5 - Vishwa1

FRAME NARRATIVES AnD FORKED BEGInnInGS: OR, HOW TO READ ThE DIPARVAn*
Vishwa P. Adluri
1. Intoduction
he Mahbhrata contains two beginnings at 1.1 and 1.4, each beginning with the identical line lomaharaaputra ugrarav sta pauriko naimiraye aunakasya kulapater dvdaavrike satre (1.1.1 and 1.4.1).1 In this paper, I demonstrate the failure of text-historical methods to provide an adequate explanation for this feature. Arguing that it is no mere accident, but a meaningful duplication, I show how the double beginning is integral to the form, content, and function of the epic. The Indian epic, the Mahbhrata, is a literary work of stunning complexity. At its core,2 this narrative recounts the story of the vicissitudes of the Kuru dynasty, but this story is located within a far more comprehensive literary and philosophical program.3 The central story of a fratricidal conflict over the throne of Hstinapura is nothing if not a cipher for fundamental philosophical and cosmological reflections concerning issues such as time (kla),4 fate (daivam),5 right action (dharma), the fulfillment of the goals of human life (the pururthas),6 the soul and the nature of consciousness,7 and the being that transcends all becoming (Ka Vsudeva).8 The complexity of this philosophical vision places tremendous demands on the epics structure,9 forcing it to break with the bounds of a simple linear narrative.10 In this paper, I analyze some aspects of the epics structure, focusing especially on the first major book of the Mahbhrata, the diparvan. I consider the frame narratives of the diparvan in the next section (2. The Frame Narratives of the diparvan), before showing how the outermost frame is split to include not one but two beginnings (3. The Double Beginning 143
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Journal of Vaishnava Studies
of the diparvan). In the fourth section (Many Beginnings, Many Models), I then analyze some earlier responses to the problem, focusing especially on van Buitenens thesis of historical expansion and Oberlies more recent thesis that the epic is comprised of multiple versions laid one on top of the other. Section five (The Double Beginning in the Critical Edition) then examines the evidence for the double beginning in the Critical Edition (CE), where I show that the manuscript evidence does not support either of these historicist models. I also discuss arguments that the CE succeeds in recovering a text that is more archetypal than its editors could have imagined. Thus, on philological grounds alone, we must set aside text-historical speculations such as those of Oberlies and Tsuchida (on whose work Oberlies largely bases his argument), and attempt to understand the double beginning as a meaningful and necessary component of the epics narrative architecture. In section six (Two Beginnings, Two Narrations), I begin the positive part of the interpretation. Through a careful reading of the opening books of the diparvan, I show how Mehta and Tsuchida overlook crucial evidence that we have not one but two Ugraravas narrations in the epic: one beginning in the Anukramaiparvan and corresponding to the first beginning, the other beginning in the Paulomaparvan and corresponding to the second beginning. Once we overcome text-historical prejudices that the Mahbhrata is a badly composed text,11 essentially an accident of history, we are then in a position to understand the specific function of the two beginnings. In section seven (Cosmological and Genealogical Beginnings: The Anukramai- and Paulomaparvans), I then demonstrate how the two beginnings provide alternative ways of entering the narrative of becoming. In section eight (A Fork in the Beginning: Hermeneutics in the Pauyaparvan), I then focus on the space between the two beginnings. I show how the double beginning creates a non-narrative space between the Anukramaiand Paulomaparvans, which allows for the text to convey its own hermeneutic apparatus in the form of the Pauyaparvan. Finally, I return to Oberlies onionskin model of the epic in section nine (Return to the Problem of Text-Historical Criticism) and then end, in section ten (Conclusion: Establishing Criteria), with some concluding remarks on the epic as a whole. Finally, a note on terms. The epic makes use of various terms to describe its major sections and their subdivisions, and it is important to keep these apart in the discussion that follows. The epic is primarily articulated into eighteen parvans or major books (as van Buitenen translates). These parvans are further divided into varying numbers of upaparvan or minor books, with the upaparvans again containing a number of khynas (narratives) and being divided into a number of adhyyas (chapters). Only the first two divisions, i.e.,
How to Read the diparvan
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the parvans and the upaparvans, are of significance to this paper. I will either use the Sanskrit terms or, following van Buitenens usage, refer to them as major books or minor books. I have tried to be as consistent as possible in this usage, except for a few instances where it would have made for awkward reading. In those cases, however, context makes it amply clear whether the reference is to a major or a minor book. This paper is mainly restricted to a discussion of the first major book, the diparvan; of this book, I focus principally on the first six minor books. The following chart lays out the eighteen parvans, the number of upaparvans in each, and then expands on the six upaparvans of the diparvan that are central to this study.
No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Name of parvan (Major book) diparvan (The Book of the Beginning) Sabhparvan (The Book of the Assembly Hall) rayakaparvan (The Book of the Forest) Viraparvan (The Book of Vira) Udyogaparvan (The Book of the Effort) Bhsaparvan (The Book of Bhma) Droaparvan (The Book of Droa) Karaparvan (The Book of Kara) alyaparvan (The Book of alya) Sauptikaparvan (The Book of the Sleeping Warriors) Strparvan (The Book of the Women) ntiparvan (The Book of the Peace) Anusanaparvan (The Book of the Instructions) vamedhikaparvan (The Book of the Horse Sacrifice) ramavsikaparvan (The Book of the Hermitage) Mausalaparvan (The Book of the Clubs) Mahprasthnikaparvan (The Book of the Great Journey) Svargrohaaparvan (The Book of the Ascent to Heaven) Number of upaparvans (Minor books) 1-225 1-72 1-298 1-67 1-197 1-117 1-173 1-69 1-64 1-18 1-27 1-353 1-154 1-96 1-47 1-8 1-3 1-15 Upaparvans 1-6 of the diparvan Ugraravas-aunaka dialogical level: 1. Anukramaiaparvan (The Lists of Contents) 2. Parvasagrahaparvan (The Summaries of the Books) 3. Pauyaparvan (The Book of Pauya) 4. Paulomaparvan (The Book of Puloman) 5. stkaparvan (The Book of stka) Vaiapyana-Janamejaya dialogical level: 6. divavataraaparvan
* All figures taken from van Buitenen 1973
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2. The Frame Narratives of the diparvan One of the most puzzling aspects of the Mahbhrata is the way some narratives are contained within other narratives. Scholars use the words enframing or emboxment to describe the way more remote narratives are used to convey other narratives. At its simplest, this technique allows the epic to answer basic questions such as by whom was this story narrated? And to whom? Where did this narration occur?,12 but the use of this technique is not restricted to providing appropriate context. Were its function merely literary, we would not find such a complexity of narratives, each interlocking with others in unexpected and subtle ways. Nor can a simplistic use of this principle preclude the problem of establishing a context for the outermost narration. In a linear narrative structure, the outermost narration must always remain open, as this level is attributed to the omniscient narrator.13 Let us see how the diparvan addresses this problem. According to Mahbhrata 1.53, the brahmin Vaiapyana first recounted the story of the bheda or conflict between the two branches of the Kuru line in the presence of Vysa, the epics traditional author, at king Janamejayas sarpasatra or snake sacrifice. Vaiapyanas narration in turn is placed within a second narrative, that of how the snake sacrifice came about. The original bheda narrative is thus itself placed within a second bheda narrative, the story of a conflict between snakes14 and mena conflict in which two descendants of the Kuru line once again play a major role.15 But who recounts this narrative? The epic tells us that the bard Ugraravas, arriving once at the Naimia forest, came across a group of brahmin seers or is attending aunakas twelveyear sacrificial rite and recounted the Mahbhrata at their behest. Unlike Vaiapyanas narration, which begins with the specific details of the conflict between the young Kuru princes, Ugraravas narrative is more expansive. It begins, among other things, with a story of how king Janamejaya resolved upon the snake sacrifice in order to avenge his father Parikits death, and leads up to the snake sacrifice at Takal (cf. 18.5.29) at which Vaiapyana narrated the Mahbhrata to the king. Vaiapyanas narration is thus enfolded within a second level of narration. Ugraravas, in recounting the Mahbhrata, actually recounts the story he overheard at the snake sacrifice. In other words, his narration is both a story about an earlier narration and a narration of the story heard at this earlier narration. The epic thus from the very beginning establishes two levels of narration: 1. Vaiapyanas narration of the Kuru narrative to Janamejaya in the intervals of the snake sacrifice, and
