MAHABHARATA SERIES BOOK#1: The Forest of Stories (Mba)

by Ashok K. Banker

  His eyes twinkled as he looked at their shining hopeful faces. It was not often that a visitor came to remote Naimisha-sharanya, much less a great Suta and he well understood their eagerness. He shared it as well, for katha-vidya, life-lessons encoded in the form of parables, was the essence of all Vedic lore. In particular he hoped that the visitor would recite one special poem that was fabled among brahmins the world over and which was considered holier than the holy Vedas themselves. To hear the great epic Jaya told by a Suta of such prowess would truly be a blessing.

  But first, the visitor would have to be received with due honour and ceremony as befitted a fellow brahmin of his stature. Already he could see that the Kulapati had been informed, judging by the movement among the rishis clustered around the centre of the ashram. That was where the great yagna was being performed. Except for a few dozen gurus such as himself who must need continue their education of their brahmacharya acolytes, the majority of Naimisha-sharanya’s rishis, maharishis, sadhus and other brahmins were all engaged in the performance of the yagna.

  As the visitor came closer, trailing hordes of curious and excited young acolytes in his wake, the guru saw that the Suta looked immensely weary and well-travelled. He was covered with fragments of leaves and dust and there were even wood chips stuck in his dhoti and in his matted hair. The guru sighed. Evidently Naimisha- van had attempted to thwart the pilgrim’s progress. Even more evidently, the pilgrim had succeeded in pushing through. The Suta may be a charioteer only in name but he was no less adept at travelling in whichever direction he pleased. The guru permitted himself another faint wisp of a smile. He greatly wished to get to know this Sauti better now, and, if Brahma willed it, to hear the great epic from his own lips.

  ||Two||

  Samantapanchaka.

  A plain well chosen for battle. Vast, flat, desolate.

  The ground firm beneath their feet, bleached clean by the northern sun, scoured by the wind until there was barely dust enough to blow in their eyes. No undulation broke its sullen monotony, no tree took root there, no hillocks or ravines impaired the horizon. Every inch was visible, every acre of hard-trodden soil naked beneath the searing northern sun, devoid of obstruction, concealment and diversion. A perfect container for the five lakes of blood spilled by Parashurama, from which it took its name. Parasu- Rama, literally Rama of the Axe, so named because as a brahmin boy who had witnessed atrocities committed by errant kshatriyas upon his own family, young Rama had taken up the axe he used for his wood-chopping chores and set out to seek and kill every kshatriya he found on earth. Twenty-one times he had cleansed the earthly plane of every last living kshatriya, warring with them en masse until this vast plain had been filled with five lakes of their blood. Finally, weary of slaughter, he had set down his parasu and retired to a life of meditative contemplation. And in time, the blood had soaked into the earth, leaving behind only this vast plain, burned sterile by the northern sun.

  A plain where a senapati seated astride an elephant could view the lay of the land for yojanas in every direction; could shield his eyes from the slanting sunlight and easily view the dark, shuffling shape of the enemy body, armour and weaponry gleaming beneath the relentless sun; turn from the waist, lean back, and view even the farthermost extremities of his own forces.

  It was a site perfectly suited to a great war. Vast enough to encompass two of the greatest armies ever assembled. Eighteen days they fought here. Till all but five were dead. Eighteen akshohinis of men and beasts. A number greater than any assemblage in the history of warfare, before or after. Brothers, clansmen, kinsmen, locked arms here in bloody civil strife. And the result was the end of an era, and of a dynasty.

  The traveller stood and contemplated the horror of that conflict. Finally, he raised the hardy staff, gripping it with both hands, and began walking. He left a trail of triple prints in the fine dust of the plain that, in time, was erased by the gentle but incessant breeze that traversed the land, just as it had covered over countless trails before.

  ||Three||

  The sun was still high by the time he reached the outskirts of Naimisha-van. He did not pause but plunged right in, and in an instant, his slender, gaunt form was no more than one of countless shadows within the embrace of a forest of shifting shapes.

