The Moral Imagination of the Mahabharata 9789393715777, 9789393715739

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Note on Translation and Transcription I would like to underline the deep debt I owe to translators—none of the translations are mine, and the Bibliography clearly names the translators. Due to the use of translations, I have used the respective page and not verse numbers. Occasionally, out of gratitude, and if not entirely inelegant, I have also named the translators in the main text. For ease of reading, I have not used diacritics: Sanskrit words are only minimally used, and spellings are derived from Debroy (2015), as his is the most familiar and complete translation.

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Introduction Again, in the Mahabharata, which has the form of a didactic work although it contains great poetic beauty, the great sage who was its author, by his furnishing a conclusion that dismays our hearts by the miserable end of the Vrsnis and Pandava [clans in the Mahabharata], shows that the primary aim of his work has been to produce a disenchantment with the world and that he has intended his primary subject to be liberation (moksha) from worldly life and the rasa of peace. This has been partly revealed indeed by others in their commenting on the work … The ultimate meaning of the Mahabharata thus appears very clearly: the two subjects intended by the author as primary are the rasa [relish] of peace and the human goal of liberation … The adventures of the Pandavas and others which are recounted, since they come to a miserable conclusion, represent the elaboration of worldly illusion, whereas it is the blessed Vasudeva [Krishna], representing ultimate truth, who is here glorified … Form no passion for insubstantial glories, now let your minds dwell whole-heartedly on virtues such as statesmanship, modesty, courage, or the like, so as to regard them sufficient in themselves … the poetcreator Krishnadvaipayana has made it perfectly clear by composing the Harivamsha as a conclusion to his Mahabharata. Since this stirs us towards an intense devotion (bhakti) to that other truth that lies beyond worldly life, all worldly activity appears now as a preliminary goal, to be rejected. (Anandavardhana and Abhinavagupta 1990: 690–692)

It would be hard to state more pithily many of the themes of this book than the above formulation expressed by the eleventh-century scholar, aesthete and mystic Abhinavagupta. Indeed, Abhinavagupta’s commentary will cast its hues on the structure of this Introduction and the book itself. To begin with, let one perform a preliminary, brief unpacking of what has been so tersely and compactly attested above. Abhinavagupta affirms that in the Mahabharata the poetic is not hostile to the didactic—rather, they are often intermingled. 1

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The Mahabharata is often called an itihasa in tradition, and itihasa (literally, it happened) is seen as history. But history here does not so much mean history in the post-Enlightenment sense. History, or a given sequence of events, is not contrasted to the narrative forms of religion, myth, moral thought, or poetry—this book will call the Mahabharata an epic, aware of the inadequacy of the term, and only as a matter of convenience rather than any articulable norms of genre identification. For Abhinavagupta, and indeed for the Mahabharata, these distinctions (scripture, moral norm, poetic pleasure) are actively blurred. The distinctions would not have been seen in any necessary conflict—they may well be read as conflictual if that reading is productive for whatever particular point was sought to be made. Disagreement between norms and genres sometimes help clarify what is at stake. So, while the narrative (the Mahabharata is an account of a devastating war) may be read as simply a listing of facts, Abhinavagupta prioritizes the composite impact that the reading of such a war makes on a reader. To him, the reading of such a war is not an end in itself—or simply a statement of frail and bereaved human nature—but is intended to actively produce a ‘disenchantment’. This disenchantment opens one’s psyche to the possibility of an insightbased liberation (moksha). He affirms that such a reading has been common in the tradition. Further, the space of that liberation is not empty—rather, it is filled with the narrative of a particular deity: here, Vasudeva/Krishna. This is clear from the fact that the last book of the Mahabharata—the Harivamsha—is explicitly a narrative of the glories of the deity from birth to kingship and adulthood. These stories are to be read/recited/remembered in a spirit of ‘intense devotion’, i.e., bhakti. Indeed, as scholars have noted, ‘Harivamsha [is the] narrative origin point of bhakti’ (Davis 2019: 218). The passage above contains some repetitions for emphasis—the miserable end of the warriors is repeated. But their misery is also of a piece with other human achievements: ‘statesmanship, modesty, courage’. While these key achievements are admirable and must be pursued,

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they must not be misunderstood as being ends in themselves. For Abhinavagupta, these claims and arguments do not come lightly. These passages appear toward the end of his large and elaborate work, and distil much of what had gone on beforehand in his philosophy of shimmering meanings and moralities, of uncertain powers and passions, of hopeful soteriology. In terms of the oeuvre of the diversely talented Abhinavagupta, scholarship has emphasised how his ideas of aesthetics cannot be easily parsed from his broader ideas on logic and theological reasoning (Ingalls 1990; Kaul 2020; Chandran and Sreenath 2021). These themes—of the intertwining of the ends of worldly pleasures and powers, morality, religious freedom—will cast braided influences in this book, which takes as its aim the elaboration of diverse subject-formations in the Mahabharata. There is much controversy over the period of the composition of the Mahabharata. Since this book does not engage with thorny questions of historical dating, one may cite an influential scholar who places it between 150 bce and the turn of the millennium (Hiltebeitel 2001). It is a vast work, believed to have eighteen books, and over a hundred thousand verses. The mammoth Pune Critical Edition project (1919–1966) sought to minimise interpolation—this edition restricts the number of verses closer to eighty thousand. Within the tradition, the last book of the Mahabharata, the Harivamsha is seen as a part of the Mahabharata. It has a more explicit flavour of theophany, but as this book will argue—and as Abhinavagupta has already pre-emptively argued—there is a deep narrative and conceptual coherence in entertaining the possibility of a Harivamshatelic Mahabharata. Even in his earlier work, Hiltebeitel had noted that ‘It seems that the texture of the epic has included a balance of didactic (including mythic) and narrative portions for as long as it has existed in India’ (Hiltebeitel 1991: 313). There is thus an interweaving, however serrated, of religious, moral and literary discourse—and that weave leads to a newer, more enigmatic coursing of the work. As the philosopher Giorgio Agamben remarks, what makes something

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religious or mythic is not just a set of events in time, but the fact that those events ‘give time a soteriological value and meaning’ (Agamben 2011: 44). This book seeks to analyse the complexity of the Mahabharata through a traditional mode of classification of the four ends of life— dharma, artha, kama, and moksha. These may be, very roughly, translated as moral law, worldly power, pleasure, and spiritual freedom. Given the reach of these terms, one never takes them as self-evident. Rather, the analysis here seeks to read the plot of the text to unveil the evermore multipart dimensions of these categories. As the philosopher Ian Hacking reminds us with regard to concepts and names of words and categories: ‘A concept is nothing other than a word in its sites. That means attending to a variety of types of sites: the sentences in which the word is actually (not potentially) used, those who speak those sentences, with what authority, in what institutional settings, in order to influence whom, with what consequences for the speakers’ (Hacking 2002: 17). In the case of these concepts (dharma, artha, kama, moksha), which form the orientation and chapters of this book, Patrick Olivelle has cautioned that these must not be too easily linked to a similarly influential quartet—brahmacharya (celibacy), grihastha (domesticity), vanaprastha (forest-dweller), and sannayasa (renunciant) with which they are sometimes associated (Olivelle 1993). Scholars who have sought to link it include Charles Malamoud and K.K. Klostermaier, but Olivelle, in his definitive The Asrama System: The History and Hermeneutics of A Religious Institution (Ibid.), makes the point that the overlaps and disambiguations are not intrinsic, and can only happen through careful empirical and historical readings (Malamoud 1988; Klostermaier 1989). Olivelle observes: ‘This much can be said with certainty there is no historical connection between the scheme of the four purusharthas [dharma, artha, kama, moksha] and the system of the four ashramas’ (1993: 219). It is beyond the scope of this book to track how these two systems interact—here, one will only follow the scheme of dharma, artha, kama, and moksha as

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that in itself will pay rich dividend in illuminating the Mahabharata’s vast moral psychology. In the inaugural quote by Abhinavagupta, we can already discern the subtleties of his position—statesmanship combines the elements of the Sanskrit terms dharma, ‘courage’ may be seen as the quintessential mark of martial values (artha), and ‘modesty’ is required to carve a space for spiritual fulfilment. Other verses in Abhinavagupta (as will be discussed later) speak of kama. Thus, Abhinavagupta would likely be sympathetic to the structuring of this book on the pivots of dharma, artha, kama, and moksha. For example, there is a relevant quote at the very end of the last (eighteenth) book Ascent to Heaven: ‘He who is versed in interpretation of this great work becomes purged of every sin. Such a man lives in virtue (dharma), profit (artha) and pleasure (kama), and acquires liberation (moksha) also’ (1013, translation by M.N. Dutt). The current book is organised around these nodes of dharma, artha, kama, and moksha, and the chapters are referred to as vistas to emphasise the expansiveness of these concepts. These are not mundane, straightforward concepts, but ones that grow in meaning and power through the dense, webbed intertextualities that the Mahabharata-narrative enunciates. Not only the overall claims, but Abhinavagupta’s careful textual readings, and his prioritizations of chains and hierarchies of affect also serve as useful guardrails. One may refer to Abhinavagupta’s reading of an episode with regard to Bhima and Draupadi. The relevant plotsituation is as follows: Draupadi was wife of the five Pandavas (who were the victors in the chief war). One of the reasons for the war was Draupadi’s public humiliation by the Kauravas (the Pandavas’ rivals who were also cousins). The humiliation included her being pulled by the hair by Duhshasana, one of the Kaurava brothers. Bhima was one of the five Pandavas and he took a public vow of revenge. Draupadi swore that she would not tie her defiled hair again till Duhshasana was killed, and Bhima swore that he would himself tie Draudapi’s hair one day with the blood of a dead Duhshasana. Eventually, this death

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does come to pass, and Abhinavagupta has a complex gloss on the writing of the whole episode. Following Abhinavagupta’s method, one begins with the original quote from the Mahabharata, with the gloss coming afterward: … ‘he whose name is truly Bhima/may deck your hair, my lady, with his hands/new-reddened in that fresh-congealing blood’ … [Abhinavagupta’s explication follows] I shall be “Bhima”, that is, one who strikes terror in the heart of cowards. ‘Your” hair; of you, to whom so many insults were given—‘my lady’ shows how little deserving she was—I shall deck the hair, that is, I shall change it from its braided state and give it as it were a coronet of red flowers with the bits of blood falling from my hands … By using the vocative ‘my lady’ which reminds us that a noble woman was humiliated, the author has applied a stimulus to the relish of anger. Accordingly, [in spite of the reference to a normally amorous act, the decking of a beloved’s hair] one cannot suspect any suggestion of the relish of love … By showing that sweetness and excitement are opposed to each other in love and fury, our author would indicate that in comedy, the fearsome, the loathsome, and peace, these qualities exist together in varying proportions. (Anandavardhana and Abhinavagupta 1990: 255–257)

To unpack the strands of the gloss above, one may note Abhinavagupta’s close reading of the Mahabharata text, as well as his deep appreciation that the text derives its power and meaning from both assuming certain conventions of the erotic (putting flowers in a beloved’s hair), and its violent overturning of that expectation: the flowers are revealed to be clots of blood. Emotions are juxtaposed to each other, and with varied effects that only the skilled poet can manage—rage is not slackened by the evocation of tenderness. Bhima, he ‘who strikes terror’, is primarily a warrior (for whom rage is key), and only secondarily a lover. Later chains of emotions also need to be meticulously compounded, carefully dosing them as they inhibit or promote each other—sweetness, excitement, love, fury, fear, peace, the loathsome, and so on. A

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similar discussion occurs regarding a later passage. The aesthetic and moral question that arises in this situation is with regard to women seeing their dead lovers on the battlefield: is the tragedy enhanced or diminished or rendered bathetic if they remember that those lifeless hands had once (as the Mahabharata notes and is quoted in Abhinavagupta) ‘untied the knot of my skirt’ (Anandavardhana and Abhinavagupta 1990: 499)? Does the fact that some of these killings were through unfair means add pathos to the scene, or diminish the tragic through extraneous information? The literary is this regulation of ever-increasing chains of indeterminate emotion as they cumulatively interact with each other. This is especially the case with poems or histories that have powerful centralizing emotions—the Mahabharata ultimately concerns a warrior class, hence there is both the necessary cultivation of rage/fearlessness, as well as the keen ability to regulate it (dharma). Love (kama), for example, is important for a warrior to cultivate, but not at the cost of courage. Abhinavagupta has further nuanced key categories such as heroism: ‘ … when certain states of mind such as the heroism of compassion and the like are entirely without egoism, they form a variety of the peaceful; otherwise they form a variety of the heroic’ (Ibid.: 524). The aim that Abhinavagupta had spoken of in the passage at the beginning of this Introduction—with its references to liberation/ peace (moksha)—is clearly central to the Mahabharata. Yet, it is disputable whether the aim of moksha is indeed the central message of the Mahabharata either in its diegetic world or in the psyche of the reader, as Abhinavagupta argues. While the Mahabharata is essentially a narrative of war, there are verses such as the following that he perceptively quotes: ‘The joy of pleasure in this world/and the greater joy of pleasure found in heaven/are not worth a sixteenth of the joy/that comes from the dying of desire’ (Ibid.: 520). Whether the Mahabharata is a text that ultimately affirms or disaffirms, implicitly or indirectly, worldly power and pleasure is a question that is kept

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alive in keen reverberation. This book—following the Mahabharata itself—cannot give a final, authoritative answer, and argues that the question is always more potent than any answer that one might tentatively arrive at. Whether the Mahabharata has an ultimate unity of purpose— whether this unity is understood as narrative or moral coherence— has been an important strand of contemporary scholarship. A distinguished Mahabharata scholar James Fitzgerald, in line with earlier scholars such as W. Halbfass and Paul Hacker, emphasises the moral heterogeneity of the Mahabharata, arguing that there is no ‘free-standing, overarching cosmic natural law’ that is easily available to the actors (Fitzgerald 2009: 251; Halbfass 1988; Hacker 2009). This is also in line with scholars such as Wendy Doniger who has linked this sensibility of heterogeneity with the very structure of the text— its open-endedness, likening it over the years to an encyclopaedia, a Wikipedia, and so on (Doniger 2009). In contrast, others such as Alf Hiltebeitel feel that there is a unity to the text. He explains this by ‘multiple authors working under a single inspired authorly design’ (2011: 14). This book will make the case for a conceptual unity— not so much through the social or biographical facts of authorship and composition—but through a careful reading of a narratological logic under the sign of the four ends of man (dharma, artha, kama, moksha). The salience of the Mahabharata across time and language in India does not need to be retailed. The following is only to pick a few traditions and a few texts from what has been a continuing and effervescent lore (and in many cases, the dates still remain contentious). Thus, in the highest poetic canon of Sanskrit itself, there is the fifthcentury poet Kalidasa’s eponymous play Abhijnanashakuntalam: The Recognition of Shakuntala (2016), the sixth-century poet Bharavi’s Arjuna and the Hunter (2016), the seventh-century Magha’s Killing of Shishupala (2017), the fourth-century Bhasa’s The Shattered Thighs (2009; whose resonant theme of the killing of Duryodhana is also

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discussed in detail in the Conclusion). The stories of Krishna, and in particular the last book the Harivamsha, inspired the great theological work of the Bhagavata Purana. The rise of regional languages did not mean the end of the fascination of this story. The historian Cynthia Talbot has observed that the Mahabharata was typically the epic to be most adapted to regional literatures (2016). Among many iterations and derivations, one may mention the tenth-century Kannada poet Ranna’s Duel of Maces. The Krishna-strand was the central thread of a great devotional tradition—one may mention the sixteenth-century Rajasthani poet Meera, the seventeenth-century Braj poet Surdas, the many Tamil Vaishnavite traditions from the fifth century, and so on. It is a superficial exercise to even begin to trace the contours of the massive influence of the Mahabharata, and one only mentions it for those readers new to South Asia. The Mahabharata has equally been the subject of continuous and sophisticated scholarly treatment within the tradition. This Introduction began with Abhinvagupta, but one may also mention scholars such as Madhvacharya in Tulu/Kannada country in the thirteenth century and Appayya Dikshita in the sixteenth century in what is now Tamil Nadu. Scholars such as Kumarila Bhatta (eighth century) had already treated the Mahabharata as a dharmashastra (canonical text)—the Mahabharata takes itself seriously as a dharma-text and devotes much time explicitly to the concept. There were also scholars like Devabodha in eleventh-century Kashmir and Arjunamishra in sixteenth-century Bengal, while the work of Nilakantha in the seventeenth century is exemplary: he was conscious of writing using earlier scholars like Devabodha and Arjunamishra, he sought to collect authentic manuscripts from various parts of India, he paid attention to the structuring of the work, his work was applauded and circulated quickly to many parts of India, and he was unafraid to use concepts and imagery of his time to make meaning of the Mahabharata as a whole (Minkowski 2004; 2005).  In time, with the arrival of the Europeans, there were further mutations in

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interpretation. There was a new priority of philological and historical work, and collections and translations of diversely located and dated manuscripts. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, there were two complete translations—by M.N. Dutt and Kisori Mohan Ganguly. By the first quarter of the twentieth century, there was an effort to collate, date, and thus create what has been called the Pune Critical Edition project—this large-scale half-century effort was finally completed in the 1960s (Chakravarty 2009). One has had a preview of some of the influential scholarship; newer scholarship, some of which will be discussed in greater detail in the chapters themselves, include McGrath on many of the chief figures and episodes of the Mahabharata—Vyasa, Bhishma, Yudhishthira, Arjuna, Karna (McGrath 2019; 2018; 2017; 2016; 2004, respectively). Some scholars focus more on individual figures (such as Pradyumna or Vyasa) both within and beyond the Mahabharata as they relate to other sectarian traditions (Sullivan 1999; Austin 2019). An excellent example of a reading, attentive to theoretic and moral nuance with regard to pressures on the already fraught idea of ‘brahminic kingship’ is found in Adam Bowles’ study of dharma in the context of extreme political disorder and distress (Bowles 2007). Scholarship is also increasingly using newer gender theory to interpret aspects of the Mahabharata such as masculinist/patrilineal genealogies (Brodbeck and Black 2007; Dhand 2008; Brodbeck 2009). There are also recent works that stay with illuminating a close textual reading of moral ambivalences (Sutton 2000; Hudson 2013; Shalom 2017). This book is deeply indebted to the historical, anthropological, comparative, philological, ethics, and gender-based scholarship listed above, but perhaps has a slightly different theoretic and affective orientation, ambition and horizon. It is more concerned with a conceptual interpretation of the Mahabharata’s narratalogical structuring, insofar as that structuring speaks to the self-avowedly stated themes of dharma, artha, kama, and moksha. These will be the only Sanskrit terms left untranslated as their very meaning is what is at stake, and this meaning only unevenly unfolds over the panorama of the

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epic. This is why each of these terms forms a chapter that makes the case for a faithful but expansive, inventive, densely interconnected reading. This book takes the schema of dharma, artha, kama, and moksha as a given—it does not ask if these four categories exhaust human fulfilment, or if these four may not be fewer or more categories, or if there is even a hierarchy between these terms. Thus, in structuring the chapters, it is the exploration of the narrative complexity of the concept (say kama, or artha) within the storytelling module that is highlighted—the interconnectedness of the schema thus depends partly on the reader’s exposure and investment in the text, and the intuitive linkages they discover between the concepts in any given dramatic nucleus of the text. A last guiding strand is the oeuvre of the ‘best known [Indian] academic philosopher’ Krishnachandra Bhattacharya (Bhushan and Garfield 2011: 515). Bhattacharya discusses his approach with regard to studying ancient texts—contemporary interpretations have to be seen as problematic constructions … The work of construction has, however, been subordinated to the work of interpretation …. [one] cannot begin his work at all unless he can live in sympathy into the details of an apparently outworn creed and recognize the truth in the first imperfect adumbrations of it. The attitude of the mere narrator [has] to be exchanged as far as possible, for that of sympathetic interpreter. (Bhattacharya 1983: 1, italics in original)

One hopes that this works partakes of some of this spirit and humility, and the awareness that the Mahabharata is not a text of ancient history, but one that also passes through and unfolds within and through the present.

Mapping the Textual Universe The strong moral accent of the Mahabharata persists throughout the text—this is despite, and perhaps because, it keenly probes the

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question of interleaving human, cosmic and divine violence. The composer of the epic Vyasa himself tells Yudhishthira (the embodiment of dharma, and the son of Yama, the god of dharma and death) in the fifteenth book, The Book of the Hermitage (in M.N. Dutt’s translation): ‘These three, O King, are the foremost of all concerns, O Bharata, viz. the abstention of injury to any creation, truth, and freedom from anger’ (2018: 940). How does an account of the great war—a war not only in the sense of the blood and death of a war, but war as the very ethic of a martial class—come to be seen, in equally clear-eyed fashion, as involving such wanton devastation. Draupadi reminds Bhima when they were hiding in King Virata’s palace in the fourth book, the Book of Virata: ‘I have heard the brahmins propound the four classes and life-stages, and never is there a Law for the baron but the extirpation of his foes’ (Ibid.: 57). How then can one navigate moral injunctions of non-injury, or an honest freedom from anger and an expansive rage? It is this Sisyphean negotiation of ethics that structures the schema of dharma, artha, kama, and moksha—hence, each element of the schema is an eponymous chapter in this book. The method followed is that of close reading of select episodes, paying particular attention to narrative sutures, structures, digressions, shifts of voice or register, sequencing, trade-offs, relevant linkages of these episodes to frame-stories or other episodes in other books. The Mahabharata is an extensive but finite canvas, and threads and ideas are picked up in unexpected places sometimes after many intervening tens of thousands of verses. The story in brief is as follows: there is a war between two phratries of the Kuru dynasty— the Pandavas, and their cousins, the Kauravas. The text begins as a re-telling—the tale is recited to the descendants of the Pandava victors. In this mode of memory, the tale begins at the origin of the clan, and continues through many generations with the fact of the great war as a recurrent inner teleological track. The values of this warrior-class are accompanied at every stage by the presence, actions (and often long-winded opinions) of gods, demons, priests, ascetics,

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reciters, genealogists, and other sundry heroes and heroines. In this context, one ought to be sceptical of over-arching concepts and avowed statements of moral virtue and narrative control—rather, it is more illuminating to seek to ground debates as they appear in the uneven terrain and thickets of the narrative. Many turns of plot seem simply baffling, some evolve into extended sub-plots that are loosely connected to the main strand, but it is worthwhile to persevere— contemporary norms of realism and economy may not be the sole way to grapple with a metaphysics or history that may reveal itself to be intrinsically anarchic. The attempt is to interpret the massive text(s) as a formally inventive (yet loosely harmonised) series of literary registers that has lessons for any ambitious project engaged in a similar exercise of synthesising formal and moral registers with regard to individual, inter-personal or systemic political violence. The first chapter, ‘Dharma’, highlights some of the key debates around the concept of dharma that is central to the Mahabharata’s self-imagination, more than any other term in the book. Yet, there is the inevitable paradox that a martial epic has to also make a case for a notion of peace and anti-violence. This paradox drives a stake through the heart of a culture that often valorised war openly enough. Even theology often seems subservient to this ambivalence—the god Krishna himself is unable, despite his best efforts of diplomacy, to stop the war. The fifth book of the epic, The Book of Effort, is almost entirely about these last efforts—led by Krishna—to stop the war. Yet, one is unsure if even Krishna is not being disingenuous. The Bhagavad Gita (Song of the Lord), embedded in the sixth book, the Book of Bhishma, among several other influential verses, extols war as intrinsic to the dharma of warriors. Arjuna is unambiguously urged to fight. The second episode discussed in detail in the chapter is the charismatic and tragic warrior Karna. In this case, someone from a lowly caste is repeatedly humiliated, and one wonders if the very structure of the narrative is meant to confess the truth of this humiliation. The repeated shaming (by humans as well as larger

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cosmic forces) of Karna seems to exceed the contingency of events, and interrogate the larger adharma (betrayal or unrighteousness) of the polity, especially the gap between normative dharma-discourse and the reality of a caste-bedevilled community. All these turbulences lie treacherously at the core of the Mahabharata’s moral universe. It is fitting then that the counter to the god is less the worshipper (who has a non-mediated access) than the socially humiliated—one who is far from god, and is always bathed in the aura of death and defeat. Though so much of the text is full of homilies on dharma, it is the stark fate of characters like Karna that light up the hollowed core of the epic, and indeed render those many thousands of homiletic verses not only ineffectual but also deceptive and misleading. ‘Artha’, the second chapter, discusses human and worldly ambition. The three episodes chosen are: 1) those involving the matriarch of the clan Satyavati, 2) the queen Amba/warrior Shikhandi, and 3) Duryodhana, typically considered the text’s arch-villain. Much in the Mahabharata extols worldly power and prosperity—this is indeed what constitutes the fascination and motor of much of the text. Without the intrepid Satyavati, there would have been no Mahabharata, not merely in the sense that she was the grandmother of Dhritarashtra and Pandu, but in the sense that it is her ambition (for herself and the polity) that resulted in many of the controversial and fateful events (Bhishma’s vow of celibacy, Vyasa’s impregnations) that cast such long and twisting shadows on the text as a whole. Likewise, Amba’s story also led at one level to key plot events, but at another level symbolised—like Satyavati—the pivotal role of a powerful woman who had to fight the many conventional constraints of gender to carve a distinct trajectory in the epic for herself. Finally, perhaps Duryodhana represents worldly ambition at its most unapologetic nadir. The Mahabharata recognises that such grandiose kingly ambition is intrinsic to the idea of the great ruler, one forever aggrandising his polity for his citizens. And in the pathos of his final assassination by Bhima—through doubtful means—the text reveals its

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sympathy for a character that always claimed to be singularly honest. The text thus exposes the hollowness of the Pandavas’ speechifying claims to dharma—instead, they might have been better served by being more honest regarding their own legitimate, entitled claims and desires for worldly power (artha). This is thus continuous with the themes of the first chapter on dharma. A central claim of this book is that despite the self-imagination of the primacy of normative dharma, it is in the narrative—with its unpredictable worldliness of events, the messy twining of emotion and politics—that we have the pulsing, questing heart of the epic. The third chapter, ‘Kama’, is admittedly less central to the epic seen as a whole. And yet there are many incidents of great charm that ask profound questions of the place of desire in the human and cosmic scheme of events. This chapter will discuss three such episodes. The first is that of the sage Rishyashringa who grows up without human company till adolescence. When he meets a woman, his body is subject to strange feelings that he cannot comprehend or control. The episode—written in a lighter, more humorous vein—poses sharp questions of the intersections of ideals of religious austerity, naïve desire, filial piety, sexual play, the mingling of aggression and sexual awakening, and the relation of the celibate sage to the ideals of kingly polity. There is clearly a sophisticated imagination of kama here. Similarly, the second episode discussed is the well-known story of the royal pair of Nala and Damayanti. Again, there are the richly interleaved themes of the contingency of kingship and personal fate (as exemplified by the dice game—this obviously references the dice game of the Mahabharata), and the duties of the sovereign visà-vis rulership, love and the importunate demands of impetuous, interfering gods. The last episode discussed is that of Arjuna. During his days in the forest (book three, the Book of the Forest), he sets out to engage in rigorous, solitary celibacy so that he could obtain as gifts from the gods the weapons that would help him eventually win the war. And yet, Arjuna’s wanderings intersperse that solitary celibacy

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with episodes of him pairing up with different queens of mysterious and exotic lands. Children are sometimes conceived, and these become a type of weapon too, for they also help him in war. One is back to the ambivalence of the warrior-ideal with regard to the ascetic one. Does the renunciation of sex enable—via a discourse that is ultimately religious—the warrior to materialise higher weapons? Or is austerity an illusion—is one better off practising with the body and muscle, instead of practising a more elusive, psychic meditation? Or do the temptations and illusions of austerity only block the warrior in his legitimate duty to love and progeny, those very traits that are required for the continuation of the self and the polity? The final chapter is ‘Moksha’—freedom. Moksha is a rich idea in Hindu thought, but the attempt here is not to read it in historical terms, but from within the deeper logic of the Mahabharata. To some extent, this vista is available even in the previous ones. One has seen the entanglement of austerity and desire (kama), but perhaps in the Mahabharata, moksha may be more particularly germane to the travails of artha and dharma. The weariness of violence makes one long for the peace of a final resting place of freedom—Abhinavagupta had perceptively noted this a thousand years ago. Perhaps the Mahabharata aimed at a happy, cumulative exhaustion after the reading of the vast work—an exhaustion that oriented us toward the cloudless sky of heaven. This is Abhinavagupta’s reading, but one may argue that even within the text, there are strong articulations of freedom. It is an open question if this freedom is this-worldly or other-worldly. This book argues that in the Mahabharata freedom is an actively, joyously imagined narrative of power, protection, and refuge. The key figure here is Krishna, arguably in a different avatar from that of the warrior-statesman discussed in the dharma chapter. In the Harivamsha, the last text of the Mahabharata, Krishna appears explicitly as a supra-human, even though the narrative describes a very earthly, humble (cowherd) life of both suffering and power. The Harivamsha is the end in the sense of both being the end of the

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sequence, as also in the sense of accumulation and teleology. There is a certain relief and logic in this joy replacing the desolation of the war—and the Sanskritic tradition has often seen it this way, again as Abhinavagupta himself noted. Thus, even though there are strong and perhaps irreconcilable counter-ideals (most notably artha), the ideal of moksha pervades the epic, and this book represents that pervasion by seeding quotations from the Harivamsha throughout the chapters. In structure, this last chapter follows the bildung (psychological formation over time) of Krishna as it unfolds, aware that all the key markers of life—birth, adolescence, the seizing of political power, marriage, fatherhood—will be later expanded in over a millennia of ardent Krishna-traditions. This imagination of god-ship, in its varied particularity, tells one something of how humans may imagine their gods—as not just powerful, which they indubitably and irreducibly are, but as also capable of exuberant intimacies, vulnerabilities, play, and passions. Finally, the Conclusion lists something of the impact the Mahabharata had over the centuries, and ends with a discussion of the revered Sanskrit play The Shattered Thighs (Urubhangam). The play is attributed to Bhasa—a playwright whose date is still uncertain, but belongs to the early centuries of the common era—and this stirring play revisits the scene of the final battle between Duryodhana and Bhima. The value of the play lies in how it brings to relief many of the themes of this book—the value of resolute and unashamed worldly ambition even as it, in turn, both disaffirms and affirms higher moral and spiritual calling. This is but one example among many of how much sway the Mahabharata’s configuration of ethics impacted literary and cultural thought through the centuries. For though the Mahabharata is distant in time, something of its indefatigable, insistent formulation of the pivotal dilemmas of our shared human moral imagination remains imperative and inextinguishable even today.

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Dharma [Even hunters can be] accomplished in dharma. [They] were devoted to their own dharma and were devoid of avarice and falsehood. They only did that much as was necessary for sustaining life. For the rest of the time, they devoted themselves to dharma and reflected on their own deeds … Because of their auspicious deeds, they were reborn as animals that remembered their past lives … Since they remembered their earlier lives, they reflected on the purpose of everything. They were controlled and roamed around in the forest. They were without attachments … They followed the dharma of behaving equally towards everyone and were auspicious in their deeds. They followed asceticism. They sustained their lives on a little bit of food. (Harivamsha: 71–72)

This chapter discusses the first, and most repeated, ‘purpose’ of the epic—dharma. Dharma, while not precisely translatable, nevertheless refers to a broader moral code that is intrinsic to the self-imagination of the epic. Morality, in any context, is never fully transparent, never fully without its self-deceptions—indeed, the first line of the influential French-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas’ chief work Totality and Infinity is: ‘Everyone will readily agree that it is of the highest importance to know whether we are not duped by morality’ (Levinas 1969: 21). The complexity of the embedded moral code cannot be deciphered through a priori assumptions, but only after immersing in, and then emerging from, the many readings. There are, not unexpectedly, gaps between the explicit injunctions and the actions performed—as well as inconsistencies between the explicit injunctions themselves. It is unclear how the plethora of actions in the long Mahabharata may be schematised into a few moral rules; rather, what seems more obvious is that actions and sketched scenarios exceed schemas (even as schemas continually exert normative power).

