Pradip Bhattacharya

Indologist, Mahabharata scholar

Book Reviews

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

By

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Mahabharata: Its Antiquity, Historicity and Impact on Society, edited by Neera Misra and Vinay Kumar Gupta. Research India Press, New Delhi, 2019, pp.308. Rs. 4500/- ISBN: 978-93-5171-165-0

By

This book compiles 18 papers of which 17 were presented in an international conference held on November 2012 by the Draupadi Dream Trust. The American contributors are Alf Hiltebeitel, the most prolific of Mahabharata (MBH) scholars, and his student Vishva Adluri. The first such study of the epic’s date and reality was in “Mahabharata: Myth or Reality—Differing Views” by S.P. Gupta and K.S. Ramachandran in 1976 (Agam Kala Prakshan, New Delhi).

There are four papers on archaeology, led by B.B. Lal who, in 3 pages, repeats his well-known findings regarding Hastinapura near Meerut with evidence of its abandonment due to floods and the shift to Kaushambi where the same Painted Grey Ware (PGW) has turned up in its lowest level. Udayana ruled in Kaushambi (c. 500 BCE, contemporaneous with Buddha). 24 rulers preceded Udayana till Parikshit, yielding a date of 860 BCE. So, the Kurukshetra war may be dated c. 900 BCE, which falls in the PGW period. The paper is valuable for 13 plates of the findings. Surprisingly, Lal commits the common error that the text began with 8,800 slokas whereas that is the number of riddling verses. The original was 24,000 verses. Why his 1952 findings were not pursued is a mystery. The editors could have clarified this in their introduction.

Dilip Chakrabarti briefly outlines geographical data. Reference to Chinas, Shakas, Yavanas, Hunas and Parasikas along with Ashokan knowledge of the Mediterranean area suggests a period pre 300 BCE. He feels a beginning around 1000 BCE for the composition is not unreasonable.

B.R.Mani deals with the Rajgir region, believing A.D.Pusalkar’s date of 1400 BCE for the war. Rajgir reveals a cyclopean wall as in Mycenae and Tiryns which are dated 1400-1300 BCE. However, excavations at Rajgir, Juafaradih near Nalanda and Ghorakatora near Giyak take us back to 1500 BCE. He urges detailed study at Rajgir for more definite dates.

D.P.Tewari writes on Kampilya (Kampil in Farrukhabad, U.P.), Drupada’s capital, birthplace of Vimala Natha the Jain Tirthankar and of Varahamihir the astronomer, where Charaka also lived. Excavations in 2002-3 dated the earliest of many findings to around 3200 BCE. Rice, barley and grams were grown and amla berries in plenty.

B.N.Narahari Achar’s 56 page paper with 22 illustrations on dating the war through astronomy is very interesting. The text (about 150 references) refers to the war, calamity to the Kuru dynasty, entire armies being destroyed and the population endangered. Each involves different planetary positions. Using Planetarium software he fixes 3067 BCE for the war, agreeing with Raghavan’s 1967 finding. Others, by the same software, have fixed the date as 3022, 2559, 1793, 1478 and 1198 BCE! He rejects these for not considering several planetary references. 3067 BCE is based purely on information in the epic and tallies with Aryabhatta. He pre-dates the Maurya dynasty to 1535-1219 BCE, stressing that Samudragupta is the Priyadarshin of the Rock Edicts III and XIII that mention Antiochus and Ptolemy. He discounts archaeological evidence from Meerut (c.950 BCE) and Bet Dwaraka (1500 BCE) as they do not match the epic descriptions. He demolishes at length criticisms of his proposed date.

G.U.Thite deals with differences from Vedic rituals in the epics and puranas to show that the composers were unaware of their technical details, possibly because the transmitting Sutas were not ritual experts. He asserts that the very elaborate, lengthy Ashvamedha-horse-sacrifice described here with many contradictions is fictitious.

Hiltebeitel’s is a fascinating study of what the MBH tells about its tribal and other histories. He places the Northern edition of the epic to 1st century BCE and the Southern to the beginning of the 3rd century BCE. The references to Greeks, Chinese and Shakas (but not Pahlavas or Kushanas) shows completion before the end of the BCE by late Shunga or Kanva times, possibly by Brahmins of the Kurukshetra region. Hiltebeitel points out that MBH is the first text to see a regional area, Bharatavarsha, as “a total land and a total people set in a still wider word”. It distinguishes the general populace from “the others”, viz. tribals, barbarians etc who were a special danger to Kuru kings. He argues that Kuru is a MBH invention featureing in no early or late Vedic text. MBH uses only one term for tribals, he asserts, “atavika,” (forest-dweller). Yet, “Nishada” frequently indicates them in both epics. Contesting the propositions of international and Indian scholars, his analysis concludes that MBH is not an oral bardic epic about a Kuru tribe as is mostly supposed.

S.G.Bajpai’s case is that as the Vedas are the gift of the Sarasvati, so the MBH is of Ganga. He deals with the rise of Ganga culture from Shantanu to the end of the dynasty in the 4th century BCE, with the text spanning a millennium from 800 BCE to 200 CE. The primacy of Ganga among rivers is highlighted with the MBH providing her myth and history.

Michel Danino studies the epics socio-cultural impact. Its retelling in every region, including tribal, is a testament to the cultural integration it brought about along with the Ramayana. He points out the mistake of locating the war in 3000 BCE because that is the Early Harappan phase when cities had not emerged and cultures were Neolithic or Chalcolithic, but nothing like what the epic describes. He prefers a date not before 500 BCE.

V.K.Gupta, one of the editors, describes the Vrishni Cult in the Vraja region around Mathura. Varshaneya is the most frequently used epithet for the clan in the epic. Kautilya (4th century BCE) speaks of war between Vrishnis and Dvaipayana (Vyasa?). Earlier, the Brahmanas and Panini also mention them. Gupta suggests that Tosha in the Mora well inscprition in Mathura Museum is the village Tosh, mentioned in the Bhagavata Cult. An important site is the Chamunda Tila pillar capital whose symbols indicate the same cult. An ancient structure in Vrindavan on the river front has Mauryan and Shunga/Kushana/Gupta bricks with inscriptions referring to Bhagavata. Another inscription on a carved door-jamb in the museum shows a bhagavata temple in the 1st century BCE. A late-Kushana period sculpture depicts the four forms (chatur-vyuha) of Vasudeva-Krishna, his elder brother, son and grandson. There is also numismatic evidence from 4th-3rd century BCE of the Bhagavata-Vrishni Cult which was popular as far as Afghanistan, Vidisha and Malhar, originating in Vraja. 12 excellent colour plates are provided.

In another paper Gupta describes the 84 krosha (1 krosha = 3 km) circumambulation of Braj (Vraja), the villages of cowherds near Mathura laid out in the Mathura-mandala section of the Varaha Purana, with its own dialect Brajbhasha. This tradition was founded by Narayan Bhatta in 1552 CE identifying 333 spots. A significant insight is that in the Skanda Purana’s Shrimadbhagavata Khanda, Krishna’s great grandson Vajranabha is made king by Arjuna not of Indraprastha, as in the epic, but of Mathura and, at Parikshit’s behest, he re-establishes the places related to Krishna’s life there. The Jaina text Vividhatirthakalpa of Jinaprabhasuri (14th CE first half) mentions a pilgrimage covering 5 spots and 12 woods.. Archaeology has dated half of the sites to the PGW period (1200 to 400 BCE), most of the rest to early CE. A valuable map of the area is added.

