REVIEW OF “SITUATING SARALA MAHABHARATA IN OUR PURANIC LITERATURE”

 After reading Professor Patnaik’s “Situating Sarala Mahabharata in Our Puranic Literature”, my observation is that the essay argues that Sarala Das’s Mahabharata is not merely a regional retelling of Vyasa’s Mahabharata but a radical, creative, ethical, and theological reconfiguration of the epic-puranic tradition. Its central claim is that Sarala Mahabharata should be read as a distinct Mahabharata narrative that shifts the epic's axis from dharma to moksha, from heroic-war ethics to a more compassionate, bhakti-inflected, and Jagannath-centred moral imagination.

1. Central Argument of the Essay

The essay begins by drawing a crucial distinction between retelling and reconceptualisation. Professor Patnaik does not treat the Sarala Mahabharata as a derivative or a vernacular adaptation of the Vyasa Mahabharata. Instead, he argues that Sarala’s text transcends ordinary retelling because Sarala himself calls his narrative “Vishnu Purana,” begins it with the question of moksha, and concludes it with the emergence of Lord Jagannath. This framing is important because it allows the essay to reposition the Sarala Mahabharata within the broader Puranic and bhakti traditions, rather than confining it to the Sanskrit epic lineage.

The major thesis may be stated as follows: whereas Vyasa’s Mahabharata is primarily concerned with dharma, Sarala Mahabharata is deeply concerned with moksha, bhakti, moral memory, compassion, and the ethical cost of violence. This is a significant intervention, as it challenges the common assumption that regional Mahabharatas are secondary cultural versions of the Sanskrit original. By contrast, Professor Patnaik’s essay proposes that the Sarala Mahabharata possesses its own philosophical originality.

2. Sarala Mahabharata as “Vishnu Purana”

One of the essay's strongest conceptual moves is its defence of Sarala’s repeated description of his Mahabharata as the “Vishnu Purana.” Professor Patnaik suggests that Sarala’s narrative is composed in the bhava of the Srimad Bhagavata, particularly because it celebrates the Mahima and Leela of Sri Krishna. This claim has two important implications.

First, it shifts the text from an epic of dynastic conflict to a bhakti-oriented sacred narrative. Krishna is not merely a political strategist or a divine guide, as in many readings of the Vyasa Mahabharata. He becomes the focal point of devotional consciousness.

Second, it situates Sarala Mahabharata within a specifically Jagannath-centred Odia religious universe. The emergence of Lord Jagannath at the end of the narrative is not an appendix or a local addition. It is structurally significant, transforming the Mahabharata into a theological movement towards Jagannath. Thus, Sarala’s Mahabharata becomes both an epic and a Purana, both a narrative and a spiritual itinerary.

3. The Shift from Dharma to Moksha

Professor Patnaik’s statement that “if dharma is the concern of Vyasa Mahabharata, moksha is the concern of Sarala Mahabharata” is perhaps the essay’s most significant theoretical proposition. In the Vyasa Mahabharata, dharma is unstable, complex, and often tragic. Characters struggle to discern what is right. The Kurukshetra war is framed as a crisis of dharma, kingship, kinship, and cosmic order.

In Sarala Mahabharata, however, Professor Professor Patnaik argues that the narrative is directed toward a deeper concern: liberation, spiritual destiny, and the salvific role of divine presence. This shift redefines the epic's function. The Mahabharata is no longer only a story about the moral collapse of the Kuru lineage. It becomes a narrative about how human beings, even amid suffering, error, devotion, enmity, memory, and sacrifice, are drawn toward a larger divine order.

This does not mean Sarala ignores dharma. Rather, he reinterprets dharma through the lens of moksha and bhakti. Ethical action matters, but only insofar as it participates in a larger spiritual economy.

4. “Katha Rahithiba” and the Ethics of Moral Memory

One of the essay's most original insights is the idea of “katha rahithiba,” meaning the story will endure. Professor Patnaik interprets this as a concept of immortality within the mortal world. King Pandu’s sacrifice for Dhritarashtra and Yudhisthira’s advice to Arjuna both articulate the same principle: life is temporary, but noble action endures as a story.

This is an extremely important idea. In classical Indian traditions, immortality is often conceived as moksha, heaven, lineage, fame, or divine union. As Professor Patnaik reads it, Sarala’s formulation introduces another mode of immortality: ethical remembrance through narrative.

In this sense, literature itself becomes a vehicle of immortality. The body dies, the act ends, kingdoms disappear, but katha remains. This gives Sarala’s text a profound meta-literary dimension. The Mahabharata not only tells stories of ethical action; it also reflects on why stories matter. Story becomes the cultural form through which moral life outlasts biological life.

5. Kula, Family Bond, and Ethical Revaluation

Professor Patnaik’s discussion of kulatwa, or bondedness with family, is another major contribution. In the Vyasa Mahabharata, attachment to family often appears as a moral failing. Dhritarashtra’s excessive attachment to Duryodhana is a primary cause of disaster. Family loyalty can distort justice.

