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Introduction (Samīkṣikā Series II: Text and Variation of the Mahābhārata [Samiksika Series II: Text and Variations of the ])

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The Samlksika Series is aimed at compiling the papers presented by the various scholars during the seminars organized by the National Mission for Manuscripts. The seminars provide an interactive forum for scholars to present to a large audience, ideas related to the knowledge contained in India’s textual heritage. In keeping with the title, the Samlksika (research) Series is concerned with research papers of distinguished scholars and specialists in different intellectual disciplines of India. Text and Variations of the Mahabharata: Contextual, Regional and Performative Traditions

Edited by Kalyan Kumar Chakravarty

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National Mission for Manuscripts Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd. Introduction Kalyan Kumar Chakravarty

The present volume delves into the textual, oral, visual and performing arts traditions of the Mahabharata in its ecumenical, classical versions and regional interpretations, in India and Southeast Asia, and in subaltern reconstructions. It is an exercise in locating the ways in which the Mahabharata has been understood in different places and times, and the manner in which it has endowed diverse community traditions with life, vibration and meaning. A quest for values underlies and underwrites the discourses, presented in this volume. In the Purusarthacatustaya or the quadriga o f human values, celebrated in the Mahabharata, artha and kama, wealth and pleasure, constitute the empirical pair. It is geared to the spiritual pair o f dharma and moksa, discharge o f spiritual, moral and social rria, debt, to devas, rsis and pitrs, Gods, sages and ancestors. It is the road to the summum bonum of moksa or liberation. It is a search for the bliss o f communion and not a hedonistic pursuit of sensual pleasure. The reflective consciousness discriminating between sreyas from preyas, characterizes this search, and this is the subject o f discourse in Santiparvan (D. Prahladachar). The wealth gathered by nyaya, legitimate means, is the essence of Rajadharm a or royal code of conduct in both Tuladhara Javali samvada in the Mahabharata as well as in the Arthasastra. The pursuit of material wellbeing is not divorced from spiritual wellbeing. Wealth garnered without performing ddna, yajna, saddcdra, veda or satya, gift, sacrifice, good conduct, knowledge or truth, is sterile. The tantrayukti section o f the Arthasastra is concerned with human subsistence in the mannsyavafibhumi, human habitat This is a£cep$e

