Framing the Mahabharata

Against the Evolution of Early South Asian Society

Saikat K Bose

• Publisher: VIJ Books (India) Pty Ltd
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9789386457578
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: History

It all probably was a tale. However, serious research does identify some events, from about a thousand years before the Common Era, that qualify as the bases of the epic's plot. Apparently, collective memory evolved significantly through the centuries before their stories, legends, and allegories took the forms that we know from the epic today. And yet, even if no set of historical events can be found to correspond with epic episodes, its many stories, legends, and allegories nevertheless conform to themes that were at one time authentic. In other words, whether or not epic episodes were historical, the ideas and concepts they represent were. It is with these ideas and concepts that Framing the Mahabharata weaves the pattern of South Asian society as it evolved through the cusp of the Bronze and Iron Ages, developing motifs we are familiar with today. Against this pattern, it reconstructs the military tactics, technology, and sociology that marked the interplay of nomadic and sedentary folks, most poignantly depicted in the career of war-chariots.

CHAPTER 1:

Format, Structure and Growth of the
Epic

The Epic, its Structure and Contents

The Mahabharata, as we know it today, is arranged in 18 parvans or volumes of unequal length, and also includes almost independent texts like the Bhagavad Gītā and Harivaṅśa, and tales like those of Rāma, Ṛṣyaśṛṅga, or Nala. The broad structure of the epic, and its outline story, is presented in this section. It must be noted that names of the parvans are often different between recensions and editions from various parts of South Asia. For example, Bhīṣma-parvan in some is Bhīṣma-vadhaparvan in others.

Book I: Ādi-parvan or Book of the Beginning, with sub-parvans 1–19, starts with telling how the bard Ugraśravas Sautī narrates to the ṛṣis at Naimiṣāraṇya an improved version of the epic narrated by Vaiśampāyana at Janamejaya’s sarpasattra. It also gives the history and genealogies of the Bharata protagonists and the priestly clan of Bhṛgu, and recounts the birth and early lives of the protagonists wherein the Pandu (sons of Pāṇḍu, or the Pāṇḍavas) suffer much humiliation at the hands of the Kuru (Kauravas). It includes the attempted assassination of the Pandu by the Kuru by burning them in the lac palace, and their polyandrous marriage with the Pāñcāla princess Draupadī.

Book II: Sabhā-parvan or the Book of the Assembly Hall, sub-parvans 20–28, tells how the Pandu, who had been reluctantly permitted to settle in the scrubland of Khāṇḍava-prastha south of Kurukṣetra, clear it by burning, flushing out the demon Maya who erects their palace and the court of Indraprastha in return for his life. The parvan also describes the rājasūya or the Pandu imperial quest, and the dice game with the Kuru that leads to their ‘exile’ for twelve years, to be followed by one year of living incognito.

Book III: Vana-parvan, Āraṇyaka-parvan or Araṇya-parvan, the Book of the Forest, in its sub-parvans 29–44, deal with the twelve years of exile in the forest (araṇya), and the adventures there in. It contains a large amount of interpolated tales and legends.

Book IV: Virāṭ-parvan or the Book of Virāṭ, sub-parvans 45–48, tells of the year spent incognito at the court of the Mātsya ruler Virāṭ, as required by the terms of the exile.

Book V: Udyoga Parva or the Book of the Endeavour, sub-parvans 49–59, has the run-up to battle and the diplomatic initiatives that were taken prior to it.

Book VI: Bhīṣma-parvan or Bhīṣma-vadha-parvan, or the Book of Bhīṣma, sub-parvans 60–64, is the opening book of the war and deals with the first ten days’ battle wherein the Kuru are commanded by Bhīṣma till his incapacitation. It includes the Bhagavad Gītā.

Book VII: Droṇa-parvan or the Book of Drona, sub-parvans 65–72, deals with the next four days of battle under the command of Droṇa. It has much important action, and sees the fall of many of the greatest warriors on either side.

Book VIII: Karṇa-parvan or the Book of Karṇa is a short book with only the sub-parvan 73, which deals with the brief period of battle under the command of Karṇa till he is killed.

Book IX: Śalya-parvan or the Book of Śalya, sub-parvans 74–77, is almost the last day of battle when Śalya is commander, telling how the Kuru prince Duryodhana is felled in a duel of maces by Bhīma. It also deals with the pilgrimage of Baldeva (Rāma) along the Sarasvatī, which is very significant.

Book X: Sauptika-parvan, the Book of Sleeping Warriors, sub-parvans 78–80, sees the last major action of the epic wherein the three surviving Kuru warriors raid the Pandu camp at night and kill many of the remaining warriors.

Book XI: Strī-parvan, the Book of the Widows, sub-parvans 81–85, has the lament of the widows of both sides, who visit the scene of carnage after it was over.

Book XII: Śānti-parvan or the Book of Peace, sub-parvans 86–88, has the anointing of Yudhiṣṭhira as the new Kuru king and his instructions from the immobilised Bhīṣma on political economy. Though just three sub–parvans, it is the longest and most didactic volume of the epic.

Book XIII: Anuśāsana-parvan or the Book of the Instructions, sub-parvans 89–90, continues with Bhīṣma’s instructions to Yudhiṣṭhira.

