‘Panchali….’
‘Look!’ she grabbed his arm and made him face the remains of the tragedy. ‘Look, he’s everywhere…’ she said, smiling and crying at once.
And Partha saw. He saw the earth, fresh and full of life; the ocean replete with joy and energy. Two strangers, the young son of a Yadu nobleman and a wandering tribal, worked side by side, building such shelters as they could. He saw mothers and fathers feeding infants that were not theirs. He saw children running to play among the very waves that had left them destitute. He saw hope, the irrepressible force inside them all that gave them the will to survive, to believe that some day they would all be happy and prosperous once again.
He turned back to Panchali, tears running down his cheeks. She squeezed his hand in reassurance. Letting her own tears fall, Panchali closed her eyes, remembering the day Govinda had stood in front of their armies, his arms open, his head thrown back and curly hair blowing in the wind.
Remember me! Remember Govinda! I am the Eternal Being that shines within each one of you.
In a voice that was strong and undeniably proud, the Empress of Aryavarta declared, ‘We will rebuild this city. We will rebuild it and at its heart will stand a temple, a magnificent temple…’ She faltered, and then found the words she truly sought. ‘We will rebuild this city, for as Time destroys it also births resurrection, and we are but instruments of Time. And yes, there shall be a temple within, a temple enshrined in the hearts and minds of the people, a temple of ideas, of freedom from hierarchy and destiny, of freedom to choose, freedom to rule one’s self. And it won’t matter if waves tear the city down or wars rip apart this realm because what prevails, what matters, is who we truly are: humanity.’
Panchali felt the conviction of words warm her heart, heal her. She knew with certainty now that no matter how many times Dwaraka fell, no matter how many times Aryavarta itself shattered into pieces, or the very earth was destroyed, it would all be built again. Govinda would live. Mothers would suckle him as their son, their eyes filled with dreams of the future, and children would find in him their mischievous playmate, the promise of innocence forever. He would be the sacred lover, the loyal friend, loving companion, and defiant cowherd. Uncrowned, he would be the people’s king.
There could be no greater hope.
Antha
The Resolution
NEARLY FIFTY YEARS SINCE THE GREAT WAR, THE CONCLAVE AT Naimisha was almost at its end. Ugrasravas Sauti finished a tale as he had heard it told to King Janamejaya, son of King Parikshith of the Kurus. Now a solemn quiet rested over them all. The hundreds of scholar-seers gathered felt the beginnings of weariness, the poignant and content melancholy of knowing that a huge task had been done.
The Vyasa, however, felt more melancholy and less content. He was one of oldest at the gathering, the last survivor amongst those who had been a part of the tale of the war. His time, too, would soon be up. He did not fear death, none of them did. But he feared failure. He was afraid to let down the man who had trusted him with the Truth. It was that fear that weighed as silence, over him and over them all.
A young scholar, his eyes sparkling with amusement, was the first to speak. ‘It is interesting to hear this version of events. I’ve travelled widely among the people of the southern lands, and the tale I’ve heard there is… Well, it’s different!’
A muted, but hearty laugh followed, as each scholar thought about the numerous rumours, ranging from the incredible to the ridiculous that had taken hold in but one generation.
‘Be that as it may,’ an older man intervened, ‘you must admit this has its benefits. What better way to preserve the story than to make it…shall we say, scintillating?’
A third scholar, a woman, began, ‘But, is it the truth? Few witnessed what happened, though it was just two or three generations ago. Fewer still were those who heard the story as it was set down by Krishna Dwaipayana, and of those only one now remains alive…’
As one, all eyes turned to the Vyasa.
‘What shall we do now, Acharya?’ Saunuka, the Vyasa’s dear friend and his second, asked.
What shall we do now?
The question had tormented the Vyasa for years. His father had kept his vengeful promise to Govinda, setting down the story as one of destiny and not of humanity, but Vyasa Sukadeva Vasishta Varuni had not felt beholden to that, especially since he had known this day would come: The inevitable Conclave of Seers that took place at least once in each Vyasa’s lifetime. It would be his chance to set things right. That is, if he could be sure what to do. Time and again, he had searched the depths of his soul for the answer. It was always the same; the answer that he had been given years ago, not long after Dwaraka had fallen.
