The Hindus

by Wendy Doniger

  Like the Buddhists and Jainas, many of the new sects disavowed caste or at least questioned its assumptions.14 At the same time, there was an increasing tendency, which Ashoka did much to popularize, to define a dharma that could be all things to all men, a dharma/dhamma so general (sadharana, “held in common”), so perpetual (sanatana) that it applied to all right-thinking people always, transcending the differences between various sects. And though the Brahmins quickly manipulated the system to keep individuals from moving up in the hierarchy of castes, vertical mobility was possible for the caste as a whole, if the entire group changed its work and, sometimes, its location. In this way, a particular caste might begin as a Shudra caste and eventually become a Brahmin caste. Some of the assimilated castes did become Brahmins, Kshatriyas, or Vaishyas and thus had access to the rites of the twice born. So many kings were of Shudra or Brahmin origin rather than Kshatriyas that by the time the Muslim rulers reached India they found it difficult to make a correct identification of either a class or a caste among their opposite numbers.15

  The Mahabharata both challenges and justifies the entire class structure. The word for “class” (varna) here begins to draw upon its other meaning of “color.” In the course of one of the long discussions of dharma, one sage says to another: “Brahmins are fair [white], Kshatriyas ruddy [red], Vaishyas sallow [yellow], and Shudras dark [black].” The adjectives can denote either skin color or the four primary colors that are symbolically associated with the four classes,16 as well as with the three qualities of matter plus yellow (saffron? ocher?) for the transcendent fourth of spirit. In one passage, someone asks a sage a series of questions that show us something of the perceived need, at this time, newly to justify the (mis)treatment of the lower classes:

  THE ORIGIN OF CLASS COLORS

  “If different colors distinguish different classes among the four classes, how is it that there is a mixture of colors in all classes? Desire, anger, fear, greed, sorrow, worry, hunger, and exhaustion affect all of us. How then are the classes distinguished? Sweat, urine, feces, phlegm, mucus, and blood flow out of all our bodies. How then are the classes distinguished? And how can you tell one class from another among all the species [ jati] of the countless creatures, moving and still, that have such various colors?” The sage replied: “Actually, there is no difference between the classes; this whole universe is made of brahman. But when the creator emitted it long ago, actions/karmas divided it into classes. Those Brahmins who were fond of enjoying pleasures, quick to anger and impetuous in their affections, abandoned their own dharma and became Kshatriyas, with red bodies. Those who took up herding cattle and engaged in plowing, and did not follow their own dharma, became yellow Vaishyas. And those who were greedy and fond of violence (himsa) and lies, living on all sorts of activities, fallen from purity, became black Shudras. And that’s how these actions/karmas split off the Brahmins into a different class, for there was never any interruption of their dharma and their sacrificial rituals (12.181.5-14).

  The implication is that in the beginning, everyone had not only the same general physical makeup (the Shylock argument: Cut us and we bleed) and the same general dharma of good behavior, but the same sva-dharma, “one’s own-dharma,” the particular dharma of each class (and, later, each caste), and that that primeval sva-dharma was the sva-dharma of Brahmins: maintaining dharma and sacrificial rituals. But then each of the other classes voluntarily took up other activities—the Kshatriyas indulged in pleasure and anger (a contradiction of the earlier statement that we all share these emotions), the Vaishyas in commerce, and the Shudras in violent and unclean professions—leaving the Brahmins alone in possession of the original dharma that had been meant for everyone, that had been intended as, in effect, the common (sadharana) dharma.

  Krishna’s declaration to Arjuna in the Gita that “it is better to do your own duty poorly than another’s well” (echoed in Manu [10.97]) ignored the fact that Arjuna’s own duty as a warrior would forever doom him to relative inferiority vis-à-vis Brahmins whose sva-dharma just happened to conform with the universal dharma that dictated nonviolence. Here is the catch-22 that Manu perpetuates: the hierarchically superior prototype is also the generalizable archetype. Although, in reality, power was largely in the hands of the rulers, the Brahmin imaginary relegated the violent ruler to a place inferior to that of the nonviolent prototype, the Brahmin.

