Dharma, Disorder and the Political in Ancient India: The Āpaddharmaparvan of the Mahābhārata.

Dharma, Disorder and the Political in Ancient India Brill’s Indological Library Edited by Johannes Bronkhorst In co-operation with Richard Gombrich • Oskar von Hinüber Katsumi Mimaki • Arvind Sharma VOLUME 28 Dharma, Disorder and the Political in Ancient India The $paddharmaparvan of the Mah§bh§rata By Adam Bowles LEIDEN • BOSTON 2007 Cover illustration: Death of Bhishma, Art of Legend India (www.artoflegendindia.com) This book is printed on acid-free paper. A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISSN: 0925-2916 ISBN: 978 90 04 15815 3 Copyright 2007 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands  for Tracey and Hamish and in memory of Nan CONTENTS Preface ............................................................................................ Abbreviations.................................................................................. List of figures.................................................................................. Chapter One Introduction ............................................................ 1.1 The paddharmaparvan: A brief overview ....................... 1.2 A guide to this book: Propositions and directions............ 1.3 A note on chronologies ..................................................... 1.4 Mahbhrata scholarship and the didactic corpora: What is ‘Mahbhrata’? ....................................................... Chapter Two ‘Distress’ in the literature on dharma and artha ...................................................................... 2.1 From the dharmastras to the dharmastras.................... 2.1.1 The dharmastras...................................................... 2.1.2 Manu and beyond ..................................................... 2.2 The Arthastra ................................................................. 2.2.1 The Arthastra and the dharmastras .................... 2.2.2 Arthastra analyses ................................................. 2.2.3 The treasury ‘koa’................................................... 2.2.4 The weak king vs. the strong king............................. 2.3 Concluding remarks ......................................................... Chapter Three Dharma ................................................................ 3.1 The origins of dharma: from dharman to dharma............. 3.1.1 Saühits ................................................................... 3.1.2 Brhmaõas ................................................................ 3.1.3 Upaniùads ................................................................. 3.1.4 rauta- and ghya-stras........................................... 3.1.5 Towards the dharmastras........................................ 3.2 The crisis and renewal of Brhmaõism: the ascetic and the ghastha.................................................. 3.3 Aoka ................................................................................ Chapter Four Yudhiùñhira and the narrative frame of the paddharmaparvan......................................................... 4.1 The Mahbhrata, dharma, Yudhiùñhira............................ 4.2 Yudhiùñhira’s crisis, dharma, and the paddharmaparvan.................................................. xi xiii xvi 1 3 8 13 16 36 37 37 44 54 55 58 68 71 77 81 82 84 89 94 103 109 117 125 133 135 151 viii CONTENTS Chapter Five Strategies of integration ......................................... 5.1 Integrative agents and transitional texts .......................... 5.2 Frame analysis ................................................................. 5.3 Interlocution and framing................................................. 5.4 Narrative motifs and rhetorical types............................... 5.4.1 Before a narrator begins .......................................... 5.4.2 Rhetorical types: coherence as a manner of speaking ................................ 5.5 Concluding remarks ......................................................... Chapter Six Laws for a king in crisis: Texts on paddharma I ............................................................. 6.1 ‘In praise of conduct procuring a treasury’ ..................... 6.1.1 Yudhiùñhira’s questions to Bhùma ........................... 6.1.2 Bhùma’s response to Yudhiùñhira ............................ 6.1.3 The koa.................................................................... 6.1.4 Justifications............................................................. 6.1.5 The king’s duty (dharma).......................................... 6.1.6 The king’s salvation.................................................. 6.2 ‘In praise of war’.............................................................. 6.3 ‘The conduct of a royal sage’ ........................................... 6.4 ‘A bandit’s way of life’ ..................................................... 6.5 ‘In praise of power’ .......................................................... 6.6 ‘The deeds of Kpavya’ .................................................... 6.7 ‘Explaining what can and cannot be appropriated’......... 6.8 ‘The tale of the three fish’................................................. 6.9 ‘The dialogue between the cat and the mouse’................. 6.10 ‘The dialogue between Pjan and Brahmadatta’.......... 6.11 ‘The dialogue between Kaõiïka and atruütapa’ ......... 6.12 ‘The dialogue between Vivmitra and the dog-cooker’..................................................................... 6.13 ‘In praise of wise brhmans’ .......................................... Chapter Seven Diversions on a theme: Texts on paddharma II ............................................................ 7.1 ‘The dialogue between the dove and the hunter’.............. 7.2 ‘The dialogue between Indrota and Prikùita’................. 7.3 ‘The dialogue between the vulture and the jackal’........... 7.4 ‘The dialogue between the wind and the almali tree’..... Chapter Eight Setting things right: Transitional texts of the paddharmaparvan I......................... 8.1 ‘The chapter on greed’. .................................................... 8.2 ‘The chapter on ignorance’ .............................................. 8.3 ‘The chapter on self-restraint’.......................................... 155 155 159 163 172 172 177 189 190 190 191 192 204 207 208 210 211 216 224 229 234 240 243 249 258 262 268 280 295 295 306 319 330 334 335 340 342 CONTENTS 8.4 ‘The chapter on austerity’ ................................................ 8.5 ‘The chapter on the real’ .................................................. 8.6 ‘The dissolution of anger and so on’ ................................ 8.7 ‘The chapter on bad men’................................................. Chapter Nine Coda: Transitional texts of the paddharmaparvan II ........................ 9.1 ‘Concerning penance’ ...................................................... 9.2 ‘The origin of the sword’ .................................................. 9.3 ‘The song in six parts’ ...................................................... 9.4 ‘The tale of the ungrateful man’ ....................................... Chapter Ten Conclusion .............................................................. Bibliography ................................................................................... Index ............................................................................................... ix 347 349 353 356 359 360 372 382 391 405 409 426   PREFACE This book has been long in gestation, having had its genesis more than a decade ago as a doctoral dissertation. Though one tries to cover as many bases as possible in the study of a chosen text, inevitably an author’s intellectual preferences dictate the paths that a book takes. My goal in studying the paddharmaparvan has been to approach it essentially as a work of literature, to explore its meanings and to investigate its poetic forms, and to place its central ideas in the context of thought contemporary with it. Some readers may have preferred a more thorough text-historical analysis of the paddharmaparvan; while others may despair at the long contextualising chapters exploring the development of ideas in relation to pad and dharma. For the former I can only hope that the discussions in these commentaries contain enough data to animate other adventures into the paddharmaparvan. For the latter I can suggest skipping chapters two and three and, if the narrative contextualisation and discussion of poetic devices in chapters four and five hold no interest, then perhaps those chapters as well. The commentaries on the texts of the paddharmaparvan in chapters six through nine are partially designed as stand alone essays, so readers may prefer to pick and choose as they see fit. Since the completion of the original dissertation in 2004, a spate of articles and books has appeared on some of the areas covered in this volume. I have attempted to account for or allude to as many of these as has been possible in the time available. Perhaps inevitably, however, there shall be some oversights which I hope do not prove excessively irksome. It would be impossible to name all the friends, family members, acquaintances and colleagues who have at some time or other provided advice or encouragement over the many years spent writing first the thesis and then this book. They have my deep gratitude. The person to whom I owe the most is Greg Bailey, who has been a generous mentor for well over ten years now. Greg was the first to introduce me to the study of Sanskrit and the cultures and history of early India; he has never ceased teaching and guiding, allowing open access to his library and engaging in vigorous discussion on any and every topic. For all this and more, I thank him. Eli Franco and Yashodhara Kar were other early Sanskrit teachers who taught me much. As a young xii PREFACE student, Guy Petterson offered some enduring advice. In recent times, Ian Copland has been a patient mentor and enthusiastic discussant. The revising of this book for publication was made substantially easier due to the extensive comments made on the original dissertation by Alf Hiltebeitel, James Fitzgerald and Ian Mabbett. Alf Hiltebeitel generously posted me a copy of the dissertation manuscript containing his extensive and often provocative marginalia. I have since had the great pleasure of meeting him and engaging in further enlightening conversations. James Fitzgerald generously allowed me access to a manuscript of his translation of the Str-, Rjadharma- and paddharmaparvans of the Mahbhrata (since published by the Chicago University Press), which proved an endless source of insight. He also engaged in a number of enjoyable and fruitful discussions on some passages from the paddharmaparvan. Patrick Olivelle gave me some important advice on the concept of dharma. Simon Brodbeck has been a frequent source of encouragement. His suggestions and criticisms of an early draft of the manuscript were as copious as they were insightful. Anita Ray and Perihan Avdi also generously read early drafts, offering helpful comments and improving its readability. Rob Greuner wrote a computer program for searching digital texts that proved enormously useful. A study such as this would have been impossible without the diligent efforts of the Inter-Library Loans staff at La Trobe University’s Borchardt Library. Thanks are also due to the support of the Asian Studies Program at La Trobe University. It’s a long way from an antipodean suburb to musing on Sanskrit literature and early India. That this has been possible at all is in no insignificant way due to my parents, Barry Bowles and Margaret Dare. In a time when the liberal arts are under increasing pressure to justify the meagre resources thrown their way, and universities are becoming increasingly dominated by more obviously vocational studies, they have never once flinched in their support or their determination to see me through to the other side; what I owe them is certainly beyond the parameters of what can be expressed in these pages. This book could not possibly have been written without the unquestioning support and commitment of my wife Tracey Scott. In his delightfully diverting way my son, Hamish, has vastly reduced the traumas of writing. Each day is far better than it otherwise could have been for having shared it with them. This book is dedicated to Tracey and Hamish and to my grandmother, Betty Twomey, who died during the writing of the second chapter. Her memory is a constant reminder of what is important.  