Gender and Narrative in the Mahabharata

Simon Brodbeck, Brian Black, Simon Brodbeck, Brian Black

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781134119943
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Hinduism

The Sanskrit Mahabharata is one of the most important texts to emerge from the Indian cultural tradition. At almost 75, 000 verses it is the longest poem in the world, and throughout Indian history it has been hugely influential in shaping gender and social norms. In the context of ancient India, it is the definitive cultural narrative in the construction of masculine, feminine and alternative gender roles.

This book brings together many of the most respected scholars in the field of Mahabharata studies, as well as some of its most promising young scholars. By focusing specifically on gender constructions, some of the most innovative aspects of the Mahabharata are highlighted. Whilst taking account of feminist scholarship, the contributors see the Mahabharata as providing an opportunity to frame discussion of gender in literature not just in terms of the socio-historical roles of men and women. Instead they analyze the text in terms of the wider poetic and philosophical possibilities thrown up by the semiotics of gendering. Consequently, the book bridges a gap in text-critical methodology between the traditional philological approach and more recent trends in gender and literary theory.

Gender and Narrative in the Mahabharata will be appreciated by readers interested in South Asian studies, Hinduism, religious studies and gender studies.

1
INTRODUCTION

Simon Brodbeck and Brian Black

This introduction is intended to contextualize the book as effectively as is briefly possible, bearing in mind that different readers will be approaching it from different directions and with different backgrounds. It contains indicative sections on the Mahābhārata, and on Gender Studies and its interface with the text, before turning to consider the structure and layout of the rest of the book.

The Mahābhārata

The Mahābhārata is a long narrative text in Sanskrit which tells the story of the five Pāṇḍava brothers before, during and after the war at Kurukṣetra (Kuru’s Field or the Field of the Kurus, near present-day Delhi and the Yamuna-Ganges doab) between the Pāṇḍavas (and their allies) and their 100 paternal cousins (and their allies) over the kingship of their ancestral realm. The ‘mahā ’ in the title indicates the text’s size and importance,¹ and the ‘bhārata’ indicates that these two sets of cousins, descendants of King Kuru, are also descendants of King Bharata, whose name is now interchangeable with that of India itself (see Family Tree). As this suggests, the Mahābhārata, along with the Sanskrit Rāmāyana (the Career of Rāma, with which it is often grouped for study as a Sanskrit ‘epic’), is something of a national text; it has recently been called ‘the quintessence of every thing that is Indian’ (Sanyal 2006: 197). The eighteen Kurukṣetra armies are drawn from – and the Pāṇḍavas’ various pilgrimages take them wandering over – most of the subcontinent, and versions of the Mahābhārata story recur throughout India in a wide variety of literary, performative, ritual, and political contexts.² The precise relationships between these various Mahābhārata traditions and the Sanskrit Mahābhārata are in many cases difficult to determine, but they will not concern us in this book, which focuses tightly upon the old Sanskrit text. More specifically, it focuses upon the text as presented by the Poona Critical Edition³ (Sukthankar et al. 1933–66), which was prepared by minutely comparing as many existing Sanskrit Mahābhārata manuscripts as could conveniently be found, and by thus producing a ‘reconstituted text’ consisting of broadly that material (nearly 75,000 verses) which the many manuscripts were found to have in common, supplemented by a critical apparatus of footnotes and appendices representing the additional material (occurring in some or even most of the manuscripts) which was presumed to have accumulated over time in the various manuscript traditions. All the Mahābhārata references in this book are to the Critical Edition unless otherwise stated.

The ‘reconstituted text’, it is supposed, may approximate an ancient Mahābhārata (there has been much discussion of this supposition and of the procedural details of the Poona project,⁴ and various scholars have suggested textual amendations): exactly how ancient is a matter of considerable debate, but few would suggest a date later than the sixth century ce, and many would place it – or parts of it, certainly – a number of centuries earlier. This ‘reconstituted text’, which has also been published in free-standing form (Dandekar 1971–5), has yet to be entirely translated into English, the efforts of Johannes van Buitenen for Chicago University Press having been interrupted by his death in 1979 and only recently taken up by James Fitzgerald and his team.⁵ In the meantime, although the Sanskrit text of the Critical Edition is now also available on the world-wide web (J.D. Smith 1999a), the most widely used English Mahābhārata is the ‘Roy Edition’ (Ganguli 1970, first published 1883–96, also now online),⁶ which readers may correlate with the Critical Edition references given in this book (and elsewhere) by using the concordance in the Appendix.

