Thoughts
I found this book when looking for a copy of G.N. Devy’s other book (India: A Linguistic Civilization). I read through it in a sitting because it was quite short (I’d say it’s about 180 pages in length). Devy’s work has always been hard to read, not because he’s a poor writer - he is excellent - but because it’s dense writing, efficient to a fault.
This book is a little different, perhaps because I’m familiar with the themes of the Mahabharata from reading the Debroy translation of the BORI Critical Edition.
I enjoyed this book. Devy doesn’t mince words when talking about the public that “thinks it knows the Mahabharata”.
I wanted to highlight a couple of excerpts that I really loved.
I hadn’t heard of the Garasiya Bhils or their version of the Mahabharata. Imagine my surprise when Devy claims that their version is possibly older.
I was most surprised that he constantly puts across an idea that Krishna Dvaipayana “Krishna of the Dark Island” (my most favourite way of referring to this person now) and Vyasa of the Vedas could have perhaps been two separate individuals. Now that’s an idea that will turn some stomachs no doubt! (And I’m here for it)
Highlights
1. The Epic Quest
Page 37 @ 20 April 2025 09:29:36 PM
It took the scholars at the Bhandarkar Institute in Pune several decades to place this narrative in a sensible textual form by collecting the vast repository of manuscripts from different parts of India, spread over places of traditional learning as apart from each other as Manipur and Madras, Varanasi and Tanjore, Sankheda and Kolkata. They faced the complicated task of comparing verse by verse and phrase by phrase the 1,259 handwritten manuscripts, scribed in different centuries and diverse in writing styles and script conventions. Beginning in April 1919, they could complete the project only forty-seven years later, in September 1966, and they produced a printed version of the epic containing 89,000 verses, with notes and editorial comments, with the material excluded from the main text placed in footnotes. The collected, edited, and carefully compared ‘critical version’ was published in nineteen volumes spread over 15,000 demi-quarto pages. Just as the Kurukshetra war had a series of warriors as generals—Bhishma, Drona, Karna, and Ashwathama—the project had a series of extraordinary editors such as V. S. Sukthankar, S. K. Belvalkar, S. K. De, and R. N. Dandekar.
The Bhandarkar Oriental Insitute’s Critical Edition is the one that Bibek Debroy translated, and hence the one I’ve read and recommend. I love that Devy explained how this edition even came to be.
Page 41 @ 20 April 2025 09:32:05 PM
The plot of the Mahabharata of the Garasiya Bhils and the plot in the ‘critical edition’ Mahabharata have shared elements, but the differences are quite striking. For instance, the vastra haran, disrobing of Draupadi, does not occur in the tribal epic. As against the sarpa yagnya in the ‘critical edition’, the tribal text depicts Vasuki, the king of serpents, as being far more heroic and triumphant than any of the Kuru heroes. In the Bhili version, Vasuki has a romping affair with Draupadi, and Arjuna is depicted as a mute spectator tied to the bedpost while Vasuki and Draupadi are in bed. 10 There is no Bhagavad Gita in the tribal epic, though Krishna as a character, and an important one, is present. Neither the Satyavan–Savitri story, nor the Nala–Damayanti story, and not even the Ruru– Pramadvara story are to be found in the Bhili Mahabharata . The rituals associated with its recitation and performance clearly indicate that the Bhili Mahabharata belongs to the realm of the sacred in their culture.
Page 41 @ 20 April 2025 09:46:31 PM
My idea of what an oral epic is, or can be, is shaped by the Bhili Mahabharata . I have read the documented text carefully and seen it performed several times. I have also spoken to the members of the community, who undertake years of training to perform the epic. It is clear to me that theirs is not a ‘vulgarization’ or a folk adaptation of the Mahabharata . It is more likely to be an earlier version of the epic, in existence prior to the compendious and inclusive corpus prepared by Vyasa some two millennia ago, free of the erotic portions of the narrative not relevant to the main story.
This quote and the previous one teach me that I need to read alternate versions of the Mahabharata as well, not just the Critical Edition.
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Indians, old or young, in cities or in villages, think that they know the Mahabharata although they rarely read the poem in print.
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And yet, we like to believe that we know the Mahabharata .
I chuckled as I read these sections. The number of people who think they know the Mahabharata just from reading Rajaji or from watching TV is hilarious indeed.