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2. The bard Ugraravas narration of the events leading up to the snake sacrifice, the performance of the snake sacrifice, the arrival of sage Vysa and his disciples at this sacrifice, and Vaiapyanas narration of the Mahbhrata. One could expect this logic to continue indefinitelyif Ugraravas narration provides a setting and context for Vaiapyanas narration, who relates Ugraravas narration?but Ugraravas narration constitutes a final level of narration beyond which there is no further regress.16 As readers, we first receive the Mahbhrata from Ugraravas17 and only subsequently become privy to Vaiapyanas narration. Ugraravas arrival at the Naimia forest is placed in the mouth of an omniscient and nameless narrator, who introduces Ugraravas to the reader as a bard accomplished in ancient lore (sta pauraiko; 1.1.1) and describes the initial exchange between the seers and the bard. Ugraravas then begins narrating at 1.1.20 and, except for a periodic sautir uvca (the bard said) or variants thereof to remind us who is speaking, the omniscient narrator recedes into the background. Ugraravas narration continues until 1.53, at which point Vaiapyana is introduced as the narrator.18 With the exception of a few significant returns to the Ugraravas dialogical level, the main narration remains at the Vaiapyana-Janamejaya dialogical level throughout. Toward the end of the epic, the process is reversed: Vaiapyana concludes his narration in the final major book (the Svargrohaaparvan), and the narrative returns to Ugraravas narration. Ugraravas describes the conclusion of Janamejayas snake sacrifice, and, mentioning a few other details, brings the great epic to a close.19 The following outline clarifies the relationship of the frame narratives to the epic: A. Frame level: Outer (first) frame20 Setting: Naimia forest Dialogical level: Ugraravas -> Naimieya is Narration of ancillary narratives (esp. the snake sacrifice) and of Vaiapyanas narration of The Mahbhrata
B. Frame level: Inner (second) frame Setting: Janamejayas sarpasatra Dialogical level: Vaiapyana -> Janamejaya Narration of The Mahbhrata
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3. The Double Beginning of the diparvan It would thus seem as though the main purpose of the frame narratives is to provide a plausible context for the narration of such a long epic. As C. Z. Minkowski has argued, the extended ritual activity of a sattra, with its cyclical daily activity and its long breaks, during which the king as dikita must remain in his state of consecration by following only elevating pursuits and speaking only true things, provides a believable setting for the narration of an epic as long as the Mahbhrata. From the point of view, therefore, of narrative credibility, the sattra is a good choice for a frame story. (Minkowski 1989: 403) However, there is more to the epics frame narratives than just providing a believable setting. The Mahbhrata does not just duplicate the frame narrativesplacing Vaiapyanas narration at a satra within the context of another satrabut duplicates the beginning itself. Mahbhrata 1.1 recounts Ugraravas arrival at the Naimia forest21 and subsequent narration of the epic but, three minor books later, the epic once again recounts the story of Ugraravas arrival at the Naimia forest, as though nothing had gone before! Once again, the bard greets the sages assembled at aunakas sacrificial rite and inquires of them what they would like to hear.22 The sages ask the bard to wait for their chieftain (kulapatir; 1.4.523) aunakas arrival and to narrate the stories aunaka asks of him. Ugraravas complies and this time his narration continues all the way to Janamejayas snake sacrifice and Vaiapyanas arrival and subsequent narration of the Mahbhrata at this event. However, we would be wrong to reduce one of the beginnings to the other. Even though the two beginnings share the same opening prose sentenceThe Bard Ugraravas, the son of Lomaharaa, singer of the ancient Lore, once came to the Naimia Forest, where the seers of strict vows were sitting together at the Twelve-year Session of family chieftain aunaka24the two beginnings do not simply replicate each others contents. In the first minor book, Ugraravas begins his narration with a benediction to the Primeval Person (dya puruam) at 1.1.20 and continues with a cosmology that describes the birth of the grandfather Prajpati from the large Egg (bhad aam), the undecaying seed (bjam akayam; 1.1.27) of all beings. The fourth minor book, in contrast, begins with a genealogical narrative: aunaka, having arrived and seated himself, asks the bard whether he too has learned the entire stock of ancient Lore (puram akhila; 1.5.1) which his father Lomaharaa used to narrate. Then he continues, Now from among all the tales, I would first like to hear the one of the Descent of the
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Bhgus [vaam ... bhrgavam; 1.5.3].25 Tell the talewe are eager to hear you. We also cannot dismiss the first beginning as irrelevant to this narration. Besides enclosing the all-important Lists of Contents (the Anukramaiparvan, the first minor book) and the Summaries of the Books (the Parvasagrahaparvan, the second minor book), the first beginning introduces Janamejaya in the third minor book and sets up a triad of sacrifices culminating in the great sarpasatra of the fifth minor book.26 Although modern scholars have frequently undertaken their critical surgeries on the text with the intent of smoothing out the epics narrative structure,27 one cannot appreciate the meaning of the snake sacrifice without the hermeneutic and pedagogical background provided in the first three minor books and, especially, in the third minor book.28 In the next section, I discuss some of the limitations of these approaches, followed by a discussion of the double beginning itself. The following outline clarifies the split in the outermost frame narrative: A1. Frame level: Outer (first) frame Setting: Naimia forest Dialogical level: Ugraravas -> Naimieya is Beginning: First (Anukramaiparvan) Description of Ugraravas arrival at the Naimia forest; Ugraravas requested to narrate the epic; cosmological beginning (including summaries) continues until the end of the Pauyaparvan. A2. Frame level: Outer (first) frame Setting: Naimia forest Dialogical level: Ugraravas -> aunaka Beginning: Second (Paulomaparvan) Description of Ugraravas arrival at the Naimia; Ugraravas requested to narrate the epic; genealogical beginning continues until the introduction of Vaiapyana in the stkaparvan. 4. Many Beginnings, Many Models J. A. B. van Buitenen has argued that the diparvan illustrates to perfection all the issues that the text as a whole raises. Parts of it, he continues, are man ifestly components of the main story; others are equally obviously accretions