.. ij^L ' Vr.rton *e in warheroic sustains Spirit lokayatm,iS Cm the f “,fcollective attribute<* pursuit Sanatoria dhama, the traditional ethical order. This is svnonvmous with the human engagement with the eternal ethic of satya. dama, tapa, sauca, santosa, hn, ksama, arjava, mam, sama, data and dhydna, truth, self control, penance, purity satietv, modestv, forgiveness, energy, wisdom, patience, compassion and meditation. Dharma is not inflexible or monolithic but flexible, adapted to the diverse circumstances of life. (Satkari Mukhopadhyaya) The teacher of music is, therefore, hailed in the Mahabharata for leading the student to sreyas, moksa, to goodness and liberation. A bh&vo.jfui, a master o f meanings and expressions, he is completed by the right audience of rasikas, sdmdjikas and viTJUiTsohos, knowledgeable about flavours of emotions, rules of social interaction and discriminative reflection. He is made whole by students fulfilling jdti dharma and kulacara, the code of conduct, appropriate to their social niche and lineage. He is not a trader in learning but a saindy person. He rejects superfluous causes, and reconciles contradictory texts. He applies general principles to particular cases, and refers contraries to different situations. He does not discriminate between students of noble birth and quality. He teaches them to concern themselves with what is before them and to act on what they should. (Leela Omcherry) The Mahabharata tradition is complex and not monolithic in its pursuit of Purusarthas. This is evident from the besetting preoccupation with the element of the tragic in the demonic other, in the performance of Karnamoksam in the Kataikuttu tradition in South India, in a kind of a sacrificial rite, which celebrates the possession of Kama by the demonic quality of Tanasura or Naraka, and condemns him to play a role on the wrong side of dharma, and destroy himself, in full consciousness of his fate. (Hanne M de Bruin). v f r atin!iyaka’ ^ e anti hero, is celebrated in Bhasa’s and also in Kutiyattam and Kathakali theatre in , ' actor as an interpreter and narrator invokes war as the ultimate victor, death as the hero, which brings out Introduction love and innocence in the heart, hardened against theie Face to fete with death, Duryodhana knows the value of maternal low for the First time. The purua pak$a or prologue o f the Mahabharata is completed by Harivarhsa, which provides tfpwteaya sukha, felicity, bom o f destruction of desires, as the epilogue. The demonic force is also celebrated in the depic­ tion of Draupadi as a warrior goddess, VirapancM. Draupadi is both Devi and Dayan in Muslim regional epics. (K.G.Paulose). The relentless working o f the tragic flaw leads human beings to spurn salvation, refuses to belong to one another, or to God. It compels them to play out their destiny to a bitter and abortive end. The heroic batde between the good and evil, the dissolution of dreams in dust and ashes, provide the titanic scale, complexity and poignancy to the Mahabharata characters. The depiction o f Draupadi by Mallika Sarabhai or Shaoli Mitra, or the cinematic and theatrical presentations by B.R. Chopra and Rahi Masoom Raza have, while Peter Brooks’s film lacks, this tragic grandeur. The epic is thus read as relevant to the hour, not in terms o f a remembered past, a projected future, but o f a present, when the best lack all convictions, the worst are full of passionate intensity, and only an anguished cry can be raised about the eternal indifference to the voice of dharma. (Pradip Bhattacharya) The volume has also described the indexical dislocation, symbolic inversion and subversion, ruptures, discontinuities and pluralities, articulated in vernacular versions of the epic. Female liberty has been associated with tribal matrilineal and liminal patriarchal traditions o f Kuru Pancala Janapada outside the metropolitan centres o f Madhyadesa. Women are en tided to moksa only after performing the kama samskara, the rites o f love. In svayamvara, the women are the price of manly valour, vtrya sulka. (Shalini Shah) On the other hand, the Bheel Bharath describes the primal quality o f sexual longing and the radiant celebration o f sex without any moral tamt or tirade in a vivid account o f the disgrace o f Aijuna and rape of Draupadi by Vasuki Naga. The aggressive courtship of Arjuna by women, the dalliance of Radha with Kfsna, disguised as a bangle seller, are described without any prudish criticism. Gariga dominates Santanu. Kuntl is bom o f Sakti, Introduction jdv „ Draupadi invites all the wives o f aureoled i n awesome g ^ iy ^ g p ^ jn a poses as a ja la y o g im , Ariuna to a feast. The aK$a K r which cannot be taken avraywi*drat s ££££ ^ ^ doing so with the searing sages and chides something to etch their art work

m l looks t e « « . * » ' >« « * J1* 2 S - « - * The, » . neither » » ! ^ « d e p m * n « on men nor are they neurotically self critical, (batya

