IN this series of articles, I'm working on outlining the "meaning of mahabharata"
India under the spell of Mahabharata
India today is under the spell of the Mahabharata. The
strands of the saga are woven into the very thread of the civilization. So many
traditions in literature may be traced back to this monumental book of divine
inspiration. The poem is beyond time. No one can discover its origin or the
date. Neither does it have a date of expiration. It has been invoked throughout
Indian antiquity up until the present day. What then is the magic hold that
this book has had on generations? What is its miracle? To Sanskrit scholars and
Western literary critics it is a mystery. And yet, for the common man or woman
in today’s India there is no mystery at all. They know that the Mahabharata is
a divine work. That it sprang from the mind of Vyasa to the ivory pen of
Ganesh. It recounts the warlike needs of their ancestors, the godlike heroes of
a past age. They all know the story: on the one hand are the Kauravas--
outwardly pious, but inwardly envious. On the other are the Pandavas, inwardly
righteous and sworn to serve Krishna. The righteous sons of Pandu are always
helped by their friend Lord Krishna. They fight a holy war to put an end to
injustice. It is the end of the Golden age when gods would walk with men, a
good time when people were happier and more honest.
Divine questions, divine answers
There is something in the poem far nobler than a romantic
story about a lost paradise and golden age--kshatriya princes
fighting for a forgotten kingdom--a simple tale of ancient love and war. The
meaning may seem mysterious to critics and poets; but for the common man of the
Indian subcontinent, there is no mystery to the Mahabharata. It is the very
soul of dharma. While it plays out as a long answer to the question
posed by King Janamejaya, the book leads us on a journey to the very soul. That
great king asks the Sage at the snake sacrifice: “O Vaishampayana how
arose the quarrel among those men of unblemished deeds? What was the cause of
that great war which destroyed so many lives?” His answer enthralls the King
for many days. But his answer always revolves around the question of truth,
dharma, and the ultimate goal of life.
India’s great epic
It might seem strange that the answer to such an easy
question might run into an epic work of 100,000 Sanskrit verses. And yet, how
much ink has been spilled about the causes and effects of the second world war?
One may argue that there is no need for any digression in the work of this
kind. The 100,000 couplets of the Mahabharata are eight times longer than the
Iliad and Odyssey combined, 3 1/2 times longer than the entire Christian Bible
of old and New Testament. But the length of the work owes to the fact that the
skeleton of the Mahabharata supports thousands of other tales as well as a
massive didactic material meant to educate one on all aspects of Dharma.
The story of the Pandavas and the Kurus winds its way
through a Byzantine labyrinth of elaborate treatises on everything from
religious sacrifice to moral law and ethics; from philosophy and metaphysics to
the geography and cosmography of the ancient world, as well as digressions into
a myriad of legends, mythological tales, and Hindu doctrine. And yet, the
author never loses sight of his goal. In spite of his many digressions, he
moves the drama forward, always keeping the goal in mind.
The story may be interpreted on multiple levels. On the
mundane or worldly level it is a story of rivals; of palace intrigue, of
death-defying heroes, seductive heroines and damsels in distress. The good guys
are antiheroes; they might have come straight out of the film world of Star
Wars or a graphic novel in the Marvel universe.
Dharma at the center of the work
There is a phrase
in Sanskrit यतो धर्मस्ततो जयः' yato
dharmas tato Jayaḥ "Where is dharma, there is victory".
It is the motto of India’s Supreme Court and the leit motif of
the Mahābhārata. The idea of dharma illuminates the entire work from beginning
to end. To take the Mahābhārata as a mundane story is to miss its core
teaching.
Dharma is taught
everywhere throughout the book, implicitly in the lives and examples of the
characters, and explicitly through the morals to its stories and the teachings
of the saints and sages found in the work. We must leave aside a mundane
reading of the work and try to understand its spiritual component. But even
this is problematic. Even if we read on the level of dharma,
there are still multiple layers of interpretation.
For dharma itself may be seen as both ethical and divine.
That is, there is social or moral-ethical dharma insofar as how we act, how we
live, how we treat others. "How do we live in society?" is a question
for ethical or social dharma. But in the end, Krishna tells us
to reject the ordinary ethical values of social dharma for a higher spiritual
truth. How do we keep these in balance? This is, in essence, the central moral
question of the Mahabharata, one that Vyasa will revisit again and again in his
telling of the story.
Limiting ourselves for a moment to the purely ethical level,
the best representative of ordinary or social dharma dharma is Bhishma as the
Perfect Man, the perfect hero.
He is placed by birth and circumstances in the station of a
warrior and a king. He sacrifices his kingdom for his father’s happiness. He
rules only as regent, so that his younger brothers may become king. And yet he
is the emblem of a perfect warrior, an example of chivalry. As a warrior he
follows the code. He is capable of ruthless force, but only in the service of
Dharma.
And he does his duty in a spirit of detachment free from
personal interest, uncontaminated by ego, lust, and anger. Bhishma acts selflessly.
as a knight in shining armor, his example illuminates the path for his
descendents: King Arthur, the Knights of the round table, Lancelot, Galahad,
and Percival and even the matchless Don Quixote the unexcelled champion of
Miguel de Cervantes and classical Spanish literature.
Greatness of character
Bhishma shows the greatness of character that we expect from
the Samurais of Bushido, From the Celts and Vikings, and even modern heroes
like the Jedi Knights of Star Wars or the superheroes of the Marvel universe.
Bhishma
disagrees with the war; it is not his fight. He bears the Pandavas no enmity
and in fact sees their call for justice as righteous.
But,
when war comes against his advice, he is duty bound as a soldier to help his
monarch. With duty as his standard, he becomes general of the Kurus. Since he
has pledged to fight for Duryodhana he carries out his pledge and fights nobly.
His death is remarkable. The surviving warriors on both sides put away their
weapons and armor, and leaving aside their hatred, approached him to hear his
final teachings.
Bhishma
greeted them all with his blessings. Tortured by his wounds, impaled on a
thousand arrows, and burning with fever, he taught his students. An emblem of
self-control and yoga, he had been blessed with the boon that death would never
come to him as long as he desired to live. Bhishma had conquered his ego, he
had conquered sexual desire and gave out his wisdom until his dying breath.
Bhishma’s life
and example teach us that of the different aims of life, duty, dharma is
supreme: yato dharma tato jayaḥ.
Bhishma’s heroic sense of duty disdains name and fame. He has no
interest in love or money. He exalts duty above all else. And yet, his duty is
to the mundane world of noble kings. He sees them as God’s representatives on earth. For Bhishma, service to the monarch
is service to God.
But in
the end, this is not the highest conception. In fact, it is only a beginning.
What
confuses so many about the inner meaning of the Mahābharata is that Vyāsa’s concept of dharma functions on different levels at the
same time. He returns to the idea of dharma again and again, firmly
establishing dharma as the most important value. But what is dharma?
Next up: What is dharma?
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