ABBREVIATIONS AB ABORI DhP DhS gniGS pGS pMP pS vGS vS AV BU BDhS BGS BhGS BhS BhG BP BS BSOAS CE CIS CS CU DDhP Dhv GDhS GGS HDh HDhS HGS Hit HR HS IHQ IIJ Aitareya Brhmaõa Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute paddharmaparvan pastamba Dharmastra gniveya Ghyastra pastamba Ghyastra pastamba Mantra Pñha pastama rautastra valyana Ghyastra valyana rautastra Atharvaveda Saühit (aunaka) Bhadraõyaka Upaniùad Baudhyana Dharmastra Baudhyana Ghyastra Bhradvja Ghyastra Bhradvja rautastra Bhagavad Gt Bhaspati Smti Baudhyana rautastra Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies The Mahbhrata Critical Edition Contributions to Indian Sociology concluding statement Chandogya Upaniùad Dnadharmaparvan Dhvanyloka Gautama Dharmastra Gobhila Ghyastra P.V. Kane’s History of Dharmastra Hiraõyakei Dharmastra Hiraõyakei Ghyastra Hitopadea History of Religions Hiraõyakei rautastra Indian Historical Quarterly Indo-Iranian Journal xiv IS IT JAAR JB JGS JIP k KA KñhGS KñhS KauGS KhGS KS KS KU JAOS L LS LU MaitrS Mbh MDhP MNU MRE MS MS MU NS P PE PGS PMS PS PT PU Rm RC RDhP RE RV B ABBREVIATIONS initial statement Indologica Taurinensia Journal of the American Academy of Religion Jaiminya Brhmaõa Jaiminya Ghyastra Journal of Indian Philosophy saüvda or upkhyna Kauñilya Arthastra Kñhaka Ghyastra Kñhaka Saühit Kautaki Ghyastra Khdira Ghyastra Ktyyana rautastra Ktyyana Smti Kañha Upaniùad Journal of the American Oriental Society lesson link statement literary unit Maitryaõya Saühit Mahbhrata Mokùadharmaparvan Mahnryaõa Upaniùad Minor rock edict Mnava rautastra Manusmti; Mnava Dharmastra Muõóaka Upaniùad Nrada Smti prana Pillar edict Praskara Ghyastra Prva Mmüsstra Parara Smti Pa catantra Prana Upaniùad Rmyaõa request for clarification Rjadharmaparvan rock edict »gveda Saühit atapatha Brhmaõa ABBREVIATIONS GS SI P S SU SV(K) T TB Tkh TS TU VaikhS VjS VDhS ViS VS WZKS YS xv ïkhyana Ghyastra statement of intent ntiparvan ïkhyana rautastra semantic unit Smaveda Saühit (Kauthuma) Taittirya raõyaka Taittirya Brhmaõa Tantrkhyyika Taittirya Saühit Taittirya Upaniùad Vaikhnasa rautastra Vjasaneyi Saühit Vaiùñha Dharmastra Viùõu Smti; Viùõu Dharmastra Vdhula rautastra Wiener Zeitschrift f r die Kunde S dasiens und Archiv f r die Indische Philosophie Yj avalkya Smti LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE 1. Texts of the paddharmaparvan I......................... FIGURE 2. Texts of the paddharmaparvan II ....................... FIGURE 3. Texts of the paddharmaparvan III ...................... FIGURE 4. Texts of the paddharmaparvan IV...................... FIGURE 5. pad in the dharma-stras and -stras................ FIGURE 6. Prakaraõas concerning ‘distress’ in the KA ......... FIGURE 7. Diagrammatic representation of the DhP’s frames ............................................................. FIGURE 8. Table of Rhetorical Types ..................................... FIGURE 9. Fish names in ‘the tale of the three fish’ (DhP 135; SU 8) .............................................................. FIGURE 10. Distribution of themes in ‘the dialogue between the cat and mouse’ (DhP 136; SU 9) ............................... FIGURE 11. Correspondences between DhP 138 (SU 11) and other texts .................................................................... FIGURE 12. Analysis of DhP 148 (SU 15) ............................. FIGURE 13. Correspondences between DhP 154 (SU 20) and other texts .................................................................... FIGURE 14. Correspondences between DhP 159 (SU 25) and other texts .................................................................... FIGURE 15. The ‘origin of the sword’ (DhP 160; SU 26) ...... FIGURE 16. The ‘lineage of the sword’..................................... 4 5 6 7 42 60 165 179 247 251 265 310 343 362 375 378  CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION In the course of recounting to King Janamejaya the origins of his dynasty in the first book of the Mahbhrata (Mbh), the sage Vaiaüpyana narrates the story of the engendering of the king’s great-greatgrandfather Põóu, father of the Mbh’s heroes the Põóavas. The story goes that the dynastic matriarch Satyavat, despairing at the premature death of King Vicitravrya, her youngest son, before he had ensured the future of his line through the production of an heir, seeks the assistance of Bhùma, paterfamilias and elder half-brother of Vicitravrya through their father, aütanu. Appealing to a special law functioning in a similar vein to levirate which exists to ensure dynastic survival, Satyavat calls on Bhùma to father sons on Vicitravrya’s two wives, imploring him to ‘take account of the law for crises and bear the ancestral burden!’ 1 Bhùma, however, must refuse Satyavat’s approaches, for he has taken a vow of celibacy and cannot recant his word. But there is yet hope for the Bharata dynasty, and Bhùma tells Satyavat to invite a brhman of virtue to beget children in ‘the fields of Vicitravrya’. And so, by an appeal to the special laws for special circumstances, the sage Kùõa Dvaipyana Vysa—Satyavat’s eldest son, half-brother to Vicitravrya, ‘divider’ of the Veda and reputedly the composer of the Great Bhrata—saves the Bharata dynasty from its crisis (pad) and becomes the surrogate progenitor of the Mbh’s great warring clans, the Põóavas and Dhrtarùñras (sons of Põóu and Dhtrarùñra). It is, however, a false dawn. A similar dynastic crisis occurs again in the next generation, and the same legal mechanism is employed to engender the ‘sons of Põóu’, only for an apocalyptic war of dizzying dimensions to plunge the clans into a crisis greater yet again. Eventually the cycles of crises abate, but only after the almost total annihilation of the earth’s ruling dynasties. ಧಧಧ 1 Mbh 1.97.21cd paddharmam avekùasva vaha paitmahü dhuram || Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. 2 CHAPTER ONE It is thus only through a double appeal to an paddharma, a law for a situation of distress substituting for laws that operate in normal circumstances, that the two Bhrata clans of the Põóavas and Dhrtarùñras—cousins descendant from Bharata—are able to come forth to fight out the battle for the Kuru realm, the eighteen day war that forms the heart of the Mahbhrata. Many years after Bhùma had sought a solution to the Bharata dynastic crisis in an paddharma, he is struck down on the tenth day of the great war, a war able to arise only in consquence of him finding a dharmic solution to the original crisis. Arjuna provides him with a bed of arrows and, his body larded with shafts, he waits out his last days for his boon-chosen moment of death. But once the war is over, Yudhiùñhira, agonising over his royal responsibilties and the massive slaughter of the war, approaches Bhùma for advice at the insistence of Vysa and Kùõa. And so Bhùma, the mighty ‘grandfather’ (pitmaha) of the Bharata dynasty, discourses at length to the triumphant (but not jubilant) king on all matters pertaining to dharma, the laws and codes of rightful conduct of the Kuru realm. And in the course of these instructions, Bhùma returns once again to the topic of paddharma, a topic in which he had demonstrated expertise some two generations past. This book is a study of these laws, knitted together as a collection of texts in the Mbh called the paddharmaparvan (DhP), ‘the book on conduct in times of distress’, a collection that contends with, from a variety of perspectives and through a variety of textual genres, the many problems and complications that the notion of paddharma addresses and provokes. As the above story indicates, the compound ‘paddharma’ itself— which probably appears first in the MS and the Mbh, though some of the ideas it describes reach back earlier than these two texts—fundamentally means ‘right conduct in times of distress’, and refers to the relaxing of normative rules of behaviour when extraordinary social, environmental or other difficulties, have made these normative rules difficult to follow. In short, paddharma refers to exceptional rules for exceptional circumstances. The legitimate operation of an paddharma is strictly circumscribed according to the contingencies of time and place. The conduct it entails is sanctioned as morally and ethically justifiable if the circumstances merit it, a fact implicit in it being called a ‘dharma’ and thereby being conferred whatever legitimacy which that word incorporates. INTRODUCTION 3 1.1 The paddharmaparvan: A brief overview The DhP is the second of three sub-sections of the twelfth book of the Mbh, called the ntiparvan, the ‘book of peace’. Its thirty-nine chapters, numbering from 129 to 167 in the Critical Edition (CE) of the epic, are divisible into twenty-seven recognisable semantic units that, rather than amounting to a single, unified, statement on paddharma, reflect a diversity of approach to their organising theme, a diversity reflected in their polygeneric characteristics. Yet, despite this diversity, these texts consistently coalesce around and juxtapose certain themes: political conduct, different conceptions of dharma, social disorder and social cohesion, the status of brhmans, the participation of the socially marginalised in civil life, the responsibilties of the king and the king’s right attitude to scriptural codes and the moral order they entail. The DhP’s coalescence of themes, and the juxtaposition of its texts to others included in the corpus, reveal the anxieties of a culture in transition: What should one do when social order breaks down? How can people survive when circumstances impede their legitimate livelihoods? How can a king legitimately stabilise his rule? What are the limits to political behaviour? And how can political conduct be accommodated to notions of morality that demand unwavering standards of ethical conduct? FIGURES 1-4 offer a cursory overview of the contents of the DhP, listing its semantic units (SU) and giving their titles as found in the colophons of the text and the chapter numbers and verse totals which constitute each unit. 2 As these lists demonstrate, while a semantic unit may coincide with a single chapter, frequently a unit consists of more than one chapter, as is the case with many saüvdas (dialogues) and upkhynas (stories). Since the basic unit of analysis of this book is the semantic unit, I have not provided the titles of the chapters within these semantic units. I include in this book’s analysis of the DhP the final chapter of the RDhP (SU 1, RDhP 128) because it provides a transition and introduction to the DhP, as I will further argue later, ಧಧಧ 2 Cf. the breakdown of the DhP in James L. Fitzgerald, The Mahbhrata, vol.7. Book 11. The Book of Women. Book 12. The Book of Peace, Part One, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2004, pp.159, 163-4; and now James L. Fitzgerald, “Negotiating the Shape of ‘Scripture’: New Perspectives on the Development of of the Mahbhrata between the Empires,” in P. Olivelle (ed.), Between the empires: society in India 300 BCE to 400 CE, New York: OUP, 2006, pp.266-7. 4 CHAPTER ONE FIGURE 1. Texts of the paddharmaparvan I SU 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Unit Name koadharmapraaüsanam (RDhP) In praise of conduct procuring a treasury yuddhapraaüsanam In praise of war rjarùivttam The conduct of a royal sage dasyuvttiþ A bandit’s way of life balapraaüsanam In praise of power kpavyacaritam The deeds of Kpavya hryhryakathanam Explaining what can and cannot be appropriated kulopkhynam The tale of the three fish mrjramùakasaüvdaþ The dialogue between the cat and the mouse pjanbrahmadattasaüvdaþ The dialogue between Pjan and Brahmadatta kaõiïkaatruütapasaüvdaþ The dialogue between Kaõiïka and atruütapa vivmitravapacasaüvdaþ The dialogue between Vivmitra and the dog-cooker viprastutiþ In praise of wise brhmans ch. (vv. #) 128 (49) 129 (14) 130 (21) 131 (18) 132 (15) 133 (26) 134 (10) 135 (23) 136 (211) 137 (109) 138 (70) 139 (94) 140 (37) though strictly speaking it is not a part of the DhP. The unit names are taken from the titles found in the colophons. 3 The semantic units of the DhP and its introductory RDhP text can be usefully analysed into four separate sub-groupings (as reflected in chapters six to nine of this book). The most fundamental division of the parvan is between SUs 1-17 and 18-28, a division indicated by the final stanza of SU 17 (DhP 151.34) which marks the closure of the ಧಧಧ 3 These are compiled in the CE of the Mbh, vol.13, part 1, pp.cxlvii-clxiv. Some units are rarely given titles in the manuscripts (note e.g. SU 7). As would be expected, differences between the titles tend to follow the genetic relationships implied in the manuscript taxonomy. Though there is general uniformity found in these titles across the various manuscripts, at times a choice had to be made between a number of options, in which case I opted for either the most commonly used title or the title that (in my judgement) gave the clearest guide to the content of the unit. 5 INTRODUCTION FIGURE 2. Texts of the paddharmaparvan II SU 14 15 16 17  Unit Name kapotalubdhakasaüvdaþ The dialogue between the dove and the hunter indrotaprikùityasaüvdaþ The dialogue between Indrota and Prikùita gdhragomyusaüvdaþ The dialogue between the vulture and the jackal pavanalmalisaüvdaþ The dialogue between the wind and the almali tree ch. (vv. #) 141-45 (111) 146-148 (75) 149 (117) 150-51 (70) royal instructions of the RDhP and DhP sequence. It should not be assumed, however, that the remaining texts of the DhP do not also have some relationship to these royal instructions. The texts in the second group, SUs 18-28, are in my view united by their general function as transitional texts between the royal instructions of the RDhP and DhP sequence, and the following MDhP. They therefore thematically intersect with all three sub-parvans. The first group of texts, SUs 1-17, can further be divided on stylistic grounds between units 1-13 and 14-17. Units 1-13 (see FIGURE 1) represent the core of the discussion of paddharma as such, reflecting, as a group, both the social and political problems that arise from a ‘time of distress’ (patkla). As a general rule the king is the target of these teachings, and they reflect on his role in establishing the prosperity of his kingdom through the accumulation of wealth and the establishment of appropriate alliances, his control of bandit and lowstatus peoples existing in the marginal lands of his territory, and the extent of his authority