Mahabharata Vol. 6 (Penguin Translated Texts) (3 page)

The Mahabharata is much more real than
the Ramayana. And, therefore, much more fascinating. Every conceivable human emotion
figures in it, which is the reason why it is possible to identify with it even
today. The text itself states that what is not found in the Mahabharata, will not be
found anywhere else. Unlike the Ramayana, India is littered with real places that
have identifications with the Mahabharata. (Ayodhya or Lanka or Chitrakuta are
identifications that are less certain.) Kurukshetra, Hastinapura, Indraprastha,
Karnal, Mathura, Dvaraka, Gurgaon, Girivraja are real places: the list is endless.
In all kinds of unlikely places, one comes across temples erected by the Pandavas
when they were exiled to the forest. In some of these places, archaeological
excavations have substantiated the stories. The war for regional supremacy in the
Ganga–Yamuna belt is also a plausible one. The Vrishnis and the
Shurasenas (the Yadavas) are isolated, they have no clear
alliance (before the Pandavas) with the powerful Kurus. There is the powerful
Magadha kingdom under Jarasandha and Jarasandha had made life difficult for the
Yadavas. He chased them away from Mathura to Dvaraka. Shishupala of the Chedi
kingdom doesn’t like Krishna and the Yadavas either. Through Kunti,
Krishna has a matrimonial alliance with the Pandavas. Through Subhadra, the Yadavas
have another matrimonial alliance with the Pandavas. Through another matrimonial
alliance, the Pandavas obtain Drupada of Panchala as an ally. In the course of the
royal sacrifice, Shishupala and Jarasandha are eliminated. Finally, there is yet
another matrimonial alliance with Virata of the Matsya kingdom, through Abhimanyu.
When the two sides face each other on the field of battle, they are more than evenly
matched. Other than the Yadavas, the Pandavas have Panchala, Kashi, Magadha, Matsya
and Chedi on their side. The Kouravas have Pragjyotisha, Anga, Kekaya, Sindhu,
Avanti, Gandhara, Shalva, Bahlika and Kamboja as allies. At the end of the war, all
these kings are slain and the entire geographical expanse comes under the control of
the Pandavas and the Yadavas. Only Kripacharya, Ashvatthama and Kritavarma survive
on the Kourava side.

Reading the Mahabharata, one forms the
impression that it is based on some real incidents. That does not mean that a war on
the scale that is described took place. Or that miraculous weapons and chariots were
the norm. But there is such a lot of trivia, unconnected with the main story, that
their inclusion seems to serve no purpose unless they were true depictions. For
instance, what does the physical description of Kripa’s sister and
Drona’s wife, Kripi, have to do with the main story? It is also more real
than the Ramayana because nothing, especially the treatment of human emotions and
behaviour, exists in black and white. Everything is in shades of grey. The Uttara
Kanda of the Ramayana is believed to have been a later interpolation. If one
excludes the Uttara Kanda, we generally know what is good. We know who is good. We
know what is bad. We know who is bad. The Ramayana is like a clichéd
Bollywood film. This is never the case with the Mahabharata. However, a
qualification is necessary. Most of us are aware of the Mahabharata story because we
have read some
version or the other, typically an abridged one.
Every abridged version simplifies and condenses, distills out the core story. And in
doing that, it tends to paint things in black and white, fitting everything into the
mould of good and bad. The Kouravas are bad. The Pandavas are good. And good
eventually triumphs. The unabridged Mahabharata is anything but that. It is much
more nuanced. Duryodhana isn’t invariably bad. He is referred to as
Suyodhana as well, and not just by his father. History is always written from the
point of view of the victors. While the Mahabharata is generally laudatory towards
the Pandavas, there are several places where the text has a pro-Kourava stance.
There are several places where the text has an anti-Krishna stance. That’s
yet another reason why one should read an unabridged version, so as not to miss out
on these nuances. Take the simple point about inheritance of the kingdom.
Dhritarashtra was blind. Consequently, the king was Pandu. On Pandu’s
death, who should inherit the kingdom? Yudhishthira was the eldest among the
brothers. (Actually, Karna was, though it didn’t become known until
later.) We thus tend to assume that the kingdom was Yudhishthira’s by
right, because he was the eldest. (The division of the kingdom into two, Hastinapura
and Indraprastha, is a separate matter.) But such primogeniture was not universally
clear. A case can also be established for Duryodhana, because he was
Dhritarashtra’s son. If primogeniture was the rule, the eldest son of the
Pandavas was Ghatotkacha, not Abhimanyu. Before both were killed, Ghatotkacha should
have had a claim to the throne. However, there is no such suggestion anywhere. The
argument that Ghatotkacha was the son of a rakshasa or demon will not wash. He never
exhibited any demonic qualities and was a dutiful and loving son. Karna saved up a
weapon for Arjuna and this was eventually used to kill Ghatotkacha. At that time, we
have the unseemly sight of Krishna dancing around in glee at Ghatotkacha being
killed.