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that have no organic relationship to the story whatever; still others are difficult to determine one way or the other. Citing line 1.1.50There are brahmins who learn The Bhrata from Manu onward, others again from the tale of The Book of stka onward, others again from the tale of Uparicara onward29in support, van Buitenen argues that it is reasonably clear that it [i.e., the main story] could hardly have begun before 1.90, and all that went before, roughly half the entire book, was added at a later time (van Buitenen 1973: 1). He thus discounts not only the snake cycle, which attains a preliminary end in the stkaparvan,30 but also the genealogy of the Kuru line recounted through the stories of akuntal and Yayti.31 Other scholars such as Oberlies have advanced an onion skin model of the epic, according to which the epic is composed of a series of versions that can be peeled off like the skin of an onion. Oberlies writes,
According to Mbh 1,1.50 there are some Brahmans who learn the Bhrata beginning with Manu, others who learn it beginning with stka, and [again] others who learn it from Uparicara on in the right way (manvdi bhratam kecid stkdi thatpare/ thatoparicardy anye vipr samyag adhyate). The beginning from Manu on may refer to Mbh 1,1.27ff., where the creation of the world is reported. stka and Vasu in contrast clearly target Mbh 1,3/13 and 1/57. If then this hint of the Mahbhrata is to be understood historically [historisch], the reference here would be to three versions of the text. And if one compares these against the text present to us in the critical edition, the Manu-version would be characterized through the fact that it begins with the beginning, the stka-version through the fact that it lacks the outermost frame (and therewith the first dialogical level) and the list of contents, and the Vasu-version through the fact that it would be without the narrations of stka and (therewith without) the inner frame, that of the snake sacrifice, (as well as without the outer frame and the first four lists of contents). In other words, the distinguishing characteristic of these three versions could be the absence of a framethe Manu-version would be that with two, the stka-version that with one frame, while such [a frame] would be completely lacking for the Vasu-version. (Oberlies 2008: 87-88)32
Unfortunately, Oberlies never tells us his reasons for assuming that this hint of the Mahbhrata is to be understood historically [historisch]. I am unclear whether his use of scare quotes is meant to imply neutral distancing or an ironic use of the term, but in any case it suggests that Oberlies is himself not quite clear about what it could possibly mean for an epic to hint historically.33 Does Oberlies mean that the epic is hinting at its own historical growth? Or that we should examine its literary form for clues (hints) to its history? If the former, was this hint a deliberate historical addition? Or could the epic poets have intentionally
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manipulated the epics literary form to make it appear as a historical account?34 If the latter, what guarantee is there that these hints actually exist given that we possess no evidence of this history other than these texts?35 In addition to these theoretical issues, Oberlies insistence on a historical interpretation is also textually problematic as it implies either textual or historical priority of one passage over the other. The passage, however, merely states there are brahmins who learn the Mahbhrata from this point onward (cf. -di), without making any claims as to an absolute (textual or historical) priority of one beginning over the other. The three beginnings are therefore best understood as three distinct points to enter the narrative, rather than as referring to the historical priority of one narrative over the other. In other words, we have a single, continuous narrative that offers us a multiplicity of beginnings. We may contrast Oberlies historicist approach with the 13th century Vaiava philosopher Madhvcrya, who reads the same passage allegorically. Madhvcrya writes:
The meaning of the Bhrata, in so far as it is a relation of the events with which r Ka and the Pavas are connected, is stikdi, or historical. That interpretation by which we find lessons on virtue, divine love, and the other ten qualities, on sacred duty and righteous practices, on character and training, on Brahm and the other gods, is called manvdi, or religious and moral. Thirdly, the interpretation by which every sentence, word or syllable is shown to be the significant name, or to be the declaration of the glories, of the Almighty Ruler of the universe, is called auparicara or transcendental. (Cited and trans. in Klostermaier 2007: 62)
One could, of course, dispute Madhvcryas suggestion on the grounds that it leaves the ground of pure history to speak about transcendent realities such as morality or an Almighty.36 The historical reading has the advantage that it is accessible to everyman, and allows for a simple model of the epics growth. But here, too, matters are not as simple as Oberlies three-stage model suggests. The outer bheda narrativethe story of the conflict between snakes and menoverlaps with the central bheda narrative in ways that are both subtle and problematic.37 For example, the narrative of the bheda or breach between the Kurus and the Pavas continuously overlaps with the narrative of the breach between snakes and men.38 Oberlies forced articulation of the epic into an original Vasu-version and the later enframed versions cannot account for the continuous interaction of the two bheda narratives throughout the epic. Oberlies model is also unable to explain why the epic has two other beginnings (viz., Mahbhrata 1.1 and 1.4) that correspond to neither of the
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beginnings of these three versions. In fact, the entire problem of the twin beginnings is elided and it remains ambiguous in Oberlies analysis whether Ugraravas narration to aunaka in the Paulomaparvan belongs to the stkaversion or to the Manu-version. In order to be able to account for this second beginning, Oberlies is now forced to interpret the Paulomaparvan as a switch narrative39 (Schalterzhlung) that links the older stkaparvan (i.e., our current Pauyaparvan) to the stkaparvan.40 In addition to the local problem of how to fuse the Pauyaparvan to the stkaparvan, Oberlies also has to account for the link between his so-called stka-version and the Vasu-version.41 His solution is to interpret the stkaparvan itself as a neck-saving narrative (Hals(lsungs)erzhlung), i.e., a story told in order to save someones life such as Scheherazades narration in The Thousand and One Nights or, closer to home, Rumpelstiltskins riddle posed to the millers daughter, which she must answer in order to rescue her first born.42 The snake king, writes Oberlies, sways in the highest danger [in the sky?], and in order to save his neck [Hals], stka narrates a story [Geschichte]the Mahbhratauntil the life-threatening danger for Takaka is past.43 The actual problem of the double beginning gives way to a fanciful comparison to The Thousand and One Nights and the Mahbhrata44 is reduced to the epigraphy of an historical king Vasu ruler of a golden age.45 Besides the problem that there is no evidence that the reference is to a historical king Vasu or that the epic was necessarily built up around this historical core,46 there are also serious logical flaws to this argument, as I demonstrate below. The hypothesis of three distinct versions of the Mahbhrata, although appealing in its simplicity, cannot account for the complexity of the text. Crucially, Oberlies reconstruction either begs many of the questions it is supposed to answer or does not answer these at all. Why does the epic refer to a multiplicity of origins? Why does it introduce multiple beginningsnot just from Manu or stka or Uparicara onward, but also from the story of Bhmas birth or the bheda narrative forward? Why does it duplicate the outermost beginning using the same opening phrase both times? Why does aunaka ask Ugraravas to narrate the ancient lore in its entirety (puram akhila; 1.5.1) and does this include the material previously narrated to the sages? Or does the first beginning enclose the second, with Ugraravas selfconsciously narrating the story of an earlier visit to the Naimia? Not only is Oberlies reconstruction unable to answer these questions, but it leads to even more puzzling questions: if stka replaces Vaiapyana as narrator in the stka-version, where did stka hear this story from? And if he arrives at
