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The Bhagavad Gita
THE INDIAN CLASSICS—THE MAHABHARATA, BHAGAVAD GITA & RAMAYANA CYCLE—FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECES SERIES VIA GOODREADS—-ROBERT SHEPPARD, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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Mahabharata by William Buck
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
THE INDIAN CLASSICS—THE MAHABHARATA,BHAGAVAD GITA & RAMAYANA CYCLE—FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECES SERIES VIA GOODREADS—-ROBERT SHEPPARD, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
“Man is a slave to power…” says the Mahabharata,”…but power is a slave to no one.” The puzzle of power in its acquisition, intrinsic contradictions, disillusionments and disappointments, transience, arbitrariness, loss and questionable legitimacy is one of the principal themes of this monumental epic, and its ultimate pessimism and absence of any viable solution to that puzzle makes this touchstone classic of World Literature as modern as it is ancient.
The Mahabarata, or “Great Battle of the Men of Bharata” is an epic war story of equal stature with the “Iliad” of Homer, and like the Iliad and Odyssey, is not only a classic of Sanskrit and Indian literature, but similar to them has become constituative in the shaping and defining its own culture and civilization. Thus no educated person in the world today who wishes to understand the living world around him or her can remain ignorant of at least the broad outlines not only of the Mahabharata, but its included and related component works, the Bhagavad Gita and Ramayana, which together consciously or unconsciously move and animate the understanding and motivations not only of the of the billion and one-half people of the Indian subcontinent, one fifth of all humanity, but also across the extended sphere of Indian cultural influence over five millennia, from Indonesia to Persia, to Japan and China through Buddhism and abroad in the wider world.
How can we then approach the Mahabharata? One initial problem is its gargantuan size and bagginess. It is ten times the legnth of the Iliad and Odyssey combined, and its shape, reflecting its origin of evolution from a cloud of orally transmitted sagas to transformation into a coherent literary work is understandably intimidating for many. For those of us coming from the Western tradition a thumbnail analogy describing the Mahbharata might be to imagine gathered into one book the Iliad, the Odyssey, Hesiod’s Theogony, an anthology of selected works and dialogues of Plato, Socrates, the Pre-Socratics, Aristotle, Plotinus and a grabbag of “Popular Books & Passages from the Bible.” The Mahabharata, even more than the Homeric epics aspires to offer not just a story, but a total account of a culture, announcing in its opening: “Whatever is found here may well be found elsewhere; what is not here is nowhere.”
The Bhagavad Gita, (Song of the Blessed One) often read as a separate work but in reality but one section of the Mahabharata is included in this sprawling mass, and presents the philosophical dilemma of the warrior Arjuna on the eve of the horrific war, contemplating the moral and spiritual question of whether participation in the savagery, horror and waste of war can ever be morally justified or spiritually condoned, and the answer of Krishna that one must do one’s duty (dharma) even if violent and wasteful, and acheive a spiritual state of detachment in so doing. A shortened version of the third great classic, the Ramayana, presenting the story of the abduction of Sita, virtuous wife of Rama at the hands of the evil Ravana, and her rescue by Rama with the aid of Hanuman, the magically gifted Monkey-King, a tale known not only to every child in India but also echoed across China, Japan and East Asia in the incarnation of Hanuman as Sun Wu Kong the Chinese Monkey-King, is also part of the sprawling whole.
Though I have read the complete Bhagavad Gita and Ramayana, I have to confess that while I have read the great bulk of the Mahabharata, I have never completed reading it from page one to its end, a feat perhaps as comparable and as little accomplished as reading the complete Bible from page one and Genesis to the last page of Revelations and the Apocrypha, another feat I have fallen short of. Nonethelsss even falling short of total completion in either case is well worth the effort.
The core of the Mahabharata, like the Iliad, is a saga of a great war from its origins to its all-consuming escalations, to its horrific end and consequences, and like the Iliad, it constitutes a great story. The saga begins in “The City of the Elephant,” Hastinapura with a conflict of princely succession to the throne between two branches of the royal family, the Kurus, being the Kauravas and the Pandavas. I will not attempt to give all the details which are too convoluted for such an introduction such as this, but relate some of the more striking salient points.
The Pandavas are five brothers, sons of one main scion of the royal lineage, Pandu. Pandu has two wives, Kunti and Madri, but is stricken by a curse that should he ever have sex he would be stricken dead! He rules briefly then retires to the forest wilderness with his wives, Buddha-like, for spiritual reasons. His wives, not to be undone by the curse, nevertheless succeed in producing children, who are fathered not by Pandu but by various gods, Dharma god of Law, the Wind god, Indra, and the Ashwins–Divine Horsemen. These five Pandava Brothers grow up in the wilderness until the death of Pandu their father, upon which the drama of conflict and war begins when they return to the kingdom, in the interim dominated by the other branch of the royal family the Kauravas, to claim their patrimony, power and right to rule.