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Finally, there is the question of divinity—do actions make a moral god or human (the protean, multivalent Krishna, or the righteous Yudhishthira), or do actions of the god (or kingly human) underwrite the moral code? Are contradictions and inconsistencies only apparent or illusory—is there a positable higher justice beyond the intelligibility of the purely human or natural world? The historian Manu Devadevan contrasts later Sanskrit poetry, beginning with the influential Bharavi’s Kiratarjuniya (fifth century), with the moral and affective tradition of the Mahabharata. According to Devadevan: The Kiratarjuniya makes this [the loss of emotional vibrancy] possible not only by moving away from the biographical gaze of earlier poets and directs attention to a more limited sphere of human activity, namely kingship, but also by de-individualizing Arjuna to present him as an archetypal hero who is emotionally contained, less a human being in flesh and blood and more a personification of values and ideals. (2020: 221)

This chapter seeks to demonstrate how the Mahabharata achieved this fuller characterisation of moral issues through the invocation of a variety of psychological and affective notes. As the text is fundamentally about war and peace, a key plot-point to reflect on this hinge of war/peace would be the moment just before the war when a concerted effort was made by many of the actors to forestall the catastrophe. The power of the text lies in these types of tensions—on the one hand there seem to be genuine efforts at peace; and on the other hand (and because culturally speaking, everyone already knows the story/history), one knows that a devastating war will/must take place—even the gods seemingly could not have prevented it. Krishna officially tries to perform the role of an ambassador of peace, and fails. This gives rise to a further question—is the war indeed a fate that the gods cannot stall, or is it that martial values (and the corollary of death and mourning that it entails) are the motor that makes war inevitable,

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even desired? In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna seems to explicitly extol war—as do many warriors. And, significantly, even the queen Draupadi insists on a notion of justice that is pitiless and literally bloody—as quoted in Abhinavagupta, she wanted Bhima to tie her hair with hands bloodied through the death of Duhshasana. So is it fate contra god, or a martial ethics that is disingenuous about the roles of gods and fate and peace missions? The external environment—with its many omens (unnatural sounds, animal couplings and so on)— also seems to point to devastation without it always being clear if this was inevitable, or rather in the nature of a punishment (by nature? god? fate?) on human folly and greed. What follows is a discussion of the peace-making segments of book five (titled The Book of Effort) using J.A.B. van Buitenen’s translation (1978). The plot here largely deals with the peace missions that are sent by both parties. This analysis below seeks to slowly unpack the careful layering of appearance, motivation, and ambivalence that infect all the actors. It would be useful to step back a little to give context: Duryodhana refuses to part with the kingdom even though the Pandavas had successfully completed twelve years in the forest and the one year of exile without being discovered. This was as per their agreement after the Pandavas lost the dice game. The festivity of a marriage between the princess Uttara and Abhimanyu (Arjuna’s son) is the last happy occasion before the looming imminence of war. There are disagreements on whether embassies should be sent at all as many feel that Duryodhana would only further insult the diplomats because he is anyways just looking forward to war. The entanglements between the parties are many. The Kuru princes were of course cousins, but there were further fellowships as students—for example, Krishna’s brother Balarama spoke warmly of Duryodhana as he was the teacher of mace-warfare to both Duryodhana and Bhima, and was proud of both of them as students. Indeed, Balarama felt that much of all this was Yudhishthira’s fault due to his love of gambling. In sum, despite many saying that peace embassies were foredoomed,

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the dominant view was that the moral right of peace should be given a strong chance to prevail. This resulted in the embassies being established. Part of the power of The Book of Effort is the sense of how the ruination of the war is foreseen—not just in a general sense, but in its most telling detail. For example, Gandhari, the mother of Duryodhana, knows that Bhima will kill him, and Bhishma’s death has already been prophesied at Shikhandi’s hands (Ibid.: 337). It is not just a question of the inevitability of tragedy, but specifically, of each individual tragedy. With all the knowledge, wisdom and common sense of the world, these individual tragedies cannot be stymied. Krishna remarks on the difficulty of operating in a world saturated by prophesy and seemingly inimical to free action—do the learned say that the success of an act is properly rewarded only in the hereafter, or do they say that an act is successful in this world if it is an outcome of right knowledge? (Ibid.: 240). Krishna seems to be a divinity that prioritises the world of human enterprise, not the foreknown afterworld of gods—he reiterates that ‘I do not hold anything higher than acting’ (Ibid.). One cannot know for sure what right action is, or whether it can be complete or successful, but Krishna reminds us that ‘Abandoning pleasure and the heart’s desires/Has Shakra [Indra] by acting become the chief ’ (Ibid.: 241). All one can hope to achieve by right action is to attempt a context of detachment. Warriors are no different from renunciants in this need for detachment. To return to the moments following Abhimanyu’s wedding: Krishna leaves the celebrations and returns to his hometown Dvaraka. He has to appear non-partisan. Even as war is being prepared for, King Drupada (father of Draupadi, the wife of the Pandavas) sends his learned house priest as the first peace-emissary. The priest, at the court of Hastinapura, makes the case to the Kauravas that peace would prevail if the Pandavas were given their rightful share. Failing that, Pandavas would be forced to fight. The envoy was not being entirely ingenuous—he had been told by the Pandavas to present peace, but

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also try and create a wedge between Duryodhana and the elders such as Bhishma and Drona. A certain deception underlay the peace negotiations—even as peace is being attempted, both sides bolster their forces, and war intrigues continue apace. Both Duryodhana and Arjuna go to Dvaraka to court Krishna and his army. Later, Duryodhana and Yudhishthira try to out-manoeuvre each other for the favour of the powerful King Shalya. There are constant discussions regarding who is aligning with which party, and what weapons and factions and divine beings the other camp is accumulating. The dharma of peace feels insipid with regard to the excitement and pomp of intrigue and war. The second embassy is initiated by Dhritarashtra. He tells his counsellor Sanjaya (famous later as the indirect narrator of the Bhagavad Gita) to meet with the Pandavas. Sanjaya is both a respected counsellor as well as the son of a suta, the class of artists who traditionally performed martial epics such as the Mahabharata. He is thus linked to Karna, who too was brought up in a suta household. It is not unexpected that the message of the Bhagavad Gita, and important moments in the text, are mediated by the vantage of socially disadvantaged classes. In The Book of Effort, it is unclear what exactly Sanjaya’s mission is, and what he is authorised to offer— it seems more staged to address Dhritarashtra’s fear and guilt and vexation. Dhritarashtra shares his many concerns with Sanjaya—he admits the affection of the Pandavas despite all the injustice heaped on them, and he is admiring of their principles: ‘They always act with Law and Profit [dharma and artha]:/Loving comforts, yet they indulge no desires’ (Ibid.: 223). He is conscious that the Pandavas are likely to win the war as he enumerates the great soldiers arrayed on their side. Sanjaya’s embassy seems a private mission unsanctioned by Duryodhana, and thus unlikely to bear any fruit. Despite all these odds, Sanjaya leaves for the Pandava court. When he reaches, there are the conventional courtesies, but these are intermixed with threats. Yudhishthira observes: ‘If fools do not restrain their greed/There will

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be a total collapse of the Kurus … For I have not seen anyone on earth/Or heard of one Arjuna’s equal or better’ (Ibid.: 229). Sanjaya concedes the strength of Yudhishthira’s army, and Dhritarashtra’s pain: ‘He does not condone it [Duryodhana’s actions] and is deeply pained,/The old man is grieving’ (Ibid.: 230). The main thrust of Sanjaya’s message is the guilt that must accrue to the Pandavas of acquiescing to total destruction: You are gifted with every virtue, ye Parthas/With steadiness, mildness and honesty … Any evil on your part would glare like a drop/Of collyrium fallen upon a white cloth./Who knowingly would commit a deed/Entailing total devastation … Where victory amounts to defeat?/ They are blessed who act for the sake of their kin:/Your sons, your friends, your kinsmen they are. (Ibid.: 231)

These are the instances where larger moral principles are invoked, and the Mahabharata may lay claim to loftier questions than one just confronting the everyday family violence of a local clan. Much of the back-and-forth of these conversations self-evidently engage moral conflicts such as the expansive martial ethic of the king versus the more individuated ethic of the survival of kin, clan, and preceptor. Surely the harshness of killing one’s family and teachers cannot be entirely normalised. Aware of these idioms of loyalty and duty, Yudhishthira responds that he is hardly the one provoking the war, and that he will wage it only if war is absolutely necessary for justice and the common good: ‘Why would a man knowingly go to war? / Who cursed by his fate would choose for war? /The Parthas [Pandavas] who hanker for happiness act/For the fullness of Law and the common weal.’ (Ibid.: 233). This is a rare invocation of the ‘common weal’, and this weal is assumed to be continuous with the justice of a clash between royal cousins. For Yudhishthira, it is important to communicate that his sense of justice is distinctly discontinuous with either simple vengeance, or the pleasures of the senses that being a world-conqueror entails. He notes,

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The Moral Imagination of the Mahabharata the longing for pleasure consumes one’s body, / And spurred by it, misery is its reward … As a fire whose glow has been kindled will grow/Even greater power if fuel is added, /So desire grows more if its object is gained, /Like butter-fed fire it will not be sated. (Ibid.: 233)

The king is very much imagined as an embodied human, with desires not particularly separable from any other human. Indeed, what may distinguish him at all is the desire (and possible success) of being able to keep his pleasures in check—not for the first time, and in the particular context of Yudhishthira, the king is linked to the renunciant rather than the everyday citizen. One further complicates and develops this notion of desire as separable from kingly justice in the third chapter on kama. It is important to recognise Yudhishthira’s insistence that he does not wish to go to war for the sake of worldly greed—it is rather, an ascetic sense of justice, both for himself, his brothers and allies, and the common weal. Yudhishthira accuses not just Duryodhana, but even the latter’s father Dhritarashtra as being consumed by desire—‘Desire still consumes the heart in his [Dhritarashtra’s] body’ and this desire now stands in the way of ‘non-partisanship’ (Ibid.: 233). The desire for pleasure is what corrodes judgments regarding the polity and the welfare of the populist. Yudhishthira is willing to yield his grudges if the Kauravas were willing to be fair henceforth: ‘You know the hardships that we have suffered:/In honour of you I forgive them all’ (Ibid.: 235). Sanjaya agrees that peace and poverty, even with injustice, is better than war. Life is short, why tempt fate? Killing is always guilt-laden and a ‘sin’, no matter how proportionate and duty-laden (Ibid.: 236). And can this sense of justice ever really be fully separable from desire, the ‘search for possessions’ (Ibid.)? Is a war-like sense of injustice compatible with the virtues of ‘truth, self-control, honesty, gentleness’ (Ibid.: 237)? Sanjaya believes that peace is always superior—that giving up sovereignty for peace is honourable, and more moral. Many of these issues are raised again by Arjuna when Krishna delivers the

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Bhagavad Gita, but in this fifth book the answer is not so foreclosed as it appears to be in the Gita. The structure of an open court with many voices is polyphonic compared with the hierarchical binary structure (of question annulled in the answer, doubt annulled in the revelation) of the Gita. The questions raised in the peace-missions are oriented toward simple peace and not theophany, and thus remain not simply unresolved, but a pointed failure—an aporia kept fresh as an open wound. This is why this fifth book has arguably greater affect and pathos than the Gita, or the didactic books like the twelfth book, The Book of Peace, or the interminable didacticism of the thirteenth, The Book of the Instructions. The latter are malleable accretions both narratively and conceptually, even if the impulse to didacticism is an impulse as old as the oldest storytelling core. In contrast, The Book of Effort keeps its scepticism disarmingly open. It is aptly situated before the war—this makes it more successful dramatically. The looming war provides tension and urgent desperation—not the false consolation of retrospective homilies. Though the Bhagavad Gita also occupies a similar narrative position—before the war—it is clearly a sequence that may be removed without injury to the narrative. The genius of the Bhagavad Gita achieves much. But it is also indisputable that the overall unreality of the Gita—a long, private discussion that happens on the battlefield—makes it hard to believe that there is truly anything at stake. But in this earlier time of the peace-missions, when a peace (with or without honour) may have been brokered, one feels a palpable dramatic tension. Everyone’s survival is at stake, and there is a rigorous weighing of all kinds of arguments—in purely dramatic and affective terms, this is a more successful and stimulating sequence than the Gita. Thus, at so many turns in the text, subtler and larger questions are raised: those regarding the nexus of war, justice, duty to clan and family, and the ascetic imperative that asks kings to be frugal and rule over frugal, non-violent empires. Yudhishthira remarks that it is hard in practice to separate dharma and adharma (opposite of dharma)

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for situational exceptions complicate many a norm: ‘… if what is Law appears to be Unlaw, /Or again whether Law has the right guise of Law. / Thus in emergencies Law and Unlaw, /Applied to one’s livelihood, share the same aspect’ (Ibid.: 238). Who is to ultimately confirm the rightness or wrongness of ‘inaction [or] misaction’ (Ibid.: 239). Krishna too wonders aloud ‘whether Law commands a king to wage war/Or Law commands him not to wage war’ (Ibid.: 242). Yudhishthira repeats that war is not a matter of coveting: ‘I do not, Sanjaya, covet by Unlaw/Whatever there is of wealth on the earth’ (239). Is justice non-violence, or is it the precise dose of violence that a situation or custom calls for? To Yudhishthira, war must both be, and be seen to be, impersonal, ascetic, in self-defence, and for a larger cause: ‘Keshava [Krishna] must advise me/Whether I’m not to blame when I give up war, /Or desert my own Law when I do wage war’ (Ibid.: 239). The turn to Krishna is both worldly—Krishna is in the room—but is also the call to a divinity to save one from a present conundrum beyond human intelligibility. And Krishna indeed begins to speak—he says that he too wishes that all should prosper, and that none should suffer or feel slighted. But it seems that even a god could not ensure this. Krishna insists on action (contra mere theory) as both embodying as well as confirming morality, in both the human and the natural world—‘he who knows food/And then fails to eat it will still go hungry…One’s thirst is appeased by the drinking of water … Ordaining the days and the nights by his acts, / The Sun rises daily unwearyingly’ (Ibid.: 240). Krishna holds action as irreducible to the mere satisfaction of desire: ‘Abandoning pleasure and the heart’s desires/ Has Shakra [Indra] by acting become the chief ’ (Ibid.). This is ambiguous of course—Indra is notorious for his excessive desires. In the same verse Krishna also says that it is the cultivation of virtuous, appropriate pleasure that is key, rather than a whole-scale renunciation. The idea of the act is sometimes agnostic of the ideas of desire/pleasure. Sometimes it is not so clear—the sun, insofar as he is the sun (as natural or divine being),

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must rise, but can it be said that he has to actively renounce the pleasure of another hour in bed? Yudhishthira tells Sanjaya to wish all the types of people in the Kaurava kingdom—not just relatives and the people of the court, but the wide swathe of the common weal: ‘hunchbacks, cripples ... the orphaned, the weak, and the ill of mind’ (Ibid.: 249). It is a long list—a rare surfacing of these marginal people in the narrative, and they are being summoned at precisely the moment when a great war is going to overtake, without their consent, all their lives. But Yudhishthira also emphasises that the chief message to give the Kauravas was not so much the horror of war to the common weal, but rather, that ‘I am as capable of peace as I am of war, Sanjaya, as capable of Law [dharma] as profit [artha], of gentleness as of toughness’ (Ibid.: 251). Always present was the uncomfortable fact that the kingly way of life respected war, and was thus not always attuned to the good of the populace: ‘But what is pretty in war? It is the evil law of the barons, and we have been born in the baronage. It is our Law, be it lawless: any other way of life is forbidden to us’ (Ibid.: 345). All the contradictions remain—the ideal of the personally renunciant life (including the renunciation of anger and covetousness) even as the king must amass wealth for his people, and the persistent gap between a less-than-honourable peace and the violence of a reparative, merited, for-the-people war. All agree with Sanjaya that the ‘torrent of life is a transient thing’ (Ibid.: 235). One way of engaging with the blood-stained action of the warrior is to emphasise the state of mind while doing the action. Sanjaya remarks on this state of ‘truth, self-control, honesty, gentleness’ (Ibid.: 237). Throughout the Mahabharata, war is repeatedly compared to the Vedic sacrifice. As Sanjaya notes: ‘Your acts are known to be pure as the food/ That with proper rite is given to brahmins—/ Food tasty and fragrant and hallowed with faith’ (Ibid.: 236). Yet, Sanjaya also presents the sceptical view: martial values run against elementary human limitations: ‘having gained all of earth to her borders of oceans/You shall yet not escape old age and death. / Nor happiness, king, or unhappiness.

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(Ibid.: 238). It is an endless exchange. Yudhishthira returns to defending the intrinsic worth of martial principles—peace is noble, yet not so high a value as the just war. In times of emergency, it is right to espouse other values, but war is not always in response to an emergency—thus war is not equivalent to the injunctions that allow one to, say, eat unclean food in a time of famine. Rather, to Yudhishthira, violence is sometimes intrinsic to the moment or opportunity. Far from war being wrong (as it sometimes may be), sometimes nothing is more righteous than war. Indeed, rarely can war hope to have such moral clarity as in this case where Duryodhana seems to be playing the role of the ideal villain. Just as war could never hope to be more right, Yudhishthira remarks that in this instance peace cannot be more wrong. The Harivamsha would agree to this sentiment: ‘one should be able to conquer the earth through his ferocity, while being devoted to dharma’ (Debroy 2016: 99). What is significant is not the rightness or wrongness of war, but courage in risking life—courage is already moral and the embodied guarantor of immortality. Detached, public-spirited acts cannot be considered violent. Krishna, who is present, avers that martial families have to punish what is simple, repeated, multiple theft: Draupadi embodies a humiliation that is simultaneously personal, familial, and public. The case for war as necessary and ethical is made in evermore elaborate ways. Yet the ideal of peace remains as a thorn, and the final effort is made by none other than Krishna. Yudhishthira notes that ultimately, it is ‘poverty that is the death of a man … In this world the wealthy are alive and the poor are dead’ (van Buitenen 1978: 344). This is not said with compassion for the poor but in the sense that victory is necessary in the war, else destitution awaits. There is no moral value for a soldier in poverty—perhaps poverty is useful for an ascetic, but poverty cannot be esteemed as a universal moral value. The interest of the king/soldier is linked to the interest of his clan’s people: ‘Kinsmen, friends and priests turn away from a poor man, friend, as birds from a tree without bloom and fruit’ (Ibid.). While many passages in the Mahabharata extol poverty as a virtue,

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it is also seen—in the strictly martial context—as going against common sense, and against soldierly values: ‘Wealth they say is the highest Law: everything is based on wealth’ (Ibid.). The caveat is that glory and wealth must not be seen as personally greedy or vengeful. Krishna avers that Duryodhana should indeed be ‘killed like a snake’ and so one wonders at the good faith of his embassy (Ibid.: 348). In keeping with the inevitability of war, there is the continuity of portents (cries of beasts, elephants, and horses assuming fearful shapes at night, fires burning in unusual colours). Bhima—perhaps unexpectedly—appears conciliatory, and feels that one should, for best results, manage Duryodhana psychologically: ‘Don’t talk to him harshly, treat him gently … all of us would bow before Duryodhana, Krishna, and follow him humbly rather than destroy the Bharata [the clan]’ (Ibid.: 349–350). On the whole, such psychological aspects are rare, and people conform to (complex and articulate) typologies. Krishna disdains such conciliation, and reminds Bhima of his many promises: ‘You are attacked by cowardice, and that is why your mind is awry’ (Ibid.: 350). There is little doubt that Krishna seems to think victory in war is the only acceptable outcome—Bhima is surprised and remarks that Krishna is like a ‘shipwrecked man floating in a lake and that is why you are attacking me with words that are wide off the mark’ (Ibid.: 351). Bhima insists that talking of peace is not cowardice or ignorance, but Krishna, more pragmatic and knowing, talks of the necessary ‘work of terror’ (Ibid.: 352). Arjuna is also hopeful that only Krishna may bring about peace and ‘what is healthy for Kurus and Pandavas’ (Ibid.: 353). Nakula defers to Krishna, and notes the fickleness of the quest for justice or satisfaction: We had one set of opinions while we were living in the forest, another set when we were incognito, Krishna, and yet another now that we are out in the open. When we were roaming about in the forest at the time Varshneya [Krishna], we were not so set upon the kingdom as we are now. (Ibid.: 355)

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Like in the case of Bhima and psychology, here is another perspective that is raised but ignored for it goes against the larger momentum for war. The careful reasoning for all positions is given full play: Sahadeva is insistent on war, observing that the accumulated actions of Duryodhana deserve no less, even if they show contrition in the present. Satyaki, Krishna’s clansman, agrees, remarking that only through war will their just rage be appeased. Draupadi—the one with perhaps the most right to anger due to her public disrobing—also takes a strong stand for war: When neither conciliation nor generosity amounts to anything with these people, I would show them no mercy … It will bring profit to the Parthas [Pandavas], glory to yourself [Krishna], and great happiness to the baronage … Those who know the Law know that just as it is a sin to kill one who does not deserve it, so a sin is found in not killing one who does deserve it. (Ibid.: 356)

Only after this ‘objective’ argument does she speak of personal humiliation. Perhaps due to the blame now being located squarely with the Kauravas (with the silent complicity of the Pandavas being benignly neglected or forgiven), her anger and helplessness rise: A curse on Bhimasena’s strength, a curse on the Partha’s bowmanship, if Duryodhana stays alive for another hour, Krishna. If you find favour in me, if you have pity on me, direct your entire fury at the Dhartarashtras [Kauravas], Krishna … what peace will my heart know unless I see Duhshasana’s swarthy arm cut off and covered with dust. (Ibid.: 357)

As Krishna leaves, the portents are again adverse—rain without clouds, rivers flowing backwards, wells pouring out water, sprawling, uprooted trees. In keeping with the idea of continuity between human and extra-human worlds, the cosmos is full of evil omens.

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The horror of war is presaged both overtly and subtly—there is a sense of deep discordance and rupture, the overturning of natural laws, the pressing upon the human of the invisible, the loss of clear causation, the multiplication of uncertainties. Krishna meets Kunti, the mother of the Pandavas, who too thinks that war must be made. Krishna acquiesces: ‘The steadfast [Pandavas] seek the extreme, while those that want the pleasures of villagers seek the mediocre’ (Ibid.: 372). Again, war and courage is a moral ideal, and peace is only the fear of harm, the self-interest of the average, amoral, indifferent human. The next day in court, despite everyone’s advice, pleading, and admonishments, Duryodhana remains predictably adamant. Duryodhana, more than other peace-pretenders or peacedissemblers, had always been upfront about the deep, inner necessity of war: ‘… for once war has been undertaken no peace is made by pretending there is no war’ (Ibid.: 365). He adds that martial duty has always internalised the possibility of death—so peace cannot be an argument against war. Death is the essence of courage and duty: And if we, following our own Law, meet our death by the sword in a war, Madhava [Krishna], when our time has come, it will mean heaven. This, Janardhana [Krishna], is the highest Law for us who are barons, that we lie on the battlefield on a bed of arrows. (Ibid.: 420–421)

Krishna’s embassy fails, but as he leaves, he makes an unexpected detour. This is to plead with Karna—Krishna reveals that Karna is the true heir, and he can actually prevent the war. Both Duryodhana and Yudhishthira would assent. But Karna—the warrior brought up among non-warriors—rejects the offer. He too is too steeped in a martial ethos—besides, he feels he could not betray his friend Duryodhana. It is in the larger story of Karna, more than in the war of ideals within martial cultures, that a different cosmos of dharma is articulated. Far more than merely verbal argument, it is in Karna’s harrowing life that the most elaborate scene of the Mahabharata’s ideal of dharma is embodied, problematised, and enunciated.

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Karna: The Maze of Fate It is important to realize that moral equality in the form of the social arises not as an intellectual position but as one that is grounded in the experiences of the social. The implication is that the presence of the experienced social is the necessary precondition for moral experiences of equality, dignity, respect and so on. (Guru and Sarukkai 2019: 156) [Krishna says] People who want to know how a doubtful Law distinguishes between what is fate and what is human effort do not reach a form conclusion, Bhimasena. The same factor which causes a man to succeed in his affairs also causes his fall, for human action is always doubtful. Matters that are judged by wise men, who would be able to see the flaws, turn out the other way, like the changing directions of a veering wind. A human action, however well counselled and conducted and however correctly carried out, may be opposed by fate. Also, human action countervails against what fate does or leaves undone—like cold and heat, rain, hunger, and thirst. And again, an action personally taken by a man who has the right insight may not be hindered by fate. These are the three characteristics of fate and human effort. The world cannot live by any other means than action, and the man who knows this will carry on whatever the result be of both his effort and fate. (The Book of Effort: 352)

This section will begin with the story of Karna in brief, and then go on to a close analysis of The Book of Karna. The narratives of Karna are not revealed in sequence in the epic, but one may reconstruct it here for ease of reading, and to contextualise his final general-ship and death. As is well known, and what makes the Karna-narrative so poignant is the fact that he is in truth the eldest son of Kunti. He is the true heir—if he had revealed the truth of his birth to Yudhishthira and Duryodhana, there would likely have been no war. It is a mystery why the god Krishna who knew this did not reveal it to all. And yet, this non-revelation is best understood through the lens of observing the

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Mahabharata as representing a stern, inescapable martial ethic. Even the gods are pre-eminently martial, even as they, in some contexts, strive for peace. It would seem that ultimately, both the honour and the reality of the Mahabharata’s vision is that war may be the more honourable, more intrinsic, deeper human condition and political datum. This martial world is not separable from the world of families and clans, the claims of parenthood and legitimacy. Though Karna is the most distressing victim, the trail of disrupted parenthood reaches back—farther than even his birth. His mother Kunti too had faced displacement from childhood. Her story is recounted in the first book, The Book of Beginnings—Kunti was adopted by her uncle, the king Kuntibhoja who could not have children. The adoption required her renaming to Kunti, compounding the displacement. Her growing up in the palace was further fraught. In her youth she had to serve the powerful and ill-tempered sage Durvasa for a year. In appreciation, he gave her a mantra to summon gods who would gift her powerful sons. One may note the structure of the disruption of royal families— children, especially sons, are rarely born without the mediation of both sages and divinities. Kunti wished to check if the mantra actually worked—the pervasive sun was an obvious divinity that came to mind. When the sun does appear, a startled Kunti pleads with the sun to not give her, an unwed, young woman, a child. But the implacable mantra results in a pregnancy, and a son is born with the signs of the father—golden armour and earrings—stitched onto his body. A hapless Kunti puts the child in a basket and floats him down the river where a charioteer picks him up and takes him home. Karna is brought up by these parents—Adhiratha and Radha. Charioteers have a strong role in the epic—they are often the bards who narrate the events of the Mahabharata, and even Krishna famously assumes the role of Arjuna’s charioteer during the war. The structure of the charioteer/bard reflects the interest of a disadvantaged community in claiming the most pathos-laden character (Karna) to

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be of their community—if not by blood, then by upbringing and values. Karna thus has divine and royal blood, but is brought up by a lower caste—his blood is truly a merging of disparate classes. Such a figuration could have been one of hope, but it is telling that he is insistently imagined as tragic. Though deeply grateful to his adopted parents, it seems as if the inertia of Karna’s blood draws him to the demanding world of warfare and weapons-training. He is rebuffed by the teacher Dronacharya (who taught both the Pandavas and the Kauravas). Dronacharya tells Karna that the more advanced skills would only be taught to those of appropriate lineage. Karna then leaves for the sage Parashurama’s hermitage. Parashurama had a particular animus to warriors (he was supposed to have emptied the earth of the soldier-caste many times). However, just because Parashurama hated warriors, it did not make him more favourable to all non-warriors—only brahmins counted in his scheme of things. Karna thus goes to him pretending to be a Brahman. Perhaps this too is a reflection of how the performative and more colloquial arts of the bards (including the narration of the Mahabharata itself) were still deemed ritually inferior to various Brahminic arts and knowledge, including archery. Parashurama was deeply impressed by Karna’s skills, but the inevitable happened. One day, as Parashurama was resting with his head on Karna’s lap, an insect stung Karna. Karna did not flinch, not wanting to disturb Parashurama. But when the teacher awoke, he saw the wound on Karna, and Parashurama inferred that only someone from a warrior-caste could bear such pain. Such an inference seems hardly credible, and indeed makes mockery of martial training itself— at any rate, Parashurama curses Karna saying that the latter will forget all his training when it is most needed. It is an extraordinarily harsh curse for a student who meant only love and respect for his teacher. Karna leaves his teacher dejected, but his life has more in store by way of punitive curses. As he is walking away despondent after being rejected by Parashurama, a sudden movement in the air causes him

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to be startled and shoot an arrow in self-defence. It kills a cow, and he is cursed again by a Brahmin—Karna is to be unfairly killed when he is helpless. It is as if an evil fate is being gratuitously piled on him. The spectacular entrance of Karna in the main narrative is during an open tournament held for the royal princes including the Pandavas and Kauravas. Arjuna, Karna’s rival, has already provided proof of his talent. Karna makes a dramatic appearance, equalling each of Arjuna’s dazzling feats amidst jubilation from the assembled crowd. Duryodhana enthusiastically welcomes this new and unknown talent. Karna is grateful, and asks for a direct contest with Arjuna, so that the question of who is the finest archer may be put to rest. The royal overseers of the contest ask Karna of his lineage—according to rules, only equals could compete. Even though Duryodhana bestows Karna with territory and proclaims him king, the overseers are not persuaded. They call out Karna’s humble origin. Yudhishthira had once grandly remarked: He is known as a Brahmin … in whom truthfulness, liberality, patience, deportment, mildness, self-control and compassion are found … authority, truth and the Brahman extend to all four classes ... The marks of the shudra are not found in a brahmin; but a shudra is not necessarily a shudra, nor a brahmin, a brahmin. In whomever the brahmin’s marks are found, he is known as a brahmin; and in whom they are not found, him they designate a shudra … conduct is the chief postulate [of designation]. (The Book of the Forest: 564)

Needless to say, at critical moments, such as that of the arrival of Karna, none of the Pandavas live up to these ideals of judging people by conduct not lineage. They stand in silence at Karna’s humiliation— Karna’s father comes to the tournament ground to embrace his son in pride. It is a psychologically keen moment in the Mahabharata, an intimate picture of a rare, affectionate father–son relation that the royal elite rarely displays. Karna is both distraught as well as helplessly moved by the appearance of his aged father—but to everyone else in the audience, it is a sealing of his fate.

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The consensus is that Karna must graciously bow out of the tournament. A fierce and cherished friendship is forged between Duryodhana and Karna in that fateful hour. It would last till Karna’s death in the former’s service. Unlike the rhetoric of martial honour (or even honourable peace) that suffuses the epic, for Karna, it is a broad fidelity that is his highest moral commitment. In this, he is truly solitary and at odds with much of the rhetoric and psychology of the Mahabharata. Few characters in an Indian epic have been so persistently beloved in public memory. The valour of Karna—birthed uniquely from humiliation—gives him a vantage that the more obvious dharmic figures (like Yudhishthira, and perhaps even Krishna) cannot quite achieve. Karna is after all the son of the sun—and the sun is imagined in many cultures as endlessly open-handed, and life-giving. Karna is generous to the last degree, in both courage and friendship. It is this generosity that will eventually allow Indra—the father of his rival Arjuna—to deceive him, and cause Karna’s death. The sequence is as follows: The Sun god at one point appears to the adult Karna in a dream and tells him to be careful—Karna’s reputation for absolute generosity will be his undoing. The god tells Karna that Indra will come to him and ask him for his earrings and armour. These divine earrings and armour were a guarantee for Karna’s victory in battle, hence Indra is anxious to gain them. The Sun god is aware of Karna’s extraordinary generosity, his extreme unwillingness to turn anyone away. He tells his son to appease Indra with ‘gems, women, pleasures, riches of many kinds’ (Ibid.: 781). Indra does appear one morning in the guise of a poor Brahmin as Karna is saying his day-break prayers in the river, and asks for that which gave Karna invulnerability—his armour and earrings. Karna is not fooled, but nevertheless gives Indra the armour that he wants. Not listening to his father would ultimately cost Karna his life—Karna only remarks that death is more fitting than infamy, or of being known as a man who breaks his word. The Sun god is sceptical of such high-minded moral rightness—‘The fame of a dead mortal is like a garland on a corpse’ (Ibid.: 782).