According to Professor Patnaik, Sarala revalues this idea. Duryodhana’s grief over the sons of Draupadi, whom Aswasthama kills by mistake, is read as an affirmation of family feeling. Even a morally compromised figure like Duryodhana is not reduced to evil. He is shown capable of grief, attachment, and human tenderness.

This is important because Sarala’s ethical imagination is not rigidly binary. He does not merely divide characters into dharmic and adharmic figures. Instead, he explores the mixed nature of human beings. Even the villain retains emotional depth, and even the wrongdoer is not outside the human circle of suffering.

 

 

6. Sarala’s Radical Ethics of War

The essay’s most powerful section is its discussion of war. Professor Patnaik argues that the Sarala Mahabharata offers a radical critique of war without parallel in classical war literature. Three points are especially important.

First, Yudhisthira seeks peace at the very edge of battle. When war becomes unavoidable, he proposes that only the hundred Kauravas and five Pandavas fight, since the war belongs to them. This is a strikingly modern ethical idea. It distinguishes between rulers who benefit from war and ordinary soldiers who die for causes that are not their own.

Second, the Sarala Mahabharata treats war as sinful without qualification. This stands in sharp contrast to the concept of dharma yuddha, or just war, in which a war may be justified if the cause is righteous. Professor Patnaik argues that Sarala questions, and even rejects, this idea. For Sarala, the shedding of innocent blood renders war morally tainted, regardless of the declared cause.

Third, Sarala develops a distinct war ethic centred on the idea that the one who begins war bears the sin of war. Arjuna refuses to shoot the first arrow, and Dhaumya advises Yudhisthira not to initiate hostilities. This establishes a moral framework in which restraint is more important than heroic aggression.

This marks a major philosophical departure. In many epic traditions, the warrior’s glory lies in courage, combat, and victory. In Sarala’s imagination, moral greatness may lie in refusing to initiate violence.

7. The Absence of the Bhagavad Gita as a Creative Act

Professor Patnaik’s reading of the Bhagavad Gita’s absence from the Sarala Mahabharata is particularly sophisticated. He does not treat the absence as a deficiency but rather as a creative act.

In the Vyasa Mahabharata, the Gita becomes necessary because Arjuna is morally paralysed by the thought of killing his relatives, teachers, and elders. Krishna’s discourse responds to that crisis. But in the Sarala Mahabharata, Arjuna’s hesitation is different. He is not unwilling to fight his relatives. He is unwilling to start the war. Therefore, the philosophical need for a Gita-like discourse disappears.

This is a brilliant narratological observation. Sarala does not merely omit the Gita. He restructures Arjuna’s moral crisis, rendering the Gita unnecessary. The omission is therefore not accidental. It signals Sarala’s independent ethical and narrative architecture.

8. Sakuni and the Tragedy of Condemned Agency

Sarala’s Sakuni, as Professor Patnaik presents him, is one of the essay's most fascinating reinterpretations. In the Vyasa Mahabharata, Sakuni is often portrayed as a figure of deceit and destructive cunning. In the Sarala Mahabharata, he is more tragic. Bound by a promise to avenge the murder of his father and relatives, who were starved to death by Duryodhana, he is driven by this duty.

This recasts Sakuni from a villain to a tragic agent. He acts destructively, but his destructiveness stems from filial obligation and historical injury. He knows he has caused enormous suffering and chooses death as atonement. Professor Patnaik calls this “virtuous suicide.”

This reading raises a profound question: What is agency in a morally predetermined world? Sakuni is guilty yet trapped. He is an avenger, a sinner, a devotee, and a tragic instrument of destiny. Sarala’s genius lies in refusing to reduce him to a single category.

9. Questioning the Inevitability of War

Another striking feature of Sarala’s text is its challenge to the notion that war is inevitable. Bhishma tells Arjuna that the Pandavas, too, share responsibility for the war. If they truly valued kula dharma, they could have renounced the kingdom and returned to the forest, as Pandu once did by renouncing his kingship for Dhritarashtra.

This is ethically unsettling because it rejects the comfort of one-sided blame. Sarala asks whether even a just claim is worth mass destruction. The question is not merely whether the Pandavas had a right to the kingdom. The deeper question is whether asserting a right can justify catastrophic violence.

Here, Sarala Mahabharata becomes morally more demanding than many heroic traditions. It does not allow the reader to rest easily in the language of justice. It asks whether sacrifice may be ethically superior to victory.

10. Karma and Kripa in the Vastraharana Episode

Professor Patnaik’s discussion of the Vastraharana episode highlights Sarala’s theological creativity. In the Vyasa Mahabharata, Draupadi’s protection can be read in relation to her dharma and karma. In some bhakti traditions, it is Krishna’s grace that saves her. Sarala synthesises both perspectives.

Krishna appears but does not directly clothe Draupadi. Instead, he directs Surya to help her because she had once helped Surya in a previous birth. Thus, divine grace operates, but it does not cancel karma. Karma operates, yet it requires divine mediation.