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The Mahabharata tells us about the change taking place in ancient India over an extended period of time, spanning several centuries. But, if it does so, what indeed was the nature of the epistemic change that interested the Mahabharata?
This one quote summarizes what this book is about.
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[I]t is necessary to consider the relatively late arrival of Lord Krishna in the Hindu pantheon. He was not part of the Vedic pantheon, which gave primacy to Surya, Indra, Varuna, and Agni. Similarly, the darshanas, schools of ancient and classical Indian philosophy, do not mention Krishna in any major discussion.
Towards the end of the first millennium, about eleven centuries before our time, Adi Shankara prepared a massive commentary on the Gita, the Gita Bhashya . Since then, during the last thousand years, Krishna as a deity rose in eminence among the medieval sects. This was reflected in iconography, theatre, dance, painting, music, and literature. The Vaishnava Acharyas, Ramanuja and Madhava, gave the Bhagavad Gita centrality in their philosophical expositions. Poets like Jayadeva composed the Gita Govinda with lyrics of haunting charm on the life of Krishna. Religious rituals related to Krishna emerged and were consolidated as large mass events. Apparently secular community festivals such as the Raas dance during Navaratri and Holi placed Krishna at the heart of the celebrations. A great poet like Mira composed immortal poems pining for Krishna. The continued engagement with the Gita reached its high during the twentieth century. Major social, cultural, and spiritual leaders alluded to it, wrote about it, translated it, and offered compendious commentaries. These include Swami Vivekananda, Lokmanya Tilak, Sri Aurobindo, Mahatma Gandhi, Vinoba Bhave, and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. In modern India, the Gita has acquired a special status as a definitive religious text by being accorded legitimacy in law courts by the legal system. It is a text accepted for taking oaths.
As we have seen, the Mahabharata emerged in ancient India as an oral epic. The Gita, placed within it at some stage in its historical journey, has come to be its representation and is accepted as the written text for people who formally identify as being Hindu. Just as it is difficult to say if the Gita of Krishna was originally a part of the Mahabharata, it is also difficult to say if the great devotion to the Gita in the second millennium of Indian history was because it was a part of the epic, or whether the undiminished popularity of the Mahabharata till this day has been a result of the Gita being a part of it. And yet, one can be certain beyond any doubt that the essence of the Gita —the precept of detachment, and the perspective of an uninvolved witness, the sthitpragnya or sakshi—was the precise sentiment that the Mahabharata epic sought to evoke in the minds of its audiences.
Beautiful.
Page 73 @ 20 April 2025 10:14:58 PM
The expanse and the grandeur of the action and the heroic qualities of the major characters of the Mahabharata are so dazzling that, surprisingly, one tends to overlook the fact that the one character who is present at the very beginning as well as the very end is Yama. He is also present in the action, in all its crucial active and contemplative moments. Yama, in popular imagination, is associated with death. He is imagined to be the sovereign of the land to which the dead depart. But that was not how Yama was positioned in ancient myths. In the pre-Mahabharata mythology, Yama is described as Time as well as Light. In the Rig Veda, dated by scholars prior to the era of the Mahabharata, Yama is the son of Vivasvan and Saranya. Vivasvan is himself the Sun God and Saranya is the Goddess of Dusk. At this juncture in the evolution of Indian myths, Yama was not yet seen as the God of Death. He was an immortal who opted to undergo death. In that sense, he is the first to be both a mortal and an immortal being. He combines light and darkness in his person, given his parentage.
I didn’t expect this, and it makes so much sense.
2. The Wheel
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The widespread misconception that the Mahabharata war took place some 5,000 years ago, that the epic was composed some 4,000 years or so before our time, arises out of its unique method of mythologizing history, a method which none could employ as convincingly as Vyasa.
Elsewhere in the book, I can’t find it now, Devy says that this interspersing of history and mythology is something that repeats often in Indian archaeology. I’ll come back to this one day to ponder more about it.
Page 110 @ 20 April 2025 10:38:07 PM
The story of Shantanu meeting Ganga is told in the ‘critical edition’ and in most Mahabharata traditions one way, but it can also be narrated differently, as the following passage from a Rajasthani Mahabharata does:
I was not aware of a Rajasthani Mahabharata. This retelling was too long to put in highlights, but I recommend reading this book just for this.
