshasa named Kumbhakarna whose head was sliced off by Rama’s arrow. It is the palate of that skull that has taken the form of a lake. Being ancient, it has broken into pieces on my overturning it. Those who attacked you were the Sarogeya gods who are enemies of this world and it was necessary to destroy them cunningly thus. Now they have been shattered against the rocks of Trikuta mountain. Now let us return to the Pandavas who are being threatened by Drona’s son.” Bhima begged Krishna’s pardon for his rude words, which was granted.

Barbareek is worshipped on the new moon day of Shravana and the thirteenth day of the dark fortnight of Vaishakha by lighting a hundred lamps, chanting a hymn in his honour and offering purika cakes.  

Khaatu Shyam

(claims to be based upon canto185, sections 1-2 of the Udyoga Parva of the Mahabharata)

Khaatu village is located 16 kilometres from Reengas railway station. King Khatvaanga ruled on the banks of the river Rupaavati and bathed in it daily with his queen. A temple of Shiva was located in the centre of the town where he worshipped daily with river water and grain grown by himself. Ever concerned about the welfare of his subjects, he was just and virtuous. One day his queen complained that she had no jewels to wear. The king told her that only what he grew himself was theirs, but the queen would not be pacified without ornaments.

Finally, the king sent a messenger to Kubera, the lord of wealth, who sent back chests filled with ornaments. Decked in these, the queen accompanied the king to the river on a Monday to bring water to pour on the Shivalinga in the temple. As they dipped the earthen pots in the river, the king’s turned golden but the queen’s melted away. She realised the fruit of her karma.

This river Rupaavati used to flow originally by Hastinapura. Any creature bathing in it was lifted bodily to the other world. The Dharma-king approached Vishnu that as the Kali Yuga was approaching, should all sinful creatures bathe in Rupaavati they would cause mayhem in heaven. Hari smiled and said in that epoch this river would disappear into the earth and be visible only to the virtuous. Further, Krishna would manifest as Shyamdeva at Rupaavati. What was sacred Kaashi in the Satya Yuga would be Khaatu in Kali Yuga.

250 years ago a Kshatriya maiden named Narbadaa used to serve the deity faithfully with water from the pond and bathing with the water daily. One day the deity appeared before her and granted her the boon of appearing at her call and granting her desire. Since then that Kshatriya clan serves the deity and Brahmins of Gauda perform the worship.

Bhima had two beloved sons. His first queen was Ahilyavati, the second Hidimbaa. Ahila’s son was Barbareek who had gifted his head and obtained a boon from Krishna. Hidimbaa’s son Ghatotkacha died fighting heroically for the Pandavas. He had a son named Suhridaya, blessed by Devi Shakti. As he had curly ringlets, he was also called Barbareek. Arriving at the battlefield he boasted of his prowess before Krishna who beheaded him.

Ahilyavati was Naga princess, daughter of the king Vasuki, who used to accompany her father while he worshipped Shiva and Parvati. She was born when Parvati blessed Vasuki that Devaki would be born as his daughter.

Once in a storm all the flowers in the garden were blown away. The next morning Ahilyavati, finding not a single flower on any plant, gathered some fallen on the ground and offered them to the deities. Bhavani was infuriated at this insult to her husband and cursed her to have a dead husband. The maiden begged forgiveness and Vasuki rushed to Mahadeva who assured him that his daughter’s fortune would remain unimpaired. When Bhima was poisoned by Duryodhana and thrown into the river, he floated into the realm of the Nagas. Ahilyavati fainted on seeing his body, saying that this was her husband. Vasuki poured amrita into Bhima’s mouth, reviving him. Ahilyavati told him how he had reached her abode and narrated Bhavani’s curse. Bhima, beset by hunger-pangs, demanded food first and gulped down all the amrita. Vasuki had the remnants fed to cows and since then their urine is counted as pure. Vasuki now begged Bhima to respond to Ahilyavati’s plea—for he was indeed a dead person now alive, as Bhavani had stated her husband would be. Bhima said he would act as directed by his mother and elder brother and wanted to leave, refusing the repeated pleas of Vasuki and his daughter to at least give his word, pledging marriage. Tired out, he fell asleep, in a lovely bungalow in the midst of a garden. Vasuki set guards all around, directing that none should be allowed entry. At midnight the sage Narada arrived and enquired of the guards whether a fair complexioned man had entered the abode of the Nagas, for he had come in search of him. The guard took him to Vasuki who narrated everything. When Bhima met them in the morning, Narada advised him to fulfil Bhavani’s prophecy on the pain of suffering her wrath, and that he would ensure that Kunti and Yudhishthira did not take offence at their permission not having been taken. Bhima agreed to the marriage, which was conducted by Narada. On his way to Hastinapura Narada came across Krishna who told him that for succouring creatures in Kali Yuga Ahilyavati would give birth to his four-armed form.

