The Mahabharata

It is difficult to date the epics. They deal with remote periods when the Aryans were still in the process of settling down and consolidating themselves in India. Evidently many authors have written them or added to them in successive periods. The Rama-yana is an epic poem with a certain unity of treatment; the Mahabharata is a vast and miscellaneous collection of ancient lore. Both must have taken shape in the pre-Buddhist period, though additions were no doubt made later. Michelet, the French historian, writing in 1864, with special reference to the Ramayana, says: 'Whoever has done or willed too much let him drink from this deep cup a long draught of life and youth.... Everything is narrow in the west—Greece is small and I stifle; Judea is dry and I pant. Let me look towards lofty Asia and the profound East for a little while. There lies my great poem, as vast as the Indian Ocean, blessed, gilded with the sun, the book of divine harmony wherein is no dissonance. A serene peace reigns there, and in the midst of conflict an infinite sweetness, a boundless fraternity, which spreads over all living things, an ocean (without bottom or bound) of love, of pity, of clemency.' Great as the Ramayana is as an epic poem, and loved by the people, it is really the Mahabharata that is one of the outstand-ing books of the world. It is a colossal work, an encyclopaedia of tradition and legend, and political and social institutions of ancient India. For a decade or more a host of competent Indian scholars have been engaged in critically examining and collating the various available texts, with a view to publishing an autho-rized edition. Some parts have been issued by them but the work is still incomplete and is proceeding. It is interesting to note that even in these days of total and horrible war, Russian oriental scholars have produced a Russian translation of the Mahabharata. Probably this was I he period when foreign elements were coming into India and bringing their customs with them. Many of these customs were unlike those of the Aryans, and so a curious mixture of opposing ideas and customs is observable. There was no polyandry among the Aryans, and yet one of the leading heroines of the Mahabharata story is the common wife of five brothers. Gradually the absorption of the earlier indigenous elements as well as of newcomers was taking place, and the Vedic
106
religion was being modified accordingly. It was beginning to
take that all-inclusive form which led to modern Hinduism.
This was possible, as the basic approach seems to have been
that there could be no monoply in truth, and there were many
ways of seeing it and approaching it. So all kinds of different
and even contradictory beliefs were tolerated.
In the Mahabharata a very definite attempt has been made
to emphasize the fundamental unity of India, or Bharatvarsha as
it was called, from Bharat, the legendary founder of the race.
An earlier name was Aryavarta, the land of the Aryas, but this
was confined to Northern India up to the Vindhya mountains
in Central India. The Aryans had probably not spread beyond
that mountain range at that period. The Ramayana story is one
of Aryan expansion to the south. The great civil war, which
occurred later, described in the Mahabharata, is vaguely supposed
to hwe taken place about the fourteenth century B.C.
That war was for the ovcrlordship of India (or possibly of northern
fndia), and it marks the beginning of the conception of
India as a whole, of Bharatvarsha. In this conception a large
part of modern Afghanistan, then called Gandhara (from which
the name of the present city of Kandahar), which was considered
an integral part of the country was included. Indeed the queen
of the principal ruler was named Gandhari, the lady from
Gandhara. Dilli or Delhi, not the modern city but ancient cities
situated near the modern site, named Hastinapur and Indraprastha,
becomes the metropolis of India.
Sister Nivedita (Margaret Noble), writing about the Mahabharata,
has pointed out: 'The foreign reader... is at once
struck by two features: in the first place its unity in complexity;
and, in the second, its constant efforts to impress on its hearers
the idea of a single centralized India, with a heroic tradition
of her own as formative and uniting impulse.'*
The Mahabharata contains the Krishna legends and the
famous poem, the Bhagavad Gita. Even apart from the philosophy
of the Gita, it lays stress on ethical and moral principles
in statecraft and in life generally. Without this foundation of
dharma there is no true happiness and society cannot hold together.
The aim is social welfare, not the welfare of a particular group
only but of the whole world, for 'the entire world of mortals is a
self-dependent organism.' Yet dharma itself is relative and depends
on the times and the conditions prevailing, apart from some basic
principles, such as adherence to truth, non-violence, etc. These
principles endure and do not change, but othewise dharma, that
*/ have taken this quotation from Sir S. Radhakrishnan's 'Indian Philosophy'. I am indebted
to Radhakrishnan for other quotations and much else in this and other chapters.
107
amalgam of duties and responsibilities, changes with the changing age. The emphasis on non-violence, here and elsewhere, is inter-esting, for no obvious contradiction appears to be noticed between this and fighting for a righteous cause. The whole epic centres round a great war. Evidently the conception of ahimsa, non-violence, had a great deal to do with the motive, the absence of the violent mental approach, self-discipline and control of anger and hatred, rather than the physical abstention from violent action, when this became necessary and inevitable. The Mahabharata is a rich storehouse in which we can dis-cover all manner of precious things. It is full of a varied, abun-dant and bubbling life, something far removed from that other aspect of Indian thought which emphasized asceticism and negation. It is not merely a book of moral precepts though there is plenty of ethics and morality in it. The teaching of the Maha-bharata has been summed up in the phrase: 'Thou shalt not do to others what is disagreeable to thyself.' There is an ^empha-sis on social welfare and this is noteworthy, for the tendency of the Indian mind is supposed to be in favour of individual per-fection rather than social welfare. It says: 'Whatever is not con-ducive to social welfare, or what ye are likely to be ashamed of, never do.' Again: 'Truth, self-control, asceticism, generosity, non-violence, constancy in virtue—these are the means of success, not caste or family.' 'Virtue is better than immortality and life.' 'True joy entails suffering.' There is a dig at the seeker after wealth: 'The silkworm dies of its wealth.' And, finally, the injunction so typical of a living and advancing people; 'Discontent is the spur of progress.' There is in the Mahabharata the polytheism of the Vedas, the monism of the Upanishads, and deisms, and dualisms, and monotheism. The outlook is still creative and more or less rationalistic, and the feeling of exclusiveness is yet limited. Caste is not rigid. There was still a feeling of confidence, but as external forces invaded and challenged the security of the old order, that confidence lessened somewhat and a demand for greater uniformity arose in order to produce internal unity and strength. New taboos grew up. The eating of beef, previously countenanced, is later absolutely prohibited. In the Mahabharata there are references to beef or veal being offered to honoured guests.