Haripriya Rangarajan deals with Draupadi as the manifestation of the supreme feminine energy and argues that she was the first to fall in the final journey as she had to return to Vaikuntha following Krishna’s death. Being in human form, she had to suffer like humans. The presentation is not convincing.

Nanditha Krishna’s valuable paper deals with MBH in the reliefs of Angkor Vat after surveying the depictions in art since 800 BCE showing the Bhagavata cult, with as many as 51 plates. In Angkor Krishna is the hero as his childhood exploits are depicted. Here his companions are not milkmaids but cowherds. He is not the erotic god but always a warrior and ruler. She claims that the four-faced figure of Angkor Thom is Vishnu. Nowhere is that god described as having four heads except in Cambodian reliefs.

G.D.Bakshi writes on strategy, war and weaponry in the epic. He compares Krishna’s strategy to the British one of making Germany and Russia fight in WW-2. The evolution of the art of warfare is studied in terms of localized revolutions in military affairs (RMA) and the MBH paradigm examined in terms of battle formations, wearing down the foe and rules of fair-fight. He fails to deal with the last concept being consistently violated in the war.

Kavita Sharma’s paper is on P.K.Balakrishnan’s novel, And Now Let Me Sleep which is a series of nightmares, dreams and flashbacks involving mostly Draupadi but also Yudhishthira and Kunti. She fails to note how the novel evades dealing with Karna ordering the stripping of Draupadi, by having her see him reproaching himself for it.  It focuses on glorifying him and making Draupadi imagine her as his consort at the end.

Vishwa Adluri’s is a very significant study of the architecture of the MBH as having a double-beginning with frame settings creating a cyclical narrative accommodating both pravritti and moksha, while holding them apart. He states, but does not explain, that the Gita echoes the lament of Dhritarashtra in the beginning, while the Narayaniya in the Mokshadharma Parva reverses the descending cosmology in the beginning of the Adi Parva. Vishnu is the moksha/nivritti figure while Indra/Bhishma is of pravritti. The Gita teaches living in pravritti serenely. Narayaniya breaks through to Moksha. Adluri is the first to note that Shaunaka refers to Janamejaya’s massacre of snakes as a sacrifice, whereas Ruru, to whom his father tells the tale, calls it “violence”. MBH creates steps beginning with violence, then sacrifice and finally moksha. He presents a new way of seeing how the multiple narrations are related. The outer and inner frames are actually sheaths, where one can add yet another tale. The whole Vaishampayana narrative of the snake massacre is contained in Ugrashrava’s account, all of which is doubled and enclosed in the Pramati-Ruru frame. MBH is an ahimsa text on structural and semantic levels and violent on the aesthetic level. The architectonics is made up of two themes: eternity and time. He argues for going beyond the current literary approach of scholars to an aesthetic one of shared and disputed judgements about how we experience the text. This will not contrast history and myth, but focus on narrative elements common to both.

Savita Gaur’s short paper studies the Shanti Parva as a manual of practical wisdom, noting some significant teaching about principles of governance and harmonious living. There is no clamouring for rights. Instead, a stress on duties of all officials and subjects to benefit society. The qualities emphasised are for all time and all people. Human dignity is stressed as supreme. Gaur states that the epic’s ethics are based on the Upanishads, which raise it to a spiritual plane. Equanimity is the key to successful and blissful living.

Sibesh Bhattacharya’s profound paper discusses literary devices used in the epic “to break free of the time-space constraints.” He subscribes to the tradition that it was orally narrated (still done in parts of India), which Hiltebeitel has challenged forcefully as a fictional trope adopted by the composers to feign antiquity. He adopts the usual diachronic approach to the narrative structure, that Adluri has so significantly departed from, to provide revealing insights. He shows how the placing of Dhritarashtra’s lament at the beginning defies the chronology of events:“The form of this post-factor overview is one of prognosis” dissolving time-space boundaries. It also provides a tragic dimension to the epic from the loser’s viewpoint. The epic’s narrative mode is conversational story-telling, not dialogical except in the Gita. It is very significant that the audience for this very violent saga of Kshatriya massacre is celibate ascetic Brahmans in a peaceful forest ashram. This duality characterises the locales in the epic. Through such devices, the epic breaks out of the conventional boundaries of time and space.

A very impressive collection indeed, well published, with few printer’s devils marring the production. It ought to have had at least a line about each contributor. The insights have not lost their value over the six years it took to publish it.

https://www.boloji.com/articles/51867/the-mahabharata-its-antiquity

 

Kurukshetra as Adharmakshetra: Hitler mirrors Arjuna’s thinking

By

Meena Arora Nayak: Evil in the Mahabharata, Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 355, Rs. 650/-

Lately one has noticed a trend among American scholars of arguing that ancient Indian texts instead of celebrating the primacy of Dharma as the foundation of a meaningful life are actually subversive. Beginning with Emily Hudson’s Disorienting Dharma in 2013, it has been followed up by Naama Shalom’s Re-ending the Mahabharata: The rejection of Dharma in the Sanskrit epic in 2017, and in 2018 by Wendy Doniger’s Against Dharma and the book under review. One is reminded of Lytton Strachey’s debunking of Eminent Victorians by highlighting their warts.

“Where there is Dharma, there is victory,” so says the Mahabharata (henceforth, MB). Nayak, professor of English in the USA and a novelist, has marshalled a long litany of accusations to prove that MB “calls all in doubt.” Her thesis is best stated in the words of Karna (which strangely she does not quote):-

“Those who know dharma

Have always proclaimed

That dharma protects those

Who cherish dharma.

I have always cherished dharma

As best as I could.

It has harmed me.

It forsakes its bhaktas.

It protects no one.” –VIII.90.88 (The P. Lal translation)

What she chooses to overlook is Krishna’s comprehensive demolition of Karna’s claim in the very next section. Of course, she sees Krishna and the semi-divine Pandavas as metaphors created by Brahmins to absolve people from accountability for immoral acts. She sees “dharmayuddha” as a dangerous paradigm for the ends justifying the means. She claims that the (MB) has been used to exploit women and “the others” by deifying characters exemplifying unrighteous conduct; that people never realise that the Gita tradition and the narrative do not tally. She begins by making much of the long discredited Aryan invasion hypothesis propounded by Mortimer Wheeler in the 1920s. She splits this into three waves: Old (pre-5th century BCE); Middle (5th century BCE to 100 CE) and New (post 1st century CE). To this she adds a euhemeristic interpretation of the Devas being these Aryans who split from the Ahura-mazda worshippers, invaded India, demonised the indigenous people and “usurped” the wealth of these Asuras, Nagas and Rakshasas, i.e. the “others”, the Nagas being targeted as devotees of Buddha (there is no such reference in the MB). The original inhabitants were the “dasyus”, later called Asuras and assigned the Shudra caste. In that process she makes some astonishing claims such as, “the atheistic, amoral Vedic system” (despite all the hymns lauding multiple deities); the epic was first “2,400 verses” (actually 24,000); eating beef was “considered reprehensible” (the MB celebrates Rantideva  for his sacrifices of cattle so huge that the river running red with their bloody skins was named Charmanavati); there is little evidence of moksha-dharma (it is as large as the raja-dharma portion of the Shanti Parva); the Aryans moved “westward from the Indus Valley…(to) Kashmir” (the geography is puzzling); “myth is empirical truth”; The first Kaurava to fall is “Bhima”.