Bhima and Ahilyavati proceeded to Hastinapura with four mighty escorts provided by Vasuki. On the way they stopped at Panchavati to offer worship to Shiva in his temple. At night a terrible Rakshasi named Ghori appeared, roaring and throwing rocks and trees about. Ahilyavati urged Bhima not to hit a woman, and herself jumped on the ogress, whirled her about by her hair, threw her on the ground, kicked her on the chest and dragged her by the hair to her husband’s feet. Bhima pardoned the terrified demoness who was begging for her life. With a parting kick Ahilyavati bade her leave. The next day Bhima announced his departure for Hastinapura, assuring that he would come whenever she called. Ahilyavati smiled sadly and said she knew he would never come back. She asked him to stay on at least till their son or daughter was born so that the child knew the father. Bhima assured her that it would be a mighty son and that he would definitely return on call. He left for Hastinapura. Vasuki came to visit his daughter and left after putting the guards on alert.

The demoness Ghori told her spouse, the rakshasa Doondaa, about this couple living in the forest. Doondaa assumed the appearance of Bhima and sat down where Ahilyavati was lost in meditation, worshipping Shiva and said, “I have arrived, my queen.” As he sought to hold her hand, she opened her eyes, stood up and stepped back. Flames erupted enveloping the demon and burnt him to ashes. As Ghori came running, she too was burnt up. 

Ahilyavati gave birth to a son who waxed mighty immediately after birth, with mighty arms, red eyes, shining curly black hair. Narada came from heaven, named him “Barbareek” and informed Ahilyavati that the Pandavas had been exiled deceitfully for thirteen years. As advised by him, she taught her son to worship Shiva and taught him to perform “japa” since he wanted to meet him.

Once, hearing a lion roar, Barbareek sought it out and rode on its back to his mother. He used to play with the entire pride. One day Ahilyavati showed Barbareek a lion fleeing from a hunter. Barbareek ran after them and challenged him. As the hunter shot arrow after arrow at him, Barbareek caught them all and snapped them. When the hunter was exhausted, Barbareek hit him once with his fist and he fell dead. Barbareek dragged the corpse to his mother who rebuked him for killing a defeated opponent. She taught him the code of Kshatriyas—never to trouble the weak, to protect the defeated, never to let a mendicant leave empty-handed and ever to obey parents.

From the god of fire, Agni, she obtained an indestructible bow that would never miss its target. Agni told Barbareek that the matching arrows he would have to obtain himself from Shiva. Daily this bow and the arrows were to be garlanded in the Shiva temple. Ahilyavati took her son to the realm of the Nagas where Vasuki, her father, gave him Amrita, the draught of immortality, to drink. Daily Ahilyavati would sit on the branch of a tree and teach her son archery. Barbareek faithfully followed every instruction of hers. One day she pointed out to him the top of a mountain as the target and challenged him to hit it. Barbareek shot his arrow with such force that the mountain peak shattered, the wild beasts fled in all directions, and the arrow flew back into Barbareek’s hand. His mother leapt down from the tree and hugged him in joy.

On this mountain lived many demons who were injured when the peak was shattered. Roaring aloud, they ran at mother and son. Ahilyavati alerted her son, who shot a single arrow at them and then watched while she started catching them and throwing them on the ground. Barbareek noticed that she thrashed only those who attacked her, but did not touch the fleeing demons. Returning to her son she asked him to explain why he had shot the arrow without her permission when she had only asked him to be ready. She explained that the opponent must be given the opportunity to make the first move. The Kshatriya never hits first. Touching his head to her feet, Barbareek begged forgiveness and promised never to repeat this mistake.