In the Mahabharata, because it is
nuanced, we never quite know what is good and what is bad, who is good and who is
bad. Yes, there are degrees along a continuum. But there are no watertight and neat
compartments. The four objectives of human existence are dharma, artha, kama and
moksha. Etymologically, dharma is
that which upholds. If one
goes by the Bhagavad Gita, pursuit of these four are also transient diversions.
Because the fundamental objective is to transcend these four, even moksha. Within
these four, the Mahabharata is about a conflict of dharma. Dharma has been reduced
to
varnashrama
dharma, according to the four classes (
varna
s) and
four stages of life (
ashrama
s). However, these are collective
interpretations of dharma, in the sense that a Kshatriya in the
garhasthya
(householder) stage has certain duties. Dharma in the Mahabharata is individual too.
Given an identical situation, a Kshatriya in the garhasthya stage might adopt a
course of action that is different from that adopted by another Kshatriya in the
garhasthya stage, and who is to judge what is wrong and what is right? Bhishma
adopted a life of celibacy. So did Arjuna, for a limited period. In that stage of
celibacy, both were approached by women who had fallen in love with them. And if
those desires were not satisfied, the respective women would face difficulties, even
death. Bhishma spurned the advance, but Arjuna accepted it. The conflict over dharma
is not only the law versus morality conflict made famous by Krishna and Arjuna in
the Bhagavad Gita. It pervades the Mahabharata, in terms of a conflict over two
different notions of dharma. Having collectively married Droupadi, the Pandavas have
agreed that when one of them is closeted with Droupadi, the other four will not
intrude. And if there is such an instance of intrusion, they will go into
self-exile. Along comes a Brahmana whose cattle have been stolen by thieves.
Arjuna’s weapons are in the room where Droupadi and Yudhishthira are.
Which is the higher dharma? Providing succour to the Brahmana or adhering to the
oath? Throughout the Mahabharata, we have such conflicts, with no clear normative
indications of what is wrong and what is right, because there are indeed no absolute
answers. Depending on one’s decisions, one faces the consequences and this
brings in the unsolvable riddle of the tension between free will and determinism,
the so-called karma concept. The boundaries of philosophy and religion blur.

These conflicts over dharma are easy to
identify with. It is easy to empathize with the protagonists, because we face such
conflicts every day. That is precisely the reason why the Mahabharata is read
even today. And the reason one says every conceivable human
emotion figures in the story. Everyone familiar with the Mahabharata has thought
about the decisions taken and about the characters. Why was life so unfair to Karna?
Why was Krishna partial to the Pandavas? Why didn’t he prevent the war?
Why was Abhimanyu killed so unfairly? Why did the spirited and dark Droupadi, so
unlike the Sita of the Ramayana, have to be humiliated publicly?

It is impossible to pinpoint when and how
my interest in the Mahabharata started. As a mere toddler, my maternal grandmother
used to tell me stories from
Chandi
, part of the Markandeya Purana. I still
vividly recollect pictures from her copy of
Chandi
: Kali licking the demon
Raktavija’s blood. Much later, in my early teens, at school in Ramakrishna
Mission, Narendrapur, I first read the Bhagavad Gita, without understanding much of
what I read. The alliteration and poetry in the first chapter was attractive enough
for me to learn it by heart. Perhaps the seeds were sown there. In my late teens, I
stumbled upon Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s
Krishna Charitra
,
written in 1886. Bankimchandra was not only a famous novelist, he was a brilliant
essayist. For a long time,
Krishna Charitra
was not available other than in
Bengali. It has now been translated into English, but deserves better dissemination.
A little later, when in college, I encountered Buddhadeb Bose’s
Mahabharater Katha
. That was another brilliant collection of essays,
first serialized in a magazine and then published as a book in 1974. This too was
originally in Bengali, but is now available in English. Unlike my sons, my first
exposure to the Mahabharata story came not through television serials but comic
books. Upendrakishore Raychowdhury’s Mahabharata (and Ramayana) for
children was staple diet, later supplanted by Rajshekhar Basu’s abridged
versions of both epics, written for adults. Both were in Bengali. In English, there
was Chakravarti Rajagopalachari’s abridged translation, still a perennial
favourite. Later, Chakravarthi Narasimhan’s selective unabridged
translation gave a flavour of what the Mahabharata actually contained. In Bengal,
the Kashiram Das version of the Mahabharata,
written in the
seventeenth century, was quite popular. I never found this appealing. But in the
late 1970s, I stumbled upon a treasure. Kolkata’s famous College Street
was a storehouse of old and secondhand books in those days. You never knew what you
would discover when browsing. In the nineteenth century, an unabridged translation
of the Mahabharata had been done in Bengali under the editorship of Kaliprasanna
Singha (1840–70). I picked this up for the princely sum of Rs 5. The year
may have been 1979, but Rs 5 was still amazing. This was my first complete reading
of the unabridged version of the Mahabharata. This particular copy probably had
antiquarian value. The pages would crumble in my hands and I soon replaced my
treasured possession with a republished reprint. Not longer after, I acquired the
Aryashastra version of the Mahabharata, with both the Sanskrit and the Bengali
together. In the early 1980s, I was also exposed to three Marathi writers writing on
the Mahabharata. There was Iravati Karve’s
Yuganta
. This was
available in both English and in Marathi. I read the English one first, followed by
the Marathi. The English version isn’t an exact translation of the Marathi
and the Marathi version is far superior. Then there was Durga Bhagwat’s
Vyas Parva
. This was in Marathi and I am not aware of an English
translation. Finally, there was Shivaji Sawant’s
Mritunjaya
, a
kind of autobiography for Karna. This was available both in English and in
Marathi.