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Thus, for the Sun god, kama (gems, woman, pleasure) is temptation, but also the common sense of choosing life, prosperity, and fame (artha and kama), rather than the death-wish that Karna’s dharma seems to entail. This is a case where two legitimate ends of life— kama and artha on one hand, and dharma on another—are inversely related. One is not surprised by what Karna chooses. The traits of valour and generosity do not, in any necessary way, go together and the figure of Karna rises above the narrower, traditional understanding of the scope of a martial ethic. The generosity is not explained—psychologically or in terms of upbringing. Perhaps he partakes of the sun’s generosity—the sun shines on all, good and evil, day after day, expecting nothing in return. Or perhaps the generosity is due to his having known want, having grown up in a poor and low-status family. So Karna gives and gives, at great cost to himself. The episodes involving Karna are more skilfully elaborated than the more incidental and smaller (though still powerful) episode of another marginalised character Ekalavaya—the latter was another rival to Arjuna who is forced to disable himself. This is why Karna may be seen as a true embodiment of dharma—dharma appears less as comprehensive or consistent norms, and more an affective narrativisation of everyday personal and social suffering. In this tale are realistic, concretely imagined trade-offs of power and friendships, of judgments and decisions. It is in Karna’s lowest moments that the dilemmas of dharma are portrayed in their most vivid, dramatic, and insistent forms—as a live exemplar, he exposes the hollowness of pieties of an unthwarted elite that includes both kings and gods. There is something extraordinarily straightforward about Karna’s trajectory. One may contrast this with the more ambiguous figure of Krishna. Despite his promise, Krishna is anything but neutral in the war—indeed, he is not neutral even to the Pandava side, but regards Arjuna as a clear favourite. There is a direct moral challenge that the tale of Karna throws to the idea of divinity that Krishna represents— Karna’s is a heroic embrace of death, the offering of his very body

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(not just in the final death, but also in instances such as that of the Parashurama episode). In contradistinction, Krishna’s is a canny prioritisation of an alleged ultimate good. It is not clear which moral image—Krishna’s or Karna’s—stays longer in the reader’s/viewer’s mind. Karna’s is deeply poignant, but it is Krishna who wins in the Indic cultural imagination—newer traditions of Krishna proliferated, whereas Karna remained frozen in his moment of tragedy in the Mahabharata. Even in their interaction, Karna comes off as the more generous one. When war seems inevitable, Krishna tells Karna of the latter’s rightful claim to the throne. But Karna does not want the kingship— and again, it is telling that he is not given the Bhagavad Gita argument on the duties of warriors. Karna would not have listened to such a plea/revelation. His values are different, and more empathetic. He makes Krishna promise that the secret of his birth would not be revealed to anyone till his death (which he clearly foresaw). Soon after Krishna, his mother Kunti too comes to Karna and confesses. It ought to be a deeply poignant moment but the Mahabharata underplays it. The text rightly gives Karna the moral high ground: the warrior who faces constant social and psychological humiliation exposes the values of patriarchy with its obsessions with the virginity of royal women. Karna makes the extraordinary promise that even though as a warrior (as well as due to his friendship with Duryodhana) he was obliged to kill as many of his brothers as was possible, he would promise to attempt to kill only Arjun; this way, Kunti would still have five surviving sons. All of this sets up the context for the war itself. As the first Kaurava general Bhishma had repeatedly humiliated Karna, Karna enters the war only after Bhishma is vanquished. Bhishma is defeated on the tenth day, and lies on a bed of arrows—he had been given the boon of being able to choose the time of his death. Acting as so often with propriety, Karna meets him to take his blessings. Bhishma tells him that he too had known of Karna’s true parentage. This is a surprise to the reader, and again, like Krishna’s silence, makes

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one feel that the deep martial ethos of the narrative required a war that always found a way around the possibilities of peace and amity. The rest of this section will follow the sequence of events as they are related in The Book of Karna in the two-volume translation by Adam Bowles (2007, 2008). The events are for the most part linear, but there are flashbacks at critical times, as well as long digressions that do not always add to the significance of the main storyline. Karna becomes the commander of the army after the death of Drona, who had been appointed general after Bhishma. The entire The Book of Karna narrates less than two days of battle—Karna would die on the second day of his leadership. On the first day, he performs the rites of the morning, and is ‘lauded with blessings for victory from charioteers, panegyrists and bards’ (Bowles 2007: 55). The stylisation of battle is within the text (the mention of bards is apposite as Karna himself was brought up by such a charioteer-bard family). By now the reader can feel the shadow of fate—there have been many internal prophecies within the text of his death, and of course the whole Mahabharata is being recounted in its outermost frames long after the events it outlines. Thus, an air of weary mourning already suffuses the battle. The text begins with an internal, retrospective frame— Karna’s death is announced within the first few pages—as Sanjaya tells Dhritarashtra. The Mahabharata is constructed as frames within frames, and often as recitations within recitations. One of the effects of such a device is to allow for complex, mixed storeys of affect— here one may point to the pervasion, multiplication, stasis, and sense of hopelessness of the primary affect of mourning and lamentation. The linearity of Karna’s two days is recounted in a retrospective fashion, causing Dhritarashtra to ‘fall to the ground in anguish like an elephant bereft of sense’ (Ibid.: 65). Sanjaya tells the king of so many piled up bodies: not only Karna, but many of Dhritarashtra’s grandsons, as well as Dhritarashtra’s son Duhshasana, whose blood has been drunk by Bhima. One has thus travelled far into the future narrative, which now has to be reconstructed in more linear

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detail—the recitation has to pivot back to expound what has already been previewed. This method of repetition—the fact that Karna is dead is repeated numerous times by Sanjaya in slightly differing contexts—builds up the aforementioned affect of a fateful passing, an open-ended, limitless mourning. For much of the Mahabharata there is a sense of pre-knowledge, but here one can see that this method is amplified at critical moments—no character suffers from a greater sense of foredoom than Karna, both before and during the battle. Just as there are frames within frames, there is also a narrative on the accrual of bodies: Dhritarashtra remembers, in the context of Karna’s death, the deaths of Bhishma and Drona, their memories honoured not just by names, but by a full listing of their qualities, accomplishments, epitomes, and biography. War is not just a sense of urgency, but also the opposite—a deliberate enlargement and immobility. Kingly fate is one of repeated distress and loss, one where ‘grief tears my guts apart’ (Ibid.: 69). Dhritarashtra’s musings continue, and he thinks this moment as the end of hope: ‘I see no survivor now that the charioteer’s son [Karna] has been killed in battle. For he was the great safe shore for my sons, Sanjaya’ (Ibid.: 99). Dhritarashtra recounts Karna’s many great victories, and remains continually wonderstruck at his assassination. He notes that the other generals— Bhishma and Drona—had been killed by deceit, and wonders if this was not the case with Karna too (Ibid.: 105). He is also puzzled that Karna did not kill the other Pandavas when he had the chance—he did not know of Karna’s promise to Kunti, just as he did not know that Karna had been tricked into using the weapon Indra gave him on Ghatotkacha instead of Arjuna. The reader is thus complicit in the deceit of Karna’s death, all too aware of the continual besmirch of martial dharma. Dhritarashtra asks again, in wonder— ‘… his chariot got stuck in the ground, or he lost his weapons [especially the special divine arrow with the serpent’s head gifted by Parashurama]. For I see no other way of killing him’ (Ibid.: 107). The text thus sets up a moral compass through this first section of Dhritarashtra’s lament and

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perplexity with regard to the unfolding of battle—the Mahabharata’s moral economy again calls to be investigated. The next section begins the linear unfolding—the first day of war with Karna as the chief of the Kaurava army. Ashwatthama, Drona’s son, was listened to especially as his father had just been killed—he is the one who proposes Karna as general, and Duryodhana is thankful for he remarks that ‘those two mighty archers [Bhishma and Drona] were old and they looked out for Dhananjaya [Arjuna]. But I respected those heroes because of your advice’ (Ibid.: 123). So all recognise that Karna, earlier inhibited by his customary respect for elders (who were partisan), is finally being allowed to come into his own, to lay claim to his high destiny. Karna is crowned according to ritual, including ‘water-filled horns of elephants, rhinoceroses’ (Ibid.: 125). He takes the position of ‘snout of the crocodile array’ (Ibid.: 131) as the day commences to the sound of conches, kettle-drums, and cymbals. The descriptions of battle are visual and stylised—soldiers have colourful clothes ‘sprinkled with fragrances and aromatic powders … chatting jovially … danced and laughed, spurred on by various musicians’ (Ibid.: 139). The gaiety is not oblivious to the deaths and bodies all around: The earth is luminous with bold men’s arms smeared with sandal powder and wearing beautifully decorated armlets, arm-guards and bracelets, their jewelled hands sporting finger-guards scattered about … and their heads wearing earrings and fine jewels in their braided hair…the various coloured horse blankets and cushions … wonderful golden garlands … discarded parasols … the equal of a sky ringed with autumnal stars. (Ibid.: 194–195)

Historically, battles were unlikely to have taken place with so much prominence given to individual battles (especially if they were on a horse, chariot, or elephant). But the scenography of the epic prioritises the glory of individual warriors, their series of duels, and their victory or death. Kevin McGrath has argued that Karna is the ‘most important

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hero of the poem … a martially and verbally gifted figure with some degree of divine genealogy who is separated or isolated from his community and is returned to that community only after death, via the medium or praise and lament’ (2004: 1). The books of the Mahabharata are often named after these critical warrior-leaders. Many individual duels and battles are narrated in a manner that seems repetitive and stylised, even tedious—but this style helps best convey the exhausting sense of the perpetual fog of war. The stylised duel replaces more realist description of positional or defensive tactics. The warriors are often extolled for overt, declamatory aggression. Heavenly beings appear in the sky to watch particular battles—for example, in The Book of Karna, an early battle commences between Arjuna and Ashwatthama. Heavenly beings commend the prowess of both warriors, showering flowers and blessings (Bowles 2007: 167). Much of the first day is the battle between assorted heroes, setting the stage for what everyone thinks is the critical duel of the war: the Arjuna–Karna encounter. It is clear that victory would not be easy to accomplish for either side. That night Karna walks to Duryodhana’s chamber and promises him that the following day would be decisive: ‘I’ll kill that hero [Arjuna] or he will kill me … Because of my fondness for you above all else, nothing is impossible for me …’ (Ibid.: 291–292). He feels his main point of weakness is that he does not have a charioteer to rival Krishna—hence he asks for the king Shalya, a ‘mighty warrior, erudite in horse lore’ (Ibid.: 295). Duryodhana pleads with Shalya to agree. Shalya responds with rage, ‘contracting his brow into three lines’ (Ibid.: 303). First, he considered himself a superior warrior, but more to the point, he is angry at being asked to be the charioteer to someone of ‘such inferior status … For having been higher than that lowly man, I can’t become his servant’ (Ibid.: 305). This is proclaimed in the presence of Karna. Shalya is so enraged that he threatens to quit the battle altogether: ‘I am a King … I should be served and praised by bards … I can’t become the chariot-driver in battle for the charioteer’s son! Receiving this insult, I will not fight at all’ (Ibid.). Yet, slowly,

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Duryodhana’s flattery works—he says that Shalya is superior to Krishna the rival charioteer. Shalya makes a fateful condition—he will be able to ‘sling any words’ at Karna (Ibid.: 309). Though the fact that he could speak back to Karna may have only meant an assertion of equality between charioteer and warrior, it seems an odd condition. However, as will be seen, this condition has momentous implication. For, as it turns out, Shalya continually humiliates Karna the next day, undermining him psychologically. This is particularly affecting— especially in the context of how vital Krishna’s encouragement and counsel was to Arjuna. Shalya had been appointed to counter-balance Krishna, but the truth unbeknownst to Karna was that there had been a prior agreement between Yudhishthira and Shalya for precisely this situation. Shalya was thus another one in a long series of those who betrayed Karna. The text does eulogise Karna through a brief narrativisation of his life—how he got Parashurama’s bow, and was his favoured student. These are ambiguous stories, exalting Karna but also showing him enmeshed in an endlessly murky ill-fortune. Duryodhana tells Shalya that Parashurama gave the divine knowledge of weapons to great Karna with feelings of great joy … I don’t believe at all that Karna was born into a family of charioteers. I reckon that he’s the son of a god and was born into a family of Kshatriyas. He was thrown out so that his lineage could be correctly recognized, that’s what I reckon … How could a doe give birth to a sun-like tiger? (Ibid.: 349)

Duryodhana has rightly intuited Karna’s divine birth—but such a narrative of divine birth assumes the impossibility of one of ‘lowbirth’ achieving martial prowess on their own terms, and thus restereotypes various classes of humans. It also seems to undermine Duryodhana’s friendship. As seen later, even the weapons of the mighty Parashurama fail at a crucial time due to the incident related to the worm that had bitten Karna’s thigh.

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When Shalya agrees to become Karna’s charioteer, it is for unexpected reasons—as though the whole episode needed even more twisting, Duryodhana tells Shalya that he will be the leader if Karna dies! As soon as Karna mounts the chariot, and even as the kettledrums were celebrating, Shalya begins to deflate him by speaking of the valour and skill of the Pandavas. It is as if this warrior–charioteer conversation is a parodic analogue to the Bhagavad Gita, for both Shalya and Karna proceed to abuse each other at great length. Both accuse the other of not following caste-norms, and call each other ‘[of] low-birth’ (Ibid.: 439). That Karna, who has lost so much to caste injustice, falls into similar finger-pointing is both ironic and unsurprising, and speaks to the resilience of the caste imaginary in the world of the epic. Nevertheless, both recognise the seriousness of the military situation. As if to confirm the ill-fate of Shalya’s presence, an inauspicious ‘shower of bones’ falls from the sky (Ibid.: 369). Karna is full of premonition: ‘I can’t find a thing that is certain in this world because of the divine workings of past acts’ (Ibid.: 373). Of Shalya too, Karna intuits that ‘clearly you’ve been planted by the Pandavas since, like an enemy, you always act against us’ (Ibid.: 401). Shalya continues, through various direct and indirect means, to speak of Karna’s low birth. He repeats, for example, the traditional conservative argument that caste only represents differences found naturally: the crow cannot aspire to be the divine geese on Lake Manasa in the Himalayas—it has neither the geese’s beauty, nor the ability to fly such vast distances. In the accompanying story that Shalya narrates, the goose saves the crow as the crow almost falls in exhaustion down to the ocean. From this the crow was supposed to learn temperance and gratitude—just as Karna was to understand that the Kauravas ‘support you with their leftovers’ (Ibid.: 415). Karna grows increasingly dispirited—this is hardly what he wants to hear on the day of his greatest battle. He is reminded again of how accursed he is. Only the series of curses remain salient through the

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labyrinthine forks of caste: ‘the curse from [Parashurama] troubles me greatly today’ (Ibid.: 419). When Karna had wished to learn from Parashurama, he had been forced to disguise himself as a Brahmin. Then, according to Karna, Indra, the king of gods, took the form of a worm and pierced Karna’s thigh when Parashurama was resting his head on Karna and sleeping. Out of ‘fear of the guru’, Karna silently swallowed the pain (Ibid.). When the guru woke up, seeing the ‘huge torrent of thick blood [and Karna] holding firm’, Parashurama declared that Karna could not be a Brahmin. Karna confessed to being a suta—of the lowly charioteer class. Parashurama curses him: ‘When the time comes for it [the key weapon] to perform, it won’t appear to you’ (Ibid.: 421). Karna realises that the battle with Arjuna would be the time when he would most need it, and thus, in the morning of the battle, feels the premonition of fate’s ceaseless betrayal. Yet, believing entirely in martial values, he vows to fight on: ‘for Duryodhana, for your [Duryodhana’s] affection, for fame, for myself and for god, doggedly I’ll fight the Pandava and Vasudeva [Krishna]. Watch this feat of mine today!’ (Ibid.: 427). But it seems that even to utter this is to tempt fate. For Karna immediately adds: ‘He [Arjuna] cannot escape from this weapon of mine in battle today as long as my wheel doesn’t sink in the rugged ground’ (Ibid.). Karna recounts the time when, testing his bow, he killed by accident the calf of a Brahmin. He is then cursed by the Brahmin-owner that the ‘wheel of your chariot shall fall into a hole as you fight in battle and meet a terror that’s all your own!’ (Ibid.: 429). Though Karna tried to plead with the Brahmin, the latter remained adamant regarding this killing of a helpless animal. Perhaps the careless killing of the calf did deserve some punishment, but the final killing of Karna is a disproportionate retribution of that act of reckless negligence. But his death was still in the future. To return to the scene of battle: after much bickering between Karna and Shalya, day two commences in earnest, with the ‘heart-stirring sound of thousands of conches and the raucous sound of kettle-drums [becoming] audible

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from both sides … the sound of elephants, horses and chariots rose, and the guttural roar of a lion came forth from the heroes’ (Ibid.: 475). The battle is enjoined in earnest. Karna loses a son: ‘Dispatched by a razor-edge arrow, his head—its face like the moon—was as beautiful as a lotus flower fallen from its stalk’ (Ibid.: 479). Descriptions in the Mahabharata are typically visual and rhetorical, and the unforgiving heap of images rarely allow for introspection—the narrative does not present the psychology of Karna’s reaction to the death of his son. There is only the eternal verity of the war that must go on. Karna seems to recover fast—or perhaps his rage and grief sharpen his skills. He soon has Yudhishthira in his sights but, following his promise to Kunti, he lets him go. But not without mocking him: ‘You’re incapable of the duties of a warrior, that’s what I think! Dedicated to sacred power, the recitation of mantra and sacrificial rites, you mustn’t fight’ (Ibid.: 495). This is not the first time Yudhishthira is mocked for being more learned and spiritual than a true warrior— and this conflict has many dimensions for the Mahabharata, and will be explored in later chapters in the book which indeed argue that the values of dharma, artha, kama, and moksha have moments of both consonance and harsh dissonance. This argument is used by many, and against many, and often the accused may also be the accuser. For example, only a little later in the war, Yudhishthira, ‘with rage and indignation’ chastises Ashwatthama for fighting and going against his duties of ‘austerity, generosity and studying’ (Bowles 2008: 9). These conflictual values repeat the anxieties that were central to the legitimacy/succession question that precipitated the battle: Was Duryodhana indeed more martial and expansionist, and thus better suited for kingship than the sage Yudhishthira? Or does Yudhishthira represent a more mature notion of the aims of kingship, one that better intermixes moral/spiritual (dharma/moksha) value as well as worldly (artha/kama) prowess? Are these two aims—especially dharma/ moksha and artha—ultimately complementary or conflictual? These questions are left open unto the very end of the epic, even up to that

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last reunion in heaven in book eighteen, The Book of the Ascent to Heaven. To return to the scene of battle: bands of apsaras (heavenly beings) in the sky are hard at work ‘continually raising into their celestial chariots those heroes killed in the hundreds’ (Bowles 2007: 499). The prospect of heaven makes soldiers more eager to die courageously, and thus there are evermore poetically lauded loops of bloodshed: ‘Coated with blood, the ground was luminous, like the soil covered with red beetles in the wet season; or, the earth was like a darkly beautiful young woman who might wear, above and below, white garments died with safflower’ (Ibid.: 525). In terms of the actual strategy on the ground, the need of the hour is to protect Yudhishthira as the Pandavas could not allow a repeat of Karna’s defeat of Yudhishthira—and what to them must have been the inexplicable decision of Karna not to kill him. There is a miasma of death all around: ‘Grasping their various different weapons, bold men still seem alive and eager for victory though their lives are gone!’ (Bowles 2008: 45). Soon, the Pandava army ‘all quickly attacked Karna like birds a tree’ (Ibid.: 19). Karna again ‘wounded the Pandava king in the chest’, even as the latter fled back into the encampment (Ibid.: 101). Karna has to leave to protect Duryodhana as the latter is attacked by Bhima—the call of friendship triumphs over strategy. Yudhishthira returns to his camp in ‘some shame, and, bruised and wounded by arrows, quickly dismounted from the chariot and settled on to a beautiful bed’ (Ibid.: 107). The Pandavas gather around him, and Yudhishthira, generally presented as measured and detached, speaks with feeling: For thirteen years I was terrified of him [Karna] and could never get sleep at night nor comfort during the day. Consumed with hatred for him, Dhananjaya [Arjuna], I’m burning up, and now I’ve gone to my death like an elephant with a severed trunk … Whether awake or asleep, son of Kunti, I only ever see Karna everywhere; the world’s become Karna. (Ibid.: 133)

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This sentiment of fear is not unmixed with contempt for the ‘wretched son of a charioteer’ (Ibid.: 137). He remembers Karna insulting them during the dice game—Karna had called the Pandavas ‘barren sesame seeds’ (Ibid.: 141). There is the unhappy mixture of caste and emasculation anxieties, a potent brew. Yudhishthira is in such an agitated state that he accuses Arjuna of running away from Karna, of breaking his promise to his king and brother, and of being a disappointment for all that had been prophesied. It is a rare moment of strain between the brothers. A furious Arjuna threatens to kill Yudhishthira, and lists the latter’s many faults including ‘lying in Draupadi’s bed [as well as the] vice of dicing … we’ve known no happiness at all since you began playing with the dice … You’re a gambler! The kingdom was lost on your account. Our crisis has its source in you’ (Ibid.: 185–187). All this is a most uncommon moment of an honest airing of very muddy sibling laundry. Yudhishthira concedes: I’ve brought this dreadful disaster on you, cut my head off right now! I’m a wretched man! The ruin of our family! I am evil, obsessed with evil vices, simple minded, lazy, cowardly, disrespectful to the elderly and abusive … Evil as I am, today I will go to the forest. (Ibid.: 193)

This longing for the forest does speak to Yudhishthira’s deep need— his difficulty with inhabiting the martial world, his preference for a quiet, unpeopled forest. This psychological realism regarding siblings, and the accumulated frustration of many decades, is most exceptional and unsurprisingly occurs in the heat of battle, and against their most feared rival Karna. (That Karna is also their unknown sibling is a credit to the text’s employment of irony.) Krishna has to calm Yudhishthira, and redirect this bitterness to the more useful public duty of war— anger toward the Kauravas, and especially Karna. It is not unusual that in a martial culture even interpersonal relationships untie themselves best in the heated context of war and death. Just as the Bhagavad Gita unfolds in a deliberately non-realistic context (it is hardly realistic

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that soldiers will allow such a leisured theological elaboration at the beginning of a war), so too, it is only in the background of war that relationships and values are best appraised, and understood in their full context. Here, one must remember that Karna is a sibling too, and provides another axis of comparison. This sharing of emotion in the heat and tumult of war empowers both Yudhishthira and Arjuna, and ‘after weeping for some time, the majestic brothers, their minds cleansed, became elated’ (Ibid.: 199). Yudhishthira is more openly able to confide his fear of Karna, and Arjuna promises to kill Karna that very day, the seventeenth day of battle. They all return to battle. But on the field, the ghouls of fretfulness return: Arjuna begins to ‘sweat profusely, and his anxiety for how things would turn out became great’ (Ibid.: 207). Krishna has to validate his courage and remind Arjuna of his past deeds of valour, and yet also realistically remind him of how dangerous and formidable Karna is. Choosing his psychological incentives carefully, Krishna brings up the role of Karna in the unfair killing of Arjuna’s beloved son Abhimanyu—how, at his death, the ‘wretched Karna and Duryodhana burst into laughter’ (Ibid.: 229). Krishna senses that if Karna was not killed that day, Arjuna would grow evermore ineffectual. Krishna knew Arjuna best—not just as a friend but also as a despondent, often-reluctant warrior. For it was true that Arjuna—the greatest of warriors—also found it hard to always inhabit that martial role—in this he was not altogether different from Yudhishthira, and this too may have fuelled their conflict. To Yudhishthira it may have been the appeal of other values such as learning and austerity. To Arjuna the difficulty of a soldierly bloodlust seemed to be that it could not hide a deep, inner pointlessness of violence (i.e., surely this went against any meaningful notion of dharma). The counsel of the Bhagavad Gita had clearly not put all his questions to rest. Krishna has to repeatedly goad Arjuna through the war for it was only Krishna—unlike any purely human actor—who saw with clarity the need for the triumph of the Pandavas whatsoever the cost (in lives and morality).

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Due to this fine-tuned goading, Arjuna responds: the latter proceeds to be ‘rid of my debt to … anger’—he declares that he is the greatest warrior as he has a unique combination of patience and rage (Ibid.: 247). Even as Arjuna engages in such tortuous introspections, the battle everywhere else is proceeding apace. Extended similes abound in the Mahabharata: blood for water, chariots for whirlpools, elephants for hippopotami, men for fish, horses for crocodiles, hair for duck-weed, severed, bejewelled arms for snakes, marrow for mud, parasols for geese, turbans for foam, and so on (Ibid.: 279). The brutality—and the pleasure sometimes partaken in that brutality—is epitomised in the killing of Duryodhana’s closest brother, Duhshasana, the one most infamous for stripping Draupadi at the dice game. Bhima had promised to avenge her, and drink Duhshasana’s blood—a promise that paints the outer horizon of the lust for vengeance that drives the war. The gruesome nature of this fight sets up the mood for the Arjuna–Karna duel that follows. Though Duhshasana puts up a brave fight, Bhima tears off his arm, opens his chest, lops his head, and quaffs the warm blood declaring it superior to mother’s milk, ghee, or liquor—with ‘mouth dribbling crimson’, he thus declares the superiority of the warrior’s path to family, religion as well as simple vengeance or hedonism (Ibid.: 365). Bhima then proceeds to kill ten more of Duhshasana’s brothers, i.e., his cousins. Karna is not left untouched by all this grisliness and grief. He loses a second son whose ‘head filled the earth and sky with the sound of its thud’ (Ibid.: 257). A little later still another son is lost, and then a brother (Ibid.: 363). All the warriors are aware that it will soon be the turn of the last great confrontation of the war—Karna and Arjuna. As if to prolong the torture, Arjuna promises to first kill Karna’s favoured son Vrishasena—he does so, rendering the son ‘armless and headless’ (Ibid.: 393). Karna and Arjuna finally come face to face, like a ‘pair of giant inauspicious planets rising for an epoch’s end’ (Ibid.: 403). Not just the Kauravas, but ‘all the vaishyas, shudras, sutas and those born of mixed stock … ghosts, demons, carrion-eating animals and birds,

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sea monsters, dogs and jackals’ urge Karna on, as he is their ill-fated underdog (Ibid.: 409). It is a long battle. Even Krishna is wounded. Divine beings in the sky, watching this great tournament, ‘sprinkled sandal water and waved divine yak-tail fans … [the two warriors even had] their mouths wiped clean with lotuses’ by their fathers, the Sun god and Indra (Ibid.: 467). Finally, under the pressure of an especially powerful arrow with the ‘mouth of a serpent’, Krishna intervenes— against his promise—and pushes the chariot down with his foot so that Arjuna would be saved (Ibid.: 469). And then the prophesied ill turns of fate begin to catch up—the earth swallows the left wheel and Karna’s chariot shudders as the consequence of many curses. Parashurama’s weapon, as a consequence of the curse, ‘disappeared from his mind’ (Ibid.: 489). Karna, tottering feebly, continues to fight back and attempts to hold his own. He is finally forced to step down from the chariot and attempt to lift the half-buried wheel from the earth. He tells Arjuna: Hold on for a second while I raise my swallowed wheel from the ground! You can see that the earth has swallowed my left wheel on account of divine fate, son of Pritha [Indra], so shun the deceits that’s practiced by cowards [i.e., attack an unarmed enemy] … Please don’t kill me while you stand in your chariot and I’m on the ground incapacitated as I lift my swallowed wheel. (Ibid.: 497)

But Krishna eggs Arjuna on, remarking that Karna hardly took recourse to justice in the manner in which he treated Draupadi, or in the killing of Abhimanyu. Arjuna accedes to Krishna’s counsel, and Karna’s head falls ‘resembling the sun passing through the middle of an autumnal sky … fiery energy spread out from Karna’s body and entered the sky and sun’ (Ibid.: 509). The use of the sun-image is apposite as it pointed toward Karna’s divine paternity: ‘with all its limbs larded with arrows and bathed in rivulets of blood, Karna’s body glowed like the sun with its own rays’ (Ibid.: 511). It is a death worthy of a hero—unlike the divine sun that rises again every day from the

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darkness, this human hero was to rise no more. A life that represents many values—the rise of lower orders, the obsession with martial excellence, a sense of loyal friendship that abjured the very kingship he had been rightly entitled to—has been laid low by deceit abetted by a divine being. This is fitting in its irony, and reveals the starkness of the challenge that the tale of Karna throws against constricted, complacent notions of dharma.

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Artha Does not lucidity, the mind’s openness upon the true, consist in catching sight of the permanent possibility of war? The state of war suspends morality…War is not only one of the ordeals—the greatest— of which morality lives; it renders morality derisory…The trial by force is the test of the real. (Levinas 1969: 21) [Krishna says] Victory, king, is the womb of heaven, great fame is the womb of heaven, austerity is the womb of heaven, and so is the straight road to battle. (The Book of the Assembly Hall: 71) [Draupadi says] The man who believes that everything in the world is fate and the one who professes that it is chance are both apostate: it is the spirit to act that is extolled. (The Book of the Forest: 284)

In her observant book Re-ending the Mahabharata: The Rejection of Dharma in the Sanskrit Epic, Naama Shalom rightly brings, as it were, the end of the epic back to centre-stage (2017). Shalom argues that the ending—where Yudhishthira emphatically rejects dharma— is a plot-node that scholarship (both traditional and contemporary, in India and abroad) have traditionally often neglected, or at least underplayed. It is clear why the ending is awkward and difficult to grasp—it is one thing to be sceptical, but another thing to—with certainty—denounce dharma as misguided. Why would one read such a large text to reach such an ending that denounces moral values, rather than at least keeping the question open? Shalom addresses this conundrum through an impressive range of references both within the text and through later texts. This chapter charts a slightly different path. It argues that dharma was not so much denounced in forceful terms only at that dramatic final moment, but was continually disrupted, especially by the counter values of artha. As discussed in

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the previous chapter, dharma was always a lofty concept and though it exerted normative power, it was also continually unsettled in different manners by all the other values of the quartet (artha, kama, and moksha). Indeed, all these values have meaning only in relation to each other—a relation that includes the productive expansion of meaning that emerges from this disjunction. Besides, Yudhishthira’s opinion cannot count for all persons and situations. As the more one-sided figure that literally represents dharma (by being imagined as the son of dharma), his may not be the ideal filter through which to run the gamut of meanings of dharma and its relation to the other terms of the quartet. One may see the play of dharma in other better-realised and more suggestive figures, including (and perhaps especially) the women whose stance on dharma (like that of the humiliated Karna) would be very different. This chapter begins by discussing two of these women (Satyavati and Amba) as their behaviour engages with the flow of the narrative (the translations are from van Buitenen). This engagement of gender, dharma, and artha is imprinted from the very beginning of the epic. One’s analysis may start with the effective founding matriarch of the Mahabharata, Satyavati, whose name already makes the moral claim of ‘speaker of truth’. Her negotiation of dharma and worldly power (artha) is through a different compass, and with different ends, from characters such as Yudhishthira, or even Karna or Krishna. Satyavati is, perhaps other than Duryodhana, the character that seems most explicitly ambitious for royal power in both its attainment and its maintenance. Unlike the male, royal-born Duryodhana, she cannot avow it openly—yet this ambition is evident in the unfurling plotline of the epic. The Mahabharata as a whole would have travelled to a very different set of concerns if it was not for the many decisions that Satyavati took, often without due consultation. The shadow of Satyavati on the epic is profound—quite literally Vyasa, the ‘author/ arranger’ of the Mahabharata, is her son. He is both a protagonist and memory-keeper, poised on the frame of the narrative, and sometimes

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intervening in dramatic fashion—Satyavati orders him to beget heirs at a crucial moment for the clan. Satyavati, who summons him for such tasks, is also inside and outside the story, an enterprising matriarch and yet vulnerable to all the vicissitudes of royal and male domination. Satyavati is thus a metaphor of the frames themselves—within and without, voice and silence, mediation, retracement, reversal—the negotiation of a harsh moral universe that did not particularly cater to outspoken women. In the words of the contemporary choreographer and poet, Karthika Nair, Satyavati performs the Mahabharata’s constant conciliation of ‘old hate, diffused through blood and womb and semen’ (2017: 3). Satyavati’s origin—like many of the lineages of the Mahabharata— is a mixture of the divine and the subaltern. The teleology of royalty and kingship always underlies the disadvantaged caste who can never be a player on her own class terms—one saw this with Karna. Rather, the lower-status person is revealed—at some point—to have had kingly or divine origins. This is both conservatism, as well as a nail in the coffin of straightforward kingly legitimacy. Uncertain status is inbuilt into rulership, and the debate about legitimacy (that finally drives Duryodhana to war) is prefigured several times in the clan, with Satyavati’s story being a prescient instance. She is first mentioned in the first book (The Book of the Beginning) in the lists of contents that serve as a plot overview. It is instructive to note that Satyavati is both venerated and elided: The son of Satyavati [Vyasa] composed this holy History after he had arranged the eternal Veda by the power of his austerities and continence. Krishna Dvaipayana [Vyasa], son of Parashara, the wise Brahmin seer of strict vows, begot at his mother’s behest, and that of the sage Bhishma, lawfully and powerfully, the race of the Kurus…. (The Book of the Beginning: 22)

Satyavati is both origin—Vyasa the composer is her son—but also secondary to this creation of the son Vyasa. She is less a creator, and

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more a mother-facilitator. Vyasa is a double creator—of both the text of the history, as well as literally fathering Dhritarashtra and Pandu. The text indicates, firstly, that this was a controversial begetting (as Vyasa was impregnating his half-brother’s wives)—hence, the anxious reiteration of ‘lawfully and powerfully’. Secondly, this was at the express ‘behest’ and collusion of his mother Satyavati and Bhishma. Satyavati is the instigator of a fateful impregnation—her role as conscious motivator is arguably far more important than Vyasa’s more biological, and instrumental role. It is she who takes the decision— with consciousness, if not with full foresight. It is her human (and royal) decision that sets the course of the narrative—perhaps Vyasa ‘knew’ all along what would be entailed, but this is not obvious from the text. Rather, he chooses to participate more passively in the decision of royal fatherhood—a decision whose consequences will run as a red thread through the entirety of the history, and inaugurate the unresolvable conversation on unnaturalness and illegitimacy, the mixture of ascetic and royal values that will plague many of the protagonists and their choices (i.e., not just the war itself, but the very problem, mentioned in the previous chapter, of Yudhishthira being more ascetic than warrior). Satyavati is no impassive queen—or rather, she did not become queen to be merely enfolded in passivising luxury. Queendom is only a means to an (indistinct) end. Her ambition scars and goads all the generations to come, and Duryodhana with his focussed thirst for rulership, is her truest heir. The text returns to the Satyavati story in greater detail—in a section on the descent of the first generations. A backstory is added that contributes to the fantastical intricacy of her origins and character. It is a hard story to summarise, and its whimsy makes it less purely human, and more a sort of tale of ‘fate’s amusement’. In the tale that the frame-reciter Vaishampayana recounts, there is an ancient, revered personage Vasu, ‘foremost of kings’ (The Book of the Beginning: 131). On one occasion, his wife was in her season:

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Artha she bathed and made herself pure for the conceiving of a son. That day his pleased ancestors said ‘Shoot some deer!’… unable to transgress the mandate of his ancestors, Vasu went hunting, lovingly musing on Girika [his wife], who was a surpassingly beautiful woman … And while he roamed the lovely woods, his seed burst forth. No sooner had it been spilled than the king caught it with a tree leaf, thinking, ‘My seed should not be spilled in vain’, and ‘Nor should my wife’s season remain barren!’… he said to a fast kite that was perching close by, ‘Friend, as a kindness to me, take this seed of mine to my house’ … another kite saw it coming and went at it … thinking it was a piece of meat. The two birds fought a battle of beaks up in the sky, and while they were fighting the seed fell into the water of the river Yamuna. Now there was a fish that lived in the Yamuna, as a beautiful apsara [heavenly maiden], Adrika by name, who had been cursed by Brahma to become a fish. This Adrika in her body of a fish quickly swam close and swallowed Vasu’s seed that had fallen from the kite’s claw. Then one day fishermen caught that fish … when she was in her tenth month. And from her belly they pulled human twins, a boy and a girl. They thought this a great marvel and told the king … Thereupon the king took the boy child and he later became King Matsya … the girl, the other child of the fish, smelled like a fish and the king gave her to the fisherman … This girl was called Satyavati. She had beauty and character and every virtue, but because she lived among fishermen the sweet-smelling girl carried for a while the smell of fish. (Ibid.: 133)

Alongside the fantasy’s charm, one can discern a thread that speaks to many of the values of the epic. Satyavati’s origin straddles the human, the kingly, the divine (in terms of the fantasy-laden plot, if not blood) as well as the humbler fisher-folk. Again, the comparison to Karna is not inapt. This origin-tale is an epic miniaturised. There is a sense of extreme contingency—semen that hangs adrift in the kite’s fighting beak. But there is also the opposite sense that the event was wholly foreordained—there is a fortuitously waiting and cursed apsara—for the purpose of the birth of a deeply significant person, a vital actor without which the Mahabharata could never quite have taken wing.

