Spring School
on
Mahabharata

The Mahābhārata is one ancient book of India in which modern Indians have substantial investments. It is as if, to the moderns, (particularly to those who have been subjected to the rigors of western pedagogy), Mahābhārata is at once an archive and a living text—a source-book complete-by-itself and a text perennially-under-construction as well. 

A storehouse of information, Mahābhārata furnishes ample material to any professional interested in ‘excavation’—and the professional may don the hat of, say, the anthropologist or the historian or the sociologist or the linguist or the literary critic to work out, even if provisionally, some or the other well-integrated meaning. On the other hand, in the course of entering the Mahābhārata there is almost none who does not undergo a sense of déjà vu—an inescapable feeling that the ‘present’ s/he inhabits is only a re-play of ‘happenings’ already-recorded; an eerie sensation that most of the ethical dilemmas, the logical paradoxes, the unavoidable impasses which baffle the modern man as well as the mood of irresolution following every resolution that keeps plaguing him have already been punctiliously check listed. In the case of the Mahābhārata thus, two interpretative paths—one devoted to the uncovering of a shadowy past and the other engaged in negotiating the contemporary—keep intersecting. While scholars seek to expound on its subtleties of meaning by imposing strict contextual limits, poets-playwrights-novelists-journalists-political commentators extend its contextual scope by treating it is a package of Rohstoff or ‘raw material’ derived from their own experiences.

But the interesting thing is, both experts and amateurs, adepts committed to the sanctity of words enshrined in the book and authors of fictions keen on spinning new versions of them, tend to regard their output as being pre-inscribed. Deep down, scholastic and eclectic exercises involving the Mahābhārata are united in viewing it as an inexhaustible repository. By the same movement, the Mahābhārata steadily gains in significance as itihāsa or iti-ha-āsa or ‘so indeed it was’. Scholars engrossed in sifting through various confusing variants in order to bring coherence to a chaotic corpus, absorbed in the pursuit of transforming a ‘literary unthing’, (an expression coined by Maurice Winternitz), into a critically codified text that can shed light on India’s past with sufficient cogence, collaborate, wittingly or unwittingly, with amateurs who, even while critically reflecting on ‘current affairs’, remain more or less convinced that the Mahābhārata is no less than ‘a chronicle of events foretold’. This double-play of ‘freezing’ and ‘unfreezing’—the double-move of construing a decisive ‘body of words’ that can be employed to prove or disprove any scientific hypothesis in relation to the past and of reckoning the same as being a tool that can be employed to decipher the mysteries of the present—renders to the word itihāsa a magical quality: creating a kind of ‘transcendental synthesis’, Mahābhārata’s (modern) reception transforms itihāsa to imply ‘so indeed it was’, ‘so indeed it is’ and even ‘so indeed it will be’ all at once. The urge to discover in the Mahābhārata the repetition of before, during and after provides, in turn, a master-key to the analysis of the ‘compulsion’ known as the compulsion to repeat which holds the modern Indian in its grip—a ‘compulsion’ palpably evident in a number of his ‘philosophical’, ‘aesthetic’ and ‘political’ undertakings.

To read the liaison between the Mahābhārata and ‘modernity’ as being somehow symptomatic of a ‘time-loop’, it is imperative that over and above paying attention to the ‘thematic’ bundles it contains we take in our intellectual stride the bundle of ‘narrative-styles’ the text displays.

In an effort to foreground our own fascination with the Mahābhārata—a work that is indeed fascinating—the following topics will be dealt with in the Summer School being organized by the Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla:

1. Modes of Narration

(Special emphasis on: the ‘report’ of the ‘War of Kurukshetra’; ‘digressions’ that keep interrupting the ‘main plot’)

2. Modes of Transmutation 

(For example:[1] the methodology behind the preparation of the Critical Edition brought out by Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute,Poona; [2] comparative analyses of pre-modern ‘translations’ of the Mahābhārata into Indian vernaculars and modern ‘adaptations’; e.g., relevant portions from Kasiram Das’ Bangla Mahābhārata [17th c.] and Rabindranath’s ‘Gandhari-r Abedan’ [‘Gandhari’s Plea’: 1897] / ‘Karna-Kunti-sambad’ [‘Karna-Kunti-Exchange’: 1899]).