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the sarpasatra while it is in progress and begins narrating the Mahbhrata to Janamejaya, where are we to locate Vaiapyanas narration to Janamejaya? What happens to the Vaiapyana-Janamejaya dialogical level? Does stkas narration refer to the original Vasu-version and, if so, is this the version containing Vaiapyanas narration to Janamejaya? Where and when did this narration occur, if not at the sarpasatra? And if stka knows of this narration, why would he repeat the same narrative to Janamejaya (albeit with additions to make it longer)? Why does the king wish to hear the story twice?47 Oberlies attempted reconstruction of the diparvan perfectly illustrates the dangers of attempting to second-guess a text, especially one as carefully composed as the Mahbhrata.48 As an alternative to this text-historical approach, I propose a hermeneutic approach49 that uses the text itself to interpret the text rather than adducing pseudo-historical considerations or employing circular arguments.50 Before articulating this hermeneutic interpretation, however, I first consider the evidence of the CE in the next section. 5. The Double Beginning in the Critical Edition Scholarly criticisms of the double beginning are based on a perception of the redactor as a sort of bricoleur who works with scraps of texts,51 either taping one piece to the other to extend the text backward or splicing materials here and there into the text.52 But if we set aside this prejudice for a moment and consider the manuscript evidence as presented in the CE, a different picture emerges. The evidence of the manuscript tradition is unambiguous: the double beginning occurs in all the manuscripts collated for the CE (cf. Sukthankar 1933: lxxxvii). Although Mehta has argued that this only means that the two beginnings are older than the recensional ramification (Mehta 1973: 548), this is clearly an argument ex silentio, as, in the absence of manuscript evidence, the arguments on both sides are evenly balanced. Not only is there no manuscript evidence that the double beginning is a later addition to the text, but the double beginning is also clearly a central feature as it occurs in all manuscripts of both recensions. If it were really so evident that the two beginnings smack of two different redactorial agencies (ibid., 549), one could expect that one of the two beginnings would have been removed long back at some stage in the epics history. Yet, remarkably, within the span of roughly 330 years covered by the manuscripts collated for the CE, not one scribe or redactor found the double beginning a serious enough problem to consider correcting it. Even Nlakaha, whose version of the Mahbhrata is explicitly intended as a compendium of the best readings, does not excise
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either of the two beginnings, perhaps indicating that he did not consider the two beginnings as alternative readings.53 Sukthankar rightly criticizes Vidushekhara Bhattacharya, who is perhaps the first to have drawn attention to the problem of the double beginning, for his suggestion that the first prose sentence of the Mahbhrata be deleted from the CE, because it is intrinsically inappropriate in the context.54 The manuscript evidence is especially strong for the double beginning, as about 70 manuscripts were either fully or partly examined and collated for the CE of the diparvan, and, of those, about 60 were actually used in preparing the text.55 A number of manuscripts also preface the opening lines of 1.4 lomaharaaputra ugrarav sta with sautir uvca or variant forms, thus explicitly forging a link between the preceding narration and the second beginning.56 While this does not demonstrate that the two beginnings are original,57 the onus is emphatically on the modern critic to demonstrate that the two beginnings were combined,58 as Mehta describes it, without any attempt at organic combinationa strange patchwork! (Mehta 1973: 547). Whatever the modern critic may have to say about the seeming incongruity of the two beginnings, the fact remains that for at least four centuries the double beginning was not felt to be something that required correction. Especially if one takes the evidence of the CE seriously, it is clear that one requires a more sophisticated theory of the double beginning than those proposed hitherto. I am not here concerned with the question of whether the text as constituted in the CE is the Ur-Mahbhrata or the Ur-Bhrata, that elusive Holy Grail of philology, although I am in agreement with Hiltebeitel that the CE editors succeed in retrieving a text that is more thoroughly archetypal than they could have imagined.59 Instead, I want to emphasize that, minimally, the CE tells us something of how the Mahbhrata was read, understood, and transmitted among a pan-Indian reading community60 in the last four hundred years and that, in this entire period, the double beginning was felt to be a necessary and meaningful component of the text. It thus cannot be attributed either to an accident of manuscript transmission61 or to an idiosyncratic desire to make the Mahbhrata a veritable repository of epic tradition (Mehta 1973: 550). In contrast to these pseudo-historical explanations, however, which rely upon second-guessing the redactor, I argue that the fact that the poet(s) chose to compose two beginnings must have its reasons.62 The enigma of the double beginning thus confronts us with the problem of understanding the text as a unified whole, from both structural and philosophical perspectives.63

6. Two Beginnings, Two Narrations
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If one sets aside these text-historical prejudices for a moment and considers the text itself, it becomes clear that the text is not deficient with respect to structure but, rather, carefully and purposefully constructed. The entire Mahbhrata is arranged in 18 chapters, the Bhagavadgt and the Nryaya also feature 18 chapters, 18 armies encounter each other in the Mahbhrata battle, and the battle itself lasts 18 days.64 Further, as Oberlies already saw, the Anugt is composed of 36 (18 x 2) chapters, the Pavas are exiled for 12 years, and Arjuna must spend 12 years65 alone for intruding on Yudhihira and Draupad in their private quarters.66 These numeric equivalences are, of course, only the most visible sign of careful composition or redaction, but they hint at an interest in symmetry that can also be found, for example, in the stories of Ruru and Jaratkru.67 Symmetry, doubling, and repetition are crucial elements in a narrative based on a cyclical understanding of time.68 Thus, rather than excising one of the two beginnings as a repetition, I argue that we must examine the text itself for clues on how to read the double beginning.69 The diparvan, which van Buitenen considers one of the latest major books (cf. van Buitenen 1973: xxiii), shows signs of remarkable redactorial and philosophical activity. It is here that we must look for clues to the thematic and compositional unity of the entire epic. The first major book is of global significance to the epic, as we find here both a nexus of themes that are carried through the entire epic and the entrance into the labyrinthine narrative of the remaining 17 major books. The diparvan provides the epic with the textual authority, integrity, and coherence necessary to present a narrative of this scope. Stating its fiction that the Vaiapyana narrative had grown over time,70 the diparvan provides a rationale for canonizing the text in its present form by legitimizing the original recitation at the second retelling by the bard Ugraravas at aunakas twelve-year sacrificial session. The opening minor books of the diparvan thus authorize the text in its redacted form, articulate a unified set of concerns, and seal off the canon against further expansion. While these expansions of the epic have been noted, explanations of the logic of expansion have been unsatisfactory. Ranging from the ease of insertions into loose leaf manuscripts (cf. van Buitenen 1973: xxix) to sophisticated theories of embedding texts according to the hierarchy of sacrifice (cf. Minkowski 1989), all theories thus far provide overtly mechanical and formal models. My analysis of the diparvan, however, shows that the logic of expansion is also philosophical. The double beginning of this major book especially cannot have been an accident, as it demonstrates great textual self-consciousness and enables the text to overcome the problem of positing an absolute origin in time.71 Let us see how.