C In th^Mewati Mahabharata o f the tribal pastoral Meo Muslims, the narrator performer, the Mirashi singer, invokes Goddess BhavanI along with Ustad and Allah, for inspiration, so that they can please the ptiriya audience, and make them rdji or agreeable. There is a debate between Guru Gorakh and disciple Augad, the voice respectively of orthodoxy and modernity, about the legitimate role of women, as courtesans or ascetics. Gorakhnath or Puran Bhagat gives fertility to barren Gangadhar and Kunta, makes the garden green and fills the lake with water. (Shail Mayaram). Draupadi Amma, Gandhari Amma are worshipped by depressed classes in Tamil Nadu. In the Aravan festival, transvestites and hermaphrodites celebrate the birth of Aravan from the loins of Aijuna and snake woman Ulupi. Kr?na spends a night with Aravan, assuming feminine form. Alii Arasani Malai learns martial arts in a Gurukula, and wins back the Pandyan kingdom in war. She punishes the love simtten Duryodana, and parades him in the street, nailed on a ladder. She is reluctant to submit to Aijuna, who seduces ^ , yPnotlz^s her in the guise of a Sanyasi, a transvestite, a o T L r f . passi0n and rolls on her “like a mustard Z r l j ! 7 ™ ’ a bee on a flower.” A variant of Ariuna and of n Pnn“ ss Pavazhakkodi, who is seduced by conceived firm?1*6^ 1 erar‘ls’' ”dr’ daughter o f Purushan Devi, ^nka. (Vijaya R^la^ a 5 ried ** “ fr°m SH of folk M ^ a b h a ^ L s °Unterf l!jtura!’ transgTessive traditions ’ nursed by Naths, Bairagis, Yogis and Introduction xv

Satpant Ismailis in the twelfth or thirteenth c., or by the Meo Muslims in the eighteenth c., have also been celebrated in the volume. The Pandun brothers are depicted as pastoral brothers in the Mewati Mahabharata, the Pandun Ka Kara, the war of the Pandins and Kairus. They challenge exclusive Rajput claims to authority and set out for a kingdom without authoritarian kingship. The Meo Muslims come from the untouchable Dhadhi subcaste, and sing the Mahabharata in dohas, in the popular Rajasthani Dingal Apabhramsa. They claim to be Joduvamshis and have been in constant conflict with the centralizing Muslim, Jat, Rajput and British kingdoms in the area between Vraja and Kuruksetra. Satyavadi Rdjans are hailed for royal rectitude, for acting as fences to protect the fields, their domains. (Shail Mayaram) The transgressive nature of the regional texts is also articulated in the close connection of the floral and faunal in the human world. The search for the rhino by Aijuna, Pandu’s birth as a street dog, birth of KuntI and Gandhari from a dead eagle, in Bheel Bharath, the overwhelming dominance o f Vasuki Naga, over Aijuna and DraupadI, the birth o f Alii in a flower, the entry of Aijuna into the Alli’s apartment in the guise o f a snake, are examples. (Satya Chaitanya) The episode of shadow piercing or Nilalkkuttu is adapted, in the Adiparvan performance of the older Malayalam work, Thirunilamald, and from oral pottos, dttakathas and Kurumba and Pana aboriginal songs. The local folk and tribal traditions provide background to the atavistic shamanistic description o f deviant abhicdra and counterabhicara rituals, used to put the Pandavas to sleep, or to revive them, in classical Malayalam theatre performances. (A. Purushothaman and A. Harindra- nath) The volume also describes the journey of the Mahabharata to Southeast Asia and East Asia through Buddhist jdtakasy avadanas, legends, and its mutations in local folklore and myth. In the process o f this diffusion, the epic is installed, taught, sculpted and recited, in the temples of Kampuchea. Eighteenth, ninteenth centuries Thai works deal with the story o f and Usha. The rhythm, culture and grace xvi Introduction

