Pradip Bhattacharya

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Review of Pradip Bhattacharya, trans., The Mahabharata of Vyasa. Book 12: The Complete Shanti Parva. Part 2: Moksha-Dharma. Kolkata: Writers Workshop, 2016, 1112 pages.

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International Journal of Hindu Studies (2018) 22:523–549

Pradip Bhattacharya, trans., The Mahabharata of Vyasa. Book 12: The Complete Shanti Parva. Part 2: Moksha-Dharma. Kolkata: Writers Workshop, 2016, 1112 pages.

In 1968 Purushottam Lal began transcreating Vyasa’s Mahabharata in free flowing English verse—indeed a mammoth enterprise. No one before him had attempted a translation of the complete epic in verse. Before his death in 2010, he had transcreated and published sixteen and a half of the eighteen books, leaving the Mokshadharma part of Shantiparva and the Anuśāsanaparva untouched. Pradip Bhattacharya took up the challenge of translating the former. This was indeed very brave of Bhattacharya as this is the toughest section of the epic, containing the essence of Vyāsan philosophy. In many ways Bhattacharya was the right person to undertake this work, given his deep and extensive study of the epic.

The book comprises a short preface, the text, and some interesting appendices: two maps, a list of stories in the Parva, and Bhattacharya’s eloquent reviews of Professor Lal’s transcreations of the Karṇaparva, Strīparva, and Shantiparva (Rājadharma). Bhattacharya’s methodology is to keep to the original syntax, translating sloka-by-sloka in free verse and prose, faithful to Lal’s objective of providing “the full ragbag version.” It is the most complete translation to date and the first in verse, conflating the editions published by the Gita Press, Aryashastra, and Haridas Siddhantavagish, cross-checked with the shorter critical edition (including the supplements), Kaliprasanna Singha’s Bengali translation (1886), and K.M. Ganguly’s first English translation (1896).

Yudhiṣṭhira, having been instructed on the principles of governance, shifts gear from Section 174 of Shantiparva (Section 168 of the Critical Edition) to ascend to the higher levels of philosophy with the question,

“O Pitamaha-grandfather, you have

spoken on auspicious

Rajadharma, the dharma of governance.

O Earth-lord, speak

now of the best dharma of ashramites!”

A series of questions follow that reveal Yudhiṣṭhira’s supremely disturbed state of mind as he tries to find solace, a method for getting over the guilt, the sorrow, and the confusion arising from the loss of all his relations and friends in the pyrrhic battle for which he holds his own greed responsible. Bhīṣma tells him everyone must try to obtain moksha, liberation, by way of detachment which can only come if one remains unaffected by worldly possessions and rises above emotions like sorrow and happiness as these are ephemeral. The true nature of the Self,     ātmajnana, must be realized to obtain liberation, which emancipates from the liability of rebirth and is the highest goal of human existence. This is the only panacea.

Easier said than done! So, for the next two hundred and one chapters, Bhīṣma holds forth on how to obtain liberation, answering myriad questions from the troubled Yudhiṣṭhira, through which the vast expanse of epic philosophy is opened up. To explain the difficult concepts involved Bhīṣma uses fifty-five engaging stories and dialogues, thus establishing a tradition to be followed by Pañcatantra, Hitopadeśa, and so on. Four additional stories from the Siddhantavagish edition and two from the Southern recension are included which Bhattacharya found during his extensive research.

Devala and Pañcaśikha’s Sāṁkhya philosophy is dealt with at length. Ignorance being the root of misfortune, knowledge of the twenty-six principles is a precondition for obtaining moksha. Yajñavalkya delineates the cosmic principles in detail to Janaka who tells Pañcaśikha’s disciple Sulabhā,

“…renunciation is the supreme

means for this moksha and

indeed from knowledge is born renunciation

which liberates.

…That supreme intelligence obtained, I

free of opposites,

here indeed, delusion gone, move free of attachment.”

Interestingly, Sulabhā takes this much deeper, saying,

“Who I am, whose I am, from where I have

come, you asked me.

…If you are free from dualities of

“This is mine,” perhaps

“This is not mine,” O ruler of Mithila,

then what need of

words like, ‘Who are you? Whose? From where?’ ”

Yoga is a necessary addendum of Sāṁkhya. Through Sāṁkhya one attains knowledge and through Yoga one attains direct perception. They are complementary and equally efficacious.

Despite the Brahmanization of the epic, it reflects considerable catholicity. One becomes a Brahmana not by birth, but by gunas and consequent karma. This Parva celebrates non- Brahmanas and women like Sulabhā, Piṅgalā and Tulādhara. Much of the Bhagavad Gita is included here, covering Karmayoga, Jñānayoga, and Rājayoga, with Bhakti as an undercurrent climaxing in the Naran    ārāyaṇiya.

The emergence of Shiva and the Nara-Nārāyaṇa duo as important deities are the salient developments. Shiva is established as a principal deity by getting a share of the offerings after destroying Dakṣa’s sacrifice. By Shiva’s boon Vyasa gets his son Śuka. Nara and Nārāyaṇa are incarnations of the Supreme Soul who defeat Rudra. Nārada has their darshan and initiates their worship as supra-Vedic deities.

Finally, Yudhisthira asks the last question of Mokshadharma Parvādhyāya, which was his first question too!

“Grandfather, the dharma relating to

the auspicious

moksha-dharma you have stated. The best

dharma for those

in the ashramas, pray tell me, Sir!”

Bhīṣma then narrates the story of the Brahmana Dharmāraṇya and Nāga Padmanābha. Moksha is obtained by uñchavṛtti (gleaning), by the grace of Shiva. Uñchavṛtti seems to be Vyasa’s favourite option for attaining moksha. He ends the Aśvamedhikaparva too with such a story.

The most important quality of any translation is its readability and authenticity. Most translations suffer from the use of extraneous verbiage and loss of material— traps which Bhattacharya has carefully avoided. Moreover, he has succeeded in communicating the meaning of concepts that are difficult to comprehend. One moves easily with the easy flow of his language. His poetry is excellent. It is rich yet simple and never causes one to stumble. It has the smooth continuation of a river and the cadence of raindrops, and that is what makes the translation so attractive. Consider:

“Wrapped in many-fold threads of delusion

self-engendered,

as a silk-worm envelopes itself, you

do not understand (329.28).”

The depth of research that has gone into this translation is very impressive. The only problem I perceived was the inclusion of “memorable shlokas,” which break the continuous flow. These perhaps were not really needed. The production of the book is excellent. The readers will be happy to see that the Writers Workshop continues Professor Lal’s innovation of handloom sari-bound production with gold-lettering in his unique calligraphy.

Major General Shekhar Sen Independent Scholar Kolkata, India

Revising the Critical Edition of the Mahabharata: An Approach through the attempt to strip Draupadī

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Introduction

C.E. vol.2 stripping Draupadi

The Critical Edition (CE) of the Mahabharata published by the Bhandarkar Oriental Institute (BORI), Pune (1933-1966) is generally regarded as the last word in arriving at the textual canon of the epic. Half a century later, however, enough justification exists for taking a hard look at its claim to provide the best manuscript version extant. The fact is, as Mehendale[1]  points out, that the oldest manuscript by far— a 12th century, Nepali palm-leaf manuscript— was not available for study. Nor, admitted Sukthankar,[2] were Kannaḍa, Oḍīya and Nandināgarī manuscripts examined. Edgerton, editor of the Sabhā Parva of the CE, refers to a complete manuscript, a continuous roll in Devanagari, in the Bharat Itihasa Sanshodhaka Mandal of Pune, which he could not obtain for study.[3] The National Mission for Manuscripts has to find and document it for the revised edition of the Mahabharata.

The CE also did not take into account the earliest version of the epic in a foreign language: Abu Saleh’s Instruction of Princes (1026), an Arabic translation from the Sanskrit. Preceding the oldest manuscripts depended upon by the CE by centuries, this is an astonishing account of the Kurus and Pāṇḍavas as viewed from Sindh with no mention of Kr̥ṣṇa.[4] Had Ruben known of it, it would have added grist to his mill in arguing that originally the epic was Kr̥ṣṇa-less.[5]

Further, the editors did not study the Razmnama (1584), the Persian version of the epic (including Harivaṁśa) that Akbar commissioned, although it was contemporaneous with the manuscripts depended upon for the CE. Sukthankar was mistaken in rejecting it as merely a “free rendering of the original.”[6] Neither is it “an abridgement” as Adluri and Hiltebeitel claim.[7] A comparison with the CE would reveal the departures in the Persian version, which would throw light on the status of the text followed under Akbar’s direction. For instance, its Aśvamedha Parva follows Jaimini’s composition, not the Vaiśampāyana recital.[8] The scholars Akbar gathered for this massive enterprise formed an editorial board that was the precursor of the CE’s and included Debi Misra (author of Bhārata artha dīpikā ?) and Chaturbhuja Misra (author of Bhārata upāya prakāsaka bhārata tātparya prakāśikā) from Bengal, Satavadana, Madhusudana Misra (editor of Mahānātakam), Rudra Bhattacaraj and Sheikh Bhawan (a Dakhini Brahmin convert). The selection shows Akbar’s awareness of the existence of the Bengal, Northern and Southern recensions. His orders were to establish exactitude so that nothing of the original would be lost. The work was often read aloud to him, followed by discussions. Badauni records that once Akbar lost his temper on hearing certain passages and accused him of inserting his own bigoted views. Thus, the fidelity of the Persian version to the original was carefully verified.[9]

What the editors of the CE have done now, Kālīprasanna Siṁha did in Calcutta by the age of 30 for his Bengali translation of the Mahabharata (excluding Harivaṁśa, which he stated was clearly a much later composition) in 17 volumes (1858-1866) omitting and adding nothing. He had a team of 7 pundits. Manuscripts from the Asiatic Society, Shobhābāzār palace, the collections of Asutosh Deb, Jatindramohan Thākur and his own great-grandfather Shāntirāma Siṁha’s collection in Benares were collated. For resolving contradictions in the texts and making out the meaning of knotty slokas he was helped by Tārānātha Tarkavācaspati of the Calcutta Sanskrit Vidyamandir. Every evening the translation, as it progressed, was read out to prominent leaders of Hindu society.[10]

Thus, like the CE, both the late 16th century Persian version and the mid-19th century Bengali translation were prepared by collating Mahabharata manuscripts from different regions. However, issues of repetition and inconsistency were not resolved in the Bengali translation. Without studying the Razmnama we cannot say what had been done there. One would expect that 20th century scholars would try to make good these lacunae. Instead, the CE contains contradictions that are the result of the rigid[11] application of the principle that whatever appeared in the largest number of manuscripts was to be included, irrespective of intra-textual consistency, which was rejected as “the realm of higher criticism.”[12] Yet, Sukthankar himself set aside his own cardinal principle when he chose to begin the CE text with the benedictory invocation, despite its absence from the entire Southern recension. His reason: all Hindu texts invariably began thus.[13] No one has dared to criticise this departure.

