Mahabharata Now

Narration, Aesthetics, Ethics

Arindam Chakrabarti, Sibaji Bandyopadhyay

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781317342137
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Indian & South Asian History

The Mahabharata is at once an archive and a living text, a sourcebook complete by itself and an open text perennially under construction. Driving home this striking contemporary relevance of the famous Indian epic, Mahabharata Now focuses on the issues of narration, aesthetics and ethics, as also their interlinkages. The cross-disciplinary essays in the volume imaginatively re-interpret the 'timeless' classic in the light of the pre-modern Indian narrative styles, poetics, aesthetic codes, and moral puzzles; the Western theories on modern ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, psychoanalysis, and philosophy of science; and the contemporary social, ethical and political concerns. The essays are all united in their effort to situate the Mahabharata in the context of here and now without violating the sanctity of the 'written text' as we have it today. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of Indian and comparative philosophy, Indian and comparative literature, cultural studies, and history.

PART I

Narration

Of Gambling

A Few Lessons from the Mahābhārata

Sibaji Bandyopadhyay

I

I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice.

— Albert Einstein (1971: 130, emphasis original) (Popular variant: ‘God does not play dice with the universe’.)

The number four is of immense significance in the textual imagination of India. Used for centuries to configure a variety of discursive units, the number has a special force accrued to it long ago. The piling of categorical measures onto number four has been so persistent and thick that one may even suspect the working of an organizing principle behind it. There is nothing to prevent one from speculating that the driving motive has been such as not only to compose a network of foursome bundles but also to arrange them in terms of a somewhat convergent series. It is as if, (despite many loose ends), there is a design implicit in the taxonomy scaled to degree four — a pattern that on its own profferṣ a slippery limit which, albeit indistinct and distant, casts a long shadow on the other four-pronged elements and functions as their ultimate referent.

As the fourth numerical embraces many a theoretical and practical aspects of existence; enumerates a plethora of forms of the ‘social organization’, ‘calibrated life-style’ and ‘graded life-end’; and traverses the entire spectrum ranging from the ‘ineffably abstract’ to the ‘grossly mundane’, the impression that it has a ubiquitous quality about it is inescapable. Who can navigate the ocean of Indian texts without the guidance of lighthouses such as: the corpus of hallowed texts collectively called the Four Vedas; the amalgam of rank and prestige signified by the Four varṇas; the stipulated stages of life or the Four āśramas; the endowments of dharma–artha–kāma–mokṣa (‘customary as well as customized propriety–material gain–pleasures of love and lust-deliverance’), holistically termed the Four vargas; dharma’s catuṣpāda or the Four Aspects of Right Conduct; Brahmā, the creator of the universe, who speaks in many voices with his Four faces; the cyclical movement of Ages construed by progressive degenerations and regenerations resulting in the Four yugas — no, the Brahminical grammar is not thinkable without the numerum quattuor. But, of all the quadruplets which ‘conceptual package’ brings to that grammar a semblance of consistency?

Kālo ’smi, ‘Time am I’ — so said Kṛṣṇa when He revealed his True Identity to Arjuna just before the all-consuming War ensued on the battlefield of Kurukṣetra (Gītā XI. 32). The ‘Superself’ Kṛṣṇa taught the ‘Superman’ Arjuna (Sukthankar 1998: 121): Time was the prime mover of the universe (Radhakrishnan 2008: 279); being Time-incarnate, Kṛṣṇa was not only ‘world-destroying’ (Gītā XI. 32) but also came into being yuge-yuge (from age to age), to protect the good and ruin the wicked (Gītā IV. 8). The transcendental heightening of the temporal combined with yuga or the Age’s four-fold division starting from the time of righteous prosperity to that of rapacious villainy, and thence on a reverse-journey of upward-climb from the state of utter degradation to that of absolute perfection gives the clue to spot the four-based unit we are interested in — it must be something that has the capacity to schematize vagaries of time in accordance with codes of some chancy game.

As in many other Indian texts, so also in Manu’s Book of Laws we find mention of the Four Ages. In Chapter I, Verses 81–86, Manu exposits on them with a fair amount of details. Chronicling the tale of decay and destitution with increasing gloom, Manu names the successive four yugas: kṛta, tretā, dvāpara and kali (Bühler 2001: 22–24; Bandyopadhyay Sastri 2000: 37–39; Doniger and Smith 1991: 12). Now, it so happens that the words kṛta, tretā, dvāpara and kali correspond exactly with the words for (a) the number of dots on the sides of the four-sided Indian die (Monier 2005: 301, 462, 503, 261) and (b) the throws of dice (Doniger and Smith 1991: 11). The akṣa or die — usually made out of the fruits of the vibhītaka (Terminalia Bellerica) tree, each the size of a hazelnut — was four-dotted: the dot of four was called kṛta, those of three, two and one, tretā, dvāpara and kali respectively. The throw from a lot of die onto the game-board or adhidevana/iriṇa yielded the four following results: if the total count were divisible by four the thrower obtained kṛta or ‘winning’; if after dividing it by four the remainder were three he obtained tretā or ‘trey’, if two, dvāpara or ‘deuce’; and, if one, what he earned was kali or ‘losing’ (Lüders 1906: 2–3).

