FOR YOUR KIND ATTENTION

Jadavpur University (Department of Comparative Literature), Kolkata has just published (2013) the book Retelling As Interpretation: An Essay on Sarala Mahabharata (123 pages), which contains my essay with the same title, responses to it by Professor Pratap Bandyopadhyay (Literature), Professor Vrinda Dalmiya (Philosophy), Professor Syed A. Sayeed (Philosophy), my response to these, and the piece "By Way of Conclusion" by Professor Ipshita Chanda (Literature). Most of the stories from Sarala Mahabharata discussed here have not been part of Introducing Saaralaa Mahaabhaarata and of this blog.

THE STORY OF KRISHNA'S GURUDAKSHINA

One day Krishna decided that his elder brother and he himself, both barely out of their childhood, absolutely needed education. It must have occurred to the avatar that no matter how many asuras he punished or how many mountains he lifted on his finger tip, how many serpents he chastised or gods he humbled, none of these or even all of these together would compensate for his lack of literacy and knowledge of the shastras. So with elder brother Balarama he went to a well known preceptor of those days, named Santipani (better known as Sandipani). He told him that they had lived among people who were all unlettered and ignorant of the shastras. They had never heard the Vedas even once where they grew up. All they knew was how to graze cattle, milk cows, churn milk, and some silly things like playing pranks and the like. The language people used there was uncouth, and the talk was mostly about catching someone, beating someone up, etc. With so much quarrelling and fighting all around, they had learnt the language of quarrelling. No one ever arranged for their education, or even felt that they needed education. Now they had left it all behind them, left home and parents as well, and had come to him to learn. In all humility they pleaded with him to accept them as his pupils. Santipani was kind-hearted, and he agreed to teach them. He was impressed with their sincere desire to learn and had not failed to notice that they were very different from children of their age, that they were truly exceptional. They almost looked like devas, he thought. He had lost four sons and only his youngest son alive who was still a child. Santipani and his wife felt that looking after these two extraordinary children would bring them some solace. 

The guru ritually started their education. He first taught them the script (most certainly the Odia script!): the alphabet, the markers, the diacritics and other symbols, compound letters, etc. They mastered these in no time. In fact, as their teacher was writing the letters and the markers, Krishna and Balarama learnt them by just looking at them. They needed no practice and the teacher did not have to teach them anything the second time. Then he taught them spelling, and again they learnt it as Santipani was teaching them. Teach us more, the pupils would say, and the teacher was astonished at the speed of their learning. This must not surprise us for which knowledge needed time for the avatara to internalize whose consort was the goddess of learning herself! 

Then Krishna and Balarama learnt languages: Odia, Telugu, Nagari, Marathi, languages of the South, among others – altogether sixty languages, as the poet tells us, and many scripts. Then they learnt the four Vedas, astronomy and astrology, kama shastra (science of desire), tantra, yoga, archery, military arts, among many others, which according to Sarala, numbered many thousands. We need not be curious about what these were. 

One day Santipani had gone to bathe in the sea and his son, Saudasi, was with him. As he was bathing, a big wave washed away the child from the beach. The unfortunate parents had lost four sons before and now they lost their fifth. The grief-stricken parents decided to go on pilgrimage and at the completion of it, end their life by sacrificing themselves ritually in the sacred waters at the holy Prayag. Krishna asked his preceptor why he was so distraught. Life is an opportunity for those who have done some virtuous act, and the sinners die early, he told him, so he should not think of ending his life, grieving over the death of his sons. He said that Balarama and he, being his pupils, were like his sons, and that he should look upon them as such and enjoy parenthood. They had a good deal more to learn from him, he told him, so his responsibility for them was not over yet. In those words Santipani experienced grace flowing on to him. He had always wondered whether Krishna and Balarama were not manifestations of Narayana and Shiva. Since his pupils were insisting, Santipani told his wife that they should postpone their pilgrimage plans and stay home for some more time. His wife, who was no less fond of those wonderful god-like children, agreed.

So Krishna and Balarama studied again, but Sarala does not tell us what they studied since according to his narrative, the guru had already told them that he had taught them all he knew. Sarala had nothing to tell really, he knew that the pupils were pretending. They had simply wanted to comfort Santipani and his wife. The couple were happy; how could they not be when Krishna and Balarama had taken it on themselves to make them happy?

Now Krishna knew that they could not stay there for long. One day Krishna most humbly sought Santipani and his wife’s permission to leave. The guru told him that once they left, they would go on pilgrimage, have a ritual bath in the Ganges at Manikarnika, and then have a darshan of Madhava at Prayag and having done so, consign themselves to the sacred waters there. That was how they would be able to put an end to their suffering on account of the death of their sons. Krishna decided to do his preceptor a favour and give him just whatever he wanted. If he wanted his sons to return to him from Yama’s loka, he would let it happen. But he did not tell him anything.

He requested Santipani to tell him what he wanted from Balarama and him as guru dakshina. The guru said that he did not want anything from them. Wealth and possessions had become meaningless to him because he had no child to inherit the same. The young pupil insisted that he ask for his guru dakshina, because the knowledge they had obtained from him would be useless if they did not give him dakshina.