  The conversation about the colors thus brings the argument for equality into the open—where it must have been at this time, when various social barriers were being challenged—but the old argument from creation comes to the rescue, and the class differences are affirmed in new ways. Now the class system is not created ab initio, by the gods, as in the Vedic “Poem of the Primeval Man”; now it results from the bad karmic choices of the classes themselves. It’s their own damn fault. This is a major transition from authoritative decree to apologia.

  THE NISHADAS

  The four classes were the central concern of a broader social agenda that included (by excluding) both Pariahs (even lower than the Shudras) and tribal people, epitomized by the Nishadas. A typically cold-blooded disregard of the Nishadas is evident in a story told early in the Mahabharata:

  THE HOUSE OF LAC

  When the Pandavas were still young, and living with their mother, Kunti, their enemies tricked them into staying in a highly combustible house made of lac [a kind of natural resin], which they intended to burn. Yudhishthira decided that they should put six people in the house, set fire to it, and escape. Kunti held a feast to which she invited a hungry Nishada woman and her five sons. The Nishadas got drunk and remained after the other guests had left; the Pandavas set fire to the house and escaped, and when the townspeople found the charred remains of the innocent Nishada woman and her five sons, they assumed that the Pandavas were dead (1.134-37).

  Only the single word “innocent” (“without wrongdoing” [1.137.7]) suggests the slightest sympathy for the murdered Nishadas. They are sacrificial substitutes, whom the author of this text treats as expendable because he regards them as subhuman beings. Perhaps their drunkenness (one of the four addictive vices of lust) is meant to justify their deaths.

  A somewhat more sympathetic story about Nishadas is the tale of Ekalavya:

  EKALAVYA CUTS OFF HIS THUMB

  Drona was the Pandavas’ archery tutor, and Arjuna was his star pupil. One day a boy named Ekalavya, the son of a tribal Nishada chieftain, came to them. When Drona, who knew dharma, refused to accept the son of a Nishada as a pupil, Ekalavya touched his head to Drona’s feet, went out into the jungle, and made a clay image of Drona, to which he paid the respect due a teacher. He practiced intensely and became a great archer. One day the Pandavas went out hunting with their dog. The dog wandered off, came upon Ekalavya, and stood there barking at him until the Nishada shot seven arrows almost simultaneously into the dog’s mouth. The dog went whimpering back to the Pandavas, who were amazed and went to find the man who had accomplished this feat. They found him and asked him who he was, and he told them he was the Nishada Ekalavya, a pupil of Drona’s.

  They went home, but Arjuna kept thinking about Ekalavya, and one day he asked Drona why he had a pupil, the son of a Nishada, who was an even better archer than he, Arjuna. Drona then resolved to do something about this. He took Arjuna with him to see Ekalavya, and when he found him, he said to Ekalavya, “If you are my pupil, pay me my fee right now.” Ekalavya, delighted, said, “Command me, my guru. There is nothing I will not give my guru.” Drona replied, “Give me your right thumb.” When Ekalavya heard this terrible speech from Drona, he kept his promise. His face showed his joy in it, and his mind was entirely resolved to do it. He cut off his thumb and gave it to Drona. And after that, when the Nishada shot an arrow, his fingers were not so quick as before. Arjuna was greatly relieved (1.123.10-39).

  This is a brutal story, even for the Mahabharata. How are we to understand it? First of all, who is Ekalavya? He is a prince among his own people, but that win
s him no points with the Pandava princes. The Nishadas here embrace Hindu dharma and Hindu forms of worship but are still beneath the contempt of the caste system. For such a person to stand beside the Pandava princes in archery classes was unthinkable; that is what Drona, who “knew dharma,” realized.