  An errant breeze curled around the traveller’s neck, nuzzled him as tenderly as a gandharva’s caress, and whispered sweet indecipherables in his right ear before flitting away coyly. He heard it rustling leaves and brushing past dense foliage as it danced wantonly through the deep forest. As it fled farther away, it reminded him, a lifelong sworn celibate, of the faint tinkling of silver anklet bells and the soft teasing laughter of a courtesan in a rajah’s seraglio.

  He shivered and glanced up. He was dwarfed by the boles of enormous trees, rising high above to form a dense canopy that blocked out the sky and shrouded the heart of the forest in perpetual twilight. Craning his neck, he could just spy the tips of the highest leaves glistening as they caught the occasional rays of the noonday sun. It was only a little past the noonday hour. But if he looked around him, he might well be deceived into believing that darkfall was imminent.

  He hastened his steps, bare feet pressing steadily into the mulch and leaf-strewn forest floor where no human feet but his own had traversed for unknown ages. Something slithered through the undergrowth nearby, hissing sibilantly. He knew better than to slow his pace or turn his head. Eyes fixed resolutely ahead, he strode onwards. He did not think he had much farther to walk; he prayed he did not have much farther to walk.

  He had walked unstintingly for days, stopping neither for food nor rest. Accustomed though he was to a rigorous pace, a life spent on the open road, the forest unnerved him. There were tales told of Naimisha-van. Rumours of strange inhabitants who resided within its shadowy depths. Not all were human, it was said. Not all were benign. There were tales of horror, wretched stories of hapless travellers who had spent the night within the vaulting embrace of these formidable boles, and had never been seen or heard from again.

  He had always laughed off such tales, not being one to succumb to superstition or fireside entertainments, but it was one thing to laugh at a tale in the gaudy light of noonday, or even by the crackling heat of a fire with twenty companions beside you, and quite another thing to recall them when striding alone through the same darkling woods themselves. Especially when that darkness was not a natural one.

  His face, pinched and terse with concentration, had no smile upon it now. All he cared about was reaching his destination before the day ended and real darkness descended completely and the forest swallowed him within its nocturnal embrace.

  He shivered again as another gust of breeze whisked past him. This was not the playful caressing gust that had teased him moments earlier. This was a rough blow that shoved at the small of his back with the force of a man’s hand, forcing him to open his mouth in a moue of surprise at its strength, then shook branches to rain down twigs and leaves upon his person, and then went on to raise dervishes of dust and debris on the forest floor, first to his left, then to the right, then straight ahead, in an almost sentient pattern. Abruptly, a pile of writhing leaves and dead branches rose up in a frenzy, whirled violently, and flew directly at him. It struck him with the force of a minor sandstorm, blinding his vision, enveloping him in a pillar of dust, leaves, rotting wood and mulch and something that reeked like the sour urine of some jungle predator.

  He cried out in momentary confusion as the dervish assaulted him, its fury stinging his ears like the outrage of a cuckolded husband. Counterpointing its rage, the soft teasing tones of the earlier gust that had caressed him returned, whispering in nervous agitation. The voices rose and fell in debate.

  A twig with a sharp point scratched his shoulder hard enough to nick and draw blood. And with that, he lost his patience.

  |Om Namay Shiva|

  he cried.

  And invoked the name of the lord of the forest. Indeed, the lord of all forests,
and all their denizens, living or otherwise, Pashupati himself, who of course was none other than Mahadeva in one of his infinite forms. He continued chanting invocations to Shiva in his various forms, amsas and avatars, ending with a japa recitation of a powerful mantra:

  |Hara Maheshwara Shulapani Pashupati Shiva Mahadeva|

  The birdsong and insect-noises that had been so shrilly loud only moments ago were instantly hushed. The breezes died away.

  Unsupported by the dervishes, all the assorted debris—leaf fragments, dust, rotting wood—fluttered down to the forest floor to lie still. The light, so dim and murky, seemed to relent, growing a mite brighter—just a mite, but it was enough.

  The forest waited; watching, listening.

  He looked around, dusting himself off with brisk efficient movements, took up his staff, and, in the moment of still, waiting clarity, saw that he had been approaching his destination in an elliptical curve, taking far longer than was needed. A small ray of sunlight gleamed through the close-growing boles, marking the correct way he ought to go, and he smiled.