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After Ugraravas takes his place, the is assembled at aunakas twelveyear session question him about his wanderings. The bard relates that he was present at Janamejayas snake sacrifice, where he heard the Mahbhrata of Ka Dvaipyana Vysa. He then undertook a pilgrimage to many sacred fords and sanctuaries, before visiting Samantapacaka, the place where the great battle between the Kurus and the Pavas was fought. Having visited this holy place sought by the twice-born (puya dvijanievitam; 1.1.11), the bard sought out aunakas hermitage in the Naimia forest. The hermits, having completed their rituals, ask the bard to relate the Mahbhrata as he heard it from Vysa. The bard then clarifies the relationship of Vysa to the text. He recounts to the sages that Vaiapyana narrated the Mahbhrata at the bidding of his teacher Vysa. The authority of the author and the authority of king Janamejaya testify to the truthfulness of the recitation: both are witness to Vaiapyanas recitation. The emendation of the narrator from Vysa to Vaiapyana is significant, as it separates the author and the bard while simultaneously authorizing the retelling. Further, it separates the epic from that which is heard: ruti. The Mahbhrata is that which is remembered: smti. As Hiltebeitel has already noted, the two beginnings present us with quite different descriptions of the same event.72 In the first beginning, Ugraravas is welcomed by the sages assembled at aunakas twelve-year sacrifice, who offer him a seat. After Ugraravas seats himself and is at ease, the sages, addressing him as the lotus-eyed one (kamalapatrka; 1.1.7), ask him where he has come from and where he has whiled away his days. In response, Ugraravas tells the sages that he was present at the Snake-Sacrifice of the great-spirited royal seer Janamejaya, son of Parikit, where Vaiapyana recounted all manner of auspicious tales of events, just as they had happened, in the presence of the king. They were tales that had first been recounted by Ka Dvaipyana.73 The sages interest in Ugraravas doings and wanderings in the first beginning sharply contrasts with the second beginning, where the sages peremptorily inform the newcomer: Later we shall ask you, son of Lomaharaa, and you shall relate your repertory of stories, which we shall be eager to hear. But for the time being the reverend aunka is sitting in his fire hall. He knows the clestial tales, the tales that are told of the Gods and the Asuras, and he knows fully the stories of men, Snakes, and Gandharvas (1.4.34). As Hiltebeitel notes, Ugraravas can hardly feel much esteemed at being told that the reverend aunaka already knows completely all such stories as Ugraravas might tell him (Hiltebeitel 2001: 103). Equally significant is Ugraravas response: Ugraravas first words in the
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entire epic relate not to the great battle, but to the retelling of that battle at Janamejayas sacrifice. Ugraravas now informs the sages that, after listening to these stories of manifold import that form part of The Mahbhrata,74 he undertook a pilgrimage to the Kuruketra, the site of the battle between the Kurus and Pavas. Ugraravas then concludes his first speech in the epic, asking the sages what they would like to hear narrated. In an epic that is seemingly unafraid of redundancy, the sages now recount back everything that Ugraravas has narrated to them concerning the epics first narration:
Tell us [they say] that ancient Lore that was related by the eminent sage Dvaipyana, which the Gods and brahmin seers honored when they heard it! That divine language of the sublime Histories, in all the varieties of words and books, the sacred Account of the Bhratas, that language of complex word and meaning, ruled by refinement and reinforced by all sciences, which Vaiapyana, at Dvaipyanas bidding, repeated truthfully to the satisfaction of King Janamejaya at the kings sacrifice. We wish to hear that Grand Collection, now joined to the Collections of the Four Vedas, which Vysa the miraclemonger compiled, replete with the Law and dispelling all danger of evil!75
Van Buitenens translation, although generally excellent, does not quite succeed in capturing the passages significance here. Hiltebeitel is much more alert to the philosophical resonances of the Naimia sages panegyric; he translates as follows:
We wish to hear that wonderworker Vysas collection (samhita) of the Bhrata, the history (itihsa), that most excellent communication (khynavariha), diversified in quarter-lines and sections (vicitrapadaparvan), with subtle meanings combined with logic (skmrthanyyukta) and adorned with Vedic meanings (vedrthairbhita), which i Vaiapyana properly recited with delight at the sattra of Janamejaya by Dvaipyanas commandholy, connected with meanings of books (granthrthasayuta), furnished with refinement (saskropagata), sacred, supported by various stras (nnstropabhita), equaled by the four Vedas, productive of virtue, and dispelling of fear and sin. (1.1.16-19). (2001: 100)
Let us see how this opening passage encapsulates the audiences intertextual (including especially Vedic textual) interests. Traditional Indian commentators note that the beginning of any text must contain a magalam or benediction, followed by a statement of anubandha ctuya or the four criteria qualifying the text. These criteria are: 1. Adhikri or the student who has fulfilled preparatory learning requirements and thus is qualified to study the text;
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2. Viaya or the subject matter; 3. Prayoga or the purpose of the text; and, finally, 4. Sabandha or the project, i.e., the relationship between the subject matter and the goal of the text. Remarkably, we find all four anubandhas referred to in this passage. 1. A major limitation of the ruti tradition is that one of the qualifications refers to the vara system. The epic, which is called a fifth Veda and popularly referred to as a str-dra-veda,76 overcomes this limitation, as the text itself guides the student through aesthetic experience into the necessary competence. Thus the stories of the trials of yodas students also, on a deeper level, serves as initiations. This could easily be one of the tasks of the epics project: suitably to cover up subtle and esoteric meanings of the Veda by hiding them under everyones nose disguised as history. Student qualifications are not suspended, however: the Vaiapyana narrative occurs under the aegis of the qualified teacher Vysa, and the reader-students qualifications are underscored by the Naimia frame, into which the Pauya preparatory apparatus is inserted. The notion of the adhikri is thus clearly in the background of the lines: We wish to hear that wonderworker Vysas collection (samhita) of the Bhrata which i Vaiapyana properly recited with delight at the sattra of Janamejaya by Dvaipyanas command. 2. Viaya is mentioned next: Vysas collection (samhita) of the Bhrata, the history (itihsa), that most excellent communication (khynavariha), diversified in quarter-lines and sections (vicitrapadaparvan), with subtle meanings combined with logic (skmrthanyyukta) and adorned with Vedic meanings (vedrthairbhita). 3. Followed by a reference to prayoga: productive of virtue, and dispelling of fear and sin. The text also claims to lead to all four goals, i.e., dharma, artha, kma, and moka, but, of these, the first and the last are especially emphasized. 4. Finally, the sages address the sabandha : holy, connected with meanings of books (granthrthasayuta), furnished with refinement (saskropagata), sacred, supported by various stras (nnstropabhita), equaled by the four Vedas. Every line in the first beginning is thus rich with clues to the texts project. But in addition to providing clues to its project, the text also contains subtle hints of the personal connections behind the narration. Consider, for example, the sages statement that Vaiapyana, at Dvaipyanas bidding, repeated [the epic] truthfully to the satisfaction of King Janamejaya at the kings sacrifice. Obviously the sages know more of this narration than they let on;