fthf> eoics are transmitted through purvds, kakaviru, specially L Rglivin Bharatayuddha, and parvans in Indonesia, the Z y Z m u performed by ritual D ating artists and Gamelan Z?hestra There are parallels to the epic stones in Chinese Z d Mongolian versions. (Lokesh Chandra) In the inscriptions, T l Kinffs and heroes are equated with Visnu, Siva and Buddha r. their life and work. The recitation o f the epics is seen as contributory to royal victory and prosperity. Japanese KabuU drama tells the story o f Rsyasrriga, renamed as Ekasrriga. The theme of giant Vakasura and its Japanese counterpart Shutenboji, the story o f UrvashI and Sakuntala and the fairy maiden Hagoramo in Japanese Noh play also show the links. The dialogical style o f discourse is shared by Korean and Zen Buddhism with the epic, specially for solving riddles on practical problems. (Anita Khanna) The volume describes the preliminary step, taken for preparing a critical edition to understand the epic philology in terms o f the drsta path to the mantras visualized; the sruta path for retrieval o f orality; krta path for reaching the core through various readings, via heuristics, recensio, emendations and higher criticism; and the prokta path o f reconciliation of diverse readings. (Vasant Kumar Bhatt) There is also an attempt, in the manner o f Western scholarship, to examine the epic threadbare, in terms o f melopoiia, melody, lexis, direction, opsis, spectacle, mythos, plot, ethos, characters and setting, dianoia, concepts, following the tradition, inaugurated in Aristode’s Poetics. (Mehta 1990)1 There is a discussion on the methodology adopted for preparing a critical, definitive and consensual edition of the Mahabharata for the first time by the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute under the general editorship of V.N. Sukhtankar. In this exercise, begun in 1925,1300 manuscripts have been examined by 1966. It has been established that both the southern and northern recensions and their eight versions in diverse scripts are independent copies o f a single text, transmitted orally. In this critical edition, the most common, mutually agreeable denominators have been rought together with a preference for the least tampere Kashmir version. Solecisms considered original have been Introduction xvii

preserved. Reading* adjudged different and timetested interpolations have been included in the footnotes and appendix. In this manner, contradictions generated in oral transmission have been respected instead o f resorting to the vulgate or the best text available. (M.A. Mehendale) In the process of this philological exercise, the attempt to strip Draupadi has been detected as apocryphal, added by later redactors. The evidence for this is considered to be minimal, inconclusive and contradictory, in the absence o f any allusion in any Purana, including the Bhagavata, Harivamsa or post Mahabharata plays. The story is considered to be an interpolation, even in the critical edition. (Pradip Bhattacharya). Use o f modern technology, including speech recognition, minimization o f data entry, alignment o f data with original manuscripts, conversion o f data base format, word or phrase level search, highlighting o f the images, collation o f readings, generation o f reports, retrieval, mark up and publishing have been discussed for deciphering, editing, indexing, searching and preparing a concordance o f texts on the epic, along with other Vedic texts. The electronic and statistical surveys o f the subjunctive forms o f the epic have been seen as being outside the epic verbal system. As such, slokas, violative o f Pingala’s provisions, are being analyzed, in terms o f digital philology, on an interactive global platform. The affinities and differences are being read as e-texts. Formulaic and grammatical patterns are being used to trace the bardic epic. A biological phylogenetic analysis o f various approaches to the epic is being undertaken for similar and dissimilar manuscript readings. (P. Ramanujan) A discussion o f the variant meanings o f the Mahabharata has been undertaken, in the attempt to penetrate the historical layers and reach the core text. The epic has been read as an account o f the defeat o f virtuous Siva worshipping Kauravas by Vaisnava Pandavas; an eschatology of creation and destruction, played out by Visnu and Siva; a war between Gods and demons; a solar drama, telescoping natural phenomena into a mythic format; an intra tribal or anti conflict; a conspectus for a social organization, based on a dual, Ipdp Introduction xviii * historical event; an Indo European myth Iranian P ^ ’^^re-Vedic. Vcdic and para Vedi’ transmitted tnr # ^ odelled on Rajaauya sacrifice. It U a characters; as a in r£told throUgh a diversity o f oral story, rethougn dramatic performances, and mdir n% T o vadant texts against an archetype. lu tra„n,emp?.r ry resonance is felt in it, appreciation by c o n temporal y as an allegory about a