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The Harivamsha also has an account of Satyavati’s human birth as having taken place only due to an infraction: ‘Because you committed a transgression toward your ancestors, you will have to go through this inferior birth’ (Harivamsha: 59). The hunting king who in the midst of nature ejaculates bespeaks an intertwining of the separable values of kingship, predatory power, and the erotic luxuriousness and fertility of nature. The kite is helpful, and so are rivers and fish—all subserve a higher plan. Human intervention in nature—this time not in the form of the royal king, but the humble fisherman—again demonstrates a continuous feedback loop of the human, the natural, and the divine that Satyavati represents, in her very origin, as a core value of the Mahabharata. Finally, the king finds use for the boy as a future king, but the girl was discarded. This is unsurprising. But in the sort of twist that the epic abounds in, negotiating its way out of popular clichés, it is the girl who—despite every disadvantage (including a fishy malodour)—makes for a resonant myth and history of the founding of an exalted kingdom. This could not have been foreseen when the fisher-folk parents lovingly raise Satyavati—again, the comparison to Karna is recognisable (the divine birth, the working-class upbringing, the awaiting royal fate). For many years, it would have been hard to bet on the attractive but fish-smelling woman, as she daily plied her ferry on the river. But such fates are bound to turn over. One of the visitors on the boat is the great sage Parashara. Here is what follows: ‘Scarcely had he seen Vasu’s daughter, who was surpassingly beautiful and desirable even to the Siddhas, before the sage began making love to the comely daughter’ (The Book of the Beginning: 133). Somewhat bathetically (though this does not exclude the trauma of assault), she says, ‘Sir, look, there are holy men standing on both river banks. How can we lie with each other when they are looking at us?’ Whereupon the blessed lord created a fog that seemed to cover the entire region with darkness. When she saw the fog that the great seer had created, the modest and spirited girl said smilingly, ‘Sir, you must know that I am a

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Artha virgin and in my father’s keeping. If I consort with you, blameless lord, I shall lose my virginity. And when my virginity is lost, how shall I be able to go home, good Brahmin?’ … The great seer was pleased with her word, and he said, ‘When you have done my pleasure, you will still be a virgin. Choose a boon’… she chose that her body would always smell deliciously… (Ibid.: 134)

As if to make up for his crassness and to prove the divine significance of the coupling, Satyavati gave birth that very day to a grown son—the aforementioned Vyasa. The son ‘stood before his mother and set his mind on asceticism. “When you think of me, I shall appear to you if any task needs to be done…’”(Ibid.). This initial trauma is also inseparably an opening, an opportunity for agency. Using her delicious smell, she entices Shantanu, the Kuru King of Hastinapura. Shantanu had been wandering on the banks of the Yamuna, and was enthralled by Satyavati’s presence. He promptly went to her father to ask for her hand. Satyavati’s father agreed to the marriage on the condition that her son alone would inherit the kingdom—not other elder sons the king may have. But Shantanu had a valorous older son, Bhishma, and so he did not have it in him to grant this patently unfair wish. Bhishma, seeing his father brood, asks him what the matter was. Shantanu does not confess the dilemma, but only remarks that it was safer for a king to have more than just one son. Mystified, Bhishma seeks to probe the reasons for his father’s mood, and soon learns of Satyavati’s father’s demand. He travels to the house of the fisherman and agrees that the son born to Satyavati would be the future king of Hastinapura. The canny father, ‘speaking in the manner of those who love their daughters’, notes that while Bhishma may be large-hearted, how could he be sure that Bhishma’s sons would also be agreeable to this plan? (Ibid.: 226). Bhishma famously replies that he would live henceforth ‘as a monk’ (Ibid.). This promise is what gives him the name Bhishma (i.e., awe-inspiring)— his given name had been Devavrata. There are no more obstacles to Shantanu marrying Satyavati, and in due course, Satyavati bears him

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two sons, Chitrangada and Vichitravirya. Some years later, Shantanu passes away. Chitrangada becomes king, and is a powerful warrior, making his mother proud and gratified—she is well on the way to being a successful, retired matriarch of a prestigious clan. But fate had much in store for her. Her story could have ended with her birthing a powerful king, but this is only the beginning of the tale, and her centrality to the narrative is to emerge in the following years. The idyll of the good and powerful King Chitrangada abruptly ends when he gets entangled with a gandharva (divine being). After fighting him for three years, he eventually succumbs. His brother Vichitravirya is made king. To consolidate the kingdom, Satyavati has to return to affairs of state—she and Bhishma decide that Vichitravirya must marry appropriately so that heirs may be born. They agree on the three daughters of the prestigious king of Kashi. Bhishma proceeds to abduct them. Such a stratagem was not only acceptable, but also admired in that milieu. Bhishma had averred: ‘But the students of the Law hold that the bride is the best who is carried off by force’ (Ibid.: 228). Despite the provocative nature of the act, none of the assembled kings can defeat Bhishma, and he brings the women home for Vichitravirya. However, one of them, Amba, says that she would not agree to this marriage, as she loves another—Amba’s is a narrative that is dealt with separately in the next section. Satyavati’s and her story are entangled in terms of the plotline, but also as exemplars of what ambitious women may hope to carve out for themselves within coercive royal and patriarchal arrangements. The other two sisters of Amba are more compliant, and agree to the marriage. The marriage is only a dubious success: ‘Seven years the king of the land whiled away with his wives; then Vichitravirya, still young, fell ill of consumption’ (Ibid.: 230). Soon enough he dies, heirless, leaving Satyavati ‘wretched and hungrily begging for grandsons’ (Ibid.). She begs Bhishma, in the name of kingly and familial responsibility, to father sons, but, ironically, he had taken his vow of celibacy to placate her father. It is in this context that she

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remembers Parashara and Vyasa. All this time, though Satyavati has been in the thick of palace administration, she had kept her past, and especially her encounter with Parashara, secret. But now, in this renewed moment of crisis for the clan, she is forced to remember. Bhishma remarks that the continuity of the line can only be retained if one invites a ‘Brahmin of virtue and lets him father children on the fields of Vichitravirya’ (Ibid.: 233). In this context, with ‘faltering voice … smiling shyly’, Satyavati tells of her youthful days as a fisherwoman ferrying travellers (Ibid.). She recounts the Parashara encounter again—in this narration, for the first time in her voice, there is more detail, and a greater sense of pragmatism and reflection. There are the mixed feelings of tenderness (at her youth), claustrophobia (at her poverty that partly allowed for the sexual coercion), as well as pride in her survivorship, and what she had been able to make of her life. As she reflects: When I was ferrying him [Parashara] across the Yamuna, the great hermit came up to me and, possessed by love, spoke to me many sweet things with great gentleness. Equally fearful of his curse and of my father, and showered with boons that are not easily come by, I could not reject him. He overpowered and mastered me with his virility … Before that time I had had a strong odour of fish—loathsome. He took it away, the hermit, and gave me a pure fragrance. He also told me that when I had delivered my child on an island in the river, I would still be a virgin. (Ibid.)

To help with the current situation of the lack of a male heir, Satyavati thinks of her son Vyasa, who abruptly, physically appears before her—in the Mahabharata many sages and gods have this habit of suddenly appearing, especially when thought of by characters. For the intervening years, there had been no indication of Satyavati’s relation to him, or indeed of his sense of her. But now she ‘embraced him with her arms and sprinkled him with tears—the fisherwoman wept as she saw her son after so long a time’ (Ibid.: 234).

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After the sentimentality of meeting a long-lost, eldest son, Satyavati quickly gets to the matter at hand, explaining the lack of an heir for her kingdom. She tells him that he must help as it is the right thing to do: Now, out of esteem for your brother [Satyavati’s son Vichitravirya], for the continuity of the family, at Bhishma’s word and at my own behest, blameless sage, out of compassion for the creatures and for the protection of everyone, you must do what I am proposing without any cruelty of heart. The two wives of your younger brother, who are like daughters of a God, lovely and in the bloom of their youth, are yearning for sons by the Law [Dharma]. Beget children on them— for you are fit for the task, son—that are worthy of our family and continuing our progeny. (Ibid.).

Arguments are thus a mixture of the personal, the royal, and in the name of compassion for both family and citizenry. The sexual act is imagined as detached and non-coercive. Indeed, the wives are portrayed as keen on the act so that they may beget heirs and perform their duty. This is odd, for even Vyasa remarks that it must be hard for the wives to ‘bear with my ugliness. If she bears my smell, my looks, my garb, and my body, [she] shall straightaway conceive a superior child’ (Ibid.: 235). Satyavati is certain that this is what must be done—she promptly leaves to prepare the wives. She does not ask for their opinion or approval, and simply repeats that such an act is the most timehonoured as well as practical course. The wives seem to have little choice as Bhishma too is in favour. Satyavati does attempt a basic courtesy: ‘But this measure depends on you: I know it well, daughter. Rescue the lost dynasty of Bharata! Bear a son, buxom woman, to resemble the kingdom of the Gods. For he shall carry the burdensome yoke of the kingdom of our dynasty’ (Ibid.). Somehow she persuades the princesses, who abided by the Law, by appealing to the Law. She helps her daughter-in-law, Kausalya (also known Ambalika), bathe and prepare her toilette. Kausalya only knew that a man would

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come, and did not know who—indeed she thought it would be ‘Bhishma or any other of the bulls of the Kurus’ (Ibid.). Satyavati— incongruously—waits outside for Vyasa as he finishes his act, and asks as he comes out: ‘Shall there be a son in her, a prince of virtue?’ (Ibid.). As it turns out, poor Kausalya had closed her eyes in fright at Vyasa, so Vyasa predicts that the son would be blind. Satyavati proclaims that ‘No blind man is worthy to be king of the Kurus, ascetic! Pray grant a second king…’ (Ibid.). Vyasa agrees, and so the ‘blameless’ Satyavati persuades the second daughter-in-law Ambika, who too, as Vyasa notes, ‘paled when you saw my ugliness’, and will thus have a son of ‘sickly pallor’ (Ibid.). Satyavati, now truly desperate, asks Vyasa to try again with Kausalya—but this time a terrified Kausalya disguises a ‘slave woman’ to have intercourse with Vyasa (Ibid.). The slave woman was unafraid, and begot a healthy, wise child. Vyasa, who otherwise seemed to know everything, did not seem to realise that his mother had been cheated, and considering himself as having performed her wishes, departs. Satyavati’s decisions, well-intentioned, clear-eyed, and within norms, nevertheless set the stage for the whole unhappy conflict that is to follow a few generations later. She has so sought to establish a grand and stable dynasty, but instead forms one that hurtles inexorably toward war. When her grandson Pandu dies, her son Vyasa, seeing her ‘blinded by the pains of sorrow’, tells her, The times of happiness are past and times of trouble lie ahead. The days grow worse every new tomorrow, earth herself is aging … Go now, leave it all. Yoke yourself and live in the wilderness of austerities, lest you must witness the ruination of your own dynasty. (Ibid.: 264)

She understands that this is not just the scepticism of the ascetic— her son has the capacity for prophecy. She thus accepts fate, her own and the dynasty’s, and with her daughters-in-law, Ambika and Ambalika (who has just lost her son Pandu), retires to the forest. There ‘they did awesome austerities, and at last the princesses shed

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their bodies’ (Ibid.). It is a quiet end to the matriarch, and certainly a reflection on the limits of human agency and ambition (artha), and how the best-laid plans often seed spiralling envy and violence—as the poet Karthika Nair concludes in her reflection on Satyavati: ‘For Kurukshetra/is a ploy: men can create/mayhem in heaven’ (Nair 2017: 211). Her great-grandson Bhima had also noted that the wheel of human action was ever thus, and can only be bidden to continue without relent: ‘You have heard of the baronial laws as Manu has pronounced them—tough ones, full of deceit, are enjoined, informed by no serenity. There is work to be done’ (The Book of the Forest: 293).

Amba: Re-incarnating a Gender-fluid Martial Body [Draupadi says] I detest the Pandavas, those grand strongmen in war, who looked on while their glorious consort in dharma was molested! A plague on the strength of Bhimasena! A plague on the bowmanship of the Partha [Arjuna] … I have got no husbands, no sons, Madhusudhana [Krishna], not a brother, nor a father, nor you, nor friends. (Ibid.: 249–251) [Yudhishthira says] Anger kills men, anger prospers them … wellbeing and ill fortune are rooted in anger. (Ibid.: 277)

Though the story of Amba has been mentioned before (for example, in the first book, The Book of the Beginning), its most extended treatment is in book five, The Book of Effort—it is the last section of the fifth book, indicative of its importance. For the most part, Amba’s story is related in a linear fashion, and this analysis will follow the linearity, interspersed with commentary. It is a story of a humiliation, an overcoming, and a perseverance that is striking and original—again, these themes are found less in the putative heroes, the Pandavas, and more in other, seemingly more peripheral characters—Karna, Satyavati, and as will be demonstrated, Amba. The divine and the fantastical is invoked, but only to return to the worldly pressures

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and pleasures of artha. The divine and the magical (for example, the fluidities of gender) is evoked here perhaps not as an end in itself but as engaging in the management and fulfilment of resilient thisworldly interests and passions. These are powerful actors who feel a strong sense of duty that results in a preternatural discipline that finally bears very this-worldly fruit. One may follow the sequence of events and re-telling: as they march out to the battlefield Duryodhana asks Bhishma why the latter will not kill Shikhandi. Bhishma then asks all to gather around and hear him out. The reason lies in the history of Shikhandi—Bhishma proceeds to give the complete multi-life context. He speaks of the death of his father Shantanu, and his (Bhishma’s) responsibilities to his half-brother, the consecrated King Vichitravirya. The responsibility included him finding the king appropriate brides. The three daughters of Kashi were said to be ‘peerless in beauty’ (The Book of Effort: 497). They were also available at a swayamvara—a ceremony where the women choose their bridegrooms from among assembled and vetted men. Amba was the eldest daughter of the king of Kashi, followed by Ambika and Ambalika. Unlike book one, The Book of the Beginning (referred to in the earlier section in the context of Satyavati), where Bhishma had explained that carrying off women was the most admired martial way, here Bhishma simply notes that he ‘lifted the girls on my chariot’ calling this very act their bride price (Ibid.). It was understood to be a challenge thrown at all who dared. Bhishma had to fight off many warriors, all of which he did ‘laughing out loud’ (Ibid.). These years were the peaks of Bhishma’s martial glory. He returns to his kingdom, where an overjoyed Satyavati awaits him. But trouble is to follow. Amba ‘bashfully’ tells Bhishma—calling him ‘wise in the dharma and learned in all scriptures [that] in my heart I had chosen the king of Shalva as my bridegroom, and he too had chosen me secretly, unbeknownst to my father’ (Ibid.: 497–498). Amba asks if it was not improper according to the prevailing codes that she was abducted as she was in ‘love with someone else’ (Ibid.: 498).

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She asks Bhishma to abide by norms: ‘Take pity on me … [you] are known on earth for being true to your vows’ (Ibid.). Taking her words seriously, Bhishma informs the court, and allows Amba to leave for king Shalva. But King Shalva rejects her saying ‘you have been another man’s before, fair woman’ (Ibid.). This is hardly surprising in the cultural context—it is reminiscent of Rama’s rejection of Sita in the poet Valmiki’s Ramayana. There Sita accedes, but the Mahabharata seems far more morally inventive in developing the story of this humiliation. For Amba’s fate is unlike Sita’s, and the woman is given a more complex narrative play. Amba aligns herself with the many agential women of the Mahabharata—Satyavati, Ganga, Shakuntala, and Draupadi. Yet the pathway of her anger is unique. The other women still need men to do their bidding, but Amba decides to become a self-created man through rigorous penance. This journey takes time, and the text is careful to delineate a psychologically plausible path. Initially, Amba does plead with Shalva when he rejects her: ‘I was not happily abducted by Bhishma … He abducted me by force, in tears … Love me who loves you, an innocent girl … I swear by my head that I have never dreamed of anyone at all but you’ (Ibid.). It is a voice of courage, sincerity, and genuine bewilderment at male aspersion. But Shalva casts her off as a ‘snake casts off its worn-out skin’ (Ibid.). Her response is then a slow mixture of surprise and sorrow—giving way to more measured anger: ‘With tears in her eyes she said, overcome with anger, in a sob-choked voice…’. She was to depart from the city ‘wretchedly, screeching like an osprey’ (Ibid.). The humiliation was to continue—Amba could not have known the ways of male royalty, one that amplified mundane male dominance. As she returns, Amba relives the incidents and its motivations: It is really my own fault, that I did not jump off that chariot and run for Shalva while that carnage went on … A curse on Bhishma, a curse on my dull-witted mindless father, who dangled me like a harlot for the bride-price of some derring-do. (Ibid.)

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Finally, her rage settles on Bhishma as he was the ‘beginning of my misfortune. I see now that I have to revenge myself on Bhishma, by austerities or battle’ (Ibid.). Perhaps Shalva was equally deserving of her hate, but what is curious is the unusual path that Amba’s rage stakes. She decides to meet ascetics, and tell them of her plight. But they, not unexpectedly, wonder aloud what ascetics could do in this war between kings and lovers, promises and betrayals. Disappointed at their lacklustre response, Amba nevertheless discerns a track for vengeance. She decides: ‘I want to wander forth. I shall practice severe asceticism … I cannot go back to my own people, ascetics, disowned, disconsolate, discarded … I want you to instruct me in asceticism’ (Ibid.: 499–500). As is assumed throughout the Mahabharata, the highest martial weapons can only be attained by the highest austerities—spiritual practice alone yields the highest weapons. Arjuna’s wanderings in book three, The Book of the Forest are the longest exposition of this—and the faith in this transference (of the ascetic to a tangible weapon/skill) is what synergises the spiritualist and martial worlds, compounding both. Warriors are supposed to undertake spirituality for war’s sake—most famously the Bhagavad Gita is, among other lessons, an incitement to war via theophany. Only ascetics are supposed to undertake spirituality for its own sake—the warrior’s path via asceticism is believed to be closer to a notion of public prosperity via conquest. Amba’s case remains very much within the warrior’s fold—asceticism for public justice. The ascetics she met had argued among themselves regarding whether they should simply return the woman to her father’s house, or to King Shalva—she was a royal maiden, not cut out for the rigors of physical penance. It was believed to be unsafe for a young woman to be living alone with men—spiritual exercises do not preclude unexpected erotic desires. But Amba is determined. In an odd turn of events, she gets her way—the hermitage is visited by her mother’s father, one of those rare people who happened to be respected as both

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‘royal seer and ascetic’ (Ibid.: 500). He is aggrieved at her tale and recommends that she approach the warrior–sage Parashurama, one of the few people who could hope to vanquish Bhishma. Amba wishes to learn more about Parashurama. Her grandfather fills her in on the back-story. He speaks of Parashurama as living in the depths of the wilderness, engaging in austerities, blessing visiting scholars from both heaven and earth. The grandfather adds that Parashurama was his friend, and so would help Amba. And it turns out that Parashurama is on his way to visit the grandfather, and so they all fortuitously meet— it is the sort of coincidence that the Mahabharata is happy to throw at the reader. The grandfather tells Parashurama why he should avenge Amba for ‘now she thinks Bhishma alone is the cause of her sorrows’ (Ibid.: 502). Amba avers that she cannot return anywhere for ‘fear of contemptuous treatment and because I am ashamed’ (Ibid.). Then the grandfather and Amba ask Parashurama who is the greater villain— Shalva or Bhishma? Parashurama espouses the conservative view that it was fair that ‘Shalva has reason to doubt you’—thus, it must be Bhishma who ought to be the target of her wrath (Ibid.). Amba confesses that the death of Bhishma was the ‘fierce desire of my heart’, but she was so wrathful that either’s death would have sufficed (Ibid.). Without further ado, Parashurama puts on his armour—the sword and his famous battle-axe. Parashurama says that he (Parashurama) does not ‘willingly take up weapons other than in the cause of scholars of the brahman’ (Ibid.: 504). The grandfather intervenes, saying that the battle may not take place at all as Bhishma may either listen to his old guru Parashurama or simply surrender. Then the grandfather also reminds Parashurama of another vow the latter had made—to help anyone who comes to him as refuge. Parashurama agrees that he would remain true to the vow, but repeats that he would first try to diplomatically engage with Bhishma. He departs to set up camp at the river Saraswati, and calls for Bhishma who, not knowing the context, is happy to visit his old teacher. But Parashurama chastises him about the abduction.

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Bhishma replies that he cannot take back Amba for his brother as she had of her own volition gone to Shalva. Amba finds herself tangled between the three men—Bhishma, Vichitravirya, and Shalva, all accusing her of being with other men. Parashurama’s solution is to agree to fight for her honour. He threatens to kill Bhishma, no matter how much the latter attempts to appease him. Parashurama proclaims that Bhishma should do as he wished only because he had been Bhishma’s guru who had taught him as a child the ‘four kinds of weaponry’ (Ibid.: 506). He rues that Amba’s future is bleak as she now will ‘find no husband’ (Ibid.). Bhishma repeats that he cannot take Amba back—he rhetorically and misogynistically asks: ‘What man who knows the perilous flaws of women would ever allow a woman in love with another man to lodge in his house like a snake?’ (Ibid.). Bhishma taunts Parashurama too—the latter, though a guru, did not act like one, and so must be resisted, if only in self-defence. This is the way of those who ‘know time and place’ and dharma and artha (Ibid.). Bhishma continues: ‘I shall sanctify you by killing you in the same place where you once sanctified your father’ (Ibid.). Though Parashurama had killed all the warriors in the world through many cycles, he had not yet met a warrior such as Bhishma. They prepare for the fight. Bhishma seeks Satyavati’s blessings, mounts his chariot, and heads out for the duel. As was custom, Bhishma seeks not only blessings from his guru, but victory itself. Parashurama responds that he can only bless, not wish him victory. The proprieties are observed—it is not apt to fight with Brahmins or gurus unless they have taken up arms, and even then only with utmost courtesy. The battle begins, one that was to last twenty-three days (longer than the Mahabharata war), with Amba watching anxiously from the sidelines. Wounding his guru was difficult for Bhishma, who bemoaned his lot. But he is egged on by Parashurama himself, who wounds him, and kills Bhishma’s beloved charioteer. Both warriors are often rendered unconscious, and then revived—the sky became ‘one vast fire and all creatures were

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undone’ (Ibid.: 516). Finally, Parashurama concedes that Bhishma has greater weapons in his arsenal—Parashurama sees his paternal lineage standing in a circle and telling him that the greatest wealth of a Brahmin is ‘Veda study and the observation of vows’ (Ibid.: 517). He is asked to permanently withdraw from war, and return to the realm of austerities. They tell him that it has been prophesied that Bhishma would only die in the Mahabharata war—one among many of the internal prophesies of the war. All the attending gods and celestial beings ask for peace—‘the heart of brahmins is like butter: make peace’, and Parashurama finally yields (Ibid.). At the end of the war, Bhishma again asks for his teacher’s blessings, and it is freely given: ‘I have been greatly gratified by you in this battle’ (Ibid.: 518). Parashurama turns to Amba and admits that his best was not enough. Amba agrees that he did all he could, but she was not prepared to concede. Instead, she wishes to ‘go there where I myself can bring Bhishma down in battle’ (Ibid.). Amba ‘set her mind on austerities, brooding’ on Bhishma’s death (Ibid.). One must remember that the whole Amba episode is being related by Bhishma—his commentary is sparse, and there are only the rare moments of the use of the first person. After the battle with Parashurama, Bhishma returned to a joyous Satyavati. The women are on different quests, and cross each other on opposed sides. Satyavati is relieved, but Amba begins her quest anew—she retires to the forest to commence the vengeful cycle of austerities that would bring her great martial power—power that had one aim only. Bhishma was aware of her prayers, greatly ‘troubled, wretched, and well-nigh lost my wits. For no baron can defeat me in battle with his prowess, son, except one who knows the brahman and whose vows have been honed by austerity. In my terror, I conveyed all this to [the celestial sage] Narada …’ (Ibid.: 518–519). Narada is not consoling: he tells Bhishma that none can stall fate. Amba soon ‘gave herself up to superhuman self-mortification. Going without food, caked with dirt, she lived for six months on air…’ (Ibid.: 519). She spends years standing in water, sometimes on

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tiptoe, bathing at night in cold, sacred rivers—including in the Ganga (who is Bhishma’s mother). These are the familiar lists of ascetic practice—Arjuna had done similar feats. Martial power (even via spiritual blessings) could only be gained by acts that only the martially endowed (male or female) could anyways hope to do. Ganga tries hard to dissuade Amba from her obsessive task. But Amba persists—she subsists on withered leaf, recalling Parvati’s prayers to attain the lord Shiva. Fourteen years pass. She knows the mortifications could kill her, but she also knows that death would only lead to another body, perhaps one more apt for assassination—‘may this be the fruit of my vow in another body’ (Ibid.). Amba’s is one of the great quests for a body capable of wielding the highest martial skills. Asceticism here is comparable in its physical athleticism to any divine being’s body. Amba makes no claim to a larger public good (family or citizenry), and seeks solely an individual vengeance. Her penance is literalised in its harshness in a marvellous image—at one stage half her body became a crooked, dry, crocodile-infested rivulet! Amba remained fierce to her chosen calling: ‘I am consecrated to his [Bhishma’s] death, not to a higher world’ (Ibid.: 520). To achieve this, she finally decides to shift gender: ‘I am totally disgusted with being a woman and I have resolved to become a man’ (Ibid.). The gods Shiva and Parvati appear to her prayers and promise success in her desired warrior maleness. They also promise that ‘thou shalt remember everything when thou hast gone to a new body’ (Ibid.). Anger must keep alive the meaning of self from birth to birth. Hearing this, Amba collects firewood, makes a pyre, and mounts it on the Yamuna’s bank. She re-incarnates in the human realm as King Drupada’s daughter. This king has no children, and Shiva had promised him—through another sub-plot—Bhishma’s death. Amba was born unexpectedly as a woman again, but Shiva explains to the king: ‘You shall have a man child who is a woman’ (Ibid.: 521). When Amba is born, Drupada performs all the rites that he would have performed for a son, and everyone in the court thought that that he had a son named Shikandi.

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Though Drupada’s own court and citizenry did not know of this switching of gender codes, Bhishma finds out through a spy. Shikandi was brought up with a fullness of education that would have been denied to him/her had his/her gender role been rigid. Instead, he/ she was taught everything from painting to craft to archery. Indeed, the queen wanted to find a woman for her non-binary child, and they did get him/her married. Shikandi keeps his secret from his wife, but the wife finds out, and tells her father, who then threatens war. King Drupada and his wife did not know what to do—Shikandi hears this, feels guilty, and contemplates suicide. He/she goes deep into the forest and begins fasting. Fortuitously, a powerful yaksha (divine being) lives in that forest. He notes Shikandi’s austerities and asks what he/ she wants—Shikandi asks for a male body. The yaksha states that he can only give Shikandi his own male organ for a limited time, after which he must return it. The yaksha would in the meantime ‘wear your female organ’ (Ibid.: 525). Shikandi agrees that he needs the organ only to counter his father-in-law. He returns to his father and tells him what had happened—King Drupada then proclaims to his in-laws that his son is indeed a man. Women are sent to inspect; they ‘fondly reported’ to the king that Shikandi was indeed male (Ibid.). An unfortunate complication—and resolution—occurs. A god is angered that the yaksha had given his organ, and curses the yaksha that he/she would stay with a woman’s body. So Shikandi gets to stay with a male body, or, one might more precisely say, a penis-bearing body open to the intrinsic varieties of gender expression. The yaksha was to get his/her organ back only when Shikandi is killed in battle. Shikandi is gratified at this turn of events and proceeds to perfect his archery. He has not forgotten his task—to kill Bhishma. Bhishma had been continually informed of all these developments from his spies, and relates everything to Duryodhana on the eve of battle— this is how the reader/listener gets to hear all the details. It is an astonishingly intricate tale, a mixture of martial values, proud affect, gender fluidities and anxieties, and the longue durée of goal-driven

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asceticism. It is also a tale of which Bhishma knows fully well what is to follow: ‘When he [Amba/Shikandi] encounters me with bow in hand eager to fight, I shall not look at him even for a moment, and I shall refuse to hit him’ (Ibid.: 528). Though Duryodhana must have been loath to hear this—it is a fatal chink in their leadership—he concedes that ‘this was worthy of Bhishma’ (Ibid.). There were higher norms of honour than victory. The dictum of ‘victory at all costs’ belonged more to the Pandavas than the Kauravas—as is well known, it is the Pandavas who kill all the generals through dubious means. This is not the first or last time that Duryodhana displays insight into artha, and the passing show of moral righteousness (dharma). As the next section demonstrates, Duryodhana understood and appreciated the nuance of martial and worldly life more profoundly than most would credit him for. What Duryodhana symbolises and represents is a greater exploration of artha than would be evident to a casual reader caught up in simple binaries of victory and justice, the integrities of moral utopias and the candid ambition of earthly kingship, to wit, dharma and artha.

Duryodhana: An Ideologue of the Worldly There are many points from which one can begin to read Duryodhana’s character—he is consistent in his ambition for kingship from early childhood. But to concentrate the reading, and to select a moment where the pathos of his position is the clearest, one will concentrate on the scene that tradition has most insistently returned to (as the Conclusion of this book will discuss further). This is the scene of his death, toward the end of the war, and at the hands of his life-long nemesis, Bhima. Toward the end of the war, in the ninth book, The Book of Shalya, when the ‘earth was strewn with beautiful heads that had the complexion of lotus filaments, the eyes turned up and the lower lips bit in anger … bleeding and headless torsos seemed to rise up and dance’, Bhima proceeded to kill Sudarshana, Duryodhana’s

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last surviving brother (Debroy 2015: 415–416). Another one dear to Duryodhana—his uncle and instigator Shakuni—is similarly besieged. The Pandavas kill Shakuni’s son, and then the youngest Pandava, Sahadeva, proceeds to kill Shakuni himself. In spite of the deaths of all those whom he most trusted and loved, Duryodhana tells his army to keep on fighting. Finally, turning ‘in all the directions and [seeing] that the earth had been emptied … [he] was overcome by depression. Devoid of soldiers and men, he resolved to retreat’ (Ibid.: 420). A wounded Duryodhana abandons his dead horse, flees east on foot with a single club toward a lake, which he enters, ‘his heart consumed with grief ’ (Ibid.: 421). Only four had survived from the Kaurava army—Ashvatthama, Kritavarma, Goutama Kripa, and Duryodhana himself, but Duryodhana has fled even from the other two, and lay in the lake where, ‘through his maya [powers of illusion, he] created a passage’ (Ibid.: 422). It is explained that he ‘made the waters solid … [he] was sleeping in the waters’ (Ibid.). It is in this last, strange fantastical realm (of solid waters and interior passages) that Duryodhana’s actions and words rekindle the epic’s ancient questions about the meaning of war, courage, justice, and worldly loss and power. The other three survivors wish to fight on, and visit Duryodhana, to seek his advice and guidance. The wives, guards, and servants of the army have returned heartbroken to the city, conceding that the war was finally over. The three survivors meet Duryodhana—but the latter for once says that he is tired, will rest the night, and fight only the next day. Ashwatthama then takes the fateful decision to kill all of the remainder of the Pandava army—he does so in what is arguably the most horrific deed in an epic full of horrific deeds. He kills everyone (except the Pandavas themselves, and Krishna), including the unborn Pandava children—he achieves this by burning the entire camp at night. But this is later. The Pandavas too had been seeking out Duryodhana, and find him the evening before Ashwatthama’s fatal act. They find him in the lake that was ‘clear, cool and pleasant to the

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heart and it was as large as the ocean’ (Ibid.: 431). Krishna insists that Duryodhana must be killed, by any means necessary—at this point, such an instruction may almost be taken as code for deceit. Krishna recites the precedents of the necessary killing of demons of earlier epochs such as Vritra, Hiranyakashipu, Ravana, Taraka, and so on (Ibid.: 432–433). The Pandavas mock Duryodhana’s cowardice for hiding in the lake. Duryodhana replies in a calmly pragmatic fashion— he said he was not frightened or sorrowful, only exhausted, and bereft of weapons. He would be ready to fight them all soon enough. He agrees: ‘Those among the Kurus for whose sake I desired the kingdom … are dead … the earth is devoid of her jewels’ (Ibid.: 435). This puts in mind Arjuna’s question to Krishna at the beginning of the war—what is the use of victory if many of those one fights for will not anyway survive the slaughter? The repetition of the question cues one that the Bhagavad Gita may not always have the answers that satisfy everyone. Duryodhana further remarks that he would rather ‘clad myself in deerskin and leave for the forest … Devoid of fever [you, Yudhishthira, may] enjoy the kingdom’ (Ibid.). Yudhishthira’s reply captures the convolutions of both dharma and artha. He responds by noting that ‘If you give this earth to me, its acceptance will be adharma [opposite of dharma] … the learned texts say that it is not dharma for a Kshatriya [warrior] to receive gifts … I will enjoy this earth after having defeated you in battle’ (Ibid.: 436). War is both appropriate and necessary, even if the other side sometimes is simply willing to yield—and yet, when fought, the war must be carried out in the detached state of mind as Krishna had instructed Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. How does one know if Yudhishthira is truly detached now, or only scenting victory? One has seen his range of emotions already—the fear of Karna, the anger with Arjuna, the deceptions that led to Drona’s death, and so on. Duryodhana is aware of all this as he weighs his options from his underwater dwelling: ‘Inside the water, he repeatedly wrung out long and hot sighs. Inside the water, the king repeatedly wrung his hands’

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(Ibid.: 437). Duryodhana has, at the least, been more consistent than Yudhishthira in his courage/greed, and there is the unsurprising reversion to an old indefatigable warrior self. He declares that though bleeding, without mount or armour or weapon or rest, he would still be willing to fight one Pandava at a time. He is confident of defeating each singly, and in succession, and he takes the name of each beloved, dead warrior from the Kaurava side in whose honour he would fight. He proceeds to choose his favoured iron club as weapon, and declares that he would wish to fight on foot. He steps out of the waters, regal once again in his call for final war: ‘He arose from inside the waters, like an Indra of serpents that was sighing’ (Ibid.: 439). Krishna is aware of the danger of Yudhishthira’s tendency to impulsive generosity—he realises that only Bhima has a chance against Duryodhana, and Krishna manoeuvres it such that it is Bhima who is chosen for the duel. Bhima steps forward like an ‘elephant that has been separated from the herd’, eager to fulfil his promise to Draupadi (Ibid.: 443). Bhima recites Duryodhana’s sins, but all know that it is action and victory that will count. Duryodhana asks: ‘What is the need to speak a lot?’—this is repeated throughout the fight as Bhima continually vents his fury (Ibid.: 444, 527). Speech, and the rationale of justice, is dharma, but it is the contingency (of success/failure) of war that counts (artha). And it is with artha in view that Duryodhana, at the outset, wonders if this will be a ‘fair fight’, knowing well how all the Kaurava generals were tricked into their deaths (Ibid.: 444). On the hour of battle, Balarama—Krishna’s brother, guru to both Duryodhana and Bhima, and one who had remained neutral in the war—arrives. The text digresses at some length regarding where Balarama had been during the war—he had gone on a pilgrimage ‘towards the Sarasvati’ with a large retinue, generously donating to all in need (Ibid.: 447). Yet, pilgrimage and charity alone are not dharma, and the true admixture of dharma and artha remains to be sorted in this encounter between stellar warriors. The duel begins: ‘the scorchers of

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enemies were like Destiny and Death … like two suns that had risen at the time of destruction’ (Ibid.: 523–524). It is an exuberant and extended fight, long-awaited, full of skill as well as brute strength, ‘two Garudas [eagle/kite] who were after the same serpent’ (Ibid.: 533). Krishna becomes aware that ‘using dharma, Bhimasena will not be able to win’ (Ibid.: 532). He again bemoans Yudhishthira’s continual misunderstanding of dharma: ‘This has been great stupidity on Dharmaraja [Yudhishthira’s] part. He has staked the entire victory on the outcome of a single encounter’ (Ibid.: 533). The preceding war (with all its heroisms and deceptions and deaths) had been made redundant—if Duryodhana won, the Kauravas would declare final victory, and all of the earlier eighteen days of battle would have been annulled. This went against worldly—artha—principles that Krishna was trying to inculcate. The Bhagavad Gita itself had been about the rightness of war, a counter to Arjuna’s renunciatory impulse. Ironically, it is Krishna who understands and affirms Duryodhana’s relentless this-worldliness, the latter’s scepticism of both the after-life, as also the palaces of dharma’s moral imagination—palaces built on quicksand, fragile and misleading. Krishna recognised that at this point of the war, a desperate Duryodhana is ‘single-minded in [their] resolution’ (Ibid.). Krishna decides to have no more of this dangerous foolishness (Yudhishthira’s dharma) and indicates that Bhima attack—against the rules of combat—Duryodhana’s thigh. An exhausted Bhima proceeds to accomplish this, and the very cosmos registers the injustice: ‘Lakes and wells vomited blood. Extremely swift-flowing rivers began to flow in the reverse direction’ (Ibid.: 535). The tide of the duel is unfairly turned, and Duryodhana falls, wounded. Bhima kicks the fallen Duryodhana’s head with his left foot to add insult to injury. Bhima adds, without irony, that ‘there is no guile … no deception in gambling with the dice with us. We resort to the strength of our own arms and counter our enemies’ (Ibid.: 536). Yudhishthira realises the unfairness of the taunting, and asks Bhima to show more respect to a

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fallen warrior. Balarama, watching this naked injustice, grows furious, and scolds Bhima using troubling language: ‘Shame that one should exhibit the valour of a shudra and strike below the navel’ (Ibid.: 538). One notes the argumentation that sutures action to class—suddenly Bhima is a shudra in whom artha, rather than dharma, rules. Yet the indeterminacy of the dharma–artha dyad is plainly exposed—can, for example artha-means lead to dharma-ends? This dilemma traverses Krishna as much as Yudhishthira, and indeed it is this indeterminacy that Duryodhana exposes as hollow in his frank attestation of artha being the only real end for a warrior, with dharma only attending as a self-serving screen. The moment when he lies wounded and insulted would seem to confirm his scepticism of the Pandavas’ lofty claims. The neutral Balarama is enraged and moves to strike Bhima. Krishna restrains him, pleading the larger righteousness of the Pandavas, as well as their family relation—the Pandavas are cousins of Balarama and Krishna. Dharma is not as detached and impersonal as it claims to be. Balarama is no simpleton: Dharma is followed by the virtuous. But dharma is also followed for two reasons—artha, for those who are addicted to artha, and kama, for those who are addicted to it [kama]. Those who obtain great happiness follow dharma, artha and kama, without oppressing dharma and artha, or dharma and kama, or kama and artha. (Ibid.: 539)

Ideally all should be able to be follow all values harmoniously. But according to Balarama, Bhima has clearly followed adharma. Krishna parries, and argues from a different angle—he says that Balarama was speaking in anger, and that rage is adharmic in itself. Balarama responds that this incident will blight forever the claim of the victors (Pandavas) to have fought a war for dharma, with dharma, i.e., as means and ends, which is what it should ideally be. The worldly Duryodhana would be remembered for fighting ethically even if for an unjust cause—can one be sure that his is the greater sin?