She asserts that the Vedic ethical “rita” (she has just called the Vedas amoral) was replaced by a theistic, “desire-oriented concept of purushartha” in the MB and that dharma “subverts” the cosmic rita to “a wholly earthly scheme.” By extolling sacrifices, the MB “promote(d) violence against the ‘other’…resurrected evil practices that the system had already expunged.” This in the face of constant exhortations to pursue righteous conduct, as it leads to Svarga, and non-attachment leading to moksha. She refers to M.N.Dutt (1934) while the bibliography has “P.N.Dutt”. There are Sanskrit spelling mistakes: “Shanti” with both vowels elongated instead of only the first; “daivya” where “daiva” is meant; “mahatamaya” instead of “mahatmya”, “vasva” instead of “vasava”; “asidharavrata” is not “fine-edged as an arrow” but “sharp as a swordblade”. Despite being a professor of English she uses peculiar words like “egoity”, “capsuled”, “intestine feuds”, “slayed”. What happened to the editors of OUP (India)?

Nayak takes flagrant liberties with the text, possibly presuming that the general reader will accept her assertions as facts. The snake sacrifice is “diabolic” because it is “necrophilic” (coitus with corpses of snakes?). In the Uttanka story he is said to create fire from the “horse’s nostrils” whereas smoke issues on blowing into its anus. She turns the moon and soma into the “lunar earth goddess slandered as Nirrti”, whereas it is always a male deity. In the myth of Garuda she interprets the slavery of Vinata as the time the Aryans took to replace indigenous female deities by their solar male gods, although her slavery is to her co-wife Kadru, not to any male. She has Gandhari abort herself by hitting her belly “with an iron rod” which is nowhere in the text.. Nayak invents this to link up with the iron bolt causing the destruction of the Yadavas and, more far-fetched, as “a reversal of Eliade’s sacred pole symbolism” of consecration. She misquotes the Vana Parva where Markandeya does not tell Yudhishthira in the first person that he will create a new yuga, but that Kalki will do so. There is no use of the first person singular in the passage at all. When Brihaspati rapes his sister-in-law Mamata, he does not curse her but the son in her womb to be born blind.

The logic followed is also flawed: following dharma means doing good; the idea of goodness leads to attachment (why?) i.e. ignorance and therefore to evil! Since nishkama karma has liberation as the goal, it injures those in relationships, which is adharma! She ought to have paid attention to the story of how Shuka attains moksha. She asserts that by linking detached action with accomplishing wealth and pleasure “an ethical trap” was created. A person was encouraged to enjoy worldly life while karmic life condemned it. The only solution is to cease to act, or to follow desireless action, both being impossible.

Nayak makes an excellent point that while the ethics envisage pursuit of four-fold “purushartha” (dharma, artha, kama, moksha), morality is left to the individual and is situational. It is more “apad-dharma” being practised—when anything is justifiable for saving one’s life and property—than a Hegelian adherence to a superordinate goodness. However, her definition of morality as “what is done” as opposed to ethics which is “what ought to be done” is questionable. Further, she holds, the MB hardly follows the tenets of the Gita, which, along with the didactic Shanti and Anushasana Parvas, were interpolations. The concept of Karma she finds realized not in the Pandavas but in the Kauravas, and that the former are held accountable, condemned to suffer after the war while Duryodhana goes to Svarga. The Pandavas are morally depraved, killing cousins “for wealth on sanctimonious grounds”. So Duryodhana’s attempts to murder them and cheat them of their inheritance are above board. Nayak finds that the MB has deepened the differences between traditional beliefs leading to creation of “morally corrupt customary laws” and “societal inequities”. Further, with no evidence she asserts that the Shaivic elements (Shiva’s presence is quite significant) are “all later interpolations”. Arjuna’s acts in Khandava forest are heinous, being purposeless violence, while Ashvatthama’s nocturnal massacre of sleepers is avenging his father and fighting for victory. In his condemnation Nayak sees Vaishnava condemnation of Shaivism, and the epic’s bias justifying violence by Krishna and his followers as necessary. To her, Shishupala is another Shaiva and Shiva’s collaboration with Krishna and Arjuna is an interpolation, for which no evidence is advanced. Arjuna’s release of the Brahmashiras to counter Ashvatthama’s makes him culpable as “it reeks of abuse of power” reflecting “how Vaishnavas behaved whenever they gained advantage.”

Nayak even misreads the epic as when claiming that Bhishma refuses to let Karna fight being jealous that he may turn out to be the greater warrior. The reason is very clearly stated by Bhishma from his bed of arrows to Karna. Karna, she claims, was only paying Draupadi back for humiliating him although he brought down the mark in her svayamvara. Actually, he never shot the arrows, nor does Draupadi ever insult Duryodhana as “the blind son of a blind father”. Krishna’s violence in response to Shishupala’s abuses “is shocking; no mythical justification…excuses it.” Duryodhana, she finds, has no free will to change his karma and, therefore, no matter what he does he is condemned as evil! That flies in the face of his deliberate machinations from adolescence to destroy his cousins. For Nayak, despite his adharmas, he is distinguished by “secularity” and “purusharthic dharma” in pursuing dharma, wealth and pleasure. But where is his pursuit of dharma and secularism seen? Duryodhana, she asserts, is portrayed as “a warrior supreme” but never Arjuna. Duryodhana is “aghast” at Yudhishthira staking Draupadi. Bhasa portrays the true nobility of Duryodhana not the Brahmin-redacted MB. Is all this not special pleading? Finally, “Krishna not only makes the victory of dharma imperfect, he also makes the dharmakshetra an adharmakshetra.” In teaching society how to act the MB tradition fails because its “exemplars of dharma…are deeply deficient dharma heroes.”

As dharma is ambiguous the characters are guided not by universal ideals but by their relationships. Universal good being fought for would be dharmayuddha—but that is not so. In this, Nayak overlooks the very reason for the war having been structured to relieve the earth sinking under the burden of oppressive rulers. She argues it is a war against a previous form of dharma by the new Vaishnavism. She asserts that by epic times animal sacrifice was seen as adharmic vide ahimsa paramo dharma. The repeated emphasis placed on this implies the existence of widespread violence and leads to sanction of himsa as “good violence”! Violence being approved in emergencies, the idea of goodness was in flux then as now. She posits a clash between the ethics of Kshatriya conduct justifying lying and morality whereby such action is immoral and lands one in Naraka. Arjuna fails to resolve his moral dilemma: he will not kill Drona, hesitates to kill Bhishma and grieves for Abhimanyu, failing to sunder his relationships of self. He does gain freedom from doubt and the victory of unequivocal dharma. Unquestioning practice of inherited traditions like varnashrama led to varna-based dharmayuddhas against peoples beyond the vedic fold named by Bhishma and Karna. Nayak confuses race with caste in asserting that the concept of ‘the other’ was based on people’s birth, whereas it is clearly those following non-Vedic practices. She even says, “Hitler’s words almost mirror Arjuna’s warning about deterioration of Aryanism” from miscegenation (p. 292) and equates Nazis with twice-born Hindus perpetrating violence upon lower castes. Sectarian violence based upon religion is another facet of Nayak’s dharmayuddha e.g. Vaishnavism vs. Shavism and Shramanic traditions.