Koshaasur was the leader of the demons and on hearing of what had happened he was enraged. He proceeded to where Ahilyavati was and insulted her. She gestured to Barbareek who hit him with his fist. The demon attacked him with a sword, whereupon Barbareek kicked him on his chest so hard that he fell far away. Barbareek then caught hold of his legs and tore him into two. Similar was the fate of his general Khadgasur whom Barbareek throttled. The hermits living in dread of the demons were now free of all fear. Delighted, Ahilyavati blessed and embraced her son.

Mother and son worshipped Shiva and Barbareek got immersed in invoking the deity, totally oblivious of the passage of time. Ahilyavati deputed guards around him and sat down, invoking Parvati to grant her son the darshan of Shiva. At this time Vasuki arrived and understood what was happening. He proceeded immediately to Shiva’s abode and bowing at his feet begged him to grant his grandson and his daughter the divine darshan. Manifesting before the meditating mother and son, the divine couple awakened them. Falling at their feet, when Shiva bade Barbareek to ask for a boon, he begged for arrows to match the bow given by the god Agni. Shiva then gave him three arrows and told him that a single arrow would pierce through an entire army, killing all creatures and return to the quiver. Together, the three could destroy the entire creation and none could withstand them. Shiva prescribed a condition, that Barbareek should assist the side which was likely to lose in a war. Shiva blessed Barbareek that no one, not even the lord of creation, would be able to oppose him.
Barbareek used this arrow to destroy Bhil bandits who stole the cows of Phattaa Gujar, with whose milk Ahilyavati used to worship Shiva, and Somasur with his army who tried to ruin the sacred sacrifice performed by sage Harit.

One day the sage Narada arrived and told Barbareek that the great war between Kauravas and Pandavas was to begin in which the former had the larger army while the latter had only Krishna with them. Barbareek then decided that according to his vow he would fight on the side of the weaker side. Narada left, eager to see what Krishna would do now because the side that had Krishna with it was actually the stronger and therefore Barbareek ought to be supporting the Kauravas. That would lead to a fascinating god-versus-devotee encounter that Narada gleefully awaited.

Taking his mother’s permission, Barbareek set out for Kurukshetra. On the way he rested beside a lake at night and sang a paean to Shiva. Hearing this a demoness approached him, disguised as a nymph, and begged him to be her husband. When he refused, she caught hold of his hand. Barbareek invoked his mother for protection as he would not raise his hand against a woman. Flames issued from the saffron mark Ahilyavati had put on his forehead, and consumed the demoness.

The next morning Krishna, disguised as a Brahmin, met Barbareek on the road and asked where he was going. Barbareek proudly announced that he was going to fight in a war and that a single arrow of his would decide its fate. He urged Barbareek to return home, asking how with just three arrows he expected to do anything. Barbareek replied that with one arrow he would win the war as it would slay all soldiers, howsoever numerous. The Brahmin asked him to demonstrate the power of that arrow by shooting down every leaf of an ashvattha tree before them. Barbareek did so, but Krishna had kept one leaf hidden under his foot. When the arrow reached his foot, Krishna became grave understanding that in an instant this youth was capable of making the impossible possible and changing everyone’s destiny. He removed his foot and the arrow, piercing that leaf, returned to Barbareek’s quiver. Krishna revealed his four-armed form, to which Barbareek bowed his head. When asked to beg a boon, Barbareek prayed that this enchanting Shyam form, clad in yellow, be his and the world extol him by that name. That was day of Ekadashi, the eleventh day following the new moon.

The next day Barbareek reached the camped armies and sought for the flautist. He noticed the huge army of the Kauravas and was sure they could not lose the war. A soldier pointed out to him the chariot flying the monkey pennant on which Krishna would be found. Approaching the chariot, Barbareek asked its driver his name and was told it was Muralidhar, the flautist. Saluting him, Barbareek declared that he was Ahilyavati’s son, was of Pandava descent and had come to fight on the weaker side. The Pandavas ran up and embraced Bhima’s son. Krishna now told him that before the battle began it was necessary to perform a ritual to removed all obstacles to Pandava victory and that for this the head of either Arjuna or Krishna or Barbareek—the mightiest three among them—was necessary.