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The incident captures in miniature the Mahabharata’s snaking vectors of dharma and artha—in times of conflict, are they best seen as continuums or aporias or chiasms? On hearing Balarama, Krishna and Yudhishthira engage in a minor quarrel themselves. The latter says in some exasperation: how does it matter whether it was dharma or adharma?’ (Ibid.: 540). Krishna understands—he says it is now Yudhishthira’s duty (dharma!) to get on with the task of governance. Governance itself is a strange, unresolved intermixture of power, justice and prosperity that is contained within a moral compass—its opaque boundaries ultimately lie with the sovereign: ‘Rule over it and follow your own dharma’ (Ibid.: 541). All around them was the exhilaration of victory, and talk of moral niceties seem out of place amidst the exhaustion. Relief for the end of war, sorrow at the many deaths, greed at the prospect of conquered gold—all these seem more authentic appraisals of the moment. All this is at play while Duryodhana lies still alive, wounded, trying to rise. He manages to speak again of the overwhelming injustice of his defeat. He addresses Krishna directly: ‘Do you think I do not know what you told Arjuna? You have slaughtered thousands of kings through unfair means. You have used many crooked means. But you suffer no shame or abhorrence on account of that’ (Ibid.: 543). He lists, without rebuttal, the unfair killings of Bhishma, Drona, Karna: Had you fought me, Karna, Bhishma and Drona through fair means, it is certain that you would not have been victorious. However, you adopted ignoble and deceitful methods. There were many kings who followed their own dharma. But you caused them to follow you and thus to be killed. (Ibid.: 544)

Krishna responds by pointing to Duryodhana’s generic wickedness. Yet the power of Duryodhana’s questions is undeniable. If all are guilty, then Duryodhana being least hypocritical (and most openly greedy about worldly power) is less guilty. Duryodhana claimed the virtue of living his life honestly and openly—when he had power

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he revelled in it, and when he is on the verge of defeat, he is happy to die bravely. This is the closest to the martial virtue of a warrior— it is superior to the confused vacillations by Yudhishthira between dharmic love of peace, as well as filial and public duty to war. Duryodhana is the one who had been true to his dharma—in the manner Krishna had recommended in the Bhagavad Gita to Arjuna. Duryodhana always unabashedly felt and acted as a warrior: ‘I have ruled the earth, up to the frontiers of the ocean. I have placed my foot on the heads of enemies. Who is as fortunate as I am … Even if I am slain, who can be more fortunate than I am?’ (Ibid.). It is a far-reaching claim, exceeding his immediate audience with their defensive rationalisations. Duryodhana’s native martial pride exposes the rich heart of the meditation on fundamental values that makes the Mahabharata so fertile, especially when some of these values lie in uneasy coexistence. The text is richer for its antagonists—the latter are bolder in their conception than the more one-dimensional gods and warriors. At least in this scene of death, Duryodhana steals the sceptre from Krishna and Yudhishthira. The gods rain down flowers on Duryodhana, affirming his values of courage and honour (Ibid.: 545). The Pandavas and Krishna too felt ‘ashamed’, and honoured Duryodhana in his death-hour (Ibid.: 545). Krishna concedes that a fair fight would not have won them the war, and that it was ever thus: In a fair fight, even if we fought bravely, we were incapable of defeating them in battle. That is the reason I thought of means to slay those lords of men … earlier, this was the path followed by the gods, when they killed the asuras [demons]. (Ibid.: 545)

Vyasa had told Arjuna: ‘Where there is dharma, Krishna is there. Where there is Krishna, victory is there’ (Ibid.: 548). This is ambiguous: morality triumphs, but only if god is also on your side—a god who takes the license to (mis)interpret ethics—and thus there is only the circularity of divinity and morality.

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The moral and emotional consequences of war have a long tail—Krishna has to meet Gandhari, the mother of Duryodhana, to appease her not so much for the death of her son, but for the ‘deceitful and fraudulent’ means through which her son was killed (Ibid.: 550). Without this ambivalent explanation, Gandhari’s austerities were ‘capable of burning down the three worlds’ (Ibid.: 550). Only Krishna can repair what he had promoted—only he can mitigate Gandhari’s righteous and fierce anger. A god is not just a warrior but also a diplomat, and dharma has again to be leavened by artha. Sorrowful news must be conveyed thoughtfully to rueful, powerful parents. A wounded Duryodhana’s curse reverberates long: ‘If victory is obtained unfairly, what pleasure can virtuous men obtain from that?’ (Ibid.: 555). He is proud of the constancy of his life, the fact that he had ‘served the three objectives [dharma, artha, kama]. Who can be more fortunate than I am?’ (Ibid.). This livid defiance—up to the very end— makes Duryodhana a cultural figure with a fascinating afterlife. The Sanskrit playwright Bhasa revisits the scene of his final duel—and this book too will revisit this scene in the Conclusion. This scene is also one of the most loved in the repertoire of contemporary performances in art forms such as Yakshagana (Karnataka) and Kathakali (Kerala). Duryodhana is confident of going to heaven—he is sure that he will joyously meet his treasured brothers and friends and soldiers. He is certain that on earth his memory will hold the Pandavas to strict account. Duryodhana hangs on to life till the three Kaurava survivors (including Ashwatthama) visit him. They too affirm his power and nobility and Duryodhana passes his last night among dear friends— it is a gift bestowed by a ‘destiny impossible to cross’ (Ibid.: 559). One must not forget that this leopard never changed his spots: the burning at night of the camps, the extermination of all the children and grandchildren of the Pandavas had Duryodhana’s blessing. Though not instigated by him, that final act is not inconsistent with Duryodhana’s ingenuity, and one must thus judge him by the light of his own unsparing warrior ethos.

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Kama ‘Pursue the pleasure by which neither law nor profit are diminished’. (The Book of Effort: 281) ‘[In Kali yuga] they will believe that no one should be loved as much as a wife’. (Harivamsha: 432) To a casual reader it would seem that kama (romantic and sexual love), in distinction from the other three terms of the quartet, is given much less priority in the Mahabharata. Perhaps there is some truth in such a characterisation. And yet, the text does give us at least a few richly imagined episodes of kama. For one, the imagination of royalty and the court is incomplete without the ideal of the king as expert lover. Just as there were dharma-shastras and artha-shastras (shastras being the canonical texts), there were also numerous kama-shastras, of which the Kamasutra is of course the most famous. The historian Daud Ali has made many pertinent observations on the courtly world of kama— it was an essential social avocation of royal males, insisting on skill and beauty, and included beyond erotics several other arts (cooking, gardening, attire, music, knowledge of birds, and interior decor), sex itself was understood as that involving the entire sensorium of ear, skin, tongue, and so on, even as sensuality was always understood as that which may control the subject rather than the other way around (Ali 2011). One can see that kama (like artha) has both the impulse for autonomy, as also the impulse to lapse back into the familiar dharmic or soteriological (moksha) norms, such as the monogamous marriage or the self-imposed restraint of renunciants. The sections below occur within the first three books (and are all translated by van Buitenen). They cover a wide range, including kama vis-à-vis asceticism in the case of the sage Rishyasringa; the amours of the travelling warrior Arjuna 82

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(who too is supposed to be a celibate in his quest for weapons); the tortuous adventures of a married but separated royal couple, Nala and Damayanti—the separation occasioned by King Nala’s love for dicing— itself a type of self-destructive, even if enticing, kama quest.

Rishyasringa and the Innocence of Sex One may begin with a tale in the third book, The Book of the Forest that speaks to what would seem to be the most evident conflict—that between sex and spiritual practice. The story is as follows: The sage Vibhandaka engages in great austerities amidst nature, far away from other humans. But on seeing a heavenly nymph, he spills his semen in the water. Humans and sexuality may not be available socially but they still infiltrate his mind. A deer drinks the water and gives birth to a sage with an antelope horn. One can see the similarities with the Satyavati story—birth as separable from a heterosexual human couple, and as being mediated by the animal world and the cosmos. The stories are related in a spirit of detachment—the tone is as if it is well accepted that such magical events happen, especially to those engaged in the high human tasks of austerities or kingship. The antelope-horned sage is named Rishyasringa—the Sanskrit word is a literal translation of antelope-horn, and as it is useful to remember that this is an inter-species being, one will retain the name Antelope-horn. The sage is assumed to be male, and this section will use the masculine pronoun—but it may be noted that the inter-species trait would put at least simple notions of masculinity in suspension. To return to the story: Antelope-horn grows up beside his father in the forest. There are no other human beings, or other human–animal beings. He does not seem to question that he has to follow his father’s ascetic ways: The boy [Antelope-horn], always austere, grew up in that very forest. The great-spirited child wore an antelope horn on his head, [...] and hence became famed as Rishyasringa [...] Besides his father, he had

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They continue living far away from other humans. In their world, there are just the two of them engaged in austerities. The antelopehorned sage seems even more at home in (human?) meditation than his father. He does not know that he does not know (of other humans). As far as he is concerned, it is a cosmos filled with the single act of his and his father’s meditation. An ascetic may fear that he accumulates austerities/merits only for himself, but it always turns out that it was needed for some larger cosmic and social purpose. Asceticism also invites a familiar enemy— Indra, the King of the heavens, is determined to seduce him away from his stated path. In times of drought, Indra had to be appeased, and a petitioning king was told ‘Fetch the hermit’s son Rishyasringa, he is a forest child, ignorant of woman and devoted to uprightness. If the great seer descends to your realm, Parjanya [Indra] will at once rain forth’ (Ibid.: 433–434). The king asked the courtesans to help out. But they were caught between a rock and a hard place—the king’s wrath versus the sage (Antelope-horn’s father)’s wrath. Further, Antelope-horn’s reputation is so formidable that most courtesans refuse to even try— or perhaps there is some inexplicit discomfort with his interspecial sexuality. Only one older woman agrees to volunteer her daughter for the task. The older woman sets about the seduction purposefully—in the mountains adjacent to their hermitage, she built a ‘water-borne hermitage [full of] artificial trees of various blossoms and fruit and landscaped with many kinds of bowers that yielded sweet fruit of every taste’ (Ibid.: 434). The daughter employed was ‘renowned for her wit’ (Ibid.). In time, it is engineered that the daughter pass by him on a boat, and that they begin interacting with one other. One is curious how Antelope-horn, despite growing up with only his father, and with meditation as his only act, has nevertheless developed a sense of language and wit. One assumes that to live in silent meditation was to forgo social language. Yet the

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mother–daughter duo is confident. The daughter greets Antelopehorn. The courtesies of her language are at least as important as the novelty of her appearance. To what must be a wonderstruck Antelopehorn, new uses of language as well as a new type of body is available. The young woman enquires of his health, asks of his austerities, and his relations with his father. All this must have dazzled him. He seems to know how to reply to humans. His theoretical knowledge of ‘Law’ (dharma) now has a live addressee—he offers her the traditional water for washing her feet, as well as roots and ripened fruit, a cushion of kusha grass with black deerskin (Ibid.: 435). The woman notes that in her culture it was they who offered food, and she proceeds to offer him tasty food, conveying a sense of warmth and pleasant luxury. She gives him fragrant garlands, clothes, liquors—the sage feels a rising, a strange pleasure, a homecoming of the body after the rigors of asceticism. This is heightened when she laughs and plays with him (with a ball), occasionally touching and embracing him in the course of the sport. An atavistic virginity is seduced out of its shell of flesh. On seeing wonderment, she retreats, using the power of her glance, indicating that she would have stayed, but obligations take her away. The seduction had its effect—‘love crazed Rishyasringa … went out of his mind/Left empty by feelings that followed her steps/He heaved many sighs, a picture of grief ’ (Ibid.: 436). One must remember that Antelope-horn has not really met a human other than his father. So there is a sense of his father, and a sense perhaps of the mysterious maleness of the father. What can a masculinist sense of one’s own sexuality be in this context where there were no women to offset that maleness? As to himself, he is part-animal and part-human. His mother has vanished from the narrative—there may be no sense of even an absence of the feminine. Or perhaps the absence always secretly haunts him in a way he can neither acknowledge nor assuage nor understand. He does sense the beauty and remoteness of the forest-world he inhabits. Nature serves its conflicting tropes—thus far it has been the safe, complete space of

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becalmed meditation. But soon it will also serve as the site of (mostly unsanctioned) trysts, a location of thrill and danger. When the young woman appears to Antelope-horn, he sees a wholly new type of being. He has not seen a second human (other than his father), and here, the second human happens to physically look different. The text is a marvellous imagination of the mystery of human sexuality—of innocence, of maleness and femaleness that may invoke sexualities that go beyond limiting binaries. What is this new, unknown type of body that causes his body to respond so? What is the appropriate response? A young woman is a body and mind that he cannot ‘re-cognise’. Is this response nameable as desire? The other is not yet seen as a full identity, or as possibility of ‘union with’, but just as this mystery that catalyses one in a new, visceral fashion. In contrast, from the perspective of the young woman, there is some grasp of a situation that seems—initially at least—familiar. She plays up a familiar seduction routine of faux-coyness and retreats into the beauty of nature. But even for her, Antelope-horn’s appearance (the animal–human conjoining), and perhaps something in his movement and gaze must have arrested her, and indicated that this was no routine seduction. The text does not elaborate much from her vantage, but the situation encourages speculation. What is desire when it is imagined on bodies that are interspecial, or that have very unusual upbringings? It is worth paying attention to the language of this birthing and unravelling of desire. One can only infer Antelope-horn’s feelings from the way he describes the visitor to his father. To Antelopehorn, everything is describable visually but he is not quite able to name everything clearly. All of the woman is new to him—and this includes the full appearance of the woman as bearing not only her body but ornaments and behaviour. Earrings, anklets, beauty, breasts, sport, wine—all these serve a continuum of experience. When this conglomeration of descriptions and objects leaves, he is left without a sense of the unity of that visual heap of adjectives. He also feels

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a foreign, unaccountable feeling—a sense of aloneness, a sense that nature and meditation and father are no longer sufficient. There is a sense of life being greater than he had been taught to envisage, an unfamiliar sense of incompleteness, a desire to return to the interactions and the feelings felt in the presence of the visitor. The father is unsympathetic—he simply tells his son to shun the visitor. When the visitor returns to Antelope-horn, he finds himself unable to take leave of her presence. They sail in a boat to the king’s palace, where Antelope-horn meets other humans. Over time, Antelope-horn is acculturated into husband-hood and fatherhood, but what is worth reflecting on is the earlier structural moment of his wonderment at the discovery of longing, desire, and loneliness—he had looked for her three days and nights without rest. He had been taken violently out of himself, and his life was suddenly exposed as one of hollow habit. It is the foundational moment of desire for the visitor’s presence (who could have been, in colloquial terms, ‘from another planet’) that effectively renders him human, and thus, socially, bonded. It is this moment of desire that allows the precipitation of the social norms that follow—marriage, fatherhood, citizenship and so on. Desire (kama) is part of this larger moral scape of the Mahabharata— desire that transcends species, that allows secret passages between human semen and a doe’s egg, a sense of the web that connects and traverses, making all beings part of a larger biome and cosmos. Desire that is strongest is that which operates at this plane, beyond the straitjacket of species and the norms of human gender. Asceticism in itself does not preclude virility, even though it would seem to foreclose the act of virility. Indeed, asceticism often enhances and intensifies virility—the Arjuna section of this chapter demonstrates this. Antelope-horn’s father is described as one who had ‘perfected his soul with austerities, whose virility was neverfailing, and whose lustre was Prajapati’s [lord of creation] (Ibid.: 433). Asceticism is often needed to beget the needed child (typically son) who continues the species. The Harivamsha alludes to this dilemma

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of asexual renunciation versus the need to propagate. God had first tried to create people by thought, but too few were being born thus, so the god then chose the ‘dharma of sexual intercourse. He [god] thus accepted Prajapati Virana’s daughter, Asikni, as his wife. She was full of extremely great austerities and was capable of sustaining the worlds. Thus, five thousand valiant sons were born …’ (Harivamsha: 11). It may have been the rising sap of that reproductive virility that caused Antelope-horn’s father to spontaneously spill semen—for it happened on his sighting of Urvashi, the heavenly nymph. After Antelope-horn’s first encounter with the woman-visitor, the father Vibhandaka notices that the ritual obligations of firewood, ladles, cows, and suchlike had not been taken care of. He observes his son as ‘brooding … absentminded … troubled’ (The Book of the Forest: 436). The son replies that a ‘student’ had visited. His [Antelope-horn has no concept of ‘female’] eyes were white and black as cakoras [bird]/His braids were blue-black, translucent, and fragrant,/Fastened with gold thread and very long./At his throat he wore what looked like cups … And below the throat he had two globes,/Without a hair on them, most beguiling./About the navel his waist was pinched./But his hips again were very full: And beneath his habit there glittered a girdle,/Like the belt of mine, but made of gold./ What is more, and a wonderful thing it was. At his feet he seemed to have a tinkle:/To his hands likewise were tied some strings./Like my prayer beads, but his made music./Whenever he moved, these beads of his/Would sound like mad wild geese in a pond … His voice was like the cuckoo’s song,/That bothered my innermost soul as I listened …. He would hit it [a ball] and then swing himself around,/His body aquiver like a wind-tossed tree:/When I saw him, father, a child of the Gods./Great joy and love were born in me./He embraced my body time and again,/And pulling my hair he lowered my mouth:/He placed his mouth upon mine and sounded/A sound that begot great pleasure in me … Those fruit of his, I ate them all … Magnanimously, he gave me liquids/To imbibe of utterly flavourful taste:/As soon as I drank them, surpassing joy/Seized hold of me and the earth seemed to sway

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Kama …. His leaving left me out of my mind,/And my body feels exceedingly hot./I want to go back to him straightaway,/And have him return here every day./I am going, father, I’ll go back to him./Pray tell what the name of his life rule is,/I want to observe it together with him,/The awesome austerity practiced by him! (Ibid.: 436–438)

Perhaps this is still a masculinist description, even if Antelope-horn is supposed to imagine the woman as a man—as he did not know of gender. The person has introduced to him new bodies, language, music, jewellery, dance, and sport. This undercuts traditional norms of gender by emphasising the experience of the other, rather than one’s own reaction. A person is loved as a totalising experience. This is also a desire that does not see itself as contradicting austerities, or understand austerities as only a solitary pursuit (or a pursuit with a revered father). Indeed, the history of Antelope-horn’s austerity has arguably sharpened and elevated desire. When Antelope-horn relays all this, his father pronounces it demonic. He reiterates the traditional views of austerity: ‘A selfcontrolled hermit must not frequent them/At all, if he seeks for the worlds of the strict’ (Ibid.: 438). But the norm of the ascetic was itself an outlier norm, and it may be argued that when Antelopehorn inhabits the world of romance, sex, fatherhood, and wealth, he is ‘returning’ to both a biological and social home, away from the digression of the forest-life. In time, after sufficient insistence and persuasion, the father accedes to his son’s fate, and basks in the joy of a daughter-in-law, whose name is given to us only now—Shanta. The father agrees to not burn down the kingdom with the fire of his rage. Being the Mahabharata, there is a last twist, for the norm of asceticism does not go gentle into the good night. The father makes the son promise that when Antelope-horn has a son, he (Antelopehorn) will return to the forest (and, for good measure, be waited on by his wife). This, says the father, is in the illustrious manner of Rohini waiting on the moon, Arundhati on Vashishta, Damayanti on Nala, and Sachi on Indra. Wifehood is indifferent to palace or forest.

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Despite the conservative ending, the story has moments that evoke fecund attractions beyond gender and species. It seems to awaken a submerged, unsuspected body, a body within the body. Asceticism has whetted, not dampened the interior links across the cosmos. The story of Antelope-horn is within the overall cycle of the Pandavas’ tour of the sacred ford—the Pandavas’ journey is itself a story of asceticism subservient to larger aims; these latter aims include the multivalent lessons of kama. The Pandavas are royalty, and princes have to engage many domains. The luxuriant eroticisms of the forest are connected through secret interior channels to the psychological demands of kingship. The stories of kama that the Pandavas discover, embody and learn from, reveal an imagination of desire that inter-penetrates the world. Though the stories themselves often seem fantastical and bizarre, they are also, as in the case of Antelope-horn, full of wonder at the erotic joust that the body ceaselessly is.

Nala and Damayanti: A King Gambles with His Love Another tale that encapsulates the joust, with its unexpected digressions is one of the most well-known and loved stories from the Mahabharata—the Nala–Damayanti story. It too is a gentle, skilful, expert play on romance and its vicissitudes. Almost everything in the finely plotted story speaks of the cool breezes of romance and kama. As the historian Daul Ali had noted, the kama-theme involves not just the core romance in its unravelling and ravelling, but all that is associated with it—enemies, birds, the pitched and volatile psyches of humans and gods. Each pulsing of the plot is filled with an air of fantasy. For the time of the story is a self-contained universe, and one forgets the broader plot of the Pandavas and the Kauravas—this is somewhat uncommon in the Mahabharata. This section tracks the story in detail, as the full meaning—and pleasure—of the tale can only be illuminated by its patient unfolding. Many stitches of the plot reveal delicate arrangements building on evermore delicate

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arrangements. This is not a narrative built upon a few single conceits or broad strokes, but an expansive interlacing. The story begins typically: Nala is a king and—as such protagonists must inevitably be—is ‘all good virtues, handsome, and a connoisseur of horses’ (The Book of the Forest: 322). Fatally, he also loved to gamble. This is consistent with the darkly playful spirit of the Mahabharata, especially the character of Yudhishthira. There was, equally inevitably, a beautiful daughter Damayanti (whose limbs were as ‘garlanded lightning’) of the neighbouring king (Ibid.: 323). The beauty of Nala and Damayanti were so widely and frequently praised that they soon heard of each other. The constant recitation of each other’s virtues and beauty caused them to fall in love, unbeknown to each other, or indeed, to anyone outside their hearts. Nala, being a bold king, could not hold himself back, and so he set forth to wait patiently outside Damayanti’s quarters. There he picked up a goose— the frightened goose pleads that if Nala spares its life, it will go to Damayanti and praise Nala such that Damayanti will not think of any other person. Nala agrees. The goose manoeuvres carefully to be chased by Damayanti in the park the next morning—when Damayanti was close enough, and there was enough privacy, the bird recites the glory of Nala. The praise was not without flattery to both. The goose further asserted that only Damayanti was worthy of Nala’s beauty, and that the two were complementary in every way. Damayanti, no less assertive than Nala, takes a quick, bold decision: she asks the goose to convey her love. After the bird leaves, Damayanti is no longer herself … She was prone to brooding, dejected, pale and wan, and was given to much sighing. She would raise her eyes to heaven, or sink in thought, looking like a woman crazed, and she found no pleasure at all in lying, sitting, and eating. Neither day nor night did she rest, often crying of woe. (Ibid.: 324)

This description of love was to be greatly influential in subsequent Sanskrit literature. Love was not only represented in ethereal terms,

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but also literalised in this registering on the body, breath, the postures of rumination, and distracted cognition. Damayanti’s friends notice her behaviour and tell her father. The father decides that this behaviour must be because she has come of age—she must be married off soon, and in the appropriate fashion. He arranges a grand swayamvara. One is familiar with this tradition from the Mahabharata—there are the important instances of Draupadi, Subhadra, and Amba’s fateful swayamvaras. This swayamvara was to be no less momentous. For the gods too hear about it and, first curious, then competitively desirous of Damayanti, they decide to take part. On the way they espy Nala, and for a moment—astonished at his beauty—they seem to even forget Damayanti. But they catch themselves in time. They cannily ask him to be their envoy. This puts him in an awkward position, for, as he tells them, he is a suitor too. How could he represent both his competitors and himself? But the gods insist, and Nala has to yield. They help him secretly enter Damayanti’s quarters. He sees her for the first time, and falls evermore deeply in love. But he realises that he has to keep his promise, and so he tries to hide his true feelings. To make matters more bathetic, all the other women of the court, seeing his fabled beauty, fall in love with him. Only Damayanti is so bold as to ask him who he is. She, already in love, now sees this new man who was, as she candidly admits, ‘feeding my heart’s desire’ (Ibid.: 326). Nala confesses who he is, and also that he was now perforce an envoy. Damayanti remonstrates: ‘I myself and whatever possessions I own are all yours—show your feelings with confidence …’ (Ibid.). She talks of the goose that helped them exchange love messages, and said that the whole pretence of the swayamvara was so that she could openly claim him. Nala is heartbroken, but dutifully argues that he is only a mortal, whereas she is being wooed by divinities. The caprice of the gods could cost both of them their lives—the gods are not used to being crossed. But Damayanti resists—she tells him to bring the gods with him to the swayamvara, and she will choose him there.

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She says that she is willing to take on the wrath of the gods. On the day of the swayamvara, the grand kings and gods assemble, and the scene is resplendent with their proud presence—akin to a ‘mountain cave with tigers’ (Ibid.: 327). Damayanti enters—and then, to her surprise, sees five men of ‘identical aspect’ (Ibid.: 328). She does not know which of these identical five was Nala. She realises that the gods had tricks up their sleeve. But she is determined. She prays that as she has been ever-truthful in love, she must be guided—and then, awarded a higher perception, she notices that one of those five had a shadow, sweat, dust, a garland that was fading, blinked, and had feet that lightly touched the ground. This charming moment of (human, female) ingenuity must have been part of the original core story, which may very well have ended with her clever exposure of the gods’ ruse—in the Mahabharata, this is only the beginning of the gods’ sport. At the moment of the swayamvara she is triumphant: she garlands the sweaty, grimy human, and the gods, in good sport, bless the couple. As indicated, the marriage is not the end, but the commencement of kama’s rigors. One of the gods—Kali—refuses to accept the slight. Even malevolence has to enter through chinks in human behaviour. And so, after twelve years, Kali sees his chance when Nala once ‘attended to the twilight rites without washing his feet’ (Ibid.: 330). Grabbing the solecism, Kali possesses Nala and activates that fatal Mahabharata vice—gambling. Fate has turned: in an ecstasy of gaming that goes on for months, Nala loses everything, even as Damayanti watches ‘ravaged with anguish … overcome with fear and grief ’ (Ibid.). She recognises Nala’s perverse psychology: ‘… for the more the king loses to Pushkara [Kali’s proxy] the more his passion for gambling grows’ (Ibid.: 331). In a replay of the Draupadi story, Nala is asked to bet Damayanti. But in the Nala story, Nala simply leaves in a huff—‘in a single robe, unclad, feeding the grief of his friends’ (Ibid.: 332). Damayanti meekly follows, and they spend the next few nights outside the city they had lost.

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There follows the sort of spectacular image that makes sections of the Mahabharata so arresting. One can see here the conscious literary adornment that the text mostly eschews—a hungry Nala sees some birds with feathers that seem to be made of gold. He throws his robe to catch them, but the birds take hold of the robe and fly. As they fly away, they say that they were the dice—and indeed, it was their intent to deprive him of every last article of possession. Nala is reduced to utter nakedness—there is now only his body, and his wife. He realises at this point that ‘[my] mind is failing me’ (Ibid.). He asks Damayanti to leave him, but she says that she cannot abandon him, especially at this juncture of total loss. They travel awhile together—hungry, ill-clad, dusty. One night, when she is asleep, he, desolate, leaves, thinking she has a better chance without him. It is a low point in their history of kama—love sometimes means to leave, to hope that the other has better fortune without one. When Damayanti wakes, she is panicked—as well as angry at the betrayal. She, who had taken so much loss without demur, finds her old wit and resistance (even at the gods) reappearing. But she is in a bleak, anxious situation. As she wanders confusedly in the forest, a boa attempts to eat her—it seems another nadir. She is ultimately saved by a hunter. After thanking him, she continues her journey. Her ‘bitter grief ’ gives her the courage to wander through outlandish landscapes ‘crazed, wailing, panic-stricken’ (Ibid.: 336–337). She perseveres, keeping faith in sanity and a hope that the tide must turn at some point. After many nights and days, she reaches a hermitage, and tells the inhabitants her sorrowful tale of wandering and loss. The ascetics listen sympathetically, and prophesy that she would eventually reunite with Nala. She is temporarily reassured, but for the present has to simply continue with her travels. She travels by foot or friendly caravan. As if her tale of ill-luck had not run out, the caravan is assaulted by musth-stricken elephants. Damayanti wonders at her fate. She should have been fortunate—she was after all a royal maiden who married the king she loved. And yet, she was not only to suffer

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ill-fortune, she was also to bring it on others. She remains adamant that she had done no wrong, and had never wished anyone ill—and then it strikes her anew that maybe all the gods were angry because she had rejected them when she chose Nala. It is a speculation that she cannot confirm, and it does her little good. She trudges on with such thoughts in her mind, barely an agent in her own love-story. In her travels, she enters a neighbouring city— her royal mien attracts the king’s mother, who asks her to stay in the palace as a maid. Nala, in his travels, has been having his own adventures. He saves a snake from a fire—this turns out to be a magic snake that could be easily carried about, and could shrink to the size of a thumb. The snake bites Nala, transforming him to an old, bent man. The snake explains that this was to help Nala. With this disguise, he could learn the art of dicing, and then one day win back his kingdom and beloved wife. The snake also gives him a garment—if he wore the garment, Nala would get back to inhabiting his handsome self. He need no more be the old, bent man. Nala goes to the dicing expert who in return for dicing lessons teaches the king horsemanship and cooking—one discerns the centrality of these art forms in the Mahabharata. The king, it may be remembered, is an epicure. This is with reference to not just the high literary arts, but also humbler arts such as cooking and horse grooming. In Virata’s kingdom (described in book four, The Book of Virata), these arts of horsemanship and cooking were lovingly performed by Nakula and Bhima respectively, and of course Yudhishthira was associated with dicing. The whole situation—of living in deception in another kingdom while plotting revenge—is a miniature prophecy of the fate that awaits the Pandavas. It is a fine example of the Russian-doll quality that the Mahabharata deploys deftly. Multiple frames exemplify the wager of the dice game, with dicing instantiating a larger metaphor of contingency, risk, danger, and an insistence on all-or-nothing stakes. The martial code embodies this essence—death or victory, with all else being only an interregnum of waiting, deception, and preparation.