to oversee his brhman subjects and adjudicate on their engagement in activities appropriate to their station. While these texts delve into problems and scenarios raised in the scholastic traditions of the brhmaõic texts on dharma, they are also politically charged and participate in a discourse frequently derived from the Indian tradition of political science (nti). They contain six tales or fables (units 6, 8-13), some of which are known in other Indian textual traditions, and the most famous of which is probably ‘The dialogue between Vivmitra and the dog-cooker’. The second group of texts, units 14-17 (see FIGURE 2), are a collection of narratives that stand separate due to their length, multi-chapter structure (besides SU 16) and, though they connect thematically to the problem of ‘distress’, their generally less determined political content. The four narratives in this group each depict a situation of crisis, but, unlike many of the preceding units, they are rhetorically less grounded 6 CHAPTER ONE FIGURE 3. Texts of the paddharmaparvan III SU 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Unit Name lobhdhyyaþ The chapter on greed aj ndhyyaþ The chapter on ignorance damdhyyaþ The chapter on self-restraint tapodhyyaþ The chapter on austerity satydhyyaþ The chapter on the real krodhdiparikùayaþ The dissolution of anger and so on naüsdhyyaþ The chapter on bad men ch. (vv. #) 152 (32) 153 (14) 154 (36) 154.38-155.13 (14) 156 (26) 157 (18) 158 (13) in what one might call a discourse of pad. In addition, the elements constituting their interlocutory frames are relatively loose. Such matters should not lead to a dismissal of these texts, however, since each makes interesting contributions—indeed, perhaps even some of the most interesting—to the themes that animate the DhP and the Mbh. The second half of the texts of the DhP that follow the main division indicated by DhP 151.34 (SUs 18-28) can also be further divided between SUs 18-24 and SUs 25-28. The first of these divisions, SUs 18-24, is a group of texts formally united by their tendency to develop an analysis of their topics through building descriptive catalogues, a technique typical of brhmaõic scholastic literature. These texts fulfil what I regard to be a transitional function between the royal instructions of the DhP/RDhP sequence, and the instructions on liberation of the MDhP. In performing this function, their work is twofold, since on the one hand they reassert a normative order, while on the other they clearly foreshadow the contents of the MDhP. 4 ಧಧಧ 4 Fitzgerald does not include SU 24 (DhP 158) in his section two of the DhP (SUs 18-23; DhP 152-7), a section which he distinguishes (as I do) for their mokùadharma themes (The Mahbhrata, vol.7, p.159; in “Negotiating the Shape,” pp.2679, he suggests that these texts form a “Proto-MDhP” that preceded the development of the MDhP proper). As explained, my incorporation of SU 24 into the group of SUs 18-24 is based on the stylistic similarities of these texts and their functions in reasserting a normative order after the ‘disorder’ represented in the texts on paddharma. 7 INTRODUCTION FIGURE 4. Texts of the paddharmaparvan IV SU 25 26 27 28 Unit Name pryacittyam Concerning penance khaógotpattiþ The origin of the sword ùaógt The song in six parts ktaghnopkhynam The tale of the ungrateful man ch. (vv. #) 159 (72) 160 (87) 161 (48) 162-167 (151) Each of the units in the final grouping (SUs 25-28, see FIGURE 4) is formally distinct from the others in the same group. One of the most notable features that sets this group of units apart from the other groups is the degree to which the frame conventions typical of Bhùma’s instructions undergo variation. In the first case, these texts account for three of the four occasions in which Vaiaüpyana’s presence is explicitly felt in the interlocutory frames of the DhP. Secondly, two texts in the group, SUs 26-27, display variations in interlocution that are immediately striking for their distinctiveness, with first Nakula assuming a key interlocutory role in SU 26, and then all the Põóavas plus Vidura (but not Bhùma) participating in SU 27. While these variations in the interloctory frame will be explored in greater detail later, at the moment it is worth noting they underscore the transitional positions and functions of these units. Yet each text performs their transitional functions in quite separate ways. Though quite distinct in form and content, the first and last of these units draw a line under the instructions on the ‘laws in times of distress’, providing, in a sense, a full stop (or perhaps an exclamation mark) to these instructions before the beginning of a new set of instructions with a new topos. The second and third of these texts, on the other hand, can perhaps be regarded as a pair, since the former looks back towards the royal instructions uniting the RDhP and DhP corpora, while the latter first glances back, only to then look forward towards the instructions that will follow in the MDhP. These various groupings could be analysed into still more divisions, but for such further analysis the reader is referred to the commentaries on each unit in chapters six to nine of this book. 8 CHAPTER ONE 1.2 A guide to this book: Propositions and directions While individual texts of the DhP have occasionally been utilised for studies in Indian ideas, history, political theory and myth, there has been no thorough study of the DhP that takes the entire corpus as the unit of analysis. 5 This neglect is emblematic of the general regard for the didactic corpora in Mbh studies. The present study, therefore, fills two gaps in scholarship on the Mbh. On the one hand, it has been designed as an introduction to, and useful tool for further research into, the texts of the DhP. On the other hand, it attempts to explore the DhP as, in some sense, a unitary (but not uniform) work, participating in some of the broad concerns of the Mbh and, therefore, as a functioning part of the Mbh. The scholarly context of the latter concern is explored in section 1.4. In exploring a text like the DhP, one is immediately confronted with the problem of gaining control of its diverse content. To this end, I approach the DhP with two principal objectives, to explore its meanings and to identify how it fits together. While the former leads to the placement of the DhP in its broader intellectual context, the latter leads to an investigation of the repertoire of poetic tools employed by the epic poets and/or redactors to make the DhP a cohesive unit and, at least rhetorically, a part of the Mbh. This book, therefore, has two principal propositions related to these two objectives. Beginning with the second, I argue that the agencies responsible for the creation of the DhP attempted to establish a cohesive text out of diverse materials by consistently employing a set of poetic devices and techniques. That is to say, these authorial agents were concerned with the way the texts of the DhP were compiled into a collection. I will discuss and analyse these devices and techniques in chapter five. My argument, therefore, questions the view that the didactic corpora are amorphous and incohesive collations of texts that received little compositional or redactorial attention. Such a view has been suggested by Hopkins, perhaps the most influential Mbh scholar, who said of the Mbh (and we can take this as especially applying to the didactic corpora), “Tale is added to tale, doctrine to ಧಧಧ 5 J. Fitzgerald undertakes some analysis of the DhP in his translation (The Mahbhrata, vol.7) and more recently in “Negotiating the Shape”; S.K. Belvalkar, the editor of the DhP CE, includes some preliminary discussion in his introduction to the DhP in vol.16 of the Mbh CE. INTRODUCTION 9 doctrine, without much regard to the effect produced by the juxtaposition.” 6 Even more extreme views, held by Hopkins and others, imply and sometimes directly suggest that the didactic corpora were collated by more or less incompetent redactors. While the argument presented here is opposed to such views, I do not, however, assume that there is anything simple about the semantic content and the internal structure of the various units of the DhP. Their instructions are, at times, complex, and offered from different perspectives. Nor do I mean to suggest that there are no textual difficulties in the DhP (many of which are discussed in chapters six to nine). However, my argument does assert that we should remain open to the dynamism of the DhP’s treatment of its themes, a dynamism which may well turn out to be located in the very juxtaposing of ‘tale to tale’ or ‘doctrine to doctrine’ which, though apparently problematic, may reveal the central importance of, and creativity provoked by, these very same themes. Secondly, the DhP collection represents a re-articulation of the brhmaõic view of kingship in terms of dharma. Some of the DhP’s texts stridently reflect this re-articulation at the rhetorical level. At other times it is more evident in the juxtaposition of one text to another, juxtapositions revealing underlying cultural anxieties about the proper application of royal power. No sooner, for instance, does one text relax the normal strictures on the king’s behaviour, than another re-asserts these limits. This re-articulation does not so much change the substance of the brhmaõic view of kingship, as reflect a broader cultural crisis—exemplified, for example, in the opposing values of the sacrificing householder and the renunciant ascetic—that problematises the violence perpetrated by kings and kùatriyas as part of their brhmaõically defined duty. Along with this crisis, there is a broad cultural tendency for debates over morality and ethics to take place in terms of dharma; indeed, typically, the question becomes, ‘what is dharma?’ Thus, of all the positions articulated in the texts collected in the DhP, one of the most significant is that the extreme measures a king might take in a situation of crisis can indeed be understood in relationship to dharma and, therefore, as legitimate behaviour. ಧಧಧ 6 The Great Epic of India, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1993 (11901), p.370. Hopkins views were generally dismissive of the didactic corpora as coherent and functioning parts of the Mbh. 10 CHAPTER ONE While these two propositions as they are presented here may seem separate issues, they are, in fact, intimately implicated in each other. The poetic form of the DhP, integrating this collection into the postwar teaching of Yudhiùñhira, the one character who most clearly represents the broader cultural conflict over proper conceptions of dharma, establishes the authoritative character of the DhP texts as part of the ‘royal revelation’ delivered by Bhùma for the edification of Yudhiùñhira, and as part of a much grander articulation of dharma that continues in the MDhP and the DDhP of the Anusanaparvan. This discursive integration establishes the authoritative voice of the DhP discourse as part of the great tradition of the Mbh as smti. If there is a decisive moment for the way we understand the texts of the DhP, therefore, it is the defining of the unit called the paddharmaparvan, an initiative that must be viewed as decisive for conferring at least some level of structural and thematic coherence on otherwise disconnected texts. Therefore, though the various texts making up the collection of the DhP may have had a life prior to (and beside and after) their inclusion in this collection, it is the fact of their inclusion in the DhP (and hence the Mbh) that is decisive for their meanings in this context. 7 The only boundaries we can ever be certain about are the textual boundaries imposed by the inclusion of texts in the Mbh and its subsections. The question of what may have motivated the formation of the DhP, and the inclusion in it of its various texts, is, of course, difficult to answer. Moreover, by no means can we assume that there was a single purpose behind the formation of the collection, since it is a distinct possibility that it was not formed with all its texts at the one time. 8 If it is accepted that texts like the DhP have a complex history of production, then it must also be admitted that the isolation of these historical conditions is problematic and, in all likelihood, not entirely resolvable. Yet, despite the inherent complexities involved, attempts in this direction must be made because of the potential insight it gives into these texts. In my view, the DhP responds to specific concerns emerging in Indian intellectual traditions associated with social and political behaviour and, furthermore, to how these concerns are heightened by, explored and mirrored in, the Mbh narrative. The question is, therefore, what significance attaches ಧಧಧ 7 Cf. Fitzgerald, The Mahbhrata, vol.7, p.129 n.200 and p.144. And if its texts were included at different times, then we have no way of knowing how much time lapsed between its various chronological ‘layers’. 