See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340335175 Introduction (Samīkṣikā Series II: Text and Variation of the Mahābhārata [Samiksika Series II: Text and Variations of the Mahabharata]) Book · January 2009 CITATIONS READS 0 58 1 author: Kalyan Kumar Chakravarty Centurion University of Technology and Management 40 PUBLICATIONS 11 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Himalayan heritage View project Hindu Tradition View project All content following this page was uploaded by Kalyan Kumar Chakravarty on 01 April 2020. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. Samiksika Series II Text and Variations of the Mahabharata Samlksika Series No. 2 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 L ji ^ 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<jL&&& Introduction a . roncem in the extended area o f the state in r S S r * (Nriwnha P ™ * Bhaduri). .. ij^L' Vr.rton *e in warheroic sustains Spirit lokayatm,iS Cm thef “,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.