Barbareek laughed and said this was a unique opportunity where Krishna himself was asking for alms, but his innermost desire was to witness the war and this should be granted. Krishna gave his word that Barbareek’s head would be immortal and would be worshipped by the world in Kali Yuga. Catching his hair on one hand, with the other he sliced off his head and placed it in Krishna’s hands. Krishna transformed it into his own likeness and placed the head atop a pole on a hill from where it watched the entire battle. Krishna explained to Arjuna that for the salvation of people in the coming Kali Yuga he had invested that head with a fourth of his sixteen qualities, participating in the battle with the remaining twelve.
After the war in the Pandava camp Arjuna and Yudhishthira ascribed their victory to Krishna. This enraged Bhima who asserted that it was his mace and Arjuna’s arrows that had won the victory. Yudhishthira then told him that to resolve the dispute it was best the enquire of one who had witnessed the entire war. Bhima agreed. Krishna brought down the head from the pole. Everyone was enchanted, finding it was virtually Krishna’s reflection. Krishna bade him to relate to his father whether it was Bhima’s mace and Arjuna’s arrows that had won the war.

That head witnessed every fighter killed by the discus, followed by Bhavaani catching the blood in a skull and drinking it gleefully along with a band of dancing yoginis and Bhairav sword in hand. The Flautist had turned Annihilator. Bhima bowed his head in acknowledgement.

Krishna blessed Barbareek that his head would be a deity in the Kali Yuga granting his devotees their desires and would be invoked with the chanting of “Jai Shri Shyam!” His form would be four-armed and the scent of sandalwood would waft from it. Krishna then summoned Luhaagar, handed him the head, asking him to keep it in the sacred spot of Dagdhsthali. In Kali Yuga Sishupal would be born as an extremely arrogant king because he had lamented while dying that while Krishna had fled from Jarasandh he had never done so from him, thereby casting a slur on his fame. In Rupavati river Sishupal would discover the head where Luhaagar was asked to drop it.

Luhaagar complied and the head of Barbareek was carried down the river to Khaatu, the capital of king Khatvaang, where the river disappeared. The capital too was abandoned. Here a cow would daily pour its milk on the spot where the head lay buried. Hearing of this marvel, the people dug up the head and heard a celestial voice announce that this was an incarnation of divinity blessed by Krishna, the son of Ahilyavati, which should be worshipped in a temple. The people built a temple, kept the head on a throne and worshipped it. The spot where it was found became known as Shyam-kund, the pond of Shyam. 

The First Bengali Mahabharata in Verse and in Prose

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Towards the end of the 13th century A.D. we notice a common literary feature emerging in eastern India that becomes very prominent by the 16th century not only in the east but also in the south. Vyasa’s Mahabharata was translated first into Bengali and then into Assamese, Oriya, Telegu and Kannada. The reasons for this remarkable synchronicity deserve further study. For the present, let us look at the picture in Bengal.

According to Dinesh Chandra Sen, the renowned historian of Bengali literature,  it was a Muslim ruler of Bengal, Sultan Nusrat Khan or Nasir Khan (1285?-1325) who commissioned the first translation of Mahabharata in Bengali entitled “Bharat Panchali.”[1] The work is not traceable but Kabindra Parameshwar states in his Bengali Mahabharata: “The glorious leader Nasrat Khan had the panchali[2] composed, the ultimate in merit.” However, history is ignorant of any sultan of Bengal by this name ruling for forty years at that time. After examining the evidence, Major General S.K. Sen suggests that the reference might actually be to Nasiruddin Nusrat Shah (1519-1531 AD) who succeeded his father Sultan Alauddin Hussain Shah of Bengal (1493-1519 AD). Nusrat Shah went to Chattagram (Chittagong) with general Paragal Khan as the king’s representative in 1515-1516. Paragal became governor there and got the Mahabharata translated by Kabindra Parameshwar, which came to be known as the Paragali Mahabharat. Hussain Shah was a distant ruler while Nusrat, the crown prince, was a powerful patron at hand in Chittagong as is evident from the verses of Shrikara. Kabindra would be referring to this Nusrat and to Srikara’s panchali, not to a distant ruler. Paragal’s son Chhuti Khan succeeded him as governor and got the Jaiminiya Ashvamedhaparva translated by Shrikara or Shrikaran Nandi which came to be known as Chhuti Khaner Mahabharat. Part of it was included in Kashiram Das’ Bengali Mahabharata (composed 1604-1610) and Krittibas’ Ramayana (c. 1st half of 15th century).