Some unresolved contradictions and repetitions

Bankimchandra Chatterjee argued in his masterly Krishnacharitra (1886-1892):

“Those that contradict each other, of them one must necessarily be interpolated…No writer indulges in unnecessary repetition or creates a situation of contradiction through such repetition.”[14]

A good example of repetition is the two occasions on which Arjuna prevents Kr̥ṣṇa from killing Bhīṣma at VI.55 (the third day) and VI.102 (the ninth day). Lexical analysis suggests that the latter is added on, whereas the context suggests that the former is the addition. The CE editor sought to resolve this by proposing that originally it was the third day that was the penultimate day of Bhīṣma’s command and, therefore, he fought for only 4 not 10 days. His arguments are far from convincing.[15]

A few of the unresolved internal contradictions in the CE are enumerated below which appear to be “passages, which were composed at a very early date and hence found time to creep into all versions,” writes Mehendale, but “the transmitters of the epic tradition…did (not) deliberately omit what they had received by tradition.” He explains that the CE retained these “since such contradictory passages occur uniformly in all the versions of both (North and South) recensions.” He adds that decisions about these “will be the task of later researchers who have to take recourse to higher criticism (emphasis mine).” [16]

  • In the Ādiparvan (207.14), Arjuna visits Maṇalūra during his twelve-year long exile, while in the Āśvamedhikaparvan (77.46) it is named Maṇipūra. The former indicates southern influence as Southern manuscripts locate Maṇalūra near Madurai and make Citrāñgadā a Pānḍyan princess. One of these has to be emended as a scribal error by comparing with other references to Citrāñgadā.
  • According to the Ādiparvan (116.31), Mādrī mounted her husband’s funeral pyre in the Himalayas. This is reiterated at 117.28. However, at the beginning of section 117 we find Kuntī and her sons entering Hastināpura with sages who have brought along the bodies of Pānḍu and Mādrī. Then, section 118 provides a description of their ornamented, anointed and perfumed bodies and states that Pānḍu’s body looked as if he were alive. So, the corpses had been preserved for over 17 days (117.27)? Surely, either the corpses had been cremated in the Himalayas or they were brought to the capital for funeral, remaining un-decomposed for over a fortnight. One of these accounts is an interpolation.
  • In the Sabhāparvan (61. 35-38), Draupadī is dragged into the gaming hall and Karṇa directs Duḥśāsana, pānḍavānām ca vāsāṁsi draupadyāś cāpyupāhara, “Strip the Pānḍavas and Draupadī of their garments!” (61.38). Hearing this, the Pāṇḍavas cast off their uttarīya (upper garments). Duḥśāsana pulls at Draupadī’s single cloth in the midst of the assembly hall. However, almost nowhere subsequently is there any reference to the attempted stripping. We will examine this contradiction in depth.

The attempt to strip Draupadī

The CE omits Draupadī’s prayer to Kr̥ṣṇa for succour but not the miracle of unending garments. The Sabhāparvan editor, Edgerton, writes, ‘It is apparently implied (though not stated) that cosmic justice automatically, or “magically” if you like, prevented the chaste Draupadī from being stripped in public…later redactors felt it necessary to embroider the story.’[17] The CE text reads thus in van Buitenen’s translation[18] of II.61.40-42:-

“40. Then Duḥśāsana forcibly laid hold of Draupadī’s robe, O king, and in the midst of the assembly began to undress her.

  1. But when her skirt was being stripped off, lord of the people, another similar skirt appeared every time.[19]
  2. A terrible roar went up from all the kings, a shout of approval, as they watched that greatest wonder on earth.”

In the CE (II. 43-47) Bhīma vows to taste the blood of Duḥśāsana after he pulls at Draupadī’s sole cloth and a fresh one appears.

As she is dragged from the inner apartments, Draupadī appeals to Duḥśāsana to refrain (II.60.25), as she is menstruating (rajasvalāsmi) and is clad in just a single cloth (ekaṁca vāso). Duḥśāsana responds that regardless of whether she is menstruating, wearing a single cloth (ekāmbarā) or none (vivastrā), she is their prize and their slave, “And one lechers with slaves as the fancy befalls!” (van Buitenen, 60.27). As he shakes her about, there is a reference to half of her cloth slipping (patitārdhavastrā 60.28).[20] She pleads with Duḥśāsana again, “Don’t render me nude, do not debase me!” (mā māṁ vivastrāṁ kridhi mā vikārṣīḥ, 60.30). When she is dragged into the assembly hall, Bhīma notices that her upper cloth is slipping (strastottarīya, 60.47). This refers to the portion of her garment covering her torso and not to a separate cloth for the upper-half of the body since she is ekāmbarā. The painting commissioned specially for the CE shows, in the background, four Pāṇḍavas bare-bodied and Arjuna seated with his back to the scene, naked; in the foreground Duḥśāsana pulls at a single cloth wrapped around Draupadī.[21]

In the “Vulgate,”[22] Draupadī calls out to Govinda, Kr̥ṣṇa, Keśava Dvārakāvāsin, Ramānātha, Janārdana Vrajanātha and Gopījanapriya, the last two epithets indicating a post-Harivaṁśa addition by a poet familiar with Kr̥ṣṇa’s childhood dalliance with the milkmaids of Vraja as Bankimchandra Chatterjee noted back in 1886.[23] Kr̥ṣṇa springs up from his bed in Dvārakā and rushes on foot, deeply moved by Draupadī’s appeal, which reaches him telepathically.[24] This recurs when she, faced with Durvāsā’s untimely demand for food in the forest, invokes Kṛṣṇa. Referring to these two passages Sukthankar comments, “They undoubtedly represent a later phase of Kṛṣṇa worship.”[25] Some vernacular versions elaborate this further along the lines of the gopī–vastraharaṇa episode in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa (X.22): so long as Draupadī clutches on to her sole covering there is no response to her outcries; it is only when she lets go and lifts her hands in total surrender that the miracle occurs.

How Draupadī’s modesty was saved is hinted at in verse 544* in the footnotes of the CE, which might be the earliest interpolation:

“Yājñasenī cried out for rescue to Kr̥ṣṇa, Viṣṇu, Hari and Nara. Then Dharma, hidden, the magnanimous, covered her with a multitude of garments.”

This is repeated in 553*:

“Thereupon hundreds of garments of many colours and whites appeared, O lord, due to the protection of Dharma.”

These refer back to II.60.13 where, when summoned to the dicing hall, Draupadī reflects, “In this world Dharma alone is supreme. Observed, he will bring peace.”

The enigmatic statement gives rise to many speculations, one of which possibly led to the interpolated passage bringing in Kr̥ṣṇa as saviour along the lines of yato dharmas tataḥ kr̥ṣṇo yataḥ kr̥ṣṇas tato jayaḥ (VI.41.55). Further, the god Dharma incarnated as Vidura who was the first to protest against the dice-game and the summoning of Draupadī before the assembly. Does he, Dharma-incarnate, clothe her? Significantly, later in the Udyogaparvan when Kr̥ṣṇa reminds Saṁjaya of her sufferings, he refers to her casting piteous glances all around the hall to find only kṣattā Vidura as her protector, nānyaṁ kṣatturnāthamadr̥ṣṭaṁ kañcit, who alone spoke in condemnation, ekaḥ kṣattā dharmyāmarthaṁ bruvāṇo (V.29.33, 34). Or shall we imagine ‘Dharma’ as referring to the outraged sensibilities of the assembly who throw off their upper garments to cover Draupadī, as narrated in Ayyanappilla Asan’s Malayali Bharatam Pattu (c.1500 CE, contemporary with the CE’s manuscripts)?[26] Ultimately, as Duḥśāsana tires, evil omens erupt—jackals howl and asses bray—whereupon Gāndhārī and Vidura succeed in persuading Dhṛtarāṣṭra to intervene.

Hiltebeitel (2001)[27] argues that Kr̥ṣṇa’s intervention to protect Draupadī’s modesty is very much envisaged in the CE, citing two verses from the Udyogaparvan in which Draupadī, exhorting Keśava (V.80.26), and Kr̥ṣṇa speaking to Saṁjaya (V.58.21), refer to her appeal, “O Govinda,” for rescue. He admits that neither Draupadī nor Kr̥ṣṇa mentions the attempted stripping. If, then, Draupadī was not being stripped, why should Kr̥ṣṇa have intervened miraculously? Moreover, when they meet for the first time after the dice-duel in the forest-exile, Draupadī specifically mentions having been manhandled, kr̥ṣyeta (III.13.60), and “dragged around in their hall with my one piece of clothing” while menstruating (stridharminī vepamānā śoṇitena samukṣitā / ekavastrā vikriṣtāsmi duḥkhitā kurusamsadi // III.13.68), being “molested,” parikliśyantīm (III.13.107) and “laid hold of by my hair” kacagrahamanuprāptā (III.13.107, 109). However, she makes no mention of any attempt to strip her. Kr̥ṣṇa responds that, had he been present, he would have prevented the fraudulent dice-game, but he was far away battling Śālva who had sacked Dvārakā (III.14.1). He mentions neither any attempt to strip her, nor any appeal from her reaching him—telepathically or otherwise. In his 1976 study on the burning of the forest, Hiltebeitel wrote that the CE is not to be followed blindly.[28] Here he is doing precisely that.

Other Evidence

  1. At the very beginning of the Mahabharata in the Anukramanikā Parvan, Dhṛtarāṣṭra laments that Draupadī was dragged into the assembly hall but does not mention any attempt to strip her:-

yadāśrauṣaṁ draupadīm aśrukaṇṭhīṁ; sabhāṁ nītāṁ duḥkhitām ekavastrām /

rajasvalāṁ nāthavatīm anāthavat; tadā nāśaṁse vijayāya saṁjaya //

“When I heard that Draupadī, tears in her throat, had been dragged into the assembly hall grieving, in a single garment, and she in her period, while her protectors stood by as though she had no one to protect her— then, Sanjaya, I lost all hope of victory.” (I.1.106, van Buitenen).