Guru dakshina was the teacher’s fee. That was an important source of the teacher’s livelihood and the maintenance of his ashram. At the end of his education, when the pupil would leave, he was duty-bound to request his guru to name his dakshina. The guru might not always demand his dakshina, but once requested by his pupil, he was obliged to mention what he wanted, because it was believed that unpaid for education would not be useful for the pupil. The teacher was obliged to ask the pupil as his dakshina what was reasonable and was within his capacity to give. If offering guru dakshina was the pupil’s dharma, asking for proper dakshina In the above sense was the teacher’s dharma.

When Krishna insisted, Santipani named his dakshina. He and his wife wanted their five sons back. The guru needed nothing else. If Krishna and Balarama were not willing to give that dakshina, then he would happily exempt them from the requirement of dakshina. Krishna asked him whether being the wise person that he was he thought it proper and reasonable to ask even for his elder sons who had died eighty years ago. How could they return alive now after all those years, and wasn’t he thereby asking for the impossible, he asked him. The guru was unfazed and unrepentant. If he thought it improper, he must not worry about guru dakshina and return home with his blessings, he told his shishya. Krishna, who had decided, as we know, unknown to his preceptor of course, to give him his sons, assured him that he would not shy away from guru dakshina, and would try his best. But he wondered how his wise preceptor, after all those days of their being together, remained unaware of who he really was, and how he did not ask for moksha, and how badly he was caught in the snares of moha (attachment) for his sons. He asked Balarama to return home and he proceeded towards the sea where the guru had lost his youngest son.

He entered the waters and the god of the waters, Varuna, hurried to welcome him and pay his obeisance. The avatara, who was completely aware of his Self and of his essence as Narayana, asked him sternly why he had stolen his guru’s children. Varuna prayerfully said that it was not his doing, and that it was Yama’s. Under the spell of the god of life and death of all mortals, they had entered the deep waters and perished. Only Yama would know their whereabouts, he told him.

Krishna invoked the mighty Garuda, his vahana (carrier), and immediately went to Yama loka. On arrival there he blew his conch, Panchayajna, and Yama rushed to welcome him. His presence redeemed the sinners in that loka who were undergoing Yama’s punishment. Yama prostrated at his feet, offered him worship, and in great humility asked him how he had decided to grace him by his visit. In a reprimanding tone Krishna told him that he had heard about his unjust doings, about how he took children’s lives, whereas he should be taking the lives of those who had lived their full time in the mortal world. Children are no sinners, he told him, so why did he punish them with death, he asked.

We need not be puzzled about the avatara’s conflicting words. He had told his guru that sinners would die early and had not exclude childhood as not counting for the computation of “early” and was now telling god Yama that children are no sinners – presumably, as we understand, because they have not lived long enough to commit sins! He said things that would serve his purpose best. From another point of view, Krishna was unaffected by maya, cosmic illusion, and was beyond dualities. As for his words, then, what sense would truth and lie make! Only those caught in maya would interpret things in terms of duality, such as truth and untruth,

    

To return to Yama, he was reverential in his response. He did no injustice, he told the avatara with folded hands. The death of children was not due to their karma in their present life or even their earlier lives, but to the karma of their parents, in particular, the sexual wrong doings of their parents, he told him. He detailed various transgressions of sexual conduct and said that when the children are born out of such unethical unions, they come to the world with the destiny of short lives. That was the law, he told him, that humans must abide by, so he should not be blamed for the death of children. People in their lack of understanding blamed him, he told Krishna, but he was only going by the law and doing his assigned role as the dispenser of justice. 

Then Yama said something totally unexpected in the context of their dialogue. He confronted him. How can one blame the ordinary people when the fully manifest avatara himself in his unlimited power and arrogance indulged in the wildest, most irresponsible and unethical sexual union with whosoever he liked?, he asked Krishna. He was respectful but firm. Didn’t he set a very disturbing example? When the great leaders of the society engaged themselves in unethical activities, ordinary people would not only follow their example but would also justify their own reprehensible conduct, Yama told Krishna.

Given the law, the logic of the god of justice and of death was impeccable, and his charges just, but Krishna was unembarrassed and unfazed. If that was the logic of the death of children, then Yama must consider untainted all the children born out of union with him. He conceded that he had committed the sin of impermissible sexual union with others’ women, but at the same time he directed Yama not to view all these women as violators of the ethical code and his union with them sinful. Yama could administer justice according to the law elsewhere but must leave his off springs untouched. Yama bowed to his instruction. “Bada lokanku uttara nahi (there is no answer to the great men, i.e., the powerful, are above the law)”, as goes the Odia proverb.

Then he asked him where his five brothers were. They had become his brothers by virtue of being his guru’s sons, Krishna told Yama. He said that they had been reborn in the world and were living their life as thieves and robbers. Sarala Dasa was a great devotee of Bhagavan Krishna. So in his narrative, the cosmic wheel of events and time had to move backwards to materialize Krishna’s wish. We need not go into that story here.

