BHIMA AND KRISHNA: A RELOOK

 

Different from each other in a hundred ways, Bhima and Krishna share one personality trait in Sarala Mahabharata, which is a remarkably  creative retelling in Odia, in the fifteenth century, of Vyasa Mahabharata. It is this: neither can be contented.

In different respects, though!

 

Insatiable, says the poet Sarala, was Bhima’s hunger for a fight, for food, for sleep and for sex. He was simple and guileless, and pronouncedly sensuous. Wild, full of superhuman energy, and lacking in patience, this son of god Pavana (Wind) would, often thoughtlessly, jump into a fight. If he was fighting, he loved to feel his adversary’s blood in his hands. Unlike Arjuna, he hated his adversary, once he got into fighting . Think of what he did to Kichaka for coveting Draupadi – he killed him with such violence that Kichaka’s body looked like a lump of flesh! The brutal way he killed Dussasana was certainly not required by the oath he had taken in the Kaurava court to kill him. 

Now, killing the enemy from a distance with an arrow was not for him. But archery was rated most highly in the world of Sarala Mahabharata, in fact in all versions, in any language, of the ancient story of the Pandavas and the Kauravas. Bhima’s mother knew that he would never be adept at archery because he lacked intelligence and concentration. He proved her eminently right. The preceptor Drona once set up an archery test for his pupils. One, lacking in concentration and focus, would not be able to hit the target and the archer had to do it in his first attempt; there would not be a second chance for him. Bhima failed miserably. He could be easily provoked and once provoked, he lost his sense of discrimination. Once, when his mother Kunti showered abuses on Krishna in the language most foul, he could not stand the words and raised his mace to hit her. Krishna’s intervention saved Kunti. Later, in a fit of rage, he slapped the severed, living head of Belalasena, his son, to his death because he did not support his claim he made in front of his brothers, Kunti, Draupadi, Subhadra and Krishna that he was sole architect of the Pandavas’ victory in the Kurukshetra War. For Bhima, it was an act of betrayal of him by his son and he hit him hard. It was another matter that whereas Bhima stood disgraced, Krishna gave his son moksha (liberation – from the karmic cycle, the cycle of life and death). Violence was ingrained in Bhima’s nature; in fact, it defined him best. On this account, both his mother and his elder brother, Yudhisthira, the embodiment of dharma, considered him dusta (wicked) and sometimes scolded him, calling him dusta.

His craving for food was well known. To just give one example, when his mother sent him to the asura (demon), Baka, with a huge amount of tasty food of many varieties that the villagers had cooked for the asura, he was secretly happy. In the forest he had eaten roots and fruits for too long. He was longing for cooked food. He was already gulping the food when the asura came. The demon showered blows on him, but he kept eating unaffected by the asura’s blows and abuses, and dealt with him only after he had consumed the entire food. What happened to Baka is not difficult to guess.

As for his sexual conduct, from one point of view it was above reproach since not even once in the narrative, did he cast a lustful look at a woman who was not his wedded wife. His hunger for sex was with respect to Draupadi alone. He had wild sex with his first wife, the asuri woman (demoness), Hidimbaki, but he lived with her only for a short time. But one could say that what would count as wild in the case of a human, would be natural in the case of a demoness. As for Draupadi, he could never have enough of her. She found his craving for sex with her unacceptable and his love-making difficult to cope with. She had to complain to her other husbands and they worked out a moral code of living with her. As for his sleeping habit, Sarala says nothing. A reader of Sarala Mahabharata would have hardly associated long sleep with him, had Sarala not said in so many words that he could never have sleep up to his satisfaction. There are no episodes in Sarala Mahabharata that bring out Bhima’s craving for sleep.

This rare lapse in narration may be because Sarala’s concern was not really Bhima in his narrative. He wasn’t interpreting him for his audience across centuries. It was Krishna, who he was concerned with;  he was sharing his understanding of the Avatara with them. To understand the Avatara and the nature of divine intervention in the affairs of the mortals was Sarala’s real purpose. Bhima’s story provided a contrast and in a way served the balancing function in this discourse on Bhima and Krishna.

