The Digested Read Of A Sacred Text
Jan. 15th, 2008 10:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvesselOct 2007
The Mahabharata - R.K. Naryan - Penguin, 2001
* * * *
I have an ongoing personal project to correct the gaps in my education caused by my school’s apparent belief that Christianity was the only religion about which one needed to know. Divinity classes were in fact pretty good - we were taught Form Criticism and Redaction Criticism, two tools which are essential to understanding the gospels properly - but as far as I recall other world religions were never spoken of or discussed, thereby denying us the wisdom or insights that they might have to offer (and providing a completely inadequate preparation for the multicultural society in which the majority of us live). So every now and then I have made a point of acquiring major religious texts and reading them cover to cover.
It’s always risky to comment on books that people consider to be sacred, but I feel that I am on safe ground with this one because despite its title this is not the Mahabharata. The real thing is one of the longest epic poems in the world; it has 100,000 verses, 1.8 million words and comes in 18 hefty volumes. This version is a mere 180 pages long and is a prose palimpsest of the main story, similar to John Crace’s Digested Reads in the Guardian (but without the satirical intent). Hindus may be offended by the exclusion of the long passages of moral instruction and philosophical discourse found in the original (including the Bhagavad Gita), but the result is a tale that has an engaging Homeric flow, and which by incorporating the principles of Hinduism into the story rather than spelling them out didactically serves to point up their universal human appeal.
The story concerns a struggle in the royal family of Hastinapura, an ancient kingdom located in what is now Uttar Pradesh. The heroes are the Pandavas, consisting of Yudhistira (good, just and wise but with a fatal character flaw) and his brothers Arjuna (master of many types of weapons), Bhima (a strong man) and Nakula and Sahadeva (who are described as “brilliant” but seem to have no other distinguishing characteristics - in fact they are curiously sidelined through the rest of the story and I would like to know why). Actually, “brothers” is a misnomer, for they are the offspring of different gods, their ostensible father Pandu having been forced into a life of abstinence by the dying curse of a celestial being that he slew by accident (the curse was that he would meet his end the next time he tried to make love to his wife, a fate which he eventually finds himself unable to avoid). Their domestic arrangements are also unconventional, for all five brothers end up married to the same woman after a comic misunderstanding with their mother (you’ll have to read it to understand why). They are assisted by Krishna, the eighth incarnation of Vishnu, the supreme god.
Their opponents are the Kauravas, who consist of the cunning Duryodhana and his hundred brothers, supported by the mighty warrior Karna. The Kauravas are the cousins of the Pandavas, and their common grandparent is Vyasa, the legendary creator of the Mahabharata itself (which only goes to show that authors appearing as characters in their own stories is not nearly as original an idea as post-modern novelists seem to think). Duryodhana, fearful of the Pandavas’ god-given powers, tries to do away with them, first by burning down the palace in which they are staying, then by sentencing them to twelve years in exile after Yudhistira loses everything in a spectacular case of gambling fever.
Eventually the rivalry builds to a dramatic and complex battle in which mighty (though ill-described) mystical forces are wielded and many warriors on both sides meet their ends, almost invariably through trickery or accident. No prizes for guessing who wins, but there is a surprisingly sour epilogue in which the fates of the characters are described.
Despite the epic scope, the most striking feature is the number of human touches. Duryodhana’s father Dhritarashtra is a case in point; he is a classic woolly-minded liberal who vacillates between his affection for the Pandavas, whom he knows are right, and his loyalty to his sons. As you might expect, the women in the story are relegated to supporting roles, but Draupadi (the Pandavas’ wife) comes across as a forceful character who is unafraid to join in the cut and thrust of debate, if not the fighting. It is also interesting to see which personal qualities are regarded as important. The main ones seem to be loyalty and the keeping of oaths; there is a clear hint of the Divine Right of Kings in the way that the other Pandavas stick by Yudhistira despite his very obvious human weaknesses and bad decisions.
This is one of those rare books which would have benefitted from being longer. The introduction is brief and there are no background notes, making some of the motivations and actions of the characters difficult for non-native readers to understand, particularly when they involve mystical or religious aspects. Still, this book achieves what I think is its aim, which is to whet the appetite and set the context for a more detailed exploration of the other Hindu texts. Now I know where it fits into the main story, I will be able to read the Bhagavad Gita with more interest.