‘The Books of Knowledge are nearly complete,’ Govinda had said, gleefully going through the Vyasa’s scrolls. ‘Every piece of Firewright lore, every formula or method or discovery that the Wrights knew of, is now part of Firstborn scripture. The task that was left to the Secret Keeper is now complete and Time, inexorable Time, shall do the rest. Knowledge is not what is written, it is what is lived. Years from now, people won’t know the difference between Firstborn and Firewright. It is the future we must think about now, Acharya, not the past. History protects tragedies better than it does tales with happy endings and there is no bigger human tragedy than unrequited love. Let your father’s words remain as they are. Let the story remain as he has deemed it fit to be told: a story of duty and divinity, not of Firewright and Firstborn. Let the world read of his sons, the Kurus; of Panchali, the fiery oracle of desire and death. No matter what he calls her, it doesn’t diminish her in the slightest.’
‘And what of you, Govinda?’ Suka had asked, with genuine concern.
‘I, too, shall remain what your father makes of me – a veritable troublemaker; partly unreal, completely cunning, and undeniably dead – at least to the world. As for the rest, I’ll leave it to future generations to think of me what they will…’
‘And you have that much faith in humanity, Govinda? You trust them that much?’
Govinda had chuckled. ‘Do you believe in the Divine, Suka?’
‘Yes. Of course!’
‘I don’t. I don’t believe as a matter of faith. I know, as a matter of fact. It is that divinity I trust…’
‘Then reveal yourself!’ Suka had urged. ‘The world thinks you’re dead, and mourns you. King Dhritarastra and his companions are dead; Dharma has abdicated his throne and has retired to the wild with his brothers… Indr-prastha wavers. Already the kingdoms of the east speak of seceding from the empire. How many more reasons do you need? We are leaderless and lost! We need you!’
With a melancholy smile, Govinda had refused. ‘This is the age of Kali, Suka, the age of Time, of inevitability. It is not kingdoms that secede, but janapadas – realms of and for the people, where each human being is his or her own sovereign. The empire as you know it falls, but Aryavarta rises. Kings cannot trample on us anymore in the name of Divine Order. I had to die, so that people would believe that the Firewright Order had died with me. I had to fall, so that on my bones a new hero would rise. It won’t do for statues of stone to become living men once again. The people must find themselves; they must find the kings and gods within… Vasudeva Narayana must go back to sleep on the Eternal Ocean till he is woken at the end of Kali, the new age.’
‘But…’ Suka had protested, clearly disappointed.
Laughing, Govinda had squeezed the scholar’s shoulder in reassurance. ‘Don’t worry, my friend. Some things don’t change, whether legend or fact. Narayana will not forsake his Sri…’
‘You mean…?’
‘Yes. And that final secret of mine I shall leave in your keeping,’ Govinda had finished, with a wink.
Before the dumbfounded scholar could say anything more, Govinda was gone.
Suka never saw him again. Decades had passed since: Suka had been an old man then and was now older still. But this much he was sure of, that when his nam
e had faded into the mists of time Govinda would still be remembered.
Taking a deep breath, Suka turned to the waiting assembly. His voice cracked with emotion as he said, ‘My father often said that no story in the world existed that had not been told in this composition. But if there is one thing that I have learnt, as a witness to this tale, it is that the truth is what we make of it. Every time a story is told, it changes. That does not matter. Humanity endures. It is not ours to do more than what Time has brought to us, or less…’
The words filled each man and woman present with both doubt and hope, as though even when the promise of infallibility broke, something still remained to save them all. Confident, the Vyasa went on, ‘Like the self-perfecting Universe, the truth in these stories has a way of surviving, of serving its purpose. Perhaps generations after us will worship the men and women of these tales as heroes, as larger than life. Or, perhaps, someone may ask what is hidden behind the unbelievable. In its own way it lives on. What one calls companion, another calls wife; what one names as love, another identifies as devotion. My father, Dwaipayana, called this his greatest work. It was an account of his kith and kin, of Aryavarta. But what is it really about? Two feuding Orders that don’t exist in the same way anymore? Brothers warring for the throne? Is it a tale of deceit, of righteousness, or of revolution? Who are we to judge what the truth really was…?’ Suka shook his head. ‘Record everything…’ he ordered, his tone firm.
The scholars set up an excited chatter as they formed their groups and began to create and compile the chronicle of Aryavarta.