As Santipani and his wife were preparing to sacrifice themselves in the waters at Prayag, Krishna arrived with their five children and offered them to them. The parents were extremely happy and very much surprised as well. A little later, when the euphoria was over and normalcy returned to the guru, he wondered how the impossible had taken place. He now became absolutely certain about what had often occurred to him before - that Krishna was Narayana Himself. He felt a biting sense of regret and sorrow that he had not asked his shishya for release from the karmic cycle - for moksha. It was too late now; having given his guru dakshina, the avatara had gone far away on the back of the mighty Garuda. Santipani must have realized that when the defining moment comes, it is always nara who fails Narayana, never the other way round.     

THE STORY OF EKALAVYA

The forest dweller Ekalavya was a gifted boy in many respects. One of these was that he had an intense desire to excel. He was ambitious too. He wanted to excel in archery and had heard that the great teacher Drona was teaching martial arts to the Kuru boys at an akhada (training centre) nearby. He wanted to join the akhada and learn from him. 

Thus he went to meet the celebrated teacher one day and as a gift he took two boars. Those days brahmins ate meat and there was no prohibition against eating boar meat; in fact, boar meat was served on special occasions, such as marriages, sraddha (annual ritual for forefathers), etc. Those days a prospective pupil took some gift for the teacher, whatever was affordable on his part; one would not go to the guru empty-handed. In fact, all this was part of the ritual for the initiation of education. 

Drona was happy. The poet Sarala hasn’t written anything explicitly about it, but we can guess that he must have been impressed with the boy who was ambitious and highly motivated to learn – which teacher wouldn’t be when the pupil is so promising! He told him right away that he accepted him as his pupil. But Duryodhana objected. Being a low forest-dweller, he could not learn with boys of the royal household, he emphatically told Drona. The forest dwellers were in any case outside the cultured society and must remain so, and not aspire to mingle with the princes and learn what they learn. Yudhisthira did not agree. He did not invoke any high moral principle here. His consideration was materialistic and his logic simple: there would always be an advantage in having a forest-dweller in the akhada, he said. He would bring useful things from the forest: boar, honey, etc. Arjuna echoed his brother’s view. But Duryodhana’s opposition was vehement – a forest-dweller simply had no place in their akhada, he told them all, and in Drona’s presence, he asked Dussasana to take him away and give him a sound beating. An obedient younger brother, he enthusiastically did what he was asked to do.

Drona could do nothing, he did not say a word, and he simply put up with the insult. Neither could the Pandavas do anything. They were only the children of the former king, who was dead, leaving behind his wife Kunti who looked after them. Gandhari, the queen, did not have a comfortable relation with her or even her children. Duryodhana was the king’s son. And the Pandavas, Kauravas, and Karna were not studying in Drona’s ashram; he had none. He was the employee of king Dhritarashtra. He knew the king loved Duryodhan too much for anyone’s good. He couldn’t risk the king’s displeasure and invite trouble for himself and his son Aswasthama, the motherless child (the mother, Krupi, having died of childbirth, in Sarala’s version, when Aswasthama was born) whom he loved very much.

Ekalavya felt humiliated and miserable, but he was not the one to give up. He was not merely highly motivated and focused; he was very intelligent and enterprising too. He made a small tunnel like opening in the forest through which from his end he could watch the body movements of Drona at the other end, as the celebrated guru taught archery to his pupils. He observed them intently and intelligently, and practised them. His wife disliked these activities of her husband and scolded him often for wasting so much time and effort on things entirely unnecessary. A forest dweller didn’t have to achieve such skill and expertise of archery, she would tell him. She didn’t think anything good would come of all this and said it to him in no unclear terms. Besides, a learner needed a guru, she would tell him, and would challenge him asking who his guru was. Ekalavya saw sense in what she said, so he made a murti (an image) of Drona in clay, seated him at an elevated place in his akhada and put a garland round his neck. That was his puja (worship) of his guru. With that he ritually formalized his relationship with Drona and continued learning archery from a distance as before. But in Drona’s training centre he was completely forgotten; no one talked about him after he was thrown out.

Some years passed. One day Drona asked his pupils to get a boar from the forest in connection with the observation of the annual sraddha ritual his deceased wife, Krupi. A boar was not to be found easily. Karna and Bhima had gone to the forest together in one direction, and in a few days did manage to get one, but the Kauravas had gone deeper into the forest in another direction and had not returned. They didn’t find a boar, but came across a lake, the waters of which were clean and pure. Then they saw a beautiful young woman, a forest-dweller, walking towards to the lake. They hid behind the trees and watched her as she undressed, bathed in the lake, put on her clothes, collected water in her pitcher and started walking back homeward with unhurried grace. Dussasana marvelled at her beauty and natural elegance. He rushed out of his hiding and grabbed her. This was one doing, in Sarala Mahabharata, of Dussasana that he had done at his elder brother’s behest. She was fit for a king alone, he told her; she could not live in a forest and be owned by a forest dweller, he barked. This is the familiar way the powerful view the world: the world is there for their pleasure. Princes, pampered by their doting parents, firmly believed that everything in their kingdom, including humans, was their personal property and they could enjoy the same as and when they pleased, and in the manner they liked. The poor, harassed woman was shocked and scared and shouted for her husband to rush to her help. 