 To turn to Krishna now. Warning Duryodhana about Krishna’s nature, said Sakuni to him: “danena atriputi je manena atriputi / bhagate atriputi je jnanena atriputi (not content with (ritual) giving, not content with honour / not content with devotion, not content with deep wisdom or transcendental knowledge)” – one cannot satisfy him with gifts, honour, devotion or knowledge. However much one gives him these things, it would always be inadequate.  

Krishna had gone to the Kaurava court as Yudhisthira’s emissary. There he told king Duryodhana that in order to avoid war with him, all the Pandavas wanted was just five villages. Duryodhana flatly refused. He wouldn’t give anything to the Pandavas, he said. Born of the gods, they did not belong to the Kuru family and being thus outsiders to the family, they had no right to the kingdom. Later, outside the court, in private, Bhishma told him in that it would not be right to send Krishna empty-handed; so, he should give two, if not five, villages to the Pandavas. Duryodhana relented and was willing to go by Bhishma’s advice.

This was where Sakuni said about Krishna’s nature as mentioned above. As for Bhishma, for Sakuni too, giving the Pandavas was actually giving Krishna. Duryodhana must not give Krishna anything in order to please him. He simply could not be pleased (danena atriputi). He told him about king Bali. Appearing as a dwarf at the jajna (fire sacrifice) king Bali was performing, Narayana told the great asura king that he came from a very poor family and asked him for a small piece of land in which he would perform his religious rituals - all the land he required was whatever would be covered by three steps of his. Bali thought that the dwarf didn’t know how little he was asking for. He asked him to ask for a great deal more as dana (ritual gift), but the Dwarf avatara wanted nothing more than three steps of land. Bali’s preceptor Sukracharya warned Bali that the dwarf was Narayana Himself and he had arrived to deprive him of all his possessions and power. Bali wouldn’t listen; a dwarf is a dwarf, his steps are small, so how would it matter if the guru was right that that he was Narayana Himself? But when the time to give dana came, the dwarf’s foot was no longer a dwarf’s foot. Bali was the lord of the bhuloka (earth) and the higher lokas (worlds) as well. In his two feet the Dwarf covered all that. When the third foot emerged from his navel, Bali offered his head to him and Narayana despatched him to the Netherworld. The great Bali perished because he wanted to fulfil Narayana’s demand, said Sakuni to Duryodhana. Krishna was the same Vamana, he told him, and had come to dispossess him of everything that he had. He advised him to give Krishna nothing at all. If he gave him just one village instead of two, he would absorb the entire universe of space in that one village, like what Vamana had done, and Duryodhana would be left with nothing to even stand on. So Duryodhana must abandon all thought of pleasing Narayana with a gift of two villages.

The wise Bhishma intervened and told Sakuni that his narrative was incomplete; so, his conclusion, wrong. After sending him to the patala loka, Narayana made Bali the king there, where he was like Indra of the swarga loka in every respect. Not just that. He Himself left his own abode and stayed with him for his love for him. But all this made no impression on Duryodhana; quite understandable, one would think. Who would sacrifice his today for his tomorrow, especially when he has wealth, power and status!

So, Bhima and Krishna were similar in just one respect, but unpack that similarity and you find a great difference. Bhima’s discontent was with respect to his bodily cravings. He couldn’t get certain pleasures to the level of his satisfaction. In Sarala Mahabharata, it is unclear whether Narayana wanted anything from anyone: dana, mana, bhakti or whatever else. The gods, the humans and the demons gave him things on their own, not knowing that one cannot please him by giving him anything whatever - this is all that this celebrated narrative by Sarala Das says. In the spirit of our ancient knowledge, all we can say is the following: He is not pleased if you worship Him, He is not displeased if you do not worship Him. He is not pleased if you pray to him and sing his mahima (glory); he is not displeased if you abuse him. Then what remains for us to do? Witness his leela perhaps? At least  that’s what I think poet Sarala says to his listeners and readers across centuries in his Mahabharata, popularly known as Sarala Mahabharata.     

Note:

Vyasa Mahabharata is about nara (the humans), whereas Sarala Mahabharata is about narayana ( Supreme god Narayana); Vyasa Mahabharata is about dharma (virtuous living), whereas Sarala Mahabharata is primarily about moksha and secondarily about dharma. This is what I understand. 

17.5.25

THE WAR CODE: ANOTHER VIEW

 

War between the Pandavas and the Kauravas was imminent. In the assembly of the warriors who had joined him, Duryodhana appealed to them to give him victory. They assured him that they would fight for him with utmost commitment but would not be able to win the war for him. The Pandavas themselves were great warriors and with Krishna on their side, they had become invincible.