The Mahābhārata comprises eighteen books ( parvans) of varying proportions. Its main story follows the Pāṇḍavas from their birth, childhood, and polyandrous marriage to Draupadī,⁷ through their deepening breach with their cousins, through the eighteen-day Kurukṣetra war (in which all 100 cousins are killed) and its aftermath, to their deaths and even to their afterlives. This Pāṇḍava narrative is not told at a fixed pace; it is punctuated and embellished along the way by the many sub-stories and diverse teachings which the characters within the narrative tell to each other. These sub-stories are a vital aspect of the Mahābhārata; they are often called upākhyānas, though many names are used (Hiltebeitel 2005a: 464–76). They are fitted carefully by their tellers to their hearers, at once diverting and pedagogical, and the characters develop and grow partly by means of them. Some are tales of Bhārata ancestors; some are situated teachings of one kind or another; some are back-stories of characters who also figure in the main Pāṇḍavas story (some of whom we meet also in other texts); some are stories of gods and demons, or notable brahmins or snakes or kings of yore; yet their motifs tend to be of a piece with the Mahābhārata as a whole. In parallel to their effect upon the characters who hear them, they seem also to provide a kind of interpretive commentary applied by the authors and available directly to the text’s audience. Otherwise unconnected stories or episodes from widely separated points in the text can be juxtaposed and compared by the redeployment of names or distinctive motifs. And the Pāṇḍavas narrative, despite its sheer extent, is in the final analysis a sub-story itself, for it is presented in the Mahābhārata as told by Vaiśaṃpāyana to King Janamejaya’s, great-grandson of the Pāṇḍavas, on the occasion of his (Janamejaya’s’s) snake sacrifice (sarpasatra), and as heard there by Ugraśravas and re-told, along with the story of the snake sacrifice and one or two others, to Śaunaka and other brahmins assembled for a protracted ritual satra in the forest of Naimiṣa. In every case the narratives are formally presented as dynamic interactions between the teller and the told; and the told may intervene repeatedly to direct the teller or to ask for details or commentary. This telescoping technique of nested narrative frames stretching into and out of the Pāṇḍavas story, as well as giving the text an intra-commentarial property, allows the ‘authorial voice’ to remain obscured behind a sequence of inverted commas; and it is this, in part, which makes the Mahābhārata such an intriguing text to explore and interpret. The text highlights the question of its own authorial voice by containing a putative author as a character within several levels of its own narrative: Kṛṣṇa Dvaipāyana Vyāsa is the great uncle of the Pāṇḍavas and their father’s biological father; he appears at many points in their story to give them advice and assistance of various kinds; and he later puts the story together for posterity, teaching it to several of his pupils and witnessing Vaiśaṃpāyana’s performance of it in person at Janamejaya’s’s snake sacrifice.⁸

Broadly speaking, the Mahābhārata’s most obvious principal concerns are the problems and possibilities of government, most explicitly at the level of society, but also ranging beyond the human into the cosmic level involving various gods, as well as focusing more tightly within the household and ultimately within the individual. Social government pivots around the figure of the king, who should be of the kṣatriya varṇa, the class of warrior–aristocrats, which is said primordially to have been created from the chest or arms of the cosmic man.⁹ The necessity for a king is stated very clearly by the Mahābhārata at various junctures (e.g. 12.59; 12.67–71), and the question of who is to be king in the Kuru capital Hāstinapura brings out issues of primogenitive birthright and of behavioural fitness. On the first issue, Dhṛtarāṣṭra, older brother of Pāṇḍu, was incapable of fully discharging the kingly function because he was blind, so the two effectively took it in turns, superintended by their uncle Bhīṣma; but both of the eldest cousins in the next generation, Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s son Duryodhana and Pāṇḍu’s son Yudhishira, are about the same age. Before their story is told in full, we are given tales of odd behaviour in many previous generations of the royal line (Bhīṣma, for example, abdicated his primogenitive claim to the throne and vowed life–long celibacy in order that his aged father might marry again), and there is a sense in which irregularities of dynastic succession are something of a family tradition.

