Mahabharata: A Modern Retelling (93 page)

The proportionality that Satyamurti is able to maintain follows largely from her strategies and decisions at the level of craft. For one, she pays close attention to the poetic organization of the
Mahabharata
. She keeps all 18 major books in her version, but she treats them astutely as “accordion structures” that can be expanded and compressed to fit narrative exigencies; she represents the minor books as “chapters,” and reduces their number to 60. Each of her chapters corresponds to one or more minor books and, within its framework, she carefully selects the characters, episodes, stories, and themes that will advance the narrative effectively. For whatever she chooses to highlight in a chapter, she usually combines detailed narration with condensation and précis to keep up the proportionality between retelling and original. Her poem is only one-twelfth the size of the
Mahabharata
, but it still gives us a detailed and balanced picture of the whole.

For another input at the level of craft, Satyamurti brings extraordinary discipline and inventiveness to her versification. Unlike the
Iliad
and the
Odyssey
, each of which is composed uniformly in a single meter, the
Mahabharata
is a composite poem in Sanskrit. In its critical edition, the text contains 73,821 numbered units; almost 99.5 percent of these are in verse, while 385 of them are prose passages, the latter being distributed over 12 “cantos” in 6 minor books. Of the 73,436 units in verse, 4,426 are composed in meters belonging to the
trishtubh
class, whereas 68,858 verses are in meters of the
anushtubh
class. The common form of this last category is the
shloka
, which consists of 32 syllables arranged in two equal “lines,” each divided at its midpoint by a caesura; structurally, we can view the
shloka
as either a couplet (with 16 syllables per line) or a quatrain (with 8 syllables per line). In Sanskrit, a “verse” is syntactically closed, so it ends in a period; the end of a “line” coincides with a syntactic break, and hence coincides with the end either of a clause or of a sentence; and a caesura within a line, whether in a symmetrical or an asymmetrical position, coincides with the end either of a phrase or of a clause but not of a sentence. The short and long pauses around the middle and at the end of a line, and the long pause at the end of a verse, reinforce the rhythm arising from the metrical pattern, which gives the verse an incantatory or lyrical quality. One consequence is that, whenever a Sanskrit text composed in verse is delivered orally, it is not merely recited or read aloud, it is either chanted or sung. The conceptions involved here, especially of lyricism, differ from those in a language such as English, because Sanskrit verse forms do not require end rhyme or internal rhyme. The convention of chanting and singing applies as much to a short poem, a ritual mantra, and a philosophical treatise, as to an epic. Given the general prosodic features of Sanskrit, and given that the bulk of its text (about 75 percent) is composed in the
shloka
verse form, the
Mahabharata
appears to graft a “lyrical” texture onto a metrically variable narrative of massive size.

Satyamurti makes no attempt to reproduce or even approximate this system of versification, which is impossible in any case because of fundamental differences in phonology, syllabification, and prosody. Instead, she chooses boldly to invigorate English blank verse, developing a flexible line of nine to eleven syllables, with an average of five stresses. She brings it forward into the twenty-first century, not only by reducing its mechanical quality, but specifically by blending its metrical pattern with the syntax and vocabulary of contemporary “middle diction.” Satyamurti’s blank verse avoids poeticisms as well as archaisms, syntactic inversions as well as semantic simplifications, without becoming prosy or prosaic. Her sentences flow smoothly through enjambments and shifting caesuras, providing a medium for the narrative that is both transparent and dynamic—as amenable to the conversation of the gods and the fury of battle, as to philosophical disquisition, theological debate, deathbed speech, domestic vignette, emotional outburst, and evocation of landscape. A light and elastic surface of this kind stands in contrast to the
Mahabharata
’s verbal texture, but it is the ideal vehicle in English for a multiplex narrative that stretches out to 27,000 lines. It transports us back to a past that is cut off from us, as in an epic, but it also brings that past alive, here and now, as though it were a novel in finely crafted verse.

___________

1
. Robert Lowell,
Imitations
(1961; New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990), p. 68

2
. Detailed information on the epic’s textual history, print publication, and critical edition appears in the general introduction to
The Mahabharata
, vol. 1:
The Book of the Beginning
, translated and edited by J. A. B. van Buitenen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), pp. xiii–xliv; see especially pp. xxiii–xxxix.

3
. J. J. Clarke,
Oriental Enlightenment: An Encounter between Asian and Western Thought
(New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 58–59 and 85.

4
. On classical arguments and his own position, see Ramanujan’s “Repetition in the
Mahabharata
,” in
The Collected Essays of A. K. Ramanujan
, edited by Vinay Dharwadker (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 161–83, especially p. 163.

5
. V. S. Sukthankar et al., Critical Edition of the
Mahabharata
, 21 vols. (Poona, Maharashtra, India: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1919–69). The edition includes 18 volumes for the 18
parvan
s, 2 volumes for the
Harivamsha
, and 1 volume for the critical apparatus. The editors consulted 1,259 manuscripts, and processed over 89,000 verses attributed to the epic.

6
. The case for multiple authors of the
Mahabharata
is made in van Buitenen, op. cit., “Introduction.”

7
. Aristotle,
Poetics
, edited and translated by Stephen Halliwell, Loeb Classical Library 199 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 47–55.