Nayak finds that the MB proves that claim to ownership can cause dharmayuddha (cf. Kunti’s advice to her sons via Krishna). The question of who is the legitimate ruler of Hastinapura remains unresolved, hence the Pandava claim to dharmayuddha is negated. Further, for the Pandavas the end justifies the means: “just the fact that the Pandavas destroy the peace and happiness of an entire land proves that their yuddha is an adharmayuddha.” (p. 309). Bhishma’s advice to Yudhishthira never to forgive an enemy plunges people into a cycle of endless wars, almost wiping out a race or community: “The whole MB war is a series of so many blood feuds that it reduces the ideology of a dharma war to gratuitous war-mongering.” The code of conduct in war laid down by Bhishma is constantly violated. Nayak quotes Cicero in “Pro Milone”: silent enim lēgēs inter arma— silent is law during war. What Kautilya recommends is what both Kauravas and Pandavas practise. Nayak’s presentation of this is very interesting, specially breaking the enemy by ruining his reputation (constantly condemning Duryodhana as wicked) and spreading rumours about one’s own power e.g. Pandavas being born of gods, Krishna’s divinity.

Finally, Nayak points out that the MB is an allegory of the yuddha of the self, destroying the baser impulses for self-realization. It is the only MB tradition that succeeds. Opponents disguise themselves as goodness, hence the need of deceit to destroy them. Preserve the Higher Self by destroying the baser self. The violence is figurative. War is a metaphor acting “as a catalytic goad to elicit deep questioning about moral and immoral behaviour.” In that case, is it a parallel “Pilgrim’s Progress”? Duryodana is evil because he knows only his social self, has no internal life. Only after winning the internal war should the external war be undertaken, otherwise it will have an evil causality injurious to self and others. The victories will be those of the lower self. Conflict with desire is yuddha.

The greatest tragedy, according to Nayak, is that when clear guidance is needed the MB tradition supplies ambiguities leading to confusion but no clear answers. However, its internal war is relevant today to lead everyman to victory over the lower self. Actually it convolutes the path. Thus, “the dharmayuddha of the Mahabhrata fails in its practicability…The only tradition the Mahabharata actually institutes is one that makes enquiry customary.” As Dharma is subtle, only the consequence of conduct reveals whether it is right or wrong and this is often different from the expectations of the agents. Not only are their intentions unrealized but the ideologies are also not uniform or absolute. Incomplete executions of good and evil action create paradoxes. The MB provides not answers but ways of contextualizing enquiry according to place, time and circumstance.

Nayak plots the evolving thought through the example of Vritra, an evil power withholding waters in the Rig Veda, but in the MB a Brahmin whose murder is condemned. Nahusha asks gods why they did not stop Indra from cruel and vicious deeds. He even says Vedic hymns are not authentic. Nothing was sacrosanct during the melting pot situation when social changes were occurring. There was conflict between old Vedic dharma and the new Krishna-ized dharma. The Purusharthic goals of artha and kama are misused for selfish gain because dharma’s parameters were flexible. Misogyny is disguised as wisdom when Bhishma denounces women as sunk in tamas who stupefy men, objectifying them as to be blamed for men’s immorality.

The MB calls itself “collyrium” which is the wisdom of questioning what is right and wrong, eradicating the ignorance of narrow-mindedness. It created a tradition of fluid enquiry to question evils in every era. Its becoming a Shastra stopped its evolution. Nayak argues the necessity “to re-examine the text as a chronicle of its time…not binding traditions but metaphors of enquiry into the changeable human condition.”

The Doomsday Epic Condensed

By

The Condensed Mahabharata of Vyasa by P. Lal, First published 1980, 3rd edn 2010 (Revised and Corrected) Price: HB Rs 600, FB Rs 400

We have in hand a gorgeously produced reprint of the 1980 Vikas edition of Padma Shri Dr. P.Lal’s condensed transcreation of Vyasa’s epic. R.C. Dutt, the first ‘condenser’ of the Mahabharata’s one lakh shlokas, chose to spare the Western reader the “unending morass’ and “monstrous chaos” of episodical matter by leaving out whatever he felt to be super-incumbent.

The result was a Tennysonian Vyasa rhythmically relating in Locksley-Hall metre his knightly tale of barons at war in two thousand English couplets.  

In the process Dutt sacrificed much that is integral to the Vyasan ethos: most of the Book of Beginnings and the Book of the Forest, and all of the Club, the Great Departure and the Ascent to Heaven books.

Here Prof. Lal has condensed the hard-core narrative of the Pandava-Dhartarashtran conflict, around which a vast collection of myths, legends, folklore, philosophy and homilies was woven to make up the great epic of Bharata. A complementary project, Mahabharata Katha, is underway, the first of which, The Ramayana in the Mahabharata, is out. Successive volumes will make available to the English-speaking world those peripheral episodes which are, nevertheless, integral parts of the Vyasan universe articulating leitmotifs that run as unifying themes linking the apparently chaotic medley of episodes.

To the modern reader who has neither the time, nor perhaps the inclination, to seek out the iridescent Ariadne’s thread to follow through the epic labyrinth, the Lalian approach is richly rewarding. Besides a valuable 67 page introduction, a family tree, a map showing India at the time of the Mahabharata, an annotated bibliography and an index to proper names, his condensation differs markedly from those of Dutt, Rajagopalachari, R.K. Narayan, Kamala Subramanyam, Meera Uberoi and Ramesh Menon in that he neither re-tells nor adds. Dr. Lal is the only condenser who also transcreates, giving the story ‘always in Vyasa’s own words, without simplifying, interpreting, or elaborating’ preferred Vyasan dialogue to straight narration and report.’

It is not his intention to narrate merely the essential story of the fratricidal war but also to communicate the ‘feel’ of the epic; that ineffable flavour which transforms a sordid account of a bloody clan-war into the Mahabharata. With this end in view, he incorporates a number of incidents which do not appear, at first glance, to have any link with the central story, e.g. the Arjunaka-serpent-Gautami episode in the 13th Book, the memorable parable of the Drop of Honey related by Vidura to Dhritarashtra in Book 11, and the repeated exhortation regarding ahimsa in this violent epic – so violent that, traditionally, it is prohibited reading for nubile women.

It is to correct the general impression that the Mahabharata is off limits to women that Kavita Sharma, principal of Hindu College, Delhi, has written her study of the royal epic women, pairing Satyavati and Amba (though the parallels are far more between the former and her grand daughter-in-law Kunti and between the latter and her daughter-in-law Draupadi), Gandhari and Kunti, Draupadi by herself and Arjuna’s wives whom she groups as ‘warrior queens’. In the last group her coverage of Alli, Pavazhakkodi, Minnoliyal and Pulandaran from the Tamil ballads is extremely valuable. One wishes that she had included the insights provided by Bhasa and Bhatta Narayana.