  1. Nor does he refer to Bhīma’s vow to drink Duḥśāsana’s blood. Arguing that the vow is a subsequent addition, Bhatt writes that this is “wonderfully supported by the omission of the event from the summary of the Karṇa Parvan given in the well-known Parva-saṅgraha Parvan.”[29]
  2. In the Virāṭaparvan, Draupadī, while lamenting her condition before Bhīma, refers only to a prātikāmin (servant/messenger) dragging her into the hall by her hair and being called a dāsī (IV.17.2).
  3. Aśvatthāmā refers to the incident (IV.45.11-12) while reprimanding Karṇa for boasting: “Likewise, where was the battle in which you won Kṛṣṇā? In her single garment she was dragged into the hall, miscreant, when she was in her month, ekavastrā sabhāyām nītā duṣṭakarmaṇā rajasvalā” (van Buitenen).
  4. Arjuna upbraids Karṇa: “You watched how evil men molested (kliśyamānāṁ) the Princess of Pāñcāla in the assembly hall” (IV.55.4), but he does not mention the ultimate outrage of his command that she be stripped, or even to his abusing her as a prostitute.
  5. In the Udyogaparvan (V.29.31, 33) when Kr̥ṣṇa mentions to Saṁjaya the atrocities suffered, he refers only to Duḥśāsana dragging menstruating Draupadī into the hall before elders.
  6. Whenever Yudhiṣṭhira recounts the sufferings they have undergone, he always mentions Draupadī having been dragged by her hair, but never to any attempt to strip her. In his message to Duryodhana through Saṁjaya, he refers only to her hair being violated in the hall, keśeṣva dharṣayat (V.31.16).
  7. When Kr̥ṣṇa and the Pāṇḍavas consult before the peace-embassy (V.70-79) they do not mention avenging any attempted stripping. Of them, Arjuna alone speaks of Draupadī’s trials and this is limited to “how that fiend molested Draupadī in the middle of the hall” parikliṣṭā sabhāmadhye (V.76.18).
  8. Even when Draupadī herself, furious with everyone favouring peace, lists her sufferings (V.80. 24, 26), “grabbed by the hair and molested in a men’s hall” (sāham keśagraham prāptā parikliṣtā sabhām gatā) and states how she invoked Govinda mentally for succour (trāhi māmiti govinda manasā kaṁkṣito’si me), she does not mention any attempt to strip her, although that would have been the sharpest goad to spur them into battle.
  9. In his embassy to the Hastināpura court when Kr̥ṣṇa tells Dhṛtarāṣṭra all the suffering Duryodhana has imposed on the Pāṇḍavas, including dragging Draupadī into the court (V.93.58), he makes no mention of the attempt to strip her, which would have been the greatest crime.
  10. When Kr̥ṣṇa rebukes Duryodhana during the peace embassy, enumerating all his ill deeds, he refers to his abusing and maltreating (vinikr̥tā) the queen of the Pāṇḍavas (V.126.8-9), but makes no mention of the supreme outrage of attempting to strip her.
  11. Kuntī, listing her sorrows to Kr̥ṣṇa several times over, laments that her greatest sorrow is Draupadī being abused verbally and molested (parikliṣṭā), dragged into the assembly hall draped in a single cloth while menstruating, but does not mention any attempt at stripping her daughter-in-law, which would surely have been the greatest torment by far (V.88.50, 56; 85-86; 135.15-18, 21).
  12. Ghaṭotkaca, assailing Duryodhana, charges him for dragging and insulting Draupadī in her period in a single garment in the assembly-hall, with no mention of attempted stripping (VI.87.26).
  13. The Karṇaparvan begins with the Kauravas musing over how they dragged and demeaned Draupadī. Dhṛtarāṣṭra tells Saṁjaya how his son had the wife of the Pāṇḍavas violently brought into the assembly where Karṇa abused her as “Wife of slaves” (dāsabhāryeti5.79). Although at different stages in the battle Dhṛtarāṣṭra, Bhīma, Duḥśāsana and Kr̥ṣṇa all recall the dragging and insulting of Draupadī, none refers to any attempt to strip her.
  14. In the Karṇaparvan verses relegated in the CE to footnotes (VIII.61.934* and 935*), when Bhīma rips off the arm with which Duḥśāsana boasts he had dragged Draupadī by her hair, neither refers to the grosser outrage of attempting to strip her.
  15. When Kr̥ṣṇa recounts Karṇa’s misdeeds to goad Arjuna into killing him, he refers to single-cloth-clad, menstruating Draupadī being summoned to the sabhā and mocked (VIII.67.2-3), but does not refer to Karṇa instigating any stripping, which would have surely been the sharpest goad to spur him on.
  16. Bhīma enumerates Draupadī being dragged by her hair among the sufferings imposed by Shakuni, Duryodhana and Karṇa but not any attempted disrobing (Vulgate, VIII.83.46).
  17. At the end of the war, when Yudhiṣṭhira provokes Duryodhana to emerge from Dvaipāyana lake, he mentions Draupadī being verbally abused and dragged, but says nothing about any attempted disrobing (IX.30.187*).
  18. Bhīma, while kicking Duryodhana’s head, refers only to single-garment-draped Draupadī being mocked in the hall, not to any attempted stripping (IX.58.4).
  19. Even at the very end, in the Svargārohaṇaparvan, Yudhiṣṭhira, outraged on seeing Duryodhana in heaven, refers to his having caused Pāñcālī to be afflicted, parikliṣṭā (XVIII.1.9) in the sabhā, but nothing more.

Adluri and Hiltebeitel peremptorily dismiss the evidence of the passages involving Duryodhana as “karmically irrelevant” because of a philosophical proposition “that blame-casting must necessarily be agent-specific in a karmic universe.” This is resorting to the same “higher criticism” which they frown upon instead of tackling the contradictory evidence. They also feel that some of the others are “broadly worded enough to include an allusion to the disrobing,” though they do not explain this.[30]

Textual disconnect

Satya Chaitanya’s study of the sequence of events brings to light a major hiatus in the text.[31] A similar disconnect can be found in the Bhīṣmaparvan where the text-block VI.95.4-23 repeats the portion at 16.11-20+42.2, indicating an adding-on of verses 16.21 to 42.1.[32] In Draupadī’s case, after Duḥśāsana failed in his attempt, ‘The people shouted, “The Kauravyas refuse to answer the question,” and condemned Dhṛtarāṣṭra’ (II.61.50). This refers to Draupadī’s question to the assembly (II.60.44), repeated at II.62.13, which remains unanswered in the epic. Strangely enough, the audience neither censures the king for allowing the attempted stripping, nor criticises Duḥśāsana for making the attempt. Even more puzzling is everyone’s silence about the unending stream of cloth, whether emanating from Dharma or Kṛṣṇa. Instead, Vidura’s speech, which follows, states that Draupadī is awaiting a reply to her question, weeping like an orphan (II.61.52). Surely, Vidura would have been the first to protest against any attempt to disrobe Draupadī publicly and to extol her miraculous escape in response to her appeal to Kr̥ṣṇa? It is significant that he refers neither to Vikarṇa’s response in support of Draupadī nor to Karṇa rebuking him and directing that she should be stripped. It is as though these speeches have not happened at all. We have noted above that even Kr̥ṣṇa, while listing Karṇa’s misdeeds, does not mention his having ordered the disrobing (VIII.67.2-3). The sequence of events indicates that originally there was no hiatus between Draupadī’s query and Vidura’s exhortation to the assembly to provide an answer. Whatever we find now, in-between, is a subsequent addition.

There are three parallel accounts of Draupadī’s coming to the dicing hall in chapter 60, which need to be reconciled.[33]

  1. Duryodhana sends the prātikāmin to fetch her but she sends him back with a question to Yudhiṣṭhira.
  2. Duryodhana sends him again to tell her to come and state her case in person. She, thereupon, expresses her faith in Dharma.
  3. Now in slokas 14-15 Yudhiṣṭhira sends his trusted attendant to her, whereupon she appears in the hall.
  4. But in sloka 16 onwards Duryodhana asks the prātikāmin to fetch her and, on his hesitating, orders Duḥśāsana to do so. He, then, drags her by her hair into the hall.

The accounts at 3 and 4 are contradictory and the latter has possibly been added subsequently along with Bhīma’s blood-drinking vow for greater dramatic effect.[34]

What happens thereafter?

  1. When Draupadī herself speaks, after Karṇa bids Duḥśāsana take her away to the Kaurava apartments, she voices her bewilderment at being dragged into the assembly but utters not a word about any attempt to strip her, which is most unnatural. Nor does she refer to Kṛṣṇa’s response to her prayer and the abject failure of the attempt to disrobe her (II.62.1-14), about which Hiltebeitel is insistent.
  2. Subsequently, disturbed by the ominous howling of beasts, when Vidura and Gāndhārī press Dhṛtarāṣṭra to intervene, neither refers to any attempted disrobing (II.63.24).
  3. Dhṛtarāṣṭra rebukes his son for his wicked speech to dharmapatni Draupadī, but not for any heinous attempt to strip her.
  4. Even the vow that Bhīma makes refers to her hair having been touched, parāmr̥śya (II.62.34), while Nakula’s vow mentions her being verbally abused, yairvācaḥ śrāvitā rukṣāḥ (II.68.43). Neither refers to any attempt to disrobe her, which would surely have been the gravest provocation for swearing vengeance.
  5. When Draupadī proceeds on exile, she is described as wearing a bloodstained cloth (II.70.9). If Kṛṣṇa or Dharma had continuously replaced what Duḥśāsana kept pulling away, how could she still be wearing this cloth stained with menstrual blood?
  6. In the last chapter of the Sabhāparvan Dhṛtarāṣṭra laments that they “dragged the wretched Draupadī to the middle of the hall…clothed in her single garment, stained with blood…Duryodhana and Karṇa threw biting insults at the suffering Kr̥ṣṇa” (van Buitenen II.72.12-18). There is no mention of what should have been the greatest crime: the attempted disrobing and its miraculous failure.
  7. Dhṛtarāṣṭra also tells Saṁjaya (II.72.19-20) that the Bharata women and Gāndhārī cried out in anguish and Brahmins did not perform the sandhyā rituals on the day of the dice game, furious with the dragging of Draupadī. Again, there is no reference to disrobing.[35]
  8. In the Vanaparvan, Saṁjaya repeats his master’s word parikarṣaṇe to describe the outrage but makes no mention of disrobing.
  9. L. Vaidya, editor of the CE’s Karnaparvan, held that a verse referring to her being stripped (VIII.85.15) was an interpolation and left it out of the CE text.[36]

Hiltebeitel has overlooked two confirmations of stance in the Śalyaparvan. J. D. Smith[37] pointed out to me that as “Bhīma is gloating after fulfilling his vow to overthrow Duryodhana and tread on his head,” he says,

“Those who brought the menstruating Draupadī and who made her naked (avastrām) in the assembly—see those Dhārtarāṣṭras slain in battle by the Pāṇḍavas because of the torture on Yājñasenī.” (IX.58.10)

Yet, in an earlier verse (IX.58.4), while kicking Duryodhana’s head, Bhīma refers only to Draupadī clad in a single garment being mocked in the hall, not to any attempted stripping. Smith acknowledges that a contradiction exists, but is helpless because of the principle followed by the CE: “…it is strange that Bhīma says this at this point and does not say anything similar after fulfilling the more relevant vow against Duḥśāsana. But again, this is what the text actually says.”[38]

Secondly, earlier on in the same parvan (IX.4.16-17) Duryodhana tells Kr̥pācārya that there is no point in seeking peace because,

duḥśāsanena yat kr̥ṣṇā ekavastrā rajasvalā

parikliṣṭā sabhāmadhye sarvalokasya paśyataḥ

tathā vivasanāṁ dīnāṁ smaranty adyāpi pāṇḍavāḥ

na nivārayituṁ śakyāḥ saṁgrāmāt te paraṁtapāḥ

“Wearing a single cloth and covered in dust, dark Draupadī was wronged by Duḥśāsana in the middle of the assembly hall under the eyes of the entire world. Even today the Pāṇḍavas still remember how she was naked (vivasanām) and wretched (dīnām); those enemy-destroyers cannot be turned from war.”[39]

This is the solitary reference retained in the CE to Draupadī having been stripped naked (not to an attempt to strip her), but it is devoid of any mention of re-clothing. That implies that she remained naked thereafter and there was no miracle of endless garments. On the other hand, all recensions of the text agree that she proceeds on exile wearing a bloodstained garment.

This prompts examination of the annotations, which reveals that some manuscripts have vimanasā (dejected, bewildered) instead of vivasanā. Vimanasā is textually more consistent with Duryodhana’s description of her condition in the earlier line (parikliṣṭā), but the editors of the CE did not accept this reading that is more consistent with what has gone before and comes after. Thus, they ended up with a text that renders Draupadī naked without any re-clothing.

There has been no attempt to reconcile these contradictions although the overwhelming evidence is weighted against any incident of trying to disrobe Draupadī.