Her husband came running with a crude bow and arrows. He charged out against the molester. Dussasana said that the ugly and crude forest dweller that he was, he had no right to have such a beautiful woman. He must be killed and his wife must be taken away for the princes’ pleasure, he said. The forest-dweller was angry and attacked him with his arrows. The ninety nine brothers of Dussasana joined him, but they were no match for him. In no time he killed them all. 

Twelve days passed and the Kauravas did not return. Drona was worried. He started out with Karna, Bhima and Arjuna to look for them. They found them dead. Drona was surprised. Who could have killed them all, he wondered. It occurred to him that only a pupil of his alone had the skill and the knowledge involved in the killing. But there was no such pupil of his. The Kuru boys were his first pupils. Any way, he kept such thoughts to himself.

Meanwhile Arjuna had gone looking for his cousins’ killer. Seeing him, the forest-dweller came out of his hut menacingly, angry and agitated, muttering things that were neither clear nor intelligible, and soon Arjuna and he were engaged in a terrible fight. Arrows in hundreds swished past. None was yielding, they were equals. Hearing the swish of the arrows Drona came and saw his pupil Arjuna and a stranger engaged in a fierce fight. He was amazed at the latter’s archery; he knew that his pupil alone was capable of such feat, but he had never taught the stranger. He never knew him. So how was it possible? 

He shouted for them to stop fighting. The fighting stopped. The guru went to the stranger and asked him who he was and who his teacher of archery was. He said that he was Ekalavya and his teacher was Drona. Drona remembered things now, how he had gone to his akhada to learn archery from him and how he was humiliated, beaten up and thrown out. He told him that he himself was Drona, but how could he be his teacher when he did not teach him, he asked. Ekalavya prostrated at his feet and told him how he had learnt from him. Because of that he considered himself as his pupil. Drona was very pleased with his accomplishment (which guru would not be!) and very affectionately seated him next to him. He then asked him about the Kaurava brothers. Ekalavya recounted how they were trying to molest his wife and how he had to fight them to protect her. They were all dead, he told his guru. Drona said that he now wanted to give him a test: he must give back life to the dead Kauravas. Ekalavya at once invoked the life-giving sanjeevani mantra and empowered an arrow with it and shot it at the hundred dead. In an instant they all came back to life. 

Duryodhana was very upset. He complained to Drona that they learnt archery from him, the one who was Parshurama’s student and was beyond comparison, and yet, they were defeated so easily by a mere forest-dweller.  Drona told him that Ekalavya was his pupil too, and that they all should treat him as their guru bhai (brother by virtue of having the same teacher). These words comforted the eldest Kaurava prince. Had he reconciled himself to that new bond between the forest dweller and him which he knew was completely beyond him to destroy? This must have been the case; Sarala says nothing explicitly and leaves it to his audience’s imagination. 

It was time to take leave. Drona told Ekalavya that he was abandoning the training centre in the forest and going to Hastinapura where he would open a training centre. He blessed him that he would be without an equal in archery and that he would be defeated by none. An immensely happy and grateful Ekalavya fell at his feet, and requested him to ask for his guru dakshina (the teacher’s fee). When the guru said that he was no more going to use the training centre in the forest to teach military arts, Ekalavya knew that his own learning from him had come to an end. And Ekalavya knew that end of one’s education was the time for the shishya (pupil) to offer dakshina to his guru, whether he wanted it or not. 

Drona said he would tell him what he wanted as dakshina only if he took an oath to the effect that whatever he asked from him, he would give. He would willingly give his head, if he wanted it, said Ekalavya. Everyone who knows the story knows what he asked for and how Ekalavya did not fail him. Having offered him his dakshina, Ekalavya told him that he asked him for his right thumb because he was afraid for the Kauravas but in the process had injured him permanently. Ekalavya then told him that he had not forgotten what had happened in the akhada and what humiliation he had undergone. He had not forgotten that Duryodhana was the one who had deprived him of the opportunity to be the celebrated teacher’s pupil, neither had he forgotten that someone called Yudhisthira had tried to intercede on his behalf. He had not forgotten too that he had been beaten up at the behest of Duryodhana. He told the guru that since those days he had nursed a grouse against Duryodhana and would have destroyed his entire clan one day. He, the kind-hearted guru that he was, had now gone to the extent of disabling him, his pupil, in order to protect him.

It was not Ekalavya alone from whom guru Drona had asked for a difficult dakshina. The dakshina he asked from the Kauravas and the Pandavas was to bring king Drupad a prisoner to him. It was obviously no mean task. It meant war not just with an individual named Drupad, in the form of say, a single combat, but with the armed might of the kingdom of Pancala as well. The guru dakshina convention required the shishya to fulfil the guru’s wish on his own effort. So his shishyas were expected to defeat Drupada without the support of the kingdom of Hastinapura. They could meet death while fighting Drupad and his army. The Kauravas failed, but the guru was not displeased. He happily exempted them from guru dakshina. The Pandavas brought Drupad a prisoner to Drona’s presence and gave him their dakshina. What he asked Karna, who was not a Kaurava but neither a Pandava, and later Shikhandi and Dhristadyumna, Drupad’s sons, for guru dakshina, we do not know. Sarala hasn’t told us. 