There are some glaring errors such as ‘Rishi Gavala’ instead of ‘Galava’ (p.4) and Vibhruvahana instead of ‘Babhruvahana’ (p.113). While discussing Draupadi, she fails to note (despite listing Hiltebeitel’s research on Rajasthani ballads in the bibliography) how the popular imagination reincarnated her in medieval times as Bela in the Alha. Puzzled by Draupadi’s silence when married off to five husbands, she proffers haphazard explanations, completely missing out that her appearance Kritya-like during a sacrifice is followed by a declaration that she will be the agent of the gods for the destruction of the warrior clans and she is called a puppet, ‘Panchali’ (her behaviour often suits that appellative). Her marriage to Yudhishthira, son of Yama-Dharma is ominously appropriate. She is the mysterious femme fatale who inveigles five Indras into being sentenced by Shiva to be reborn as the Pandavas with her as their wife to ensure that the intended holocaust occurs. The course of the epic is determined by the dark four and Kunti: Kali-Satyavati, Krishna Dvaipayana Vyasa, Vasudeva Krishna, Draupadi-Krishnaa, and Kunti. While Yamuna’s black waters link the first three, Satyavati, Kunti and Draupadi are prototypes of one another.

Superficial study of the epic is indicated when Sharma recounts Krishna saving Draupadi from being stripped where Vyasa refers to Dharma (another name for Vidura) having clothed her, the passage regarding Krishna being an interpolation consigned to an appendix in the Critical Edition.

While summarising Draupadi’s advice to Satyabhama, Sharma diligently lists all the chores of the dutiful wife, failing to note two interesting points: the complete account of income and expenditure of her husbands was in her grasp and she alone knew the extent of their wealth; she kept track of what each of the many maids attending on Yudhishthira was doing; and she took particular care never to surpass her mother-in-law in ornaments, dress and even the food taken, besides avoiding all criticism of Kunti (III.233. 38, 41).

Surprisingly, Sharma does not notice how skillfully Draupadi uses her charms to get her way time and again, particularly with Bhima and Krishna.

While her book is a sorely needed corrective and provides a popular overview of the role women play in the epic, it would have benefited considerably by reference to Sr. M.A. Hughes’ study, Epic Women: East and West (Journal of the Asiatic Society), Saoli Mitra’s Nathavati Anathavat and Katha Amrita Saman, Chitra Chaturvedi’s Mahabharat, Tanaya and Amba nahin mein Bhishmaa, the 2003 national conference on Pancha Kanya – the five virgins of India’s Epics and the 2005 MANUSHI-ICCR international panel on it in New Delhi. The bibliography contains references that have nothing to do with the subject (E.A.Johnson, Sheetan) and though dated 2006, is innocent of the most important work on the epic, Hiltebeitel’s 2001 ‘Rethinking the Mahabharata’.

The Lal condensation is distinguished by the inimitable choice of passages from the original which no other abridgement has incorporated. Thus, in the beginning of Book 12 is Yudhishthira’s lament over Karna’s death:

‘Even when Karna spoke harshly to us in the palace assembly room, my anger cooled when my eyes fell by chance on his feet. They were our mother Kunti’s feet’ And he goes on to utter words that sum up the existential angst at the root of the epic: ‘We have squabbled like a pack of dogs over a piece of meat, and we have won – and the meat has lost its savour. The meat is thrown aside, the dogs have forgotten it.’

This is precisely what the epic is about – or, at least, one of the many things it is about. This theme of a pyrrhic victory, in which the victors ‘instead of gust chew bitter ashes,’ is stressed again and again in passages omitted in other condensations: ‘Enjoy the barren world – it is now yours’, says Duryodhana at bay, bear-like at the stake surrounded by snarling, slavering Pandavas. ‘You have a world to yourself, a world without friends, horses, chariots, elephants, forts. Enjoy her.’

Yudhishthira shouts, ‘You rave like a madman’ – a desperate attempt to drown the grinning skull and the rattle of bones in lung-power. But truth will out, and it comes at the very end in Yudhishthira’s apocalyptic vision of his kinsmen in hell while his enemies loll on celestial couches.

This is the climactic episode of the theme stated un-compromisingly just before the holocaust begins when Arjuna states blandly that the war is being fought neither for avenging Draupadi, nor for ‘dharma’, but for an extremely mundane and selfish objective: land.

If, then, the epic is such a sordid affair, what lends it memorability and relevance today? It is those situations where characters are shorn of all their trappings and face the ultimate test, forced to play chess with death. Such is the dramatic moment when time stands still as Yudhishthira answers the Yaksha of the lake over the corpses of his brothers. Such is the incident where Yudhishthira, again, replies to his ancestor Nahusha crushing the invincible Bhima in his adamantine coils. Such, yet again, is that tremendous scene where Yudhishthira faces Indra and refuses to give up his canine companion for heaven.

Then there are those other intensely human episodes true for all time: the confrontation between Kunti begging Karna to join her other sons; Draupadi putting the entire peerage to shame with an unanswerable question; Draupadi’s upalambha to Bhima after Kichaka has kicked her; Arjuna facing his brothers finding Abhimanyu slain; Amba, rejected by Salva, facing Bhishma. It is woman and man in all their passionate intensity – all the blood, toil and tears that makes up this short and brutish life. And yet it is man who questions the Divine, wrestling with him, as Arjuna with Shiva physically, or intellectually as Arjuna with Krishna, till God has replies to logic with magic to stun him into submission, as Jehovah to Job out of the whirlwind. It is all this which lends this sometime-ballad of the Bharata clan its epic dimensions and eternal appeal.

The selection of incidents from the original for inclusion in this condensation is itself a feature which distinguishes it from other condensations. The choice is carefully guided by Dr. Lal’s overview of recurring themes or patterns. Take, for instance, the Gita itself, which is missing from most of the other abridgements. Lal carefully incorporates a dialogue between Draupadi and Yudhishthira in the forest which looks forward to the philosophy of nishkama karma and of following one’s dharma.

This is a passage providing rare insights into the respective speakers which readers of other condensations have missed.

The episode of the sage Brihadashva’s visit to the exiled princes appears unnecessary but on closer examination the links with the plot become clear. This sage imparts to Yudhishthira mastery in casting the dice, which is of crucial importance for maintaining his disguise in Virata’s court. It is also skillfully placed immediately after Urvashi cursing Arjuna with eunuch-hood, another boon for the period of ‘exile-in-disguise’. A valuable inclusion is Karna’s retelling of a dream to Krishna which all other condensers miss, completely in consonance with Prof. Lal’s awareness of the underlying theme of pyrrhic victory: ‘I saw you (Krishna) in that dream, busy scattering weapons of war on the blood-red earth. Then I saw Yudhishthira standing on a heap of bones, gladly licking thick sweet curd from a golden plate’.

A remarkable quality of the Lal condensation is the effortless shifting from prose to verse according to the demands of the original. The use of verse in describing Hidimba’s honeymoon, the Pandavas’ stay in the Dvaita forest, Bhima’s obtaining the golden lotus and the description of the rains, help to create and communicate the other-worldly and idyllic flavour of the original. On another unforgettable occasion Lal changes with a sure touch from prose to verse to describe Urvashi approaching Arjuna as abhisarika whose delicate nuances can hardly be communicated in prose. Vyasa also uses verse for rendering solemn ritualistic passages such as Sanjaya consoling the blind monarch, the women wailing over the corpse-strewn field, Gandhari upbraiding Krishna, and the tremendous calling-up of ghosts of the departed from the waters of the Bhagirathi in a translation redolent of the Odyssey.