Kabi Sanjay is the first translator of the complete Mahabharata into Bangla for regaling rustic audiences, composed in payar metre in the first half of the 15th century, prior to the rule of Sultan Hussain Shah in Bengal. He precedes Chaitanya (1486-1533), unlike most other vernacular renderings of the epic, as there is no trace of Vaishnava bhakti in his work. His date is uncertain, but he might be a contemporary of Krittibas, the translator of the Ramayana (not later than the 15th century).[3] However, on the basis of language and style some scholars place him in the 17th century AD.[4] A resident of Laur in the Sunamganj subdivision of Shrihatta district in East Bengal, he belonged to the Bharadvaja gotra. An interesting point is that he praises Bhagadatta as the ruler of Laur and also calls him ruler of Bengal, although Vyasa’s Mahabharata does not do so, because Shrihatta was at one time part of Pragjyotishpura, the capital of Bhagadatta. While his version is almost unaffected by the devotional movement, it contains several unusual Shakta-influenced episodes. He departs quite freely from the Sanskrit epic’s contents, unlike Kashiram Das a later translator. The narration is interspersed with laachari to be sung and various ragas and raginis are indicated in the text such as Vasant, Kamod, Bhatiyal (not a raga, but the typical boatman’s song of Bengal), Shri, Barari, Pathamanjari.

Kabi Sanjay created a new genre, the Pauranik fairytale in his translation of the epic. The key elements are given below:-