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The Nala–Damayanti story is admittedly convoluted. It shows kama under its many avatars and tests—the charm and wit of a most unusual courtship, the undeniable obsessions with physical beauty, the fact that this beauty is preyed on even by gods, that this is only partly allayed by female ingenuity, and despite all this, the long afterlife of a love relearned under the conditions of separation (viraha) and hopelessness. The truer love is the love that comes after a journey of self-knowledge. The narrative is in no hurry to conclude its serpentine turns: Damayanti’s father sends out spies to find his daughter, and one of them recognises her despite her utter emaciation. For, in spite of all hardship, her ‘light undarkens all horizons … the image of Love’s Lust’ (Ibid.: 346). The spy confronts her, and she decides to return to her natal city. She continues to pine for her wayward Nala: her happiness depended on his return. The father sends out more spies to find him. One of them reaches Nala’s town, and when the spy relates the sorrowful tale of the wronged Damayanti, Nala (disguised) could not help reacting with sighs and tears. Damayanti hears of this—but knowing Nala would not simply return, she pretends to organise a second swayamvara the next day, as there is now the widespread assumption that Nala is dead. She knows that the expert horsemanship required to come from such a distant town could only be achieved by Nala—again, her ingenuity saves the day. Nala’s ‘heart was rent asunder from anguish’ on hearing of Damayanti’s tale, but he was not one to simply return to her (Ibid.: 351). In this finely plotted tale, the metaphoric dicing game is ultimately between him and Damayanti—he realises that either Damayanti is ‘demented with grief ’ or that the attempt to lure him with the swayamvara is a ruse. Either way, he is discontented. As the expert horseman/charioteer he claimed to be, he races to the swayamvara—like the first time when he was an envoy, this time too he is still technically only a charioteer for the king. The king is so surprised at the horsemanship that he wonders if this man—though looking so different—is not indeed the legendary horseman Nala himself?

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The king wishes to learn the secrets of this horsemanship—in return, he offers to teach Nala the secrets of dicing! Learning the secrets of dicing leads to a visceral reaction in Nala— he literally vomits out the venom of the god Kali who had put him through all this trouble in the first place (Ibid.: 354). Nala is restored to his original beauty—all the signs are there for a restoration of his love and kingdom. When Nala returns to the familiar city of Damayanti, all the animals (not just the horses, but also the elephants and the peacocks) recognise him, and welcome him back. It is another charming moment—so much of Nala’s charm (that defuses his addictions and stubbornness) is his genuine, consistent love for animals. Damayanti too waits for him, animal-like, longing for his ‘delicious touch’ (Ibid.: 355). But she does not recognise him in his disguise of the older man. Disguise and revelation are central to the string of knots in the plot—ever since the gods disguised themselves, appearances are not to be trusted. This is even as the physical beauty of the lovers is continually proclaimed. Such is the aporia of the physical in kama—it can neither be denied nor trusted. Damayanti sends the older man a servant, Keshini, to see through possible disguise—when the servant speaks to Nala of the tragedy of Damayanti, Nala works hard to suppress his emotion. But again, he cannot help his tears. So many times in the tale, it is the recitation of love (and its concomitant of parting)—the mediation of love through speaking—that reveals love for what it heart-bracingly is. Keshini is tasked with exposing Nala’s disguise. Keshini observes the nobility of his conduct, and the little magical events that trail him—for example, he crushes flowers and they turn more fragrant. Damayanti has Keshini steal his food, and as she tastes the flavourful meat she recognises her husband’s culinary mastery—most unstereotypically, here is a male king who is recognised by his wife via his cooking. There is also the fact that he appears old, and this is at odds with the text’s insistence on male and female beauty. Nothing in Damayanti flinches from his aged aspect—his youthful beauty is only useful in

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pinning a beloved husband’s identity. It could be plausibly argued that for her all along his true beauty was within. Though throughout the tale much is made of Nala’s beauty, Damayanti hardly seems to notice it, and instead sees him as her true partner irrespective of appearance. Kama is made of sterner stuff. To finally resolve the matter, Damayanti has him come to her room, and asks how cruel must Nala be to abandon his wife? The statement again bears witness to the importance of language. On hearing her plea, Nala can bear no more—he confesses that he has paid much for that thoughtlessness. The final resolution is not far away. He explains that his austerities— partly the repentance of his dice-addiction—will exorcise the demon trapped within him. After the demon blazes away, Nala will regain his youthful form, and they may again celebrate marriage. Damayanti confirms that the idea of the swayamvara was her stratagem to find the true Nala, as only he could ‘drive horses a hundred leagues in one day’ (Ibid.: 360). The gods affirm her purpose and her ‘vast treasure of honour’ (Ibid.). On cue, flowers fall from heaven, there are cool breezes, and fine, distant percussion rings across the line of the horizon. Nala returns to his own body—his body is no longer the site of competing curses or the jealousies of the gods. He then, as it were, brings this body out to the citizens who again acclaim the return of their king. There is a simultaneous reclamation of king (in both dharma and artha aspects), as well as in the mode of husband (kama). The values of the epic are happily reaffirmed: ‘When one practices law, profit and pleasure [dharma, artha and kama] at the right time he finds the aggregate of law, profit and pleasure here and hereafter’ (The Book of Effort: 276). The story is not complete till the final game of dice to revenge that long and arduous past. Somewhat unbelievably (though still within the martial high-stakes code), Nala stakes Damayanti and the city all over again—if the old opponent (Pushkara) was not willing to play, there was always the threat of a real battle. Pushkara laughs in anticipation of victory. But by now Nala, who has learnt the art

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well, wins. He benevolently returns all the wealth he has won. The game—like battle—was played not as an impulsive or greedy addict, but as a detached code of martial and aesthetic expectation. The sage Brihadashva recites this tale to Yudhishthira. He draws the obvious parallels to Yudhishthira’s plight. He remarks that the Pandavas were lucky in that they had each other and Draupadi, unlike Nala and Damayanti who were separated from each other. The Damayanti– Nala story is one of both profound charm as well as profound grief: ‘To him who narrates the great story of Nala and listens to it ceaselessly, misfortune will never befall’ (The Book of the Forest: 364). Its charm lies in its miniature-epic quality, its control of grief and faith, of the belief that love will finally conquer, and thus it is love that is the true warrior. There is both warning and hypnotism in the tale, hence its timelessness. In the terms of this book, it is a tale imbued with kama at diverse levels—the charm of the capricious plotline, the content of the story itself (dice, horses, disguise), and the ambivalence of its didacticism. The following section—the last in this chapter—is another take on kama; again, kama is seen as embracing and enriching seemingly-disparate themes: martial ethics, the ideal of the journey, the beauties of nature and art, and the faith that art and love will triumph through suffering and patience.

Arjuna: Asceticism, Nomadism, Love This section will follow Arjuna’s trajectory up to the beginning of the war: it is in these earlier episodes that Arjuna is revealed as not only a warrior, but as also a serious connoisseur of kama. The event and devastation of war have prioritised Arjuna’s image as a warrior, but an analysis of his earlier life show him to be more fully rounded. Focalising kama through Arjuna will also give further precision to the theme. The earlier sections focused on Antelope-horn, and Nala–Damayanti, but these are more marginal characters to the epic than Arjuna who is one of its central heroes. Many characters in the

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Mahabharata represent different dimensions of kama, but Arjuna perhaps represents these dimensions more fully than any other single, major character. For the purpose of this section, Arjuna is less important as a singular, distinctive character—he is used instead to diagram the thematics of the many possible sub-themes of kama. Even in popular imagination, Arjuna is revered as a great warrior, but is also equally venerated as the eunuch dance-teacher Brihannala, as also the solitary wanderer who takes in the beauty of nature (forests, mountains, rivers) in his spiritual/martial quest—for weapons via austerities. The milieu of the Mahabharata does not see a necessary contradiction between these aims. By now it should be clear that kama is less the narrower notion of sexual pleasure, and more a fuller sense of the cultivation of varied kinds of bodily pleasure. The athletic warrior’s body with its scars is also a dancer’s body perfumed with sandalwood as well as the wiry, resourceful body that wanders amid nature’s beauty. Arjuna embodies this diverse phenomenology of the body, one reaching for maximal openness to nature’s possibilities. His mother Kunti had given birth to children from nature’s many gods—Bhima from Vayu (the god of wind), Arjuna from Indra (god of rain), the twins Nakula and Sahadeva from Ashwin (the horse-gods), and Yudhishthira from the god of dharma and death (i.e., a moral order). The natural and moral order is interwoven into the very bodies of the Pandava brothers through their mother’s bodily actions. One may begin the narrative of Arjuna from the first book, The Book of the Beginning, so that one can get a sense of all these dimensions. The List of Contents in this book contains not just the title of chapters but also brief summaries. It is indicated that Arjuna (along with his siblings) spent the early years of their lives in the forest as their father Pandu had retired there, away from the rigors of rulership. These years are spent in ‘holy and pure forests, and in the hermitages of the great’ (The Book of the Beginning: 23). A deep sense of the beauty of the natural world was bred into the Pandavas, and

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they did not lose this sense of wonder even when they began to live in the city and court. Years later, they were to be again exiled to the forest. For the Pandavas, these forests were never unwelcome—they were familiar from childhood, and functioned as a sacred, mobile home for their restless, wandering selves. They were however aware that their responsibilities tended toward city-life. Citizens loved the princes, and so they learned the ways of the court; ‘all the townspeople were joyful because of their love of them [Pandavas]’ (Ibid.). In the epic, cities were not set up as moral opposition to the forests—the responsibility of the warrior, in the prime of their years, was to governance and war, but forests held their own appeal and power. There is little sense that the corruption of the city may require one to retire to the bucolic forest—one will come across this easy continuity of city and forest in the Harivamsha too. It was all assumed to be a happy continuum— education itself cut across the urban–forest divide. Even in the forest, it was the sages that taught the Vedas—the same class of people taught the same class of texts, whether in the city or forest. Arjuna is a natural warrior from his earliest childhood. His discipline came from joy and pride in his athleticism, his sense of his body, his co-ordination of eye and hand. War-training was not blood-lust, but a pride in skill, as well as love for his teacher, Drona. The latter takes to teaching Arjuna to shoot arrows at night, and there is a shared joy in the skill of archery, a single-minded devotion to the discipline (Ibid.: 270). It is this detached use of skill without personal grievance that Krishna was to remind Arjuna of in the Bhagavad Gita—moral code enjoined violence, but only when one was sure that it was both objectively just, and subjectively detached. Arjuna’s life and learning was just such a preparation: when he got it right, ‘Drona shuddered with pleasure’ (Ibid.: 273). Arjuna’s successful bowmanship eventually wins the hand of the much sought-after queen, Draupadi. Krishna smilingly congratulates him with a ‘festoon of white flowers’ (Ibid.: 353). It is the beginning of a momentous friendship. Arjuna beats back the kings who question his right over

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Draupadi. It is decided that he has to share his wife with his brothers. Marriage brings together some of the more uncomfortable mixtures of dharma and kama, but the brothers and Draupadi seem to manage their co-habitation. But perhaps it was always fragile, and one day, the contract breaks. The agreement was that none would enter the room when another brother was with Draupadi. However, at one point Arjuna is forced to, as he needed to get weapons urgently to help an importunate Brahmin. The punishment was to spend twelve months in a forest, away from the others. Arjuna leaves with a retinue to the forests on the banks of the Ganga. He decides to use this separation from his brothers to concentrate on furthering his martial skills for the war that everyone senses was imminent. But one cannot predict what happens in forests, amidst communities whose customs may be very different. One day, bathing in the river, he finds himself sharply pulled down into the waters by the daughter of the king of snakes, a woman named Ulupi. Under the waters, he discovers, there is a parallel order of life. Arjuna offers the fire rites as he would on land—this imagination of a subterranean world is similar to the final episode of Duryodhana’s life where he waits wounded, protected by the waters of a lake. In the case of Ulupi, the fact that she is a snake/human is consistent with the concern with snakes throughout the Mahabharata. After all, the whole narrative of the epic—the outermost frame—had started with Arjuna’s descendent Janamajeya attempting to kill snakes. Snakes appear in many stories as open-ended symbols, sometimes benign, sometimes malevolent, always powerful, a testament to the enduring mystery of nature. The episode with Ulupi is a charming and fantastical romance— like parts of the Nala–Damayanti story, it affirms the simpler meaning of kama. Ulupi falls irresistibly, helplessly in love with Arjuna: ‘I am churned’ (Ibid.: 400). Arjuna too is immediately attracted to Ulupi, but he feels obliged to tell her that part of his punishment was that he had to be celibate. Ulupi assures him (with a non-human logic?) that the vow of celibacy applied only to his relations with Draupadi! She

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argues that her love was greater than any punishment that he would suffer for such an infraction. Thus it must be honoured! Without too much hesitation Arjuna spends the night with her. The next morning, he rises through the waters and continues with his journey. All around are verdant, sacred landscapes, mountains, coasts, and rivers. More romance surely awaits amidst such fertility. The vow of celibacy seems to be long forgotten, or perhaps Ulupi has successfully convinced him. A princess Chitrangada awaits him. Her father insists that she could only be promised to Arjuna if he promises to impregnate her, giving the kingdom an heir. Arjuna spends three months, unlike the solitary night with Ulupi. But after many nights, he reverts from his romantic to his warrior self, and returns to a life of wandering. Such recesses are always filled with him saving quietist ascetics from enemies. He has never forgotten his primary duty: A baron’s life is always conquest. For were he to lack all virtue, a man of prowess still routs his enemies: were he to possess all virtues, what use is he without prowess? All virtues have their being in power … afterward the saffron robe will be easily available for hermits who hanker for peace. (The Book of the Assembly Hall: 62)

It is precisely because of—and not in spite of—the fact that he is a powerful warrior that Arjuna can have adventures in love, and it is his warrior-ship that arguably causes him to be desirable in the first place. The warrior has to know when to put on his armour, but also when to lay his quiver aside. The sage Prahlada had noted: ‘He who is gentle at the right time and hard at the right time finds happiness in this world and the world hereafter’ (The Book of the Forest: 276). Arjuna returns to Chitrangada to see the son he has begotten, but does not stay. Instead, he joins up and picnics with Krishna. Together, they ‘fetched foodstuffs … watched actors and dancers’ (The Book of the Beginning: 405). Krishna takes him to his home city of Dvaraka. What was supposed to be a punishment with regard to Draupadi turns out to be an adventure of love and friendship: ‘For many nights

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he stayed with Krishna in Krishna’s lovely house that was filled with gems and pleasurable things’ (Ibid.). Arjuna exemplifies the warrior ethos—he is not a pure hedonist (he has a great sense of discipline, loyalty to brothers, friends, wives). But perhaps more than any other character, his gravitas was complemented by a carefree counterethos of adventure and nomadism. There is also a warm sense of the fantastical—underwater snake-lovers and outlandish non-human enemies he is always happy to wound or kill. The warrior-class, when not soldiering, was happy to indulge in peace’s vivid pleasures. Arjuna and Krishna enjoy the pleasures of each other’s company, and also jewellery, music, fragrant aloe and sandalwood, flecked and osprey hued horses, feasts in opulently terraced and turreted homes, alcohol: ‘drunk, always war-crazed, wearing divine garlands and raiment’ (Ibid.: 406). This is kama in its fullness, and sans guilt—its full meaning involves all these elements of the kingdoms of peace and prosperity: fantasy, revelry, pleasure, friendship. It is not surprising that in contradistinction to Krishna-rajya (rule), Ram-rajya has always been imagined as more austere, more morally weighted. But one cannot revel endlessly, and there is always the undercurrent of kingly responsibility. The sage Vyasa urges Arjuna to attain weapons from Indra and Rudra (Shiva). This results in the famous encounter with Shiva disguised as a mountain man. One of Sanskrit’s great mahakavyas (long, narrative poems) Kiratarjuniya (written around the sixth century) was with reference to this encounter between Arjuna and Shiva. This is especially relevant as it is the aspect of kama—a type of extended languor—that was appealing for the later, more extensively elaborated poetic traditions such as the aforementioned mahakavya. The appeal of the encounter lies beyond the martial facet: it is about the coming together of two great warriors, one human and one divine, in a landscape of unearthly beauty. Arjuna finds himself in a ‘forest empty of people, [and] there arose in heaven the sound of conches and drums. A heavy rain of flowers fell on the ground and massing clouds covered him everywhere’ (The Book of the Forest: 298).

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In this forest whose whirlpools had the colour of blue beryl, Arjuna began his meditations and austerities: ‘because of his ceaseless bathing the braided hair of the great-spirited hero of boundless might took on the sheen of lightning and lotus’ (Ibid.: 299). The perennially insecure divinities are worried—what are the intentions of Arjuna? But Shiva knows Arjun’s intentions are pure: ‘he does not desire heaven, nor sovereignty, nor long life’ (Ibid.). Rather, what he wants is earthly success for his brothers and clan. Nevertheless, in the spirit of a god’s play, Shiva takes on the guise of a mountain man and descends in a blaze of flame to the forest where Arjuna is performing his austerities. When Arjuna arrives, the forest with its trees and birds abates its breath. Nature is hushed by the presence of divinity. A boar appears. Arjuna—who as a meditator should only indulge in violence if strictly necessary—decides to kill it. The boar did look threatening. As he takes aim, a voice stops him— this is Shiva in the guise of the mountain man. The mountain man says that he had seen the boar and had taken aim earlier—he asks Arjuna to desist. Arjuna ignores him, and shoots his arrow—the boar is killed, but now there are two arrows, for the mountain man had also shot one. An impressed but angered Arjuna observes that he now has to fight the man. It is not clear if the injunction against the meditator’s violence includes self-defence against insult—or is this only Arjuna’s irrepressible conceit? Arjuna makes up his mind, and the fight begins. Arjuna’s arrows prove ineffectual, as too his sword. The mountain man then strikes, and though Arjuna puts up a fierce fight, he is soon reduced to a ‘ball of flesh with his limbs mangled’ (Ibid.: 301). Arjuna is dumbfounded, but the reason is soon made apparent. The man reveals himself as Shiva. Arjuna prostrates with contrition and joy—and Shiva responds by granting him the coveted weapons that he would need for the war. This is a famous episode and it is often read—rightly—as a bhakti (devotional) tale whereby the ego of the greatest human warrior is annihilated by a smiling, superior deity. But the charm of the episode lies equally—as the mahakavyas affirm—in

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the emplacement of the encounter in a diaphanous, supernaturally beautiful landscape. A remote mountain, a wandering warrior, an act of courage against a dangerous animal, a deceptive god (rustically outfitted) who plays, though gently, with human pretention. The poems pick up the environment—rather than just the event of the encounter and dénouement—and describe that world in lavish terms, terms that celebrate the rich kama of nature. As a gift for his austerities and courage, Arjuna is transported to Indra-loka (the world of Indra—a type of heaven). Indra is also his father. This is an enchanted world, an imagination of peace and limitless luxury. Indra is an anxious divinity, but his world abounds in the lusciousness of kama. Arjuna is given an ability to see what human eyes cannot (he becomes correspondingly invisible). And lo, as he ascends to heaven, he sees that the skies are full of invisible, aerial chariots. He sees that the stars are saintly beings or brave, youthful warriors martyred in battle. He enters the city of heaven where trees flower all year round, and where there is music all year and all night. On his way, Arjuna sees celestial trees that had both fruit as well as minerals; neither trees nor beings had aged, and there is no greed or anger; there are always pleasant breezes, and abundant flowers on the ground (Ibid.: 542). Heaven has its seas where pearls float on the ocean-top (Ibid.: 544). Arjuna stays in that air-borne world for five years, learning both weaponry as well as singing and dancing from the master-teacher Chitrasena. Heaven is described by an envoy of the gods as unfading, outside of time and decay, full of unalloyed allure: Sounds come there from everywhere, appealing to the ear and the heart … There is no sorrow, no old age, no effort or complaint … The bodies of those who partake it are luminous; they are born from one’s deeds, not from a father and mother. There is no sweat or foul smell, neither faeces nor urine, and not a speck of dust spoils their garments. Their garlands, of heavenly fragrance and beautiful, never fade. (Ibid.: 703–704)

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One is reminded of the Nala story with its grimy humans. Arjuna’s apprenticeship in heaven is key preparation for the coming war. Vaishampayana, Vyasa’s student, and chief reciter of the Mahabharata explains: ‘Without the purified prowess of his arms and complete mastery of weapons, Bhishma, Drona and the others cannot be countered in battle’ (Ibid.: 311). But it seems equally significant that Arjuna gains mastery of the finer arts as well: ‘Strong-armed, spirited Gudhakesha [Arjuna] has received the weapons and has gained a mastery of dance, music and song’ (Ibid.). Indra gives him weapons, and also robes and ornaments. Even war had a higher aesthetic in heaven—his steeds had ‘fur like peacock feathers’ (Ibid.: 543). Against the inevitable telos of war, it would seem that all else is trivial—yet this is not so, either in heaven or earth. Even in the shadow of war, the finer feelings of kama—arts, music, and architecture continue to hold humans and divinities in thrall. Arjuna’s travel (on earth, as well as to heaven and back) has dimensions of austerities, duty as well as pleasure—the beauty of nature is apt for meditation, and indeed it is that beauty that gives the mind the serenity required for the attentional practices that make up meditation. Here is a description of the visual pleasures the forest affords: With its cleanly exposed mineral patches, golden, black and silver, which formed unequal patterns, it was as though the mountain had been painted with fingers. With the clouds that clung to its sides, it seemed to dance as with wings, and gushing, cascading streams piled it with pearl strings. Lovely were its rivers, groves, waterfalls, and hollow caverns where many peacocks danced to the tunes of the apsaras’ [divine female beings] ankle rings … as the rivers irresistibly spurted forth and rushed down the mountain seemed to shed its skirt. (Ibid.: 499)

Here is a description of clouds: Wondrous looking huge clouds rise up in the sky, like herds of elephants, in the finery of garlands of lightning, some darkling like blue lotuses others like white lotuses or fibres, others yellow or turmeric-ochre,

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the colour of spiders and of red lotus petals, and vermilion; some are shaped like grand cities, still others black as collyrium. (Ibid.: 588)

The tour of the sacred fords occupies vast tracts of book three, The Book of the Forest. This third book as a whole is an encyclopaedic description of the many sacred places, with their deities, sages, ancestors, and local narratives. Much is learned of history and responsibility, ancestors and punishment, the cycles of the ages. As the Pandavas (including Arjuna, who travels separately for a time) roam the lands in all directions, they are constantly told the legends of the lands they pass. The land is invested with a sense of temporal simultaneity—the great battles or austerities it has witnessed seem at once archaic, as well as immediately present. The act of bathing in a sacred pool feeds both a sense of the history of that pool, as also a sense of the presentness of the cleansing that the cool waters offer the body. It is as if one were to take an aerial view of the Yamuna at any moment in history and be sure to espy the timeless image of Krishna meditating. Though the Mahabharata keeps insisting on the venerable age of its lessons, it also abounds with imperatives for the present—it is a recitation constantly saying ‘Look’, ‘Listen’, ‘Here’, and ‘In this very place’ (Ibid.: 468). The advice that the sages give the Pandavas is always a practical soteriology, one embodied and immersive in a sensorial architecture of both forest and city. The final episode that demonstrates the warrior’s versatility is perhaps his most famous disguise—as a dance-teacher. This occurs in the following book four, The Book of Virata. The episode takes place in the Pandavas’ year of hiding—the thirteenth and last year. The Pandavas have to be in disguise, and not be discovered—this was the requirement after Yudhishthira lost the dice game. If they were discovered, they would have to repeat their thirteen years in the forest. The requirement of disguise is a requirement for a high art: it is a different set of skills (closer to diplomacy and state-craft with its secrecies) than the traditional skills of brute martial force. The Mahabharata also constructs this secrecy as less a juvenile game of hide

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and seek, and more an exploration of the deeper and diverse selves of the Pandavas. As repeated, the royals need to be versatile aesthetes too. To credibly disguise themselves, they could not pretend to be someone radically different from who they were. There is a continuity of character: Yudhishthira becomes, appositely, a ‘royal dicing master’ (The Book of Virata: 28). Bhima becomes a chef—a strongman who must also fetch firewood, tame elephants, and wrestle if need be for the king’s amusement. Arjuna’s is the unusual case—he concedes that his ‘string-scarred arms are hard to hide’ (Ibid.: 29). Yet, due to the skills he learnt from Indra’s world, he thinks it best that he be a teacher of the arts—dance and music. He invokes the story of Nala—and indeed, this confirms that the king is he who has diverse expertise (Ibid.). Nakula plans to be a horse-trainer and doctor, and Sahadeva offers to train, cure, milk, and breed cows. Draupadi becomes a hairdresser, a weaver of garlands, a grinder of ointment oils—in essence, a chambermaid to the queen (Ibid.: 38). One can see many art forms covered here, attesting to the diverse education of a king. Due to their expertise in the arts, the Pandavas stay concealed in Virata’s kingdom ‘like infants in the womb’ (Ibid.: 127). When the Pandavas introduce themselves to their employers, it is Arjuna that the text revels in describing: ‘… a large man who bore/ The adornment of woman and beauty supreme, /Wearing earrings the size of ramparts and walls/And long bright conch shells set into gold. /The big-armed man with an elephant’s power/Had combed out his long and plentiful hair’ (Ibid.: 40). Arjuna responds to the king’s puzzlement by saying that the reason he appears thus is too sorrowful a tale to be recounted in public. The king tests his dancing and musical skills to check whether he was a charlatan—but his skills were of the highest order. Arjuna soon spreads his learning not just to the king’s daughter, but also to all the maids-in-waiting. As events transpire, he is later called out to battle as a charioteer. Arjuna responds: ‘What skill do I have in handling a chariot in a pitched battle? If you want a song or dance or some piece of music, I can

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do that …’ (Ibid.: 81). This is noteworthy if only because humour is rather rare in the Mahabharata. Arjuna continues with his act—he puts his coat of mail upside down, and promises the ladies at the court that if he wins, he will bring them beautiful clothes. The vein of friendly humour is continued in the battlefield—the braggart prince loses his nerve on seeing the Kaurava army, and the enemy is witness to the inglorious sight of a fleeing prince followed by his charioteer Arjuna ‘[with his] long braid trailing and his red skirts fluttering’ finally catching and dragging the prince back to battle by his hair (Ibid.: 83). After their stay in Virata’s kingdom, preparations for war begin, even as peace negotiations persist. Some of the subsequent events have been discussed in previous chapters—especially the failed peace-ambassadorships. All has turned serious, and there is little scope in the epic anymore for kama. Yet, as this chapter hopes to have shown—even though a somewhat orphan virtue—kama is not without its discrete imprint. The value that, however, does pervade the text more directly, consistently, even insistently, is moksha—to which the following, final chapter shall now turn.

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Moksha Ishwara is eternally revealed in a symbol for contemplation and the contemplation is consummated not in knowledge or intuition but in a spontaneous liberation from the conceit of knowledge … It is God who makes worship possible and it is God who frees the worshipper from his own thinking mind—which is freeing him from worship itself and enabling him to work out his liberation. While then in lower stages God speaks to and vitalizes man’s reason, in the highest stage He frees him from his reason and from his feeling of dependence on Him which is conditioned by reason. (Bhattacharya 1983: 325) [The teacher Sanatsujata says] One should reflect upon it [Cosmic Unity] while keeping mauna, or silence, and not move even in thought; then the brahman [highest spiritual goal] that rests in the inner soul will come to him. One becomes a muni, or hermit, by keeping mauna, or silence, not by dwelling in the forest. He who knows the immutable One is said to be the greatest hermit. (The Book of Effort: 290) He [Krishna] is the refuge for those who observe dharma ... He is said to be supreme austerities … He is humility in those who follow good policy. (Harivamsha: 118–119)

It should be clear by now that this book does not take the key concepts (dharma, artha, kama, and moksha) as self-evident, even if speakers sometimes use these terms as not needing further explication. In other words, even if an elder like Bhishma, or even a god like Krishna, use these terms, it still behoves one to analyse and interpret what these terms may mean—both in their microscopic nuance, and in their most expansive horizon. It is only by paying attention to varied narrative textures and sequence of events that one hypothesises a fuller unbridling of these concepts. The terms are not meant to be definitions, even definitions with finite sets of 111

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qualifications. Dharma (or artha or kama or moksha) can never be simply pointed to and said—that is dharma. And the fact that a god may say it does not reduce the puzzlement of what the internal architecture of these values is, or how they inter-relate. Indeed, this book argues that when such a pointing happens, the ideas that emerge are plainly inadequate. A richer understanding proliferates only after a detailed enquiry of the value arrived at through varied narrative situations—such as the various dimensions of kama discussed in the previous chapter. Similarly, while there are whole sections purporting to explain directly and explicitly what moksha is (for example, in many sections of the large book twelve, The Book of Peace), the wager in this book is that the more incisive explication of moksha will be arrived at from a more closely curated reading of sections where there is not the pressure of so directly assuring us what moksha is. All theology turns on the imagined relation of the human to the divine, but the scholarly probe must lie in the varied specifications of this relation within a given text, or textual tradition. With the path being cleared from the more naive or more immediate readings of moksha (where it may be directly inferred), it must be an intuitively intelligible move to have this chapter focus on the Harivamsha, the text most obviously related to the narrative of a divine figure. There are arguably many notions of moksha in the Mahabharata, and this chapter does not claim to explicate them all—it focuses on one indubitable strand—the life-narrative of Krishna. One admits to an indeterminacy between the concepts of moksha and theism—insofar as moksha is narrativisable at all, it may be only through a figure that in the Indic tradition embodies a distinct and far-reaching concept of godhead, i.e., Krishna. Scholarship has for several decades noted the thick, mutually complicating knotting of the epic and the more theist Purana traditions, of which the Harivamsha may be understood as an intermediary (Biardeau 1968; Dumezil 1969; Doniger 1976). In this chapter too, this continuity between the theme of moksha, and the narration of the tale of an individual god (here, Krishna) is explicitly

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thematised. This book has continually quoted from the Harivamsha to set up this final chapter, so it is worth one’s while to read it thoroughly and systematically. The idea of Krishna varies greatly within the Mahabharata, and indeed the first part of the Harivamsha—what is called the Harivamsha Parva, The Book of the Lineage of Hari (Krishna)—mostly consists of stories that precede the arrival of Krishna. It is only from the second part—the Vishnu Parva (The Book of Vishnu)—that the narrative is consistently about Krishna, and it is this second part that will form the chief source for this chapter. The elaboration of Krishna—from the time of his birth to his adulthood—allows appreciation of a painstaking conception of divinity. From this biographical sketch, one may open the door to asking larger questions about Krishna in the Mahabharata as a whole. This chapter will also briefly touch on the further elaborations of the figure of Krishna in the wider corpus of Sanskrit literature— the Harivamsha has seeded the many subsequent histories. A full measure of the elaboration of Krishna in these key subsequent texts and movements (such as the Vishnu and Bhagavata Purana, bhakti oeuvres such as Surdas and Mirabai) is beyond the scope of this book, but a strong beginning may be made by anatomising the Krishnafigure in the Harivamsha. In the Mahabharata, from when he first appears in Draupadi’s wedding, Krishna is already an adult, and there is little motivation for him or the narrative to look back, and retrospectively measure and evaluate his growth. Besides, gods cannot quite be put on the therapists’ couch. In contrast, in the Harivamsha, Krishna is a chronologically imagined deity, thus inviting at least a tentative gloss on his psychic and moral telos. The Harivamsha is the last book of the Mahabharata, and of substantial girth—it is around six thousand shlokas in the critical edition translated by Bibek Debroy, which this book gratefully uses. The text, especially in the component called The Book of Vishnu, has large segments of unity—unity is always a relative term in texts of such age. It is anyway tempting to read eponymous narratives as

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already cohering around the name. It is in the detail that one may understand how carefully the persona of Krishna is composed: this entire chapter, unlike the earlier chapters, will be occupied with just this single, large segment of The Book of Vishnu, for, as noted, the first section is concerned with events before his birth, and the last, very brief section is a prophecy of the future that again does not involve Krishna.