Prof. Lal’s faithfulness to the original affords valuable insights into characters which other condensations miss. In the svayamvara of Draupadi, her joy at the Brahmin-Arjuna’s success vis-‘-vis her disgust at the Suta-Karna’s entering the contest reveals certain caste-snobbery. Lal carefully brings out Yudhishthira’s cussed mule-headedness in his sparing the rapist Jayadratha and in offering to surrender the kingdom if any of the Pandavas are worsted by Duryodhana in a duel. Krishna’s furious berating of such woolly-thinking is often missing in condensations: ‘It was foolish of you to gamble away our advantage now, just as you gambled everything away to Shakuni.’ Most interesting is Krishna’s inability to recreate the Gita experience when requested by Arjuna before he leaves for Dvaraka after the war: ‘I could not now recall what I said then, even if I wished. How will I get all the details right?’

There is the bland statement of Bhishma and Drona, omitted in other abridgements, explaining why they fight for Duryodhana: ‘A man is the slave of wealth though wealth is no one’s slave. The wealth of the Kauravas binds me to them.’ Then there is that solitary glimpse into Draupadi’s heart as she wails to Bhima in Virata’s court: ‘Any woman married to Yudhishthira would be afflicted with many griefs….What does Yudhishthira do? He plays dice…Look at Arjuna… A hero with earrings!

…You saved me from Jayadratha … and from Jatasura … I shall take poison and die in your arms Bhima.’

This is the source of Iravati Karve’s brilliant exposition of Draupadi’s thoughts as she lies dying and murmurs to Bhima, ‘Aryaputra, in the next birth, be born the eldest!’

It is the inclusion of such incidents and rendering them with careful exactitude which make the Lal version uniquely valuable. In addition there is the sheer readability of the transcreation.

There are, however, a number of omissions that detract from the plot interest. We are not told why the Vasus were cursed to be born as Shantanu’s sons, nor how the fish-odorous Satyavati acquires the lotus-scent which draws the king to her. There is a contradiction between pages 102 and 106 between who was born first and who was conceived first – Yudhishthira or Duryodhana. The Ekalavya episode does not mention how this rejected pupil used to practise archery before a statue of Drona. Drona’s birth is omitted though it provides insight into why he is virtually caste-less and spurned by Drupada. Page 120 conveys a mistranslation: the Pandavas do not flee to Varanavata on Vidura’s advice; they go there on Dhritarashtra’s insistence and flee from there with Vidura’s help. The killing of Baka is omitted with its remorseless scrutiny of family relationships and Kunti’s remarkable decisions as a leader. An unfortunate omission is Krishna’s Machiavellian strategy in deliberately throwing Ghatotkacha as bait to attract Karna’s infallible weapon. The atrocious killing of Bhurishravas by Arjuna and Satyaki, referred to on page 409, is another uncalled for omission.

The most critical lapse occurs on page 393 where at the end of Yudhishthira’s horse-sacrifice Prof. Lal unaccountably omits the story that the half-golden mongoose relates, making the ending of Book 14 trite and inexplicable. There is a cryptic reference on page 101 to Gandhari having once sheltered Vyasa when he was dying from hunger which is neither expanded nor found in the original. The story of Shikhandin-Amba’s birth is left out though it is one of the threads that link the Adi to the Bhishma Parva: Amba is the hamartia in Bhishma’s tragedy. The Arjuna-Shiva encounter is yet another memorable incident which has been omitted.

What is the final impression with which this condensation-cum-transcreation leaves us? It is the anguished cry of a man who has witnessed his progeny slaughter one another in insane strife:

I raise my arms and I shout- but no one listens!
From dharma come wealth and pleasure:
Why is dharma not practised?

This is the story of Vyasa and his descendants, all corrupted by that single consuming weakness – lust. With unerring instinct Lal has incorporated in his condensation a speech by Pandu which touches the core of this tragic flaw – a speech which most condensers drop – ‘Addiction to lust killed my mother’s husband, though the virtuous Shantanu gave him birth. And though truth-speaking Vyasa is my father, lust consumes me too’. The seed of lust runs through both sides of the family. It consumes Shantanu who marries a fisherwoman in his dotage, depriving his kingdom of its rightful and able heir, Devavrata. Mahabhisha is reborn as Shantanu for having looked lustfully on Ganga in Brahma’s court when the wind uplifted her dress. Vichitravirya, child of his old age, carries the same weakness and dies of sexual over-indulgence. Satyavati is a product of Uparichara’s lust. Vyasa is born of Parashara forcing himself on Satyavati mid-stream in a boat. Satyavati refuses to put her daughters-in-law through the year-long purificatory penance which Vyasa advises. They await their brother-in-law Bhishma lust-fully and, shocked at the advent of Vyasa, the union inevitably produces flawed progeny. The curse, like the Erinyes, pursues the entire family. It is the supreme irony of the epic that ultimately the Puru lineage and the dynasty Satyavati sought to found through Vyasa are extinct. No wonder Vyasa finally cries out in despair at man’s deliberate rejection of salvation and the remorseless working out of the tragic flaw ingrained deep within, driving him to destruction.

Why is the Ramayana more popular than the Mahabharata?

By

Sukumari Bhattacharji: The Popularity of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata—A Comparative Analysis. Translated by Tanika Sarkar and Somdatta Mandal. Anustup, 2018, pp. 109, Rs.300/-

The late Sukumari Bhattacharji was one of the rare Sanskrit scholars from India who was equally at home in English. Her The Indian Theogony has been a major reference work for decades and Legends of Devi is a delightful retelling. Possibly her most fascinating Bengali book is a study of why the Ramayana is more popular than the Mahabharata (1996). She asserts, “What we claim as Indian civilization today has The Ramayana at its root and not The Mahabharata.” Unfortunately, till now her trenchant and illuminating analysis has not been available to Indologists all over the globe.

Professor Bhattacharji always wrote to the point, was never guilty of verbiage or of pulling punches. Her professed Marxist bent does not vitiate her incisive and penetrating insights in this book. In the slim compass of just 87 pages she not only provides a parva-wise summary of the world’s longest epic in 15 chapters, but also investigates the elements that make the Ramayana more appealing than the Mahabharata. A splendid achievement, for anyone interested in our epics this is the finest overview. It steers the reader deftly through what Oldenberg called “the monstrous chaos” of the Mahabharata.

The matrix birthing the two epics, according to her, is the crisis of values during the Kushana times (1st-2nd centuries A.D.) with the emergence of small kingdoms and new clans leading to creation of the mahakavyas, the Kamasutra, Manusamhita and some Sanskrit Jataka tales. These dealt with practical issues of the paramountcy of filial duty, familial bonds and loyal friendship, enduring long suffering for the sake of vows etc. The Shanti and Anushasana Parvas are the text needed for the empires that emerged between the Maurya and the Gupta periods. Old values are revised and codified in a collective effort. Bhishma’s advice never to trust a woman “is an attempt to poison men against women” for all time, as post-Gupta society relied on male domination and Shudra servility.

Simultaneously there is Bhishma’s statement, “Nothing is greater than Man,” which Bhattacharji takes to heart as the concluding message of the Mahabharata. Animandavya curses Yama the god of death and Gandhari curses Krishna. “No higher justice governs the world…it depends on mortal beings to ensure justice.” The Ramayana, having no such revolutionary statement, is much more like a fairy-tale, replete with supra-normal events and characters which appeal powerfully to the general public as “Values of domination and subordination come decked out in supernatural mysteries, in a fairy-tale appeal.” With hardly any grey areas, all relationships being simple and linear, “It saves the reader from self-searching and self-doubt.” Above all, it is “suffused with lyrical qualities.” Hence, accepting the protagonists as models poses no problem.