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how else could they know that Vaiapyana repeated the epic truthfully and to the kings satisfaction? The important point here is to see how repetition in the epic is never gratuitous, but always made to reinforce a message or with subtle shifts of emphasis that nonetheless can have major effects. Obsessed with the idea of a historical redactor who combined two distinct versions of the beginning, Tsuchida and Mehta fail to consider unambiguous evidence, as pointed out by Brodbeck,77 that there are, in fact, two Naimia narrations: the first by Ugraravas to the is (1.1.1-1.3.195) and the second also by Ugraravas but to aunaka rather than the sages (1.4.1-1.54.24). In the second minor book of the diparvan, the Parvasagraha or the summaries of the books, Ugraravas himself refers to this earlier narration; he says I shall narrate to you the full story [vistaram] of The Bhrata from The Book of Puloman onward, as it was told at aunakas Session...,78 but he could hardly do this if this narration were ahead of him in time.79 Van Buitenen translates vistaram as the full story, perhaps because he thought there was only one Naimia recitation, but this does not do the term justice. Vistaram rather has the sense of I shall elaborate or I shall expand and thus underscores the fact that the narration beginning at 1.1.4 is a more elaborate recitation.80 Following this comment, Ugraravas then presents the summaries of the books arranged in 100 upaparvans or minor books, which he concludes with the words: This full Century of Books, which was recited by the great-spirited Vysa, was later exactly so recounted by Ugraravas, son of the Bard Lomaharaa, in the Naimia Forest, but in Eighteen Books.81 But when was this? The Parvasagraha must be referring to an earlier recitation by Ugraravas, if this full Century of Books (parvaata pra) has already been recounted (puna ... kathita) at the time of Ugraravas statement. If one takes the Parvasagraha seriously, we not only have two beginnings, but also two narrations corresponding to these two beginnings: Ugraravas outer narration, which enfolds the inner one, and an inner narration that in turn enfolds Vaiapyanas narration of the Mahbhrata. Brodbeck has also suggested that the word ghapati describing aunaka (at 1.4:11) might distinguish the earlier satra (where aunaka talks with Ugraravas) from the (iterable) later satra (beginning 1.1) where aunaka is just kulapati and not necessarily personally present.82 I find his suggestion regarding iterability83 especially valuable, as it fits in with my thesis that the reader is a central component of the epic84 and that discussions of the text that leave the readers perspective out of consideration (e.g., Tsuchida, Oberlies) are reading the epic from the wrong end, as it were.
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7. Cosmological and Genealogical Beginnings: The Anukramai- and Paulomaparvans As indicated above, the second beginning does not simply replicate the contents of the first. The first beginning is explicitly cosmological and eschatological: it begins with a triple magalcaraa (a prayer invoking auspiciousness) to the god Hari, the seer Vysa, composer of the epic, and the many meters (chandovttai; 1.1.26) of the epic,85 followed by a cosmology that has explicit parallels to both the Hirayagarbha Skta (V 1.10.82, 1.10.121) and the Nsadya Skta (V 1.10.129) of the g Veda:
When all this was without light and unillumined and on all its sides covered by darkness, there arose one large egg, the inexhaustible seed of all creatures. They say that this was the great divine cause, in the beginning of the eon and that on which it rests is revealed as the True light, the ever-lasting Brahman.86
Following the opening magalcaraa and cosmology, the first minor book then presents two summaries (1.1.67-94 and 1.1.95-195); the second presented as the lamentation of a grieving king who has lost all his one hundred sons in the great war. In 54 quatrains all ending in the same refraintad nase vijayya sajaya! then, Sajaya, I lost hope of victory!the blind Dhtarra retrospectively recounts the events leading up to the great war. Dhtarras bhavagt87 or lament of becoming sets up the basic problem of the epic as that of the destruction of becoming; here is how he concludes his soliloquy:
Woe! Ten, I hear, have survived the war, three of ours, and seven of the Pavas. Eighteen armies perished in that battle, that war of the barons. Now a dullness that is all overspread by darkness seems to permeate me. No sign of sense do I see, Bard, my mind seems to go crazy.88
Dhtarras after-the-fact realization provokes a sobering rejoinder from Sajaya, who reminds him of the inevitability of destruction for everything that exists in time:
All this is rooted in Time, to be or not to be, to be happy or not to be happy. Time ripens the creatures. Time rots them. And Time again puts out the Time that burns down the creatures. Time shrinks them and expands them again. Time walks in all creatures, unaverted, impartial. Whatever beings there were in the past will be in the future, whatever are busy now, they are all the creatures of Timeknow it and do not lose your sense.89
The bards description of the work of time is immediately followed by a eulogy of Kna Vsudeva, who is eulogized here as brahman or absolute being:
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In this book, Ka Dvaipyana has uttered a holy Upaniad And Ka Vsudeva is glorified here, the self-eternal Blessed Lordfor He is the truth and the right and the pure and the holy. He is the eternal Brahmanthe supreme Surety, the Everlasting light of whose divine exploits the wise tell tales. From Him begins existence that is not yet, and the non-existent that becomes. His is the continuity and the activity. His is birth, death and rebirth.90
These passages set up the contrast between time (kla) and eternity as the basic problem of the epic;91 following the first summary of the Kuru narrative at 1.1.67-94, Dhtartras lament and Sajayas response provide a first interpretive guideline to the meaning of the Kuru narrative. Lines 1.1.193-195, which are directly juxtaposed to this discussion of the awesome destruction of time, then introduce Ka Vsudeva in terms recalling the tradition of soteriological ontology in the Upaniads and Kas divine manifestation in chapter 11 of the Bhagavadgt. The first minor book concludes with a description of the merits that accrue from listening to the epic and an etymological derivation of the name Mahbhrata that underscores its function as a mokastra:
Once the divine seers foregathered, and on one scale they hung the four Vedas in the balance, and on the other scale The Bhrata; and both in size and in weight it was the heavier. Therefore, because of its size and weight, it is called The Mahbhratahe who knows this etymology is freed from all sins.92
The second minor book then begins with the sages asking the bard to describe Samantapacaka.93 The bard complies, clarifying the etymology of the name Samantapacaka. At the juncture of the tret and dvpara yugas (tretdvparayo sadhau; 1.2.3), Rma Jmadagnya slew the entire race of Katriyas (sarva katram), filling five lakes with their blood (paca cakra rudhirahradn; 1.2.4). Here was also fought at the juncture of the dvpara and kali yugas (saprpte kalidvparayor) the battle between the Kurus and the Pavas (yuddha kurupavasenayo; 1.2.9).94 The seers question signals a shifts away from the present moment in the Naimia forest (nimi = moment) to the epochal cycle as it turns at Samantapacaka. This shift is simultaneously a shift from the readers individual concerns, especially foregrounded in the concluding phalaruti (the recitation of the merits accruing on hearing the narrative) of the Anukramaiparvan, to the narrative of epochal time that dominates the Parvasagrahaparvan. The reference to Kuruketras original name and its meaning marks Kuruketra as a sacrificial site and sacrifice itself is linked to the cyclical turning of
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the ages. At the end of an age, all living beings go under in a dissolution (pralaya). Thus, concealed within the seers seemingly innocuous interest in etymology are a wealth of clues to the Mahbhrata narrative. By locating the upcoming narrative within a cosmic, geographic, and temporal context, the arbitrariness of violence is negated and violence itself elevated to a cosmic principle. Something escapes cosmic dissolution and forms the seeds of the new beginning; destruction is always incomplete. Becoming proceeds through cycles of destruction but this destruction is never total so there is no end to the cycle. Thus, just as a few katriyas survive Paraurmas massacre, Parikit will survive the Kuruketra battle. The turn to the history of Kuruketra makes it clear that the Kuruketra battle is no ordinary war, as it unfolds at the preeminent sacrifical and cosmological site at the juncture of dvpara and kali yugas. Ugraravas description of Samantapacaka in lines 1.2.2-14 is then followed by the third and fourth summaries of the epic at 1.2.34-69 and at 1.2.71-234, and the bard then concludes with a second invocation of the benefits accruing from listening to the Mahbhrata. Let us now turn to the second beginning in the Paulomaparvan. In the second beginning, aunaka enters and, having taken his seat, asks the bard whether he too has learned the entire stock of ancient Lore which his father used to recount. [W]e have heard them before, and long ago it was, says aunaka, from your own father. Now from among all the tales, I would first like to hear the one of the Descent of the Bhgus. Tell the talewe are eager to hear you.95 Hiltebeitel has contrasted the seeming hauteur (2001: 104) of aunaka and the sages in the second beginning, but, more than that, it is the shift in emphasis away from the bard as someone in attendance at Janamejayas sacrifice and who received the Mahbhrata directly from Vaiapyana in Vysas presence that is notable here. In the first beginning, this fact was emphasized twice: once in the bards own statement (1.1.8-11) and once by the sages who recounted back to the bard the circumstances of his first hearing (1.1.15-19). In the second beginning, there is no reference either to Ugraravas presence at the sarpasatra or to his having heard it from Vaiapyana: in response to aunakas question, Ugraravas merely says, Whatever was so perfectly committed to memory long ago, O best of the twiceborn, by such great-spirited brahmins as Vaiapyana and his successors, and was recited by them of yore to my father and again committed to memory by himall that I myself learned no less perfectly.96 Even though Vaiapyana is once again placed at the head of the line of transmission, there is no suggestion that Ugraravas may have heard the epic directly from him. Instead, the transmission is now mediated by his father, and this genealogical mediation
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perfectly reflects the content of aunakas request. Ugraravas now launches into the Bhgu genealogy, beginning with the birth of Cyavana from i Bhgu under strange circumstances. Bhgu begets a son on Pulom, born of his virility (bhgor vryasamudbhava; 1.5.11). The demon Puloman sees Pulom and is overcome by desire for her. Assuming the form of a boar (varharpea; 1.6.1), he carries her off, and her unborn son falls enraged from his mothers womb (ron mtu cyuta kuke; 1.6.2). Seeing the son aborted from his mothers womb and radiant as the sun (dityavarcasam; 1.6.3), the demon is burnt to ashes. Because he fell (cyuta), the son is known as Cyavana (cyavanas tena so bhavat; 1.6.2).97 The story of Cyavanas birth is the first in a set of genealogical narratives in the Paulomaparvan that also includes the stories of Pramatis birth from Cyavana and Rurus birth from Pramati. The cycle which begins with Cyavanas fall into becoming only comes to an end when Ruru meets his namesake, a lizard named Ruru, who tells Ruru about how the brahmin stka rescued the snakes at Janamejayas snake sacrifice.98 stka is the offspring of sage Jaratkru and the snake-woman Jaratkru. Because his father, before departing for the forest, declared There is [asty ea] a child in you, fortunate woman,99 his name came to be stka or he who is possessed of the quality there is.100 The stkaparvan, which unites elements of cosmology (the story of the churning of the ocean) and genealogy (the Jaratkru narrative),101 fuses the cosmological beginning of the Anukramaiparvan and the genealogical beginning of the Paulomaparvan: two narrativesone cosmological, the other genealogicalculminate in the great sarpasatra, the setting for the first narration of the epic.102 Ugraravas narration to aunaka comes to an end in the next book, and gives way to Vaiapyanas narration to Janamejaya: the central bheda narrative of the doings of the Kurus, culminating in the Kuruketra battle. Let us return to the problem of the double beginning. In the preceding section, I showed why the hypothesis of a conflation of two beginnings fails on the grounds of textual evidence alone. The two narrations corresponding to the two beginnings constitute distinct textual moments and therefore must be held apart while reading the epic. In this section, I have shown that these two textual levels address different themescosmology and genealogyand thus are alternative beginnings only in the strictly defined sense that they constitute alternative points of entry into the narrative of becoming.103 They are not alternatives in the sense that we could excise or do without one of the two beginnings. The double beginning, in fact, splits the text from the very outset: like the forked tongue of a snake, we have two beginnings that