3.Authors in Search of the Hero of the Mahabharata

(Comparative analyses of character-centric studies; e.g., Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s Krishnacharitra [first edition: 1886; expanded second edition: 1892], Irawati Karve’s Yugānta [Marathi: 1967; English: 1969], Buddhadev Bose’s Mahābhārata-er Katha [1974], Alf Hiltebeitel’s Rethinking the Mahābhārata [2001], Chaturvedi Badrinath’s The Women of the Mahābhārata [2008])

4. Authors in Search of the Meaning of the Mahabharata

(E.g. comparative analysis of Abhinavagupta’s (10th-11th c.) or Ânandatīrtha’s (?) or Nēlkantha’s [15th c.] view with that of V. S. Sukthankar as expressed in the latter’s book On the Meaning of the Mahābhārata [1957])

5. The Ideal Life Style

(Analysis of the internally contradictory views on ‘Varna-dharma’ and ‘Âśrama-dharma’, between the notions of ‘Total Duty’ and ‘Total Renunciation’ etc. in the Mahābhārata and the ‘modern’ efforts to ‘resolve’ them. A special session on a discussion on the Mahābhārata’s conflicting versions of praxis relating to ‘Âśrama’ in conjunction with Pandurang Vaman Kane’s piece ‘Âśramas’ included in his monumental treatise History of Dharmaśāstra [Volume II, Part I: 1941] may be planned.)

6.Transgression and Dissidence  

(Just as ‘fouls’ give a better picture of the ‘rules of the game’ than the ‘code of proper play’, focusing on the [near-systematic] transgressions of the Dharmic Law in the Mahābhārata may tell us more about the ‘Eternal Dharma’ it spells out at various junctures. Transgressions may include instances involving ‘love’, ‘marriage’, ‘sex’, ‘sexual harassment of women’ [Draupadī, of course], ‘military cunning’, ‘strategic untruths’ etc. along with those sanctioned during times of ‘distress’. The session on ‘transgressions’ cannot be complete without a discussion on the sense of acute ‘embarrassment’ that almost unfailingly accompanies most modern ‘recounting’ of the past misdeeds.

‘Dissidence’ in the Mahābhārata is often linked with the themes of ‘revenge and retribution’ and ‘procuring justice by violent means’. In this regard, Aśvatthāmā, the last army commander on the Kaurava side, is a stellar example. Focalizing on ‘transgression’ and ‘dissidence’ will certainly clear the way to lead us to Dalit and Feminist perspectives on the Mahābhārata.

7. The Ethical Conundrum

(There is no dearth of material in the Mahābhārata on this score. However, it seems, one would gain much if we concentrated on three interlinked concepts; namely, himsā [‘violence’], ahimsā [‘nonviolence’] and ānŗśamsya [‘noncruelty’]. Although it is referred to in many places, we receive a rather elaborate thesis on the ‘golden mean’ between himsā and ahimsā, that is, on ānŗśamsya in Âraņyakaparvan: 197-206 in the voice of Dharmavyādha

Dharmavyādha’s discourse may also provide a clue to the Brahminical mechanism of neutralizing the trenchant Śramaņ [e.g., Buddhist-Jain] critique of himsā and its over-valorization of ahimsā. It may also be employed to re-consider the ‘violence’-‘nonviolence’ binary that dominates India’s nationalist [and post-nationalist] discourses—the ideologues of the 1905-08 Swadeshi Movement and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the modern Apostle of nonviolence, are surely pertinent, as far as this is concerned.

8. The Bhagavadgītā and the Other Gītās

This session can have three parts:

a. A comparative analysis of the Bhagavadgītā and the other Gītās like ‘Anugītā’ in Âśvamedhikaparvan, ‘Bhīmgītā’ in Udyogaparvan

b. The pre-modern and modern / post-modern divide on the question of the ‘central message of the Bhagavadgītā’Commentaries by Śankara (8th-9th c.), Rāmānuja (11th-12th c.), Madhva (13th c.) on the one hand and 19th-20th c. commentaries by Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi on the other, may be marshaled for this purpose.

c. A brief history of English translations of the Bhagavadgītā and also that of Gītā’s western response For the former a detailed discussion on the first English translation [1785] done by Charles Wilkins is necessary.For the latter, nothing can be more illumining than the Introduction appended to Wilkins’ translation authored by Warren Hastings, the then Governor-General of India. In addition, G. W. F. Hegel’s reading of the Gītā [1827]—a reading based on Wilkins’ English translation and August Wilhelm von Schlegel’s Latin translation [1823]—can also be effectively used.)

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