As the guru took leave, he told Ekalavya that from then on he must learn to shoot his arrows with the remaining four fingers and he must do so without any wrist band or some such support. Having disabled him, he blessed him that he became a great archer and that he remained undefeated. He great shishya did become a superb archer and did remain undefeated, but we need not tell those stories here.

FOR KIND ATTENTION

My book " Introducing Saaralaa Mahaabhaarata" has just been published. The publisher is: Central Institute of Indian Languages, Manasagangotri, Mysore (Pin: 570006), India. It presents a number of important episodes from Sarala's Mahabharata and interpretes them in the spirit of the text.

 

THE GITA IN THE MAHABHARATA

At last the defining moment for Arjuna arrived. He picked up gandiva, his divine bow and pulled its string, and Krishna returned to the chariot driver’s seat and blew his conch, pancajanya. Together they produced a sound that sent shivers down the enemies’ spine. Soon the war started and as the war drums rolled and the elephants trumpeted and the horses neighed, and from all around arose the terrifying death cry of the humans and the animals, and the loud and painful wailings of those who had fallen mortally wounded in the battlefields of that dharma yuddha, which was to solve problem of inheritance of the kingdom of Hastinapura, Bhagavan Krishna’s discourse to Arjuna about the immorality of atma, and the incorrectness of the familiar beliefs and perceptions about death and the agency of the killer, etc. faded into oblivion in Arjuna’s mind. Krishna knew it. Was he disappointed? Who knows! But then we, amrutasya putrah, the children of immortality, like the blind old king Dhritarastra, so highly privileged as to have been able to hear his discourse and see in our mind’s eye his Universal Form through Sanjaya’s narration, cannot understand what sense disappointment or delight would make in the context of Krishna. In any case, once Arjuna lifted his gandiva, Bhagavat Gita disappeared from the sage-poet’s narrative. It is as though the Sacred Words freed themselves from their context and soared into an autonomous existence, leaving the narrative to deal with the macabre happenings in the battlefields and the mundaneness of the Kuru clan. Or is it the case that those Words of God were de-contextualized (do not ask what that context was, who knows for certain!) and re-contextualized in the Mahabharata?

Arjuna would not fight his grandfather Bhishma to his fullest potential. Bhishma could not be killed of course, unless he wished to be killed, but he could be disabled, wounded to the extent he would be incapable of fighting, but Arjuna seemed unwilling to hurt his grandfather. Krishna was so disgusted and upset with Arjuna’s attitude one day that he forgot his role in the war and his promise too to his elder brother Balarama and picked up a wooden wheel from the battlefield and rushed to attack Bhishma. He was calmed when Arjuna promised him that he would fight Bhishma with all his might. Arjuna was terribly upset when Dhristadyumna, the commander-in-chief of the Pandava army, decapitated his preceptor Drona in a totally unethical and cowardly manner and he wanted to avenge the killing. He had to be pacified. He had forgotten about death being a mere change of clothes. He had forgotten that he was not the agent, was only a nimmita, a proxy, to do what had already been done - Bhishma, Drona, Karna, Jayadratha had already been killed. He had forgotten that he had seen it all in the Universal Form of Krishna.

Arjuna lost self-control completely when he came to know about the death of Abhimanyu. The loss of his son was too overwhelming for the father. He reacted by pronouncing an oath – a terrible oath: either he killed his son’s killer by sunset the following day if the latter was still on the battlefield or he would consign himself to fire. He wanted revenge but only he can think in such terms who considers himself as the doer and as the victim of the doings of another person.

This time Krishna did not calm Arjuna through sagacious advice, as he had done earlier. The two situations were not the same: death of one’s own was a spectre then, but a reality now; now he was face to face with the death of his “very own”, not just his “own”. The depressing vision of death that had crossed his mind then did not seem to include the death of Abhimanyu. So did Krishna think it would be pointless to offer Arjuna sage counsel? Did he think that the son’s dead body lying in front of the father waiting to be cremated eliminated all possibilities of wise words, even from him, who was his sakha (close friend)? Or had he, the guru of gurus, just given up on Arjuna, his shisya (student)? Or did he think that his purpose was served when the war started and now he had no need to intervene? Who can fathom out Krishna! In any case, as for his intervening now, intervene he did of course but in a different way; on the following day Arjuna was saved from the fire by divine intervention rather than Krishna, the person, but there is no essential difference - it’s just another way of saying the same thing. That story we set aside here.  

According to the Gita, the purpose of the avatara is to restore dharma on earth. This he does by destroying those inimical to dharma and empowering the virtuous. Sometimes it amounted to the killing of a wicked and adharmik ruler and enthroning in his place a virtuous one who could be the protector of dharma and the practitioners of it. The avataras of Gita Govinda (setting aside the controversial case of The Buddha, who is the ninth avatara in this composition) have done precisely this, with the exception of Parshuram, who destroyed the evil doers but did not provide a substitute in the form of virtuous rulers or a just system. Now, Krishna, who demonstrated to Arjuna that he was the Whole and a part thereof, did a great deal more. By persuading Arjuna to fight, he did essentially what the other avataras had done. But his discourse, known as Bhagavad Gita or just Gita went far beyond this limited objective.