As if the conception and birth of the Pandava Brothers were not perplexing enough the tale of their marriage en route to their ancestral home kingdom is even more bizarre and mythically charged. Whilst they were in hiding the Pandavas learn of a competition which is taking place for the hand of the Pāñcāla princess Draupadī. The Pandavas enter the competition in disguise as Brahmins. The task, Odysseus-like, is to string a mighty steel bow and shoot a target on the ceiling, which is the eye of a moving artificial fish, while looking at its reflection in a pool of oil below. Most of the princes fail, many being even unable to lift the bow. One of the Pandava Brothers, Arjuna, succeeds however. The Pandavas return to inform their mother that Arjuna has won a competition and to look at what they have brought as grand prize. Without looking, Kunti asks them to share whatever it is Arjuna has won among themselves equally. On explaining the previous life of Draupadi, she ends up being shared as the common wife of all five brothers!
Needless to say, the rival Kauravas are little pleased by the reappearance and claims to rule of the five Pandava brothers and their wife-in common, Draupati. They first attempt to asassinate them by sealing them in a wooden palace, the House of Lac, and setting it afire, a plot foiled by a divine tip-off that allows them to dig an escape tunnel. The stakes are then upped when the Kauravas plot to invite one of the brothers,Yudhishtira, to play “A Friendly Dice Game” albeit with loaded dice. Yudhishtira first loses all his wealth, then the Kingdom. Fatally addicted to the passion of gambling and desperately hoping for a comeback, he then even gambles away as ultimate stakes his brothers, himself, and finally his wife, condemning all by his loss into servitude and slavery.
The jubilant Kauravas insult the Pandavas whom they now own as chattel slaves in their helpless state and even try to strip naked Princess Draupadi in front of the entire court as a common house slave, but her honour is saved by Krishna who miraculously creates lengths of cloth to replace the ones being removed. The royal elders, are aghast at the situation, but Duryodhana, leader of the Kauravas is adamant that there is no place for two crown princes in Hastinapura. Against his wishes the elders order another dice game, ending in a stalemated compromise. The Pandavas are required to go into exile for 12 years, and in the 13th year must remain hidden. If discovered by the Kauravas, they will be forced into exile for another 12 years.
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The motifs of the Ramayana of Valmiki had some influence on the composition of my own contempory epic, Spiritus Mundi(Spiritus Mundi, Novel by Robert Sheppard.) In Book II, Spiritus Mundi, The Romance, the more mythic of the two books, the heroes, led by Sartorius and his pregnant wife Eva, must enter a Portal in the Temple of the Mothers， Verne-like located at the center of the Central Sea of “Middle Earth,” a realm at the Center of the World, from which portal they can transit a “Cosmic Wormhole” through Space-Time and arrive at the Black Hole at the Center of the Milky Way Galaxy, where is convened a Council of the Immortals whose aid they need to save the human race from annihilation in a threatened nuclear World War Three.
Access to the Portal is, however, subject to a fatal restriction: no man or woman may open the portal and once closed behind them no one may return. The heroes, however must bring back the Sylmaril Crystal for use in the Crystal Bead Game which will determine human destiny. The liminal loophole through which the dilemma is resolved is similar to the hidden vulnerability of Ravana. Eva, who is pregnant with an unborn son, is both a woman and a man, both a female and the manchild within. In that liminal status, being something greater than either a separate man or a woman, she can open the gates of the portal and keep them open until the heroes return—that is in her pregnant state she is not a man or a woman but a transcendent hybrid fusion of both and as such an exception to the “either/or” rule. This universal Archetype of Liminality is found in both works and many other works of World Literature.
For a fuller discussion of the concept of World Literature you are invited to look into the extended discussion in the new book Spiritus Mundi, by Robert Sheppard, one of the principal themes of which is the emergence and evolution of World Literature:
For Discussions on World Literature and Literary Criticism in Spiritus Mundi: http://worldliteratureandliterarycrit…
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17…
Robert Sheppard
Editor-in-Chief
World Literature Forum
http://robertalexandersheppard.wordpr…
Author, Spiritus Mundi Novel
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17…
Spiritus Mundi, Book I: The Novel: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CIGJFGO
Spiritus Mundi, Book II: The Romance http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CGM8BZG
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