8
. Manomohan Ghosh, trans.,
The Natyashastra
, vol. 1: chaps. 1–27 (Calcutta: Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1950). Plot and emplotment are covered in Chapter 21, pp. 380–400. Ghosh’s translation is unfortunately opaque on this topic; my overview uses the Sanskrit text.

9
. “The language of the gods” translates an ancient epithet for Sanskrit as a sacred medium.

10
. See M. M. Bakhtin,
Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays
, edited by Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), pp. 426–27.

11
. Bakhtin, ibid., pp. 13–14.

Acknowledgments

In approaching the
Mahabharata
as a non-specialist, I have, throughout, had the benefit of advice from Dr. Simon Brodbeck, Sanskrit scholar and Reader in the School of History, Archaeology and Religion at Cardiff University (UK). Many specialists would have been dismissive of an attempt by a non-Sanskritist to render the epic for the general reader. Simon’s support for the project has been unwavering, and the value to me of his expert and detailed knowledge and deep understanding of the epic is impossible to overstate. He was unfailingly tolerant of my errors and wrong turnings, and generous in sending me useful articles, referring me to others, and lending me books. His own books and articles on aspects of the
Mahabharata
were among the most illuminating. I cannot thank him enough. Needless to say, any errors are mine alone.

I am extremely grateful to Professor Vinay Dharwadker of the Department of Languages and Cultures of Asia, University of Wisconsin-Madison, for his positive and scholarly response to the way I have attempted to render the
Mahabharata
; for his suggestions for improvement; for his very interesting Afterword; and for his help with ancillary materials, including the Glossary.

The team at Norton has done a wonderful job in producing a beautiful-looking book. My editor, Jill Bialosky, has been of immense help over the years it has taken me to complete it. I am grateful to her for her confidence in the project, her patience, and for her steady hand on the tiller, steering it through the publication process. Her colleagues, Rebecca Schultz and Angie Shih, have also been a great support. My copyeditor, Amy Robbins, did remarkable work on my enormous typescript, combining meticulousness with sensitivity. I very much appreciate her contribution.

Many thanks to the following friends and relations who read and commented on parts of the text, and whose response was encouraging: David Black, Robert Chandler, Patrick Early, Judy Gahagan, Mimi Khalvati, John Mole, Vaughan Pilikian, James Redmond, Emma Satyamurti, Manou Shama-Levy, Nancy and Al Stepan, Gregory Warren Wilson, and Martin Wilkinson.

I particularly want to thank Susanne Ehrhardt for her careful reading of my entire text, for her detailed comments and suggestions, and for her enthusiasm.

Thanks are due to the editors of
Modern Poetry in Translation, New Walk
, and
Poetry Review
, in which sections of this work have appeared.

I am grateful to Arts Council England for a grant which enabled me to concentrate on this project.

Genealogies

GENEALOGY ONE

The Older Generations

Simplified lines of descent for important characters spanning nine generations preceding the Pandavas and Kauravas, with characters only in six generations shown selectively. Each dotted line represents a marriage or sexual relationship; each continuous line descends from biological parents to offspring. More than one dotted line leading from or to a name indicates more than one relationship for that person; multiple relationships may be serial or simultaneous.

Parashara and Satyavati engender Vyasa before Satyavati becomes Shantanu’s queen and engenders Chitrangada (not shown) and Vichitravirya with the latter; Shantanu engenders Bhishma with Ganga before marrying Satyavati. Thus, both Bhishma and Vyasa, in that chronological order, are Vichitravirya’s elder half-brothers from different parents. Vichitravirya marries two sisters, Ambika and Ambalika, but dies without producing children. Satyavati, his mother and queen, then invokes the “law of levirate” to continue the royal line. Bhishma cannot participate because he has taken a vow of celibacy; so Vyasa steps in, and fathers Dhritarashtra upon the elder widow, Ambika, and Pandu upon the younger, Ambalika. Ancient Hindu levirate broadly resembles biblical levirate, as in Deuteronomy 25.

GENEALOGY TWO

The Younger Generations

Lines of descent for select characters in six generations, with two generations preceding and three generations succeeding the Pandavas and Kauravas. Each dotted line represents a marriage or sexual relationship; each solid line connects biological parents to offspring. More than one dotted line leading from or to a name indicates more than one relationship for that person; multiple relationships may be serial or simultaneous.

Dhritarashtra is in a monogamous marriage with Gandhari, whereas Pandu is in a bigamous marriage with Kunti (elder wife) and Madri; both families, however, have difficulty procreating. Gandhari, in a single supernatural pregnancy, conceives and gives birth to 101 children, of whom Duryodhana is chronologically the first. Kunti invokes three gods to father three biological sons, whereas Madri invokes twin gods to produce two; after Pandu’s and Madri’s deaths, Kunti raises the Pandavas as a widow.

Draupadi is married polyandrously to all five Pandavas simultaneously. In the course of that marriage, Bhima also marries the metamorphosing female demon Hidinbaa; with her, he fathers Ghatotkacha, who is raised in the Pandava household. While in the polyandrous marriage with Draupadi, Arjuna also polygamously marries and has children with other women (not all shown). Among the latter is Subhadra, Krishna’s biological sister, with whom Arjuna has Abhimanyu. When the young Abhimanyu is killed in the war at Kurukshetra, his bride Uttaraa is pregnant with Parikshit, who inherits the Pandava kingdom later, and passes it on to his own biological son, Janamejaya.