Mah?bh?rata

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MAHĀBHĀRATA

MAHĀBHĀRATA . Hindu India's national epic takes its name from Bharata, an ancestor of the central family of heroes. It is the story of his descendants, the Bhāratas or Kurus. The Mahābhārata (Great story of the Bhāratas) is a massive encyclopedic text. In one famous verse it claims to contain everything. It is said to consist of 100,000 verses, although no known recension comes to quite that number. The text is also known as Jaya (Victory), a reference to its concern with the victory of dharma over adharma as assured by Kṛṣṇa, who as the incarnation of Viṣṇu guides the main action of the story. The text is further called the Kārṣṇaveda (Veda of Kṛṣṇa), a reference whose ambiguity may be intended since the text not only is concerned with this Kṛṣṇa but is alleged to have been written by Kṛṣṇa Dvaipāyana, the "island-born Kṛṣṇa," whose more familiar name is Vyāsa. Finally, it is called the "fifth Veda," indicating the importance that the epic's brahman poets attached to its prolongation of the Vedic heritage. The epic is a smṛti ("traditional") rather than śruti ("revealed") text, but its reputed author, Vyāsa, is the very person whom epic and classical mythology credits with the "division" of the Vedas into four.

The actual composition of the epic seems to have been carried out between about 500 bce to 400 ce. The authors, however, probably drew on older bardic traditions with roots in Aryan lore of much greater antiquity. The central story is set in the area of the Ganges-Yamunā doab, and recalls tribal kingdoms that had settled in and around that area, after earlier residence in the Punjab, from about 1000 to 500 bce. It is sometimes assumed that the Painted Gray Ware culture of this period provided the historical setting for a real war, of which the text of the Mahābhārata is but an embellished account. More likely, if the Painted Gray Ware peoples transmitted an early version of the story, it was as part of their mythology, for the epic has an Indo-European mythological structure.

Scholarly work since the 1940s, initiated by Stig Wikander and Georges Dumézil, has shown that the text is essentially mythological, though not denying that it integrates much "didactic" material, particularly in its postwar books. It prolongs the Vedic heritage by correlating the epic story and its leading characters with Vedic, and in some cases para-Vedic and Indo-European, mythological figures and narrative (particularly eschatological) themes. More recent work has focused on the epic's treatment of the war as a "sacrifice of battle," relating the narrative to Indian sacrificial traditions, particularly from the Brāhmaṇas. Most notably, Madeleine Biardeau has shown that the treatment of Vedic mythology and Brahmanic sacrifice in the epic forms part of a bhakti rereading of the Vedic revelation (śruti ). From this perspective the epic is the first and grandest monument of bhakti, focused on Kṛṣṇa as the avatāra (incarnation) of Viṣṇu.

The main story begins when Viṣṇu and other gods descend or in some way assume human forms to relieve the burden of the goddess Earth, who is oppressed by demons. Following a succession crisis in the Lunar (i.e., Bhārata) dynasty, which rules India's "middle region," demons (asura s) infiltrate the royal lineages of the other kingdoms. In this situation two groups of cousins are born into the central lineage, each with its own succession claims: the five sons of King Pāṇḍu (the Pāṇḍavas) and the hundred sons (the Kauravas) of Pāṇḍu's older brother, Dhṛtarāṣṭra, who is prevented by blindness from ruling. The Pāṇḍavas are actually sons of gods, and their birth is part of the divine plan to rescue Earth. By means of a mantra their mothers (Kuntī, the senior wife of Pāṇḍu, and Mādrī, the junior wife) had invoked deities to sire them, thus circumventing a curse that would have caused Pāṇḍu's death had he had sexual relations with his wives. Thus, with Kuntī, the god Dharma sired Yudhiṣṭhira, Vāyu sired Bhīma, and Indra sired Arjuna; with Mādrī, the twin Aśvins sired the twins Nakula and Sahadeva.

Following the interpretation of Wikander and Dumézil, these groups of gods and heroes may be seen to represent a hierarchical axis within the Vedic (and Indo-European) pantheon that further evokes the order of the upper three Aryan classes (varṇa s) and, more archaically, what Dumézil has called the three functions: (1) religious sovereignty and law (Dharma and Yudhiṣṭhira), (2) warfare (Vāyu and Bhīma, Indra and Arjuna), and (3) economic welfare and service (the Aśvins and the twins). While the Pāṇḍavas thus represent the nucleus of social and divine hierarchy and the principle of dharma, their hundred cousins—incarnations of rākṣasa s (disruptive goblins), except for the eldest, Duryodhana, who is an incarnation of the asura Kali (Discord), the demon of the kaliyuga— represent undifferentiated chaos and adharma.