 

Duryodhana turned to Bhishma. He told him that there were many great warriors on his side and his army was huge. In contrast Yudhisthira’s army was small. Would the huge Kaurava army, he asked Bhishma, not vanquish the small Pandava army easily? Bhishma said the question was not how large his army was and how small the enemy’s but who were fighting on which side and how capable they were. It was within Bhurishrava’s power, said Bhishma, to kill them all in three days, Shalya in two, and Aswasthama, in one. Karna could do so in three praharas (three quarters of a day) and guru Drona, in two. As for himself, said Bhishma, he could end it in one prahara but Arjuna, in just a muhurta (moment).

 

Arjuna had defeated Bhagawan Shiva and pleased with him, the greatest of the gods had given him the infallible arrow, named Pashupata. Arjuna had defeated Indra, the king of the gods along with some other powerful gods in the forest of Khandava. He had defeated the incomparable Balarama and later, Krishna himself. Only the other day, he had defeated, single-handed, the entire Kaurava army in the Virata war. Arjuna was unconquerable, said Bhishma.

 

Duryodhana asked him if there was a way to neutralize him. Bhishma said there was. A rule could be made with the consent of all the warriors to the effect that weapons received from the gods must not be used in the Kurukshetra war. He suggested to Duryodhana that he must invite the Pandavas to Hastinapura. They all would persuade them to accept a war code, which would include the above-mentioned constraint. Both sides must work out the code together and both sides must commit themselves to it. Sakuni was entrusted with the task of bringing the Pandavas from Jayanta (pronounced as jayantaa), where they were staying, to Hastinapura.

 

Bhishma knew that wars are not always won or lost in the battlefields. Victory could be manipulated; victory could be assured even before stepping on the war field. Now, in such a situation, a “heroic” performance on the battlefield loses authenticity and victory and defeat become meaningless. How fettered, for instance, was the defeated - by a curse or a promise made to someone dear or revered, or to self or by a rule or a personal value and the like? Bhishma lost in the Kurukshetra War because he had promised to himself that he would not fight a woman. Yudhisthira lived because Karna had promised Kunti that he would not harm any of her sons except Arjuna.

 

Sakuni went to Jayanta and told Yudhisthira that he had come at Duryodhana’s behest to invite them to Hastinapura where they and the other warriors would work out a war code. Bhima asked him why Duryodhana did not come to them. Sakuni said that in Hastinapura, there were the Kuru elders, kings from many kingdoms and many others; the war code could be made in the presence of them all.

 

So the Pandavas went to Hastinapura with Krishna. They were fondly welcomed at Hastinapura and there was bonhomie among the Kauravas and the Pandavas. In the presence of all, Yudhisthira asked Sahadeva when the war should start. Sahadeva said the very next day – Tuesday, the dwithiya tithi (the second day) of the month of Magha - would be good for the purpose. Everyone agreed.

 

Duryodhana told Yudhisthira that since brothers would be fighting with brothers, they must fight without malice or hatred towards each other and there must be no bitterness or hypocrisy. He said that this would be the war of dharma and the witness would be the Avatara Himself! He said dharma would win.

 

Now, would Duryodhana have said all those things if he did not believe that he had done nothing adharmik (morally wrong) in not sharing the kingdom of Hastinapura with the Pandavas, no matter who all had said things to the contrary? In Duryodhana’s tone there was no insincerity. And for him, giving half the kingdom would be sharing the kingdom, as would be giving one village. No one goes to war under the banner of adharma. Duryodhana was certain that he wasn’t.

 

Then he said, “Let no one use weapons the use of which one hasn’t learnt from one’s guru (preceptor). Let Arjuna not use manavedi arrow. Let the warriors kill during the day but be cordial to one another when the fighting stops at sunset and they must then sit together as close friends and enjoy the togetherness.” Everyone agreed.  “No one must violate the code”, said Duryodhana, “Narayana will be the witness. The one who does, will suffer”. The Pandavas and the Kauravas solemnly promised to abide by the Code.