Conversely, the Mahabharata mirrors an age and its peoples, prominently featuring crises of conscience and focusing on the annihilation of entire lineages. The grey areas are pervasive, each episode having complex resonances. Faced with the clash between ends and means people find it deeply disturbing. Bhattacharji cites Shakuntala publicly pouring scorn upon her husband as an example of what readers would have difficulty in accepting. That is why Kalidasa deprived his heroine of this fire. Again, Vyasa himself is a product of rape but there is no condemnation of the rapist rishi. Bhishma tells Draupadi that what the powerful do is considered dharma, i.e. might is right. Such concepts are difficult to digest. Finally, Vyasa’s poetry is far more intellectual than Valmiki’s lyricism, which also detracts from the popularity of the Mahabharata.

Does the reluctance to fight displayed by Yudhishthira and Arjuna reflect the belief in ahimsa propagated by Jains, Buddhists and Ajivikas from the 7th century BC when, according to Bhattacharji, the composition of the epic began? Here, again, the audience faces a dilemma without any clear answer. Confronted with complex problems and ambiguities in life, people long for simple solutions. The Mahabharata creates those very complications, questioning the prevalent belief system, which is why it loses out to the Ramayana in popular appeal.

While discussing Valmiki’s epic, Bhattacharji cannot resist the occasional quip, e.g., how could the two brothers carry adequate weapons for the Lanka battle; men did not have to prove chastity as a masculine equivalent did not exist in Sanskrit; shudras and chandalas were considered subhuman. In the Mahabharata, Arjuna’s mental paralysis is dissipated by “a magical performance” stunning him—and the audience—into submission. Magic, not logic, carries the day! Never has the Gita been accorded such short shrift!

Very perceptively Bhattacharji chooses to discuss Vidura’s parable of the man in the well which, she asserts, is composed after the concepts of Nirvana (Buddhist) and Moksha (Upanishadic). Despite death being the only reality, the persistence of desire keeps life precious as a positive experience although “negation found strong resonance in a class-divided society with a large oppressed population.” She overlooks that the Mahabharata calls itself the Veda for women and shudras too and that this parable found its way into the Bible as the tale of Barlaam and Josaphat. The Ramayana neither presents such conflicts nor does it take us to such great depths.

The Sauptika Parva is omitted from the survey without any explanation. There is a puzzling statement (p.19) that the Ramayana, being unsure of Sita’s chastity, installs Bharata at the end instead of Lava or Kusha. Actually, in the text the brothers and the subjects drown themselves with Rama in the Sarayu, before which Rama installs his sons to rule over northern and southern Kosala. In view of Bhattacharji’s pronounced feminist stance (the first fall and death en route Swarga was of Draupadi because she was a woman, p.63), it is intriguing to find no reference to the mutilation of Ayomukhi (ear, nose, breasts chopped off) and Surpanakha (nose and ears sliced) by Rama and Lakshmana. She asserts (p. 41) that as Kaurava bards sang the events of the Kurukshetra war, it is a partisan narrative making a great hero out of Karna. However, Karna is not a Kaurava at all but Yadava Kunti’s illegitimate son. Further, Rama does not refuse Guhaka’s hospitality because he is chandala (p. 19) but because, having taken to asceticism, he would live only on fruits and roots, as he himself explains.

Bhattacharji declares that the Mausala Parva is interpolated being full of supernatural events, yet she admits that they construct an inevitable sense of waste. She fails to substantiate that it is “not inherently related to the epic” and admits it reflects the wider perspective of destruction caused by war. The uneasiness it creates is the key to its effectiveness. Similarly, she dismisses the entire Bharata Savitri as irrelevant (p.62) although it ends with Vyasa’s remarkable query which remains a riddle for us all: “From Dharma come wealth and pleasure. Why is Dharma not practised?” Here the translators mistranslate “phalashruti” (the benefits of listening to the epic) as “hearsay.”

Bhattacharji, like her colleague Buddhadeb Bose in his The Book of Yudhishthira, establishes Yudhishthira as the epic’s hero the reader’s attention being focused only on him at the end. A deity (Krishna), being superhuman, cannot be the protagonist. Yudhishthira upholds Bhishma’s utterance that nothing is greater than man and would put aside Kshatriya creed in favour of ahimsa. Only a man can show other men the way out in crises. In the Mahabharata a greater idea of virtue and justice is at work. The Ramayana presents no complications over heaven and hell. Its idea of duty is rectilinear. Even in killing Bali and Shambuka, Rama suffers no moral pangs. Towards the end, the Mahabharata says twice that kings have to go to hell, giving no reason (this is from the section Bhattacharji has already rejected, yet she cites it approvingly!). No solution is presented to the clash between a king’s duties and that of humanity. The Ramayana does not perplex or mortify the reader—we are told to behave like Rama. The Mahabharata alone has the protagonist debate with death itself, proving the truth of human worth through all suffering and failures, confronting them and sacrificing the self for the greater good of society. It does not ask us to behave like Krishna to whom it assigns an ignominious death, while sending Yudhishthira triumphantly to Swarga in his mortal frame. Yudhishthira becomes the hero, repeatedly perturbed but achieving a stable world-view at the end.

Devoting an entire chapter to the enigma of Bhishma, she correctly points out that non-involvement characterizes him starting with aloofness during the three year long war in which a Gandharva killed his step-brother Chitrangada. Bhattacharji notes the similarities with Rama who abdicated for his father’s marital bliss. However, Bhishma never asked his father for the boon of death at will (p. 72). Shantanu, gratified, gave that to him on his own. Unlike Vibhishana who has no qualms about aiding Rama against his kin, Bhishma constantly dithers, making it difficult for the reader to respond to him. He chooses death being unable to resolve the conflict. The Mahabharata does not aim at popularity, “it is precious only to the reader who is split with mental agony…”

Bhattacharji cannot reconcile Draupadi as Lakshmi having sons from five gods as husbands instead of Vishnu. Further, “The social question of chastity remains unanswered.” However, this is resolved in the story of the five Indras and Shri cursed by Shiva to take mortal birth and further in the tale of Draupadi’s earlier birth. Though Bhattacharji says there is no hint of a personal relationship between Vyasa and his son Shuka, this is elaborately described in the Mokshadharma Parva. She states that animal sacrifice is intrinsic to Vedic rites, overlooking the Mokshadharma Parva where for asserting this Raja Uparichara is cursed by Agastya to fall into a hole. Agastya and his fellow sages advocate offerings of grains, not flesh.