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° f n M m " r th S w a l, c a r n a l and in fheir essence and diffusion, have been examined in this volume through history. The examination shows how an oral tale, conveyed through a face to face relationship between a narrator and an auditor change, wid, the Westernizing scholarly enterprise to excise the retellings and to edit the mythic and human narrative into a coherent whole. And yet, the ruling theme o f the Mahabharata as a philosophia perennis survives through all the changes. Alternatively called itihasa, purana, akhyana, Mahabharata has sprouted from the dialogical Rgvedic hymns, genealogical myths and narratives, gathas, verses and narasarhsi songs in praise of heroes in Brahmanas. An open, fluid text, improvised by ministrels, it has evolved through upakhyana, story telling, sutra, dialectic, prasnottara, question and answer, and samada, dialogue. It has gone through successive layers o f the original Jaya of 18,800 stanzas, Bharata samhitd o f 24,000 stanzas and Mahabharata of 100,000 stanzas, reportedly done in succession by Vyasa, Vaisampayana and Ugrasravas Sauti. Repetition, elaboration, variation and oscillation o f outcomes, recapturing older events and anticipating later ones, overlapping references, passages, emotions, double espousal and parentage in kinship, the ambiguity o f argument, preceding and succeeding major experiences and acts, have characterized the Mahabharata as a tradition rather than a text. The uncertainty, complexity and the variety implicit in the tradition continues to characterize the tremendous creative surge in the folk traditions, which continue to vibrate in living literary and dramatic creations. The changes in the pitc Introduction

gesture, emotional accent, story telling styles, mimes, costumes, masks have been used in the folk tradition to dredge the amazing diversity o f thinking and emoting from the womb of the pristine story. The volume has offered a glimpse o f how, in folk operas all over the country, the bardic tradition has been localized, con temporarized and proximitized, in order to bring blessings to the family, to win affluence for the community, to control demonic forces, exorcise bad spirits, and transform life and landscape by assimilating the actors with the gods, whose role they play. The bardic lore has been transmitted through the actor performers, who have different names like kathaks, sutas, bandins, magathas, granthikas, kuMlavas, bharatas, pathakas, and dhdrakas. It has undergone transformation in the Wdree Leeba of Manipur, ojapaUi o f Assam, Paid o f Orissa, Chhdu dance o f Purulia, Ydtrd o f West Bengal, Nautanki of Uttar Pradesh, Pdndavdni o f Chhattisgarh, Akhydna o f , Pandavleela and Hidimba stories of Uttarakhand, Harikatha o f south, Kathakali and Kutiyattam o f Kerala, Yaksagana o f Karnataka, Terukuthu o f Tamil Nadu and shadow theatre in Southeast Asia. The versifiers, songsters and puppeteers have presented the Mahabharata in spectacular dramas, in which local gods migrate into the bodies of the actors, as dhami, abodes, the Pandava Kla or, are invited, to dance with actors, in Jagdr, in Uttarakhand. These performances are suffused with devotion, that imbues the being with the desire o f becoming. Popular myths have been invented to explain parthenogenesis, ayonija, miraculous, nonhuman births o f great heroes and saviours, with the accompaniment of signs and wonders. Kanini putra and Niyoga o f Kunti, who has an impotent husband, for getting children outside wedlock, have figured in Kannacja myths. Cultural landfapes have been translated into mental atlases by the continuing vogue o f the epic narrative tradition. The sijes associated with the death of Abhimanyu, Raja Kama, Bhurisravas, burning o f the dead soldiers in the epic battle have been identified in Kuruksetra. Archaeology has located the post Harappan and P.G. ware culture o f the Bharata war at Hastinapura, Atranjikhera and Kuruksetra. Baba Kanval Das o f Sahabali, has related himself to Vyasa, and used his fffroductkm