  He reached the clearing only a short while later.

  ||Four||

  Their eagerness was palpable through the arghya—the customary washing of the visitor’s feet—and through the other necessary formal rituals of greeting and hospitality. At moments, he could almost read their well-contained curiosity in minute clues. But they were tapasvi sadhus, ascetics of the deep forest who had renounced all worldly cares, and they wore their patience well, their bearded, care-lined visages composed in the preternatural placidity that came from a lifetime of brahmanic contemplation.

  They watched him patiently through his partaking of some welcome refreshment—simple ascetic food and plain water though it was, it seemed the best meal he had eaten in ages—and refrained from needless conversation.

  But once he was done with the refreshments and the oblations, and the oil lamps were lit and the chores finally over for the day, they gathered around the fire built in the heart of the clearing. Aging rishis and munis, young acolytes and brahmacharyas, every last one of the denizens of this remote outpost of brahmanical learning and ascetism. Even a little fawn with an injured forelimb that seemed to have become an honorary member of the ashram. The warm rays of the setting sun bathed the clearing in luminescence.

  They sat around in a circle, the firelight limning their bearded faces and hair piled in matted buns upon their heads, casting into sharp flickering relief their sage features, and as he warmed his tired limbs in the glow of the fire, he saw their gazes, turned inwards from decades of contemplation upon the mysteries of existence, grow bright and clear as chestnuts in fire, lit from within with the burning desire to learn. To know.

  He saw the young acolytes with their chottis wagging as they turned their heads, some barely out of boyhood, their smooth unlined cheeks shining ruddily in the fire’s glow, eyes round and innocent as the eyes of the tame fawn that sat docilely by their side, chewing on a stalk of kusa grass, watching him with large, wet, innocent, doe-eyes. They could scarcely contain their eagerness for their elders to broach the question that was on every tonguetip. Formal matters all discussed, conversation ceased eventually. The silence grew, filling the sunset hour, making every shifting of a dry log within the fire and every insect call or cricket chirring or whipoorwill’s note seem preternaturally loud, as if the denizens of the wood were gathered around the clearing as well, watching and listening from the deep shadows of the jungle, waiting, as the rishis and munis and acolytes waited . . .

  Kulapati Shaunaka spoke at last, his voice smoothened by some fourscore years of daily rote recitation into a gentle tenor.

  ‘What of the Dark Islander?’ he asked simply.

  Dark Islander.

  Krishna, meaning dark-skinned. Dweipayana, meaning Island-born. Hence the descriptor, Dark Islander. Add the family name Vyasa at the end and there you had it. Krishna Dweipayana Vyasa. ‘I bring you the news that he has surrendered this mortal form and transcended to the next life,’ Sauti replied, keeping his voice level and reverential, to convey his sadness yet without exhibiting a mite more emotion than was necessary. For here in the extremes of civilization, they followed the old ways. News of a death was to be stated in a particular fashion. Sanskrit was a precise, poetic language. Within its paradoxically simple yet complex grammar, there were no movements that were not dance, no phrasing that was not lyrical. All was precise and aesthetically balanced, beauty and precision perfectly entwined.

  They took the news equitably. None had known the ancient sage closely, though, like any seeker of knowledge in the present era, they had all lived in the shadow of his immense achievements and body of work. What Sauti saw now upon their faces was not sadness, regret or pain; it was simple reverence. They spoke for several moments more about the great one, and those who had known others who had encountered him spoke of those incidents and memories. Sauti listened without commenting, for he knew this was their humble way of showing their respect for the great departed.

  Finally, the question he had been waiting for—they had all been waiting for—arrived. It was spoken by Maharishi Gyanendra. The old sage seemed no less eager than his gathering of fresh-faced bald- pated brahmacharyas. ‘We hear you were present at the sarpa sacrifice of Maharaja Janamajaya,’ he said. ‘That you were one of those privileged to hear the recitation of the great itihasa from the lips of the great one and his disciple Vaisampayana themselves.’

  He nodded. ‘And from the lips of Krishna Dweipayana himself. ‘For despite the overall perfection of their rescencions, the master would often correct the disciples when they strayed, however minutely, from the body of the narrative, and bring them back upon the correct path. Indeed, there were times when he himself ventured to recite whole portions of the work, primarily the core poem he once called Jaya.’