8 INTRODUCTION 11 to the texts of the DhP in view of their inclusion in the DhP collection, and having, therefore, something to do with ‘paddharma’? What is the point of formally presenting the texts of the DhP (and hence their concerns) as a poetic unit of the Mbh and, therefore, lending the DhP texts whatever cultural authority the Mbh confers? In order to clarify the issues to which the texts of the DhP respond, chapters two and three explore their intellectual background in other Indian textual traditions. Firstly, chapter two investigates the applications of concepts like pad (and its synonyms), and the compound paddharma, in the dharmastras and the Kauñilya Arthastra, two textual traditions deriving from a similar cultural milieu as the DhP. A striking difference accompanies the approach of each tradition. On the one hand, the dharma literature considers the problem of ‘crises’ pad in the context of an individual’s survival when environmental or social conditions are such that the pursuance of their normative, prescribed, occupation becomes difficult or impossible. This literature characteristically takes as its paradigm the conduct of the brhman, and only secondarily treats the other social classes. It is in this tradition that the concept of paddharma as such is typically found. The KA, on the other hand, discusses the problems of pad in terms of the conditions and needs of the state. Therefore, it tends to objectively analyse a situation of distress in order that a king acting in his kingdom’s best interests might avoid, arise from, or take advantage of another’s, situation of distress. While the DhP reflects both of these traditions, and many of its texts are ostensibly about political expediency as we might find it similarly presented in the KA, its narrative engine, I contend, derives from a certain conflict over dharma. This conflict arose as an inevitable consequence of the development of dharma into one of the most important concepts in all Indian traditions, which led to a corresponding broadening of its application and its assumption of an unparalleled position of conceptual prestige within these traditions. Consequently, in a process intimately bound to the broadening of its application, it became standard practice to accommodate a set of cultural ideas or practices to the concept of dharma in order to lend that set of cultural ideas legitimacy. This, it must be said, was not necessarily obligatory. The KA, for example, maintains a fairly restricted sense of the application of dharma, which accords by and large with the orthodox brhmaõic tradition represented in the dharma literature of the stras and early stras. It does not, therefore, consistently explain itself in terms of dharma, since its concerns have their proper place within the 12 CHAPTER ONE peculiarly brhmaõic notion of dharma to which it conforms. It was only when dharma began to assume the position of an ethical paradigm abstracted from the kinds of social stratifications and contingencies found in its conceptualisations in early brhmaõic texts (like the dharmastras), that it became seen as important to describe a set of cultural ideas in terms of dharma. These changes in the usage and meaning of dharma are explored in chapter three. Dharma and the problems that arise from it—how to define it, live by it, break it, repair it and how to accommodate it to the exigencies of a political life—are central thematic concerns of the Mbh. In chapter four, I explore the particular way this manifests in the earlier adhyyas of the P. In these adhyyas, Yudhiùñhira expresses his personal crisis over dharma, and his apparent transgressions of it in the great Bhrata war. This episode effects a transition between the ‘narrative’ and the massive didactic corpora that will follow this episode. In terms of the unfolding narration of the Mbh, Yudhiùñhira’s crisis provides both a ‘debriefing’ to the war and the impetus for Bhùma’s instructions. 9 But there are aspects of this transition that pertain to style also. This episode is made up of numerous polemics in dialogic form, usually between Yudhiùñhira and one of his family, that rarely reach resolution and are heavily laden with technical vocabulary, in a way that is formally similar to but less systematic than the subsequent episodes of the didactic corpora. At the same time, the frequent shift in Yudhiùñhira’s dialogic partners retains some of the dynamism of the interlocutory system found in the preceding sections of the narrative, while the participation of Yudhiùñhira as one of the principal interlocutors of this sequence further unites it with the later, long episode with Bhùma. The central focus on Yudhiùñhira in the P reflects a textual symbiosis of character and content, since it is his continual conflict over dharma (articulating a conflict coursing through the wider contemporary Indian cultural context)—a conflict present throughout the Mbh but given specific focus in these early chapters of the P—that underlies and frames the texts collected in the subsequent didactic corpora and, hence, the DhP. With chapter five the anaylsis of the DhP itself at last takes centre stage. In this chapter I analyse some of the poetic techniques which ಧಧಧ 9 Fitzgerald has presented the powerful argument that these instructions function to ‘cool down’ Yudhiùñhira who is dangerously overheated after the apocalyptic battle, see below pp.30 and 355. INTRODUCTION 13 establish the DhP as a cohesive unit, that is to say, as more than just a collection of disparate texts. This chapter takes a twofold approach which first explores the ways in which the texts of the DhP are integrated into their broader discursive contexts (i.e. the P and the Mbh) and secondly by identifying the poetic means by which the diverse texts of the DhP are integrated into the DhP itself. Of particular focus in this chapter is the framing and interlocutory system of the DhP, since it is this system that does most of the work of establishing the DhP’s texts into a cohesive whole. This chapter charts a course that will be further pursued in the four chapters that follow it, a course which argues that the proper unit of study in a text like the DhP is the frame and the enframed text together, where the frame plays a key role in directing the DhP’s audiences in their hermeneutic exercises. Chapters six to nine form the heart of this book, and are probably the chapters that will hold most interest for the general reader. These chapters draw together the insights drawn from these earlier chapters into a series of commentaries on each of the units that constitute the DhP. These commentaries attempt to give due regard to both the uniqueness of each text contained in the DhP collection (and their linkages with other, non-Mbh, textual traditions), and the position of each text within broader textual parameters, whether this be the DhP, the P or the Mbh. 1.3 A note on chronologies In The Sanskrit Epics, Brockington suggests that, “There is probably a broad progression in terms of chronology from the Rjadharmaparvan (12.1-128) through the paddharmaparvan (12.129-167) to the Mokùadharmaparvan (12.168-353), but effectively each passage, often of one or two adhyyas at a time, must … be examined individually, since the material is only loosely integrated into these major units.” 10 Fitzgerald too contends that the didactic corpora reflect a complicated redactorial history, though he often avoids broad chronological statements, when he says, “it is not the case that the three anthologies of the nti Parvan were assembled at the same time and in ಧಧಧ 10 The Sanskrit Epics, Leiden: Brill, 1998, p.152. 14 CHAPTER ONE the same fashion”. 11 He later refers to the tautness of the earlier parts of the “rjadharma” instructions, a tautness “noticeably lacking in all other parts of Bhùma’s instruction of Yudhiùñhira”, 12 which speaks, when matched with his comments on chronology, to a criterion that can be employed to identify layers of historical development within the text. Fitzgerald further asserts that not even individual adhyyas can be understood to form the basic units of text construction, for even some of these, “particularly some in the first portions of the RDh[P] and the ADh[P], seem at times to have been assembled into the adhyyas from pre-existing passages and quotations”. 13 These views of the didactic corpora reinforce the idea that they have undergone a process of ‘layering’ over time. 14 But with the compiling of the Pune Critical Edition having largely completed the lower critical task of settling a text of the Mbh—widely regarded as being a generally successful representation of an Mbh that is as ‘early’ as the manuscript evidence will allow us to go 15—it is left by and large to the more subjective methods of higher criticism to establish such layers. The whole procedure of identifying earlier from later layers within parvans and individual adhyyas obviously requires a set of criteria with which to make these judgements. But the question of what we can take to provide accurate criteria is a difficult matter, as Hiltebeitel argues in a review of Brockington’s work. 16 One problem arises if we accept the view that the didactic corpora are collections of texts that pre-existed their inclusion in these collections (a view which is, I believe, reasonable in many respects). For then the dating of the texts on stylistic or linguistic grounds does not necessarily solve the problem ಧಧಧ 11 The Mahbhrata, vol.7, p.144. He offers a hypothesis for the internal chronology of the RDhP on pp.152. But see now his speculative 16-step chronological layering in “Negotiating the Shape”. 12 The Mahbhrata, vol.7, p.148. 13 The Mahbhrata, vol.7, p.144. Cf. J. Dunham, “Manuscripts used in the critical edition of the Mahbhrata: A survey and discussion,” in Arvind Sharma (ed.), Essays on the Mahbhrata, Leiden: Brill, 1991, p.17. 14 For a theoretical discussion, see G. Bailey, “Stages and Transitions: Introductory Reflections,” in M. Brockington (ed.), Stages and Transitions: temporal and historical frameworks in epic and purõic literature, Proceedings of the Second Dubrovnik International Conference of the Sanskrit Epics and Purõas August 1999, Zagreb: Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 2002, pp.1-16. 15 The process, of course, goes on. See p.164 n.32 below for an example of an amendment to the Critical Edition. Fitzgerald also suggests a number of pertinent amendments to the Critical Edition in his recent translation. 16 IIJ, 43 (2000), p.165. INTRODUCTION 15 of the date of their inclusion in the Mbh—surely the more important problem for the study of the Mbh. Indeed, a whole set of complicating questions then come into view, since, without a source text for comparison, there is no way to know the degree to which a text has been modified for its ‘new’ context. A comparison of Brockington’s and Fitzgerald’s applications of just one ‘internal criterion’ reveals a further problem in establishing acceptable criteria. For Brockington, “Occasionally the exceptional length of an adhyya suggests that the passage has been incorporated at a particularly late stage, since otherwise it would have been divided into several adhyyas.” 17 Yet, Fitzgerald takes similar kinds of evidence in quite the opposite way. He notes that the latter parts of the RDhP, which he considers to be later than some earlier sections, contain all “but one of the multi-chapter instructions”, 18 which would seem to be precisely what Brockington’s long passage “divided into several adhyyas” would look like. Given the difficulties in clearly determining chronological layers in the Mbh and, especially, in its didactic corpora, I have generally avoided such reflection on the DhP. I do not, however, consider the entire DhP to have been composed at one time, and I offer the occasional suggestion in this regard in the commentaries on the DhP’s texts. More precise chronological conclusions, and their implications, shall have to await further research and more precise criteria to make such chronological assessments. It is, however, perhaps important to declare that I do not regard assertions of chronological layering and assertions of syntactic cohesion to involve necessarily mutually exclusive assumptions. Poetic conventions may embody forces that transcend chronological moments. 19 On those occasions when I do offer chronological reflections, I have generally been guided by a combination of stylistic indications and differences in the deployment of framing strategies. While the latter, in my view, most readily reveal the hand of whatever redactorial agents were responsible for the DhP, it ಧಧಧ 17 The Sanskrit Epics, p.152; repeated in “The structure of the Mokùa-dharmaparvan of the Mahbhrata,” in Piotr Balcerowicz & Marek Mejor (eds), On the Understanding of Other Cultures, Warsaw: Oriental Institute, Warsaw University, 2000, p.71. 18 The Mahbhrata, vol.7, p.147; cf. pp.148-9. 19 The conventions of the Mbh’s interlocutory framing system, for example, may be regarded from one point of view as ‘generative’, since hypothetically, if the conventions are faithfully replicated, ‘new’ textual units may be incorporated relatively seamlessly. 