Page 116 @ 20 April 2025 10:40:50 PM
Chapter 3, shloka 35: shreyan svadharmo vigunah, pardharmat svanushthitat; svadharme nidhanam shreyah, paradharmo bhayavahah, which reads in translation, ‘one’s own duty, though defective, is superior to another’s duty well-performed. Death is better while engaged in one’s own duty; another’s duty is fraught with fear
It is odd that I’ve been reading the Wheel of Time lately and one of my favourite lines from that series is Death is lighter than a feather, duty heavier than a mountain.
Page 121 @ 20 April 2025 11:17:38 PM
the dharma of the ancient Brahminical Dharmasutras and the dharma articulated in the Mahabharata do not have much in common except for the language in which they were written. The fact that these were texts in Sanskrit and written around roughly the same time need not be taken as justification for the claim that the Mahabharata is a text about dharma as understood in the Dharmasutras.
Page 128 @ 20 April 2025 11:20:09 PM
David Anthony’s The Horse, The Wheel, and Language describes the historical transition from pre-chariot warfare to warfare in the era of speedy chariots pulled by powerful horses.
This is a book I’ve meant to read, but I haven’t yet gotten around to.
Page 129 @ 20 April 2025 11:21:19 PM
Arjuna, who alone can lift and wield the Kindhura dhanushya, the divine bow given by Shiva to king Drupad for use in the Draupadi-svayamvar, the contest of heroes to win Draupadi’s hand in marriage, represents Shiva.
I am a little surprised, but I’ll have to verify in the Debroy translation. I do not think that the ability to lift the bow was ever in question, like in the Ramayana. Is Devy mixing the two events up?
Page 133 @ 20 April 2025 11:23:22 PM
Jinasena, a major Jain thinker and writer of the Rashtrakuta period, wrote a text during the ninth century quite akin to Vyasa’s Mahabharata . This text, known as Harivamsha, focuses primarily on the Krishna–Jarasandha story. Generally considered as the Jain Mahabharata, it does not place the Pandavas at the centre of the plot. It is concerned more with distinguishing the characters into two categories, the baladevas, those who use violence, and the vasudevas, those who desist from using violence. Drawing upon the Jain advocacy of non-violence as a virtue, the concept of chakravarti in Jainism is an emperor who rules through non-violence. Jain cosmology mentions several chakravartis who keep appearing in the world in a cyclic rhythm: Bharata, son of Tirthankara Rishabhanatha; Samara, ancestor of Bhagiratha as in the Puranas; Maghava Sanatkumara; Tirthankara Shantinatha; Tirthankara Kunthunatha; Tirthankara Aranatha; Subhaum; Padmanabha; Harishena; Jayasena; and Brahmadat.
Wait, does this say what I think it says? The Harivamsha is a Jain work?
Page 163 @ 20 April 2025 11:35:50 PM
When post-Vedic Sanskrit was in ascendency, India had other well-developed languages such as Pali, Tamil, Prakrit, and an ancient variety of what is the present-day Assamiya.
I didn’t know Assamese was that old!
Page 167 @ 20 April 2025 11:37:53 PM
The geographical area where the Buddha lived and travelled during his four decades as a wandering philosopher-saint had several living languages in use. The language of Magadha, the ancestor of the present-day Magahi, was only one of them. There were also the ancestors of present-day Assamiya, Bangla, Khasi, Garo, Manipuri, and Bodo.
It is sad that many languages need to fight to earn the tag of “classical languages”.
Page 178 @ 20 April 2025 11:41:11 PM
If one were to answer the question, ‘What is it all about?’, one can propose with a fair degree of justice that, apart from it being about many, many other important things, it is about a method of understanding the past as a composite time, an aggregate of all aspects of Time, the kala. The Mahabharata gave India this method and it is because of this that Indian people have rarely been able to perceive their past, their histories, in terms other than the ones the Mahabharata method has proposed. It is, therefore, also why India has not stopped its lavish adoration of the epic. Despite its depiction of the varna system in a manner that should offend any Indian believing in equality of all humans, despite its foregrounding the idea of rebirth which any modern mind will find untenable, despite its valorization of a social order that almost amounted to a slavery-based society, the Mahabharata is yet not regarded by Indian people as a work of the past because it brings to them the Mahabharata method of perceiving the past.
I remembered my letter to Bibek Debroy with this. The Mahabharata is all about Dharma, but not any one singular dharma. One man’s dharma could be another man’s adharma. But I like this particular way of putting it across as well.