Here follows a summary of the Pāṇḍava story as told in the text’s eighteen books.¹⁰ When Pāṇḍu dies in the Himālaya and his five sons are brought by their mother Kuntī to grow up with their cousins at Hāstinapura, it becomes clear that Duryodhana is aggressively jealous of his role as favoured prince, and the Pāṇḍavas leave Hāstinapura with Kuntī, survive an assassination attempt, and marry Draupadī. Dhṛtarāṣṭra partitions the ancestral kingdom at Bhīṣma’s suggestion, the Pāṇḍavas building themselves a new city at Indraprastha in the provinces (Book 1, Ādiparvan, The Book of the Beginning). In Book 2 (Sabhāparvan, The Book of the Assembly Hall) the Pāṇḍavas gain kṣatriya popularity and allies when Yudhiṣṭhira, the eldest Pāṇḍavas, has the rājasūya ritual performed, but Duryodhana fiercely resents them and, ganging up with his best friend Kaṛna, his maternal uncle Śakuni, and his brother Duḥśāsana, he coerces his blind father into presiding over a dice match at which Yudhiṣṭhira bets and loses his wealth and kingdom, his brothers, himself, and Draupadī. Draupadī, who is brought into the hall, suggests that Yudhiṣṭhira’s betting and losing of her should be null and void, because at that point he had already bet and lost himself; but she is verbally and physically insulted. The drama escalates and Dhṛtarāṣṭra annuls the match; but after Duryodhana’s remonstrations he agrees to another, at which the Pāṇḍavas lose their wealth and kingdom and are sent into exile with Draupadī. The exile is for twelve years (Book 3, Āranyakaparvan or Vanaparvan, The Book of the Forest), plus one year in disguise (Book 4, Virāṭaparvan, The Book of Virāṭa). Having served the term of exile, the return of the Pāṇḍavas’ kingdom is refused, and they prepare for war (Book 5, Udyogaparvan, The Book of the Effort). In the war – famously prefaced by the Bhagavadgītā (Mahābhārata 6.23–40) – the Pāṇḍavas’ seven armies are outnumbered by their cousins’ eleven, and in order to triumph they are driven to fight ruthlessly and mercilessly by their strategic consultant KṛṣṇaVāsudeva, felling four successive generals of Duryodhana’s forces: their ‘grandfather’/great-uncle Bhīṣma (Book 6, Bhīṣmaparvan, The Book of Bhīṣma); their martial arts tutor Droṇa (Book 7, Droṇaparvan, The Book of Droṇa); Duryodhana’s friend Kaṛna, who unknown to them is their own elder brother, Kuntī’s abandoned pre–marital son (Book 8, Kaṛnaparvan, The Book of Kaṛna); and their maternal uncle Śalya, plus Duryodhana himself (Book 9, Śalyaparvan, The Book of Śalya). Aśvatthāman, Droṇa’s son, butchers most of the remaining warriors in their beds to avenge his father’s death, and is banished in return (Book 10, Sauptikaparvan, The Book of the Sleepers). Book 11 (Strīparvan, The Book of the Women) illustrates, in the immediate aftermath of the battle, the extent and human implications of the war for the non-combatant relatives. Yudhiṣṭhira’s first wish now is to retire to the forest and let his brother Arjuna be king, but he is persuaded to take up the throne, and is instructed at length in matters of kingship and salvation by Bhīṣma before the latter, mortally wounded previously on the tenth day of the battle, finally dies (Book 12, Śāntiparvan, The Book of Peace, and Book 13, Anuśāsanaparvan, The Book of Instructions). Yudhiṣṭhira then has the aśvamedha ritual performed to expiate his war crimes and consolidate his rule over the reunited ancestral kingdom (Book 14, Āśvamedhikaparvan, The Book of the Horse Sacrifice). Years later Dhṛtarāṣṭra and the elder generation retire to the forest and pass away (Book 15, Āśramavāsikaparvan, The Book of the Residence in the Hermitage); Kṛṣṇa Vāsudeva’s warrior relatives kill themselves off in a drunken brawl (Book 16, Mausalaparvan, The Book of the Pestle); and the Pāṇḍavas retire and die (Book 17, Mahāprasthānikaparvan, The Book of the Great Journey), meeting up with Duryodhana in the hereafter (Book 18, Svargārohanaparvan, The Book of the Ascent to Heaven).