Collateral Evidence

  1. The earliest post-Mahabharata evidence is in the plays of the first Sanskrit dramatist Bhāsa: Dūtavākyam, Dūtaghaṭotkacam and Ūrubhangam (c. 4th century BC-1st century CE?).
  • In the first, Duryodhana displays to Kr̥ṣṇa a vivid painting of the dice-game showing draupadī keśāmbarākarṣaṇam, “Draupadī dragged by the hair and garment” (prose passage following sloka 6) and duḥśāsano draupadīm keśa haste grihītavān, “Duḥśāsana seizing Draupadī’s hair in his hand” (prose passage preceding sloka 7). Kr̥ṣṇa exclaims, draupadī keśadharṣaṇam “Draupadī’s hair being violated!” In 1916 Winternitz, comparing Bhāsa’s Dūtavākyam with the Mahabharata, demonstrated that Kr̥ṣṇa’s reclothing of Draupadī was an interpolation introduced after the 4th century CE.[40]
  • In the second play, Ghaṭotkaca upbraids Duryodhana saying, śirasi na tathā bhrātuḥ patniṁ spriśanti niśācarāḥ, “nor do night-wanderers (Rākṣasas) ever touch the brother’s wife on the head” (sloka 47), referring to her having been dragged by her hair. This is an echo of what he says in the Bhīṣmaparvan87.26.
  • In the third play, Duryodhana says, yat kriṣṭa karanigrahāncitakacā dyūte tadā draupadī, “How Draupadī was dragged by the hair in the dicing” (sloka 63).[41]
  1. Rājaśekhara’s Bālabhārata (c. 10th century CE) is unaware of the re-clothing of Draupadī by Kṛṣṇa.[42]
  2. Neither the Vaishnava Bhakti cult’s Bhāgavata, nor the appendix to the epic, Harivaṁṣa, mentions any attempted stripping, despite their focus on the miraculous deeds of Kṛṣṇa. The former refers only to the heinous act of the Kuru lady being dragged by her hair (keśabhimarśam) in the assembly hall but not to Kṛṣṇa rescuing her miraculously from being stripped (I. 86; I. 15.10; III.1.7; XI.1.2.).
  3. In the Devi Bhāgavata Purāṇa Janamejaya refers twice only to Draupadī being dragged by her hair (IV.1.36 and 17.38), using the word dharṣitā (IV.1.38), which also means “violated”, for what Kīcaka did to her. Yudhiṣṭhira uses the same word while giving Saṁjaya his message, keśeṣvadharṣayat (Mahabharata, V.31.16).
  4. It is later, in the Śiva Purāṇa (c. 11th century CE) that we find a reference to the incident (III.19.63-66). Here the stream of garments is the result of Durvāsā’s boon to Draupadī for having torn off part of her dress to protect the sage’s modesty when his loincloth was swept away in the Ganga.[43] Kr̥ṣṇa plays no role in this. There is also the popular tale of Draupadi binding up his bleeding finger with a strip of her garment because of which he provides her an endless stream of cloth in the dicing hall.[44]
  5. Satya Chaitanya[45] has pointed out that the Jaiminīya Aśvamedhaparvan again a late work (c. 10th-12th century AD), carries a reference to the disrobing (2.62). Here Kr̥ṣṇa pays the Pāṇḍavas a surprise visit as they are wondering how to go about the horse-sacrifice. Draupadī says that they ought not to be surprised because earlier Kr̥ṣṇa had appeared to save them from Durvāsā and, “Before that, Hari appeared in the form of clothes in the assembly (vastrarūpī sabhāmadhye) to save me from shame.”[46] We have noted above Sukthankar’s rejection of both incidents as interpolations.

Adluri and Hiltebeitel have sought to bolster their argument in favour of the disrobing episode by citing a painting of the incident possibly by Nainsukh (c. 1760/65). On the other hand, the much older sculpture in the Hoysaleshwar temple in Halebidu (c. 12th century) reproduced below only depicts Draupadī being held by her hair, one woman approaching her while another restrains the male tormentor.[47]

 

We do not find any depiction of the dice game in sculpture or painting after this until we come to Akbar’s Razmnama (1598-99).

It is here that, for the first time, the stripping of Draupadi is portrayed. That is why comparing its text with the Sanskrit manuscripts is so important.

Conclusion

To sum up, intra-textual evidence supporting the attempt to strip Draupadī is available in only two passages in the Śalyaparvan (IX.4.16-17 and IX.58.10), of which the former has a more consistent variant reading available. Even these do not refer to her being re-clothed, whether by Kr̥ṣṇa or otherwise. The passages upon which Hiltebeitel depends refer only to her having invoked Govinda in her distress, but not to any disrobing-and-re-robing. With overwhelming consistency (at least 27 times), the text refers only to her being dragged by her hair into the royal assembly-hall while in her period, wearing a single bloodstained cloth and being insulted. She leaves on exile wearing the same bloody garment. Further, there is no mention of the attempted disrobing in early Sanskrit literature. It is only a couple of late texts that mention the attempt and how it was aborted miraculously.

Both the internal and the external evidence, therefore, indicate that the incident of attempted stripping that has ruled the popular imagination so powerfully, featuring on stage, in paintings, films and television as the fuse that detonated the explosion destroying the Kshatriya clans, is a later addition by one or more highly competent redactors.[48] That would imply that the three verses (II.61.40-42) retained in the CE, quoted at the beginning of this paper, are part of the interpolation that the editors rejected.

Janamejaya, who is listening to the recital, is familiar with only one version in which Draupadī was dragged, not stripped (cf. the Devi Bhāgavata Purāṇa above). That is why he never questions Vaiśampāyana about the contradictory accounts about how Draupadī was outraged.[49] How is this “the kind of ideologically motivated, idiosyncratic” approach that Adluri and Hiltebeitel condemn so vehemently?[50]

Revising the Critical Edition

The first scholar to have expressed serious reservations about the CE was Sylvain Levi, the doyen of French Indologists, who argued in favour of using the Nīlakaṇṭha text showing all other variants alongside.[51] Madeleine Biardeau, the leading French scholar, questions Sukthankar’s basic premise that the Śārada version is the genuine product just because it is the shortest and apparently earliest. She writes, “I do not give much heuristic value to the reconstituted text of the critical edition of Poona.”[52] She felt the editors were blindly devoted to an outdated German philological approach. She is the first to ask bluntly why the text should be dated between 4th c. BC and the end of the 4th c. AD, as maintained by so many. Georges Dumezil preferred the Calcutta edition to the CE.[53]

Wendy Doniger, calling the CE “no text at all,”[54] urges that “any structural analysis of the epic would of course demand all available variants of the text.”[55] Mincing no words she writes, “The critical edition…is like Frankenstein’s monster, pieced together from various scraps of different bodies; its only community is that of the Pune scholars, the Frankensteins.”[56]

Julius Lipner criticizes the imposition of the Western paradigm of a “critical edition” based upon a supposed “original version” since “popular oral tradition…which is the very lifeblood of Hinduism, does not work in this way…the text itself transcends the critical edition both as sacred narrative…and as a seed-bed for the literary imagination.”[57]

Arvind Sharma comments, “…it is clear that, at every step, the idea of a critical text seems to go against the grain of the tradition— it is an example of pratiloma Indology.”[58]

Simon Brodbeck has pointed out the basic flaw in the assumption of the CE, viz. that scribes only add to and do not subtract from texts they copy. There is a case for re-examining the decisions of the CE’s editors about both including as well as leaving out passages.[59]

Alf Hiltebeitel has argued strenuously that Belvalkar, editor of the CE’s Shanti Parva, made a mistake in following the Malayalam manuscripts to alter the frame narrative as well as splitting a section into two, changing the Nārāyaṇīya portion’s 18 sections (an epitome of the MB’s structure, like the Gita) to 19.[60]

Instead of regarding the CE as sacrosanct and arguing that we ought to accept that the epic knows of two versions of the outrage Draupadī suffered, we surely need to weigh the comparative evidence delineated above and then decide which way the scales dip. It is time to re-examine the CE adopting the “higher criticism” route. Even Brockington, who has subjected both epics to minute analysis under the lexical microscope, has come to a conclusion that echoes the “higher criticism” approach.[61]

Use has not been made of the valuable guidance available in Sri Aurobindo’s notes written in 1902. He approached the epic “from the point of view mainly of style and literary personality, partly of substance” deferring “questions of philosophy, allusion and verbal evidence” and ignoring “the question of minute metrical details on which they (Western scholars) base far-reaching conclusions.”[62] Submitting everything to the ultimate test of style, he identified that the Sabhāparvan carries “the hand of the original poet…that great and severe style which is the stamp of the personality of Vyāsa” and stated that, except for certain passages, the Virātaparvan and Udyogaparvan were also Vyāsa’s work.[63] As an example he quotes from the former (IV.16.9) Draupadī’s outcry to the sleeping Bhīma,

uttiṣṭhottiṣṭha kiṁ śeṣe bhīmasena yathā mr̥taḥ /

nāmr̥tasya hi pāpīyān bhāryām ālabhya jīvati //

He writes, “The whole personality of Draupadie breaks out in that cry, her chastity, her pride, her passionate and unforgiving temper, but it flashes out not in an expression of pure feeling, but in a fiery and pregnant apophthegm. It is this temperament, this dynamic force of intellectualism blended with heroic fire and a strong personality that gives its peculiar stamp to Vyasa’s writing and distinguishes it from that of all other epic poets.”[64] Similar is Kr̥ṣṇa’s exhortation in the Udyogaparvan (V.73) for shaking Bhīma out of his pacifist mood.

It is remarkable that this selection of verses on stylistic criteria as pristine Vyāsa is matched by their inclusion in the CE many decades later on the basis of manuscript evidence. Surely, where two approaches agree, there is adequate justification for giving equal weight to each. Brockington has urged the need for “a coordinated approach to a particular text. This is where in particular the future lies…different approaches can be combined in order to provide greater illumination.”[65]

Sri Aurobindo pointed out that there is also the hand of an inferior poet clearly visible who delights in the miraculous and whose style is highly coloured.[66] This stylistic difference is apparent in the Sabhāparvan in the portion beginning with Vikarṇa’s speech and ending with the miraculous re-clothing of Draupadī. In addition, we have to take into account Kr̥ṣṇa’s assertion —consistently borne out in the epic—that he can do all that a man can, but the miraculous is beyond him:-[67]

ahaṁ hi tat kariṣyāmi paraṁ puruṣakārataḥ /

daivaṁ tu na mayā śakyaṁ karma kartuṁ kathaṁ cana //  V.77.5

Incidents like those involving Durvāsā in the forest and the re-robing of Draupadī are inconsistent with this. “If we find grave inconsistencies of character…we are justified in supposing two hands at work.”[68] Therefore, on the grounds of both style, content and textual consistency, the incident is liable to be considered as the work of a different, later, poet. In 1916 Winternitz showed that Kr̥ṣṇa’s re-clothing of Draupadī was an interpolation.[69] In 1949, in a different way, G.H. Bhatt argued for the same conclusion at the 15th All-India Oriental Conference, Bombay.[70]

  1. M. Singhvi,[71] writing in 2008, recommended “another encyclopedic project of preparing a comprehensive Mahabharata Bibliography in all the Indian languages as well as other European and Asian languages.” Strongly endorsing the views of Bankimchandra and Sri Aurobindo regarding the stylistic layers in the Mahabharata, he urged:-

The rigid exclusion and abandonment of the Ugrasrava recension and some of the later additions and accretions would be ruinous. What we need is a continuous discourse of scholarship and a host of scholarly guides to tell us of the architectonics of the Mahabharata and the historical and literary background of different accretions, additions and interpolations…. (that) represent the history as well as legend and myth of India and the confluence of the so called classical and the folk. The interwoven tapestry of MB made it a veritable people’s Epic reflecting the social and cultural reality of different periods of Indian history and different perceptions of the Indian people at different stages.”