  • Sanjay provides a novel start to the epic. Janamejaya (J) charges Vyasa with failure to prevent his ancestors from the fratricidal battle of Kurukshetra. Vyasa laughs and says that people do not listen to prohibitions. As an example he issues an injunction that to avoid misfortune J must not make Kantavati his chief queen, which is precisely what he proceeds to do. He also insults sage Rishyashringa who curses him to be afflicted with bhagapida, syphilitic sores, all over his body. Vyasa reappears and tells him that to be cured he should listen to the epic recited by Vaishampayana. That is why the recital begins. At the end of Svaragarohana parva, J is cured, rounding off the narrative.
  • In Astika parva he adds a new story of Takshaka, pursued by Garuda, marrying his daughter Sarada to Parikshit and thus escaping death. A folktale of the ojha (curer of snake-bite) of Shankhapura is added and a novel treatment of J’s serpent sacrifice.
  • The Shantanu-Ganga story is given a novel twist. Brahma curses Mahabhisha for his shameless ogling of Ganga’s nudity to be born a vanara. He worships Shiva who grants his wish to possess Ganga. Shiva commands Ganga who takes the vanara aside and tells him that first he must become hairless like her and can do so by entering fire. To persuade him she magically protects him when he tests a finger in a flame and remains unhurt. When he enters the fire she does not protect him and he dies. King Kuru is performing a sacrifice and finds a dry place overflowing with hot water which he and the sages cannot cross. The monkey’s corpse comes floating by and they use it as a bridge. Thereupon the vanara is liberated and is born as Kuru’s son, Shantanu. Shiva berates Ganga and forces her to wed Shantanu.
  • Amba’s love for Bhishma is a creation of Sanjay’s who makes of it a long love-story.
  • Chitrangad dies of TB. Vichitravirya violates Bhishma’s injunction against entering his palace in his absence and is crushed there by the elephant with which Bhishma used to wrestle daily to exercise.
  • Dhritarashtra plots with Duryodhana to build the house of lac.
  • In the Khandava conflagration the survivors are sage Lomasha, Surabhi the cow, Danavendra lord of demons and Vishvakarma.
  • The Rajasuya yagya is held because Pandu, insulted in Swarga, sends Narada to urge his sons to hold this sacrifice so that he can regain status. During the conquests, on his return from Lanka Arjuna encounters Hanuman. This becomes an interesting folk-tale.
  • Duryodhana and Drona send a band of fasting sages to Yudhishthira in exile but Krishna’s miracle saves the Pandavas.
  • In Udyoga parva a folktale is added about Kakalilasura.
  • In Bhishma parva the story of Brahmachandala is added and the beauty and valour of horses are elaborated at great length.
  • In Drona parva after Abhimanyu’s death Draupadi leads an army of women against the Kauravas. Karna refuses to fight them. Duryodhana is routed.
  • In Karna parva the story of Tarakaksha and Makaraksha is added.
  • Ashvamedhaparva mostly follows the composition of Jaimini, Vyasa’s disciple, omitting the retelling of the Rama story. Sanjay adds Yadava and Pandava women fighting the enemy when the Pandavas are defeated. He has Surya give Vrishaketu a chariot during the battle with Anushalva. Jaimini’s Jvala is turned into Jana and glorified in particular. She dies and turns into an arrow that lies in Babhruvahana’s quiver with which he kills Arjuna. Girish Chandra Ghosh, the father of Bengali theatre, wrote an extremely popular play, Jana, about her in 1894. The battle descriptions surpass Vyasa’s. The stories of Jana, Sudhanva, Babhruvahana, Chandi, Chandrahasa are magnificently related. Chandrahasa’s story has been substantially changed, especially Vishaya’s subterfuge in replacing the word visha (poison) with her name, Vishaya. Jayadratha’s son does not die of fear but fights bravely with Arjuna. Jaimini’s Bakadalbhya has become Bakradanta and he steals the horse so that he can see Krishna. Viravarma becomes Virabrahma and his daughter Malini becomes Ratnavati. Uddalaka is renamed Udyana in the story of Chandi and the curse is dispelled when both the horse and Arjuna touch the stone. The remarkable story of the many-faced Brahmas is absent. Sanjaya describes Chitrangada as a veshya, a prostitute, while in Jaimini Arjuna says that Babhruvahana must be a son of a vaishya. The description of the horse required for the sacrifice is different too and the parva ends with Krishna’s return to Dvaraka with the Yadavas which is a departure from Jaimini.
  • In Ashvamedhaparva Sanjay goes beyond Jaimini to invent the grand episode of Vivek, son of Sudhanva, who immediately after birth takes on Arjuna and Krishna to avenge his father’s death, routs Arjuna’s army, vanquishes Arjuna and Krishna, defeats Bhima, Nakula and Sahadeva and the combined army of Yadava and Pandava women. Finally, on his grandfather Hamsadhvaja’s request, Bibek surrenders to Krishna.
  • Certain incidents are taken from Vyasa: the Pandavas go to Kailasa with Krishna to obtain the wealth of Marutta, the story of Parikshita’s birth, Arjuna’s horse goes to Kirata and Yavana lands, Trigartya, Pragjyotisha, Chedi, Magadha, Kashipura, Deshartha, Nishada, Kirata again, the kingdoms of Ugrasena, Kuntibhoja, Panchala, Gandhara, etc.
  • Mausala parva has Arjuna accompany Krishna at the end and, as they rest together, Krishna is shot and killed.
  • Svargarohana parva has new tirthas come up where each Pandava falls. The route is along the Ganga. Meghanada Daitya tries to abduct Draupadi and is slain by Bhima.

In Bengal the influence Jaimini’s Ashvamedhaparva was felt most powerfully. According to Dinesh Chandra Sen, Sanjaya, Kabindra Parameshwar, Shrikara Nandi and almost all the later translators have recorded that they translated the Mahabharata following the Jaimini-Samhita. Little is taken from Vyasa, except a few references. Jaimini was a leader among the revivalists of Hinduism (Shankara came later). His disciple, Bhattapada, defeated the Buddhists in King Sudhanva’s court. Many ancient Bengali books contain references to the Jaimini Bharata.