Suka sat back and watched the proceedings with mixed feelings. He felt pride, yes; but also wistfulness, an inexplicable sadness. Not once had he thought, all those years ago when the young cowherd prince of Mathura had sought him out, that he would truly see this day. Not when Ghora Angirasa had died in his arms nor when Krishna Dwaipayana, his father, had installed him as the Vyasa had he believed that things could be so. But they were.
At that instant, the image of a boy, hardly a young man, dark-skinned and handsome, flickered across his mind. Suka could almost feel the cool tickle of dew-stained grass under the boy’s feet, the wind that mussed his curly hair, and he heard the melody of the flute at the cowherd’s lips. It was a happy tune, but played with such emotion that it wrenched at the Vyasa’s heart.
Govinda! Suka whispered in the caverns of his mind, unable to stop himself. The young cowherd stopped playing and looked at the old scholar, a twinkle in his eyes. Suka felt unbelievably jubilant.
His old, wise head bowed with humility, his heart brimming with love and hope for humanity, a satisfied smile danced on the wrinkled face of Sukadeva Vasishta Varuni – Vyasa of the Firstborn and the last Secret Keeper of the Firewrights.
Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
A NOTE ON SOURCES AND METHODS
The Aryavarta Chronicles is the product of research and analysis, with the latter drawing on the former. A slew of work is out there – critical, unconventional, even controversial – that revolves around the world of the Mahabharata. Many are in regional and vernacular tongues, existing as folklore and tales that have never made it into print as a cohesive tome. The Chronicles rely on a mix of these scholarly and popular sources, on histories that tend towards established fact, as well as those based on socially constructed beliefs of what constitutes fact.
THE EVOLUTION OF AN EPIC
The Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) version (also known as the Poona Critical Edition) of the Mahabharata, which remains the dominant source for most retellings and reinterpretations today, is estimated to have been prevalent around the fifth century ce, that is, the Gupta Age. That leaves a fair 3,000 odd years or so during which the story was told over and over, endlessly, forming a final ‘layered’ narrative filled with explanations and interpolations. The bard–narrator of the mainstream edition, Ugrashravas Sauti, states that he recites what he heard from the scholar Vaishampayana, who in turn is one of the five students who learns the epic from its original author, the Vyasa. Add to this the fact that the epic itself recorded its growth from 8,800 verses composed by Dwaipayana Vyasa to 24,000 verses, and then to the 100,000-verse version we have today. Somewhere along the line, the Harivamsa is added on, as an appendix. And there begins a journey – for history is not stagnant, nor is its narration.
UNRAVELLING THE EPIC
Bibliographically speaking, my study began with C. Rajagopalachari’s Mahabharata (Mumbai: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 2005). My main source, which forms the broad canvas of ‘canon’ Mahabharata, is the translated version by K.M. Ganguli (The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volumes 1–12, Calcutta: P.C. Roy/Oriental Publishing Co., 1884–96; Republished, Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1970) available online through www.sacred-texts.com. I read this in conjunction with J.A.B. Van Buiten’s three-volume translation which goes up to the Udyoga Parvan (Mahabharata, Volumes 1 to 3, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975–78); P. Lal’s lyrical transcreation of the epic (Mahabharata of Vyasa, New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1986); and Ramesh Menon’s more contemporary retelling (The Mahabharata: A Modern Rendering, Volumes 1 and 2, Lincoln: iUniverse, 2006).
I have relied also on Pandit Ramachandrashastri Kinjawadekar’s version of the Harivamsa (Poona: Chitrashala Press, 1936), as translated by Desiraju Hanumanta Rao, A. Purushothaman and A. Harindranath (http://mahabharata-resources.org/harivamsa), and on M.N. Dutt’s version of the text (The Harivamsa, Calcutta: Elysium Press, 1897). H.H. Wilson’s Vishnu Purana (Calcutta: Punthi Pustak, 1961; original copyright 1840) was invaluable especially when it came to cross-checking genealogies and timelines, as was the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust International’s version of the Srimad Bhagavatam, available through the Bhaktivedanta Vedabase Network website (www.vedabase.net).
The subsequent analysis, such as it is, was not without method. D.D. Kosambi notes: ‘Against the hypothesis of “pure invention”, one must ask why the invention took these particular forms …’ (‘The Autochthonous Element in the Mahabharata’, 1964, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 84–1, pp. 31–44). This has been the dominant principle I have chosen to hold on to, focussing on the why.