16 CHAPTER ONE is the combination of both criteria that is most significant. This approach relies, of course, on the assumption that we should expect some consistency in the style of the presentation of these texts and in the way that they have been framed. Regardless of whether I have deemed a text (or part thereof) to be a later addition to the DhP, I still see it as my principal task to understand how it responds to its context and functions as part of the DhP and Mbh. 1.4Mahbhrata scholarship and the didactic corpora: What is ‘Mahbhrata’? A study of one of the Mbh’s didactic corpora cannot ignore the problematisation of these corpora in modern scholarship on the Mbh. Fitzgerald has recently noted in regard to Mbh scholarship that “What is sorely lacking is an orientation to the nti Parvan as a deliberate literary and intellectual construction, as a functioning part of the Mahbhrata, serving some of the agendas of those people responsible for the epic.” 20 The BhG aside, this could be said for almost all of the Mbh’s didactic corpora. This is not to say, of course, that these corpora, which are primarily found in the raõyaka-, Udyoga-, Bhùma-, nti-, Anusana- and vamedhika-parvans, have not received considerable scholarly attention. Indeed, one could cite numerous books on ancient Indian polity, society, law and ethics, or the many specific studies on aspects of ‘society’ in the Mbh itself, or further still, the many dealing with the various aspects of ‘religion’ or ‘philosophy’ presented in the Mbh, that all focus almost exclusively on the Mbh’s great didactic tracts. Yet, such studies are not concerned with the Mbh as such; rather they utilise the Mbh as a source text for historical data, standing alongside non-textual sources and other Indic texts, such as the upaniùads and the dharmastras, to reconstruct India’s history, or the history of Indian ideas. Missing, however, are explorations that pose the question of the didactic corpora as constitutive features of the Mbh: What is the relationship of the didactic corpora to the ‘core’ ಧಧಧ 20 The Mahbhrata, vol.7, p.80. Cf. p.101, “I propose here that a thread of interconnection between the instructional anthologies of The Law for Kings and The Laws in Times of Distress, The Book of Peace as a literary artifact within the Mahbhrata as a literary artifact, and the historical events that, I believe, provided the stimulus for the precipitation of this grand work from its antecedent materials.” INTRODUCTION 17 story of the fratricidal war? To the Mbh as a whole? How do they tie into broader concerns evident elsewhere in the Mbh? How can the didactic corpora be considered as properly constitutive of the Mbh? This general approach reflects a tendency in Mbh studies to implicitly sever the didactic corpora from the Mbh’s ‘narrative core’, so that it is unclear if the object of scholars’ investigations is the Mbh itself, or a hypothesised ‘epic’ (entirely narrative, oral, bardic) precursor to the Mbh, that is, something like a ‘Bhrata cycle’. This problem is evident in an article by John Smith that attempts to provide a broad conceptualisation of ‘the two Sanskrit epics’ (i.e., the Mbh and the Rmyaõa): The poem which is known at the present day … by the name Mahbhrata does not … bear much resemblance to the original bardic poem. Between its oral composition and the literary redaction that underlies the entire known manuscript tradition, the text of the Mahbhrata underwent a massive expansion which not merely at least quadrupled its size, but also radically altered its character. 21 What is the antecedent to the possessive pronoun ‘its’ in the last phrase, the Mahbhrata or ‘the [hypothesised] original bardic poem’? Or both? Are we justified in calling both ‘the literary redaction that underlies the entire known manuscript tradition’ and ‘the original bardic poem’ (or, ‘oral composition’) by the name Mahbhrata? Or was the Mahbhrata a product of quite different creative decisions to the ‘original’ oral poem that is presumed to lie at the core of the heroic ‘narrative’? Did the text of the Mahbhrata undergo massive expansion? Or is the Mahbhrata, roughly as represented in the Critical Edition, the end-product of an expansion of an otherwise named ‘text’ or ‘poem’? Or was it a synthesis of different elements? Can we affirm all of these statements without contradiction? Smith realises the need for such questions when he later asks: When we talk of ‘the Mahbhrata’, are we talking of an excerpted ‘original’? or of the existing text? or of some stage in between, perhaps after the expansion of the epic narrative (Dr Smith 22 convincingly dem- ಧಧಧ 21 J.D. Smith, “Old Indian (The Two Sanskrit Epics),” in A.T. Hatto (ed.), Traditions of Heroic and Epic Poetry, vol.1: The Traditions, London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 1980, p.50. 22 Referring to Mary Carroll Smith’s 1972 Ph.D. dissertation, “The Core of India’s Great Epic,” later published as The Warrior Code of India’s Sacred Song, New York: Garland Publishing, 1992. 18 CHAPTER ONE onstrates that the four battle-books of the epic contain, in turn, increasingly high proportions of non-‘original’ material, the fourth, the alyaparvan, being wholly secondary) but before the insertion of the lengthy didactic passages? 23 But in posing these questions he already betrays their purpose. In citing the ‘convincing’ evidence of the high incidence of non-‘original’ material in the battle books, he seems to forget the question he has posed, for it is not whether a passage is original to a ‘bardic poem’ supposedly lying at the Mbh’s core which is at issue, a conceptual conflation of ‘early’ with ‘original’ that underlies much Mbh scholarship, but to what the name ‘Mahbhrata’ itself refers. Reflecting a broader problematisation of the didactic corpora as constitutive features of the Mbh, this position has its origins in the very beginnings of western scholarship on the Mbh. Through the course of the development of this scholarship, this problematisation has implicated the narrative/didactic division of the Mbh in a number of implicit and explicit positions that can be listed as a series of binary oppositions: early/late, unity/disunity, uniformity/disformity, orality/ textuality, heroic/religious, core/extraneous, narrative/episodic, epic/ pseudo-epic, epic/purõic, kùatriya/brhman, sta/brhman, original/ interpolation, secular/sectarian, essential/non-essential, primary/secondary, barbaric/civilised, immoral/moral, natural/unnatural and proper/ foreign. More could surely be found. Each of these oppositions has, at some time, been mapped against the division between the narrative of the fratricidal war—presumed to be not merely the ‘core’ of the Mbh considered as a whole literary work in something like its form in the CE, but also to be the Mbh’s earliest form—and all manner of material that especially includes the didactic corpora, but much episodic ‘narrative’ material as well. The scholarly disposition to divide the didactic corpora off from the basic narrative of the fratricidal war and to regard the former as later interpolations, has its origins at least as far back as the first western scholar to systematically study the entire Mbh, the German Indologist ಧಧಧ 23 “Old Indian,” p.53. Hopkins, who otherwise is notoriously dismissive of the place of the didactic corpora in the Mbh, notes this problem when he seeks to ‘define the epic’ in The Great Epic, p.386. INTRODUCTION 19 Christian Lassen. 24 Yet, it was in the late 19th century that the problem received particular focus through a debate—primarily between two scholars, E. Washburn Hopkins and Joseph Dahlmann—that polarised two positions which respectively became known as the ‘analytic’ and ‘synthetic’. Dahlmann first presented his ‘synthetic’ views of the Mbh in his volume Das Mahbhrata als Epos und Rechtsbuch. 25 Contrasting himself to the prevailing view in Mbh studies that divided the didactic books off from an earlier epic core, 26 Dahlmann proposed that the Mbh was not produced over a long period of time, but had been collected by a single editor (diaskeuast) who combined both didactic and narrative elements into a whole unified in its character as smti and in its representation of dharma, with the narrative designed to illustrate rules of dharma. He further suggested the date of 500 BCE for this composition. 27 While Dahlmann’s views were innovative in posing the question of the relationship of the didactic corpora to the war narrative, his insistence on an early date for the Mbh, his conviction that all of it was compiled by the one editor, and his subordination of the story to the didactic purpose of the Mbh, opened him to criticism from many scholars, even some who were sympathetic to his general approach. Hopkins, on the other hand, maintained the opposite view. In a series of studies peaking (but not ending) with The Great Epic of India, Hopkins continued the trend of previous generations of scholars and analysed the Mbh into older and younger layers. Hopkins had already presented many of his ideas in a lengthy article on the ‘ruling caste’. 28 But the debate intensified with the publication of Dahlmann’s volume, to which Hopkins responded with an article rebutting Dahlmann’s arguments, 29 a rebuttal that Hopkins continued in The Great Epic. Decisively for the future reception of the didactic corpora, Hopkins introduced the term ‘pseudo-epic’ to designate these elements, separating ಧಧಧ 24 Brockington, The Sanskrit Epics, p.43; A. Hiltebeitel, “Kùõa and the Mahbhrata (A Bibliographical Essay),” ABORI, 60 (1979), pp.67-8. 25 Berlin: F.I. Dames, 1895. 26 Das Mahbhrata, pp.6-7; cf. Hiltebeitel, “Kùõa and the Mahbhrata,” p.72. 27 Das Mahbhrata, pp.25-7. 28 “The Social and Military Position of the Ruling Caste in Ancient India, as Represented by the Sanskrit Epic,” JAOS, 13 (1889), pp.57-376, esp. pp.57-71. 29 “The Bhrata and the great Bhrata,” American Journal of Philology, 19 (1898), 1-24. Much of the evidence Hopkins cites in this article to refute Dahlmann needs to be reassessed, especially in light of the evidence of the CE. 20 CHAPTER ONE them from the ‘epic core’ and inculcating the perception that the didactic corpora were not germane to the Mbh. Indeed, he boldly announced, “there can be no further question in regard to the correctness of the term pseudo-epic as applied to these parts [the didactic books] of the present poem”. 30 Elsewhere his views were no less determinative, thus referring to the “intrusion … of foreign didactic material”, 31 and distinguishing an earlier ‘Bhrata’ epic, to be compared with the Greek epics, 32 from the Mbh as such. For Hopkins, the didactic corpora were a ‘fungus’ attached to the epic core, 33 a fungus that attempted to morally cover over the retrograde actions of the epic heroes depicted in the war narrative. Hopkins further established a chronology for the evolution of the Mbh, relegating the didactic corpora as later additions to the ‘epic core’ on the basis of metrical analyses and the different sociological data represented in the two divisions. This chronology still forms the basis of many views of the Mbh’s growth. Despite Hopkins’ criticisms, Dahlmann and the ‘synthetic’ view received some support. In a long review article of Dahlmann’s book, August Barth, despite being critical in many other respects, asserted his general agreement with the view that the Mbh ought to be considered as a unit, “carried out in one stroke or, at least, within the limits of a very close period of time”. 34 Similarly, in a brief article, J. Kirste agreed with Dahlmann that the epic and didactic elements interpenetrated each other so thoroughly that “it is impossible to separate them and to take the one for the older”, though he objected to his subor- ಧಧಧ 30 The Great Epic, p.381 The Great Epic, p.384. One should ask, of course, ‘foreign for whom?’ 32 E.g. “The Bhrata and the great Bhrata,” p.2. The distinction between a Bhrata and a Mahbhrata proceeds especially from their side by side citation in vGS 3.4.4, and from the numerous references to the ‘Bhrata’ in the Mbh itself. As regards the latter, I tend to agree with Hiltebeitel that the significance of the distinction between a ‘Bhrata’ and ‘Mahbhrata’ within the Mbh has been overestimated by scholars (Rethinking the Mahbhrata: A Reader’s Guide to the Education of the Dharma King, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001, p.108; cf., however, Fitzgerald, “Negotiating the Shape,” p.272 n.19). While the vGS reference certainly needs to be accounted for, it is important to note that the terms stand side by side and do not necessarily imply that its ‘Mahbhrata’ grows out from its ‘Bhrata’, or that its ‘Bhrata’ is included in its ‘Mahbhrata’. On vGS 3.4.4 see also below p.108. 33 “The Bhrata and the great Bhrata,” p.10. 34 Journal des Savants, (1897), p.228: “a été exécuté d’un seul coup ou, du moins, dans des limites de temps très rapprochées”. 31 INTRODUCTION 21 dination of the epic plot to the “ordinances of the dharmastra”. 35 With unusual insight for the time, he also warned against the “European standpoint” and “European definitions of literary works” that tend to privilege ‘epic’ over ‘didactic’ in the Mbh. 36 A generation later, Sylvain Lévi gave a somewhat different emphasis to the status of the didactic corpora within the Mbh. Considering the Mbh to be without doubt “une épopée didactique et moralisante”, he argued that it should properly be regarded as the fifth Veda and, in addition, as the “Krùõa Veda” with the BhG, the Mbh’s most famous didactic corpus, the “le cœur et le noyau de l’ouvrage”. 37 Gerrit Jan Held, though thinking that both Lévi and Dahlmann over-emphasised the Mbh as a didactic work, 38 was very critical of the analytical method of Hopkins. 39 Dissatisfied with both the analytic and synthetic methods, Held proposed to study the Mbh from an ethnographic perspective, arguing that it was structured around a potlatch ritual. Accordingly, he considered the didactic and epic elements to belong together, since the “task of instruction is part and parcel of the process of initiation”. Held did not, however, consider the two elements to have been created or even combined together at once, but rather applied a loose organic metaphor that saw them naturally attract each other. Thus the didactic material “found its way into the Epic through the course of centuries”, yet “they belong together; they are naturally one”. 