 

Bhishma’s objective was to disempower Arjuna; King Duryodhana said what he wanted. The Pandavas could not have failed to understand Duryodhana’s motive, although they would not have guessed that the idea was Bhishma’s. In any case, they did not say anything. The meeting ended. The Pandavas returned to Jayanta. They had to make preparations for the war that would start the following morning.

 

No one, neither the Pandavas nor the Kauravas, mentioned the infallible weapon Karna had received from god Indra. Everyone in both sides knew that he had decided to use it against Arjuna alone. With that weapon, Karna could have effectively won the war for Duryodhana. With Arjuna killed, his four brothers would not have survived. Now, the code disempowered Karna too. One could guess why the Indra-given weapon was not mentioned, but one guess would be as good as another since there is nothing in the narrative that offers a clue to why it was ignored in the making of the War Code.  True, Pashupata astra was not mentioned either but it was in everyone’s mind.

 

Now, was it ethical for the virtuous Bhishma to plan with Duryodhana as to how to disempower Arjuna? Was the idea of War Code not essentially camouflage? In our view, Bhishma was right about constraining Arjuna with respect to the use of Pashupata ashtra, the all-destroying divine arrow. Since brothers were to going to fight with their brothers, he wanted there to be a level battlefield. He was also justified to have Duryodhana propose the condition. A King declares a war; so it’s for the king to make statements about it. And Duryodhana was the king.

 

But what was unethical for Bhishma, in our view, is that he did not say it during the Code- making that it was his idea and that he was being fair to both sides. He loved Arjuna most dearly and knew it very well that Arjuna loved him and revered him profoundly. So hiding the truth about the War Code from Arjuna reduces, in our opinion, his moral stature in the narrative.

 

Talking about manipulating disempowerment, in Sarala Mahabharata, Karna has been the victim more than anyone else, one would think. He was disempowered by Indra and later, by his mother, Kunti. Both had trapped him. There is no place here for those fascinating details. 

 

To conclude, the War Code did not survive; it was violated repeatedly by both sides. Those who had made it together, destroyed it together. But the Code, the poet Sarala’s creation, has lived, in a manner of speaking, in a different way. The narrative has given it permanence; in the entire puranic literature, it is the only instance of adversaries in a war sitting together and formulating a moral Code to follow during the war.

Notes: (a) This essay was published in Samachar Just Click under the title: "The War Code in Sarala Mahabharata: A Tale of Strategy, Ethics and Disempowerment" on January 9, 2025.

(b) The story of this post and the post on September 13, 2024, namely, "Politics of the War Code", is the same. But here, the perspective is different; as such different issues have been raised and discussed. Thus this post is not a repetition of the post of September 13, 2024. 

DIFFERENT STORIES, DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES (On Variations in Sarala Mahabharata)

The variations are with respect to Vyasa’s Mahabharata (referred to, alternatively, as Vyasa Mahabharata here).  Sarala Das’s Mahabharata (referred to as Sarala Mahabharata here), composed in Odia in the fifteenth century, is not a translation of Vyasa Mahabharata but a remarkably creative retelling of it. Sarala re-conceptualised the ancient narrative and retold it. In his narrative, he introduced variations in certain ways to express his understanding of the classical text, his poetic vision and insights into various matters, such as the human condition in the world, the nature of agency in a pre-determined world and the nature of divine intervention in the affairs of the humans, etc. Sarala Mahabharata scholars over the years have enumerated many variations but have not dealt, barring just a few, in detail with the significance of the same. We discuss here in brief two stories which are Sarala’s innovations in the sense that they do not occur in Vyasa Mahabharata.

We begin with the story of the “Mango of Truth”. Yudhisthira needed a ripe mango for a sage who had visited him. The visitor had told him that he would accept only a ripe mango for his food from him. It was autumn. The “sage” was Gauramukha, Duryodhana’s spy in disguise, who he had sent to the forests to trace the Pandavas, who were already into their ninth year of exile after losing the second game of dice. Just three years of exile remained and Duryodhana was getting worried. Yudhisthira invoked Krishna and he arrived. Krishna invoked sage Vyasa and Vyasa arrived. Vyasa planted a mango seed, as told by Krishna and at the Avatara’s wish a plant appeared. Krishna then asked each of the Pandavas and Draupadi to speak some truth about themselves so that at the end a ripe mango would emerge. He warned them that if anyone told a lie then the tree would burn to ashes. First spoke Yudhisthira, then Bhima, then Arjuna, Nakula and Sahadeva in that order and finally Draupadi spoke. Seven ripe mangoes appeared. Krishna gave one to the sage.