In the early 1980s, quite by chance, I
encountered two shlokas, one from Valmiki’s Ramayana, the other from
Kalidasa’s
Meghadutam
. These were two poets separated by anything
between 500 to 1,000 years, the exact period being an uncertain one. The shloka in
Meghadutam
is right towards the beginning, the second shloka to be
precise. It is the first day in the month of Ashada. The yaksha has been cursed and
has been separated from his beloved. The mountains are covered with clouds. These
clouds are like elephants, bent down as if in play. The shloka in the Valmiki
Ramayana occurs in Sundara Kanda. Rama now knows that Sita is in Lanka. But the
monsoon stands in the way of the invasion. The clouds are streaked with flags of
lightning and garlanded with geese. They are like mountain peaks and are thundering,
like elephants fighting. At that time, I did not
know that
elephants were a standard metaphor for clouds in Sanskrit literature. I found it
amazing that two different poets separated by time had thought of elephants. And
because the yaksha was pining for his beloved, the elephants were playing. But
because Rama was impatient to fight, the elephants were fighting. I resolved that I
must read all this in the original. It was a resolution I have never regretted. I
think that anyone who has not read
Meghadutam
in Sanskrit has missed out on
a thing of beauty that will continue to be a joy for generations to come.

In the early 1980s, Professor Ashok
Rudra was a professor of economics in Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan. I used to teach
in Presidency College, Kolkata, and we sometimes met. Professor Rudra was a
left-wing economist and didn’t think much of my economics. I dare say the
feeling was reciprocated. By tacit agreement, we never discussed economics. Instead,
we discussed Indological subjects. At that point, Professor Rudra used to write
essays on such subjects in Bengali. I casually remarked, ‘I want to do a
statistical test on the frequency with which the five Pandavas used various weapons
in the Kurukshetra war.’ Most sensible men would have dismissed the
thought as crazy. But Professor Rudra wasn’t sensible by usual norms of
behaviour and he was also a trained statistician. He encouraged me to do the paper,
written and published in Bengali, using the Aryashastra edition. Several similar
papers followed, written in Bengali. In 1983, I moved to Pune, to the Gokhale
Institute of Politics and Economics, a stone’s throw away from BORI.
Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute
(
ABORI
)
is one of the most respected journals in Indology. Professor G.B. Palsule was then
the editor of
ABORI
and later went on to become Director of BORI. I
translated one of the Bengali essays into English and went and met Professor
Palsule, hoping to get it published in
ABORI
. To Professor
Palsule’s eternal credit, he didn’t throw the dilettante out.
Instead, he said he would get the paper refereed. The referee’s
substantive criticism was that the paper should have been based on the critical
edition, which is how I came to know about it. Eventually, this paper (and a few
more) were published in
ABORI
. In 1989, these became a book titled
Essays on the Ramayana and the Mahabharata
, published
when the Mahabharata frenzy had reached a peak on television.
The book got excellent reviews, but hardly sold. It is now out of print. As an
aside, the book was jointly dedicated to Professor Rudra and Professor Palsule, a
famous economist and a famous Indologist respectively. Both were flattered. However,
when I gave him a copy, Professor Rudra said, ‘Thank you very much. But
who is Professor Palsule?’ And Professor Palsule remarked,
‘Thank you very much. But who is Professor Rudra?’