40 The unity of the Mbh “is the unity of the form of society with which the Epic is genetically connected” a form of society he connects with an “antagonism existing between two groups in a phratry-relationship”. 41 The advent of the Pune Critical Edition sparked renewed interest in the Mbh, and the surprising unity of manuscript evidence it uncovered provoked some to reconsider prevailing ideas of the Mbh. Vittore Pisani, responding to this edition less then a decade after Held, criticised the ‘atomistic’ approaches of Hopkins and Winternitz, which ಧಧಧ 35 “The Mahbhrata Question,” Indian Antiquary, 31 (1902), p.3. Ibid. 37 “Tato jayam udirayet,” Commemorative essays presented to Sir Ramakrishna Gopal Bhandarkar, Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1917, pp.101-2. 38 The Mahbhrata: An Ethnological Study, Amsterdam: Uitgeversmaatschappij, 1935, pp.19. 39 The Mahbhrata: An Ethnological Study, pp.2, 11-12, 25. 40 The Mahbhrata: An Ethnological Study, pp.342-3. 41 The Mahbhrata: An Ethnological Study, p.344. 36 22 CHAPTER ONE assumed “that a poem cannot rise as epic and didactic at the same time”. 42 Importantly, he noted that didactic materials tend to fill temporal hiatuses in the action of the main story, suggesting that a principle of design lies behind their inclusion. He further asserted, following Lévi, that the “poet of the Bhagavadgt is the poet of the Mahbhrata”. 43 On the other hand, Pisani also considered the Mbh to have been compiled from different sources. 44 The great chief editor of the CE, V.S. Sukthankar, in a posthumously published volume of lectures delivered in 1942, also asserted a unified view of the Mbh. Sukthankar targeted the analytical techniques of the “Western savants” (as he referred to them) noting their tendency to view the Mbh as essentially a combination of “two mutually incompatible elements”, an “epic nucleus and an extensive undigested mass of didactic-episodical matter”. He was especially critical of Hopkins, whose chronological division of the Mbh he considered “pretentious”, “quite hypothetical and perfectly arbitrary”. 45 On the other hand, he was clearly impressed by Dahlmann, though he objected to his early date, his view that the narrative was invented to illustrate the prescriptive codes of dharma and his exaggeration of the “unity and homogeneity” of the epic (or, at least, of the version used by Dahlmann). 46 For Sukthankar, the didactic corpora are no more interpolations “than the so-called ‘epic nucleus’, which is informed by the same high didactic and ethical purpose”. The Mbh’s combination of “technical” matter with parables addresses the need for all people to learn about dharma, since for some the stras are overly obscure. The “nuclear epic theme” and the “intrusive didactic interlude” are two different methods consciously utilised to express the same central idea (presumably, living life in accordance with dharma), and thus the raõyaka-, nti- and Anusana-parvans have ಧಧಧ 42 “The Rise of the Mahbhrata,” in Volume of Eastern and Indian Studies Presented to Professor F.W. Thomas C.I.E. on his 72nd birthday 21st March 1939, ed. S.M. Katre and P.K. Gode, New Indian Antiquary, extra series 1, Bombay: Kanartak Publishing House, 1939, p.170. 43 “The Rise of the Mahbhrata,” p.171. 44 “The Rise of the Mahbhrata,” p.173. 45 On the Meaning of the Mahbhrata, Bombay: Asiatic Society of Bombay, 1957, pp.9-10. 46 On the Meaning, pp.20-4. Sukthankar’s views on the unity of the Mbh applied to the text reconstituted in the CE. The edition used by Dahlmann, on the other hand, was “much inflated with late accretions and most certainly does not, as a whole go back to the fifth century B.C.” (p.22). INTRODUCTION 23 “a vital function to perform and must be regarded as forming an integral part of the original poem in its received form”. 47 Other scholars, though lacking a systematic appraisal of the didactic corpora as elements of the Mbh, do deal with them as consistent parts of the Mbh in the course of their studies. Thus both Georges Dumézil and Madeleine Biardeau, who have utilised the Mbh to reconstruct, respectively, a trifunctional Indo-European pre-history and the emergence of Hinduism as a religion of bhakti, 48 frequently consider the narrative and didactic corpora to reflect the same underlying ideological structures. Greg Bailey, showing the influence (like Biardeau) of structuralist theory, has suggested that what “is implicit in the narrative material is made explicit in the didactic material” a view that rests, he acknowledges, on the assumption of their being “thematic unities” across the whole epic. 49 Hiltebeitel, exhibiting the influence of both Dumézil and Biardeau, considered the separation of narrative and didactic elements in the Mbh, and the view of “all moral pronouncements as one or another variety of Brahminical interpolation”, to be too simplistic, though he did not rule out “didactic intrusions and extensions”. For Hiltebeitel, “epic morality” cannot be explained away “as a Brahminical veneer over a ‘heroic’ core”, and suggested a more fluid and dynamic relationship in which “virtues of different types have found reflection in the story; and the story has probably continued to suggest different dharmic formulations to poets of different periods”. 50 More recently, Hiltebeitel has passionately argued for the written composition of the Mbh in a period between the second century BCE and the turn of the millenium, in which, it is clear, he implicitly includes both narrative and didactic elements. 51 ಧಧಧ 47 On the Meaning, pp.84-6. See e.g. G. Dumézil, Mythe et Epopée I, Quarto Gallimard, 1996 (11968-73); M. Biardeau, Études de mythologie hindoue II—bhakti et avatra, Pondichéry: Publications de l’École Française d’Extréme-Orient, 1994. On the other hand, Biardeau for the most part leaves out discussions of the didactic corpora in her recent, Le Mahbhrata: un récit fondateur du brahmanisme et son interprétation, 2 tomes, Paris: Seuil, 2002; cf. vol.2 p.566 of this work in which she expresses ambivalence towards the Anugt of the vamedhikaparvan and the Nryaõyaparvan of the MDhP. 49 G. Bailey, “Suffering in the Mahbhrata: Draupad and Yudhiùñhira,” Puruùrtha, 7 (1983), pp.109-10. 50 The Ritual of Battle: Kùõa in the Mahbhrata, Albany: SUNY, 1990 (11976), pp.192-3. 51 Rethinking the Mahbhrata, pp.18ff; cf. p.28 on the Nryaõya and the Anusanaparvan. 48 24 CHAPTER ONE It is perhaps surprising how persistently scholars have returned to a view of the Mbh as a unit combining both narrative (‘epic’) and didactic materials, especially in light of the prominence given to the view of a prior epic core, a Bhrata cycle, to which the didactic materials have been appended as ‘foreign’ material. This latter view frequently appears in overviews of Mbh scholarship, in ‘handbooks’, and sometimes, quite uncritically, in studies of the Mbh, as the accepted scholarly consensus. 52 Hopkins’ influence was decisive in this regard, but he was ably assisted by another scholar, Moris Winternitz, whose campaigning was significant in the establishment of the CE project. Winternitz had published reviews of Dahlmann’s work that essentially criticised him for suggesting that the epic narrative had been invented to illustrate dharmic codes. 53 But it was especially in the first volume of his A History of Indian Literature (first published in German in 1908) that his support for views akin to Hopkins were given influential focus. For Winternitz, the ‘kernel’ or ‘nucleus’ of the Mbh was an old heroic poem, originally sung by bards for a warrior audience. In time, a diverse range of legends was first collected around this core, before it was co-opted by brhmans who introduced the great didactic tracts and its ‘sectarian’ elements. 54 As such, Winternitz saw the Mbh as a “whole literature” or a “literary monstrosity” containing clearly incompatible parts, and in no sense a “single and unified work”. 55 Thus “our Mahbhrata … is a very different work from the original epic poem of the battle of the Bháratas”, 56 a battle he suggested was “most probably a historical event”. 57 In Winternitz, as with Hopkins, we see all the hallmarks typical of the so-called ‘analytical’ approach: the assertion of a prior ‘epic’, ‘Bhrata’ cycle, the addition of episodic material, and a brahminisation of the Mbh that co-opts it for religious ಧಧಧ 52 Cf. Hiltebeitel, Rethinking the Mahbhrata, p.15 and n.57. Winternitz, M., “Notes on the Mahbhrata, with Special Reference to Dahlmann’s Mahbhrata,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1897, pp.713-59; “Genesis des Mahbhrata,” WZKM, 1900, pp.51-77. 54 A History of Indian Literature, vol.1, New York: Russell & Russell, 1971, pp.316-21; cf. M. Winternitz, “The Mahbhrata,” The Visva-Bharati Quarterly, 1 (1924), pp.343-59. 55 A History, pp.326-7. 56 “The Mahbhrata,” p.346. 57 “The Mahbhrata,” p.344; A History, p.317. 53 INTRODUCTION 25 and didactic purposes, a process that turns it into an uncontrolled mass of heterogeneous material. The influence of a view such as this runs deep in Mbh studies. As van Buitenen has said, Hopkins arguments have “been largely, if tacitly, accepted by scholarship”.58 Thus, for example, Barend van Nooten,59 Ruth Katz,60 James Laine,61 Barbara Stoler Miller,62 Yaroslav Vassilkov,63 Luis González-Reimann64 and Kevin McGrath,65 all work on the basis of there being a ‘prior’, ‘bardic’, ‘heroic’ core to the Mbh, which has been ‘overtaken’ by other, more ‘didactic’ or ‘religious’ elements. Van Buitenen himself presents a somewhat ambiguous and, at times, confusing position, a position that slowly drifts over the course of the introductions to each volume of his translation of the Mbh. While he begins by boldly asserting that the Mbh’s “grand ಧಧಧ 58 The Mahbhrata, vol.1, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1973, p.xxxiii. 59 The Mahbhrata, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1971, e.g. p.58. 60 Arjuna in the Mahbhrata: Where Kùõa Is, There Is Victory, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1990, pp.11-12, 180. 61 Visions of God: Narratives of Theophany in the Mahbhrata, Publications of the de Nobili Research Library 16, Vienna: Institut für Indologie der Universität Wien, 1989, p. 11 and esp. pp.255f., in which, following van Buitenen, he declares the ‘epic is dead’, swept away in a tide of purõicisation. 62 “The character of authorship in the Sanskrit Epics,” Journal of Oriental Research, Madras, (1992), pp.59-60. 63 “Indian practice of pilgrimage and the growth of the Mahbhrata in the light of new epigraphical sources,” in M. Brockington (ed.), Stages and Transitions: temporal and historical frameworks in epic and purõic literature, Proceedings of the Second Dubrovnik International Conference of the Sanskrit Epics and Purõas August 1999, Zagreb: Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 2002, p.133; cf. Vassilkov’s “The Mahbhrata’s Typological Definition Reconsidered,” IIJ, 38.3 (1995), pp.24956, where he discusses the efforts of Russian scholars (especially Pavel Grintser) to establish the oral origins of the Mbh, and a threefold typology of ‘epics’ into archaic, classical and late epic periods. The latter involves the absorption of “religious and didactic elements” (p.250). For Vassilkov, the Mbh is unique in combining all three types. However, if it is accepted that the oral origins of the Mbh is “an established fact”, as he maintains (p.249), though others question this (see e.g., Hiltebeitel, Rethinking the Mahbhrata, p.19), can this ‘oral predecessor’ also be called the Mbh? In the process of its suggested transformation, has it gained something that makes it the Mbh, and the hypothesised oral epic something else? 64 The Mahbhrata and the Yugas: India’s Great Epic Poem and the Hindu System of World Ages, New York: Peter Lang, 2002, p.11; cf. p.104, where, mirroring Hopkins, he speaks of “much foreign material” in books three and twelve. 65 The Sanskrit Hero: Karõa in Epic Mahbhrata, Leiden: Brill, 2004. McGrath’s ‘Epic Mahbhrata’, his own invention, is not commensurate with any known Mbh; see p.5 n.13 where he chooses to close this ‘text’ at the end of the Strparvan, a rather unfortunate decision given the interesting material on Karõa in the P. 26 CHAPTER ONE framework was a design”, 66 it soon becomes unclear what he includes in this ‘grand framework’, since much of the didactic corpora (especially the nti- and Anusana-parvans) he considers later ‘brhmaõic’ additions. 67 And while he expresses scepticism at the idea that the “grand baronial tradition” was taken over by a “mentality” identified with brhmans, 68 he later speaks of a “third phase” of composition in which the “original story” was brahminised, during which, presumably, he would have considered the addition of much of the didactic corpora to occur. 69 With these expansions van Buitenen begins to project the idea of the Mbh as a “library”, and the “central storehouse of Brahminic-Hind lore”, 70 an idea commonly met with in Mbh scholarship, and distinguishes this from the notion of the “original epic”, such expansions being frequently not “organically” connected with the latter. What van Buitenen means exactly by ‘Mahbhrata’, however, is unclear, as he himself suggests. 71 In later volumes, van Buitenen is less enamoured with the analytical method, suggesting that interpolations must still be made sense of within their contexts, since he “would like to believe” they were “attracted, even at times provoked, by an incident in the ‘original’ ”, 72 and, wisely in my view, insists that “it is not enough to decide what was interpolated; it is necessary to ask why it was interpolated”. 