skills a* a u on itlk r and healer, to enliven the narrative o f Kuruksetra in the twentieth century. The theme o f AJIi, produced by mam local Tamil society, ha* been reinvented in patrilocal Tamil society and films in the twentieth c In the Mahanadi nver delta, in Orissa, the epic has provided the slory of Sakuntala in the Udayagiri cave paneb in ictond c. bc., Sarla Dasa’s Mahabharata in fifteenth l, and o f Routrav's Draupadira Sadhi, the robe of Draupadi, in the twentieth century. The epic has served as a site for rites of sacrifice and consecration, assimilation of royal and godly virtues through history. In the tenth c. Pam pa Bharata, patron Hankesan has been identified with Aijuna. The Ardhamagadhz Jaina canon has identified Krsria as Salakdfnirusa Vasudeva, and Jarasandha as prati-Vasudeva, akin to the pralinayaka, the anti hero o f Bhasa, KuttyaUam or Katkdkah theatre. Draupadf s daughter has found her place in Sayadhamma kahdo, and Nemi has predicted aniagadadasdo, destruction of the Yadavas. The khatU dhamma has been transformed from pursuit of power, pelf, penal authority and war, to service o f the people and the state, in the Buddhist doctrine o f Dhammaraja. The themes of Krsria Uld, Graharana, Kzrdldrjumya, Bfusmastawrdja, Nala Damavand, Kuakavadha, Aniruddha, Arjuna vivdha, Abhimanyu vtvdha, abduction o f Rukmini have been shown again and again in temple art, murals, miniatures or manuscript illustrations. Playful poetic license has been displayed to spectacular effect in old Javanese in Mahgaldmrana in the Astdduia parvan in Indonesia. The marigold is addressed to king Jayabhaya as incarnation o f Visnu in Harivamsa parvan and Bharatayuddha. The Indonesian king has been seen as an incarnation o f Visnu or Siva in the poetry of Mph Sedah on Mph Punulu between eleventh to the thirteenth c. Pdrtha Yana or Ajjuna’s journey to M l Indra KJla in the relief Candi Jago temple has been depicted in thirteenth c. and has served as a theme in Majapahit and post Majapahit poetry. The Malay Hikayat Pandava Jaya is written in the Jawi, Perso-Arabic script in the fifteenth c The 49in. bas-relief, the longest in the wrold, on the epk, has figured in Khmer art in Angkor Wat, in the twelfth c. T h e Introduction xn

Mahabharata has been translated into Persian under Akbar in the sixteenth century with paintings of Dasawant In seventeenth and eighteenth c. Rajput courts, Asvame.dha ro pdno has been perform ed in memory o f the yajna o f Yudhisfhira. King Paramanujit of Thailand, has written Krishna Son Nong in nineteenth c. The epiphany o f Kr§na as Master o f bhakti rasa, rather than o f amor intellectualis, presiding over the holocaust, with anrsamsya or compassion, even as kala Visvarupa; as an uncaused cause, unmoved mover, is the hub, around which the story o f the epic revolves. Krsna Dvaipayana is the moving spirit in this hub. He is an absentee author as well as begetter o f the main role players, Dhrtarastra and Pandu, a deux ex machina, present everywhere and yet nowhere. He is both a poet of being and becoming, an interpreter of the numinous, an author, whose work carries no signature worthy o f the deconstructive lucubration o f a Derrida, who talks of the world o f becoming and conveys the truth o f Being, a Master o f pratismrti, recollection, who reaches out to the reality and lets it disclose itself,2 who translates a heroic lay, a chargon de geste, into a great existential philosophical poem. (Krishna Chaitanya 1990) Tao Te Ching mentions thirteen spokes, which are useless without the hub, which they share. The clay, shaped into a vessel, is useful only because of the hollow within. The room is useful only when holes are cut in it. Profit comes from what is there, but value comes from what is not there. The poem deals with being more rather than having more, with human imperatives, derived from the deep structure o f the world. It is in search o f a cosmic programme, in which man can work, being yogarudha rather than yantrarudha. The objective is to attain humanness through savijnana Jnana, knowledge aligned with wisdom, by endowing human endeavour with riiti, sagacity. The epic is the same tree o f manyu, anger, and dharma, ethical order, with eighteen branches, parvan,. which has to be used for ascent and cut with detachment. It is the ygdrasil, the upright and uprooted tree o f life, the journey as well as destination. It mediates between the human and divine, Nara and Narayana, ritualism joril Introduction