The Gita has transformational objectives. At one level, it calls upon one to understand oneself, understand the world, realize the nature of atma who dwells in the body but is not part of it, understand the human condition of being caught in the inexorable karmic cycle and the way out of it – the way to moksa, among so much else. At another level, it calls upon one to free oneself from ignorance, avidya, that clouds one’s understanding of things and be spiritually transformed, because the person who would be most suited to be the instrument of change in the world would not merely be virtuous, but be wise also in the above sense. It is as though Krishna had felt that the problem of the burden of Mother Earth on account of the vicious grip of adharma could not be solved by what the avataras had done so far. Changing the ruler could be at best a temporary measure. Probably the avatari (the One who assumes an avatara) was tired of descending again and again. So He pronounced the permanent solution: man must attain self-knowledge and with the clarity of vision that comes from it, deal with the world.

In changing man the avatara did not succeed.  Nothing changed. Forget about the war. After the war, Yudhisthira became the king. But that mother of all wars had not put an end to wars. Yudhisthira decided to perform aswamedha yajna. Whatever his objectives, how very laudable, nothing altered the perception about it, namely that it was a way for the emperor to demonstrate his power and supremacy. The rulers saw it as a challenge to them; it engendered bitterness and invited resistance, which some of them did offer in the only terms possible in that situation: bloodshed, which included bloodshed of the innocents in the battlefield. Those who challenged Yudhisthira’s authority lost, but doesn’t in the defeat and the humiliation of a kingdom lie hidden the possibility of a retaliatory war some day?

As though the Sacred Words were never pronounced! All Mother Earth could prayerfully look forward to in this situation was yet another descent of Vishnu.   

ARJUNA'S PROBLEM IN VYASA MAHABHARATA AND SARALA MAHABHARATA

Arjuna’s problem in Vyasa Mahabharata is too well-known to recount here: somewhat roughly and in brief, he would not kill his grandfather, other Kuru elders, preceptors, cousins and relatives, although they stood facing him in the Kurukshetra battlefield as his enemy, and if they wanted to kill him, he would not even resist and would happily get killed. He considered raising arms against one’s very own as an act of adharma. Besides, with the destruction of a family, family values and culture would also be destroyed. He was sure that he had nothing to gain in that war and everything to lose. He would not fight, he told Krishna.

Sarala’s Arjuna had a different problem. He had no qualms about killing his enemies in the battlefield, whoever they were, but he would not start the war. He would not shoot the first arrow. Starting a war was a terrible sin because many innocents would get killed, who would be fighting someone else’s war. If he was attacked, he would fight because then he would not have to carry the sin of starting the war. This was what he told Krishna.    

In Vyasa Mahabharata Krishna tried to make Arjuna see reason, which is what Srimad Bhagavat Gita is all about, as far as the Mahabharata story is concerned. He was being merely sentimental, Krishna told the despondent warrior. He told him about the illusory nature of death, and about the senselessness of grieving over the dead on that account. He wanted him to realize the consequences of his action at a personal level. He had got the rare opportunity to fight in that dharma yuddha, righteous war, and it would be unwise for him to withdraw from it, he said. Besides, whether he won or perished, he would be a winner: he would enjoy the pleasures of the world as a victor or the pleasures of the other world if he perished. But if he withdrew, he would be mocked at as a coward during his life and after death.

 It is unclear why at this stage Arjuna was not asked to consider certain other matters that arose out of his stand. Getting killed by the enemy without harming them might be acceptable to him, but was it acceptable to him that his brothers, relatives, friends and all those others who had come to fight for the Pandavas got destroyed as a consequence of his stand? If killing one’s kin was wrong, was pushing one’s brothers and sons and relatives to death was right? Did he really believe that even without him the Pandavas would win the war? Was he so naive? One would rather think that he knew that without him the Pandavas had just no chance of winning. He was not only a great archer, the greatest according to Bhishma and Drona and many others; he had with him the most destructive of divine weapons - he was the only one among the warriors assembled there who had Shiva’s all-destructive pasupata astra. Besides, no one else in the Pandava army had divine weapons, whereas in the Kaurava army ,Bhishma, Drona, Karna and Aswasthama certainly had. Bhishma might have decided not to kill the Pandavas (incidentally, not in Sarala's Mahabharata), but others had no such inhibitions, and the grandfather had not vowed to protect them from the warriors of the Kaurava army! 

Arjuna was aware that Krishna was not wrong. If he withdrew from the war, some would call him a coward - purely out of malice. But he believed that many including the wise and venerable Bhishma, Drona, Bhurishrava, Karna, and a host of others would not think so of him; they had known him too well for that. They would not call him a coward who had single-handedly defeated them all just a few months ago in the battlefield of the kingdom of Virata. But they would be shocked and bewildered. Along with everyone else, Arjuna had been preparing for this war ever since Krishna had returned from Duryodhana empty-handed. Arjuna had never said a word by way of protest against the war. They would be inclined to think of him as sentimental, immature and extremely irresponsible. But would these have been less humiliating and more comforting for him than being called a coward, one would wonder.