In the early 16th century AD Kabindra Parameshwar translated the Mahabharata in brief (so that it could be heard in a single day) up to Stri Parva[5] under the patronage of Paragal Khan. This came to be known as the Paragali Mahabharata and also as Pandab Bijoy.[6] This includes basically the battle stories, especially in the Ashvamedhaparva which, as in Sanjaya, is taken from Jaimini. Most of the stories of the original epic are omitted.  

Dinesh Chandra Sen states that after this there are many translations of which the important ones are Dvija Abhirama’s Ashvamedhaparva, Ananta Mishra’s Ashvamedhaparva, Nityananda Ghosh’s Mahabharat, Dvija Ramchandra Khan’s Ashvamedhaparva, Kabichandra’s Mahabharat, Shashthibar Sen’s Bharat, Gangadas Sen’s Adi and Ashvamedhaparva, Rameshwar Nandi’s Mahabharata, Kashiram Das’s Mahabharat, Trilochan Chakravarty’s Mahabharat, Nimai Das’s Mahabharat, Dvija Krishnaram’s Ashvamedhaparva, Dvija Raghunath’s Ashvamedhaparva, Bhriguram Das’s Bharat, Dvija Ramkrishnadas’ Ashvamedhaparva and Bharat Pandit’s Ashvamedhaparva.[7] W.L. Smith[8] mentions complete Bengali versions of Ashvamedhaparva by Ghanashyam Das and Dvija Premananda and more recent versions by Rajaram Dutt (19th century), Kaliprasanna Vidyaratna (Jaiminibharata in verse, 1884). Chandranath Basu’s Ashvamedhaparva in free prose came out in 1317 B.S. i.e. 1910-11 AD.[9] Munindra Kumar Ghosh mentions Nandaram Das, Dvija Govardhan, Bhabani Das and Dvija Srinath among others. Asit Kumar Bandyopadhyay mentions the name of Dvija Haridas too. It is not clear whether these works are based on Vyasa or on Jaimini.

The most popular Bengali verse translation remains Kashiram Das’ Mahabharat which follows Jaimini’s Ashvamedhaparva. In him the influence of Chaitanya’s Vaishnavism is overwhelmingly perceptible. The work was a major influence on Bengali literature.

Kaliprasanna Singha (1840 or 1841 to 24 July 1870) authored the first prose translation of the Mahabharata. Educated in Sanskrit, Bengali and English, he left school in 1857 at the age of 16 and established the Vidyotsahini Theatre in his own house where he enacted Venisamhara. Encouraged by its success, in the same year he translated Kalidasa’s Vikramorvashiya. In 1858 he wrote the play Savitri-Satyavan and in 1859 Malati-Madhava. These plays were staged in his theatre with him in the main roles. Purana-sangraha, a collection of Puranic stories from the Mahabharata was published between1860-66. His greatest literary feat was translating the Mahabharata into Bangla in 17 volumes, for the first time in Bangla literature. The work was begun in 1858 with a team of seven pandits and completed in 1866, omitting and adding nothing. 3000 copies of each parva were printed, being unsure of the reception. He excluded Harivamsha as he found its composition to be plainly later than the epic. However, he had a plan to publish its translation along with those of the Puranas, as the title page indicates.

What the BORI editors of the critical text of the Mahabharata have done now, Kaliprasanna began at the age of 18 in 1858 all by himself, collating manuscripts from the Asiatic Society, Shobhabazar Palace, the collections of Asutosh Deb, Jatindramohon Thakur and his own great-grandfather Shantiram Singha’s collection in Kashi. He acknowledges with gratitude the help he received in resolving contradictions in the texts and making out the meaning of knotty Vyasakuta verses from Taranath Tarkavacaspati teacher at the Calcutta Sanskrit Vidyamandir. He records with profound gratitude that Ishvarchandra Vidyasagar began a translation of the epic and had published some parts of it in the Brahmo Samaj’s Tattavabodhini magazine, but stopped the work on hearing of Kaliprasanna’s project. Vidyasagar not only went through Kaliprasanna’s translation but supervised the printing and the work of translation in his absence. Kaliprasanna writes that he has no words to express the benefits Vidyasagar showered upon him. Apparently, Vidyasagar provided him seven pandits for the project.[10] Kaliprasanna gives special thanks to several friends viz. the famous poet Michael Madhusudan Dutt for promising to turn the best parts of the translation into Amritakshar metre and a play; the Purana expert Gangadhar Tarkabagish, Raja Kamalkrishna Bahadur, Jatindramohon Thakur, Rajendralal Mitra, Dvarkanath Vidyabhushan (editor of Somprakash), Rajkrishna Bandopadhyay (professor of Bengali literature in Presidency College), Nabinkrishna Bandopadhyay (former editor of Tattvabodhini), Dinabandhu Mitra (the playwright of Nil Darpan) and Kshetramohon Vidyaratan (editor of Bhaskar). Deploring the death of ten members of his team of translators, he thanks by name those engaged till the end and the proof readers (mentioning all their names).