  At this revelation, the eyes of the brahmacharya acolytes grew so large and round that the firelight reflected in them caused them to glow like fireflies. Even the rishis forgot themselves and blurted out stammeringly: ‘Vyasaji himself recited portions of the epic? In your presence?’ They added reverentially, ‘Gurudev?’

  ‘He did,’ Sauti replied calmly. ‘And it was an experience like none other. His voice, ancient and cracked with age and with the burden of over a century of harsh ascetic living . . . although, I have heard it said after his demise that he lived a millenium and a century . . . his voice was rich and febrile, as eloquent as the Ganga roaring in spate herself, as clear and pristine in its enunciations as the Gangotri emerging from its secret cranny in the high Himalayan glaciers, and as headlong in its profligacy as the river when it tumbles down the great ranges to crash upon the foothills of the northern plains. Such was the power of his recitation that at times, they say, the devas themselves came by to listen, planets slowed in their courses, suns paused in their burning, and comets hung motionless to listen.’

  There was silence in the wake of this description. Awed, adulatory glances. They were seated in the presence of one who had heard the recitations of the great Ved Vyasa himself! For that was how Krishna Dweipayana had come to be known, for his gargantuan achievement in compiling the Vedas, the secret repository of all the sacred knowledge of the Bharata race since time immemorial, collected into four volumes of immeasurable worth. Ved Vyasa.

  Finally, he himself volunteered the information he could see they all hungered for, yet hesitated to ask openly. ‘And I had the pleasure of hearing him recite his greatest work of all, the great poem that is his life’s supreme achievement.’

  ‘The Bharata!’ said Maharishi Gyananendra.

  Kulapati Shaunaka softly muttered ‘Sadhu! Sadhu!’ to emphasize the auspiciousness of the great epic.

  Sauti inclined his head. ‘The Bharata itself. Although, it has since grown into a far greater epic than even the great Vyasji envisioned.’

  ‘How so?’ the rapt expression on the faces of the aging rishis and smooth-skinned acolytes was so similar, they might all
have been siblings in that moment of shared curiosity.

  Sauti explained. ‘The original poem he composed was some 8,800 shlokas. In that form, it was known simply as Jaya, which aptly suited its contents, covering the history of the war between the two factions of the Kuru family as it did then. However, over repeated retellings, he himself expanded it to a larger work numbering 24,000 shlokas, which he then renamed Bharata, for it was no less than the history of the Bharata race itself, and while the great war was the central matter, it was preceded and afterceded by several other narrations as well. But today, after the great retelling consuming twelve years of the sarpa sacrificial ritual of Raja Janamajaya, it has burgeoned to the mammoth size of a hundred thousand shlokas. In this epic form, the poem is now known by one and all as Maha-bharata. Or the Great History of The Bharatas. And it is by this name that Vyasa has consented to have it known, although he himself preferred the original title of Jaya.’

  The fire crackled greedily, chewing upon a new log. A consumed length of wood, eaten in the centre, collapsed upon itself, sending up a shower of sparks that rose high into the air, like a cloud of fireflies rising up to join their remote siblings, the stars themselves, starting to glimmer here and there on the grey canvas of the dusky sky. For a moment, the entire assemblage was illuminated richly, and so were the environs immediately surrounding the clearing. Sauti’s eyes blinked as he glimpsed—or thought he glimpsed— forms, shapes, silhouettes, wisps and shadows, clustered thickly in the dense woods, like an army of watching, listening hordes gathered around in the shadowy depths. Then the cloud of sparks diminished and dissipated and he could spy only his immediate environs, the gleaming faces of his brahmanical companions. He sighed softly. What had he thought he had seen? The spirits of the dead, gathering around to hear their own history? The legends of the Naimisha-van claimed that the souls of those killed in the great Kurukshetra war came here to reside, to find solace for and understanding of the events that led to their demise. Could it be that by listening to the history composed by the sage Vyasa they might finally find that solace? He shrugged off these errant thoughts with an effort. Surely he was letting his imagination run riot.