Book XIV: Aśvamedhika-parvan or the Book of the Horse Sacrifice, sub-parvans 91–92, describes the Aśvamedha by the victorious Pandu. This book also contains the Anugītā episode.

Book XV: Āśramavāsika-parvan or the Book of Retirees, sub-parvans 93–95, tells of the retirement of the older generations to the forests and their eventual deaths.

Book XVI: Mauṣala-parvan or the Book of the Clubs, sub-parvan 96, wherein the Yadu people scatter as a result of infighting (curiously, with mauṣalas or clubs) at a picnic.

Book XVII: Mahāprasthānika-parvan or the Book of the Great Departure, sub-parvan 97. In this volume, the Pandu leave the country on foot to ascend the Himalayas; each of the brothers and their wife drop dead one by one except Yudhiṣṭhira.

Book XVIII: Svargārohaṇa-parvan or the Book of the Ascent, sub-parvan 98, has Yudhiṣṭhira finally reaching heaven in his corporeal form, and several didactic events thereafter.

The Harivaṅśa or Genealogy of Hari, sub-parvans 99–100, as also the Bhaviṣyat, are khilas or addenda; the former fills in more data on the life of Krishna, especially on his childhood which is not covered in the eighteen books.

The Evolution of the Epic

The compendium of eighteen parvans with 100 sub–parvans is a massive hundred thousand verses long, the verse usually being the catuṣpada or quartet. The mass was not composed in its entirety at one time but displays stratification. Internal evidence indicates two versions—the full length Maha–Bhārata (mahā being great—magna) which includes appended stories (upa-ākhyānas), and the Bhārata, which shorn of the upākhyānas, is only 24,000 verses long.¹ The epic also is said to have been first recited by the sage–bard Vaiśampāyana at Janmejaya’s sarpasattra; later, other bards, like Lomaharṣaṇa the Sūta and his son Ugraśravas Sautī,² worked on it, Sautī’s version being presented at Naimiṣāraṇya. In addition, there are indications that a nuclear 8,800–versed version, called Jayaḥ, composed by Vyāsa, had once existed.³

There are other evidences of accretion of the epic. Vedic literature does not mention the epic but does mention some of its characters; it is also aware of an itihāsa (‘it so happened’)⁴ by which probably the Jayaḥ was meant. This shows that the period of the epic was the end of the Vedic age. And yet, the epic is aware of Vedic and Upaniṣadic schools that did not come into existence till many centuries afterwards.⁵ Also, it mentions the Kṣudraka–Mālava, a political combine that came into being not before Greek rule,⁶ and forecasts that Śaka and Yona⁷ will rule the Kali Age,⁸ who were known in India not much earlier than the 3^rd century B.C.

That the epic remained open for yet more centuries is seen in its mention of the Hara-Hūṇa and implicit reference to the Uttara Ramayana, whereas the Huns appeared in South Asia only in the second century and the Uttara Ramayana was not composed till several centuries A.D.⁹ While Paṇini and the Aśvlāyana Gṛhyasūtra, dated to the latter half of the 1^st millennium B.C., mention both Bhārata and the Mahābhārata, indicating two extant versions, the Greek chronicler Dio Chrysostom, c. 40–120 A.D., mentions an Indian Iliad of 100,000 verses. Finally, copper-plates of Śarvanātha, 533–534 A.D., found at Khoh in Satna District, Madhya Pradesh, describe the epic as śatasahasrī saṅhitā, i.e. ‘collection of 100,000 verses’.¹⁰ It is thus reasonable to conclude that from an early Jayaḥ spawned two versions by late 1^st millennium B.C., of which only the larger version survived by mid-1^st millennium A.D., the smaller one having fallen out of use. By this time, the epic was no more itihāsa but a didactic composition.

Extraneous Material and Inconsistencies in the Epic

Strict rules of transmission, called the padapāṭha, had ensured that the Ṛgveda remained consistent from Assam to Kerala. There was however no such arrangement for the epic, and bards and minstrels added to and edited it freely, interpolating masses of material between sections or nesting them up to several levels in the frame-in-tale style, introduced with the help of certain stock phrases.¹¹ The additions and modifications, reconciled from time to time, are of three categories—that providing background information of characters and events, that offering moral advice, didactic lessons, and justifications of certain disturbing episodes, and that which is entirely unrelated to the plot, like the copious Bhārgava legends. In addition, the epic ‘copied itself’—many episodes occur at multiple places,¹² often in divergent or contradicting forms.

The inconsistencies in the narrative led scholars, like Hopkins, to remark that ‘[t]ale is added to tale, doctrine to doctrine, without much regard to the effect produced by the juxtaposition’.¹³ Several inconsistencies are directly related to the war. In the mace duel between Bhīma and Duryodhana, Bhima wins by the foul move of hitting Duryodhana on the thigh, a move suggested by Krishna himself. As Duryodhana lay writhing on the ground, Baladeva appears on the scene, berates Krishna for having used foul means, and departs. Immediately afterwards, Krishna turns on Yudhiṣṭhira and berates him for having supported the act, whereas it was he that had suggested it in the first place; Yudhiṣṭhira, who had earlier been reluctant, now finds himself justifying the act! Krishna himself concedes later that there was indeed no other way in which Duryodhana could have been felled. The anomaly, including the appearance of Baladeva, is an obvious insert in order to showcase Krishna as the pious hypocrite—dharmacchala.

The epic also spawne...