An example of the need for this is seen in Hiltebeitel’s comment in Dharma (2011) that Ashvaghosha’s reference in Buddhacharita to Karalajanaka is “unknown and uncertain,”[72] whereas a discourse with this king exists in the Mokshadharma Parva of the MB in the Haridāsa Siddhāntavāgīśa edition[73] which the CE has not covered. In his recent book on nonviolence in the MB Hiltebeitel (2016) uses the story of rishi Parnada in deer form and the gleaner Satya which is not in the CE, taking it from “the northern Vulgate of the seventeenth-century compiler Nilakantha.” He even suggests that the tale was inserted by Nilakantha, concluding that with such “improvisations” the MB “both as text and tradition…puts both ahimsa and gleaning into the consciousness and unconscious of Hindus.”[74] That reminds us of Sukthankar’s insertion of the invocatory benediction into the CE violating his own editorial principles.

Surely, the CE is not beyond all question! Even with the Bible, after the Authorised Version (1604-11) there was the Revised Version (1881-94) followed by further revised editions. It is the German philological approach to the Bible that was adopted in preparing the CE, labelling the others as “Vulgate” as in the case of the Biblical project. The central problem lies in mapping the inter-relationships among manuscripts. Wendy Phillips-Rodriguez has put forward a fascinating schema called “uprooted trees” like the Gita’s cosmic tree whose roots are upwards and branches downwards. Through this paradigm she finds that the southern manuscripts are more widely dispersed than the northern, indicating their independent evolution. This upside-down tree model opens up the study of the epic’s variations as having “an independent cultural value”. Very pertinently she asks, “Why privilege one version over the others?”[75] The variations are separate interpretations, and the study of how each evolved will enable greater understanding of the cultural roots of the epic.

The Revised Edition announced by the BORI, however, raises concerns.[76] Their website states:-

“Revisions to the edition will be limited to incorporating the addenda and corrigenda for each volume into the text and either correcting or pointing out minor errors in the editor’s apparatus or comments (e.g., misprints, dittographies, confusion of manuscript sigla, etc.). The edition will not undertake to revise the constituted text nor will it emend the form of the edition.”[77]

However, it is time to take another look at the CE taking into account not only the many manuscripts left out, but also the contents of the adaptations in Arabic and Persian that pre-date or are contemporary with the manuscripts, as well as ancient commentaries that have much to reveal regarding the state of the text. The findings of Mehendale, Dhavalikar, Bhatt and Brockington should not be ignored. The Mahabharata is the national epic of India and the largest in the world. National resources must be made available for this challenging and critical project.

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Sen, S.K. 2008. Jaiminiya Ashvamedha Parva (ed. Pradip Bhattacharya). Calcutta: Writers Workshop.

Sharma, Arvind. 2008. http://arvindsharma.wordpress.com/2008/04/21/25-against-the-critical-edition-of-the-mahabharata/#_ftn25_1 accessed 22.10.2013.

Singhvi, L.M. 2008: “Mahabharata: texts and contexts in a perspective”. In Neo Indika, Bharatayan, essays in honour of P.D. and S.S. Halvasiya, vol. 1. Ed. Dr Vasudev Poddar. Kolkata: Rai Bahadur Vishweshwarlal Motilal Halwasiya Trust, 15 India Exchange Place, 700001.

Sri Aurobindo. 2007. The Mahabharata: essays and translations. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

Sukthankar, V.S. 1933. “Prolegomena,” Ādi Parva. Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute.

______________1957. On the meaning of the Mahabharata. Bombay: Asiatic Society.

[1] Retired from the Indian Administrative Service as Additional Chief Secretary, Government of West Bengal. Author and Editor of 33 books. PhD on “Narrative Art in the Mahabharata.” International HRD Fellow (Manchester). Member, Board of Governors, IIM Calcutta. An earlier version of this paper was presented in the 15th World Sanskrit Conference, New Delhi, 2012, which the editors did not include in the papers awaiting publication as it questioned the CE.

References

[1] Mehendale 2009: 5; 21 note 5. Adluri and Hiltebeitel (2017) assert, “Sukthankar did examine the Nepali manuscript and found that it confirmed his reconstruction,” but do not cite any evidence to controvert Mehendale’s statement.

[2] Sukthankar 1933: vi.

[3] Edgerton, “Introduction,” p. xxii quoted by Mahadevan T.P. “The Southern recension,” p. 105, in Adluri, Vishwa ed. 2013. Ways and Reasons for thinking about the Mahabharata as a Whole. Pune: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute.

[4] Bhattacharya 2009.

[5] Brockington 1998: 55.

[6] Sukthankar 1933: xxviii. Quoted in Adluri and Hiltebeitel. 2017.

[7] Adluri and Hiltebeitel 2017 ibid.

[8] Sen, S.K. 2008.

[9] Jaiminiya Aśvamedhaparva 2008: 69; Bhattacharya ibid.

[10] Bhattacharya 2010.

[11] Adluri and Hiltebeitel, op.cit. plead for the word, “rigorous” instead

[12] Edgerton 1944: xxxiii.

[13] Sukthankar 1930: 268-69 quoted by Adluri and Hiltebeitel 2017 in press.

[14] Chatterjee 1991: 61-62.

[15] Brockington 1998: 146.

[16] Mehendale 2009: 15.

[17] Edgerton 1944: xxix.

[18] van Buitenen 1975: 146.

[19] Why “skirt”? The Sanskrit is vasana and vastram. Deb Roy’s “garment” (2010, p. 235) is accurate.

[20] van Buitenen mistranslates this as “her half skirt drooping.”

[21] It is not a skirt-cum-stole ensemble as van Buitenen’s translation has it, but a single cloth whose upper part covers the torso, as the sari does today.

[22] Imported from Biblical scholarship referring to the popular Sanskrit text.

[23] Chatterjee 1991: 113, 247.

[24] Wilmot 2006: 68.45. p. 449.

[25] Sukthankar 1942: xiii note 1.

[26] Asan 1988: 222

[27] Hiltebeitel 2001: 246-259.

[28] Brockington 1998: 139.

[29] Bhatt 1951: 172.

[30] Adluri and Hiltebeitel op.cit.

[31] Satya Chaitanya 2005.

[32] Brockington 1998: 147

[33] Bhatt 1951: 176-177

[34] Mehendale 2005 shows the vow is an interpolation.

[35] Satya Chaitanya, ibid.

[36] Bhatt 1951: 174

[37] Professor of Sanskrit at Cambridge and author of the abridged Penguin translation of the Mahabharata. He maintains the online digital text of the CE.

[38] J.D. Smith, personal communication.

[39] Meiland 2005: 77.

[40] Brockington 1998: 258 note 53; Dhavalikar 1992: 523.

[41] Menon 1996: 266-677, 274, 332, 411.

[42] Brockington 1998: 490

[43]Dange 2001: 231.

[44] Hiltebeitel 1988: 226-27.

[45]Satya Chaitanya op.cit.

[46] Jaiminīya Aśvamedha Parva 2008: 90.

[47] Indrajit Bandyopadhyay 2013.

[48] Bhatt 1951: p. 178: “The examination of the whole evidence available…leads us to the irresistible conclusion that the Dv. (Draupadīvastraharaṇa) episode did not form part of the original epic…”

[49] I am indebted to Simon Brodbeck for this insight.

[50] They write, referring to me: ‘uses the self-designation “mythographer,”’ “ideologically motivated, idiosyncratic… unphilosophical and unthinking approaches,” “vapid arguments,” “most senseless examples” in Adluri & Hiltebeitel op.cit.

[51] Levi, Sylvain. 1929. Review of the CE in Journal Asiatique 215: 345-48, quoted in Hiltebeitel 2011, p. 17.

[52] Biardeau 1997: 85-86.

[53] Hiltebeitel op.cit. p. 17.

[54] O’Flaherty, W. D. 1978:22 quoted in Hiltebeitel 2011: 16.

[55] O’Flaherty, W.D. 1978 ibid.

[56] Doniger, Wendy. “How to escape from the Curse.” London Review of Books 32/19:17-18 quoted in Hiltebeitel 2011 ibid.

[57] Lipner 2010: 148-149.

[58] Sharma 2008

[59] Brodbeck 2013.

[60] Hiltebeitel 2011: 192-4

[61] Bhattacharya 2003 on Brockington 2000.

[62] Sri Aurobindo 2007:11-13, 68. Western Indologists have even dated the epic from the single occurrence of words like suranga (from the Greek suringks?), antakhim (Antioch?) and roma (Rome?) cf. CE 02028049a antākhīṁ caiva romāṁ ca yavanānāṁ puraṁ tathā.

[63] Sri Aurobindo 2007: 28. He brings out the features distinguishing Vyāsa’s style at length with examples.

[64] ibid. p.47.

[65] Brockington 1998: 525.

[66] Sri Aurobindo 2007: 13.

[67] Chatterjee 1991: 210

[68] Sri Aurobindo 2007: 12.

[69] Note 30 above.

[70] Note 23 above.

[71] Singhvi 2008: “Mahabharata: texts and contexts in a perspective”. Neo Indika, Bharatayan, essays in honour of P.D. and S.S. Halvasiya, vol. 1. Ed. Dr Vasudev Poddar. Rai Bahadur Vishweshwarlal Motilal Halwasiya Trust, 15 India Exchange Place, Kolkata-700001.

[72] Hiltebeitel 2011: 636 n. 34.

[73] Bhattacharya 2016.

[74] Hiltebeitel 2016: 31.

[75] Phillips-Rodriguez, Wendy 2012: 228

[76] The editors are V. Adluri of Hunter College USA and J. Bagchee of Freie Universität Berlin.

[77] http://www.bori.ac.in/Mahabharata-Project-Revised-Second-Edition.html accessed on 19th June 2017.

Phalguna-Katha and the Yadava Hegemony

By

Nara-Narayana, Deogarh 5th c.AD

Kevin McGrath: Arjuna Pandava: The Double Hero in Epic Mahabharata, Orient Blackswan, 2016, pp.207, Rs. 835/-

Dr. Kevin McGrath, poet and Harvard professor of Sanskrit, engaged in fieldwork in the Kacch on kinship and migration, began investigations into the Mahabharata with his study Karna: the Sanskrit Hero in 2004. Thereafter, in Stri (2009) he switched to Vyasa’s women, following up with performance in the Mahabharata in Jaya (2011). Then, in swift succession, came his studies of Krishna (2013), Arjuna (2016) and Yudhishthira (forthcoming, though completed earlier). An irritation in the book under review is the repeated references to his study of Yudhishthira which cannot be fully appreciated as it is under publication. McGrath follows the Harvard school of epic poetics founded by Milman Parry, Gregory Nagy and Albert Bates Lord which concentrates on the text qua text and envisages epic society as a Bronze-Age-Indo-Aryan-pre-literate-pre-monetary culture.

The only other full-length study of Arjuna is the 1989 book by Ruth Katz who found him to be triple-layered as hero, human and devotee. She rejected the idea that contradictions in his character are a result of layers of composition, accepting them as indicative of the complexity of his nature.