  In order to protect both dharma and the reputation of his own world-class archery student, Drona claims his retroactive tuition, the guru-dakshina. Of course we are shocked; to add insult to injury, Drona really didn’t teach Ekalavya at all and hardly deserves any tuition fees, let alone such a grotesque payment. But where is the author’s sympathy? It is hard to be sure. It is arrogant of Ekalavya to push in where he does not belong; he cannot be a noble archer, for he was born into the wrong family for nobility. But Ekalavya does not act arrogant. His outward appearance invokes all the conventional tropes for tribals: he is described as black, wrapped in black deerskin, hair all matted, dressed in rags, his body caked with dirt. He is made of the wrong stuff (or, as we would say, has the wrong genes). He is physically dirt. But his inner soul, reflected in his behavior, is pious and respectful; he does what the teacher tells him to do; not only is he a brilliant archer, but he is honest and humble. To this extent, at least, the Mahabharata likes him and presumably pities him; it refers to Drona’s command as “terrible” (daruna).

  Yet the act by which Ekalavya proves his mettle as an archer is one of gratuitous and grotesque cruelty to a dog, the animal that is in many ways the animal counterpart, even the totem, of a Nishada. The dog barks at him, betraying the class attitude that dogs often pick up from their masters; the dog doesn’t like the way Ekalavya looks and, probably, smells. Does Ekalavya’s unsympathetic treatment of this dog cancel out our sympathy for Ekalavya as the victim of interhuman violence? Does it justify Drona’s cruel treatment of him—what goes around comes around, travels down the line—or, at least, remind us of the cruelty inherent in the sva-dharma of a hunter? But the text shows no sympathy for the dog and therefore no condemnation of Ekalavya for his treatment of the dog.

  Here, as in the tale of Yudhishthira’s dog, the story shows just how rotten the caste system is but does not change it. No dogs get into heaven; Ekalavya loses his thumb. I read the text as deeply conflicted; it assumes that this is the way things must be, but it does not like the way things must be. It paints Ekalavya sympathetically despite itself. If we compare this story with the Ramayana tale of Shambuka, we can see one significant difference: The central episode of mutilation of an uppity low-caste man is no longer framed and balanced by another story (the revival of a child) or by the interloper’s evil goal (usurping the gods’ privileges). The basic point is the same as for Shambuka—don’t get ideas above your station—but here it is starker, unjustified by anything but uppitiness. And where we learned nothing at all about Shambuka but his class, now Ekalavya’s physical repulsiveness is contrasted with his high moral qualities. Is this progress? Perhaps. It shows a more complex view of dharma, though it still upholds that dharma.17

  In the face of his defense of the class system, the author of this story saw the humanity in Ekalavya, saw that tribals were human beings of dignity and honor. It doesn’t necessarily mean that tribals tried to break into the professions of Kshatriyas. Nor does it mean that Kshatriyas went around cutting off the thumbs of tribals. It means that the author of this text imagined the situation and was troubled by it. The people who heard and, eventually, read the text must have seen that too; maybe some of them, as a result, treated the tribals whom they encountered with more humanity. The imagination of a better world may have made it a better world.

  Moreover, during the long history of both this story and the story of the Nishada woman and her sons, different people did read the story differently; the reading of the Brahmin imaginary was certainly not the only one. This is a moment that justifies a bit of fast-forwarding. There is a Jaina text from the sixteenth century CE that begins much like the Mahabharata story of Ekalavya but then gives the protagonist a different name and a different tribe (a Bhil or Bhilla, even more scorned than a Nishada) and veers in a very different direction:

  In Hastinapura, Arjuna learned the entire science of archery from Drona and became as it were another image [murti] of Drona, and honored him with many gems, pearls, gold, elephants, horses, and so forth. The guru said to him, “Arjuna, choose a boon.” Arjuna replied, “Sir, if you are satisfied with me, let there be no one but me who knows such a science of archery.” Thinking, “The words of great gurus can never fail to come true,” Drona agreed. One day, a certain Bhil named Bhimala, living on the banks of the Ganges, came and asked Drona to be his guru; obtaining his promise, he went back to his own place and made an image of Drona out of mud, and honored it with flowers and sandalwood and so forth, and said, “Drona, give me the knowledge of archery,” and practiced the science of archery in front of him. And with his mind and heart full of the emotion of passionate devotion to him [bhakti], the Bhil after a certain time became like a second Arjuna.