The Mahabharata - R.K. Naryan - Penguin, 2001
* * * *
I have an ongoing personal project to correct the gaps in my education caused by my school’s apparent belief that Christianity was the only religion about which one needed to know. Divinity classes were in fact pretty good - we were taught Form Criticism and Redaction Criticism, two tools which are essential to understanding the gospels properly - but as far as I recall other world religions were never spoken of or discussed, thereby denying us the wisdom or insights that they might have to offer (and providing a completely inadequate preparation for the multicultural society in which the majority of us live). So every now and then I have made a point of acquiring major religious texts and reading them cover to cover.
It’s always risky to comment on books that people consider to be sacred, but I feel that I am on safe ground with this one because despite its title this is not the Mahabharata. The real thing is one of the longest epic poems in the world; it has 100,000 verses, 1.8 million words and comes in 18 hefty volumes. This version is a mere 180 pages long and is a prose palimpsest of the main story, similar to John Crace’s Digested Reads in the Guardian (but without the satirical intent). Hindus may be offended by the exclusion of the long passages of moral instruction and philosophical discourse found in the original (including the Bhagavad Gita), but the result is a tale that has an engaging Homeric flow, and which by incorporating the principles of Hinduism into the story rather than spelling them out didactically serves to point up their universal human appeal.
The story concerns a struggle in the royal family of Hastinapura, an ancient kingdom located in what is now Uttar Pradesh. The heroes are the Pandavas, consisting of Yudhistira (good, just and wise but with a fatal character flaw) and his brothers Arjuna (master of many types of weapons), Bhima (a strong man) and Nakula and Sahadeva (who are described as “brilliant” but seem to have no other distinguishing characteristics - in fact they are curiously sidelined through the rest of the story and I would like to know why). Actually, “brothers” is a misnomer, for they are the offspring of different gods, their ostensible father Pandu having been forced into a life of abstinence by the dying curse of a celestial being that he slew by accident (the curse was that he would meet his end the next time he tried to make love to his wife, a fate which he eventually finds himself unable to avoid). Their domestic arrangements are also unconventional, for all five brothers end up married to the same woman after a comic misunderstanding with their mother (you’ll have to read it to understand why). They are assisted by Krishna, the eighth incarnation of Vishnu, the supreme god.
Their opponents are the Kauravas, who consist of the cunning Duryodhana and his hundred brothers, supported by the mighty warrior Karna. The Kauravas are the cousins of the Pandavas, and their common grandparent is Vyasa, the legendary creator of the Mahabharata itself (which only goes to show that authors appearing as characters in their own stories is not nearly as original an idea as post-modern novelists seem to think). Duryodhana, fearful of the Pandavas’ god-given powers, tries to do away with them, first by burning down the palace in which they are staying, then by sentencing them to twelve years in exile after Yudhistira loses everything in a spectacular case of gambling fever.
Eventually the rivalry builds to a dramatic and complex battle in which mighty (though ill-described) mystical forces are wielded and many warriors on both sides meet their ends, almost invariably through trickery or accident. No prizes for guessing who wins, but there is a surprisingly sour epilogue in which the fates of the characters are described.
Despite the epic scope, the most striking feature is the number of human touches. Duryodhana’s father Dhritarashtra is a case in point; he is a classic woolly-minded liberal who vacillates between his affection for the Pandavas, whom he knows are right, and his loyalty to his sons. As you might expect, the women in the story are relegated to supporting roles, but Draupadi (the Pandavas’ wife) comes across as a forceful character who is unafraid to join in the cut and thrust of debate, if not the fighting. It is also interesting to see which personal qualities are regarded as important. The main ones seem to be loyalty and the keeping of oaths; there is a clear hint of the Divine Right of Kings in the way that the other Pandavas stick by Yudhistira despite his very obvious human weaknesses and bad decisions.
This is one of those rare books which would have benefitted from being longer. The introduction is brief and there are no background notes, making some of the motivations and actions of the characters difficult for non-native readers to understand, particularly when they involve mystical or religious aspects. Still, this book achieves what I think is its aim, which is to whet the appetite and set the context for a more detailed exploration of the other Hindu texts. Now I know where it fits into the main story, I will be able to read the Bhagavad Gita with more interest.