McGrath, however, looks at Arjuna as dual in nature, uniquely godly and humanly heroic, wherein lies the secret of his cult status. He provides a fascinating appendix on Achilles who, a late Bronze Age hero like Arjuna, attained cult status by virtue of the same characteristic of bestriding two worlds, the mortal and the celestial. One might well enquire why it does not hold equally true for Bhima and Karna, shrines to both of whom exist. Well, Arjuna alone lives at length in Swarga and interacts repeatedly with the devas and Rudra-Shiva. He alone shares Indra’s seat, rides in his chariot and slaughters the demons whom the Devas cannot defeat. Achilles may interact with gods, but he never lives in Olympus. Of the others, Kunti has intimate contact with four gods, Madri with two, Karna with Indra in disguise, and Yudhishthira with Dharma as a crane and as a dog. McGrath overlooks Devavrata, brought up by celestial Ganga, taught by deva-guru Brihaspati and uniquely blessed with the supernatural gift of death-at-will.

Arjuna is defined by dualistic patterns: with Krishna (often referred to as a compound, or as the two Krishnas, or as Nara-Narayana); with Karna as his chief adversary; with Yudhishthira (as wielder of his danda, rod of chastisement); and finally in his double deaths. Further, he is uniquely ambidextrous, savyasachin. Even sexually, he is both male and neither-male-nor-female, like Ardhanarishvara Shiva, a persona in which his double is Shikhandi, born as Shiva’s boon to Drupada. McGrath finds that a similar dual pattern with Krishna and Balarama is “strangely obscured”. However, the Harivansha does develop this, which is why it is called the khila, appendix, to the epic.

McGrath’s argument is that doubling is typical of the poetic thought process of pre-literate-pre-monetary cultures while fashioning their poetry. The Iliad has similar sequences of counterpoised speakers presenting dual acts and thoughts. But is it so with the Odyssey too, whose hero has much in common with Arjuna? Such a culture’s literature operates more in terms of metaphor, barter, poetry and syntax, whereas a literate society’s favours metonymy, money, prose and grammar. “Polymorphic duality” or “twofold bivalence” lies at the core of the Arjuna narrative, reaching its acme in the Gita where Arjuna simultaneously experiences two worlds: the human and the cosmic. He is the sole liminal figure in the epic. Moreover, while here he achieves enlightenment and supposedly engages in nishkama karma, detached action, yet he is called “Bibhatsu” for his terrifying violence. Repeatedly Krishna has to shake out of depression. He even forgets the Gita, is soundly berated for it by Krishna who has to impart to him the Anugita. McGrath proposes: “This kind of polarity is an aspect profoundly inherent to both the psychic and the narrative composition of heroic Arjuna.” He suggests that perhaps there was a Phalguna–Katha (a name by which he is called whenever weapons are concerned) which was woven into the Mahabharata. But how can he argue that Arjuna is not a moral figure in the context of his repeated reluctance to proceed against his elders?

Is it not curious that this unique hero is never considered for kingship? Even more intriguing is that Bhishma does not enumerate him among the atirathis (supreme warriors) or maharathis (great warriors) but mentions him as an ordinary rathi(chariot-warrior). A similar triple ranking occurs in Book 12 of the Iliad. Yet, it is Arjuna’s grandson—whose grandmother is a Yadava—who is installed in Hastinapura. Parikshit, like Arjuna, dies twice and is resurrected. Why were the sons of the elder brothers Yudhishthira (Yaudheya) and Bhima (Sarvaga) not considered, nor his sole living son Babhruvahana who alone laid Arjuna low?

The argument that Parikshit’s investiture is “the victory of the matrilineal clan system—Pandavas—over the patrilineal model—Dhartarashtras—represent(ing) the triumph of the indigenous over the intrusive Indo-Aryan,” is founded upon the premise that Arjuna’s marriage to Subhadra “is a Dravidian type,” being matrilineal, while patrilineal marriage is Indo-Aryan. The proposition is questionable being based upon the discarded Aryan invasion hypothesis. McGrath suggests that bheda (division) between two lineage types represents two separate traditions of heroic poetry which were combined early in the 1st century CE. Evidence for substantiating this challenging notion is not produced. It is undeniable, however, that the Yadava link is crucial: through Kunti Arjuna is half-Yadava; he marries Kunti’s Yadava niece; he is devastated by the death of his son by his Yadava wife, not by those of his other two sons; the Yadava Vajra is installed in Indraprastha and Parikshit—part-Yadava in lineage—at Hastinapura. McGrath mistakenly calls Vajra Krishna’s son (p. 78, fn.10) while he is his great grandson, being Aniruddha’s son by Usha. McGrath is the first to call the Mahabharata, “the charter myth of the victorious Yadava clan,” and the Gita “a truly influential Yadava song,” statements that invite vigorous discussion. Hopefully, we will see this in the near future.

According to McGrath, Arjuna alone has sexual relations with three females of whom only one is human (Chitrangada) “and with an apsara” (p. 9). What about the human Subhadra? Moreover, Arjuna refuses to be seduced by Urvashi in Swarga. In abiding by the mortal value of regarding the ancestress of the Lunar Dynasty as a mother, despite her curse, Arjuna abjures his godly heritage from the libertine Indra. Similarly, Gilgamesh refused the advances of the goddess Ishtar, thus inviting her wrath. Arjuna is also the only one to rescue the apsara Varga and her four friends from the curse of a crocodile existence. In Tamil ballads, he is very much of an inveterate philanderer, even masquerading as a snake to seduce three princesses with the help of Krishna during this period of self-imposed exile.

McGrath is incorrect in asserting that none of the Dhartarashtras receive cult status except one temple to Duryodhana in Uttarakhand. Karna is worshipped in Netwar village of the Tons valley in Uttarakhand. Down south, a Duryodhan temple exists in Edakkad Ward (Kara) of Poruvazhy village in Kunnathoor Taluk of Kollam District, Kerala. The legend is that tracing the Pandavas in exile, Duryodhana reached Malanada hill. Tired, he went to Kaduthamsserry Kottaram, where Malanada Appoppan, the priest and ruler of the land was staying. An elderly woman gave him toddy, the customary mark of respect. He enjoyed the drink, but realized after seeing the ‘Kurathali’ worn by the woman that she belonged to an untouchable caste named ‘Kurava’. He appreciated the divinity of the place and its people who possessed supernatural powers (Siddha). Thereafter, he sat on the hill and worshipped Shiva, praying for the welfare of his people. As an act of charity, he gave away hundreds of acres of agricultural land and paddy fields as freehold to the temple. The land tax of this property is still levied in the name of ‘Duryodhanan’. The king also ensured that Gandhari, Duhshala, Karna, Drona and the other members of his family were worshipped nearby by the Kurava caste. There is a temple dedicated to Shakuni in Pavitreshwaram in the same district. Shakuni travelled with the Kauravas and when they reached the place where the temple is situated, they divided their weapons amongst themselves, whence the place came to be known as ‘Pakuteshwaram’, which later became Pavitreshwaram. Shakuni returned here after the battle and attained moksha with the blessings of Shiva and became Lord Shakuni. The other deities of the temple include Bhuvaneshwari Devi, Kiraat Murti and Nagaraj. Further, there is a Gandhari temple in Hebbya village, Nanjangud, Mysore. A Duryodhana (Periyantavar) festival enacting his death is held at T. Kuliyanur village near Dharmapuri in Tamil Nadu. Draupadi is said to have granted permission for him to be worshipped for a single day.

The half-divine nature of Arjuna, along with his celestial arms and chariot and the avatar as charioteer, makes him a hero in the ancient Indo-Aryan tradition. When he speaks to Sanjaya in the Udyoga Parva, the verse is in irregular trishtubhform, the oldest part of the epic, with frequent mention of chariots, indicative of the Bronze Age (the chariot evolved at the end of the 3rd millennium BCE). Significantly, with the spontaneous combustion of the chariot after the war, Arjuna begins to lose the superhuman qualities characterizing the old Bronze Age hero, becomes more and more mortal and even suffers death. McGrath does not explore his unheroic pettiness vis-à-vis Ekalavya, nor his obsession with Jayadratha though Drona made the inviolable discus formation. Why is he not vengeful against the seven chariot-heroes who combined to kill Abhimanyu? McGrath writes that Arjuna alone is so furious with Yudhishthira as to draw his sword to kill him, overlooking Bhima’s command to Sahadeva in the dice-game to bring fire to burn Yudhishthira’s gaming hands.

According to McGrath, Arjuna alone is able to overcome the moral dilemma of killing a guru, but so is it with Yudhishthira regarding Drona, and he suffers from the guilt throughout, expiating it through the vision of hell at the end. Equally, he is tormented by the death of Karna, unlike Arjuna. On the other hand, despite his name “Bibhatsu” (as when violating the warrior-code by cutting off Bhurishrava’s arm when he was fighting Satyaki) Arjuna rejects Krishna’s advice to lie so that Drona abandons his arms. There is also his peculiar Bhishma-like adherence to a number of vows that no one is aware of, e.g. feeling compelled to pursue the Samsaptakas despite his commitment to guard Yudhishthira against Drona’s machinations, and drawing his sword to kill Yudhishthira. These McGrath does not deal with.

In his chapter on the Gita, McGrath describes its doctrine as departing from the pastoral Bronze Age Indo-Aryan culture and approaching the “urban beliefs” of Jainism and Buddhism with their stress on puja with bhakti for salvation instead of sacrificial offerings. How this is “urban” in nature has not been explained. However, we must not forget that the doctrine-of-the-hero emerges from the interaction of a warrior duo, and that Buddha too was a Saka Kshatriya prince. The Gita’s teaching was initially imparted to King Ikshvaku, whence it became hereditary knowledge of seer-kings. The Mahabharata tells of the supreme knowledge of liberation being known only to such rajarshis whom moksha-seeking Brahmins approached for instruction. Significantly, as the Gita prepares Arjuna for the battle of Kurukshetra with the assurance that the atman does not die, so does the Anugita precede his journey protecting the dedicated horse, during which he dies and is resurrected. Why McGrath describes Ulupi here as a “spiritual figure” is not clear. This time Arjuna neither has his divine chariot, nor Krishna as charioteer. He is Nara, man, without Narayana, the Divine. At least twice the Gandiva bow drops from his hand and he is knocked unconscious.

McGrath finds it significant that Krishna announces he is Bhrigu among the maha-rishis in the context of the argument that the Bhargava community inhabiting the area around Dvaraka dominated by the Yadavas redacted the Song of Arjuna (viz. Jaya, covering the four war books), embedding it in the Mahabharata. He also suggests that the books following Kurkshetra where Arjuna is merely a “meme,” a pale copy of the earlier glorious figure, come from a different poetic tradition far removed from the original heroic one, more concerned with evoking pity and fear than horripilation and heroism. Indeed, Krishna describes Arjuna as bahusangramakarshitam, “much emaciated by battle,” on his return with the horse. Also, the picture of kingship after the Stri Parva is of an urban polity, not the earlier archaic form. This assertion requires elaboration. Arjuna, having reached his nadir against staff-wielding Abhiras, consults Vyasa who tells him that the time has come for departure, kalo gantum gatim. The last words Arjuna speaks are, kalah kalah, “time, time,” reminding us of his cosmic vision of Krishna as Kala-Time. Giving up his bow and quivers, he shrinks to the purely human and collapses silently, shorn of the duality that characterized him so memorably. Earlier, Krishna has died an ordinary, human death. In hell Arjuna mutters, “I am Arjuna” to Yudhishthira who ultimately sees him, dazzlingly brilliant, in Swarga adoring Krishna (McGrath gives the reference here as XII.4.4 which should be XVIII.4.4).