73 Similarly, he later speaks directly to the didactic corpora, agreeing with analysts that “in the course of time [the Mbh] also acquired a didactic purpose”, which he distinguishes from its “epic intentions”, but, while “accepting the didacticism of what Hopkins called the ‘pseudo-epic’ we should at least attempt to delineate to what specific purposes this teaching was applied”. 74 If there is a note of reluctance in van Buitenen, it is perhaps ಧಧಧ 66 The Mahbhrata, vol.1, p.xvi (his italics). Cf. A. Bowles, “Framing Bhùma’s royal instructions: the Mahbhrata and the problem of its ‘design’,” in P. Koskikallio (ed.), Proceedings of the Fourth Dubrovnik International Conference on the Sanskrit Epics and Purõas, forthcoming. 67 The Mahbhrata, vol.1, pp.xxii-iii. 68 The Mahbhrata, vol.1, p.xxi. 69 The Mahbhrata, vol.1, p.xxiii. 70 The Mahbhrata, vol.1, p.6, cf. p.xxiii; vol.2, p.182; and J.A.B. van Buitenen, “The Indian Epic,” in E.C. Dimock et al. (eds), The Literatures of India: An Introduction, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974, p.53. 71 The Mahbhrata, vol.1, p.xxv. 72 The Mahbhrata, vol.3, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978, p.19. 73 The Mahbhrata, vol.3, p.20. 74 The Mahbhrata, vol.3, pp.178-9. INTRODUCTION 27 because he is no fan of “didactic Sanskrit”, which “not only does not shy away from repetitiousness and redundancy, it is blissfully unaware of it”. 75 For van Buitenen, the Mbh has been transformed “into a work of religious and didactic purpose”, a transformation enacted by the Mbh’s purõic legacy in a process that leads him to announce “the epic is dead”. 76 This reflects a prominent trend in Mbh studies, often uniting the analyst and synthesist, that despairs at the literary merit of the didactic corpora, and its impact on the narrative, ‘properly epic’, core. 77 The influence of the analytical method is readily seen in the success of the enterprise of carving the didactic corpora off from the Mbh and, to echo Fitzgerald again, the general absence of studies that take a didactic corpus (with the notable exception of the BhG) as the unit of analysis, and appreciate the didactic corpora as functioning parts of the Mbh. Hopkins influence was decisive here. Though Brockington has asserted that the “dismissive implications” of Hopkins ‘pseudoepic’ designation of the didactic “must be balanced by his extensive study of epic philosophy”, 78 this study, which undoubtedly was extensive and important, precisely reflects the consequences of his approach, for it was divorced from any real consideration of the role and position of the didactic corpora within the Mbh. From this point of view, these didactic parvans are not really epic, thus not really of the Mbh, which is ‘at its core’ truly epic, a conception which undoubtedly is derived from an idea of ‘epic’ viewed from a tradition outside of the Mbh, notably, among western scholars, the Greek and Latin epics. 79 ಧಧಧ 75 The Mahbhrata, vol.3, p.180. The Mahbhrata, vol.3, p.154. This idea is prominent in Laine’s Visions of God, see above n.61. 77 The pinnacle of this despair must certainly be A. Esteller, “The Mahbhrata Text-Criticism (Apropos of a recent publication),” Journal of the Bombay Branch, Royal Asiatic Society, ns, 27 (1951), pp.242-58. 78 “The structure of the Mokùa-dharma-parvan,” p.71. 79 Like so many scholars of his day, Hopkins was classically trained and held academic posts in Greek and Latin (Brockington, The Sanskrit Epics, p.47). Of course the prejudices western scholarship inevitably reproduces when viewing the Mbh in cognisance of classical European epic traditions are both productive and prohibitive. Yet one might wonder how western scholarship would have viewed the Mbh in ignorance of Homer and his heirs. Would van Buitenen then have proclaimed “The epic is dead”, swept away in a tide of puraõicisation? Would the Mbh have been conceived as an epic core concealed beneath a didactic edifice? For a brief discussion of the application of ‘epic’ to the Mbh, see J. Brockington, “The textualization of the San76  28 CHAPTER ONE Consequently, the ‘study of the Mbh’ amounts more often than not to a study of its ‘epic core’, the fratricidal war of the Kauravas and Põóavas. In this view, the didactic corpora tell us a lot about the history of Indian ideas, but very little about the Mbh itself, and they are reduced to only being consulted in the way one consults an encyclopedia, as a source-book for cultural artifacts. Similarly, while Winternitz described the Mbh as a ‘whole literature’, this did not lead him to treat it as a whole, but rather to subdivide and compartmentalise it, a procedure no doubt encouraged and justified by the Mbh’s polygeneric character, but also a procedure that too readily became an end in itself. On the other hand, despite there being a surprising number of ‘synthesists’ asserting the unity—at least, in some sense of the word— of the Mbh in its combination of didactic and narrative elements, this has led to very little serious consideration of the place of the didactic corpora in the Mbh, and to very little scholarship that takes one of these corpora as the unit of study. It is also important to recognise that while synthesists typically suggest that the Mbh should properly be understood as consisting of both narrative and didactic elements, they do not insist that all the didactic elements were composed or included in the Mbh at the one time. It is one thing to say that the Mahbhrata should properly be understood as combining ‘didactic’ and ‘narrative’ elements; it is another to ask if all the didactic elements were incorporated at the same time, and for the same purpose (one could say the same of course, for ‘narrative’ or ‘episodic’ material). In more recent times, there have been renewed efforts to research the Mbh’s didactic corpora, no doubt stimulated by the high degree of textual unity uncovered by the Pune Critical Edition. The Nryaõya section of the MDhP has recently been the object of a substantial volume, edited by Peter Schreiner, that incorporates both sophisticated analytical methods, as well as considerations of the Nryaõya as a ಧಧಧ skrit epics,” in Lauri Honko (ed.), Textualization of Oral Epics, (Trends in Linguistics: studies and monographs, 128) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2000, especially pp.208f.; cf. Robert P. Goldman, “Gods in Hiding: The Mahbhrata’s Virña Parvan and the Divinity of the Indian Epic Hero,” Purõa, 61.2 (1999), pp.97-9. It is curious that when the Mbh is compared as ‘epic’ with epics from the classical European traditions, rarely is anything said of the didactic epics of those traditions. I can think only of van Buitenen in “The Indian Epic,” p.53, and D. Briquel, “La «Théogonie d’Hesiode. Essai de comparaison indo-européene,” Revue de l’Histoire des Religions, 197.3 (1980), pp.245-76, a study, however, that is concerned with Dumézilian ‘mythic transposition’ and not with didacticism as such. INTRODUCTION 29 textual unit in itself and as a unit within the Mbh. 80 John Brockington, who closely emulates Hopkins’ analytic methods, discusses the didactic corpora in his extensive overview of the Sanskrit epics and epic scholarship. Brockington cautiously reaffirms Hopkins’ chronological views, as “the best initial framework” in determining the relative age of different parts of the Mbh. 81 He too is clearly ambivalent about the position of the didactic corpora in the Mbh, asserting, for instance, that the nti- and Anusana-parvans, while interesting “for our understanding of the development of Hinduism”, have “little to do with the epic proper”. 82 Presumably, Brockington equates this ‘epic proper’ with the ‘oral’ poem that he thinks underlies the Mbh narrative, 83 the Bhrata, “an earlier and perhaps more clearly epic version” of the Mbh. 84 In a more recent article, Brockington aims to assess how far the MDhP “is just a random collection and how far its growth conforms to a definite purpose or reveals a clear structure”. 85 While his conclusions are equivocal, 86 this at least indicates a renewed effort to take a didactic corpus as the unit of analysis. James Fitzgerald, on the other hand, pursues territory already partially developed by Dahlmann and Lévi. Fitzgerald’s understanding of the Mbh is the outcome of one of the more sustained efforts in recent times to explicitly pose the question of the didactic corpora as constitutive parts of the Mbh. In his view, the constructive agency of the creators of the Mbh is always present, and this agency was responsible for a synthesis of at least two different ‘literary’ traditions, a synthesis which created something close to the Mbh as presented in the CE. Most significantly, the Mbh thereby conceived includes both narrative and didactic elements. Thus he has argued that the Mbh was: an elaborate fabrication (basically simultaneous with the invention of the Bhagavadgt, which is the centre and heart of our text) in which ಧಧಧ 80 Reinhold Gr nendahl, Angelika Malinar, Thomas Oberlies and Peter Schreiner, Nryaõya Studien, edited by Peter Schreiner, Wiesbaden Harrasowitz Verlag, 1997. 81 The Sanskrit Epics, pp.132-4. 82 The Sanskrit Epics, p.33. 83 The Sanskrit Epics, p.3. 84 The Sanskrit Epics, pp.18-19. Accordingly, he hypothesises “stages in the establishment of an epic tradition”. But is the term ‘epic’ here becoming inchoate? 85 “The structure of the Mokùa-dharma-parvan,” p.72. 86 “The structure of the Mokùa-dharma-parvan,” p.82: “it is perhaps best to adopt a cautious attitude towards the issue and to affirm that there are indications of planning and organisation at various points within the Mokùa-dharma-parvan but that these are not sufficient to establish that it has an overall structure”. 30 CHAPTER ONE old epic narrative materials of a “Bhrata” cycle were adapted to, and re-imagined in synthesis with, materials that existed in a distinct tradition of religious didacticism to create the “Great” Bhrata of Vysa. 87 While Fitzgerald, like Hopkins, accepts the view that there was a ‘Bhrata’ cycle that pre-existed the Mbh, there is a substantial difference between the two. Hopkins insists on the Mbh’s (unfortunate) ‘accretion’ of ‘extraneous’ didactic material to its epic core (“the original Bhrat Kath”), Fitzgerald, on the other hand, hypothesises the creation of the Mbh out of antecedent kaths of a Bhrata cycle combined with antecedent didactic materials. Fitzgerald further considers the Mbh to have undergone revisions, suggesting that “this Great Bhrata was subjected to deliberate extension or “updating” at least once after the original creation of the text” (referring specifically in this instance to the DDhP of the Anusanaparvan). 88 In more recent times, Fitzgerald has developed and modified this view, especially in regard to the incorporation of the BhG into the Mbh. 89 But the core of Fitzgerald’s argument—that the Mbh was a literary creation drawing on a generically diverse range of literary sources—remains in place in these later refinements of his position. Notably, in his most recent contribution, he suggests that the “main Mbh” (the “post-Mauryan, anti-Mauryan, MBh”) contains some “kernel of Bhùma’s instruction of Yudhiùñhira”. 90 Fitzgerald, therefore, attempts to acknowledge the Mbh’s complicated genesis without dismissing that it has claims to unity and coherence, and, most importantly, suggests that the Mbh—and not some other ‘text’, e.g. a hypothesised ‘Bhrata’—included both narrative and didactic material at its inception. Indeed Fitzgerald offers one of the few theories that integrates the Mbh’s great post-war books of instruction (the P and the DDhP) into the unfolding narrative of the Mbh, arguing that they represent the ‘cooling down’ of a Yudhiùñhira dangerously overheated through his anguish and grief at the events of the war. 91 Similarly, he ಧಧಧ 87 “India’s Fifth Veda: The Mahbhrata’s Presentation of Itself,” in Essays on the Mahbhrata, ed. A. Sharma, Leiden: Brill, 1991, p.154. 88 “India’s Fifth Veda,” p.154. 89 The Mahbhrata, vol.7, p. xvi n.2, pp.114-23, 139-40; “Negotiating the Shape” pp.270-2. For a critique of Fitzgerald on some of these points, see A. Hiltebeitel, “On Reading Fitzgerald’s Vysa,” JAOS, 125.2 (2005), pp.251-8. 90 “Negotiating the Shape” p.271; in the same article he offers a sixteen step hypothesis for the development of P’s didactic corpora. 91 The Mahbhrata, vol.7, pp.95-100. INTRODUCTION 31 is often attentive to the dynamics operating through these didactic corpora, discerning, for example, ‘a concerted effort to shape this collection’ over chapters 60-90 of the RDhP. 92 Hiltebeitel has taken matters further. Advocating a rethink on the late dating of some of the Mbh’s didactic corpora, 93 Hiltebeitel’s review of Fitzgerald’s recent translation critiques the latter’s shift from attempting a synchronic reading of the P to giving a diachronic reading, and suggests that there is a strong “case to be made for reading Books 12 and 13 whole, as part of the Mahbhrata’s total design and earliest inspiration”. 