Coward or not, everyone would have thought of him as a deserter at one level and a betrayer of trust at a more personal level. As a kshatriya ("belonging to the warrior caste") it was his duty to fight for those whose war it was not, and yet had assembled to fight for him, not abandon them right on the battlefield. His decision to withdraw from fighting was actually an act of self-indulgence and selfishness, and it showed that he was completely insensitive to his “own others”. Krishna must have wanted him to understand that his selfishness and thoughtlessness in that particular situation could lead to terribly consequences for them all, who had joined the Pandavas' side because their cause was just.

The Pandavas firmly believed that they were fighting for a just cause. Duryodhana had become the crown prince under wrong assumptions about them (that they had perished in the lac palace fire) , but when the truth was known, no one in the Kaurava court said that if the past could not be undone, the Pandavas could not be ignored either, therefore they must be compensated in some way. As for the Pandavas, for the cause of peace, they asked for just five villages, not half of the kingdom which they believed was their due. But even that was refused. Yudhisthira, like most – sages, Kaurava elders, Drona, etc. among them - had no doubt that the Kauravas were entirely unfair to the Pandavas. He called the war a “just war” out of conviction. As already said, all those who had joined the Pandavas’ side believed that they had joined the virtuous in that just war. Arjuna’s withdrawal would amount to his abandoning the fighters who were fighting in a just war. That would certainly not be morally right. Now if a kshatriya did not fight for the honest and the morally upright, and for those who were denied their due, he would be failing in his caste-duties. As he was explaining his unwillingness to fight, Arjuna told Krishna that he was not sure whose victory would be a better outcome of the war: their own or the Kauravas’. Surprisingly, he was not advised that the war was not just between the Pandavas and the Kauravas, it was also between those who followed dharma and those who did not, and that in that situation there must be no doubt in his mind about what would constitute the desirable outcome.

And as for the loss of the family values and culture, one wonders why Arjuna was not advised that he had undue anxieties. One branch of the family was going to fight against another; so there was no fear of the culture and the traditions of the family perishing irrespective of whoever won. But even in the extremely unlikely event of both the Kauravas and the Pandavas being destroyed by the divine weapons of both sides, there was little room for anxiety. If a great family dies, its traditions and values do not really die, they live in other forms: those of tales and legends, for example. And all said, aren’t the values of a family mere expressions of a deeper set of beliefs, values and practices, common to an entire culture, and at a still deeper level, to humankind as well?

About the problem of widows that eventually brings about the moral collapse of a society, Arjuna’s apprehensions were again rather exaggerated. This problem was not unknown to that society; in all likelihood it had arisen when Bhagawan Parshurama destroyed the kshyatriyas many times over. In order to deal with the problem of the widows, the society had created the niyoga system, which was still prevalent in Arjuna’s time. If things went terribly wrong, the society would again find some solution. One did not have to get unduly exercised about it.

Moral issues as mentioned above, which are rather straightforward and obvious, but by no means trivial, and which do not demand understanding things at a profound supra-mental level, were somehow not raised in the Gita  to persuade a despondent Arjuna to fight. One would think that if they had been, it would probably not have been necessary to go beyond the familiar, the rational (in the sense of “not supra-rational”) and the normal, and that the discourse went, rather too early, to a far deeper and a highly profound philosophical and metaphysical level to deal with Arjuna’s attitude. One gets the impression that although anchored in Arjuna’s problem, the Gita discourse was not really targeted to it specifically; it was concerned with, at one level, many general issues concerning the human condition, and at another, articulating a mode of one’s inner spiritual growth leading to one’s mokshya in one terminology.  Now, for a pure story teller, his interest in the Gita is to the extent it takes the story forward elegantly; he would tend to avoid whatever would conspicuously arrest its flow or affect the smoothness of it.  

Arjuna’s witnessing the Universal Form of Krishna forms an important part of the Gita. He could see this Form with the help of Krishna himself; he gave him the special power of vision for the purpose.   One might consider this episode as part of a long argument to persuade Arjuna to fight. From this point of view, there is something in it that is of special interest, namely what he saw in the Universal Form. He saw the death of warriors from both the Kaurava and the Pandava sides - he saw the time past and the time future as indistinguishable. In that Ultimate Form he saw Drona, Bhishma, Jayadratha and Karna, among others, already dead. They could be identified among the Kaurava warriors, so they were named. But none from the Pandava side was named; Arjuna did not see Abhimanyu, Ghatotkacha and Draupadi’s five sons among the multitude of the Pandava warriors who had perished too. Now, it cannot be said that his knowledge that those Kaurava warriors were already dead influenced Arjuna in a perceptible way. But one would never be sure how he would have been affected, or affected at all, had he seen Abhimanyu dead. This scepticism arises because after all, Arjuna was an ordinary mortal in terms of spiritual growth; he was not a seer like the sages of the Upanishads or the Sanata Kumars.

Why Arjuna did not see what he surely did not want to see is a question that need not detain us here.  Does it have anything to do with the fact that, unlike in Yasoda’s case, Krishna showed that Form to him because he wanted to see It? In any case, who can see the Whole as whole! He saw what Krishna gave him the power to see. And wasn’t Krishna trying to persuade him to fight!