The Arjuna-Krishna duo, one semi-divine, the other born of human parents, is an archaic Indo-European “twinning” archetype that we see in Mitra and Varuna and in the Greek Castor and Pollux, Heracles and Iphicles. Vyasa tells Satyavati that he will provide Vichitravirya with sons like Mitra and Varuna while Madri has twins by the Ashvinikumaras. McGrath is mistaken in stating that Krishna receives his discus from Mitra, for it is given to him by Agni. Nor is Krishna’s bow called “Srinjaya” (p. 120); it is “Shaaranga”. McGrath proposes that Arjuna and Krishna’s bows made of horn (as their names signify) connects with the Kushanas who settled at Mathura, whence the Yadavas migrated to Dvaraka.

The origin of the “two Krishnas” is the ancient duo of Nara and Narayana who rush into our sight in the very first book during the churning of the ocean for amrita, Nara wielding a celestial bow and Narayana the Sudarshana discus, slaughtering the demons. Here Nara is the human while Narayana is the Divine. The Khandava massacre is a doubling of the same scenario with the nature of the two reversed. The Vedic deities attacking them withdraw on hearing that they are that ancient duo. In the Nara-Narayana myth narrated by Parashurama in theUdyoga Parva, Nara counters a king’s attack with deadly reeds, while Narayana remains still. McGrath does not notice that this is reversed in the Mausala Parvawhere reeds are what Krishna uses to slaughter the Yadavas. This use of reeds recurs in the Jaimini Mahabharata’s Sahasramukharavanacarita where Sita uses mantra-infused reeds to destroy the thousand-headed Ravana who has knocked down Rama. Such “twinning” is also seen in Achilles-Patroklos and Achilles-Diomedes. Like Krishna driving Arjuna’s chariot and speaking to him, Athena drives Diomedes’ chariot and talks to him.

We can see the Nara-Narayana duo represented in sculpture in the oldest Indian temple which is located in Deogarh, (circa 5th century CE). The antiquity of the Mahabharata is seen in the solitary reference to images of divinities in the Kaurava temple shaking, laughing, dancing and weeping. The first statuary found in India is Buddhist in the 3rd century BC, co-terminus with the appearance of writing. McGrath is wrong in saying that there is no reference to writing in the epic. There is explicit mention of the benefits accruing from gifting a copy of the Mahabharata.

In the very beginning, Dhritarashtra states that Narada declared to him the divinity of Arjuna and Krishna as Nara-Narayana. Then, in the Vana Parva Krishna announces that Arjuna is Nara and that they are inseparable, indistinguishable. In the Shanti Parva they speak in unison—a unique phenomenon. Thus, this epic duo replaces the Vedic Mitra-Varuna pair. At the end of the Drona Parva, Vyasa declares Narayana as a deity “older than the oldest,” born of Dharma, who deludes the world. Nara is a product of his ascesis. McGrath suggests that this duo is Dravidian in origin, turning an archaic concept of divine twins and double heroes into a later idea of conjoint deity-and-hero. To him this becomes “a perfect metaphor for how the preliterate and the literate aspects” of the Mahabharata were combined in early Gupta times. The world of the Shanti Parva “is of a historically later order of culture and society.” Indeed, in the Puranic world Narayana becomes the Supreme Being, equated with Vishnu, giving rise to Vaishnavism. McGrath further proposes that this represents a union of the Kshatriya and the Brahmin orders, of worldly puissance and ritual power. A parallel is visible in the figures of Parashurama, Drona and Kripa—all Brahmins who choose to be mighty warriors and teachers in warcraft.

A character who shares in the doubling of Arjuna and Krishna is Narada, incessantly moving through the celestial and earthly worlds and joining the past to the future through his speeches, knowing all the done and the undone in the world, loke veda kritakritam. Narada also forms a duo with his sister’s son Parvata—again a matrilineal connection. He is the first to use the term omkara(XII.325.83) and is the first to interact with Nara and Narayana, being virtually their first priest. Krishna declares that among the deva-rishis he is Narada. Like Krishna’s theophany to Arjuna, Narayana’s to Narada is hundred headed and thousand armed, vishvarupadhrik, containing all forms, divine and otherwise. As such, opines McGrath, Narada is “thoroughly imbued with that inchoate world of emergent Hinduism” representing “the poem’s own internal oral tradition,” for others recollect what he had said in the past. Vyasa— whom for some unexplained reason McGrath calls a rajarshi although he is no royal seer— and Narada shape the epic narrative “towards crisis and resolution.” Just as Narada understands Narayana and is closest to him, so is Vyasa an avatar of Narayana.

As Vyasa is to the Kuru clan, so is Narada to the Yadavas. He advises Yudhishthira, who promptly complies, to perform the rajasuya yajna. Conversely, when he advises Duryodhana in the Udyoga Parva to ally with the Pandavas, he refuses. In the Stri Parva Dhritarashtra regrets having ignored the advice of Narada and Vyasa. After advising Yudhishthira, Narada leaves for Dvaraka, reappearing during the rite, satisfied that Hari-Narayana, the Supreme Lord Self-Born, will destroy the Kshatriyas in the form of the human Krishna. Then Krishna kills Shishupala, following which Vyasa foretells the apocalyptic Kurukshetra war. It is Narada who informs Bhishma about the true gender of Shikhandin, because of which he does not fight the transvestite and dies. Just before the Gita, it is Narada who makes the renowned pronouncement: yatah krishnas tato jayah, “where is Krishna, there is victory.” Narada narrates Vyasa’s composition to the devas and summarizes the eighteen days of war for Parashurama in the Shalya Parva. The Vyasa-Narada pair informs Bhishma of Karna’s true identity and stands between the all-destructive missiles of Ashvatthama and Arjuna, speaking in unison—like Nara-Narayana—to prevent annihilation. Narada tells Yudhishthira of Karna’s deeds which are unknown elsewhere in the poem. McGrath does not mention that it is only to Narada that Krishna confesses the misery he is subjected to by the Yadavas. Narada foretells when Dhritarashtra, Gandhari, Sanjaya and Vidura will die, tells Yudhishthira of having witnessed Dhritarashtra’s death, and predicts the destruction of the Yadavas. He is, thus, part of the epic’s process of closing the bheda, alongside Vyasa who sends the Pandavas off on their last journey. Finally, it is Narada who brings about “calm of mind, all passion spent,” telling Yudhishthira, distressed on seeing Duryodhana, “This is Swarga; there is no enmity here.”

On the other hand, McGrath points out, Narada’s quoted speeches do not influence the narrative. His is thus a twofold presence: one that is effective and another that brings past oral tradition to comment on the present. His presence derives from the Puranic tradition, “indicating a late acquisition” featuring most in the Shanti and Anushasana Parvas (the latter is the richest in Bhargava material and at some time formed part of the former). He is unique in that no other character is mentioned and quoted so much. To McGrath, “He is a fine exemplum of how preliterate Mahabharata poets once functioned, as they in their performances likewise drew upon what had been formerly heard.”

McGrath asserts that there are three figures of a-temporal consciousness influencing the poem’s movement: Krishna who conducts the political narrative, Vyasa the maker of the poem, and Narada who omnisciently draws upon the past and the future to perfect the narrative. The epic is entirely retrospection and recollection, a characteristic typical of Narada. However, McGrath is mistaken when he says that the only two figures alive when the epic is being sung are Vaishampayana and Janamejaya. Vyasa is very much there, granting permission to the former to recite his composition. In the Jaiminiya Ashvamedhaparva, he grants it to Jaimini. As at the beginning, so at the end we find the statement that Narada recites the Mahabharata to the devas. For McGrath, through Narada’s performance the poem becomes an imperishable, unmatched tradition making Arjuna the epitome of the ancient heroic warrior to be worshipped.

While scholars like J.A.B.van Buitenen feel that the Virata Parva is a burlesque composed later, according to McGrath its account of chariot fighting is highly archaic, as also the scenes about Draupadi and Bhima. Unfortunately, he does not explain how. Sri Aurobindo was also of the opinion that the style here is typical of Vyasa’s style that is “bare, direct and (of) resistless strength (going) straight to the heart of all that is heroic in a man.” Vyasa, Narada and Krishna do not appear in it. More variant readings exist for this book than for any other. Is it, then, a combination of various Bharata traditions inserted after the Vana Parva?

McGrath makes a number of telling points regarding the character of the Mahabharata. The absence of reference to the Indus civilization and to Buddhism suggests a purposeful avoidance. The references to Hari and his being four-armed, to Krishna as maha-yogi, to bhakti (when such devotional practice is depicted nowhere) are all typical of classical Hinduism. Yet, Vedic figures like Indra, Agni, Surya and Rudra move easily in and out of the narrative, showing a remarkable conflation of cultures and periods. McGrath proposes that the poem supports a heroic religion that based itself on chariot warfare characterizing the old Bronze Age heroic world to express new views exemplified by the duo Arjuna-Krishna and Nara-Narayana, semi-divine and immortal. Arjuna, a late Bronze Age persona, is initiated into cosmic knowledge so that he becomes a myth of ritual devotion, connecting “as a metonym…the mortal with the supernatural,” fading out once bheda, the partition, has ended. Hence he is still worshipped. The Yadavas, the Bhargavas and the Gupta rulers changed the Mahabharata “from an old and polymorphic verbal and performative tradition to a uniform and synoptic written text.”

McGrath’s book is a fascinating slim volume that everyone interested in the Mahabharata will benefit from.

A shorter version of this review was published on 20th November 2016 in the 8th Day supplement of The Sunday Statesman.

 

JAYA by Devdutt Pattanaik

By

Devdutt Pattanaik: Jaya, Penguin, 350 pages, Rs. 499/-.

How shall vibrant shoots of the future come forth unless we go to our roots? That is why Janamejaya, king of Hastinapura, requests Vyasa, his ancestor, to tell him about his lineage. Retellings of Indian mythology have been many but for the first time we have a medical doctor ministering to the spirit by evoking archetypal memories through his retellings. Of his work, the most significant is this attempt to re-tell the Mahabharata in a new way.

A.K. Ramanujam spoke of 300 Ramayanas—and was taken off the Delhi University syllabus for it. There are possibly as many Mahabharatas; each of our languages with its own version, besides the Indonesian and Malayan. Retellings of it are legion, from 12-year old Samhita Arni’s to economist Bibek Deb Roy’s, but none includes glimpses of regional variations like this one which, hopefully, will not attract the ire of fundamentalists. For instance, for the horse-sacrifice; Pattanaik—like Akbar in1592 for the Razm Nama and the Bengali and Assamese Mahabharatas—follows the composition of Vyasa’s pupil Jaimini. Sensitively split into 18 chapters like the original, with a prologue and an epilogue, each has a bulleted addendum in a grey box—management manual style—providing insights, commentary and additional information. Lest the “maha”-ness of the work put off the modern reader, the style is kept simple, unpretentious and focused on communicating the significant events clearly (though calling Shiva “the great hermit” is awkward, as is “the father of the planet Mercury is the planet Jupiter”). Fine sketches by the author (assisted by his chauffer), and an attractive, reader-friendly layout enliven the read. His interpretation of the difference between “vijaya” and “jaya” is meaningful indeed: the former connotes victory over others; the latter is spiritual conquest of oneself.