But he ensured that Gauramukha did not take the mango to Duryodhana. He met him disguised as a brahmin and told him that it was not a real mango because a ripe mango in the autumnal month of Bhadra is out of nature and that if he went to Duryodhana with that fake mango, he would become the laughing stock in the court. Gauramukha told him that the fruit was real because he had witnessed the entire process of its coming into existence. Krishna told him that utterance of truth cannot change the law of nature. He told him that he wanted to subject it to a truth test. He uttered a number of lies, such as he had “seen” the sun rising in the west and setting in the east, the sun shining at night and the moon, in the day, a lotus grown on the top of a hill and the like. Unable to withstand the onslaught of lies, the mango of truth disappeared. Krishna told Gauramukha that the mango was unreal and that he had saved him from ridicule in the Kaurava king’s court.

Turning to what Draupadi said when her turn came. She said that although she had five husbands, she wished for Karna. This occurs in the version of Sarala Mahabharata published by Sarala Sahitya Sansad and seems to have received popular acceptance. Sarala Mahabharata scholars are generally of the opinion that exposing Draupadi as just an ordinary woman and by no means a “sati” (virtuous woman), is the purpose of this episode. Sarala Mahabharata, edited by Artaballav Mohanty and published by the Department of Culture of the Government of Odisha does not contain this. Here she said something else; she talked about her having the same weakness as other women, namely that when they saw a handsome person, who might even be their blood relative, they would desire him. She also said that she had a special fondness for Arjuna. In either version, Draupadi emerges as an unexceptional woman. As for the Pandavas, what they said revealed no dark secrets about them and can be ignored in this discussion. (For some details of this fascinating episode, see my post “The Mango of Truth” in the blog: saralamahabharat.blogspot.com). One wonders if exposing Draupadi’s secret desires could be a strong enough justification for this innovation in the Mahabharata story.

No Pandava ever talked about Draupadi’s weaknesses and there was no change in the attitude towards her on the part of any of her husbands on that account. After her death, Yudhisthira did mention her special fondness for Arjuna as an act of adharma (sin) but during her life time he never treated her unkindly for that. In other words, Draupadi’s revelations about herself has no consequences at all for the narrative. Her view of woman’s nature concerning handsome males may be interesting but it would hardly count as a deep insight into the woman’s sexuality in the context of Sarala Mahabharata.

In our opinion, a Draupadi-centric reading of the episode, which has been the case so far, as the literature on this episode shows, can hardly raise questions of interest and significance. A reading of it from a different perspective is certainly in order in my opinion.

We suggest a mango of truth-centric reading of the episode. In this reading, questions of appearance and reality, of the power of the utterance of truth and also of falsehood and of the role of Krishna would arise. Can the words of truth really extend the possibilities of happenings in the real world that defy the laws of nature? Was the mango of truth a real world object? What is the power of lies? Is the power of truth and of untruth inherent or derived? What is Krishna’s role in the appearance and the disappearance of the mango of truth?

The Pandavas’ and Draupadi’s utterances of truth made the impossible possible, but Krishna’s lies destroyed what truth had created. So, truth can create, lies cannot. There was pratyaksha pramana (evidence based on what the eye had seen) for the existence of the mango but that was no evidence for the reality of the mango, as Krishna told Gauramukha when he advised him that the mango should be subjected to a truth test to determine whether it was real. When it was destroyed, he told him that it was indeed unreal because words could not destroy a physical object.

Incidentally, there is no mention of the other mangoes in the narrative. One could presume that they all vanished once Gauramukha’s mango was destroyed. There is no mention of the mango- of- truth event in the narrative thereafter.

It is true that the truth of the Pandavas and Draupadi produced the mango but their truth was empowered by Krishna. It was he who had told them that their truth would yield the desired fruit. So in a sense his words for them were his truth. It was his truth that created the mango and it was his lie that destroyed it. It is not clear whether the mango was an illusion or a real object. A real world object could not be destroyed by words but when Indra received the mango from Krishna, he must have thought it was a real mango. In any case, the narrative does not need this clarification. By creating the mango as the causer-agent, Krishna disturbed the order of the natural world and by destroying it as the agent, he restored order to it. Viewed thus, the episode is a description of his leela.