Now Sarala, the story teller must have felt it more manageable to alter Arjuna’s problem, and tell the story from that perspective. In his narrative, Arjuna’s problem was intensely moral, but did not invite any profound discourse or supra-human experience of Reality. Arjuna did not need any advice. He simply had to wait. When two armies stood face to face, something or the other would happen, someone or the other would lose patience and shoot an arrow or hit one with a mace. And that would solve his problem. This is precisely what happened, as we have seen in an earlier post in this blog.  

Snana Purnima, 2012

BAABARAPURI

In Udyoga Parva of Saaralaa Mahaabhaarata Krishna tells the story of the kingdom of Babarapuri. Your kingdom is like baabarapuri, he told king Duryodhana in his court, when he went there as Yushisthira’s emissary to explore the possibility of avoiding war. He was only pretending to do so, but that’s another story.

Bhishma had not heard of such a place, and in all humility requested him to tell the assembly some details about it. In western Saurashtra (it is futile to try to locate it somewhere today), Krishna said, there was a country called Kurala, and the city of Babarapuri was its capital. The name of its king was Bhandeswara (literally, the lord of the cheats), and his minister’s name was Baibhanda (mad person). The deity worshipped there was naked, with wild, untied hair, and everyone in that city, both men and women, moved almost naked. The only clothes they wore were some headwear. They studied what one might call “anti-shastras”, which dealt with unethical modes of living. They valued lies, rewarded those who told lies, and killed those who spoke the truth. They also rewarded those who spoke uncouth and vulgar language.

The king was simple minded; the subjects had no respect for him and would maintain no distance from him, violating the traditional norms of conduct. The city had no enemies. People were prosperous, but no one paid any taxes to the king. They lived in wanton lavishness, spending whatever they earned. There was no sexual discipline; men and women indulged in sex whenever and wherever they liked. They had no inhibitions; any man could choose to have any woman, without regard for even blood relationships. Once a man used a woman, he left her; there was no enduring relationship between a man and a woman in that city.

Then one day a strange fear enveloped the city: it was the fear of kokuaa. Everyone talked about him, as though they had seen it, but no one really had. But people spread rumours about it; if one said it had several eyes, another said it swallowed whatever it saw. Still another said it was so huge that it covered the entire sky. In no time the talk about kokuaa became the truth about it. People stopped going out. They would stay indoors long before it was dark, and would not venture out for quite some time after the day break. Parents often frightened their children with the mention of kokuaa. There was a vicious atmosphere of tension all around. But there are limits to how much tension a system can absorb. One day fight broke out among the inhabitants of the city, and many died. Then natural calamities visited the city, and they took their toll of life. The city was completely destroyed. There was no attack from any enemy. “Listen, O son of Ganga,” said Krishna, “Duryodhana’s kingdom will be similarly destroyed”.

Trying to make sense of baabarapuri, one might begin asking what kind of place name it is. It is an odd name, an inelegant combination of the “native” sounding name baabara and the tatsama classifier puri. It sounds very uncomplimentary, bringing to mind the tatsama word barbara, meaning uncivilized and uncultured, and expresses a very negative view of the kind of life the inhabitants of the city lived. Naming a place is giving an identity, in linguistic terms, to some space set apart from undifferentiated space. A place is given a name, or a name different from the one it already had, sometimes by insiders, and sometimes by outsiders. Sometimes for a particular place name, it is not easy to figure out who gave it - the insider or the outsider.

Place names are like proverbs. It is futile to try to find the origin of a proverb. It is possible that the ancestral version of a certain proverb was quite different from its present form, and it is quite plausible that it underwent various refinements in course of time. One could vainly search for its author; one would never know for certain whether it had a single author or a group of authors. It is more or less the same with place names.

In all probability, the name was given to the city by the arrogant outsider, who considered degenerate the social, economic, cultural and political life in the city. It is by no means undesirable if the ruler and the ruled did not maintain distance between them. It is no disaster if everyone from the ruler to the ruled earned their own livelihood, and the citizens did not have to pay tax to the king. For whatever reason if the city did not attract aggressors, it does not invite negative evaluation. The city perished, and the way it did was terrible. But it is unreasonable, arrogant and insensitive to suggest so unambiguously that it deserved such an end because they disrespected tradition.

One might argue that the name was given by the inhabitants of the city themselves, who were not unaware of the negative connotations of baabarapuri. They were aware of the contemptuous attitude of the outsiders to their culture, and they had made a statement by giving their own city such a name. It was thus an affront to their detractors.

May be, it was Krishna himself who gave the city its name (wasn’t he an outsider?), but did not own that act. Like so many things he did or caused to happen in Sarala’s narrative, but the world never knew he was the doer or the cause. He used the episode to issue a warning, a threat. Surely some in that august assembly knew it was nothing short of a prediction - they knew it was Krishna’s wish. Krishna had used baabarapuri as an analogy for Duryodhana’s kingdom. It is not clear how it was an appropriate comparison, except on one count – like baabarapuri, it did not face any threat from outside. But let us not forget Sarala’s Krishna went to Duryodhana to make sure war took place. And this was the kind of discourse that was entirely appropriate for the fulfillment of his objective.