During their youth the two groups of cousins vie with each other and form alliances that continue into the war. Thus Karṇa, son of Kuntī and the sun god Sūrya (Kuntī had first tried out her mantra with Sūrya before marriage, and then abandoned the son), allies with Duryodhana. At the Pāṇḍavas' polyandric wedding with Draupadī (incarnation of Śrī, goddess of prosperity), they ally themselves with Draupadī's brother Dhṛṣṭadyumna, the incarnation of Agni (Fire), who will lead their army. It is also at the marriage of Draupadī that the Pāṇḍavas first meet their cousin Kṛṣṇa (who is Kuntī's brother's son) and consolidate their relation with him.

For a brief period the two parties divide the kingdom; the Kauravas retain the ancestral throne at Hāstinapura, while the Pāṇḍavas build a new palace at Indraprastha. But when Yudhiṣṭhira performs a Rājasūya sacrifice to lay claim to universal sovereignty, Duryodhana is inconsolable until his friends suggest he invite the Pāṇḍavas to a dice match and win their wealth at gambling. At the dice match Yudhiṣṭhira gambles away everything; the last stakes are his brothers, himself, and finally Draupadī. Duryodhana then orders his vilest brother, Duḥśāsana, to drag Draupadī into the assembly hall, and when she protests, Karṇa commands Duḥśāsana to disrobe her. But Duḥśāsana is unsuccessful, for new saris keep descending upon Draupadī—according to most versions, thanks to her prayer to Kṛṣṇa—to keep her covered. When Draupadī is thus miraculously saved, Dhṛtarāṣṭra grants her husbands their freedom and returns their weapons, which the Pāṇḍavas will use in the war to fulfill their vows to destroy Draupadī's offenders.

In a second gambling match the Pāṇḍavas lose again, and together with Draupadī they are exiled for thirteen years. The last year must be spent incognito if they are to get back their kingdom. They adopt disguises and escape detection, yet when the thirteen years are over Duryodhana refuses to return the Pāṇḍavas' half of the kingdom. But the brothers have spent their exile in pilgrimage and penance (Arjuna in particular has done tapas to get weapons from Śiva). Their last year in exile has the character of a dīkśā (consecration preparatory to a sacrifice), and they have thus prepared themselves for the sacrifice of battle.

As the war looms, Kṛṣṇa's role becomes increasingly central. Although he serves as the Pāṇḍavas' peace ambassador and is himself sworn to noncombatancy, he actually prepares both sides for war. Then, just before the first day's battle, as Arjuna's charioteer he "sings" the Bhagavadgītā, thus convincing Arjuna of his duty to fight. The eighteen-day war on the plain of Kurukṣetra (an ancient sacrificial terrain) then follows, in which all the divine and demonic forces converge in a vast holocaust that has been variously interpreted as a sacrifice or as the end of the universe (pralaya ). By leading the Pāṇḍavas to victory, Kṛṣṇa as avatāra achieves his task of relieving Earth's burden and renovating the dharma at the juncture between the dvāpara and kaliyuga s, the latter of which is our present age.

Bibliography

The most accessible full translation is that by P. C. Roy and K. M. Ganguli, The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, 12 vols. (1884–1896), 2d ed. (Calcutta, 1970). A partial translation by J. A. B. van Buitenen, The Mahābhārata, 3 vols. (Chicago, 1973–1978), covers five of the epic's eighteen books and is now being continued by several translators. C. V. Narasimhan's The Mahābhārata (New York, 1965) is the best abridgment.

Early work on the Mahābhārata culminates and is best summarized in E. Washburn Hopkins's The Great Epic of India (1901; reprint, Calcutta, 1969) and Epic Mythology (1915; reprint, New York, 1969). Stig Wikander's "Pāṇḍava-sagan och Mahābhāratas mytiska forutsattningar," Religion och Bibel 6 (1947): 27–39, can also be read in French in Georges Dumézil's Jupiter Mars Quirinus, vol. 4, Explication de textes indiens et latins (Paris, 1948). Dumézil's own most comprehensive treatment of the Mahābhārata can be found in his Mythe et épopée, vol. 1, L'idéologie des trois fonctions dans les épopées des peuples indo-européens (Paris, 1968).

Other works that develop various views in connection with Indo-European and Indian myth and ritual include Madeleine Biardeau's "Études de mythologie hindoue, Chap. II, Bhakti et avatāra," Bulletin de l'École Française d'Extrême Orient 63 (1976): 111–263 and 65 (1978): 87–238; Alf Hiltebeitel's The Ritual of Battle: Krishna in the "Mahābhārata" (Ithaca, N.Y., 1976); Heino Gehrts's Mahābhārata: Das Geschehen und seine Bedeutung (Bonn, 1975); and Jacques Scheuer's Śiva dans le Mahābhārata (Paris, 1982). See also Vishnu S. Sukthankar's On the Meaning of the Mahābhārata (Bombay, 1957), which emphasizes the epic's reliance upon Upanisadic formulations, and B. B. Lal's "Excavation at Hastināpura and Other Explorations in the Upper Gangā and Sutlej Basins, 1950–52," Ancient India 10/11 (1954/55): 5–151, which discusses epic place names in relation to Painted Gray Ware.