and gnosticism, activism and asceticism, theism and humanism. It provides bridges between two philosophical traditions. One is the Nydya Vatfesika perspective about human souls being like material atoms, coming together at divine will, choosing between good and bad, under the circumstance o f their birth. The other is the Sdmkhya concept of Yogaf the process of evolving the world out of the manifest material abode of potential. On the one hand, the epic sees the lord and devotee as united in devotion. On the other, it sees the Lord as an embodiment at all the ideal predicates in a world, which is his body and reminder, o f which he is the instrumental and material cause. In this manner, the epic combines the empirical with the transcendental, metaphysics with physics. The suggestion of the ruling sentiment being disenchantment in terms of tragedy unmitigated emerges from the story o f the war as an all engulfing conflagration, a great carnage, a universal sacrifice in the maw o f time. The epic has been seen as providing the backdrop to the modem world, a waste land o f devastation and extinction, described in terms o f an archaeology o f broken columns. The heroic age has been reassessed by an age of enlightenment. A transition has been charted from an aristocratic and ritual order to a new complex order of spititual homelssness, miscegenation, moral and psychological uncertainty. All the values, purusarthas, have been highlighted, all rasas demonstrated in the Mahabharata. And yet, santa is propagated as the main rasa, a sthayibhava, an enduring emotion, and moksa is revealed as the ultimate purusartha. The epic is committed to nivrtti and ahimsa, withdrawal and non violence, but preaches anrsamsya, non injury, clemency, adopted to the pravrtti marga, the worldly way, in the interest o f grhastha and rajadharma, house holder and royal ethic, adjusted to the human condition. The dandamti, the penal law, is ethically metamorphosed in the person of the Dharmaraja Yudhisthira. The divisive vision o f Dhrtarastra, mdmakah Pandavdscaivamy people and those of Pandu, is pitted against Krsna and Aguna, who reflect each other, like clean mirrors, and o f Sanjaya, who melts like a saltdoll in love or them. In the Asvamedha parvan, mama, mine, namama, Introduction xxm

not mine the three lettered sacrificial formula coexist impelling mortals to fight and to die. ’ Moha, illusion clouds Dhrtara^tra’s mind about the relentless march to destruction. It is evident in his words, yadd sausam, ever since I have learnt, and tada nasamse vijayaya Sanjaya, since then I have lost all hope o f victory, the beginning and end of evey stanza. Svetaketu questions the institution of mamage, Yudhisthira that o f the state, Aijuna the K§atriya*s dutj£ to fight, Janaka, the need o f a grhastha to live a worldly life. (Pande 1990) In Bhasa’s Kamabhara, in Kamamok$am in Kataikuttu and Kama Tandhing in Javanese Wajring Wong, the kavaca and kundala, become Kama’s burden of gift to Indra, a gift begging glory and death. The eschatology of the end of the world or the fate of the individual after demise, the creation ex nihilo o f everything, are attributed to the wheel o f karma. The ritual, moral and aesthetic aspects of anusasana, discipline, are ascribed to ksatriya svadharma, the code of conduct of the ruling warrior class. This, in turn, is counterpoised to moksa dhamia. These are the various attempts to answer the problems of theodicy in the epic. These are but reflections o f the various aspects o f the truth. As is said, the changes in shadow are but changes of light.

R eferences

1. J.L.Mehta, 1990. “Dvaipayana, Poet o f Being and Becoming,” in R.N. Dandekar, ed., The Mahabharata Revisited, Sahitya Akademi, Delhi, p. 103. 2. Ibid., p. I ll 3. Krishna Chaitanya. ‘The Mahabharata : epic of universality and human concern. ” Ibid., p. 160. 4. G.C. Pande, 1990. “An Age of Change.” In R.N. Dandekar, ed. The Mahabharata Revisited, p. 131.

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