This is a subtle theological synthesis. Sarala avoids two extremes, neither reducing everything to mechanical karma nor making divine grace arbitrary. Human action and divine compassion cooperate. This is a deeply Puranic mode of thought, yet Sarala gives it a distinctive narrative form.

11. Jara and the Radical Theology of God’s Need for Man

The essay reaches one of its most original points in its discussion of Jara, the Sabara figure associated with the emergence of Lord Jagannath. Professor Patnaik contrasts Jara with familiar types of bhaktas in Puranic literature. Devotees usually seek God, whether through love, surrender, service, or even hatred, as in virodha bhakti. But Jara is different. He does not seek Narayana. Rather, Narayana needs him.

This is a remarkable theological inversion. In most bhakti frameworks, the human being is incomplete without God. In Sarala’s Jagannath narrative, God’s manifestation is incomplete without the participation of a marginal human figure, a Savara. Jara is not merely blessed by God. He is required by God.

This has major implications. It places a forest-dwelling, socially marginal figure at the centre of divine embodiment. The making of Jagannath’s murti depends on Jara’s participation. In this sense, Sarala Mahabharata articulates a powerful anti-hierarchical theological imagination. Divine manifestation is not monopolised by Brahminical ritual authority. It requires the involvement of the socially excluded.

This makes Sarala’s Jagannath theology profoundly democratic and culturally Odia. It reflects the inclusiveness often associated with the Jagannath tradition, in which tribal, folk, Brahminical, Vaishnava, Shaiva, and Shakta traditions coexist.

12. The Essay’s Original Contribution

Professor Patnaik’s essay makes several important contributions.

First, it establishes Sarala Mahabharata as an autonomous intellectual text rather than a vernacular derivative of Vyasa's Mahabharata.

Second, it shows that Sarala is not merely adding local colour or regional episodes. He is creating new ethical categories: moral memory, kula consciousness, anti-war ethics, creative omission, tragic agency, and divine dependence on humans.

Third, it situates Sarala Mahabharata within Puranic literature while also showing how it challenges the Puranic tradition from within. Sarala inherits bhakti, Krishna-centred devotion, moksha-orientation, and divine leela, but he also revises inherited categories such as dharma-yuddha, bhakti, karma, kripa, and the divine-human relationship.

Fourth, the essay implicitly argues for the philosophical seriousness of the Odia literary tradition. Sarala Das emerges not only as Aadi Kavi but also as a thinker, theologian, and moral philosopher.

13. Critical Evaluation

The essay is rich, suggestive, and original, but an intellectual level critique must also identify areas for improvement.

One limitation is that several claims are very large. For example, the essay asserts that certain ideas have no parallel in the entire Puranic literature. This is a bold claim that requires fuller textual demonstration. A comparative discussion with the Bhagavata Purana, Vishnu Purana, Devi Bhagavata, regional Mahabharatas, and bhakti literatures would make the claim more academically secure.

Second, the essay would benefit from more direct citations of passages from Sarala Mahabharata in Odia, with translation and close reading. Since the argument depends on Sarala’s specific narrative innovations, including key textual excerpts would strengthen its scholarly authority.

Third, the category of Puranic literature requires further theoretical clarification. Should Sarala Mahabharata be situated within the Purana genre, as religious imagination, as narrative theology, or as cultural memory? The essay moves among these meanings, but a more explicit definition would sharpen the argument.

Fourth, the essay could engage with contemporary scholarship on regional Mahabharatas, vernacularisation, bhakti, and Jagannath culture. Scholars such as A. K. Ramanujan, Sheldon Pollock, Velcheru Narayana Rao, and Alf Hiltebeitel, along with scholars of Odia literature and Jagannath studies, could offer a broader theoretical framework.

14. Possible Research Thesis Emerging from the Essay

A strong PhD-level thesis based on this essay could be:

Sarala Mahabharata transforms the Sanskrit epic inheritance by relocating the Mahabharata narrative within a Jagannath-centred Puranic and bhakti universe, shifting the central concern from dharma to moksha, from heroic justice to compassion, from war as duty to war as sin, and from human need for God to God’s need for marginal human participation.

This thesis would enable a scholar to study the Sarala Mahabharata not merely as an adaptation but also as an ethical counter-epic, a regional Purana, and a vernacular philosophy.

15. Concluding Assessment

Professor Patnaik’s essay is valuable because it invites us to read Sarala Mahabharata as a major work in Indian intellectual history. Its importance lies not only in its Odia identity or its narrative departures from Vyasa, but also in how it rethinks some of the deepest concerns of Indian thought: dharma, moksha, karma, grace, bhakti, war, memory, family, agency, and divine embodiment.

Sarala Das does not merely retell the Mahabharata. He provincialises the Sanskrit epic without diminishing it, while universalising Odia religious imagination through Jagannath. His Mahabharata becomes a profound meditation on how human beings survive violence, remember virtue, bear guilt, seek liberation, and participate in the world's divine drama.

 

Dr Babuli Naik

bnaik@mln.du.ac.in