The making of an epic

The Mahabharata is a narrative of the fratricidal struggle between two branches of a royal family. Indian mythology dates the original events at 3102 B.C. but modern historians are more comfortable with a date around the 15th century B.C. The epic was passed on for generations in an oral form, doubtless tweaked and tuned along the way. It is believed to have been written down, in Sanskrit, sometime between 200 B.C. and 200 A.D.

These were momentous times in Indian history. Buddha and Mahavira had lived and preached in the sixth century B.C. The Vedic religion of the Aryans who had invaded India from Iran was slowly being obliterated and being replaced by what we would today recognize as Hinduism. Indra, Agni, Varuna and Vayu, members of the Aryan pantheon were increasingly being shoved aside by the trinity - Shiva, Vishnu and a rarely-mentioned Brahma.

Because the Mahabharata evolved in such interesting times, nearly every character in the Mahabharata is claimed for one god or the other, for one faction or the other. So, you have Arjuna as the son of Indra and Bhishma as a Vasu reborn. Sometimes, as in the case of Bhishma, the result is a charming tale that adds to the epic. In other cases, as in Karna being the son of the Sun, nothing tangible is added. The identification of every character with a god detracts from the really crucial relationships. With everybody in the Mahabharata being some sort of a god, the immortality of Krishna and his special relationship with Arjuna - Nara and Narayana, the special man and his personal God, the human and his conscience, Arjuna and Krishna - fades into the background.

In addition, the Mahabharata was entrusted in the hands of two different classes of society - the often illiterate folk musicians and entertainers and the Brahmins, priests and advisors to kings. Thus, the written form of the Mahabharata contains numerous allusions to respect for Brahmins although the narrative hardly ever mentions a Brahmin except in passing. The oral version of the epic even today is performed in pieces with an emphasis more on the magical story than on the philosophical discourse.

The tribal society described in the Mahabharata had been replaced by a bunch of kingdoms that had begun to have contact with the outside world. The Mauryas, starting to unite the disparate kingdoms into an empire, and the arrival of the Greeks all connived to forge a new Indian identity. The Mahabharata was a product of that Indian awakening. My hope is that as we approach the fiftieth year of our republic, this thousand-year old Indian epic will remind us of the tribal society and the fratricide that was our past but will not be our future.