Two stalwarts have influenced my approach to this issue. First, I have borrowed liberally from Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s deductive principles in his Krishnacharitra (trans. Alo Shome, New Delhi: Hindology Books, 2008). Chattopadhyay’s analysis is based on a categorical rejection of supernatural events, interpolations and ‘events that can be proved to be untrue in any other way’ (p. 27). A similar perspective is evident in K.M. Munshi’s series Krishnavatara (Volumes 1–7, Mumbai: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1990). While Munshi admits to using his creativity freely in filling what may be gaps in the facts, he remains true to the notion that Krishna-Govinda was a man who eventually became a legend. In his view Govinda was not god, but a (near-perfect) man. I have gratefully followed his lead in beginning with the premise that this is the story of human beings, exemplary ones who are well-deserving of their consequent elevation to divine status. But it is not a story of gods.
Alf Hiltebeitel, a leading Mahabharata scholar, is one of those who speaks of a symbolism-rich Mahabharata; that is, the idea that many expressions in the Mahabharata cannot be literally interpreted (‘The Mahabharata and Hindu Eschatology’, 1972, History of Religions, 12–2, pp. 95–135). Hiltebeitel’s Rethinking the Mahabharata: A Reader’s Guide to the Education of the Dharma Kings (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2001) also deserves mention for fuelling many ideas; as does James L. Fitzgerald’s broad piece covering many topics on the Mahabharata, including the historical evolution of the text itself (‘The Great Epic of India as Religious Rhetoric: A Fresh Look at the Mahabharata’, 1983, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 51–4, pp. 611–630). Mary Carroll Smith’s analysis of the variation in meter, narrative structure, and the subtle moves from Vedic to Classical Sanskrit in the text as we have it today, to identify possible additions and int
erpolations (‘The Mahabharata’s Core’, 1975, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 95–3, pp. 479–482) was central to my reconstruction of the story.
Such a reconstruction also requires political, social and even psychological explanations. For this, I have drawn on ideas from many analytical and creative works, first among them being Irawati Karve’s Yuganta: End of an Epoch (Hyderabad: Disha Books/Orient Longman, 1991). Karwe is particularly notable for her critical approach to the question of Dharma Yudhisthir’s father. Buddhadeva Bose in his Mahabharater Katha/The Book of Yudhisthir (trans. Sujit Mukherjee, London: Sangam Books/Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1986) attributes to Dharma Yudhisthir’s character the many frustrations and exasperations that I find likely, and though I am less inclined to glorify Dharma as the protagonist of the epic I cannot deny that I benefitted from reading Bose’s book.
Alf Hiltebeitel’s work on Panchali (The Cult of Draupadi: Volumes 1 and 2, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1988, 1991) and Pradip Bhattacharya’s essay on the Panchkanyas of lore (‘She Who Must Be Obeyed – Draupadi: The Ill-Fated One’, 2004, Manushi, 144–Sep/Oct, pp. 19–30) provides deeper insights into her compelling character and even the intricacies of her relationships. Panchali is symbolically and overtly equated to Sri – the consort of Vishnu in terms of the pantheon and the symbol of nature at a deeper level. This clearly places her as the heroine of a story which has Govinda as its hero; an idealized symmetry that is alluded to in Prathibha Ray’s Yajnaseni (trans. Pradip Bhattacharya, New Delhi: Rupa, 1995.)
The tale, however, unfolds in a different way. The consequent asymmetry, anomaly even, is explained away in canon Mahabharata and its derivative tales (many of which speak of Panchali’s preference for Partha) using the concepts of rebirth and divine manifestation. But, if we do away with such interpolated justifications, what might it mean?
I do not have the answer to this riddle, but only a question. Behind the implied and admitted romances, is there a story of affection so obvious that it is easily overlooked? Is it a kind of Freudian transference, whether in the original itself, or perhaps created post-hoc in the interests of sanitizing and legitimizing the epic but nevertheless hinted at by the triangle of three dark-skinned Krishnas – Panchali, Partha and Govinda? Or is the asymmetry itself the story – the tale of a world where many such things are not right? To borrow Govinda Shauri’s words: ‘The world as we know it would not make sense unless Ahalya were turned to stone.’
The Aryavarta Chronicles Kurukshetra: Book 3 Page 48