  One day, Arjuna, following Drona, who had gone in front to take a bath in the Ganges, saw that the mouth of his own dog was filled with arrows that had not pierced his upper lip, lower lip, palate, tongue, or teeth. Thinking, “No one but me has such a power,” he was amazed, and going forward by following along the arrows from his dog’s mouth, he saw Bhimala and asked him, “Who shot these arrows into the dog’s mouth?” “I did.” “Who is your guru?” The Bhil said, “Drona is my guru.” Hearing that, Arjuna reported this to Drona and then said, “Hey, master. If people like you leap over the boundary markers of words, then what can we wretched creatures do?”

  Drona went there and asked the Bhil, “Where is your guru?” and the Bhil showed him the representation that he himself had made and told him what he had done, saying, “Arjuna! This is the fruit of my bhakti.” But the sneaky, cheating Arjuna said to him, “Bhil, with your great zeal, you must do puja with the thumb of your right hand for this Drona whom you met through us.” The Bhil said, “Yes,” and did it. But then the guru said, “Arjuna! You are a sneaky urban crook, and you have deceived this artless, honest, unsophisticated forest dweller. But by my favor, even without a thumb these people will be able to shoot arrows.” And as he said this, the guru gave the Bhil this favor and went back to his own place. And so, even today, a Bhil can shoot arrows using his middle finger and his forefinger.18

  The entire moral weight has shifted; now it is Arjuna, not Drona, who makes the cruel demand, and Drona who objects to it and who calls Arjuna deceitful and cunning, in contrast with the artless, honest Bhil, who does not hurt the dog, as the text takes pains to tell us. Indeed Drona has agreed to be the Bhil’s guru at the start and, at the end, grants him superior skill in archery, despite Arjuna’s attempts to hobble him. The image of Drona that the Bhil makes of mud is now matched by other flesh and blood images: Arjuna is the image of Drona, and the Bhil is the image of Arjuna, hence of Drona, once removed. Altogether, the Bhil, with his grotesque guru gift (no longer a Vedic tuition gift, but a Hindu puja), comes off smelling like a rose, and Arjuna, with his gift of gold and precious jewels and horses and elephants, does not.

  The forefinger is called the tarjaniya, the finger that points, that accuses, and here it points straight at Arjuna. Knowing all this, we can see other possible multiple readings of the story even in the Mahabharata. For there is a two-way conversation going on between the Hindu and Jaina texts, an intertextual conversation. The Jaina text quotes the Hindu Mahabharata, an example of the widespread intertextuality between religions in India, not just within Hinduism. But Hindus would probably know the Jaina version too, a supposition justifiable on the basis of our understanding of the relationship between Hindus and Jainas at this period, and this may have contributed to the eventual use of the story of Ekalavya by contemporary Hindu Pariahs, for whom he is an important hero.

  Whatever the spirit in which the tale of Ekalavya was originally told, it continued to be remembered among people crying out for soci
al reform. A glance at later versions of the same story supports some of the hypothetical meanings that I have hunted out of the original telling and suggests, but certainly does not prove, that the seed of that later response may already have been there in the Sanskrit text (hindsight alert!), or at least that there may have been other readings of this episode besides the original one we have, with other evidence of moral conscience, to bridge the gap between the first recorded telling and later versions that explicitly call out for justice.

  Whether the situation was equally encouraging for women is a subject that we must now consider.

  WOMEN

  The women of the Mahabharata are extraordinarily prominent, feisty, and individualistic, in part as a result of changes that were taking place in the social structures at the time of the recension of the text (such as the widespread public recognition of women as donors and renouncers, and their more active role in the pujas of sectarian Hinduism), in part as a result of the infusion of the Sanskrit corpus with stories from village and rural traditions that were less hide-bound in their attitudes to women. The new attention paid to women in the Mahabharata emerges clearly from the stories of the births of both its legendary author, Vyasa, and its heroes: