Pradip Bhattacharya

Indologist, Mahabharata scholar

Mahabharata

BHISHMA–A VEXED MORAL AUTHORITY: THE EGOTISTICAL SUBLIME

By

Kevin McGrath: Bhishma Devavrata—authority in epic Mahabharata, Orient Blackswan, 2018, pp. 180, Rs. 945/-

So far there have been only two novels on the patriarch of the Mahabharata (MB): M.M. Thakur’s “Thus Spake Bhishma” (1991) and Kamesh Ramakrishna’s “The Last Kaurava” (2015). McGrath’s is the sole book-length study of how Bhishma comes to be regarded as the supreme moral authority. So much so that Krishna, instead of advising Yudhishthira himself, has Bhishma from his death-bed lecture Yudhishthira on various aspects of dharma over an astonishing period of two months speaking as both prince and priest.

McGrath finds that in MB morality is fourfold: a behavioural value-system; variable depending upon conventions; transcendent (the Gita); and personal. The last aspect is also the most vexed because this “pitamaha” (grandfather) is celibate and does not continue his lineage. Ambivalence characterizes him. He is torn between duty to the throne and affection for the Pandavas and their right to the throne. McGrath argues that Bhishma’s understanding of right conduct stems not from tradition and shastras but from an epiphany. McGrath argues that the theophany to which Krishna exposes Bhishma in Dhritarashtra’s court engenders a detachment because of which he can fight against those whom his heart favours and accept death without a murmur. Drona underwent the same experience, but we do not find him evincing such “vairagya”. Both fall undefeated, voluntarily laying down their arms and enter into meditative trance to die.

His authority stems from his being the only true descendent of Kuru. True, his eldest paternal uncle Devapi became a sanyasi being denied the throne by Brahmins because of a skin defect. But how do we forget the existence of Shantanu’s brother Bahlika? He had a son named Somadatta who fought in the war. It is not clear how Bhishma getting Pandu married to Madri would restore the patriline as she has nothing to do with Bahlika.

McGrath does not resolve how Bhishma reconciles keeping Karna out of the war for ten days with loyalty to the throne. The parallel with Achilles sulking in his tents is pronounced. This is paralleled by Karna, despite his much-vaunted loyalty to Duryodhana, not capturing Yudhishthira after trouncing him, Bhima, Nakula and Sahadeva. Further, both Bhishma and Karna are displaced eldest sons, a leit motif in the epic. The two greatest philosophers, Krishna and Bhishma, are both eighth sons with their elder siblings murdered.

McGrath does not clarify how Duryodhana displays magus or shaman-like characteristics. Neither is it correct that the Dhartarashtras have no cult status. Temples to Duryodhana (and Karna), Shakuni and Gandhari exist in Garhwal, Kerala and Bangalore. Nor is it that Bhishma is not worshipped anywhere. Allahabad has a temple in Daraganj built in 1961 with an image of Bhishma on the bed of arrows. Special puja is conducted during the “pitri-paksha”. Narkatari Temple with a pond called “Bhishma Kund” is at Kurukshetra commemorating where Bhishma lay. It is not purely a Kshatriya view of the universe that is depicted. Bhishma’s discourses include a considerable portion portraying varying Brahmin views as well. Further, Sanjaya does not merely see and recount; he actually participates in the war, being almost killed by Satyaki. Sanjaya is the world’s first war-correspondent.

The reference to Vyasa as “chiranjiva” (p.5), ever-living, is puzzling as he is not described thus, unless it is taken as a reference to this appellative being given to the series of such editors/compilers of whom Krishna Dvaipayana belongs to the Dvapara epoch. Again, with the detailed description of the wondrous hall constructed by Maya, how can we say that MB depicts “an idealized culture where there is…no substantive architecture”?

McGrath’s point is well taken that precise portrayal of rituals is missing, as though these had become unfamiliar. Similarly, physical details of characters are few. They are mainly moral figures. Vyasa’s conjuring up of the shades of the dead who rise with “a great sound” from the Ganga is taken as a metaphor for the making of the “maha-kavya”. We, like Dhritarashtra, visualise in the mind’s eye what Vyasa (and Sanjaya) narrate.

It is curious that there is no reference to the Harappan culture (unless we count Shiva as one) and few to Shramanic tradition which would have been prevalent alongside. There is a solitary reference to a “kshapanak” (naked Jain mendicant) and to “pashanda” (Buddhist/Jain heretic) besides the lokayata Charvaka whom Brahmins kill for condemning Yudhishthira. Some of the stories Bhishma tells are similar to Buddhist jatakas. Romila Thapar has suggested that the Harappan was a matrilineal society. A late Buddhist text lists Gujarat as one of the “pancha-dravida” lands. The Kshatriya lineage destroyed by Parashurama is regenerated by its women who approach Brahmins for sons. Such progeny are “suta” by class, making all later royalty’s claim to Kshatriya-hood spurious, unless Parashurama’s annihilation was restricted to the Haiheya clan. In Hastinapura the matriline begins with Satyavati making her pre-marital son Vyasa (of mixed caste) continue Shantanu’s line.  It is also shown in the overwhelming influence of Satyavati over Bhishma and of Kunti, her nephew Krishna and Draupadi over the Pandavas. Finally, the MB portrays a Yadava take-over: the great-grandsons of Kunti and her nephew Krishna ultimately rule Hastinapura and Indraprastha. McGrath even argues, “it is his (Bhishma’s) role to advance this Yadava coup.”

McGrath is the first scholar to point out Kunti’s culpability in causing the partition that culminated in the war by concealing Karna’s identity. On a different level, Surya bears equal blame in not supporting his son effectively whereas Indra comes to the aid of Arjuna powerfully. Kunti’s causation of the “bheda” is structural, while Draupadi’s is temporal, constantly goading her husbands towards the holocaust. Their influence is far more pervasive than those of Kryseis and Briseis in the Iliad to whom McGrath compares them.

It is not only that we have no idea of which text of the MB Nilakantha (late 17th c.) was commenting upon, as McGrath says. In 1584-86 when it was translated into Persian as Razmnama, there is no indication of what text was used. The names of the scholars Akbar appointed indicate that they were drawn from all corners of India, showing awareness of the existence of different versions. However, we do know from the illustrations Akbar commissioned that for the Ashvamedha Parva the Emperor chose Jaimini’s composition instead of his guru Vyasa’s.

McGrath maps six crises in Bhishma’s story which bring about his fall: the abduction of Amba and its results; his advice to partition the kingdom; his offering the supreme honour to Krishna in the rajasuya yagya; his aloof stance in the molestation of Draupadi; his silence about Karna’s birth and his acceptance of marshal-ship in Kurukshetra. Thus heroic Bhishma is at the very core of the collapse of order in the narrative.

There is a seventh decision that plays a critical role in the plot: his appointing Drona as royal tutor knowing his obsessive animosity against Drupada. In the Harivansha (I.20) Bhishma recounts how the usurper of Panchala, Ugrayudha, demanded that the widow Gandhakali (Satyavati) be handed over to him. Bhishma killed him in a mighty war and restored the kingdom to Prishata, Drupada’s father. Vyasa never clarifies why Drupada holds a yagya seeking a son to kill Bhishma.

Bhishma’s regency is described in ideal terms, making him the authority for declaiming on governance. People clamoured for him to become their raja, he tells Durodhana (V.145.25). His description of Yudhishthira’s rule in the Virata Parva (IV.27) echoes this idealistic picture. However, later the people criticise him for not protecting the Pandavas against Duryodhana’s machinations and say that he “does not attend to dharma” (I.137.5). When the Pandavas depart on exile they revile him again, along with Vidura, Drona and Kripa (here McGrath mistakes “Gautama” as referring to Drona who is a Bharadvaja, whereas Kripa is a Gautama). The vow he takes gives Devavrata the appellative “Bhishma”, “terrific” and that is what characterises his speech. The only person to vilify him, and at length, is Shishupala. Bhishma’s response is to offer up himself as an animal sacrifice. Instead, it is Shishupala who is beheaded. Bhishma repeats this in the Bhishma Parva, and his offer is accepted. Although McGrath says that the killing in the rajasuya is not commented upon, Vyasa categorically prophesies calamities as a consequence on being asked by Yudhishthira.

It is, however, difficult to agree with McGrath’s repeated assertion regarding Bhishma’s “transcendental awareness” of dharma as truth attained through dhyana-yoga as it is not manifested in his conduct. The unique lucidity of behaviour that McGrath praises is nowhere in evidence in the dice game episode where he is the epitome of confusion. Even the code of battle he lays down is not observed during his marshal-ship. However, it is true that Bhishma stands as the moral standard in the poem as far as his discourses are concerned, which are in a didactic poetic tradition totally different from what has gone before. It is another matter that Duryodhana gives him short shrift, yet cannot escape making him the marshal.

By stating that Bhishma and Vyasa are descendants of the rishis Vishvamitra and Vasishtha, who were contemporaries, McGrath creates a chronological problem. Vyasa is Vasishtha’s great grandson, but Bhishma is many generations after Vishvamitra and is descended from his daughter Shakuntala, who is half-human as is Bhishma himself having Ganga for his mother. It is interesting that the three preceptors of the Dhartarashtras—Bhishma, Drona and Kripa—are born of apsaras. On the other hand, their opponents, the Pandavas, have devas for fathers, with Bhishma being the Vasu Dyaus (sky) reborn. Like Krishna, the other avatar, he is the eighth born with his elder siblings having been killed. Bhishma remains caught in the middle, a predicament that Krishna easily side-steps. Unlike Vidura, Bhishma never asks Dhritarashtra to reject Duryodhana. Karna, born of Surya, queers the pitch of the Dhartarashtra-Pandava balance. As with Karna, Bhishma’s sense of personal honour supersedes loyalty to Duryodhana. Neither will kill the Pandavas (Karna makes Arjuna the exception, as Bhishma does Shikhandi) though it may cost Duryodhana victory. The phrase, “egotistical sublime” can well describe both.

Beginning with driving Satyavati to Hastinapura to wed his father, Bhishma becomes the bride-supplier to its princes. Kunti is the only exception. The repeated rite of abduction whereby Bhishma, Arjuna and Karna (for Duryodhana) obtain brides raises the question why this form of marriage named “rakshasa” was approved for Kshatriyas. Why was the royalty adopting a custom of people they condemned?

McGrath makes the very striking point that the MB is about adharma as it deals with the onset of the “impoverished” Kali Yuga when dharma stands on just one foot. Thus, only a fourth of all action and speech is dharmic! All characters are, therefore, compromised, Bhishma most of all. He chooses to act on loyalty instead of upholding moral judgement. “Kinship is the absolute, not ethics.” That is why this is such an existential poem and in that inheres its tragic appeal to us.

It is interesting to find McGrath asserting that the battle in the Virata Parva is drawn from a different poetic tradition, very archaic in style, because many Western scholars opine that this is a burlesque added on later. Sri Aurobindo held that this parva shows the young Vyasa at work.

Bhishma is the warrior of unrivalled excellence and he describes his ability at length to Duryodhana.. When McGrath argues that Bhishma is never defeated, he forgets the Virata Parva encounter where he and everyone else is laid low by Arjuna. Bhishma Where Drona is called “the more experienced warrior” has not been cited. Nor does Bhishma call Karna “a half charioteer” (p. 71). The word he uses is “ardha-ratha,” i.e. “half-chariot-warrior”.  Bhishma’s supremacy as warrior is established by his victory over his guru Parashurama, the decimator of Kshatriyas. There is a contradiction here because Parashurama would not tutor anyone but a Brahmin, as Karna finds out to his cost. Further, in the beginning in the list of contents (I.2.79) Bhishma is described as guarding Chitrangad. No evidence of this is forthcoming as this young prince dies in a duel with no sign of his protector being around. Indeed, Bhishma’s regency is characterised by status quo, with no awareness of Jarasandha’s imperial designs reaching out from Magadha to adjoining Mathura and surrounding areas, imprisoning numerous kings.

McGrath alone has pointed out that Bhishma’s reluctance to fight his guru prefigures Arjuna’s predicament. Both events occur at Kurukshetra which is also the scene of the philosophical discourses of both Bhishma and Krishna. McGrath states that whereas Arjuna overcomes his qualms about violence, Bhishma does not (fn. 33). If that were so, Bhishma would not have gone on slaughtering ten thousand troops daily for ten days.

It is not only Bhishma’s charioteer who goes unmentioned, as McGrath remarks, but Drona’s too, which is very peculiar as the charioteer’s role is seen as crucial. It is as though Bhishma were totally alone in war, as solitary as in his celibacy, not needing another presence. He never loses control even when Krishna loses his composure and rushes at him twice over.  Apart from Vidura who is no warrior, he is possibly the only character truly detached from his own self, so much so that he reveals how he can be brought down. Karna, too, gives up his impenetrable skin-armour, and in doing so values adherence to his word over loyalty to Duryodhana, just like Bhishma. Both are altruistic, but Bhishma does not behave thus for sake of glory. That is the nature of his renunciation, “vairagya”. He never voices his emotional anguish and only announces that he is tired of his body and invites Yudhishthira to kill him.

The special death that he, Drona and Vidura undergo, suggests McGrath, is a result of the theophany experienced during Krishna’s embassy to the Hastinapura court. McGrath trips up here in writing that Vidura dies in the Mausala parva, whereas it is in the Ashramavasika Parva. McGrath feels that Bhishma “is the truest practitioner of Krishna’s Gita teaching…able to practise vairagya” in action, unconcerned about the fruits of his acts. Arjuna forgets the teaching and asks for a repeat performance in the Ashvamedha Parva. Bhishma alone sings paeans to Krishna, not Arjuna. His is a profound moral understanding of the cosmos, symbolised by the hamsa (swooses) who appear when he falls. No wonder that he should be the one to discourse on the paths to attaining moksha at great length. The adharma-centred eleven books are more than balanced by the two massive tomes on dharma.

McGrath asserts that Bhishma’s discourses on governance form the template of the Gupta imperial rule, being quite different from the type of kingship modelled by Yudhishthira, which is power shared with brothers and Krishna, and characterised by seeking revenge for justice. What Bhishma depicts at very great length is a codified system of judgement that we find in the dharmashastras and Kautilya. It is common in late Bronze Age cultures (Hittite, Assyrian, Judaic), none of which are anywhere as encyclopaedic. In doing so he also reveals a massive store of oral tradition replete with moral tales of incredible variety and speaks in multifarious voices (McGrath counts as many as 280) but without emotion, despite the anguish he has suffered far longer than anyone else. That lifelong suffering, despite which he has not deviated from his principles, also sets him on a moral pedestal because of which his authority extends well beyond the poem into all audiences.

McGrath is quite correct in positing that the Anushasana Parva was originally part of the Shanti Parva which thus consisted of four dharma-texts: raja, apad, moksha, anushasana. Indeed, the list of contents does not mention the Anushasana separately. Further, the oldest list of parvas found in the Spitzer manuscript (1st-2nd century CE) in a cave in Xinjiang province of northwest China does not mention it. Vyasa informs Yudhishthira that Bhishma learnt all this from Brihaspati, Ushana, Chyavana, Vasishtha, Sanatkumara, Markandeya and Indra. The discourses are in a style completely different from the preceding heroic mode.

Where Dharma’s avatar Vidura is only a speaker, except where he rescues the Pandavas, and where the son of Dharma Yudhishthira violates dharma at critical moments, Bhishma speaks most powerfully and also acts righteously. However, McGrath bypasses the issue that at crucial junctures he does violate morality by omitting to act, e.g. in failing to protect the young Pandavas from Duryodhana’s villainy and Draupadi from being publicly molested. We should add to this his deliberate obfuscation of the truth about Karna’s birth, which is surely not moral by any standard.

It is curious that McGrath should be unclear about the effect of Shiva in the narrative. His presence is quite pervasive. He sends the five Indras down to earth with Shri as their common wife; his boons to Amba and Drupada produce Shikhandi as Bhishma’s killer; he provides Arjuna with divine weapons; he precedes Arjuna’s arrows killing those he aims at; he empowers Ashvatthama to massacre the Panchalas and Draupadeyas; by his boon Krishna obtains Samba the source of his clan’s annihilation. Bhishma himself in his three paeans to Krishna refers to him as Rudra and Shiva, while Krishna sings Rudra’s praises in the Drona, Shanti and Anushasana Parvas as McGrath notes. Thus, Bhishma’s devotion to Krishna includes Shiva. We do not find any other hero displaying such devotion which is independent of ritual and this elevates him to a unique level of spirituality.

In the context of Shiva we should not overlook the symbolism conveyed by the names of the Kashi princesses: Amba, Ambika and Ambalika. All are names of the Supreme Devi. Vyasa rapes two of them. The consequence is defective progeny. In the affront to Amba, which leads to her invoking Shiva, and the omission to act to protect Draupadi, Bhishma is arousing the rage of Shakti. We find Kali appearing amidst the carnage of Kurukshetra. Since both Bhishma and Vyasa represent patriarchy (both are “pitamahas”), the extinction of both their lineages (Vyasa even loses his son Shuka) suggests that the final establishment of Yadava hegemony represents the victory of the matriline.

Following Russell Blackford, McGrath sees Bhishma’s authority in three dimensions: “objective moral” (the Pandavas’ right to rule); “inescapable practical” (loyalty as an employee of Duryodhana) and “transcendent” (gladly falling to Arjuna’s arrows). He infuses the epic with the overtone of normative action and expresses it in speech that influences the audience so powerfully even today. The beauty of the MB is that everyone believes he has a right to act as he does. It is the wide variation in these views that, McGrath holds, produces the clash between adharma and adharma, not dharma and adharma. But would that not mean that Bhishma’s “objective moral authority” favouring the Pandavas is adharma?

McGrath’s footnote admiring Narendra Modi has taken a vow of celibacy like Bhishma is intriguing. McGrath feels that as with Gandhi and Aung San Suu Kyi (married and separated), this feature lends great moral authority. In Bhishma’s case it is refraining from “biological union with all of life” that accounts for his moral authority even today. It is important that no judgement is passed on Bhishma’s decisions (Gandhi-like “experiments with dharma?”). This is left to the audience.

In an interesting section, modern perceptions of Bhishma are surveyed as in Tharoor’s The Great Indian Novel, Peter Brooks’ play and the several TV versions of the MB. Brooks’ five-finger exercise provides the least insights about Bhishma.  McGrath concludes that moral authority vests not in any character but in the MB itself which “remains a charter myth” for modern India.

McGrath shows that dhyana-yoga is the means whereby Vyasa composed the MB, veritably creating an entire world and portraying its destruction, just like kala-Time itself. By paralleling the action of cosmic time, the epic becomes the authority on dharmic awareness for its audience. It achieves this through speech which conveys thought and is then translated into action. It is Bhishma who is the most prolific speaker in the MB, charging it with power “that it intrinsically transcendental and suprahistorical”. That is why it remains the greatest commentary on adharma for the world.

The passage from the Bhishma Parva that McGrath quotes admiringly (p.135) depicting the radiant whiteness of his appearance has a parallel in the first tournament where the young princes face-off in Hastinapura. There Drona’s appearance is described in almost identical terms:-

White his robes

White his sacred thread

White his hair

White his beard

White the flower-

Garland on his body

White the sandal paste

Smeared on his body. (I.136.19-20, the P. Lal transcreation).

 

A very fine point is made in analysing the presence of violent death in the epic, a keynote struck from the beginning. That is why Akbar called it Razmnama, the Book of War. As in the Greek epics, its depiction is devoid of bodily pain. This is achieved through the multiplicity of metaphors used to turn a field of blood into a thing of beauty. It is a remarkable feat how death is made aesthetically appealing to the audience who come to realise that it is the ultimate truth. It is that truth which Bhishma encounters fearlessly and this is what makes for his moral pre-eminence. In celebrating Bhishma, the MB projects an awareness existing on the border of life and death. This dwelling upon the fine margin of transition from one state of existence to another constitutes the unique splendour of the MB. Very perceptively McGrath refers to the World War poets shrouding carnage in beauty and sadness instead of horror. He turns our attention to Anandavardhana’s assertion that the purpose of the MB is to generate disillusionment with worldly life and lead to peace and liberation. Hence the predominant presence of death. “Kurukshetra, the site of so much deadly and lethal violence, is the source and ground of generation for the lovely aesthetics and moral semantics of this work.”

The concluding section is a fascinating analysis of how the redactors arranged the poem to secure moral influence. Beginning with the voice of an anonymous poet (who speaks again after an interval), we find Ugrashrava reciting, Dhritarashtra lamenting, succeeded by Sanjaya describing, then revert to Ugrashrava. About the first two-thirds of the first book McGrath writes, “The evidence is of a rough and syncretic compilation…not a labour of inspiration but of …literary anthologists with a particular socio-politico agenda in mind” moving back and forth in time.” The Adi, Vana, Shanti and Anushasana Parvas cobble together numerous narratives like a patchwork quilt (the Bengali “kantha”) or bricolage. The others are inspired composition. It is questionable, however, that Ugrashrava is performing long after Janamejaya’s death since he states that he is just coming from that king’s snake-sacrifice. Nor does Vaishampayana state that the epic’s performance needed three years. Rather, that rising daily, Vyasa completed composing it in three years. Vyasa did not recite it to Janamejaya as McGrath states (p. 158) but asked Vaishampayana to do so in his presence. P.L.Vaidya, whom McGrath quotes, is mistaken in asserting that the recitations by Vyasa’s pupils retained the same contents with different wording. We have evidence of the vast difference in content that exists in Jaimini’s version of the MB, of which the Ashvamedha and Ashramavasika Parvas are extant.

In the considerable number of passages the Shanti Parva shares with the Manusmriti the Bhargava hand is clear, Bhrigu expounding the latter. His name occurs 135 times in Bhishma’s discourses. He is a paramount exponent of moral order whom Bhishma imitates. Indeed, the MB begins with tales of Bhrigu’s lineage, creating a world of mythical wonder. Through Bhishma’s defeat of the Bhargava superhero Parashurama were the editors projecting him as their icon representing the ideal of dharma expounded in the Shanti and Anushasana Parvas? Further, it is significant that the Gita is embedded in the Bhishma Parva. McGrath likens their work to that of Lonnrot with the Finnish Kalevala, of Virgil with the Aeneid and of Wagner with The Ring cycle.

McGrath is the only scholar after Andre Couture to bring to bear insights from the Harivansha on the MB. He points out Vyasa’s use of the word lekha, “signs” or “writing” (114.27) indicating that much after the epic’s composition its written form became authoritative instead of oral performance. That is why the merit accruing from listening to the MB includes gifting a copy of it.

In establishing Bhishma as the supreme moral figure, however, McGrath “doth protest too much” as in the repetitive assertions in the latter half of the book. One cannot also agree that Bhishma is “an icon of justice” because though he spoke of it profusely in action he did not exemplify it.

“Between the idea
And the reality…
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response…
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow.”

Pradip Bhattacharya

A shorter version of this review was published in The Sunday Statesman of 3rd June 2018 in the 8th Day Literary Supplement.

 

“The Dharma of Moksha–the Way of Liberation” a Review by Shekhar Sen

By

The Mahabharata of Vyasa: The Complete Shantiparva Part 2: Mokshadharma 
translated from Sanskrit by Dr. Pradip Bhattacharya,
Writers Workshop, Kolkata, 2016, pp. 1107, Rs. 2000/-

Padma Shri Professor Purushottam Lal, D. Litt., Jawaharlal Nehru fellow, began transcreating the Mahabharata in 1968 in free flowing English verse. It was indeed a mammoth effort and unique because no one else had attempted a translation of the epic in verse before him. Unfortunately, he could transcreate and publish sixteen and a half of the epic’s eighteen books before he breathed his last in 2010. Mokshadharma Parva of Shanti Parva and the Anushasana Parva remained to be completed. Perhaps, like a true guru, he wished to test the abilities of his shishyas to take up the challenge of completing his unfinished project. And Dr. Pradip Bhattacharya, a worthy shishya of a great guru, took up the challenge of translating, and not transcreating as he says, the remaining part of the Shanti Parva, the Mokshadharma Parvadhyaya. It is indeed very brave of Bhattacharya as this part, in my opinion, is the most difficult section of the epic revealing the essence of Vyasan philosophy. In many ways, Bhattacharya is the right person to undertake this work, given his deep and extensive scholarship about the epic. Besides, he has his own reasons. He writes in the Preface:

‘Professor Lal was my much-admired guru and beloved acharya in every sense. He gifted me a copy of his extensively revised edition of the complete Adi Parva (2005) with the inscription, “for Pradip, chelaextraordinaire, shubham te astu,” leaving me overwhelmed. It was therefore, a wonderful opportunity to offer dakshina when his son, Professor Ananda Lal, handed me the Professor’s copy of the Gita Press Shanti Parva volume and asked me to complete the project – a signal honour and a great challenge.”

The book under review has a short preface, the main text and a few interesting annexures. These include maps of Aryavarta and of India at the time of the Mahabharata sketched by Prof. Lal, a list of stories narrated in the Moksha Dharma Parva (courtesy Madhusraba Dasgupta’s Samsad Companion to theMahabharata) and reviews penned by Bhattacharya of Karna Parva, StreeParva and Shanti Parva, Part 1, (Raja Dharma) transcreated and published by Prof. Lal earlier. These elegant reviews were published in The Statesman’s 8th Day literary supplement and provide interesting reading. The Preface explains the methodology followed: keeping to the original syntax as far as possible, in free verse and prose faithful to Prof. Lal’s objective of providing the full ragbag version. “The text is a conflation of the editions published by the Gita Press…Aryashastra and that edited by Haridas Siddhantabagish Bhattacharya with the Bharatakaumudi and Nilakantha’s Bharatabhavadipa annotations, cross-checked with Kaliprasanna Sinha’s Bengali translation, the first English translation by K.M.Ganguly and the shorter Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute edition.”

After the Kurukshetra holocaust, Yudhishthira, stricken with sorrow and guilt, receives instruction from Bhishma on three aspects: Rajadharma, principles of governance, Apaddharma, principles to be followed in extremity and Mokshadharma, principles for attaining liberation. The book under review deals with Mokshadharma. It starts from Section 174 of the Shanti Parva (Section 168 of the Pune Critical Edition).

Having been instructed on the principles of governance, Yudhishthira shifts gear and ascends to the higher level 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!”

He follows it up with a series of questions which reveal a supremely disturbed mind trying to find solace, seeking a way, a method by which he can get over the guilt, the sorrow and the confusion arising out of losing all his relations and friends in the pyrrhic battle for which he holds his own greed responsible. Bhishma tells him that everyone must try to obtain moksha, liberation, by way of detachment which can only come if one remains unaffected by worldly emotions and possessions. One must rise above sorrow and happiness as these are ephemeral. True nature of the Self, atma–gyana, must arise before liberation can be achieved. That emancipates him from the liability of rebirth and that is the highest goal of human existence. That is the only cure for the affliction Yudhishthira suffers from.

Easier said than done! So, for the next two hundred and one chapters, Bhishma holds forth on how to succeed in obtaining liberation, answering myriad questions from the troubled Yudhisthira, opening up the vast expanse of epic philosophy, proceeding from one concept to the other. He talks about removal of sorrow and attainment of supreme joy, removal of attachment and giving up of desire, renunciation, truth, samadarshana-equity, importance of japa, reciting the name of god, dhyana, dana (gift) and tapasya-ascesis. He talks about the four ashramas and due observation of the duties prescribed for each, underlining the importance of sadachara, virtuous conduct. Non-violence must be practised and therefore slaying of animals in sacrifices cannot be approved (even though we observe the continued performance of Ashvamedha!). To explain each concept Bhishma narrates stories and dialogues. There are fifty-five such engaging stories (with, of course, many sub-stories, stories within stories), in the MokshadharmaParva establishing a tradition followed later perhaps by works like Panchatantra, Hitopadesa, etc.

Samkhya philosophy has been dealt with at some length because ignorance is the root cause of misfortune. An ignorant man can never achieve moksha. Therefore, knowledge is of primary importance. In this Parva we find the Samkhya theories of Devala and Panchasikha, a detailed delineation of the cosmic principles by Yagyavalkya to Janaka and also discussions on concepts like avyakta, gyana, buddhi, manas, mahat, ahamkara, prakriti, pancha-bhuta, vikaras – the twenty-four principles later modified to twenty-five and then to twenty-six, in short. Panchasikha of course had thirty-one principles in his conceptualisation. It assumes the three gunas and that everyone comes under the influence of these. Therefore, Samkhya basically emphasises that renunciation and knowledge of all these principles are necessary preconditions for obtaining moksha. Dharmadhvaja-Janaka says to Sulabha, disciple of the Samkhya philosopher, Panchasikha,

“…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.”

Though this is the basic tenet of samkhya, interestingly Sulabha takes this far deeper in response to his question, who she was and from where she had come, 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?”

She goes on to deliver a very lengthy lecture on Panchasikha’s Samkhya, saying,

“Not attached am I to my own body.
…Not, surely, did you hear the entire moksha
from Panchasikha,
with its means,its Upanishad, its adjuncts
and its conclusions.”

For Sulabha, nothing is one’s own. One’s self is part of the same self in any other body which is composed of the elements that revert to the unmanifest source. For Asita Devala the ultimate goal is Ananda in the state of Brahman.

Yoga is a necessary addendum of Samkhya. Mahabharata describes two kinds of yoga: the Raudra and the Vedic ashtanga, laying down the rules of diet etc., and the methods of attaining ultimate bliss. Samkhya gives knowledge and Yoga, health. Through Samkhya one attains knowledge and through Yoga one attains direct perception. According to the epic, both are complementary and both are equally efficacious.

In course of the Brahmanisation of the epic, many stories were added almost deifying the Brahmins. But the epic still reflected thoughts displaying a great extent of catholicity. One becomes a Brahmin not by birth but by his gunas, qualities and consequent karma, not by birth. In the Vana Parva Nahusha tells Yudhishthira,

“Truth, self-control and charity,
non-violence, tapasya,
and the practice of dharma –
not caste and not family –
are the means to perfection.” (Vana Parva, 181-42/43).

The Gita displays similar catholicity and the same generosity is displayed in the Mokshadharma Parva too. Having described the characteristics of variousgunas, Bhrigu tells Bharadvaja,

“If these characteristics exist in
a shudra and
they are not in a twice-born Brahmin,
that Shudra is
indeed no Shudra and that Brahmin is
not a Brahmin.” (Shanti Parva, 189.8)

That is the reason why even in a strong Brahmin-dominated society this Parvacelebrates non-Brahmins like Sulabha the Kshatriya, Pingala the prostitute, Tuladhara the merchant, etc. and bestows great wisdom on them.

In fact, a major part of the Gita is included in the Mokshadharma Parvadhyaya. The concepts of Karmayoga, Gyanayoga, Rajayoga, etc are more or less covered in this Parva and though Bhakti is not specifically mentioned, it flows as an undercurrent through the Parva. Many of the protagonists mention bhakti in passing as an essential element for achieving success. The resplendent Bhagwan appeared before Narada and told him that the maha-rishis Ekata, Dvita and Trita craved for his darshan, but

“They were unable to see me. None can
see me save those
excellent ones exclusively devoted
to me, and indeed you
believe in the ultimate.”

Bhishma’s total surrender to Krishna is sufficient to indicate that Bhakti was never far from his thought process.

While going through Bhattacharya’s translation, two things appear to be worthy of specific note, viz., the emergence of Shiva and the Nara-Narayana duo as important deities in this Parva in the Krishna-dominated epic. Though we have seen Shiva earlier in the Samudra-manthana (Adi Parva), Kirata and Arjuna episodes (Vana Parva) and the Ashvatthama-Shiva encounter (Sauptika Parva), it is in this Parva that Shiva gets his due place as a principal deity. In the story of Vritra, it is Shiva who infects Vritra with fever and empowers Indra with his energy which enables Indra to slay Vritra. This is immediately followed by the Daksha-sacrifice episode in which Shiva creates Virabhadra and Parvati, Bhadrakali, born of her anger. The two together destroy the sacrifice. Most importantly, at the conclusion of the sacrifice Shiva, who till now was not entitled to a divine share in sacrifices, a mark of godhood, becomes entitled and consequently gets recognition as a deity. Daksha sang a paean to Shiva describing his greatness and reciting his one hundred and eight names. In the Shukracharya episode Kubera approaches Shiva requesting him to recover his wealth from the usurper, Shukracharya. Shiva subdues Shukracharya in the most interesting manner, confirming his divine powers. In the story of Shuka, Vyasa himself prays to Shiva for a son, as pure as the five elements. By Shiva’s boon Vyasa gets Shuka as his son.

The Supreme Soul Narayana incarnated in four parts as Dharma’s sons, Nara, Narayana, Hari and Krishna. Of these, Nara and Narayana performed severe ascesis in Badrikashrama where Narada met them. To behold Narayana’s original form Narada, with the permission of Nara and Narayana, went to Shvetadvipa where he met the divine inhabitants, supermen who were totally dedicated to Narayana. Narayana was pleased to appear before him in his cosmic form. Some scholars locate Shvetadvipa somewhere near Egypt or Asia Minor and claim that the legend is influenced by Christian thought. Winternitz however says, “In my opinion, the description of Shvetadvipa…does not remind us of the Christian Eucharist, but of heavenly regions such as Vaikuntha, Goloka, Kailasa and the Sukhavati paradise of Buddha Amitava (History of Indian Literature, Vol. 1, p 440).”

However, Narayana goes on to describe his characteristics, incarnations and activities which involve removal of evil and establishment of good, etc. During that dialogue he mentions that when he, with Arjuna, destroys the Kshatriyas in Kurukshetra, it will be said that Nara and Narayana destroyed the Kshatriyas. So, Nara and Narayana are incarnations of the Supreme Soul and, therefore, gods. To establish that concept on firm footing, the duo are depicted as defeating Shiva-Rudra in a battle. Narada returned to Badrikashrama, spent a thousand years there and worshipped Nara-Narayana. Since then Nara and Narayana are worshipped as gods.

At the end of it all, Yudhishthira asks his last question of MokshadharmaParvadhyaya:

“Grandfather, the dharma relating to
the auspicious
moksha-dharma you have stated. The best
dharma for those
in the ashramas, pray tell me, Sir!”

In fact, that was his first question too! Bhishma then proceeds to tell him the story of the Brahmin Dharmaranya and the Naga chief Padmanabha. The Brahmin faced a dilemma: there are so many dharmas; for moksha, which one should he follow? Padmanabha told him the story of the Brahmin who obtained moksha by unchhavritti, gleaning, once again by the grace of Shiva. The Brahmin’s doubts were removed and he took up unchhavritti. Unchhavritti seems to be the favourite option for Vyasa as through it all the behavioural parameters for mokshacan be achieved. He not only ends the Shanti Parva with such a story but also the Ashvamedhika Parva. There, too, another Brahmin attains moksha by practicingunchhavritti.

But all of Bhishma’s wise discourses fall on deaf ears. Yudhishthira is not fully convinced and tells Bhishma, “You have described to me many fine tenets by which to obtain peace. But even after listening to all of it attentively, I am not getting peace.” So, Bhishma continues with the Anushasana Parva. But that is another 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. Bhattacharya has very carefully avoided these traps. He has stuck to the text diligently. Moreover, he has managed to communicate the content and meaning of the concepts, which are, to say the least, very difficult to comprehend. One can move easily with the easy flow of language of the text. Bhattacharya has worked hard indeed to bring Mokshadharma to the readers’ easy comprehension.

The second quality that strikes one is the excellent poetry of Bhattacharya. It is rich yet simple. The reader never stumbles as he goes along. The use of rhetoric is fetching. It has the easy flow of a river and the cadence of raindrops and that is what makes the translation so attractive. Consider just one stanza,

“Wrapped in many-fold threads of delusion
self-engendered,
as a silk-worm envelopes itself, you
do not understand.” (329.28)

Also, it must be remembered that Bhattacharya is the first scholar who has translated the Mokshadharma Parva in verse.

Lastly, the depth of research that has gone into this translation is amazing. He has gone through so many other editions, viz., the Mahabharat of Haridas Siddhantabagish, the Critical edition of BORI, K.M.Ganguly’s English translation, Kaliprasanna Singha’s Bengali translation, the Southern recension, etc. The additional stories and verses that he found have been included in the translation, justifying Prof. Lal’s objective of providing the reader with a “full ragbag version”. The additional stories that he has included are two from the Southern recension (Narada and Rishi story), four from Haridas Siddhantabagish (Nibandhana-Bhogavati, Narada, Garuda and Kapila-Asuri) and many verses not found in the Gorakhpur edition. This has given the book the kind of comprehensiveness which even Prof. Lal did not achieve.

Now a few words about the annexures. The map of India at the time of Mahabharata gives us the location of all the principal monarchies in the country. Similarly, the map of Aryavarta gives us a detailed description of the places and kingdoms in the northern part of India where the main events of the epic took place. These are very informative and help us to visualise the events as they occur while reading the text.

The production of the book is excellent. The readers will be pleased to see that Writers Workshop continues Prof. Lal’s innovation of handloom sari-bound production with gold-lettering in his unique calligraphy. In his own words, “Gold-embossed, hand-stitched, hand-pasted and hand-bound by Tulamiah Mohiuddin with handloom sari cloth woven and designed in India, to provide visual beauty and the intimate texture of book-feel…Each WW publication is a hand-crafted artifact.” Happily, it still is.

What makes the reviews penned by Bhattacharya most interesting is his frequent references to characters and events from folk literature, literature of other Indian languages and world literature, which he uses to draw comparisons. Comparing Karna with Achilles (Iliad) and Edmund (King Lear), reference to Karna in Gujarati songs, comparing and contrasting Hecuba and Gandhari, reference to the works of Hiltebeitel and Fitzgerald, Haribhadra’s Jain text, the text engraved on the Garuda pillar of Heliodorus, David’s lament, Deor’s Lament, reference to Arthashastra and various Dharmashastras etc are fascinating. Besides enriching the knowledge of the reader, these make the reviews multi-hued, enhancing the readability level manifold.

The Mahabharata, like the ocean, hides many gems in its huge bulk, generally not available in the popular editions offered in the market. It requires deep insight and study to find them. Bhattacharya has these in good measure. He has brought out information not easily perceived by the reader. Karna, considered “the never-retreating hero” by Dhritarashtra, who haunted Yudhishthira wherever he went and of whom Krishna himself was apprehensive, actually fled the field thrice during Drona’s command, was knocked unconscious by Yudhishthira and Bhima and mangled and dazed by Abhimanyu’s arrows during the war. Even before that he was bested by the Gandharvas in the Vana Parva and by Arjuna in the VirataParva. In Vana Parva he becomes infused with the Asura Naraka and in the Tullala songs of Kerala he is the demon Sahasrakavacha reincarnated! Chitrangada is actually a Pandya (not Manipur) princess in the Southern recension. Interestingly, in the epic the slayer of Mahishasura is Skanda, not Durga. We also are informed about a mini-myth of Shiva engaging Parashurama to annihilate the Daityas. We come to know that Karna was 168-finger length taller than Arjun. Bhattacharya has also identified the possible interpolations at various places of the Parvas reviewed. No one really knows who slew Abhimanyu. Bhattacharya informs that Sudarshana, son of Duhshasana, slew him. He points out how Vidura’s concept of the dama-tyaga-apramada triad forms the basis of Buddhist teaching. Even though Yudhisthira fears Karna and is angry with him for his misconduct, his anger strangely dissipates when he looks at Karna’s feet because they resemble Kunti’s! Sibling instinct? Or an interpolated afterthought?

Some of us may feel somewhat uneasy to know that cow-slaughter in honour of a special guest is a Vedic practice and King Rantideva killed 20000 cows to feed guests. We also are informed by Bhattacharya that the insect that bores through Karna’s thigh resulting in Parashuram’s curse, is in fact the demon Damsha cursed by Bhrigu for raping his wife. Administrative policies appear to be both catholic and practical. Shudras could hold the exalted position of a minister and daughters could become the ruler if and when necessary. Lying, prohibited in the Gita, is permitted to save a life, for sake of one’s guru, to win over a woman and to arrange a marriage. Krishna’s lament giving vent to his frustrations over the despicable behaviour of his kith and kin is another unknown but moving vignette Bhattacharya draws our attention to. The most telling observation however comes in the last review (on Rajadharma) in which Bhishma equates the ruler with Fire, Sun, Death, Yama and Vaishravana. The ruler must have the qualities of these gods. As Bhattacharya says, “There is more than enough guidance available here (Bhishma’s advice in Shanti Parva) for our own times – provided we are interested.” He has also underlined Prof. Lal’s philosophy reflected in the Introduction to the Shanti Parva, his last transcreation, where he explains the implication of Chaturvarga: Artha, Kama, Dharma and Moksha. Each of these have two distinct alternatives, individual and universal. Which one should be chosen? “…it is our disciplined choice that changes one into the other.” Says Prof. Lal. How true!

The reviews of Bhattacharya have these and many more insights. These make the reading informative as well as interesting. After reading these the reader will no doubt wish to read the text and find out for himself.

The only problem I perceived was the inclusion of what Bhattacharya calls “memorable shlokas”. These cause the reader to stumble; he must pause and try to read and comprehend, which causes a break in the continuous reading. These perhaps were not really needed. Also, while discussing the appearance of Karna on the Bengali stage (review of Karna Parva), he could have mentioned Buddhadev Basu’s remarkable play, “Pratham Partha”. However, these are minor issues. In short, Dr. Bhattacharya, a difficult and colossal job, well done!

The Spitzer manuscript, a highly-fragmented Sanskrit manuscript discovered in Qizil in Eastern Turkestan, does not have the Virata and Anushasana Parvas. Most probably, the texts of these two parvas were included in the preceding Vanaand Shanti Parvas. That appears to be logical since the story of the secretly-lived one year, the Virata Parva, is just a part of the Pandavas’ stipulated period of exile (the Vana Parva) while the Anushasana Parva, Bhishma’s continued instruction of Yudhishthira, is merely an extension of the Shanti Parva. We hope Bhattacharya will go on to complete his guru’s project by translating the Anushasana Parva too. Having done the Mokshadharma, it should not be difficult for him at all.

(A shorter version was published in The Sunday Statesman’s literary supplement 8th Day on 25 December 2016.)

The First Bengali Mahabharata in Verse and in Prose

By

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[2] Rhyming verse that can be sung.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[11] Binod Ghoshal, op.cit.

Raja Yudhishthira by Kevin McGrath

By

“Because he ranjita-delighted

all his people,

he was called a raja.”

Models of Monarchy in the Mahabharata[1]

“There was a raja named Uparicara, a dharma-following monarch, fond of hunting,”[2] is how Vaishampayana begins the detailed recital of his guru Vyasa’s Mahabharata (MB) at Janamejaya’s request, striking what McGrath regards as the keynote of the epic: kingship. Buddhadeb Basu was the first to argue that Yudhishthira, not Krishna or Arjuna, was the protagonist of the MB in Mohabharoter Kotha (1974), Englished by Sujit Mukherjee as The Story of Yudhishthira (1986). McGrath’s sixth book on the MB studies Yudhishthira as a model of dualistic monarchy, shared with Krishna and his brothers, in a “pre-Hindu,” pre-monetary, pre-literate Bronze Age society of the first millennium BC. This monarchy, based upon agreement of the family, the clan and the people, is juxtaposed with the Shanti Parva’s paradigm of autarchy (“more classical, early Hinduism”). McGrath strongly feels that it is Mauryan and, even more so, Gupta epitomes of kingship that are represented here. Vaishampayana ends saying that this “itihasa” named Jaya is to be heard by one who desires to rule the earth. The epic, therefore, is focussed on kingship.

McGrath also explores how pre-literacy is portrayed, again dually. Externally, there is the drama of recitation before an audience; internally, the narrative of Yudhishthira’s kinship group which is the foundation for preliterate poetry. The great variations in style are evidence of different poetic traditions that are amalgamated into a single vast poem: Vedic, pre-Hindu, Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist. McGrath believes that MB became a written text in the time of Samudragupta, which is why a coin of that king features on the cover. However, he falls into the trap of believing that one person could not have composed the MB. What about the enormous output of Isaac Asimov in almost all branches of knowledge in modern times and of Shakespeare in the past with wide stylistic variations?

In a time long long ago north of the Vindhyas lived communities who for protection chose from among Kshatriya families a ruler. The Shanti Parva chapters 57, 59, 67 have this to say:-

tena dharmottaraś cāyaṁ kr̥to loko mahātmanā /

rañjitāś ca prajāḥ sarvās tena rājeti śabdyate //

That mahatma ensured

the sway of dharma

in the world.

Because he ranjita-delighted

all his people,

he was called a raja.

 

First find a raja.

Then get a wife.

Then wealth, they say.

Without a raja—

Your wife and wealth,

What good are they?

 

There is only one Sanatana Dharma

for a raja

who wishes to rule a kingdom:

the welfare of his subjects.

Such welfare

preserves the world.

The raja drew his authority from the people who, in return for his protection, gave him one fiftieth of their animals and gold, a tenth of their grain and the loveliest of their daughters (Shanti Parva, 67.23-24). It was a time when money did not exist and writing was unknown. Wealth acquired by the raja consisting of precious metals, gems, cattle, but not land, was distributed by him during yagyas and other ceremonies. Succession to the throne was not by primogeniture alone and needed ratification by the people.

For instance, Bharata disinherited his nine sons finding them unfit to rule and adopted the Brahmin Bharadvaja as his successor, naming him Vitatha. Yati, Nahusha’s eldest son, was not his successor but the younger Yayati. Yayati had to explain to the people why he gave the throne to his youngest son Puru. Brahmins did not agree to enthrone Pratipa’s eldest son Devapi who became a sanyasi. So the youngest, Shantanu, became king.  Again, it was Vichitravirya’s younger son Pandu who was made king.

McGrath makes out a strong case for the MB being about the establishment of Yadava hegemony ( pointed out in 2002 in my paper “Leadership and Managing Power: Insights from the Mahabharata”). The displacement of Yayati’s eldest son Yadu in favour of the youngest Puru comes full circle. However, it is not “a son of Krishna” (an error repeated twice) who becomes king at Indraprastha, but his great grandson Vajra, while his sister’s grandson rules at Hastinapura. McGrath expands this idea to envisage a conflict in which a matriline defeats a patriline. Actually, it is Satyavati’s line that is displaced by her daughter-in-law Kunti’s. McGrath appears to be supporting the idea that the matriline represents “indigenous” Dravidian traditions that defeat “intrusive” Indo-Aryans. Thankfully, he refrains from stepping further into this morass.

We find here a new insight: royal authority is portrayed as dualistic, being shared by Yudhishthira with Krishna in both the major rituals of rajasuya and ashvamedha. Before that, authority is shared between Satyavati, Bhishma and Vyasa. Royal power depends upon support of the community who are represented in the group of ministers chosen from all four classes. Yudhishthira’s is also a fraternal kingship shared with his brothers and even with Dhritarashtra. Thus, after Karna is dead, Yudhishthira tells Krishna that now he is raja of the world along with his brothers. McGrath pertinently points out that “kingdom” has its origins in the Old English “cyn” standing for “kin” and means “the situation or location of kinship” which does not connote rule by one person, which is the model Bhishma presents in the Shanti Parva.

When Vyasa is called “brahmarshi kavih” McGrath has problems finding an English equivalent for “rishi”. Not happy with “wizard” he leans towards “shaman”. The Oxford English Dictionary glosses “rishi” as “A Hindu sage or saint”. The exact equivalent would be “seer” in the sense that MB uses it. The “kavi” is a seer-poet.

Shantanu is the only one called “adhiraja”, superior monarch. This is significant because it is the dynasty of his step-father with which Vyasa is concerned, having been inserted into it by his mother to carry it forward. The royalty of the bloodline, therefore, becomes dubious, particularly when Pandu’s wives gets sons from multiple devas. It is interesting that McGrath does not examine this aspect of Yudhishthira’s claim, despite Duryodhana questioning it bluntly. The need for the people’s acquiescence to legitimise the kingship seems to be more implicit than voiced explicitly. McGrath overlooks that Yayati has to explain to the people why he is choosing his youngest son. However, we do not see Shantanu doing the same in the case of Devavrata, nor do the people protest. They only object vociferously when the Pandavas are exiled, but this carries no weight with Duryodhana who appears to represent the “later” type of autocrat, though not a tyrant since the people tell Dhritarashtra they were happy under his reign. The installing of Yudhishthira as crown-prince requires no consent from the public. Their applauding him is not evidence of public opinion featuring as a crucial element in making that decision as McGrath asserts. When he refers to Krishna in his peace-embassy appealing to the kings in the assembly to speak as evidence that Dhritarashtra has to heed the “sangha”, this would be because that is the mode of governance obtaining among the Yadavas. No one in the court responds to this appeal, because the modality of Hastinapura’s monarchy does not envisage such consultative rule. Duryodhana is not bothered about Krishna’s exhortation to behave so that the great warriors install him as crown-prince. He successfully asserts his right singly.

The dharma of a raja had three qualities: punishing, protecting, donating. He rules, as Kunti tells Krishna, by conciliation, giving gifts, causing division, using force and strategy. Yudhishthira always speaks in terms of not just himself but always including his brothers (the most significant being sharing a wife). All decision-making is fraternal for him, except for the game of dice twice over.

Krishna is referred to as sanghamukhyo, leader of the association. According to V.S. Agrawala, in Panini’s time the Bharatas’ profession was ayudhajivin (weaponry) and they lived as a sangha. The MB seems to be showing political systems changing from an oligarchic sangha and a kinship type of rule to absolute monarchy. Neither Parikshit as full-fledged monarch nor Janamejaya shares power with anyone. The Yadavas end up with Krishna’s great grandson Vajra ruling in Indraprastha, and the sons of Satyaki and Kritavarma ruling in nearby kingdoms.

McGrath argues that three forms of time coalesce in the MB. There is the recalled pre-monetary, pre-literate time of sanghas; the time poetry creates representing an ideal; and both are conveyed through the time of actual performance. Thus there is “a compounding of the historical, the mythical and the performative which coalesce into a single instance or event that has been simply transmitted and then recorded in our present text of the poem.” An impressive thesis indeed.

A very interesting proposition in the book is that Parashurama’s genocide of Kshatriyas might represent destruction of Buddhist kingdoms east of the Ganga-Yamuna doab. But where is the evidence for this? J. Bronkhorst proposed that the MB’s earliest written text is from the time when Brahmanism was imposing itself on eastern regions viz. Magadha. The Bhargava Brahmins, whose tales feature prominently in the MB, would have been linked to this expansion.

It is not clear why the MB should be recalling “an imagined former era” of war-chariots, when Persian armies used them against Alexander. Nor is there a shift away from the Rigvedic sacrifice which remains central to the MB. In the Shanti Parva, however, other ways of achieving liberation are described such as Sankhya and Yoga. Ritual sacrifice is even shown as of no consequence compared to the life of unchavritti (gleaning). These, as McGrath writes, could certainly be a response to Buddhism and Jainism. There are references to caityas (funeral monuments) and edukas (ossuaries) in the kingdom of Gaya. Bhurishrava is said to be meditating on mahopanishadam and engaged in yoga. The earliest Upanishads are dated to the middle of the first millennium BC. McGrath points out that Arjuna’s sword is described as akashanibham (blue like the sky). This is the wootz steel which was produced in North India in the 3rd century BC. Further, prior to the battle Uluka refers to the rite of weapon-worship (lohabhihara). Loha means “coppery, red.” McGrath interprets this as indicating bronze weaponry, thus bolstering his thesis about this being a bronze-age heroic culture.

A significant point is that the term chakravartin, turner-of-the-wheel, is only applied to ancient rulers, never to Yudhishthira, who, therefore, was never given the status of an emperor despite the rajasuya yagya. When finally installed at Hastinapura, he is called patim prithvyah, lord of the earth. Other terms used are mahipati, nripa, bhumipa, narendra, nareshvara, synonymous with “raja”. Chakravartin is a term that was used by Buddhists and Jains, particularly in the Andhra region along the Krishna River.

There is a curious incident usually overlooked which McGrath points out as an indication that kingship was oligarchic. After the Pandavas have been exiled, Duryodhana, Karna and Shakuni offer the kingdom to Drona considering him as protector, ignoring Dhritarashtra and Bhishma who appears nowhere at the close of the Sabha Parva. Where is the consent of the public? This recurs when Duryodhana, rescued by Pandavas from the Gandharvas, offers the kingship to Duhshasana. McGrath proposes that this is the consequence of the rajasuya having gone wrong so that royal authority seems to have become mobile. The Udyoga Parva has the subjects discussing Duryodhana’s destructive thoughtlessness (as citizens do in Shakespeare’s plays), a feature that never occurs in the type of kingdom Bhishma describes in the Shanti Parva. The mobile nature of kingship is seen when Karna tells Krishna that Yudhishthira would not accept the kingdom were he to know about Karna’s birth. Gandhari, however, is quite categorical that the Kuru kingdom passes by succession. The rajasuya instead of making kingship permanent for Yudhishthira completely upsets it. The MB seems to be presenting different claims to kingship without projecting a single model. It is subject to family, kinship, the clan, the public etc.

The king’s primary duty is as a sacrificer, which McGrath analyses at length. The primary model is Indra, shatakratu (performer of a hundred sacrifices) the rain-bringer, promoting fertility. Satyavati urges Vyasa to provide a successor to the throne as a kingless kingdom gets no rain. As an offshoot of this, in old age the king finally takes to the forest as a renunciant, which does not form part of the paradigm of the later “classical” model of monarchy where he rules till death.

Besides the pattern of the displaced eldest son in the line of succession, there is the feature of sons being born to queens not from their husbands (Ambika, Ambalika, Kunti, Madri). Further, the earliest kings did not take princesses as wives. Yayati has sons from Brahmin and Asura women; Uparichara from Girika, a riverine woman; Shantanu from Ganga and Satyavati, both riverine women. Only in subsequent times we find the practice of restricting the choice to royal families.

McGrath is mistaken in stating that during Pandu’s rule Dhritarashtra declares Yudhishthira’s right of succession. By the time Duryodhana is born—which is the context of Dhritarashtra’s comment—Pandu  has long given up the throne to his elder brother, retreated to the Himalayas, been cursed by the deer-sage and has persuaded Kunti to beget a son by the god Dharma. It is interesting that Yudhishthira is referred to as “ajatashatru” (whose foes are unborn), since this is name of Bimbisara’s son (491 BC) who killed his father and founded Pataliputra. It is not a name shared with Ashoka’s father, as McGrath states, who was Bindusara. Both expanded the Magadha kingdom considerably. Without conquering Magadha, Yudhishthira cannot become samraj (emperor). There is a historical memory here.

Regarding the dice game, McGrath quotes Yudhishthira as having vowed never to refuse a challenge, which overturns the “fraternal kingship” paradigm. He seeks to cover this in a footnote pointing out that on the second occasion all the Pandavas were invited, not just Yudhishthira. He observes that while Draupadi was treated contemptuously, “there is no overt violence and a certain etiquette is observed.” What about being dragged by the hair and sought to be stripped naked?

McGrath points out a fact that has been overlooked by others: Krishna’s report to Yudhishthira about what Dhritarashtra and Gandhari said supporting his rightful claim to the throne do not tally with what we have heard in the Hastinapura court! Similarly, Krishna’s report to Uttanka and to Vasudeva about the events of the war differ significantly from what Sanjaya has reported. Why?

Another interesting sidelight is provided: Karna tells Krishna that Brahmins will recount the Mahabharata sacrifice. Why not the half-kshatriya sutas? This hints at the Bhargava redaction of the epic.

Yudhishthira is said to have been guilty of lying only once although there is a series of lies all the brothers tell Virata. A very rare example of the fury Yudhishthira is capable of even against his own family is the curse he lays upon all women after finding out that Karna was his elder brother. In his aversion for the kingdom his parallel is Balarama who avoids the war. Yudhishthira’s renunciant bent has parallels in Buddhism and Jainism. In the Shanti Parva he uses a metaphor to describe worldly predicament which Shakespeare’s King Lear repeats: “Thus on this various wheel of samsara, like a chariot wheel…” A similar disgust for the kingdom won by slaughtering kinfolk is voiced by Arjuna the perfect kshatriya in the Ashvamedha Parva.

McGrath holds that Vyasa is older than Bhishma and is not mortal. The timeline does not indicate that. Devavrata is returned to Shantanu as a teenager. Four years after that Shantanu weds Matsyagandha who has given birth to Vyasa earlier. Vyasa would be around the same age as Bhishma. Further, he is definitely mortal, not chiranjivi like Ashvatthama and Kripa. He is divine only in the sense that much later he tells his disciples that he is an avatara of Narayana.

On page 107 there is a curious error: “Shalya’s driver is killed by Kripa”. This is a good example of the sort of mistake the editors of the critical edition made by ignoring logic to follow blindly the maximum manuscripts agreeing with the Sharada script version. It is Bhima who does this, following up by killing the horses and cutting away Shalya’s breastplate. Further, though displeased, Yudhishthira does not reprimand Bhima for kicking prone Duryodhana’s head, despite being urged by Krishna who does not justify this act as McGrath has it (p.108). Rather, Yudhishthira justifies Bhima’s kicking.

It is good to find McGrath speculating about why the movement of the narrative was impeded by introducing the didacticism of the Shanti, Anushasana and Anugita portions instead of peremptorily rejecting them as interpolations. It is necessary to find out what possibly motivated the redacteurs to do this, and how it happened. Why stitch together such widely divergent types of poetry? This could only happen in a literate period.

The manner in which Vyasa exhorts Yudhishthira to be king-like and emerge from depression by drawing upon traditions of ancient monarchy can be seen in the Old English poems “Deor’s Lament” and “The Wanderer”. McGrath compares this to the Gupta dynasty seeking to revive the ashvamedha rite to legitimise power and using the MB recital for this purpose. Why should we not see this as valid for the revival five centuries before that by Pushyamitra Shunga, a Brahmin general who assassinated his king and attacked Buddhists? The wrongs a raja commits are said to be removed by performing such yagyas and distributing donations.

The archaic nature of MB culture is further exemplified by the absence of icons of deities. There is just a solitary mention of images of devas shaking, laughing, dancing, weeping before Bhishma’s fall. Yet, McGrath mentions Yudhishthira offering puja to deities before entering his palace after investiture. The first statues come in Ashoka’s time and are of animals and yakshas. In the late Shunga period (the closing years BCE), we find decorative sculptures depicting human and mythical figures. The MB makes no references to worship of deities in homes or temples or to building of memorials. McGrath opines, “This is because stone sculpture at that time was a solely Buddhist or Jaina phenomenon.”

McGrath points out what is seldom realised, viz. that the warrior’s way, kshatradharma, is first spoken of by Hanuman and is similar to the catalogue in Arthashastra. The raja’s dharma is first enunciated by Narada at the beginning of the Sabha Parva. The Gita does not touch upon this, being directed solely at the hero. McGrath examines three instances when Yudhishthira is advised in practical terms how to function as a raja. Arjuna propounds practical tenets of governance; Draupadi holds forth on what is to be done in crisis; Yudhishthira has his own craving for liberation of the spirit. There is no mention of any ministers counselling him in Hastinapura. This characterises Bhishma’s picture of kingship. However, it overlooks the episode in the Adi Parva where the Machiavellian counsellor Kanika expounds his niti to Dhritarashtra for getting rid of the Pandavas.

McGrath argues that the shift in oligarchic monarchy of the earlier books to a single person’s rule in the Shanti Parva is matched by development of a pre-monetary barter economy into one where currency is exchanged for goods. This is the time dominated by Jain and Buddhist merchant classes when fraternal kingship is replaced by autarchic rule. It is also the time of urbanisation when coins gradually replace land, agricultural produce and cattle as mediums of exchange. The lack of mention of coinage in the Shanti Parva is explained away as because it is describing a mythical time, “blurring historic and poetic reality.” That is not a satisfactory explanation and undermines the argument.

When McGrath believes that the culture MB depicts is primarily a pre-monetary, pre-literate Bronze Age one as Homer’s epics do, why does he contradict himself by saying that it is only “an idealised old world” and “not a portrait of an historical reality, but a pictured heroic time”? Hasn’t evidence of the Homeric world turned up?

The peculiar incident of the Brahmin Charvaka condemning Yudhishthira, which McGrath finds so puzzling, becomes clearer if we look at Duryodhana’s dying speech. Here he says that if the ascetic Charvaka, master of eloquence, hears how he has been killed in unfair combat, he will definitely avenge him. Even more intriguing is how Kripa, despite his role in the massacre of the Panchalas and Draupadi’s sons, goes unpunished and continues as guru to Parikshit. McGrath proposes that perhaps Sauptika Parva was a later phase of the epic’s growth featuring Kripa in assisting in the massacre.

Vidura’s precepts and Bhishma’s discourses on kingship come to be collected in Kautilya’s Arthashastra, which is also an action-less monologue. This picture is an urban one of a classical king and his entourage. What is particularly shocking is Bhishma’s advice that Yudhishthira ought to fear kinsmen like death, because Yudhishthira’s is all along a familial kingship. But why is the use of spies Bhishma advocates “a new practice” (p. 156) when Duryodhana had all along been using them to track the Pandavas in exile? The two parvas are concerned with the king’s morals and are devoid of dramatic effect on either Bhishma or Yudhishthira. Only at the very end the Anushasana Parva says that Yudhishthira was anointed having obtained the kingdom. The heroic epic re-starts with the Ashvamedha Parva. These two books surely belong to a radically different poetic tradition, being upanishadic, not heroic.

In sum, Yudhishthira is not the king Bhishma describes, for he shares his power with Krishna and with his brothers, with approval of his public. He is incredibly gentle and intensely humane. The only instance in which he does not involve his brothers is the disastrous decision to participate in the game of dice. Only twice he displays anger: against Arjuna and Kunti. He is unique for the world-renouncing remorse he feels, unwilling to be king even after the horse sacrifice. Curiously, he shows no signs of spiritual liberation despite the massive discourses of Bhishma. As McGrath pertinently writes, “dharma for him concerns praxis, and it is in no way a medium of enlightenment. He is a moralist, not a mystic.” This is tellingly brought out in his encounters with Dharma-as-crane and Nahusha-as-python. His counterpoint Duryodhana might have been drawn from a different tradition because of the paradoxical presentation of his death. Why McGrath feels this could be Buddhist or Jain is not clear, nor why “his truculence and minatory belligerence…have been laid upon another kind of earlier character.”

Vyasa presents us with three portraits of kingship: Dhritarashtra, Duryodhana and Yudhishthira. All display a dependence upon public opinion and the subjects appear to have been happy under the rule of all three. When Yudhishthira exits, he hands over the throne to the dual authority of Yuyutsu and Parikshit (the courtiers surround the former; the women the latter). He advises Subhadra to protect Vajra in Indraprastha and not follow adharma (i.e. seek to supplant him by her own grandson Parikshit). Like Arjuna much earlier, Yudhishthira enters heaven in his mortal frame—and yet he does not, because he has to experience hell. He is said to be filled with bitter rage here. He will not accept heaven without his brothers, just as he shared earthly power in their company. Only thereafter, having discarded his mortality, is he taken to Swarga.

McGrath makes the very interesting point that the MB is recited at Takshashila, the capital of Gandhara (Kandahar), the land of Gandhari and Shakuni. Kautilya composed his Arthashastra here. Ashoka was viceroy here. The oldest manuscripts of the MB are from Kashmir. In his conclusion McGrath puts forward a very important suggestion for studying how the commentator Nilakantha prepared his edition of the text. While McGrath very rightly points out the puzzling omission of the Sindhu-Sarasvati civilization’s urban heritage in one place, in another he asserts it is “obviously recalled” without citing evidence.

Just as in late 6th century BC Athens, in the Panathenaia festival, brought a re-conceived Bronze Age epic poetry into a single Pan-Hellenic form, so the MB integrated all available material on social living in a single collection. McGrath sees it depicting a religion of hero-worship which continues today. He is certain that the war books and parts of the Virata Parva are older, depicting an ancient Bronze Age warrior tradition, than the Shanti–Anushasana Parvas. Does the poem hark back only to the older world of Vedic deities? Does it not stress repeatedly the primacy of the Nara-Narayana duo and the underlying presence of Rudra-Shiva? Nor does it elide all Buddhist and Jain experience. There are negative references to kshapanaka (naked Jaina mendicant) and pashanda (Jains/Buddhists). The Mokshadharma Parva incorporates much of their concept of world-abandonment for the sake of individual salvation, quite contrary to the stance of the Gita and the kingship the MB portrays. The very concept of the supreme value of yagya is completely undercut at the end of the horse-sacrifice where the half-golden mongoose shows it is much inferior to what is achieved by those living by gleaning. The archetypal seer-king, rajarshi Janaka is thoroughly debunked by the female sanyasi Sulabha! In Yudhishthira’s intense remorse and obsession with dharma much of Ashoka is surely assimilated.

Despite the MB’s final message that in Swarga there is no animosity, the entire epic has presented mutually destructive rivalry between cousins for the throne. Its message is dualistic like the model of monarchy it presents of a ruler making decisions in consultation with kin and with implicit, if not explicit, approval of the public. This portrait undergoes a development summarising “all the historical possibilities, if not temporal developments, of kingship in Northwestern India” around 950 BCE onwards.

There are two appendices on epic time and on epic pre-literacy. McGrath suggests that the war books plus the Sauptika Parva amounting to 23,795 stanzas are the 24000 slokas constituting the Jaya that is mentioned by Ugrashrava Sauti. The archaic Bharata legends were combined with Bhargava myths of the classical period. This stitching together occurs within a ring structure: Sanjaya recites to Dhritarashtra; Vaishampayana recites this to Janamejaya; Sauti recites all this and more to Shaunaka. Sanjaya’s recital uniquely combines past and present, always beginning with death of a general and then going back to describe how it happened. Time is projected triply: Dhritarashtra’s lament summaries most of the action in 56 verses; the anukramanika gives a digest of 100 mini-tales; the parvasangraha lists the books and chapters. There is the crucial importance of fertilising women at the right time that is reiterated repeatedly, and it is the violent disturbance of this in the assault on Draupadi that engenders the sterility of war and of the Kuru and Yadava lineages. Narrative time, chronological time and mythical time are “compounded in one unitary sequence of worlds or poetic montage.”

McGrath’s description of the krita yuga as a timeless, changeless, deathless utopia is not correct because monarchs and sages of that period are shown as dying. It is the passage of time that leads to the onset of the treta yuga. While acknowledging that no dates with full astrological data are supplied, McGrath seems to accept A.N. Chandra’s date for the battle as 3137 BCE. Based upon the same data, widely different dates have been arrived at by a range of scholars, showing that interpretation is highly dubious. McGrath estimates the time-span for the core narrative as spanning fifty years from the infancy of the Pandavas to the investiture of Parikshit. Into it are interwoven tales from the past featuring Vedic divinities as well as the ethos of early Gupta monarchy. The poem oscillates between the microcosm and the macrocosm. Centripetal in form, the stories are narrated in manifold voices creating a tapestry of coruscating brilliance that evokes willing suspension of disbelief.

Just as time in the MB is an illusion, so is space. There is very little description of interiors and topography except in very general terms. It is place-names that feature, not details of terrain. Similarly, details of physique are elided. Individuals are made out mostly by their speech, for it is a world of drama. It is not a poetry of realism but of emotional theatre and didacticism. There is no reference to plastic and visual arts (except a single mention of Shikhandini being adept at “lekhya” i.e. writing or painting), which might be because the first statuary is Buddhist, mention of which the MB seems to avoid.

In the appendix on epic pre-literacy McGrath takes the position that the MB was first written during Samudragupta’s reign combining the pre-literate and literate. Writing is dateable to Mauryan times. The different parvas exhibit great stylistic differences, incorporating popular songs about heroes, folklore and formulaic compositions of professional poets. Sanjaya’s inspiration, which is visual, differs from Vaishampayana’s which is a recital of remembered text. Sanjaya’s is filled with formulaic terms and comparatively little narrative. An excellent example of such epic inspiration is found in the Russian bylina recorded in 1925 by N. Misheyev.[3] Different periods of theological and political thought have been combined along with varied cultural strands. Preliterate narrative is not chronological but proceeds structurally, which we see in the MB. Further, it is based upon the functions of kinship, and its performance is dramatic and metaphorical. Preliterate poetry is also characterised by a pattern of duality (as seen in the Iliad too) which is a function of pre-monetary culture where no single currency existed. Society functioned on exchanging services and loyalties defined by rites. Value depended upon kinship. Wealth was distributed in great yagyas and weddings in the form of jewels, weapons, cattle, servants, but not land (gambling is the exception). Writing and coinage seem to have occurred together. This, of course, begs the question about Harappan culture which had seals and a specific system of weights, neither of which the MB mentions despite featuring Jayadratha as king of the Sindhu area.

McGrath’s slim volume is a densely written book offering new and rich insights into an aspect of the MB that has not been researched so thoroughly in the past. No one interested in the MB can afford not to read it.

Pradip Bhattacharya

[1] Kevin McGrath: Raja Yudhishthira—Kingship in Epic Mahabharata, Orient Blackswan, 246 pages, Rs.1050. A shorter version of this review was published on 14.1.2018 in the 8th Day literary supplement of The Sunday Statesman.

[2] All quotations are from the P. Lal transcreation (www.writersworkshopindia.com )

[3]A woman of 80 in the far north of Russia in an out-of-the-way village suddenly created a new lay, “How the Holy Mountains let out of their deep caves the mighty Heroes of Russia” after reciting the traditional tale of “Why the heroes have vanished from Holy Russia.” http://www.boloji.com/articles/49556/a-modern-russian-bylina

The Last Kaurava

By

Re-imagining the Mahabharata

Kamesh Ramakrishna: The Last Kaurava, Frog Books, 2015, pp. 533, Rs. 525/-

Considerable control is called for while reimagining myth so that it does not degenerate into fantasy. The first successful attempt at this with the Mahabharata was by the Bengal civilian Nabin Chandra Sen in his Bengali epic trilogy, Raivatak, Kurukshetra, Prabhas (1887-1896). Gajendrakumar Mitra did so in the novel Panchajanya (1963), a trend continued today by Dipak Chandra. In Gujarati, K.M. Munshi recreated Vedic India and the Mahabharata in Bhagwan Parashuram and the unfinished octology Krishnavatara. In Hindi, Gurudutt, Acharya Chatursen and Narendra Kohli novelised Vedic and Puranic India. Marathi, Kannada and Malayalam fiction drew upon both mahakavyas. In English, in the 1980s came Maggi Lidchi-Grassi’s magnificent Mahabharata trilogy exploring the psychological quests of its characters. Ashok Banker started off a rediscovery of Indian myth as fiction with his Ramayana heptalogy. This stream has grown from a trickle in the late 1990s to a gushing river by 2015. What is particularly interesting is that now engineers and management executives are turning to this massive narrative heritage to create novels. Unfortunately, except for Krishna Udayasankar’s Aryavarta trilogy and Rajiv Menon’s Thundergod, the rest leave much to be desired in terms of language and style. Since most Indian publishers scrimp on editors, these flights of mythic fiction are riddled with errors of idiom, spelling and grammar. This is where Ramakrishna’s debut novel—the first of a trilogy—comes as a welcome surprise. A software architect with a doctorate in computer science from Carnegie-Mellon, reading him is a rare pleasure. He reimagines the events as occurring in 2000 BC. This is India north of the Vindhyas with a non-literate oral culture, bereft of iron, horses and chariots, with onager and cattle drawn carts, mud wattle cottages, bows, arrows and bronze weapons. There are no missiles, no aircraft, no huge gem-encrusted palaces and gleaming silken attire. But why are there no ornaments when archaeological evidence exists?

Beginning with the reminiscences of the dying Kuru patriarch Bhishma is not a new device. Pratibha Ray used it very dramatically, opening Yajnaseni with Draupadi’s life flashing before her dying eyes. In somewhat similar fashion, the dead Karna speaks to us in Shivaji Sawant’s Mrityunjaya. The Mahabharata is a series of extended flashbacks at several levels, beginning with Dhritarashtra’s plangent lament over past incidents that presaged no hope for victory—tada na shamse vijayaya sanjaya! However, Ramakrishna does start with a shock: Bhishma, ambushed by Shikhandin (his son by Amba), kills him and is shot by Arjun. Vengeful Amba drives the arrow deeper into him.

Ramakrishna creates the Kavi Sangha, a guild of bards, functioning as the memory of over 2000 matriarchal communities led by the Purus, trading with Mesopotamia, Persia and Egypt. Ramakrishna calls Egypt “Pitri-vihara-naad”, the land of temples to ancestors, although its original name still remains “Misra”, a mixed people, harking back to the Bhavishya Purana which speaks of sage Kashyapa with his son Misra going to that country and Brahminising the people. As the Sarasvati basin dried-up, the Purus migrated from Panchanad (Indus etc.) to the banks of the Yamuna and Ganga, establishing Hastinapur as a trading outpost to the east. In the process, they pushed out the slash-and-burn Naga culture and clashed with the hunter-gatherer Rakshasa tribes. A transition occurred from a matriarchal trading and forest-based life to a patriarchal urban society with an army of farmers. Ramakrishna is quite the geographer, drawing a clear picture of the how the changing courses of rivers brought about changes in prehistoric cultures. He is an ethnographer too, providing details of the matriarchal, matrilocal and matrilineal cultures at tedious length. He is also a linguist discoursing on the Phoenician alphabet used by the trading “Baoga” (Sanskritised “Bhargava”) and the development of a phonetic, metrical script (Sanskrit) by Vaishampayana, who is prejudiced against writing. He is persuaded to dictate the memorised archives to a Bhargava scribe, as narrated by Bhishma to the archivist Lomaharshana in the presence of the Vyasa named Shukla, Satyavati’s brother.

The problem is one of verisimilitude. Nowhere in Indian myth are the Nagas depicted as matriarchal. Ramakrishna could easily have kept to the original Nishada descent of Satyavati without any problem. The Nagas were an ethnic group living in and around the original kingdom of Yayati at Khandavprastha which the Pandavas reclaimed as Indraprastha. Ramakrishna creates a siege of this city by Suyodhan who cuts off the water supply, foolishly allowing the Pandavas to escape into the forest. He goes to great lengths to set up Bhishma as the dynast of a trading family who builds an army to establish a comity of communities along the Himalayan foothills against Saka inroads. The proposition may not be difficult to swallow for readers unfamiliar with the Mahabharata.

The Kavi Sangha’s chief is called “Vyasa”. Anachronistically, Ramakrishna makes Vasishtha and Vishvamitra precede Bhrigu as Vyasas. This guild functions as the Chanakya-like advisor to the ruler, imposing a one-child norm on migrants from Panchanad to the Kuru habitation and upon the Nagas who are the crop-growers. To set an example, Shantanu has to do away with all his sons from Ganga born after Devavrat. Ganga commits suicide in despair. Devavrat, though taken with Satyavati of the Meena-Nagas (also called “Matsya”), sacrifices his desires for his father’s sake. Satyavati’s brother Shukla spins the plot whereby her sons get the throne instead of Devavrat—an interesting twist. Another innovation is in the death of her son Chitrangad, rashly attacking marauding horse-riding Sakas. Ramakrishna paints a gruesome scene in which Devavrat, finding that the Sakas have blinded Chitrangad and torn out his tongue, secretly cuts his throat to spare him further agony and spreads the tale that he was killed by Gandharvas. Devavrat acquires the sobriquet “Bhishma—Terrible” because of his horrific torture of captured Saka families in revenge. From the Sakas he rescues the Naga maiden Amba, falls in love with her and brings her with her two sisters to Hastinapur. Satyavati constantly upstages her co-regent Bhishma, even forcing him to have the widowed queens live in his palace so that they imbibe the true Kuru aura, pleading that physicians have so advised! Bhishma is shown to be clueless about what was happening within the palace, always busy with constructing water-works and building an army to establish an empire. There is no mention of the levirate custom. Amba, driven away Satyavati when pregnant with Devavrat’s child, delivers Shikhandi among the Panchals, the traditional foes of the Kurus. Ramakrishna’s Panchals are a standing Naga army set up to tackle the rogue Naga band led by Takshaka. Draupadi is the matriarch of the Panchals, Krishnaa Agnijyotsna, the Dark Lady. Whatever happened to King Drupada and what is gained by naming Drona “Kutaja”?

Unaccountably, Ramakrishna makes Dhritarashtra the son of the younger Ambalika instead of Ambika, whose son he names Mahendra, called “Pandu” being an albino. Disagreeing with Bhishma’s policies, Mahendra exiles himself. Duryodhan repeatedly shouting “Shut up!” at his father jars because in the Mahabharata he does not insult Dhritarashtra, as he draws all his authority from him. The grand heroic scale of Devavrat’s vow is diminished drastically. There is an incongruous reference to the Roman deity Saturn as arbiter of fate on page 415.

The novel ends with Bhishma’s shock at discovering from the Vyasa Shukla that Dhritarashtra and Pandu were not of Vichitravirya’s blood, but are progeny of the son of Parashara, the earlier Vyasa, and Satyavati. This is a signal departure from the original where it is Bhishma who advises resorting to levirate by an eminent Brahmin and assents to Satyavati summoning her illegitimate son Vyasa. However, Ramakrishna’s insight is correct, that neither of the contending cousins had any Kuru blood in them. At least Dhritarashtra was Satyavati’s grandson, while the Pandavas are not her grandchildren, each having a different, unknown father. Thus, the Kavi Sangha, guild of bards, came to wrest the throne from the trading dynasty of Purus. Ramakrishna may have drawn inspiration from the Brahmin Pushyamitra Sunga wresting the throne of Pataliputra from his Mauryan master.

The book has an excellent map, a helpful family tree and a descriptive glossary of names. For a welcome change, there are practically no typos and the novel reads very well, except that it could have been tighter by omitting the excursions into geography, linguistics and ethnography which the appendices cover in detail. We certainly look forward to the sequels.

Indraprastha Revisited

By

Neera Misra, Rajesh Lal ed.: Indraprastha Revisited, B.R. Publishing Corporation, Delhi, 2017, pp. 264

The Draupadi Dream Trust founded and chaired by Smt. Neera Misra of Kampilya—Panchali’s birthplace—organized the first Indraprastha Festival in November 2016 to highlight the need for recovering and showcasing evidence of this millennia old city. Besides a performance of the Indonesian “Wayang Kulit” depicting how Indraprastha was built according to the legend in Bali, an international conference was held covering a variety of topics centred on Indraprastha. 23 of these papers have been published in this large format volume along with a host of sketches and plates that make it an important book for anyone interested in the heritage of ancient India.

There are several papers by eminent archaeologists led by their doyen Dr B.B. Lal who was the first to locate and excavate both Hastinapur (in Meerut district) and Indraprastha (in Purana Quila) 60 years back. Unfortunately, since then only desultory digging has taken place. So far nothing earlier than Painted Grey Ware pottery (around 1000 BCE) has been found at sites associated with the Mahabharata. It is puzzling why there is no reference to Dr. Gauri Lad’s thesis on the archaeology of the Mahabharata for which the renowned Dr. H.D. Sankali was the guide.

However, J.N. Ravi’s extremely valuable study of Balarama’s pilgrimage along the Sarasvati reveals the links that would have existed between Harappan culture along this river (e.g. Rakhigarhi, Bhirrana dated around 3000 to 2000 BCE), Hastinapur on the Yamuna and Indraprastha on the Ganga. That is why it is puzzling why no excavation has been carried out at Kurukshetra, the site of the bloodiest of all carnages where eleven armies were decimated. Surely some metal artefacts ought to turn up if there is any historical basis to the “itihasa”. Ravi’s paper unaccountably omits the tirthas named after the Vriddhakanya (old woman) who could attained Swarga only after marrying and the Kanya who went to heaven remaining a virgin throughout. The latter half of his paper is an excursion in Euhemerism with Yayati’s sons migrating to become Danaans, the Irish (Danavas), Avestans (Daityas), only missing out on linking Ila with Elam in ancient Iran! Acharya Chatursen had presented a far more evocative picture in his great Hindi novel, Vayam Rakshamah.

“Archaeo-astronomy” is a new term coined by those dating the Mahabharata war by using astronomical data from the text. This book exposes the mutually contradictory dates arrived at. Narhari Achar fixes it in 3067 BCE, along with precise dates for Draupadi’s birth, marriage and the lacquer house episode. As the editors have not provided the bibliography for his paper, the references cannot be verified. A.K. Bhatnagar decides upon 14 October 1793 BCE for the start of the war, besides fixing dates for Varanavat, Krishna’s embassy, the deaths of Bhishma, Drona, Karna and Duryodhan. Besides interpreting the same data differently, Koenraad Elst favours post-1900 BCE because the Sarasvati “must have” (?) dried up around that time and as S.R. Rao dates Dwarka to 1700-1500 BCE. They are all unaware of Dr. Sita Nath Pradhan’s research finding that the war occurred in 1150 BCE. Clearly, no firm date upon which twelve good people and true agree can emerge!

A.D. Mathur draws only upon the Shanti Parva for the principles of governance instead of linking it to what is found elsewhere, e.g. the Machiavellian advice Kunika tenders to Dhritarashtra for getting rid of the Pandavas, or the questions Narada puts to Yudhishthira at Indraprastha. Come Carpentier skips all over the immense span of comparative mythology, compares Indraprastha to Angkor and can come to no conclusion about the historicity of the city. In asserting the existence of copper weapons for the war he is mistaken as no such weapons have been found in any site of that antiquity in this region. Shashi Tiwari’s account of Kaliyuga dynasties with reference to Indraprastha is disappointing as it merely paraphrases Pargiter’s research instead of looking at the different findings of Sita Nath Pradhan in his Chronology of Ancient India (1927) and Kunwar Lal Jain’s Chronology of India in the Puranas (1993). She even mis-attributes a list of puranas to the Mahabharata. She assigns the last date for them to 7th century AD whereas the Bhavishya Purana includes references to the British, the Brahmavaivarta Purana is of the 16th century and the Linga and Shiva Puranas are 10th to 11th century. The most flagrant error is her assertion that Yudhishthira’s line ruled in Indraprastha whereas it is Arjuna’s dynasty that ruled in Hastinapura while Krishna’s great grandson Vajra (and his descendants?) ruled in Indraprastha. What the Kurukshetra War achieved was the establishment of the hegemony of the Yadavas in the heartland of Northern India. The bloodline of Puru/Kuru died with celibate Bhishma. Actually, even Kuru is not a Bharata by blood because King Bharata disinherited all his sons, adopted the Brahmin Bharadvaja re-naming him Vitatha and put him on the throne. It is this Brahmin’s lineage that ends with Bhishma.

There is an important paper by Chahan and Pachauri on the role NGOs and citizens can play in preserving and promoting our cultural heritage. This deserves wide dissemination for implementation. Renu Khanna contributes an architect’s vision with pictures on showcasing Indraprastha as a tourist destination. She refers to having studied “the detailed English illustration of the Mahabharata” which does not exist. The editors should have corrected this to “translation” and provided the reference.

Swapna Liddle’s paper is a valuable presentation of how local builders introduced traditional Hindu motifs even while constructing Muslim edifices, e.g. the Kirtimukha, the lotus and the water pot but did not adopt the true arch till 1280 (cf. Balban’s tomb). She shows a picture of the invocation to Vishvakarma and the name of the Hindu architect inscribed on the Qutub Minar. Unfortunately these fascinating aspects are not highlighted in the ASI plaques, although these provide excellent instances of communal harmony. Sudha Satyawadi contributes an illuminating paper on art and architecture in the Janapada period while Arundhati Dasgupta summarises how modern art depicts the Mahabharata. Rupali Yadav describes the dice-game scene in a mural of the Chattar Mahal of Kota Palace, Rajasthan. Unfortunately, the plate only shows the full mural with no enlargement showing the detail of Duryodhana consulting an astrologer. The editors should have ensured this.

Somnath Chakraverty writes on the ethnography of the epic. He draws upon B.S. Upadhyaya and H.D. Sankalia without citing the references and asserts that names of nagas are drawn from Assyrian kings and therefore they came from that region. Without citing any evidence he asserts that the Yadavas were from Western Asia and Iran. He also says that “there are enormous evidences” from Indus towns of serpent worship, again without supporting reference. It is disconcerting to find him claiming that rock art at Bhimbetka and elsewhere records “mass genocide and battle” that is replicated throughout India. While he states that these belong at least to the Gupta period if not earlier, actually rock art is dated much earlier (10,000 BCE at Bhimbetka).

Major General G.D. Bakshi’s paper on the geo-politics of that time is a superb analysis showing that the autocratic royalty banded together to crush the nascent “democratic” (actually oligarchic) government of the Yadavas. Krishna kept the Yadavas out of the war so that when the field was swept clear, they could take over Indraprastha under Krishna’s great grandson Vajra. Kritavarma’s son and the Bhoja women were given Marttikavat (unknown) while Satyaki’s son was settled on the banks of the Sarasvati, both nearby. K.T.S. Sarao’s very interesting paper describes little known data from Buddhist sources regarding Indraprastha, e.g. that Buddha’s razor and needle were deposited there and its ruler was Dhananjaya Koravya of the Yudhitthila gotra.

Several of the contributors make the common error—not expected from Indologists—of asserting that initially the Mahabharata consisted of only 8,800 verses. This is the number of riddling, knotty slokas Vyasa composed to gain time to compose more while Ganesh scratched his head trying to understand them. The “Jaya” version was 24,000 slokas without ancillary tales, which Vyasa expanded to several lakhs of which one lakh verses were recited to Janamejaya by Vaishampayana in his guru’s presence during the snake-sacrifice in Takshasila.

Neera Misra’s paper presents an overview of the archaeological and other data on the subject, most of which has been featured in individual papers. Hers is a fervent plea for opening up the Purana Quila site for displaying the excavations which ought to be taken further and making it a tourist destination. The editors should have added a line or two about each contributor instead of merely providing their e-mail addresses. The large number of colour plates and sketches of archaeological finds, maps and paintings make this volume a collector’s item. Hopefully the publication will stimulate excavations in key sites mentioned in the Mahabharata and lead to the setting up of a Mahabharata tourist circuit.

Pradip Bhattacharya