In a contrast of various kṣatriya masculinities, Yudhiṣṭhira’s virtuous abstraction, Bhīma Pāṇḍavas’s passionate but good-hearted brawniness, Arjuna Pāṇḍavas’s cool heroism, and Duryodhana’s uncompromising and ambivalent manners (sometimes noble, sometimes shocking, at once traditional and unworkable) are nicely juxtaposed within one generation. Yudhiṣṭhira plays the public role of the proper, righteous king (he is also called Dharmarāja, which can mean exactly that), but this role depends also upon his brothers, most specifically Bhīma, who kills every one of the 100 cousins, and Arjuna, who disposes of most of Duryodhana’s other allies and whose grandson Parikṣit becomes the family heir. The context of the Pāṇḍavas story’s recital is Parikṣit’s son Janamejaya’s snake sacrifice (see Mahābhārata 1.3–53, where Janamejaya begins to massacre all snakes to avenge his father’s death but is eventually dissuaded, aborting the attempt): this is doubly appropriate because not only is the story recited a story of Janamejaya’s ancestors, but it is also a story of the kṣatriya king’s delicate and ambivalent relationship to violence – state violence on the one hand, and the violence of the unruly on the other.¹¹

Heavenly and ethereal hosts assemble from afar to witness the Kurukṣetra war, which is described in bright detail as a wondrous marvel. The extent of the destruction is astonishing (1,660,020,000 warriors die, according to Yudhiṣṭhira’s count at 11.26.9–10, and an additional 24,165 go missing), and both before and after the heat of battle the Pāṇḍavas story is suffused by sorrow and confusion over the event. Yudhiṣṭhira, Dhrtarās tra, and his wife Gāndhārī lament prominently.¹² Blame is apportioned variously by the survivors and non-combatants; Vyāsa (amongst others) often suggests that no one but Time (kāla) is ultimately responsible, and there is a peṛṣistent rumour that Kṛṣṇa Vāsudeva, who instigates the various ruses by which the outnumbered Pāṇḍavas armies triumph and who at Bhagavadgītā 11.32 tells Arjuna that he himself is Time, might hold the key. Vaiśaṃpāyana prefaces his narration of the Pāṇḍavas story with the revelation that its various principal characters were earthly incarnations of devas and asuras (gods and demons): the asuras infiltrated the ranks of human kings and caused great distress to the lady Earth, so a heavenly mission was organized, culminating in the Kurukṣetra showdown. On this view, the war was the hidden business of the gods led by Indra and Viṣṇu-Nārāyana (see Fitzgerald 2004b); and as Alf Hiltebeitel has shown (1976: 60–76; 1984; 1991b), four of the characters who most effectively drive the Pāṇḍavas narrative towards its outcome go by the name ‘Kṛṣṇa/ā’ (Dark One: Kṛṣṇa Vāsudeva, Kṛṣṇā Draupadī, Kṛṣṇa Dvaipāyana Vyāsa, and Arjuna). The war’s participants and their associates on the whole are ignorant of this higher dimension, but are nonetheless exercised by various theories of the relative influence of daiva (the business of the gods, whatever it may be) and puruṣakāra (autonomous human action).¹³

Although the Mahābhārata generically resembles the Rāmāyana in many respects, and both are written in similar Sanskrit (see Oberlies 2003), traditionally the former is usually classed as itihāsa,¹⁴ the latter as (the first) kāvya. The Mahābhārata seems to have the more robust intent (see Fitzgerald 1991), featuring a greater wealth of didactic matter within its narrative, and it considers itself to be comprehensive on all matters pertaining to the four puruṣārthas (dharma, artha, kāma, and mokṣa – briefly: propriety, profit, pleasure, and liberation),¹⁵ maximally purifying to hear or dwell upon, and no less in fact than the fifth Veda, widely accessible in contrast to its predecessors. This claim places it in a definite relation to the Sanskrit past – its debt to Vedic cosmological, sacrif...