Daily in the evening the translation, as it progressed, was read out to Raja Radhakanta Deb and other prominent leaders of Hindu society like Raja Kamalkrishna Bahadur and Rajkrishna Mitra. In villages, he writes, the translation is read out in important gatherings morning and evening. He pays a fulsome tribute to Kashiram Das’ translation in Bengali verse, regretting that details of his life and dates are not recorded anywhere. He leaves out discussion and summaries of Sanskrit literature based on Asiatic researches and Max Muller’s edition of texts to avoid any controversy that might harm the unrestricted acceptance of his translation.

The work took eight years to complete and was printed at his Tattvabodhini Press. It was provided to readers who wrote in, free of charge. Readers were advised not to send any postage stamps. In every district an agent was appointed to distribute the book so that it could be obtained without spending anything. It was and remains a unique project of making wisdom literature available without charging anything for it.

Many laughed his herculean effort to scorn, ascribing it to a quest for immortal fame by buying up pandits to translate. In response he merely stated that he had no craving for public fame, but only that should, by the grace of God, the Bengali language exist anywhere and this book fall into someone’s hands who might be able to make out its meaning and understand the pillar of glory of the Hindu race that was the Bharat, then all his labour would have been successful.[11]

Kaliprasanna dedicated his translation to Empress Victoria in gratitude for the British rescuing Bharatavarsha from the mortal clutches of the Mughals. He compared his offering to the gods offering the Parijat flower churned out of the ocean to Purandara-Indra. The intention behind the translation was a faith that it would redound to the country’s good. He hoped that Hindusthan would be lit up during her reign by hundreds of lamps of Sanskrit literature as it was during Vikramaditya’s reign by Kalidas etc. and in Queen Elizabeth’s reign by Shakespeare etc. to make her reign unforgettable.

Today one is surprised that there is no mention of the 1857 Mutiny although the translation was started the next year. The elite of Bengal were not enamoured of the aborted effort, preferring to proclaim their loyalty to the British Empress as vociferously as possible.

* This article draws heavily on the research by Maj.Gen. S.K.Sen VSM whose generous assistance is acknowledged with gratitude.

[1] Dinesh Chandra Sen, Bangabhasha O Sahitya, Gurudas Chattopadhyaya & Sons, Kolkata, 7th edn, 1st edn. 1896

[2] Rhyming verse that can be sung.

[3] Sen op.cit. and Munindra Kumar Ghosh, Kabi Sanjaya birachita Mahabharata, Calcutta University, 1969, p. 153

[4] Asit Kumar Bandyopadhyay, Bangla Sahityer Itivritta, Vol 1, Modern Book Agency, Kolkata, 2006, p. 462

[5] According to Munindra Kumar Ghosh up to Ashvamedhaparva, the later parvas being interpolations.

[6] Asit Kumar Bandyopadhyay, op. cit. p. 441-2

[7] Dinesh Chandra Sen, ibid, p. 455-456

[8] W.L. Smith, “The Jaiminibharata and Its Eastern Vernacular Versions,” Studia Orientalia, The Finnish Oriental Society, Vol 85, Helsinki, 1999, p. 402

[9] Asit Kumar Bandyopadhyay, op. cit. p. 434

[10] Binod Ghoshal, “Kaliprasannar Katha Amrita Saman,” Binodon supplement to Ananda Bazar Patrika, 20.8.2016, pp. 10-4.

[11] Binod Ghoshal, op.cit.