94 Despite their differences—and on these matters they are, at times, considerable—both scholars clearly reinvigorate the question of the position and function of the didactic corpora within the Mbh; indeed, the common ground of both scholars is perhaps more remarkable than their differences, since neither questions that the Mbh should properly be understood as including both ‘narrative’ and ‘didactic’ material. Clearly the days of the ‘pseudo-epic’ are fast being left behind. Fitzgerald’s views are especially significant, since no Sanskrit Mbh has been identified by reliable historical data that does not include at least some, though perhaps not all, of the didactic corpora. Thus, just as Hiltebeitel argued nearly twenty five years ago that “a Kùõaless epic gains absolutely no support from the Critical Edition’s reconstituted text”, 95 one could argue the infeasability of a notion of the Mbh devoid of didactic material. The close textual analysis that accompanied the creation of the CE has certainly changed Mbh studies. Like many other scholars, 96 Fitzgerald recognises that the “effort to establish a critical edition of the Sanskrit text of the Mahbhrata … re- ಧಧಧ 92 The Mahbhrata, vol.7, p.148. However, Fitzgerald detects a “loosening of editorial integration” as one progresses from this “tight organization” of the text in the first half of the RDhP instructions through to the remainder of the RDhP, DhP and MDhP and the “relatively very relaxed” DDhP. This ‘loosening’ is one of the criteria Fitzgerald uses to bolster his hypotheses of the history of the development of the instructions of the RDhP (and, consequently, the DhP and MDhP as well). See above section 1.3. 93 Hiltebeitel Rethinking the Mahbhrata, pp.28-9, urging that books considered late be viewed “with a fresh eye to the possibility that they are not any later”. He speaks here especially of the Nryaõya and the Anusanaparvan, but could just as well be speaking of other didactic corpora. See also pp.161-5 for further comments on the issue of the Mbh’s design and Fitzgerald “The Many Voices of the Mahbhrata,” JAOS, 123.4 (2003), pp.803-18 for a critique of Hiltebeitel. 94 “On Reading Fitzgerald’s Vysa,” p.259 95 “Kùõa and the Mahbhrata,” p.99. 96 See e.g. Hiltebeitel, Rethinking the Mahbhrata, pp.24-6; above p.21. 32 CHAPTER ONE vealed that a single Sanskrit version of the “Mahbhrata”, fixed in writing, was at the base of the entire manuscript tradition of the Sanskrit Mahbhrata”, 97 though, as a reconstruction, the CE can not be equated with this archetype. 98 Similarly, whatever scant epigraphic evidence there is suggests that the ntiparvan, at the very least, was a part of the Mbh at a very early date. 99 Furthermore, as Kirste and B hler established long ago, the Mbh was received in the Indian tradition as a smti as far back as Kumrila (7th century), containing both a ಧಧಧ 97 “India’s fifth Veda,” p.152 and p.153 n.5 (cf. Fitzgerald, The Mahbhrata, vol.7, p.xvi n.2); for a critique of Fitzgerald see A. Bigger, “The Normative Redaction of the Mahbhrata: possibilities and limitations of a working hypothesis,” in M. Brockington (ed.), Stages and Transitions: temporal and historical frameworks in epic and purõic literature, Proceedings of the Second Dubrovnik International Conference of the Sanskrit Epics and Purõas August 1999, Zagreb: Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 2002, p.19. Fitzgerald follows Sukthankar (see Fitzgerald’s own references and Sukthankar’s “Prolegomena,” in vol.1 of the CE, pp.lxxvi, lxxxvi, ciiciii). It is important to note that while a written archetype at the base of the Mbh manuscript tradition can be reasoned a posteriori, there is every reason to be sceptical of being able to uncover it, and Sukthankar frequently avoids making such claims in respect to the CE (e.g. pp. lxxxii, lxxxvi, cii-iii), though he does consider it an attempt to uncover “a version of the epic as old as the extant manuscript material will permit us to reach” (his italics) which, “if the editor has done his work properly”, may be regarded as “the ancestor of all extant manuscripts …” (pp.cii-iii). Sukthankar is not always entirely clear, however, especially on p.lxxix, where he accounts for manuscript variation by the assumption of an original bardic oral tradition, and then posits the independent writing down of the text “in different epochs and under different circumstances”. Whilst the interaction between oral and written Mbh traditions is not unlikely, it is unclear to me how the accounting of manuscript variation by positing either an ‘original’ bardic tradition or the writing down of the text on more than one independent occasion, is reconciled with the assertion that all extant manuscripts descend from a common ancestor. See also I. Proudfoot, Ahiüs and a Mahbhrata Story, Canberra: Australian National University, 1987, pp.37-9. 98 Bigger (“The Normative Redaction”) prefers the term ‘normative redaction’ rather than archetype, but the implications are similar. 99 In “The oldest extant parvan-list of the Mahbhrata,” JAOS, 89 (1969), pp.3348, Dieter Schlingloff has discussed a reference to the Mbh in a Kuùõa period (1st c. CE) Buddhist Sarvstivdin manuscript from Qizil which seems to refer to the P, but not the Anusanaparvan; see now E. Franco, The Spitzer Manuscript: The Oldest Philosophical Manuscript in Sanskrit, 2 vols, Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2004. M. Witzel (“The Vedas and the Epics: Some Comparative Notes on Persons, Lineages, Geography, and Grammar,” in P. Koskikallio (ed.), Epics, Khilas, and Purõas: Continuities and Ruptures, Proceedings of the Third Dubrovnik International Conference on the Sanskrit Epics and Purõas September 2002, Zagreb: Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 2005, p.62) appears to muddle this data, suggesting that the Spitzer manuscript leaves out the “dharma sections (nti ...)” of the Mbh. INTRODUCTION 33 P and (at least material from) the Anusanaparvan, 100 but probably even earlier. 101 Perhaps most remarkably, Hiltebeitel has recently mounted a compelling argument that the Buddhacarita of Avaghoùa, a brhman convert to Buddhism who lived in the first to second centuries of the common era, demonstrates a strong knowledge of parts of, at least, the RDhP and MDhP, and perhaps other didactic corpora of the Mbh too. 102 While there is a fundamental paradox in our terminological distinction between the ‘narrative’ and the ‘didactic’ corpora’, in as much as the latter are also narrated, a fact which has important implications for the didactic corpora as discourse, there are good pragmatic and formal grounds for maintaining a distinction between the actual texts we call ‘narrative’ and ‘didactic’. 103 Whether it is assumed that this distinction suggests that the didactic corpora were a later addition to the ‘narrative core’ (Hopkins and Brockington), or that the narrative and didactic elements were combined in a great compositional and editorial effort to produce the Mahbhrata (Dahlmann and Fitzgerald), both views have in common the idea that the didactic material has, in some sense, a separate ‘origin’ from the narrative (whether viewed temporally, or culturally, or both). Distinctive Mbh discursive modes are sometimes implied in the Mbh’s own view of itself. In Mbh 1.1.17, for example, the sages in the Naimiùa forest ask to hear from the sta Ugraravas the purõa which was told by Vysa, the pure (põya), sacred knowledge (brhm) of the Bhrata ‘history’ (itihsa), which is ‘adorned by refinement’ (saüskropagat) and ‘reinforced by various ಧಧಧ 100 G. B hler and J. Kirste, “Contributions to the History of the Mahbhrata,” Sitzungsberichte der Wiener Akademie der Wissenschaften, 127.12 (1892), pp.1-58. If it is accepted that Kumrila obliquely refers to the DhP (“Contributions to the History,” pp.10, 23; cf. Brockington, The Sanskrit Epics, p.131), then this is probably the first reference to this sub-parvan. 101 “Contributions to the History,” p.26: extrapolating from epigraphic evidence from the 5th and 6th centuries CE, they suggest that the Mbh “was a Smti or Dharmastra from A.D. 300, and that about A.D. 500 it certainly did not differ essentially in size and in character from the present text”. Brockington (The Sanskrit Epics, p.131) notes that a land grand dating from 532-3 CE referring to an Mbh of 100,000 verses “strongly implies the present extent of the text”. 102 A. Hiltebeitel, “Avaghoùa’s Buddhacarita: The First Known Close and Critical Reading of the Brahmanical Sanskrit Epics, ” JIP, 34 (2006), pp.229-286. Cf. Brockington, The Sanskrit Epics, p.485, noting that Avaghoùa “definitely draws on the nitparvan”. 103 Cf. Hiltebeitel, “On Reading Fitzgerald’s Vysa,” p.247 for cautionary remarks regarding the narrative/didactic distinction. 34 CHAPTER ONE sciences’ (nnstropabühit). Later in the same chapter (1.1.48), Ugraravas speaks of the Mbh as containing ‘histories with commentaries’ (itihsþ savaiykhy). In this latter citation, vaiykhy is of particular interest, since it derives from vy--—khy, ‘to explain’, a verb giving rise to a number of words pertaining to ‘explanation’ and ‘commentary’. As Fitzgerald says, this “postulates a distinction between the epic narrative and expository texts … and suggests that the latter explain, or comment upon, the former”. 104 While these are rather meagre references, and do not directly name particular elements of the Mbh, they at least indicate that the redactors of the Mbh were well aware that the great epic contained different modes of discourse, and suggest that these modes were coordinated “toward a single common end”. 105 The language of the Mbh reflects this division as well. For instance, cognates of vy--—khy tend to introduce didactic passages, even when they occur in the midst of ‘narrative’ sections, and are most frequent in the didactic books where they are often used in ‘formulaic’ introductory phrases. 106 While for some scholars this might merely constitute data indicating a ‘periodisation’ that can be mapped on the Mbh via differences in formulaic material, it may equally point to the encoding of different ‘modes of discourse’ in the Mbh. These differences, therefore, need not lead to total separation in the manner of Hopkins. Rather, they may merely indicate that the Mbh rhetorically signals the ascendancy of a particular genre. We began this section by posing the question of what scholars take to be indicated by ‘Mahbhrata’. 107 In my view, there is much evidence ಧಧಧ 104 J. Fitzgerald, “The Mokùa Anthology of the Great Bhrata: an initial survey of structural issues, themes and rhetorical strategies,” University of Chicago doctoral dissertation, 1980, pp.13f. Cf. Fitzgerald, “India’s fifth Veda,” p.165. 105 Fitzgerald, “The Mokùa Anthology,” p.14. 106 See e.g. 12.45.2, 66.1, 79.1, 136.3, 162.1, 4, 187.2, 26, 203.4, 6, 228.27, 231.4, 233.3, 234.3, 239.2, 253.12, 270.33, 271.18, 285.31, 321.6, 338.3, 13.10.2, 28.2, 31.4, 39.3, 39.12, 40.26, 47.3, 49.6, 51.4, 52.2, 6, 54.40, 68.3, 75.18, 81.21, 90.1, 106.2, 110.134, 111.1, 127.40, 128.28, 128.34, 133.63, 145.1, 14.35.1, 52.10, 89.5. Note also the description of the P in 1.2.197: ntiparvaõi dharm ca vykhytþ … These account for the vast majority of the instances of vy--khy. A thorough analysis of this verb and its synonyms may well be valuable. Note also its rare use in the Rm and its frequent use in the KA but not MS. Cf. also the different applications of verbs like pra+—vac and —kath in C. Minkowski, “Janamejaya’s sattra and ritual structure,” JAOS, 109.3 (1989), pp.411-12. 107 Implicitly, this discussion has concerned the Sanskrit Mahbhrata. INTRODUCTION 35 to suggest that the ‘Mahbhrata’—and I especially distinguish this from the notion of a ‘Bhrata cycle’—has always included and, therefore, been designed with, both narrative and didactic material. The question of a preexisting ‘Bhrata cycle’ is beside the point in this regard. Similarly, designating a didactic corpus as a ‘later interpolation’ refuses to entertain, and therefore can never hope to grasp, whatever intentionality might have been behind its inclusion in the composition of the Mbh. Once again, the questions of which and at what time a didactic corpus entered the Mbh are also beside the point. If the Mbh has been the result of a combination of different narrative and stric genres, this has produced a unique ‘text’, which participates in its own hermeneutic on a variety of discursive levels, that must be distinguished from an oral Bhrata epic, assuming that such a thing lies at the basis of the narrative of the great war. Yet, rather than being celebrated for its discursive complexity, the Mbh has more often than not been mourned for the presumed passing of a more ‘uniform’ and ‘original’ version of itself, and consequently been excavated to recover this ‘original form’. This scholarly practice has largely been the result of the tacit acceptance of the view that the Mahbhrata—and, once again, this name itself must be stressed—conceals its ‘true’ self, a self much closer to an idealised view of ‘literary epic’ than the complicated, multi-generic, and massive ‘epic’ that it really is. In order to make up for a large lacuna in Mbh scholarship, the didactic corpora must be taken up for study, and arguments must be advanced posing the question of their relationship to the Mbh, the question of their internal integrity, and the question of their meanings and intentions. This study takes the DhP as a unit that occupies a unique and integral position in the Mbh and, hence, as worthy of being studied as such. This is not a heuristic stance, but is clearly established by the tradition of the Mbh’s transmission and reception. What remains to be determined is the sense in which the DhP is a unit, and in what sense it should be considered a part of the Mbh. This study is a move in this direction and, hopefully, will contribute to a revival of scholarly interest in the didactic corpora as constitutive features of the Mbh.