The Mundane and Extra-Mundane Life of a God The Book of Vishnu begins with an immediate sense of the dramatic— the divine sage Narada enters the court of King Kamsa of Mathura and tells him that the latter’s death is imminent. It is not infrequent that sages simply appear in the Mahabharata, materialising from air. The kings have to acclimatise, and receive them with appropriate reverence and rites. The sages also rarely bother to appear if they do not have a portentous message to communicate. It is disconcerting for Kamsa to receive a divine visitor and be told of his own imminent death. There is little context even for Narada—he too just happens to overhear this ‘extremely terrible consultation’ (Harivamsha: 191). A few more details follow—the cause will be the eighth son born to his sister Devaki. This child will be ‘everything to the gods. He will be the refuge of heaven’ (Ibid.). Narada advises Kamsa to try and stop the birth. Kamsa is, however, unafraid; ‘the gods are incapable of frightening me’ (Ibid.). He mistrusts Narada who has a long history of causing dissension. Yet, deep within, Kamsa also cannot help feeling his ‘senses burning’ (Ibid.: 192). He instructs his soldiers to keep an eye on Devaki and her husband Vasudeva—he tasks them to track possible pregnancies. Kamsa muses: ‘By using a large number of appropriate mantras and by employing herbs well, it is possible to make efforts so that destiny turns favourable’ (Ibid.). There are already embedded ideas of divinity in the brief account above. Even the gods enter into a prophesied future, and are only

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channels for an unrolling of mysterious forces. Krishna seems already Krishna before he does anything—he is a vehicle for a prophesied destiny. Even before he is born, the world awaits his advent—there is the drama of incarcerated parents, and an evil, plotting king. Kamsa kills seven of Devaki’s babies by ‘smashing them against stone’ (Ibid.: 196). The gods have to maintain a constant cosmic equilibrium against menacing tribulations—here, evil is embodied in the traditional figure of a ruthless king. The divine is intimately connected with worldly iniquity. The narrative has elements of the supernatural, but also elements of the genre of the thriller, with its twists and risks and foreclosed timelines. In the palace of Kamsa, there is much complication and intrigue regarding the eighth-born—the events indicate a transfer of conception from one womb to another, the birth of a brother Balarama, the simultaneous child-birth by both Devaki and a woman Yashoda from a nearby village. It is not a coincidence that the women represented opposite poles of the spectrum—royalty and the pastoral. Both of these social and human horizons are further ennobled by a gladdened celestial horizon. The cosmos celebrates with hushed breath—‘without being struck, the drums of the gods sounded in heaven’ (Ibid.: 197). Vasudeva grabs his new-born child, enters Yashoda’s house, and exchanges the male and female babies. The next morning Kamsa insists on killing the new-born. He is not dissuaded by the fact that it was female—the baby manages to fly away, revealing its true self as a divine being. Kamsa must surely have realised that the gods are not easily thwarted. The narrative needs the deus ex machina—else, Vasudeva’s decision to sacrifice a new-born for his own would seem cruel. But violence remains entrenched in the scheme of things—the divine being as she flies away tells Kamsa that one day ‘[she] will tear apart your body … and drink your warm blood’ (Ibid.: 198). This is identical to Bhima’s promise regarding Duhshasana: killing is not enough. It has to be spectacular, especially if the vengeance takes time to flower. Death must be desecration and violation; the body must bear humiliation

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even after death. The incident must be remembered—Bhima drinking blood from Duhshasana’s chest is one of the most famous images of Indic mythography. Promises of such spectacular violence are not only seen as not wrong, but are respected, and esteemed with awe within the divine–royal–martial traditions. Surprisingly, it is Kamsa who temporarily expresses regret—this is a mixture of his sense of the pointless deaths of the new-borns he has killed, as well as his sense that destiny cannot be ultimately countermanded. Devaki forgives him, again stating the power of destiny—the rhetoric of destiny thus makes action, regrets, and forgiveness redundant. What will be, will be, sans human commentary. As the reciter Vaishampayana notes: ‘What has been written by destiny is extremely difficult to transgress, like the shoreline’ (Ibid.: 428). The rhetoric of destiny inhibits the delineation of psychological development—a string of actions will occur, and prospective or retrospective perceptions add little by way of clarification. Such is broadly true of the Mahabharata—the emphasis is on movement (sometimes with an overlay of homiletic didacticism); delineations of affect are less to be located in internal, private psyches, and more in the conception of an objectal, seething world of varied characterisation, the characters themselves being the composite of swift-flowing, interpersonal, and mostly prophesied events. Vasudeva regrets that he will not be able to see his son grow. The biological father has been separated from the provider-father Nandagopa, the husband of Yashoda, and a village-chieftain. This doubled paternity allows Krishna a dual citizenship of blood (royalty), as also a rural, non-courtly life. The Pandavas had also spent much time in their childhood and youth away from the court and in the forest. The court (though it cannot be dismissed entirely as an ethical universe) is sometimes conceived as being simultaneously a space of intrigue, envy, luxury, and distance from commoners. Those characters considered good—such as the Pandavas and Krishna—always reconcile the values of court and forest. Certainly

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in the Mahabharata the duties of the court finally win out—the forest is a place for boyhood, or for the aged when they approach death—the court is where the key ethics of political life ought to take place. This is the case with the bulk of the Mahabharata—one may remember again the hectic diplomacy of the peace-missions. In some distinction, the more favourable and long-term positive assessment of the rural is something the Harivamsha articulates more fully than the rest of the Mahabharata. In later centuries, it is the pastoral Krishna that becomes more beloved and influential. The non-courtly spaces (forest/rural/pastoral) begin to be imagined as continually morally nutritive. Though possessing royal blood, the Harivamsha allows Krishna a more expansive articulation of protectorship; these are newer notions of divinity, less tied to the court, arguably more demotic. It is these avatars of the pastoral that become influential in later Krishna-worship, especially in the bhakti (devotional) traditions. The manner in which the Harivamsha evokes these newer, more nature-endowed ideas of divinity is through extensive descriptions of idealised landscape. Though the nature has dangers—which allow the god to show his power—for the most part nature is nourishing, abundant, and welcoming of human presence and habitation. There are the banks of the Yamuna, on which are located benign and beautiful forests, full of large, outspreading trees; there are carts by the river, grazing cows mooing soothingly and, fortuitously and auspiciously, many water bodies; there are trees marked by the scars of the horns of the many virile bulls, all kinds of bird and fruit, cattle pens and pegs and ropes for tying calves as they plaintively called out to their mothers; there are huts with mats and cow-dung-filled floors, prominent spots where people promenade, overflowing buttermilk and the smells of butter, curd that is spilt all over the ground; there are the tinkle of bangles and gossip as milk is churned, women with wild flowers in their hair bearing pots of ghee (Ibid.: 201). These sentiments are continuous with the sensations and values of kama

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discussed in the previous chapter, especially episodes such as Arjuna’s travels, and his encounter with Shiva. The rural/natural is never seen as a place of want. There may be specific predators—snakes and demons—but nothing in the structure of rural life is inherently deficient, or poverty-stricken. Krishna’s character is articulated in the push and pull of this tension: while the rural is sufficient, his ultimate destiny is royal and martial, and he must return to the palace to fulfil his destiny as the assassin of a ruthless king. In later millennia, the courtly Krishna is jettisoned in favour of the curd-stealing Krishna, Krishna as child or lover. This is the Krishna of most widely influential and beloved poets—Krishnapoets Mirabai and Surdas, both of whom lived in the sixteenth century. Mirabai sings: ‘There was water east of the house, west of the house; fields all green. /The one I love lives past those fields; rain has fallen on my body, on my hair, as I wait in the open door for him [Krishna, the Dark One]’ (Bly and Hirshfield: 51). And here is an equally miniscule sampling of Surdas: [Krishna’s lover Radha’s] honeyed voice makes the crow in the kadamb tree/think her a cuckoo, and caw her away;/her hands seem tender leaves of blossom-bringing spring; /thinking so, parrots come to peck;/ and taking her face to be the moon on a full-moon night, /the cakor bird drinks the water from her eyes. /Desperate at thinking perhaps she’d been dismembered, /[Krishna] appears … (Surdas 2015: 109)

The Harivamsha arguably articulates a fuller, less domesticated image of the divine, and keeps alive the older and more open question of the relation of the divine to the martial, to political and prophetic destiny. Krishna’s adolescence is idyllic —‘He grew up amidst the cattle, like a cloud in the ocean’ (Harivamsha: 202). Like the descriptions of natural landscape, there are developed descriptions of childhood antics—these antics too remained central for later Krishna and bhakti traditions. The literary/theological conceit is that the innocent, hungry child is also innocently performing miracles—overturning

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carts and shattering trees with his feet. The child surely cannot know he is god—this is different from the calm, self-confident god of much of the Mahabharata and the Bhagavad Gita. The parents—also innocent, all too human—are worried whether their impish, maverick child will be safe. The intent is to put the reader in the psyche of the parents and village-peoples—bewildered, not quite understanding a god’s mysterious ways. This is even as the god seems to dwell blithely among all in daily parental and rural mundanity. The miracles are not always mild or pleasant, and sometimes seem to possess an extra dose of cruelty—a demoness who suckled him is killed by severing her breast. One must not too hastily understand god as benign or childlike—there will always be a final veil, and seeming cruelty is as potent a sign as any other. These ambiguous miracles are also read by the village people as an inauspiciousness emanating from Kamsa’s rule: ‘On account of Kamsa, they suffered from great fear’ (Ibid.: 203). The royal overlord is never far away, geographically or from their minds— one can escape neither god’s purview, nor human tyranny. Childhood passes, and thus too, a certain theological pressure. Adolescence allows a fuller development of character. Krishna is close to his brother Balarama: ‘It was as if a single body had been divided into two parts’ (Ibid.: 204). As they reached youth, they began to enjoy female company. One can see a compacted, particularised god in a close-knit context—parents, sibling, friends. It is an intimate picture—the brothers’ bodies pasted with white and yellow sandalwood, with side locks, making whistles out of leaves, armlets of peacock feathers, wild flowers on their breast, sleeping outside on beds of leaves by the riverbank (Ibid.: 206–207). Secure, the group wander freely across the landscape, thinking up daily adventure. It is an unhurried, patient time, full of the pleasures of both solitude and company, a time to mull and ponder one’s place in the community and the universe. There will be time for the feats of godhead—they cannot be rushed. Indeed, there are also hours of boredom. Krishna feels the need to move away from these familiar landscapes—there

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is an embryonic consciousness of the toll human presence takes on nature. Humans have eviscerated the dense vegetation, and the needs of firewood have laid waste the area: ‘What used to be inexhaustible is now exhausted’ (Ibid.: 207). The solution is not to consume less, but to find another densely wooded land. The sense of a land’s exhaustion is more an impetus to migration and a desire to explore, than a lament for human greed. There is faith that just over that mountain there is a plentiful world with succulent fruit, trees, rivers that run like the ‘parting of the hair on the head of a married woman’ (Ibid.: 208). These migrations are not painless, but the lands they reach bloom under their skilful labour. The young start to sport again in new lands amidst novel fragrances and flowers. The love of visual description continues. These are images of plenty, of youth, of nature’s super-abundance: ‘Prosperity can be seen everywhere’ (Ibid.: 213). Nature is bounteous and its beauty is carefully catalogued—the wetness of a bird’s feather renders the wing heavy, and so the bird grows tired and immobile (Ibid.: 212). Nature is not external to Krishna’s mood or personality. There is a unity and continuum between the affect of an intoxicated black antelope and Krishna’s own juvenescent body. A proud, active nature is a display, an exhibition of god’s sovereignty. Likewise, the natural is continuous with the mood and desires of the people: The stellar bodies are free from clouds. There are lotuses in the water. The minds of people are content. In the autumn, since the sky is free of fierce clouds, the sun blazes with its sharp energy and its rays dry up the earth. Kings desire to obtain victory and conquer the earth. They advance toward other kingdoms, infusing vigour in their soldiers. The mind is attracted towards the colourful beauty of the forests, with the coppery-hue of bandhujiva flowers … (Ibid.: 230–231)

One can see the easy continuity of concepts—cosmos, people, contentment, royal ambition, soldierly scepticism, and the susceptibility of that same mind to unspoiled forest. The interweaving

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of the microcosms and macrocosms are effected in an unselfconscious, unhurried manner. This is not to say that there are no frictions—the Mahabharata is ultimately about the devastation of war, and the Harivamsha is largely faithful to this broader consciousness. The harmony of mind and nature does not preclude the knowledge that there is work to be done—most immediately, the political assassination of Kamsa. But the Harivamsha also possesses many verses that linger with the theme of a richly lived time, an opulence of the present. For the villagers, to live with a god amongst them (even in a politically tyrannous time) is a gift that opens them to everyday rural pleasures, to festivals and songs and dance and food, to the ever-reverberating beauty of human bodies. In later traditions, the work of Krishna the King is more side-lined, and it is these aspects that are most fondly remembered: [Krishna] had side locks of hair. He was handsome and dark. His eyes were like the petals of lotuses. He had the srivatsa mark on his chest and looked like the moon with its mark. There were anklets on his feet … His delicate form was coppery in complexion and his tread was valorous … His yellow garments were like the filaments of lotuses and caused pleasure to men. In these thin garments, he looked like a cloud … His arms, worshipped by the residents of heaven, were anxiously engaged in virtuous tasks … [he] had a garland made out of arjuna, kadamba and nipa flowers on his beautiful head and these looked like stars in the sky … The sacred thread around his beautiful throat was adorned with a single sparkling peacock feather and this was gently tossed around by the wind. (Ibid.: 214–215)

The god is worshipped in an iconic fullness, with a recognition and belief that there is a vital continuity of the human and the divine in terms of biography and presentation: ‘There is no other man who is your equal in attire, form, childhood behaviour and strength’ (Ibid.: 232). In addition, god is a gourmand: ‘When the sacrifice was over, Krishna used his maya to assume the form of the mountain

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and consumed the rice, the milk, the excellent curds and the meat’ (Ibid.: 233). In the ideal of the pastoral Krishna, what is more significant than the literal fact of natural beauty is this sense of a safely expansive, unobtrusively eroticised time that sustains such a splendour. The following, for example, is the anthropomorphising of the river Yamuna: flowing water for feet, banks for hips, shoals of fish as sparkling girdles, whirlpools for her navel, body-hair of lotuses, pools as ripples in her stomach, birds atop the water as breasts, the foam her smile, red lotuses as her eyelashes, the swans as her laughter (Ibid.: 216–217). This imagery seems to compensate for the extended similes of the battlefield in the war books of the Mahabharata, which had compared the battlefield with its mutilated heaps of soldiers to aspects of nature. Thus, this is a text of a healing of people and the earth. During the war, nature represented the horror of the cosmos, but here, in this salvific ending of the Mahabharata, nature is rehealed by the presence of divinity, hope, profusion. Yes, the god must occasionally crush demons or serpents, but even they are forgiven, and all the waters must be eventually restored: ‘Let these waters be auspicious. Leave for the great ocean’ (Ibid.: 221). Let us look at the episode of the quarrel between Indra and Krishna. This is a famous battle—in the end Krishna lifts a mountain to shelter the villagers. But what is this battle ultimately about? It may be argued that this conflict represents a theological mutation— from a pure representation of a force of nature (Indra representing/ anthropomorphising rain), to a more complex articulation of divinity that inter-braids the human and the cosmic. In the narrative, Indra argues that he is the cause of all—it is his rain that allows crops and animal husbandry, trade, and cities (Ibid.: 234). One can discern that, in contrast, the relationship of the human to Krishna is less instrumental, and has other facets (a narrative of childhood, a more expansive sense of play and mystery, a less demanding stance). Indra proclaims that by his wrath ‘all cows will be destroyed and their lives

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on earth will be over … it was as if the fathomless and infinite ocean had taken over the sky’ (Ibid.: 234–235). There is wanton destruction, even of birds and animals that have little to do with the conflict between humans and gods—frogs and peacocks that intended to mate call out as they drown helplessly. Against the horror of this premature pralaya (the regulated destruction at the end of a time-cycle), Krishna raises the mountain to shelter everyone—it is a god showing power through protection, not destruction or threat. He has lived in the community, grown up amidst them, and is in every possible way (allowable for a god) one of them—this is not a god of the remote heavens as Indra is. Indra condescends to give, while Krishna gives as a human leader, among people and animals, grounded in earth and family and the vagaries of growing up in a tyrant’s shadow. The worshippers’ gratitude to such a god is different from their fearful gratitude to a capricious Indra. When Indra accepts Krishna’s mastery, he likens Krishna to gold among the minerals—a god may be the summit, but he is resonant with all animate beings (Ibid.: 239). This is not to assume that gods are, in the end, scrutable. Much that Krishna does (especially his cunning in the Mahabharata war) would be suspicious to those who have too literal an idea of what dharma or moksha is or ought to be. Nevertheless, it is the Harivamsha’s investment in narrativising him that marks him as of a different species than more nature-derived gods such as Indra. The fact that the plot of these texts has Krishna defeating the older gods demonstrate an intent to mark a new type of god, one more intimately involved in the human saga—involved, for better and for worse. And something of the inscrutable older gods perseveres in the newer ones—a line of kinship and alliance is visibly marked. Indra promises Krishna that he (Indra) would have a son—Arjuna—who would be very dear to Krishna. All the Pandavas can trace an undulating origin to this older godly alliance: Bhima from Vayu (wind currents), Karna from the Sun god, Nakula and Sahadeva from the Ashwins (gods intimately connected with horses, and whose lineage stretches to the Vedas).

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Yudhishthira’s father—Dharma/Yama—is comparable to this: Dharma literalises morality directly, unlike Indra who, in a human manner, may act morally or sometimes, seemingly at least, immorally as in the above instance of raining unfairly down on hapless farmers. But even dharma, as has been noted, is ultimately elusive and inscrutable. Krishna tells Indra that he knows all about the Pandavas even though he has not yet met them. Krishna even knows the secrets of their births (their fathers), which even the Pandavas do not know— he also knows of Karna’s particularly tragic story. The boy Krishna prophesies the whole Mahabharata war and anticipates the victors. It is an arresting image of an omniscient boy-god. The wonder—as his cowherd community repeat—is that though the community see his feats, they are unable to fathom who he fully and wholly is—is he a god, a new type of god, and if so, which god, and to what purpose: ‘Who are you—a Rudra, a Marut, or a Vasu?’ (Ibid.: 245). In this imagination of divinity one may see wonders and miracles, yet cannot discern either ultimate ends, or even the immediate relevance to the present: ‘For some reason, depending on your wishes, you have decided to reside with us’ (Ibid.). Krishna repeats the dilemma—he tells them to think of him as one of them, and yet, promises that in time they will see his true nature, understand his motives. The devotee/friend/kin must be eternally patient for the revelation is not in her hands. Revelation is not entirely in the eyes or body of the beholder, nor does the devotee have control of the mode: In the night, having regard to the time and showing proper respect, he invited the young gopa maidens and enjoyed himself with them. His face was beautiful … he was adorned in armlets and a colourful garden made of wild flowers … They crushed him against their thick breasts … all of them stood in lines and sported … with eyes like black antelopes, the women drank in Krishna with their eyes, but were not satisfied. (Ibid.: 246)

The sexual triumph (kama) is consonant with martial valour, and continually interweave. But in the braiding, the mood correspondingly

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shifts from conquest to a mellifluous desire that overflows its consummation. Not in the sense of unfulfilment, but simply, a happily wanting more, a never having enough—perhaps a masculinist fantasy of female desire, endlessly asked and endlessly fulfilled. Here, for example, in Debroy’s translation, are the gopis in the Bhagavata Purana (likely composed between 500 to 1000 ce): This is the greatest fruit that eyes can have. We do not know of anything superior to these two faces [Krishna and Balarama] … The two sons of the lord of Vraja possess flutes. We have drunk the loving sidelong glances that they cast around. They are decorated with tender mango leave, peacock feathers, bunches of flowers and garlands of lotuses and lilies … The flute must have performed extremely auspicious deeds. It is drinking nectar from Damodara [Krishna’s] lips and that only belongs to the gopis. It is enjoying it alone and has only left a little bit for others. (Vyasa 2019: volume 3, 44)

Themes from the Harivamsha are thus extensively developed in the later traditions—this is a divine that is protean and voracious enough for multiple lovers/devotees. It is an exultant multitude, content to share their gods and worship, appreciative of the beauty of the riverside by night, of the solidarity birthed by excessive, and often transgressive love. Meanwhile, as Krishna frolics, Kamsa is anxious, hearing the deeds of this strange, darkly charismatic youth. Kamsa recounts Krishna’s feats to his allies. All were invested in thwarting this insouciant political rival: ‘Like a fire in a cremation ground, this is a god who is sporting’ (Harivamsha: 251). Kamsa worries if this youth is not Vishnu, the god who had descended over the ages to kill demons and humans perceived as evil. His fears further catalyse the plot. The element of prophesy that shadowed Kamsa’s fears is consonant with the dictum that good must triumph even as evil thinks it can somehow escape the tentacles of justice. Narada tells Kamsa that Krishna is indeed the prophesied eighth child: ‘He is like a crow that

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plants its feet on your head and desiring flesh, pecks out your eyes with its beak’ (Ibid.: 252). Kamsa remains defiant, abuses Krishna’s father Vasudeva, and asks the latter to arrange for him (Kamsa) to meet Krishna, promising Krishna wealth and glory if he displays his muscled prowess to defeat Kamsa’s chosen wrestlers. The planetary and earthly signs bode evil: ‘A jackal has left the cremation ground and burning coals are emerging from its mouth … blood is showering down from the clouds’ (Ibid.: 257). These portend the killing of a king. Kamsa angrily sends his forces to wreak havoc in the region where Krishna lives, but the latter mangles them all, man and beast. Narada again—as his wont—appears from heaven to witness and praise these battles, and again to continually prophesy the imminence of the great Mahabharata war. The teleological tracks are well grooved: ‘Heading for heaven, the kings are readying weapons for fighting. In the firmament, paths are being cleansed for them to ascend to heaven on celestial vehicles’ (Ibid.: 262). Prophecies are also always re-cognitions—Narada says that all of Krishna’s actions have been anticipated in the sacred texts. There is a linear drive of unfolding, even as there is a parallel track of prophesy, validation, and fulfilment. The descriptions of nature and everyday life offer the temporality of a recessed time, of an appreciation of beauty that stalls for a few moments the beating heart of prophecy and the large events of regicide or war. Here is a description of evening—birds in their nests, people offering oblations and chanting mantras and meeting relatives, cows returning to be milked and grouped in their pens, happy to be with their calves again, people carrying firewood in moon-rise, stars peeping over the horizon, the sky looking ‘like a mountain that had been reduced to ashes’ (Ibid.: 262–263). This everydayness is rare in the rest of the Mahabharata—much there seems to be hurtling to war, or drowning in didactism. But the Harivamsha is unique in insisting that the divine is immanent in the mundane and not only in the large-scale events of history. It is as if one can, on any evening, steal into a village on the

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Yamuna’s banks and catch Krishna with curd in his mouth. This sense of timelessness—achieved through the use of a familiar, endearing image—is carefully composed. It is a very particular image of divinity deeply influential over millennia—one has already referred to the Bhagavata Purana, the oeuvres of Mirabai and Surdas, but one could equally invoke many other traditions, including the many beautiful verses of the child and lover god in the works of the Alvars, Tamil poet–saints who lived between the fifth and tenth centuries of the common era. Here is another token sampling of the Alvar poet Andal in Archana Venkatesan’s translation: ‘Tears gather and spill between my breasts/like waterfalls/ He has destroyed my womanhood. /How does this bring him pride?’ (Andal 2019: poem catalogued as 8.1). This is as much an image of god as that of the politically active adult, commandeering armies, and enunciating the Bhagavad Gita. One would not insist on a necessary contradiction between these images, but it would be equally facile to pretend that these images flow easily into each other. This stasis of the everyday allowed the growth of an associated iconology—the complexion of rain-clouds, the srivatsa (literally meaning ‘beloved of Sri’; an ancient auspicious symbol) mark nestled among garlands, long, muscled arms, the attire of a cowherd in yellow, diademed, with earrings, one hand with the chakra, another holding a mace, and so on. While these differ in details, these descriptions too remained influential over the first two millennia of the Common Era. There are diverse avatars of the avatar. Even as an adult, Krishna is more warrior than king, more strategist than one vested in everyday governance: ‘He will be above all the kings, but will not be a king himself ’ (Harivamsha: 264). The entire Mahabharata is itself less invested in the minutiae of governance than the telos of war. Governance is not thematised in itself—it is assumed that a rigorously moral king will solve all problems fairly, and that nothing political is inherently intractable. To some, this may be a lacuna in Sanskritic narrative traditions—even Ram-rajya arguably has no content, except

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the benevolent character of the king himself. This is a topic beyond the scope of this book but worth signalling. An attempt has been made in the chapter on dharma to articulate—perhaps more explicitly than the Mahabharata allows itself—the various ambivalences that characterise political life, including a seeming disinterest in the workings of everyday governance with regard to the more vividly dramatic facts of war and family drama. Krishna’s early life is one of certain kinds of action. He knows what he must do—kill Kamsa—and he has to trust that this action has divine significance beyond the local tyranny of Kamsa’s kingdom. The Harivamsha balances this self-consciousness of Krishna’s awareness of divinity (which itself is sometimes strong, sometimes dim) by using the words of other divine beings (such as Narada) to confirm the divinity of Krishna’s actions. The actions themselves unfold in a coherent manner—Kamsa invites Krishna to the yearly festival, and Krishna accepts the invitation to fulfil his destiny. Beyond the killing, his duties include meeting his imprisoned parents. This is an opportunity to see Krishna’s childhood in another light. Instead of the secure joy of the loved, mischievous child, here is a youth confronting parents who have suffered greatly—and indeed, largely on his account. The parenthood of Krishna is an onerous burden— they have gained little from it except misery. One is never sure of the exact age of Krishna at any point in the Harivamsha—assuming youth, one imagines that his encounter with his parents must be psychologically tumultuous. And yet, unsurprisingly, the text does not dwell on these moments—it is a messenger (thus a third person) who remarks that it would have been better for Devaki to have been childless. It seems griefful that the mother of a god should suffer such humiliation and captivity. Krishna offers little comfort, and their meeting is not described. The emotional difficulty of this meeting is different from the muscularity required to thwart demons. All that is noted in the text is that Krishna was enraged on hearing how his parents were treated, but allowed himself to be restrained—this too

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is said in passing. An opportunity for exploring a (adolescent/male/ god) psyche is foregone. Instead, what seems to be the priority of the text (and consequently in subsequent Krishna-traditions) is the investment in the figure of a beloved, joyful child Krishna. It would weaken this image considerably if psychological complexity and depth were added to complicate the matter. The child is imagined as happy, safe, secure, and adorable—this is not a child-figure in whom one wants to imagine veins of anxiety, narcissism, or insecurity. Even when he frees his parents after killing Kamsa, they are released from prison in the manner that anyone who has been unfairly incarcerated is freed. There is no sense in which they are special people, of one’s own flesh, and that the wound of their separation may track their whole lives—they have suffered a great deal, and their suffering remains a mystery for them. But such doubts must not be allowed to cloud the moment of a triumphant regicide. There is far greater investment in the description of the festive city and the visit to the snake-god the next morning. There are nuanced descriptions of the arrogance of the city-dweller vis-à-vis the rustically attired Krishna. Krishna is also attracted to the different colours of dye that people wore in the cities, their garlands with unusual flowers, fragrances, pastes, bathing chambers. Krishna looks the part of the uncouth wrestler (attired as a cow-herd) in front of the city dandies and women, but the mood conveyed is that of his simple, happy wonder at the sophistication of the city. The city itself is described as full of entertainment arenas, viewing galleries, platforms, shades, cleverly engineered inlaid pillars, fountains, promenades, flags and canopies, curtains and cushions and couches, altars, fruit placed everywhere for convenience, and moon-shaped windows. It is not counter-posed to the rural—it seems easily available to whoever conquers it through feats of valour. Krishna kills the wrestlers Kamsa has appointed, as well as an elephant trained to kill humans: ‘Placing his right foot against its temple, he uprooted both the tusks and killed it with those … thus

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struck, it released urine and excrement and screamed in pain’ (Ibid.: 279). The wrestler too is killed in gruesome fashion: ‘Tears and blood flowed from his eyes and his eyeballs emerged from their sockets, handing like bells from a seat on an elephant’ (Ibid.: 282). As Krishna kills the wrestlers one by one, prize gems from Kamsa’s crown fall. Seeing the valiant Krishna, people respond variously—some cheer, and courtesans look at him with longing. His parents recognise him as one who has caused them much misery as well as great pride. Kamsa orders Krishna to be chained, but Krishna jumps right up to him and drags him through the arena till he dies. Then he flings the body to the far horizon. The wives of Kamsa gather to mourn him whose ‘breath has now merged with the air’ (Ibid.: 286). They recount his past valour, his lovemaking skills, the helplessness of the wives of dead warriors. Kamsa’s mother tells Krishna that there must be no enmity after death—appropriate funeral rites must be performed. Krishna himself momentarily wonders if he has not ‘succumbed to the human trait of rage. Because of my act, thousands of Kamsa’s wives have become widows’ (Ibid.: 289). It is an uncommon moment of doubt, for Krishna makes clear that he does not want to rule: ‘I have nothing to do with the kingdom. There is no desire for the kingdom in me … I will roam around in the forest with the gopas, amidst cattle. I will happily roam around as I wish, like an elephant’ (Ibid.: 291). One can note again the indifference to governance. Martial valour is about winning kingship or ruling through war. But there is more freedom in roaming than administration. This ambivalence toward kingship runs through the Mahabharata, and Krishna is not atypical—the desire for the joyful, vagrant freedom of roaming is akin to the adventuresome forest-wanderings of the Pandavas. Krishna re-consecrates the older King Ugrasena and heads out of the city. Krishna continues to pursue his education—in archery, genealogy, conduct, as well as the Vedas and the Vedangas (limbs of the Vedas). Study was not extraneous to the mission of killing Kamsa, or of his

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life thereafter. Krishna never felt he needed a fuller self-knowledge (or a fuller study of the Vedas) to decide if it was moral to kill Kamsa. The search for teachers itself is a form of wandering—Krishna and Balarama go to Kashi, among other places. Both sets of parents (adopted and biological) fade into the background as if parents exist only for children or adolescents—in adulthood, one seems to simply shed parents, or they have conveniently retired to the forest. To be martial is to be a vigilant, roaming warrior—parents are a vulnerability, and martial ethics prod one toward worldly conquests in different parts of the country. Like Arjuna’s journey through wild, beauteous landscapes, Krishna too travels—it is for education and to holy places, as well as to pick up weapons and exotic valuables. This is how Krishna acquires his famous conch-shell Panchajanya—by killing a demon, and bringing back a preceptor’s son. More jewels and weapons are acquired—each a memento of an act of heroism in some far-flung part of the country. To travel is to stake a claim to distant lands, if only with one’s proud feet and gaze. The fame of Krishna in these distant lands made the citizens of Mathura proud, and whenever he returns, there is a joyous welcome—trumpets and benedictions, and it seems as if even the birds sing more sweetly (Ibid.: 294). The killing of Kamsa affects the geopolitics of the region, and Krishna finds himself up against a whole set of allied armies led by a longstanding rival named Jarasandha. Here again one can see that the Harivamsha is little interested in any realism of strategy—though a book on kings, it is in truth a narrative that is constantly sliding toward theophany. Thus, even the worldly realm with its varied military factors (details of weaponry or strategy or personal heroism) are ultimately meant only to sub-serve higher miracles. Even though there may be sufficient knowledge of the precise geopolitics of the region—and battles described may indeed carry some trace of historical truth—the aims of the book veer differently. The God-King Krishna—who is more god, and only king insofar as he is human— openly laughs at the pretensions of human kings, however mighty

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they may be in purely human and military terms. Everything has already been prophesied, and Krishna can already see—even as the enemy soldiers mass—the imminent fact of these kings crowding the gates of heaven. They are already dead before the first arrow is fired: ‘Their bodies can already be seen as headed toward heaven’ (Ibid.: 297). As a secondary fact it is mentioned that these kings were anyway oppressive to the populace as they were in a permanent state of largescale militarisation. Compared to the powers of gods, human military strategy has little chance. Even human attempts at reading the signs do not quite pay off, as mysterious forces menace the background. As noted, the Mahabharata does not pay attention to detailed, or realist discussions of strategy—or weaponry, or relation of infantry to cavalry, or precise breed of horse, or the science of armour, and so on. Rather, it works in a rhetorical mode, with the naming and itemising of legions of kings and regions, each warrior a mini-legend, and carrying a train of association. Many modes of realism (the psychology of kings and soldiers, the topographies of battlefields or fortifications, the actual numbers involved) are subservient to this rhetoric of militarised god-ship. The attempt seems to be to use battle to invoke a mystery articulated through a traditional metaphorising of great events such as war. Battles are routinely described as large mountains (or whales or serpents or divine weapons) clashing, whose ramifications spread across the cosmos through lightning and thunder. The Harivamsha spends much less time on war descriptions than the books of the Mahabharata, and yet the aspect of martial prowess remains important for Krishna. At least one great victory (here, the triumph over the powerful King of Magadha—Jarasandha) was necessary for Krishna to prove his human martial credentials. In other words, he has to be shown as capable of killing well-known human kings, not just serpents, or anthropomorphised gods such as Indra. The importance of the battle with Jarasandha is underscored by the number of soldiers killed, as well as the particular horror of their

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deaths—brains of commanders and horses lay mangled in the mire of the battlefield’s mud (Ibid.: 303). Military anxieties remain even after victory for potential enemies are always massing, and forging new alliances. The Harivamsha does not have the apocalyptic imagination of the Mahabharata where, by the end, almost everyone is killed—the final peace of the earth is only the peace of a cremation ground. The Harivamsha is cognizant of the ends of war, but also has other ends in mind. Krishna leaves the world of endless warfare, and attempts to found a more prosperous, and a less war-faring polity. He moves from Mathura to lands further west, and along the ocean to establish the new city of Dvaraka. There is now more hope for peace—one eschews the inherited exhaustion of the heartland Mathura region with its continual, intergenerational, internecine warfare. There is the pleasing prospect of other endeavours: art, play, diplomacy, resourcefulness, and prosperity. The imagination of Dvaraka is much less bleak than what the Mahabharata leaves one with—kingship could be prosperity and beauty, not just death. Nature and the cosmos may be benign—on Krishna’s request, the ocean withdrew, allowing the architects to plan a grand ocean-fronting, multi-storeyed city full of assembly halls, gardens, and extensive inner quarters. This is the world of kama— of Nala and Arjuna—mentioned in the previous chapter. But kama is rarely uncomplicated, and often does have political consequences. Rukmini—princess of an enemy faction—functions both as political and erotic prize. Krishna espies her in a temple at an auspicious hour, decorated with the marks of worship—dark, of coppery red lips and nails, of blue-black hair attired in white linen (Ibid.: 324). Krishna abducts/seduces her—there is a brief war, and on Rukmini’s request, the triumphant Krishna lets her natal family return unharmed. Rukmini becomes his eldest wife, the mother of his sons and daughters, all of whom turn out to be ‘accomplished in dharma and artha’ (Ibid.: 329). Though Krishna does not seem particularly invested in parenthood, it is clear that he accomplishes the rites of domesticity and fatherhood.