A Set of 10 Dice: Proto-historic and Early Historic Mohenjodaro and Bhita Ivory Courtesy: Indian Museum

Photograph: Somnath Ghosh

The fantastic coincidence of names of Ages and throws of the dice is made even more scintillating by Manu just before he begins to set forth the characteristics of the four yugas. He says in I. 80: ‘The Epochs … are countless, and so are the emissions and re-absorptions (of the universe); as if he were playing, parameṣṭḥī/Supreme Lord/Brahmā does this again and again’ (Bühler 2001: 22; Bandyopadhyay Sastri 2000: 36; Doniger and Smith 1991: 12).

So, contrary to Albert Einstein, Manu did think that God (or some Suprapower) plays with the universe and that too relentlessly. At any rate, (even if Viṣṇu, the god of preservation does not), there is ample evidence that Śiva, the god of destruction, plays dice with all creation (Doniger 2009: 321–22). But then, Einstein too had his moments of doubt.

At first perturbed by the news that an experimental result may disprove his theory of gravitation but later relieved to learn that the result was wrong, Einstein is reported to have quipped in May 1921: ‘Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not’ (Clarke 1971: 339). Reaffirming Einstein’s long-held faith on God’s straightforwardness — ‘I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice’ — this remark on the Almighty’s intrinsic Goodness is permanently inscribed in stone above the fireplace in the Faculty Lounge of the Mathematics Department of Princeton University. However, Jamie Sayen’s book Einstein in America: the Scientist’s Conscience in the Age of Hitler and Hiroshima (1985) informs us that in the despairing days of the Third Reich and the subsequent nuclear disaster, Einstein had, perhaps temporarily, changed his stand. Indicating that in opposition to the timid expectations of believers of divine graciousness, God led — or rather misled — people to believe they understood things that they actually were far from understanding, Einstein had said then: ‘I have second thoughts. Maybe God is malicious’ (Sayen 1985: 51, emphasis original). Einstein’s double-take on the nature of God and therefore of the cosmos becomes more pertinent to the connection between yugas and the game of dice once we recall what happened on 16 July 1945. Watching with his naked eyes the first atomic explosion on the desert-field of New Mexico’s Los Alamos — a spectacular and deafening burst that, by the way, provided the most convincing practical demonstration of the veracity of Einstein’s theoretical formulation on the issue of extracting energy from matter — J. Robert Oppenheimer, reputed to be the ‘Father of Atom Bomb’, felt that the awesome scene was only a replay of sorts. Overtaken by the beguiling sensation of the ‘Uncanny’ — the experience of witnessing the coming into the open of a thing meant to remain secret and hidden (Freud 2003: 132) — Oppenheimer was reminded of Chapter XI of the Gītā. Of the two verses from the Gītā’s ‘The Lord’s Transfiguration’ (Viśvarūpadarśana Yoga) Chapter that flashed in the mind of the nuclear scientist then, one was XI. 32: ‘Time am I, world-destroying, grown mature, engaged here in subduing the world’ (Junck 1985: 208).

Such happenstances can hardly be ignored. The metaphoric deployment of the dice by physicists sworn to the creed of ‘determinacy’ as well as by those bent upon transcending the tenets of ‘total determination’, coupled with the invocation of the Gītā at one of the most dangerous moments in modern times, does, on their own, pull us towards the Mahābhārata. It seems, the most celebrated dicegame recorded in world literature, the one in the Mahābhārata famous for the ethical dilemmas it dramatizes, has much to offer to the person who (like Albert Einstein) does his best to resist the idea that even while Nature is secretive ‘she’ is not bent on trickery, and also to the person who (like Niels Bohr or Werner Heisenberg) is willing to hazard the guess that there is an element of elusiveness in the workings of Nature which gives to the ‘femme fatale’ the appearance of being purposefully deceitful.

II

God plays dice with the universe. But they’re

loaded. And [our] main objective … is to find

out by what rules were they loaded.