When we read Sarala Mahabharata, we must not ignore Sarala’s repeatedly referring to his narrative as “Vishnu Purana”. So Sarala used the story of the Kuru clan to expatiate on the leela of the Purna Avatara (the complete manifestation) of the supreme god Vishnu.  

Let us consider another innovation in Sarala Mahabharata. Here the last effort to avoid a fratricidal war was made by Yudhisthira, not Krishna, as in Vyasa Mahabharata. Here Krishna did not offer any advice to Arjuna when he expressed his unwillingness to fight in the Great War in Kurukshetra. He left his brother’s problem in the hands of Yudhisthira. 

Incidentally, scholars of Sarala’s magnum opus have observed that there is no Srimad Bhagavad Gita in Sarala Mahabharata. The explanation of its non-occurrence has mostly been in terms of Sarala’s audience, who did not have the benefit of education. But it has not been noticed by the scholars that Arjuna’s problem in this work was fundamentally different from the same in Vyasa Mahabharata (taking Srimad Bhagavad Gita to be part of this work). In Sarala’s retelling, Arjuna was unwilling to start the war by attacking anyone in the Kaurava side. If anyone attacked him, he would respond and he had absolutely no hesitation in killing anyone in the enemy’s side, be it Bhishma or Drona or his cousins, he told Krishna. He firmly believed that the sins of the killing in the war, where blood of the innocents flows, accrues to the one who starts a war. There were others in the world of Sarala Mahabharata who had the same belief, Dhaumya, the venerable priest of the Kuru family being one. This being Arjuna’s problem in Sarala’s Mahabharata, there is obviously no place for the Gita discourse here.

To return to the war, when he heard about Arjuna’s unwillingness to attack the Kaurava warriors, Bhima asked Krishna to permit him to attack them. Krishna asked him to attack Dussasana. As he was readying himself to do so, Yudhisthira stopped him and said that he would make an effort to avoid the war. Ignoring the warnings of his brothers, relatives and Krishna himself, he proceeded towards the Kaurava army all alone and unarmed. In all humility, he paid due respects to Bhishma, Bhurishrava, Shalya, Drona, Ashwasthama, Kripacharya and Karna, who he knew, as did everyone else in the world of Sarala Mahabharata, was his elder brother and received their blessings for victory in the war.

Then he met Duryodhana and pleaded with him for five villages of Duryodhana’s choice. In contrast, Krishna had asked for five villages of his choice when he went to Duryodhana as Yudhisthira’s emissary. When Duryodhana refused, Yudhisthira asked for four, then three villages, finally ending up with just one. Duryodhana said he would not give him anything at all. He told him that if he won the war, then he would be the king of Hastinapura and if Yudhisthira won, then he would be the king.

Yudhisthira chose to take his saying literally and told him that since he held that view, then the war should be fought between the hundred Kauravas and the five Pandavas and that he should ask everyone else to leave the battlefield. He told him that that would ensure that blood of the innocents would not flow in the battlefields of Kurukshera. Duryodhana was unwilling. Yudhisthira’s understood that his attempt to avoid the war had failed.

There is, to the best of my knowledge, nothing comparable to Yudhisthira’s proposal in the entire puranic literature. It celebrates humaneness most emphatically. In essence, the idea is that if a war becomes unavoidable, then strictly only those who directly benefit from it must participate in it. As for the others, such as the soldiers, it is not their war. In that sense, they are innocent and their killing is the killing of the innocents. In Sarala Mahabharata, war is considered sinful, and there is absolutely no situation in which war is the best solution to a problem in this narrative. In Yudhisthira’s proposal, Sarala makes a rich contribution to the war ethics articulated in our puranic literature.

By dissociating Krishna from crucial decisions about war, the poet suggests that humans alone must decide their destiny. It was pre-determined that the war would take place but human agency is not undermined in the pre-determined world of Sarala Mahabharata. At the laukika level (level of the phenomenal world), alternatives, even to war, are never unavailable to the humans, neither is their freedom to choose.

As for Krishna, the devotee Sarala saved his ista: the Avatara.

 

Note: A version of it under the title “Different Tales, Different Perspectives” is published in margAsia (Summer and Winter 2023).