A SCHOLARLY APPRAISAL OF PROF B. N. PATNAIK'S ESSAY "THE END OF THE STORY OF BABARAPURI"

 

Dr. Babuli Naik
Associate Professor
Department of English
Motilal Nehru College
University of Delhi
Email: bnaik@mln.du.ac.in

 

Prof. B.N. Patnaik’s essay is a thoughtful and intellectually stimulating engagement with a relatively underexplored episode of the Sarala Mahabharata. It combines literary interpretation, philosophical reflection, and socio-cultural analysis in a manner characteristic of a scholar deeply conversant with both textual traditions and contemporary hermeneutic concerns. At the same time, certain aspects of the argument invite critical scrutiny. A scholarly appraisal may therefore proceed by considering the article’s strengths, interpretive strategies, theoretical implications, and limitations.

1. The Significance of Recovering a Marginal Narrative

One of the essay’s greatest strengths is its recovery of the Babarapuri episode, a narrative largely absent from mainstream discussions of the Mahabharata tradition. By foregrounding a story unique to the Sarala Mahabharata, Professor Patnaik highlights the creativity of regional epic traditions and their capacity to generate meanings absent from the Sanskrit canonical text.

The article implicitly challenges the assumption that regional retellings merely reproduce inherited narratives. Instead, Babarapuri emerges as an instance of imaginative textual innovation. Krishna's invention of a city and its destruction functions as a rhetorical device rather than a recollection of historical or mythic memory. Patnaik's observation that Krishna appears to create the city and its history "in the court itself" is particularly insightful, as it shifts attention from narrative content to narrative performance.

From a literary perspective, Babarapuri resembles what modern narratologists might call a "parable" or an "embedded allegory”, a story embedded within another to illuminate a moral, political, or existential truth.

2. Krishna as Storyteller and Hermeneutic Problem

The essay's most sophisticated contribution is its discussion of Krishna's communicative intention. Professor Patnaik asks whether the story is:

• a prediction of inevitable destruction, or
• a warning designed to alter future conduct.

This distinction is not merely literary but philosophical. It invokes the classical tension between determinism and agency, and between fate and ethical responsibility.

The discussion recalls major debates in hermeneutics, especially those associated with thinkers such as Wilhelm Dilthey, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Paul Ricoeur. Meaning depends partly on authorial intention, yet that intention is often inaccessible.

Professor Patnaik wisely notes that the problem becomes even more complex when the speaker is Krishna. The traditional conception of Krishna as an avatar renders his intentions fundamentally inscrutable, leaving ordinary hermeneutic methods inadequate.

The essay's conclusion that the "prediction" interpretation is more consistent with Krishna's avataric role in the Sarala Mahabharata is plausible, though not entirely persuasive. One could argue that the very act of diplomatic intervention presupposes the possibility of change. Why negotiate if the outcome is fixed? Krishna's mission itself seems to imply residual human agency. The text may therefore sustain both readings simultaneously, creating a productive ambiguity rather than demanding a definitive choice.

3. Fear as a Social and Psychological Force

The most original section of the essay is arguably its interpretation of Kokuaa.

Professor Patnaik moves beyond mythological explanation and treats Kokuaa as a symbol of fear. This reading transforms the episode from a moral tale into a profound meditation on collective psychology.

Several features support his interpretation.

• Nobody has actually seen Kokuaa;
• descriptions of it vary wildly;
• fear spreads through rumour rather than through direct experience;
• Social collapse results not from an external enemy but from internal panic.

The analysis here is strikingly modern. It anticipates insights from crowd psychology, moral panic theory, and social constructionism.

One is reminded of Gustave Le Bon’s work on crowd behaviour or of contemporary studies on misinformation and mass hysteria. Kokuaa functions much like an imaginary threat, whose power derives from collective belief rather than from objective reality.

The destruction of Babarapuri thus becomes an allegory of self-destruction fuelled by fear. The city does not die because it is attacked, but because its inhabitants internalise terror.

This interpretation is particularly relevant in contemporary societies characterised by rumour-driven politics, media-induced anxieties, and digitally amplified fears.

4. The Sociological Reading of Family and Kinship

Professor Patnaik's final argument concerns family, lineage, and social cohesion. He suggests that Babarapuri's unrestricted sexual practices prevent the formation of enduring family structures, leaving the population without emotional bonds. Consequently, when a crisis strikes, no care network exists to preserve social order.

This reading reflects a classic sociological insight: social institutions foster solidarities that enable collective survival.

The argument is internally coherent. However, it is also the most debatable point in the essay.

Several questions arise:

1. Does the narrative itself explicitly establish a causal link between sexual freedom and social collapse?
2. Is the interpretation shaped more by traditional normative assumptions than by textual evidence?
3. Could alternative forms of social organisation exist outside lineage-based structures?

Contemporary anthropology would likely challenge the notion that stable social bonds necessarily depend on conventional family arrangements. Many societies build durable solidarities through institutions beyond kinship.

Therefore, while Patnaik's interpretation is consistent with the ethical framework of the epic tradition, it should perhaps be regarded as one possible reading rather than the definitive account of Babarapuri's destruction.

5. Political Philosophy of the Narrative

The article also contains an implicit political theory.

The destruction of Babarapuri shows that civilisations are often undone by internal contradictions rather than by external enemies. Krishna explicitly tells Duryodhana that the Kauravas will perish not because of foreign invasion but because of arrogance, greed, and folly.

This theme resonates strongly with many historical analyses of civilisational decline. From ancient empires to modern nation-states, internal fragmentation is often more destructive than external threats.

Professor Patnaik correctly identifies this dimension, though he does not develop it in depth. One could fruitfully connect the episode to broader traditions of political thought on hubris, moral decay, and self-destruction.

6. Methodological Observations

From a scholarly standpoint, the essay draws on several interpretive approaches:

• textual analysis,
• philosophical reflection,
• psychological interpretation,
• sociological speculation.

Its interdisciplinary richness is one of its strengths. Yet this strength also creates methodological tensions.

At times, the essay moves seamlessly from textual observation to sociological conclusion without fully articulating the intermediate steps. For example, the discussion of family structure relies heavily on inference rather than on explicit textual evidence.

Similarly, the shift from literary narrative to psychological theory would benefit from engagement with established conceptual frameworks.

Nevertheless, because the piece is clearly intended as a reflective essay rather than a strictly academic article, such movements are understandable and often intellectually productive.

 

 

Overall Assessment

Prof. Patnaik's essay is a learned and reflective meditation on a neglected episode in the Sarala Mahabharata. Its principal achievement is to reveal the philosophical depth of the Babarapuri narrative and to show that even a seemingly minor story can illuminate enduring questions about fear, destiny, social cohesion, and political decline.

The essay is particularly successful in:

• highlighting the narrative ingenuity of the Sarala Mahabharata;
• exploring the hermeneutic problem of Krishna's intention;
• interpreting Kokuaa as a symbolic embodiment of collective fear;
• connecting mythological narrative with universal human concerns.

Its principal limitation is the tendency to move from textual description to normative sociological conclusions without sufficient critical distance. The argument concerning family, sexuality, and social collapse is suggestive but not fully substantiated and would benefit from engagement with alternative anthropological perspectives.

In sum, the article exemplifies a humanistic mode of scholarship that treats epic literature not as a relic of the past but as a living resource for reflecting on contemporary human experience. Its greatest contribution is perhaps a reminder that societies often perish not from the force of external enemies but from internal fears, divisions, and failures, a lesson as relevant today as it was in Krishna's imagined city of Babarapuri.