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A god’s play of kama does not end with begetting children accomplished through the navigation of dharma and artha. Krishna has numerous wives. This again is key to several Krishna-traditions: Hrishikesha [Krishna] married all of these [the number of women mentioned here is sixteen thousand] at the same time. All of them possessed supreme garments and ornaments and deserved to enjoy pleasure. Through them, thousands of brave sons were born … These immensely fortunate and immensely strong ones performed sacrifices and other sacred tasks’. (Ibid.: 330)

Like the warrior-king, the polygamous Krishna, and even the father Krishna, are mentioned. But in the Harivamsha at least, these thematics are not developed. The longer and more vivid sections centre on childhood and adolescence. Krishna is more eternal youth/ lover than king or father. For someone whose childhood and infancy were so celebrated, there is a curious silence with regard to his own childrens’ infancy or adolescence. The narrative logic seeking to centralise the baby/youth Krishna perhaps requires underplaying his role as aging or indulgent father. Many of these children are lost to the mists of history or narrative—there are brief references only to his son Pradyumna and grandson Aniruddha, and little is known of their time as sons of Krishna. The assumption is that they lead successful lives and hence Krishna may be inferred to have been a successful father. There are no direct descriptions of fatherhood or their childhood per se. Krishna has many avatars (child, youth, warrior, lover) but fatherhood is not one of them. Pradyumna may be considered a curious foil to Krishna. In a repetition-in-miniature of Krishna’s story, Pradyumna is stolen from Krishna, brought up in a demon’s house, where he grows up to be a youthful, charming, moral warrior. He repudiates his step-mother’s attraction. The step-mother Mayavati then tells him the true story of his parentage—though she says his mother Rukmini is pining for him, there apparently is no commensurate sense of loss experienced

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by Krishna. Pradyumna kills his abductor-father and returns to Krishna’s city, where again the women of the inner quarters swoon over his handsome appearance. Pradyumna—it may be remarked, very unlike his father, ‘walk[ed] one step at a time, face lowered in modesty’ (Ibid.: 364). Even his mother first sees him as a striking youth, though she also remarks that she envies the mother of such a valorous and modest man. As she looks closer, she sees much of Krishna (and the Vrishni lineage) in his face. Krishna appears, applauds his son’s courage, and welcomes him back. Pradyumna’s is a relatively simple story of loss, valour, and modesty. One may contrast this with the elaborately developed complexity of the Krishna-myth, with the latter’s open-ended sexual voracity and ambivalence toward martial compulsions. It is only in later traditions that a fuller scoping of the potentials of Pradyumna (his sexuality, sorcery, martial prowess, and theistic re-imagining vis-à-vis his father) is developed (Austin 2019). Likewise, the story of Pradyumna’s son Aniruddha in the Harivamsha is also a relatively brief one-dimensional tale of valour and sexual prowess without any of the digressions and subterranean layering that make the character of Krishna so alluring. Krishna’s attributes are doubled by twinning them with his brother Balarama—the latter is a more impulsive, angry divinity, in contrast to Krishna, who always prefers charm and diplomacy. Balarama is closely linked to older forms of gods, not only in this impulse to anger, but also in the imagery of the plough, and the explicit linkages to the older snake-gods such as the serpent Ananta—i.e., the very type of divinity that Krishna defeats (Ibid.: 334). Though Krishna grows up in the village (and thus partakes of the rhetoric of nature), he also has the complementary role of king, as one who founds cities and acquires wealth for his people. Diplomacy—instead of brute strength—already invokes more complex nodes of interlocked polities of varying strength and resources that engage in bureaucracy and trade. It is no more sufficient to fantasise rural self-sufficiency. The urban-military blocs are, with some luck, made of leaders who respect each other,

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and help each other grow in peace and wealth—scholars have argued that the Sanskritic ‘literary tradition is heir to, or a continuation of, a scholarly tradition regarding royal missives developed by clerks employed in the royal chancery’ (Tieken 2014: 86). The Harivamsha partakes of these multivalences—on the one hand, developing Krishna as the god-king of a flourishing, rising polity, and on the other, there are the layers that emphasise his military god-ship as well as his diplomatic kingship. It requires both diplomacy and warfare to battle legions of thousand-armed demons. It is also the case that these images interlock—the thousand-armed demon can easily be read as a large, hostile army very much of the earth (Jarasandha is the most repeated example). The continuity of the divine and the earthly is also referenced in the imagination of the new city—while Dvaraka is clearly a humanly-built city with many architectural marvels, there is also an emphasis on its continuity with the oceans, mountains, forests, and sacred white elephants. Rituals are continually performed, and these mediate heaven and earth (Ibid.: 337). There is a felt assurance that worldly wealth is moral, and consistent with divine intent—gods want humans to prosper. There is also the harmonisation of what might have been conflictual— should the wealth of the city be due to labour, or the natural ease and entitlement of divinity (Indra simply ordering divine architects to build a mirror of Amravati—the divine capital—on earth)? Nothing bespeaks divinity more than the need to forego sweat and toil, and so the Harivamsha veers to the imagination of the city being built mostly on diktat by the divine architect Vishwakarma under the instructions of Indra (Ibid.: 344). Cities are described as if already always possessing riches (bejewelled gates, steps of gold, gardens of rare herbs, abodes for fauna), and there is little description of the labour of their construction. Crowds throng in festivity—it is the other pole of the great image of the crowd as signalling war. But there is little description of the crowd that assembles to labour, either physically or administratively—brief exceptions are the

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mentions of military fortifications and infrastructure, moats, and war-machines. These easily slide into fantasy. Likewise, adjacent forests are described in terms of the colour of their trees or aquatic plants, and not in terms of their resourcing the city’s commodities or livelihood. Divine beings continually gift riches (elephants with goads decorated with coral, seats made of the fine hide of goats, birds that have been trained to speak mellifluously, lapis lazuli). These divine beings tell Krishna: ‘By following dharma, there are riches that you can obtain in the three worlds’ (Ibid.: 340). Beyond riches, there is the gift of youth. This is bestowed not only to Krishna, but also to proxies and associates—it is not pleasant to be forever young if everyone you love ages at a faster clip. Satyabhama is assured thus: ‘As long as you remain in human form, this wife of yours will always be young and old age will not touch her’ (Ibid.: 343). Krishna, as god, must be timeless—but it is a particular cultural and theological choice to imagine this timelessness as that of youth than, say, the wisdom of age, and with a flowing beard, as in some other religious traditions. The stories of Krishna’s heroism and generosity are repeated—often in his presence—by bards, including Narada. Here too, what is favoured are the stories of childhood and youth— the demons he nonchalantly kills even as he begs for butter; the lifting of Mount Govardhana; the adolescent lover; the prophesied assassination of Kamsa; the freeing of his aged and imprisoned parents: ‘He should be praised in hundreds of ways and in hundreds and thousands of ways’ (Ibid.: 359). The tales end with the usual benedictions: ‘Without any anger, perform many kinds of sacrifices … Wherever there is humility, prosperity exists there. Wherever there is prosperity, good behaviour exists there’ (Ibid.: 357). To supplement the narrative, an iconography/visual mnemonic develops—conch shells, chakras, mace, and chariot. Toward the end of the Vishnu Parva—the one that is centred on Krishna’s biography—there is a sense of completion:

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After establishing dharma in the mortal world, performing an infinite number of tasks for the gods and observing sacrifices and rites with copious quantities of dakshina [donations], he will return to his own abode. The immensely illustrious Krishna will bring about the end of the beautiful and prosperous Dvaraka through some reeds, make it merge into his own self and submerge in the ocean. (Ibid.: 359)

The age finally ages the god too, and there is a becalmed and final end that awaits all, human and divine. The metaphor of the playful child of Vraja has this deeper claim—time and dissolution are play too—god’s play is child’s play. ‘Like a child playing with toys, he always amuses himself with creatures’ (Ibid.: 359). A person and an age’s fate is god’s amusement. The last sections end with this praise of Krishna/Vishnu as being the origin of origins, and similar adjectives of the highest: ‘In learning or in austerities, there is nothing that is superior to you … embodiment of the worlds’ (Ibid.: 370). He clarifies that he is the ‘supreme destination of those who practice sankhya, of yogis and ascetics’ (Ibid.: 376). The Harivamsha’s concluding sections repeat the gesture in the Bhagavad Gita of Krishna claiming to be all—seas and mountains, the four Vedas, the darkness, the solution to that darkness, and so forth. The text thus ends close to repeated theophany, which, in the logic of a theologically-oriented text—and indeed a Harivamshatelic Mahabharata—may be persuasive and apt. The last sections consist of repeating both concrete martial victories, as also the sense of these victories yielding to a larger sense of Krishna’s ultimacy and elusiveness—humans can only partially comprehend his enigmatic origins and ends. The martial victories also end less with righteous rage, and more with a sense of the defeated warriors acknowledging Krishna’s absolute and righteous cosmic power. Thus, despite an undercurrent of a rhetoric of masculinist, military god-ship (continuous with the military theme of the Mahabharata), there are also clear indications of alternative modes. The pastoral emerges as a morally nutritive, more egalitarian space—Krishna and Balarama reiterate that they were brought up from childhood by

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cow-herders, that they were shown the wonders of the forest by these people, ate often in each other’s houses, and shared cattle-protection and nurture duties (Ibid.: 306). The divine is this irruption within the mundane—an irruption from within the realms of everyday family life and agricultural labour. In the Harivamsha, the (rural-derived) god seems always nearby, strolling (or crawling) within one’s house, raiding one’s pantry, plucking flowers in one’s courtyard, wearing it in their hair. When the accent is on the slightly-older adolescent, there is still the intimacy of the drinking partner (especially Balarama), the friend who swims with one in the river at night, the one irresistible to young female friends. The everyday god is separable from the older, remoter, purely kingly god on many counts—intimacy versus remoteness; an egalitarian everydayness; the household rather than court or temple or cave or monastery; the frequency of the site of the riverbank for amorous play, rather than the perpetually high stakes of the battlefield. This god promises protector-ship in tangible ways— he picks up the plough, herds cattle, spots patches ripe for farming. His tales confirm the ultimate injunction: continually read such texts of their deeds, be aware of their presence in one’s midst. This is not so much to learn the details of a historical or prophesied moment, but as a way of humbling oneself: the texts—to be recited or listened to—function closer to a private or public liturgy, and as mantras for psychological efficacy, repair, healing, and growth. The last lines of the text contain the following: ‘If you remember this [tales of their deeds], patience will again be generated in you and [you] will roam around the world, happy’ (Ibid.: 441).

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Conclusion Even the finest mists can fill the dry tanks, And long searching has brought me my love. No fear remains, no absence, no drought— He has returned. Mira says to her husband from previous lifetimes, Even the cattle drink this rising water. (Mirabai 2017: 56)

That the Mahabharata has been consistently and widely influential over the length and breadth of India is indisputable. Indeed, it is precisely the narrative quality that allows the epic to so potently present the quartet of values—and this is why its influence has been so much more pervasive than simply the canonical texts (shastra) of dharma, artha, kama, and moksha. Moral schemas, when simply declared, have little persuasive power in and of themselves, privately or publically, or in terms of either personal fulfilment or social justice. Earlier chapters have already quoted, and sometimes briefly discussed, many of the strands of the Mahabharata that have been particularly memorable and prominent. The Introduction mentioned the Sanskrit dramatic and poetic traditions, both of which owed many debts to the Mahabharata (Kalidasa, Bharavi, Magha, and so on). Kalidasa’s revered predecessor Bhasa also wrote a play about the final duel between Bhima and Duryodhana—The Shattered Thighs. This book will conclude with a discussion of this play. But before that it is worth mentioning—in admittedly snapshot fashion—the widespread adaptations in the regional languages that were ascendant around the turn of the millennium (1000 ce). Again, a text alluded to, in the discussion of The Shattered Thighs, will be the eleventhcentury Kannada narrative poem by Ranna, Gadayuddham: The Duel of the Maces (2019)—also about that fateful final clash that has been 140

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studied in the second chapter. Functioning both within and beyond the Mahabharata, the figure of Krishna perhaps overwhelms all other influences as being India’s most widely regarded god. Again, earlier chapters have touched on texts such as the Bhagavata Purana, and the oeuvres of Mirabai and Surdas. In the twentieth and twentyfirst centuries, many writers have returned to the Mahabharata in poetry, drama, and prose. One may mention texts such as the Hindi poet Dinkar’s Rashmirathi [One who is riding a Chariot of Light] (2020), or Ranjit Desai’s Radheya (Son of Radha, 1973) and Shivaji Savant’s Mrityunjaya: The Death Conqueror (1967) in Marathi, M.T. Vasudevan Nair’s The Second Turn (1984) in Malayalam, Oriya writer Pratibha Ray’s Yajnaseni (1984), and so on. Inheriting this rich tradition, there has been a surge of interest in the last decade and a half, especially among women Anglophone writers (located in India and abroad)—one may mention Chitra Banerji Divakaruni’s The Palace of Illusions (2008), Kavitha Kane’s Karna’s Wife (2013) and Fisher-Queen’s Dynasty (2017), Karthika Nair’s acclaimed poetic rendition Until the Lions: Echoes from the Mahabharata (2015), Ira Mukhoty’s Song of Draupadi (2021), among others. The list above is token, and cannot at all do justice to the wide variety of literary production. A fuller list would include many other cultural media such as television and film. Influential graphic novels have been especially popular—Amruta Patil’s multi-volume graphic rendition (2016), as well as Bandopadhyay and Banerjee’s Vyasa: The Beginning (2017). There is little doubt that these adaptations and retellings will continue to bourgeon. The interest in the Mahabharata cuts across genre (poetry, play-writing, novelistic prose, and essayistic nonfiction), media, notions of the popular and the literary, fidelity and the more freewheeling interpretation of historical/epical fantasy, and so on. In recent times, scholars have noted the analogical connection of the Mahabharata narrative (multi-generational wars of succession perennially brimming over with fantastical events/heroes) to powerful contemporary global narratives such as the Game of Thrones series

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(Hawley and Pillai 2021). Thus, while observing that the Mahabharata continues to flourish in the contemporary imagination, one would like to end this book by inhabiting the moral ferment as articulated in one of the truly great re-imaginations of a Mahabharata story. The Shattered Things is a one-act play and stages a much loved story-segment: the final, lakeside battle between Duryodhana and Bhima. There is continuing controversy over the dating of the play—Bhasa was a playwright held in deep respect by Sanskrit’s most eminent playwright Kalidasa (second to fifth century ce). The controversy is chiefly over whether these plays were written by Bhasa, or were corrupt versions of plays he may have seeded (Bhasa 2009). It is beyond this book’s expertise to contribute to the resolution of such perennial controversies. Instead, one would seek to concentrate on the points relevant to the narrative structuring of the themes of dharma, artha, kama, and moksha—the translation used below is that by Andrew Skilton (2016). In a first-order broad sequencing, the play consists of an account of the duel by soldiers; then, various characters interact with the dying Duryodhana. The play is chosen here to help continue the argument advanced earlier—Duryodhana is clearly sympathetically drawn as a warrior, brave in his choices as well as his clear-eyed rationale and sense of responsibility for those choices. There is no question of him being a stereotyped, simpleminded obstinate villain. Rather, he enunciates questions that are core to the entirety of the Mahabharata: what is the relationship of warrior-values to the more peaceable values of clan and constructive politics? Are all attempts at morality at best an illusion, at worst a form of deceit that does not absolve the partisan divine? The form of the play—in contradistinction to the epic—allows some specialised refinements and re-sequencing of events that allow these questions to be posed in a stark and insistent form. The structure of Sanskrit plays already shifts the stakes from the Mahabharata’s technique of multiple framing voices. In the play, with the lack of authorial framings, it is left to the characters to describe

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the situation. There is no overarching third-person voice—indeed, if there is a detached, description, it is provided by humble soldiers, not a grand, erudite reciter. The initial ‘blessing’ with which the play starts signals a slice of location and memory that puts it outside an everyday realm, in a place of vulnerability that requires protection: ‘May the illustrious Keshava [Krishna] be a raft for you in crossing over your foes, /The raft by which Arjuna crossed the river of his enemies …’ (Ibid.: 241). One is transported to the time of the Mahabharata unfolding as it were in real time, even as the invocation to Krishna (and the moksha/raft he offers) keeps the story looped within a time of devotion, and the repetitions of ritual. It is as though stories of war and familial violence will keep repeating—and thus the raft will have to be continually sought after to break the tempting, familiar cycles of greed. The play however depends also on this ritual being continually interrupted by that very world of greed and human ambition. Hence, in the midst of the seeking of the blessing, the producer (sutradhaar) is interrupted by the sounds of shouting. He stops to inquire what the commotion is, and he sees worldliness in its rawest form—mutilated, rotting bodies of war. Every slice of space is potentially a battlefield, and one is never far enough away from one. The producer also quickly identifies the temporal moment he is inhabiting—and he realises that he is enfolded within the war itself: ‘Don’t you understand, lad? Now that Duryodhana is the only survivor’ (Ibid.: 243). One is in a concrete and urgent present, one that demands a response and action. The present moment—because it is so familiar—is akin to a recurring, dream-like scenario: ‘Here soldiers and captain, elephants and horses killed in battle/Are crammed like a painting with crowded figures. / As Wolf-belly [Bhima] and Suyodhana [Duryodhana] start to fight/ Their troops have already entered death’s lonely hall of lords’ (Ibid.). The sense of painterly unreality paradoxically makes the situation only more sharp-edged. The soldiers begin to describe the battle, and it is as if it is in front of them, a theatre within the theatre: ‘So! It’s a duel with maces that has begun … The noise is coming from the fierce

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clash of maces’ (Ibid.: 255). Even in the theatre within the theatre there is an audience—for example, Vyasa himself is watching, his ‘astounded, upraised face propped on a single fingertip’ (Ibid.: 259). Such a complex temporal dimensioning allows one to enter the particularities of the play. Three soldiers enter and immediately announce the values of the play—it is decidedly martial. Indeed, the values of the martial world subsume other values—for the cosmos (moksha/freedom) too affirms the value of the fighting life for all, from kings to soldiers. The soldier intones: ‘In martial engagements the wedding chapel/where heavenly nymphs choose husbands … the hermitage called battle’ (Ibid.: 247). The culture of war slices through heaven and earth, and there is continuity between war (artha, or the human ambition to ceaselessly expand) and the ideal of a valued heaven, i.e., if the warrior dies he enjoys pleasures in heaven (kama), as well as the highest spiritual validation (moksha). Even the battlefield with dead mountains of elephants, the cries of war, the flailing torsos of animals, beady-eyed vultures, birds who have wet faces due to ‘gobs of flesh’, is a site of beauty and reverence, not despair (Ibid.: 249). It is the true school of life. In these descriptions and musings, there is much continuity with the Mahabharata. What is conspicuously absent is any attempt to frame dharma against these three other values. Where can a moral discourse hope to insert itself into an unfolding, never-ending universe of war? The Mahabharata too revels in descriptions of gore, but there are also the many books that counter-frame the war through generous doses of didacticism—the twelfth book (The Book of Peace) for example, where a dying Bhishma on his bed of arrows lectures Yudhishthira interminably. Throughout the Mahabharata, there are such red herrings of didactic dharma, and the Mahabharata captures this unresolved, and perhaps not necessarily unhappy contradiction throughout its expansive course. In contrast, and in the starker economy that a play requires, Bhasa dissents from the need to represent these conflicting currents of the ethics of the righteous war

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or a dissembling peace. This is only partly as a play needs concise visual action. A play could seek to visually and aurally represent a clash of ideas, such as the argument discussed in the chapter on dharma—the ambassadorships before the war that discussed the varieties of ethical decision-making. It would be more apposite to argue that The Shattered Thighs is truly sceptical of the values of dharma—it will not waste its lines on the didactic, when the tangible events of war make a mockery of endless speechifying. If at all there is a kernel of dharma inferable in the play, it is something tentative, something to be carved out of the narrative of action, something more interior, an elusive hieroglyph carved into the psyche. It is clearly not a pre-existing, grandiose set of idea(l)s that float over everyday human action in the manner of Bhishma’s lectures. Ethics always needs context and disembedding and can never exist as simply a set of a priori concerns. To return to the play: the soldiers watching are providing precisely this sort of mediated ethical gaze. They see Krishna guide Bhima into attacking Duryodhana’s thighs—a disallowed act. Vyasa’s disquiet is proof that the act was unjust. As known from the Mahabharata, Balarama is equally outraged, and closes his eyes in contempt and ‘rage on Duryodhana’s behalf ’ (Ibid.: 263). Balarama then proceeds to chastise Bhima and even threatens to kill him. As in the Mahabharata, the wounded, flailing, crawling Duryodhana evokes not pity, but an overwhelming tenacity. He says: ‘I must move my own half-dead body/Using both arms to drag it across the ground’ (Ibid.: 271). And yet, perhaps unexpectedly, this tenacity takes a different turn from the Mahabharata. Duryodhana tells Balarama to ‘Be calm. Calm down … let go your fury … The enmity is over; the rhetoric of conflict is over;/ we are over’ (Ibid.). There are further twists—Duryodhana tells Balarama that if he was ‘tricked’ at all, it was by Krishna, not Bhima (Ibid.: 275). But this is said less in anger than in a sense of wonderment at Krishna’s secret godhead: he who ‘just in play slept for/a thousand divine years in the ocean waters …

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who is loved by the whole world, who handed/me over to death, me who likes to fight fair’ (Ibid.). One has moved from the Mahabharata even if the debts (beyond the plot) are still clear. For Duryodhana’s dignity is still retained—in the Mahabharata he stayed an unreconciled, unrepentant warrior, whereas in The Shattered Thighs, this dignity is in the form of an acceptance that is yet not without pride: ‘With the very same pride that I was born, /I go with pride to heaven’ (Ibid.: 289). Whatever god’s play, people’s moral self-possession must lie in their insisting—against all odds and fantasies of retribution—on fighting fair, and being consistent with their martial upbringing. There is not the excessive celebration of surrendering to god that became the mainstay of a later moksha or bhakti soteriology. Surdas would say to that same Krishna: ‘give your protection to one of your own/who is terrified of death’ (Ibid.: 685). Duryodhana too represents a human vulnerability—but nothing would be more anathema to a warrior than a terror of death. Rather, his is an ennobled stoicism that is nevertheless not a denial of pain and degradation. Duryodhana’s ordeal is not over—unlike in the Mahabharata, his parents come to visit him in this humiliating state. There is the gruesome horror that not one of their hundred sons had survived. This dramatised trope of the parents coming to visit him in the forest—bringing parental lamentation into the very battlefield— becomes a common trope in later representations. It is present, for example, in the eleventh-century Kannada narrative poem centred on the same incident—The Duel of the Maces. In The Shattered Thighs, Duryodhana drags his wounded body toward his parents, rising and falling as he moves in their direction. They can only sense his coming helplessly, as the father is blind, and the mother had chosen to veil her eyes. Duryodhana’s wife and young son too cannot comprehend the macabre situation. Despite all this, Duryodhana speaks of his achievements and well-performed obligations, not his sense of current humiliation: ‘We have sacrificed at the various permitted festivals described in the Veda/Our relatives gave been supported. /

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The hundred beloved brothers have conquered their enemies. /Our dependents have not been cheated. /The leaders of eighteen armies in battle have been sore pressed in defeat’ (Ibid.: 293). His sense of obligations traverses the fact of war: martial cultures negotiate at every point with familial values. Thus he instructs his son to continue to respect Kunti and the Pandavas and regard them as kin and wellwishers. There is nought to be ashamed of—he is the proud son of a brave father who had nothing to hide: ‘My father Duryodhana was killed by an equal/While facing his enemy in battle. /He was glorious and praiseworthy; his heart alight with pride’ (Ibid.: 295). The utopic optimism of family reconciliation is in permanent disequilibrium with that same indefatigable martial culture. Duryodhana does not listen to advice on making peace with the Pandavas. In a mirroring of Arjuna’s question that launched the Bhagavad Gita, Duryodhana asks why he should attempt to survive the war at all if all those who he loved are dead—according to the Bhagavad Gita, he should fight anyway, being a warrior. But the situation allows one to reflect more deeply on the possible hollowness (or at least unsatisfactoriness) of this message with regard to the warrior’s dharma to fight. The scepticism poses a more profound question—can one survive war at all—as either victor or martyr? Are not all victories necessarily pyrrhic? Finally, in continuation of this insistently dark and demanding mood of the play, Drona’s son Ashvatthama—against Duryodhana’s plea—takes a vow to kill all Pandava survivors through deceit if need be, as deceit was so often visited on the Kauravas, including by the gods. The last moment of the play is a death-vision of Duryodhana, one that intermingles the pride and guilt that make up so much of the underlying affect of the Mahabharata. In the vision, his forefathers, brothers, Karna, heavenly nymphs, rivers and a chariot for his ascent, all appear to Duryodhana, and it would seem that heaven is not to be scoffed at, and may provide a respite after all. But then there is also a vision of the young Abhimanyu, whom he had

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killed unfairly, ‘angry and [is] scolding me’ (Ibid.: 305). Duryodhana realises that morality is indifferent to the imagined spatialisation of heaven and earth. The aforementioned Duel of the Maces (among other texts) also centralises the image of a maimed Duryodhana, unable to stand, and speaking in diverse, rich tones—anger, regret, but above all, memory of the grandeur of his martial life and the friendships (especially with Karna) that crowned that mode of living. Ambition is never entirely personal for a king, but always part of an intrinsically expansive ethic of reaching for the ends of the earth. And yet, the bloody business of conquest also gnaws, as one is responsible for the death of all those who one loves most. It is no surprise that many works that adapt from the Mahabharata pick this moment—of Duryodhana’s death—as the most honest and concentrated vantage from which to view the entirety of the clash of values that result in the war. Perhaps the Bhagavad Gita was spoken in a moment of innocence, before an arrow was fired—it is apposite that the Bhagavad Gita discourse be bookended by a moment when only the last few warriors remain, and only remain to make sure at least some mourning happens. The love and friendship of kings is pitiless, as Duryodhana realises—this is his wisdom, the counterpoint to the Bhagavad Gita’s ethic of detached warfare. In contrast to detachment, Duryodhana—in the midst of his death-vision—realises that conscience and doubt may yet make a hell of heaven, and of all moral philosophising. In the last book of the Mahabharata, The Book of the Ascent to Heaven (translated by Debroy), Yudhishthira enters heaven, with the sage Narada at his side, and sees a resplendent Duryodhana ensconced in kingly comfort. Duryodhana was ‘blazing in prosperity … resplendent as the sun and was covered with auspicious marks that distinguish heroes. He was with other shining gods and sadhyas, the performers of auspicious deeds’ (Ibid.: 670). Yudhishthira is startled, wondering how someone so ‘greedy for the worlds’ was rewarded (Ibid.). Later, it is revealed that this was only a temporary illusion—Duryodhana

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would be returned to hell, and Yudhishthira was only being punished for the one lie he told to get his teacher Drona killed. However, this explanation (and conservative reversal) does not quite do justice to the power of the initial setting up of the scene—Yudhishthira is stunned that a lifetime of fidelity to dharma has only resulted in Duryodhana enjoying heaven. Narada responds by repeating that there ought to be ‘no enmity in heaven’; that Duryodhana is being feted as he ‘offered his own body as an oblation in battle … By practicing the dharma of kshatriyas, he has obtained this region. Confronted with great fear, this lord of the earth was not terrified’ (Ibid.). Narada thus reiterates many of the (unresolved?) concerns that haunt the Mahabharata despite its formal closures. The epic retains a deep sympathy for the simple, straightforward, honest honours of war and death, power and pleasure that Duryodhana epitomises—and the epic also sustains a deep scepticism for the hollower pretensions of higher dharma/moksha that the Pandavas and gods represent. Even the very last verses on the last page continue the plaintive interrogation: ‘If dharma and kama result from artha, why should one not pursue artha? (Ibid.: 682). Thus questions of dharma and moksha, justice and freedom, undermine most fragile collaborations that continually dissolve and emerge between worldliness and love, artha and kama, the pleasures and duty of affirmatively kingly, this-worldly, sensuous power. Moments of harmony between the quartet (dharma, artha, kama, and moksha) are always melting before one’s eyes: it is no surprise then that the Mahabharata seeded the psychic and soteriological imagination of India with varied configurations of harrowing moral poignancy.

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Secondary Texts Agamben, Giorgio. 2011. The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government. Translated by Lorenzo Chiesa and Matteo Mandarini. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Ali, Daud. 2011. Courtly Culture and Political Life in Early Medieval India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Anandavardhana and Abhinavagupta. 1990. Dhvanyaloka and Locana. Translated by Daniel Ingalls, Jeffrey Masson and M.V. Patwardhan. Edited by Daniel Ingalls. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Andal. 2019. The Secret Garland. Translated by Archana Venkatesan. Delhi: HarperCollins. Austin, Christopher. 2019. Pradyumna: Lover, Magician, and Scion of the Avatara. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

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Badrinath, Chaturvedi. 2006. The Mahabharata: An Inquiry in the Human Condition. Delhi: Orient Longman. Bandopadhyay, Sibaji and Arindam Chakrabarti. 2017. Mahabharata Now: Narration, Aesthetics, Ethics. Delhi: Routledge. Bandopadhyay, Sibaji and Sankha Banerjee. 2017. Vyasa: The Beginning. Delhi: Penguin Random House. Beecroft, Alexander. 2015. An Ecology of World Literature: From Antiquity to the Present Day. London: Verso. Bharavi. 2016. Arjuna and the Hunter. Translated by Indira Viswanathan Peterson. Boston: Harvard University Press. Bhasa. 2009. How the Nagas were Pleased by Harsha & The Shattered Thighs. Translated by Andrew Skilton. New York: New York University Press. Bhattacharji, Sukumari. 2007. The Indian Theogony: A Comparative Study of Indian Mythology from the Vedas to the Puranas. Delhi: Cambridge University Press. Bhattacharya, Krishnachandra. 1983 [1958]. Studies in Philosophy: Volumes 1 and 2. Varanasi: Motilal Banarsidass. Bhushan, Nalini and Jay Garfield (ed.). 2011. Indian Philosophy in English: From Renaissance to Independence. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Biardeau, Madeleine. 1968. Some More Considerations about Textual Criticism. Purana 10/2: 115–23. Bowles, Adam. 2007. Dharma, Disorder and the Political in Ancient India: The Apaddharmaparvan of the Mahabharata. Leiden: Brill. Brockington, Mary and Greg Baily. 2002. Epic Threads: John Brockington on the Sanskrit Epics. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Brodbeck, Simon. 2009. The Mahabharata Patriline: Gender, Culture, and the Royal Hereditary. Delhi: Routledge. Brodbeck, Simon and Brian Black. 2007. Gender and Narrative in the Mahabharata. London: Routledge. Bronner, Yigal. 2010. Extreme Poetry: The South Asian Movement of Simultaneous Narration. New York: Columbia University Press. Chakrabarti, Kunal. 2001. Religious Processes: The Puranas and the Making of a Regional Tradition. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Chakravarti, Kalyan Kumar (ed.). 2009. Text and Variations of the Mahabharata: Constitution, Achievements and Limitations. Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal.

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Chandran, Mini and Sreenath V.S. 2021. An Introduction to Indian Aesthetics: History, Theory, and Theoreticians. Delhi: Bloomsbury Academic. Chapple, Christopher. 2012. Yoga and the Luminous: Patanjali’s Spiritual Path to Freedom. Delhi: Divine Books. Dabashi, Hamid. 2012. The World of Persian Literary Humanism. Boston: Harvard University Press. Dalmia, Vasudha. 2006. Poetics, Plays and Performances: The Politics of Modern Indian Theatre. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Daniélou, Alain. 1993. Virtue, Success, Pleasure, and Liberation: The Four Aims of Life in the Tradition of Ancient India. New York: Simon and Schuster. Davis, Richard. 2019. ‘Bhakti in the Classroom: What do American Students Hear?’ in Bhakti and Power: Debating India’s Religion of the Heart, edited by John Hawley, Christian Novetzke and Swapna Sharma, pp. 214–224. Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan. Desai, Ranjit. 2019 [1973]. Radheya: Karna: The Great Warrior. Translated by Vikrant Pande. Delhi: Harper Perennial. Devadevan, Manu. 2020. The ‘Early Medieval’ Origins of India Paperback. Delhi: Cambridge University Press. Dhand, Arti. 2008. Woman as Fire, Woman as Sage: Sexual Ideology in the Mahabharata. New York: State University of New York Press. Dinkar, Ramdhari Singh, 2020 [1952]. Rashmirathi [One Who is Riding a Chariot of Light]. Delhi: Rajkamal Prakashan. Dimitrova, Diana and Tatiana Oranskaia (ed.). 2020. Divinizing in South Asian Traditions. Delhi: Routledge. Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee. 2008. The Palace of Illusions. Delhi: Picador. Doniger, Wendy. 1976. Siva: Erotic Ascetic. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2009. The Hindus: An Alternative History. New York: Penguin Press. Dumezil, Georges. 1969. The Destiny of a Warrior. Translated by Alf Hiltebeitel. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ebeling, Sascha. 2013. Colonizing the Realm of Words: The Transformation of Tamil Literature in the Nineteenth-Century South India. Delhi: Dev Publishers. Fitzgerald, James. 1991. ‘India’s Fifth Veda: The Mahabharata’s Presentation of Itself ’, in Essays on the Mahabharata, edited by Arvind Sharma and E.J. Brill, pp. 249–263. Leiden: Brill.

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Index Ali, Daud, 82 Agamben, Giorgio, 3 Anandavardhana and Abhinavagupta, 1, 6, 7 Austin, Christopher, 10, 135 Bandopadhyay, Sibaji and Sankha Banerjee, 141 Bhattacharya, Krishnachandra, 11, 111 Bhushan, Nalini and Jay Garfield, 11 Biardeau, Madeleine, 112 Bowles, Adam, 10, 39, 42, 46, 47 Brodbeck, Simon, 10 Brodbeck, Simon and Brian Black, 10 Chakravarty, Kalyan Kumar, 10 Chandran, Mini and Sreenath V.S., 3 Davis, Richard, 2 Dinkar, Ramdhari Singh, 141 Desai, Ranjit, 141 Devadevan, Manu, 19 Dhand, Arti, 10 Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee, 141 Doniger, Wendy, 8, 112 Dumezil, Georges, 112 Fitzgerald, James, 8 Guru, Gopal and Sundar Sarukkai, 32 Hacker, Paul, 8

Hacking, Ian, 4 Halbfass, W, 8 Hawley, Neil Shapiro and Sohini Pillai, 142 Hiltebeitel, Alf, 3, 8 Hudson, Emily, 10 Ingalls, Daniel, 3 Kane, Kavita, 141 Kaul, Mrinal, 3 Klostermaier, K K, 4 Levinas, Emmanuel, 18, 53 Malamoud, Charles, 4 McGrath, Kevin, 10, 41 Minkowski, Christopher, 9 Mukhoty, Ira, 141 Nair, Karthika, 55, 64, 141 Nair, M T Vasudevan, 141 Olivelle, Patrick, 4 Patil, Amruta, 141 Ray, Pratibha, 141 Savant, Shivaji, 141 Shalom, Naama, 10, 53 Sullivan, Bruce, 10 Sutton, Nicholas, 10 Talbot, Cynthia, 9 Tieken, Herman, 136

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About the Author Nikhil Govind is Professor and Head of the Manipal Centre for Humanities, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Karnataka, India. He is the author (with Gayathri Prabhu) of Shadow Craft: Visual Aesthetics of Black and White Hindi Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2021), Inlays of Subjectivity: Affect and Action in Modern Indian Literature (OUP, 2019), and Between Love and Freedom: The Revolutionary in the Hindi Novel (Routledge, 2014).

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