A few omissions detract from the retelling’s dramatic effect, e.g. Keechak chasing Draupadi into Virat’s court and kicking her before Yudhishthir and Bhim. More important is the absence of the overarching themes that are so crucial to Vyas’ weltanschauung: Time, Desire and its fruits, the eidetic image of the cosmic tree that occurs in the Shanti Parva and the Gita. And what about the Bharata-Savitri, that unforgettable anguished cry with which Vyasa ends his great epic, asking a question which remains as pertinent today as millennia ago: “From dharma flow wealth and pleasure. Then why is dharma not practised?”

While making this very commendable effort to reach the world’s longest epic to today’s reader whose attention span is so short, misleading distortions of fact could have been avoided. Vyas’ Shakuntala is not Kalidas’ love-smitten teenager who promptly succumbs to Dushyant’s blandishments, as Pattanaik retells. She first gets him to promise that their son will inherit the throne. For the story of Chitrangada Pattanaik abandons Vyas for Rabindranath. There are departures from the original without any indication of the source for such a different account, e.g. the gods, instead of Shantanu as in Vyas, decree that Bhishma will be able to choose the time of his death. And when was he ever engaged to marry the Kashi king’s sister? It is Pandu, not Kunti, who speaks of women in olden times being promiscuous yet blameless and it is he who worships Indra for a son. Kunti never invokes any god on her own after the fiasco with Surya. All her sons are called “Partha”, not just Arjuna.

Satyavati does not elect to retire to the forest; it is Vyas who asks her to do so as “the green years of the earth are gone/do not be a witness to the suicide of your race.” How is Nanda the brother of Vasudev’s wife Rohini? It is not Balarama’s plough but his pestle (musala) that possibly became Vishnu’s club. Krishna has no role in Dhritarashtra’s giving Khandavprastha to the Pandavas. It is before and not after the burning of the forest that Agni gives Krishna and Arjuna their weapons and chariot, obtaining them from Varuna, which they use in the massacre.

The bard who listens to Vaishampayan’s recital of Vyas’s composition at the snake-sacrifice is not Romaharshan but his son Ugrashrava Sauti, who narrates it to Shaunak (not “Shonak”) and other sages. Shuk narrates it to Parikshit not “as he lay dying”, but while he ekes out the days till he is fated to die.

Bhim’s marriage with Hidimba occurs immediately after the Pandavs escape the house-of-lac, not after the killing of the ogre Bak as Pattanaik has it. Kunti is not uncomfortable with the Hidimba-Bhim marriage; actually, she welcomes it so that the friendless Pandavs obtain allies.

As precedents for Draupadi’s polyandrous marriage Yudhishthira cites Varkshi and Jatila, not Vidula. The Pandavs are not sent to Varanavata at Vidura’s instance to create a safe distance between the cousins, nor does he visit the inflammable dwelling. It is Dhritarashtra who insists the Pandavs go there to celebrate the festival of Shiv. Yudhishthira does not stake Draupadi on his own but only when Shakuni suggests it. The Brihannala-Uttara episode is not just burlesque but anticipates Arjuna’s refusal to fight and Krishna’s exhortations. If Abhimanyu married Balaram’s daughter Vatsala, then what happened to their progeny who and not still-born Parikshit should have been the successor? Parikshit’s revival occurs after the Pandavs return with the treasure of Marutta to perform the horse-sacrifice, not before it.

The account of Parikshit’s resuscitation is disappointingly drab, particularly where the original is so inspiring. Krishna performs an act-of-truth, “If have I turned away from battle; if truth and dharma are ever firm in me; if I am ever devoted to truth and Brahmins; if I have never I quarrelled with my sakha Arjuna; then, by the power of these truths, may Abhimanyu’s dead son live!” Krishna’s miraculously saving the Pandavas from the hungry Durvasa and his disciples occurs after the magical cooking vessel is given by Surya to them, not before as retold. After Ulupi resurrects the dead Arjun, there is no question of his not recognizing her. He thanks her for purifying him of the sin of killing Bhishma by devious means and sends her with Chitrangada and Babhruvahan to Hastinapur for the ashvamedha ceremony after which Yudhishthir loads his nephew with wealth.

Lakshman does not chop off Surpanakha’s breasts, but her nose. It is not Indra but Vishnu who humbles Garuda and prevents him from devouring Sumukha. Drona does not trap Pandava warriors within the wheel formation. They find it impossible to break into it. That is why they cannot follow Abhimanyu who alone knows how to enter it. Arjuna does not slice off Bhurishrava’s arm on his own but only on Krishna insisting he intervene to save the supine Satyaki. At no stage does Krishna shout “Kill him!” about Drona, certainly not after he lays down his weapons. Arjun rushes towards Dhrishtadyumna shouting in vain that he must not kill the guru. Everyone on the battlefield condemns the beheading of meditating Drona.

Pattanaik contradicts himself by writing that Krishna stands before Uttari (sic.) and prevents the unborn child from being harmed by Ashvatthama’s missile, while later he speaks of her delivering a dead child. The Mahabharata does not know of the former incident. Pattanaik attributes Markandeya’s vision of an infant on a banyan tree leaf sucking its toe, afloat on the waters of dissolution, to Arjun. Krishna’s great grandson was Vajra, not Vajranabha, a demon whom Pradyumna killed and married his daughter Prabhavati. After Krishna’s death all the Yadavas were not settled in Mathura by Arjun. He established Vajra in Indraprastha and Satyaki’s son Yauyudhani in the plain of Sarasvati.

There are several misspellings: “Vishaparva”, “Hastinapuri”, “Adiratha”, “Yudhishtira”, “Jayadhrata”, “Uttari”, “Lakshmani”, “Arshitsena”, “Vajranabhi” are not the correct names of Vrishaparva, Hastinapura, Adhiratha, Yudhishthira, Jayadratha, Arshtisena, Uttara, Lakshmana and Vajranabha.

Pattanaik enriches the proceedings by including stories from puranas and regional sources, e.g. Abhimanyu marrying Balaram’s daughter Vatsala with Ghatotkach’s help (made into a landmark film “Maya Bazar”), Krishna’s son Samba marrying Duryodhan’s daughter Lakshmana, Arjun and Krishna confronting each other over Gaya, Arjun and Hanuman at odds. He could have mentioned the Bengali “Dandi Parba” [presented on stage as “Pandab-Bijoy” by Girishchandra Ghosh] in which the Pandavas and Kauravas jointly oppose Krishna who attacks Raja Dandi for possession of a mare that is actually the apsara Urvashi. There is a similar bhakta-vs-bhagavan episode from a regional source regarding Hanuman protecting Raja Shakunt of Kashi from Rama. Krishna reprimanding Draupadi in exile for being responsible for her misery is Pattanaik’s own concoction. However, he provides a new insight by comparing Vikarna and Yuyutsu with Kumbhakarna and Vibhishan. He includes the remarkable tale of Krishna as Mohini marrying Iravan for a night before the Pandavas sacrifice him that is not known outside south India. Sensitively, he includes the fascinating tale of Bhangashvana who experienced life as male and as female and the riveting parable of the drop of honey Vidura tells that found its way into medieval biblical lore as the tale of the man in the well in Barlaam and Joshaphat. Pattanaik concludes on a profound note, evoking the lesson that anrishamsya, non-cruelty, universal compassion, is the secret of a meaningful life.

Kurukshetra as Adharmakshetra: Hitler mirrors Arjuna’s thinking

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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 Mokshadharma Parva Reviewed

By

Journal of Vaishnava Studies, Vol. 26, No.1, Fall 2017

Book Review III

The Mahābhārata of Vyāsa, Book Twelve, Part Two, Mokṣa Dharma. Translated from

the Sanskrit by Pradip Bhattacharya. Writers’ Workshop, Kolkata, 2016. 1107, pp.,

ISBN 978-93-5045-122-9

Review by Kevin McGrath, Harvard University

Pradip Bhattacharya is the foremost Sanskrit scholar in India today in the field of Mahābhārata Studies. This present volume accomplishes a work of many year’s duration with a translation of the Mokṣa Dharma text of the Śānti parvan, spoken by Bhīṣma Śāṃtanava. In this task Bhattacharya is completing the work of P. Lal’s translation of the whole epic; Lal expired before finishing the work.

The text which Bhattacharya has chosen to translate is that of the Gita Press (1980), not the Pune Critical Edition (BORI) nor the Bombay Edition; these are 168 to 353 in the former text and 174-366 in the latter. There is no apparatus given which means that the book cannot be used as a reference body for those wishing to work exactly with the Sanskrit language of the Pune or Bombay editions and who do not have access to that Gita Press version, although the GP text is presently available online.

This is a book designed for those who wish to simply read the most succinct and extensive of ancient classical commentaries on Mokṣa Dharma or for those who work in the field of religious studies and theology. There is no index although there is a contents page at the rear of the book which indicates the substance of each of the fifty-five parts. Bhattacharya also supplies three essays at the back of the book which situates this treatise on Mokṣa Dharma within the context of the complete Great Bhārata.

As the author himself says: “BORI was used to adopt its version whenever the Gita Press śloka was different in a significant way. That is because BORI is accepted as the holy of holies by Indologists . . . The Gita Press uses the Bombay edition and adds from the Southern Recension, which can be verified from the BORI critical apparatus. I added the Bengali Haridāsa Siddhāntavāgiśa edition which contains passages not found in BORI whose editors did not consult this manuscript which was in Haridāsa’s family.” These auxiliary passages drawn from the Southern Recension or from Haridāsa are always indicated by footnote. As the author says, “Whatever the C.E. has left out has been sought to be included.” Such a method of approach makes for a definitive translation.

Some of the earliest mentions to dhyānayoga or ‘meditation’ occur in this division of Bhīṣma’s magnificent monologue upon the various aspects of practical dharma, and here Bhattacharya sustains the profound subtlety of the original and extremely compressed words. This is given at adhyāya One Hundred and Ninety-Five, or the ninth in the book’s series. Bhattacharya likewise captures well the extremely complex dramatic quality of so much of Bhīṣma’s vast monologue in which the old warrior imitates the hundreds of different voices who inhabit and

who express the narrative; this great event of mimēsis is fully conveyed by the translation wherein Bhīṣma the poet enacts innumerable characters and voices.

The prophets Nārada and Bhṛgu play significant roles in this section of the Great Bhārata as does Kṛṣna himself at times. There are also many episodes that are given in the style of faunal allegory where animal speech and behaviour are important components of communication. The great Naranārāyaṇīya, which comes at the end of the book is beautifully translated and finely captures the tone and flavour of that long anthem which lies at the heart of early Hinduism.

At times the author frequently leaves within his translation certain words in the Sanskrit which brings to the text a much larger authenticity and authority and where the intrinsic vitality of the original language effects—both sonorously and linguistically—a quality that might evade perfect translation. This is a crucial aspect of the book’s effectiveness as a medium not simply of specific communication but also of cultural significance. In the Three Hundred and Thirty-Eighth adhyāya where Nārada speaks in list form this replication of Sanskrit terms is extremely useful insofar as the text here lacks poetry as it is given in serial and nominal fashion only and requires some rendering by the translator in order to bring vigour to the terms which are being engaged.

This wonderful, thoroughly well-composed, and masterful book is faultlessly printed and handsomely bound and will become a uniquely useful reference text for those non-Sanskritists who work in both Mahābhārata Studies and in the field of Divinity; it is surely to become a matchless title on the shelves of any library of theology. This mighty work will long remain as one of Pradip Bhattacharya’s most renowned and paramount contributions to current Indology, both in Asia and in the West.