— Joseph Ford
(Quoted in Gleick 1987: 129)

Accused Pleads Not-guilty

In retrospect it appears as if we have a foreshadowing of a Kafkaesque situation in Ṛgveda VII. 86 (Wilson 2000a: 310–11; Doniger O’Flaherty 1994: 213–14; Brereton 1992: 11–12; Bandyopadhyay 1976: 183–84). The hymn composed by Vasiṣṭha provides a tragicomic portrayal of a man harassed by one of the chieftains of authority for reasons unknown to him. Bandied from pillar to post, the distraught protagonist fails to cognize why god Varuṇa is hell-bent upon persecuting him. He keeps asking himself what was the transgression that has so upset his beloved Lord; he enquires upon the wise but all that the knowing men tell him is, ‘Varuṇa has been provoked to anger against you’. Not being able to name the provocation, the hapless man stands indicted sans the slimmest chance of self-defence. So, in utter confusion, he supplicates to Varuṇa by tabulating the misdeeds for which he, in want of conscious intention, could in no way be personally responsible. Branded ‘guilty’ before having done anything wrong, the devastated soul pleads for the mighty god’s mercy for crimes not committed by him. The humble supplicant lays out for his dreaded Master’s consideration a list of mischief not blighted by pre-meditation. It contains: (a) sins of ancestors; (b) follies of younger generations; (c) reflex actions of individuated physical body; (d) objectionable dreams during sleep; and (e) the four things that lead one astray quite involuntarily, namely, liquor, pride, ignorance and dice.

A Dicey Author?

Ṛgveda X.34 is the fabulous hymn that explores the psychological trappings of the feeling of involuntariness that seizes a man whenever he engages in a dice-game (Wilson 2000b: 274–77; Doniger O’Flaherty 1994: 240–41; Bandyopadhyay 1976: 500–1).

As ancient archival records — records that constitute the Vedic-Brahmanical tradition — testify, the author of Ṛgveda X.34 was Kavaṣa Ailūṣa. And, what is extraordinary is that there is a ‘biographical’ detail regarding the ṛṣi (sage/seer) which may have had a direct bearing on the hymn. Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi, one of the front-ranking Marxist historians of India, drew attention to the fact that the poet of the ‘touching’ Ṛgveda X.34 was once ostracized by a band of self-righteous ṛṣi-priests (Kosambi 1998: 124–25, 105–6). Now, there are (at least) two tellings of Kavaṣa’s humiliation.

Kauṣītaki Brāhmaṇa, a later Vedic text, narrates this story in XII.3: observing the presence of Kavaṣa on the banks of Sarasvatī, a group of sages who had assembled there to perform some sacrificial rite shout out, ‘thou art the son of a slave-girl, we shall neither eat nor drink with thee’; Kavaṣa then turns to Sarasvatī and the river goddess responds favourably to his prayer by swelling forth; frightened by the sight, the pure-born ṛṣis promptly revoke the expulsion order and install Kavaṣa to the post of Master of Ceremony (Haug 1863b: 112).

The story is little more elaborate in Aitareya Brāhmaṇa II.19–20 (Haug 1863b: 112–13). The haughty ṛṣis not only cast Kavaṣa out of their company but also plan to push him off to a desert so that he dies of thirst without being able to contaminate the holy waters of Sarasvatī. But, as in the Kauṣītaki, so also in the Aitareya, the river goddess shows herself to be partial to Kavaṣa. The result: those who had excommunicated the so-abused fallen sage a minute earlier hurriedly readmit him to the fold of the revered Brahmins.

But there is one salient difference in the two tales. While sages in the Kauṣītaki Brāhmaṇa oust Kavaṣa for the sole reason of his being a son of dāsa woman (dāsī), sages in Aitareya Brāhmaṇa do so because Kavaṣa, besides being a dāsyāḥputraḥ, was a kitava or gamester (Haug 1863a: 39). It may not, therefore, be too wrongheaded to assume that the existential charge that makes Ṛgveda X.34 one of the most lasting documents of human pathos owes a lot to the intense and intimate experiences of a bankrupt gambler (Bhaduri 1988: 43).

The Recurrent Lament

Written in the form of a monologue, Ṛgveda X.34 gives a harrowing account of a compulsive gambler. The hymn delineates the straits of a gambler who — after the dice, the ‘hazelnut eardrops of the great vibhītaka tree’, stop ‘rolling on the furrowed board’ and their paralyzing spell breaks — begins to realize the enormity of losses he has suffered. Many of the benighted man’s self-castigations revolve around the injuries he has inflicted on his sweet-tempered spouse: ‘Because of a losing throw of the dice I have driven away a devoted wife’; ‘[now] my wife pushes me away’; ‘other men fondle [my] wife’; ‘the deserted wife grieves’.

The unfortunate fellow is bereft of everyone’s ‘sympathy’; because of the consequences of his unconscious acts the wretched fellow is scorned by all and shunned by society: ‘His father, mother, and brothers all say to him, “we do not know him. Tie him up and take him away”’.

Yet he remains incorrigible. He honestly owns up to his irremediable weakness: ‘When the brown dice raise their voice as they are thrown down I run at once to the rendezvous with them, like a woman to her lover’. Quite in the spirit of the poet of VII.86, the lamenter of X.34 compares the bewitching dice with the intoxicating ‘drink of Soma’.

Habituated to decry himself the moment he wakes from the big sleep of mindless wagering, the waster gushes forth in great poetry. One such specimen: ‘Handless, the dice master him ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• part I: Narration
• Part II: Aesthetics
• Part III: Ethics
• About the Editors
• Notes on Contributors
• Index