With two translators plus an editor, one expected consistency and correctness in the spelling of names, particularly as the author was a distinguished Sanskritist. “Hanumana” (pp.17, 18, 96) should be “Hanuman”; “Jujutshu” (pp.61, 84) should be “Yuyutsu” as on p. 76. There are some egregious errors which editorial notes should have covered. Thus, Drona does not say to Ekalavya: “give me your fingers” (p. 25) but asks for his thumb. Vyasa does not restrain Duryodhana from attacking Pandavas in exile (p.81). Satyavati never insists that her son should inherit the throne, nor does she obtain the vow of celibacy from Bhishma (p. 26). On p.72 the author correctly ascribes these to the fisherman-chief.  Chitrangada is never termed “a sinful man” (p. 27). Drupada was not “the king of Vidarbha” (p. 34) but of Panchala. Karna never “made an obscene gesture with his hand on his thigh” to Draupadi (p. 42). That was Duryodhana’s doing. Bhattacharji states the Pandavas knew krityas had formed Duryodhana below his waist with flowers (p. 46). They had nothing to do with it. It was Parvati who formed him thus. Duryodhana undertook a fast unto death not at the end of the Virata Parva (p.93) but early in the Vana Parva. Gandhari did not birth “a round stone” (pp.49, 53) but a stone-like lump of flesh. Krishna was never king of Mathura (p. 53).  In Draupadi’s svayamvara. Shalya failed to string not “his” bow but the bow for the contest (p. 45).  “Bhima tried to crush his head with his left foot but desisted” (p. 46) is incorrect, as he did do so. The reasons for the deaths of Nakula and Sahadeva have been transposed (p.63). Nakula fell not for pride in his wisdom, nor Sahadeva for his narcissism, but exactly the other way about. Yuyutsu fought on the Pandava side instead of not participating (p.76).

Over all it is a fine translation. The rendering of “Shreya” and “Preya” as “the best and the desired for” is particularly happy. We are grateful to the two translators and the publisher for making available this very important study to the English speaking world after over two decades. It is a great pity that her Women and society in ancient India remains out of print. Hopefully, the publisher will bring this out too.

Pradip Bhattacharya

A shorter version of this review was published in the 8th Day Literary Supplement of The Sunday Statesman dated 24th June 2018.

 

Reviews in The Statesman

By

  • Krishna in the Harivamsa, Vol 2, The Greatest of all Sovereigns and Masters by Andre Couture. DK Printworld, New Delhi. The Sunday Statesman 15. 04.18

Click the link  ===> http://epaper.thestatesman.com/m5/1614823/8th-Day/15th-April-2018#dual/2/1

  • What the Ancillary Stories do in the Mahabharata. V. Adluri and J. Bagchee: Argument and Design—the unity of the Mahabharata. Brill, 2016. The Sunday Statesman 17.10.2017

Click the link  ===> http://www.thestatesman.com/books-education/ancillary-stories-mahabharata-1502511514.html

  • Management by Mythology. 14 Principles of Management to live by. By Utkarsh Patel. The Sunday Statesman 06.07.2017

Click the link ===> http://www.thestatesman.com/features/myths-behind-management-1501980032.html

  • The Song of Arjun and the Hegemony of the Yadavas: Arjun Pandava: The Double hero in Epic Mahabharata by Kevin McGrath: Orient blackswan.  The Sunday Statesman 20.02.2016

Click the Link ===> http://www.thestatesman.com/features/the-song-of-arjuna-and-the-hegemony-of-the-yadavas-1479602871.html

  • 150th Anniversary of a translator, Kaliprasanna’s greatest literary feat. The Sunday Statesman 23.10.2016

Click the Link ===>http://www.thestatesman.com/8th-day/150th-anniversary-of-a-translation-172326.html

  • A Treasure Trove in English: evading the shadows by Rajesh M Iyer. Kriscendo media, Frog Books. The Sunday Statesman 6.11.2016

Click the Link ===> http://pradipbhattacharya.com/2017/05/26/review-rajesh-m-iyer-evading-the-shadows/

  • Reconsidering the Mahabharata: Ways and Reasons for Thinking about the Mahabharata as a Whole, ed, V. Adluri, Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute Pune. The Sunday Statesman 7.8.2016

Click the Link ===> http://www.thestatesman.com/supplements/reconsidering-the-mahabharata-158618.html

  • The significance of a neglected text: Krishna in the Harivamsha Vol. 1 – The wonderful play by a cosmic child, Andre Couture. DK Printworld, New Delhi. The Sunday Statesman 3.7.2016

Click the Link ===> http://pradipbhattacharya.com/2017/05/27/review-the-harivansha-the-significance-of-a-neglected-text/

  • A landmark in Indological studies, Samsad Companions to the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, MADHUSRABA DASGUPTA, Sishu Sahitya Samsad. The Sunday statesman 19.04.2015

Click the Link ===> http://www.thestatesman.com/8th-day/a-landmark-in-indological-studies-58362.html

  • A revolutionary thesis – The Mahabharata Patriline: Gender, culture and the royal hereditary, S.P. Brodbeck, Ashgate, UK. The Sunday Statesman 12.04.2015

Click the Link ===> http://www.thestatesman.com/supplements/a-revolutionary-thesis-57126.html

  • Did Vyasa adapt Homer, Mahabharata and Greek Mythology, Fernando Wulff Alonso,  Motilal Banarasidass. The Sunday Statesman 15.03.2015

Click the Link ===> http://www.thestatesman.com/8th-day/did-vyasa-adapt-homer-52588.html

  • Victory is the name of this history Jaya – Performance in epic Mahabharata, Kevin McGrath, Harvard University Press. The Sunday Statesman 17.11.2013

Click the Link ===> http://www.thestatesman.com/8th/victory-is-the-name-of-this-history-24918.html

  • The mighty fallen in the midst of battle, The Mahabharata, volume7, Bibek Deb Roy, Penguin India. The Sunday Statesman, 06.10.2013

Click the Link ===> http://pradipbhattacharya.com/2017/05/27/review-bibek-debroy-the-mahabharata-volume-7/

  •  The Epic Psychology, Battle, Bards and Brahmins Ed by John Brockington, Motilal Banarasidass. The Sunday Statesman, 17.03.2013

Click the Link ===> http://pradipbhattacharya.com/2017/05/27/review-battle-bards-and-brahmins-ed-john-brockington/

  •  Perspective: Was Hindu angst over Doniger book justified, The Hindus, An Alternative History, Wendy Doniger. The Statesman, 17.02.2014

Click the Link ===> http://www.thestatesman.com/opinion/was-hindu-angst-over-doniger-book-justified-39708.html

  • The Unique Figure in Indo-European epic poetry, Heroic Krishna-friendship in epic Mahabharata, Kevin McGrath, Harvard University Press. The Sunday Statesman, 26.01.2014

Click the Link ===> http://pradipbhattacharya.com/2017/05/27/review-heroic-krishna-friendship-in-epic-mahabharata/

  •  Born for Valour, Born to achieve, The Mahabharata of Vyasa: The Complete Karna Parva, Transcreated from Sanskrit P.Lal, Writers Workshop. The Sunday Statesman, 07.09.2008

Click the Link ===> http://pradipbhattacharya.com/2017/05/27/review-i-was-born-for-valour-i-was-born-to-achieve-glory/

  • A Zero-Sum Game on a A Darkling Plain, The Complete Drona Parva, Transcreated from Sanskrit, P. Lal, Writers Workshop. The Sunday Statesman, 10.02 2008

Click the Link ===> http://pradipbhattacharya.com/2017/05/31/review-the-complete-bhishma-drona-parvas/

  • Interlude – the – Incognito: The Complete Virata Parva of the Mahabharata: transcreated from Sanskrit by P. Lal, Writers Workshop. The Sunday Statesman, 19.08.2007

Click the Link ===> http://pradipbhattacharya.com/2017/05/31/review-the-complete-virata-and-udyoga-parvas-of-the-mahabharata/

  • Revolutionizing Ancient History: The Case of Israel and Christianity. The Statesman Festival Issue 2004, Pages 130- 135

Click the Link ===> http://pradipbhattacharya.com/2017/05/31/review-revolutionizing-ancient-history-the-case-of-israel-and-christianity/