The literatures of the world come in a variety of genres: From prose and plays to stories and sagas. Of these there is one particular genre that is unique to some cultures: the epic. An epic is a long, often very long narrative that involves heroes and villains of extraordinary strength, a god or two and mythic beings sometimes. It is formulated as grand poetry, and usually identified with this or that culture. Most epics are ancient. Many have survived for long only through the oral tradition by which generation after generation preserved the story line and the complex prosody through regular repetition. In the next few essays I plan to recall the epics I have read over the decades.
The Mahābhārata (MB) is the longest epic in humanity’s heritage. There is hardly a person with Indic cultural roots, whether living in India of beyond, who has not heard of this magnificent work and some of its characters.
In the course of the long dynastic history of Hastināpura the blind prince Dhritarashtra became heir to the throne. Recognizing his physical disability, he made his younger brother Pandu king. Dhritarashtra had a hundred sons, known as Kauravas, after an ancestor named Kuru. Pandu’s two wives, Kunti and Madri, bore five sons, called the Pāṇḍava s. In due course, Pandu decided to abdicate the throne and retire to a quieter life. Soon, he died. Now Dhritarāshtra brought back Pandu’s sons to the kingdom for care and education.
As the children in the royal palace grew, the Pāṇḍavas proved to be more talented than the Kauravas. So the king appointed Yudhishthira, the eldest Pāṇḍava , to succeed him. This upset the Kauravas. Thus began a long rivalry between the cousins, which is the central theme of the epic.
Sensing this, Dhritarāshtra suggested to the Pāṇḍava s to move to a different city. Duryodhana, the first of the Kauravas, was not satisfied even with this. Fearing that eventually they might come back to claim the throne, he plotted to exterminate them. But the Pāṇḍava s escaped, and settled in a forest, disguised as pious Brahmins. During their sylvan sojourn, the Pāṇḍava s heard of the svayamvara of princess Draupadi of the Pañchala kingdom. A svayamvara is a public ceremony in which a princess chooses her consort from his accomplishments in a contest. The Pāṇḍava s took part in the competition. Arjuna, the third of the Pāṇḍava brothers, made a tremendous impact at the sport by his extraordinary skill in archery, and won fair Draupadi’s hand.
When Dhritarashtra heard about this, he invited them to his capital, and bequeathed to them a part of his kingdom. The Pāṇḍava s thus became rulers of a country, with its capital at Indraprastha. Yudhishthira was chief of state, and his reign was a model of justice and prosperity. This made the Kauravas seethe with envy. They tempted the Pāṇḍava s into what seemed like an innocuous gambling game. By means fair and foul, the Kauravas made the Pāṇḍava s lose miserably. The stakes grew higher and higher each time, until the Pāṇḍava s lost their wife Draupadi, their properties and eventually their entire kingdom. They had to live in exile for twelve years.
Then came a time when the Pāṇḍava s felt that enough was enough. With strong allies, they met the Kauravas on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. It was in this climactic encounter that Lord Krishna, charioteer of Arjuna, revealed to the perplexed hero some fundamental truths about the human condition and the hereafter in the form of the Bhagavad Gita, now a scripture in Hinduism.
That great war raged for eighteen days, causing much death and destruction. The Kaurava brothers were all killed, their armies were routed, and the Pāṇḍava s, as victors, came to Hastināpura. When Yudhishthira eventually reached heaven where he was warmly received, his dog was not admitted. He refused to enter paradise under these conditions, whereupon it was revealed that it was Dharma—the Lord of Justice—who had been in canine disguise all through. But years in heaven still kept Yudhishthira sad, because his brothers and Draupadi were suffering elsewhere for their earthly misdeeds. He therefore joined them there, shared in the painful punishments of hell to rid themselves of the fruits of sins. Finally they all moved into heaven, there to live happily forever.
Few other works encompass such a wide spectrum of the human. Raw passions and desires are here, as well as spiritual pursuits. There are references to duties of the householder and to rules of engagement in war. We read about games and gambling, archery and disguise, politics and diplomacy, rivalry and cooperation, and more. Then there are excursions into fanciful tales. Most of all, there is the refrain of adherence to truth and righteousness. The central message of the epic is that it is not victory in war or material possessions that should be one’s aim in life, but something loftier. To be able to renounce the most precious possession or achievement is what distinguishes the evolved human from one who is at a very base level. There is also the refrain that evil should not be allowed to persist, much less to dominate. Compassion is a virtue, but should not be extended to those who overtly violate the moral order: a lesson that is as relevant as a thousand years ago.
The work has no single historically identifiable author other than the legendary Vyāsa. There are debates as to whether the work is a narration of historical events, a didactic story of imagination, or a combination of both. All we know is that it is a magnificent work that has had a tremendous impact on the cultural worldview and history of the people of India, besides being a treasure-chest in humanity’s literary heritage. I am not aware of any work with a single title that is so encyclopedic in scope, so fascinating in anecdotes, and interesting as a narrative. It is good that there are many abridgments and easily accessible versions of this monumental work.
Most Indic readers are familiar with the central theme and the story line, and have certain hear the names of the major characters in the epic. But not many may know all the two thousand plus characters, nor the many fascinating side-stories filling the pages of the epic. Nor do they consciously think of the countless killings that occur in the work; nor are they aware of the aspects of ancient occurrences, sprinkled throughout the book, that include polyandry, lust, rape, wives freeing sleeping with other men for the sake of progeny. Then there are at least three major classes of beings: the divine, human, and the evil. These frequently interest and move from and between their respective world.
Given this, some may not regard the epic as narration of historical events, though, in spite of all this, many continue to argue that the epic is a re-telling of transpired history.
Be that as it may in the following I will be presenting various aspects of this extraordinary literary treasure which has few parallels in the world. As Virgil’s Aeneid is also the epic history of Rome in poetic measures. In size and scope it comes nowhere near the Mahābhārata.
Spurts of Thought 