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run parallel to each other until they finally come together in the stkaparvan to give us the main body of the epic. Cosmology and genealogy, which are two knowledges of becoming or two genera of becoming,104 unite to create sacrifice (Janamejayas sarpasatra), and it is within that sacrificial setting that the raa or the battle of Kuruketra must ultimately be placedand understood. An analysis of the double beginning is thus not just limited to the texthistorical question of whether both beginnings are equally original, or belong together, or represent a conflation of different manuscripts. Instead, it opens on to the global question of how the epic is to be read. Is the Mahbhrata, as 19th century German Indologists thought, no more than the story of a small conflict between tribal chieftains of the Indo-Gangetic plain only latterly inflated through the addition of extraneous material?105 Or, is it, as Indian tradition has always held, an all-encompassing text with fundamental insights into being, becoming, dharma, the pururthas, etc.? One can see how incommensurable the two interpretive frameworks are. Tracing the four genera thus constitutes an essential step in demonstrating that the Kuruketra war is not war as ordinarily understood, but thematized under the aspect of representing a genus of becoming. Agn is the paradigmatic human activity: even Heraclitus says strife [polemos] is the father of all ( ; fr. 53) It would be as absurd to try to extract some historical Ionian battle from this statement as to identify a historical Kuru conflict on the basis of the Mahbhrata, and yet the latter has been attempted time and again in epic scholarship. The chart below clarifies the relation of the epics two beginnings to its first narration and to its main narrative plot:
Chart 1: The Double Beginning of the diparvan.106 Genealogy and cosmology are like the two sacrificial sticks that are rubbed together to produce the sacrificial flame;107 the Kuru conflict is the sacrifice (raayaja108); and
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Parikit is the yajaia or the sacrificial remainder;109 and Janamejaya is the one who, feeding110 on the sacrificial remainder, becomes immortal.111
Obsessed with reconstructing Indian ethnography and history on the basis of the epic, text-historical scholarship has rarely asked about why exactly Janamejaya should be the patron of the great snake sacrifice that constitutes the setting for the first narration of the Mahbhrata. Oldenberg, for example, based on a single gvedic reference to king Janamejaya,112 is able to imagine the splendor of Janamejayas kingdom (1922: 12) where brahmins seated on gold-embroidered mat(s) (1922: 15) recite the narrative to a king interested in hearing the the heroic poem of the deeds of his ancestors (1922: 12). We should set aside Oldenbergs absurd attempts to secure historical antiquity for Janamejaya, to ask: why Janamejaya? Why this king whose name means victorious over birth? Janamejaya, I argue, is the one who hears the entire story of the Mahbhrata, that awesome narrative of the destruction of the Kuru line, and understands its meaning. Once being, in the form of stka,113 arrives through this textual yaja, there is a joyous tumult of cheers (tato halahalabda prtija samavartata; 1.53.9) and king Janamejaya, much pleased (prtim; 1.53.10), gives away many gifts to the sadasyas and to stka. With the monumental sarpasattra, Janamejaya has finally overcome the unseen danger (adam; 1.3.8) of death: he is one who is victorious over birth. 8. A Fork in the Beginning: Hermeneutics in the Pauyaparvan Although this analysis solves the so-called problem of the double beginning, a few questions remain: if both beginnings are equally original, where does one begin? Does one enter the narrative via cosmology (i.e., via the first beginning in the Anukramaiparvan) or does one enter it via genealogy (i.e., via the second beginning in the Paulomaparvan)? In this section, I argue that the most original beginning114 corresponds to neither the cosmological nor the genealogical beginning, but to a third beginning: a hermeneutic beginning in the Pauyaparvan. As van Buitenen already noted, the Pauyaparvan is exceptional among the Mahbhratas opening books (cf. van Buitenen 1973: 2). Not only is it one of the few portions of the Mahbhrata composed almost entirely in prose,115 but its placement is also highly significant as it separates the first beginning from the second. As we saw above, Ugraravas himself states that he will narrate the full story [vistaram] of The Bhrata from The Book of Puloman onward, as it was told at aunakas Session...,116 which suggests that the first beginning somehow
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comes to an end with the Pauyaparvan. The third minor book is also the first narrative segment of the epic following the lists of contents and summaries. It is the first time we encounter king Janamejaya and includes the first mention of Kuruketra, one of only three references until chapter 89 and the only one not embedded in someones verses. Significantly, Kuruketra is introduced not as the site of the great war, but as a sacrificial site.117 In fact, the entire minor book revolves around four themes: sacrifice, initiation, pedagogy, and hermeneutics. As I have already analyzed the sacrificial, initiatory, and pedagogical aspects of the Pauyaparvan elsewhere,118 I would like to focus here on its hermeneutic significance. Let us see how the Pauya narrative, beginning with Saram and ending with Uttaka, defines a hermeneutic program. Three sacrifices structure the Pauyaparvan: the sacrificial session at Kuruketra where Saram appears and warns Janamejaya of an unseen danger (adam; 1.3.8), Janamejayas conquest of Takail, and the snake sacrifice. These three form a series: at the conclusion of every sacrifice, a person appears and interprets the sacrifice, while triggering the next one. Saram appears during Janamejayas first sacrifice and warns him that he has not overcome his mortality. Her warning sends him in search of fame and conquest through conquering Takail, the next sacrifice in the series. While historical fame grants a limited form of immortality, it cannot lead to true salvation. For this reason, following Janamejayas conquest of Takail, a further interpreter appears. Uttaka criticizes the king for his conquest of Takail, and urges him to perform the third sacrifice. Janamejaya finally gains salvation through the third sacrifice with the appearance of stka, the savior.119 Sarams warning of an unseen danger (adra) sets in motion a series of events that results in the appearance of being itself. The name stka means he who is possessed of the quality there is. The story of stkas birth recounted in the fifth minor book of the Mahbhrata bears important clues to his significance in the narrative. The sage Jaratkru wanders the earth performing austerities. He is unwilling to marry, until his ancestors request him to do so for the sake of the line. Jaratkru agrees on condition his wife also bears the same name. The snake Vsuki then presents his sister, Jaratkru, to the sage. Long ago, Kadr, the mother of the snakes, cursed them to perish in Janamejayas sacrificial fire. The Creator, Brahm, promised the snakes that a remnant would be saved and that stka, the son of the sage, Jaratkru, and a namesake virgin, would bring about their salvation. One evening, as the sage is sleeping with his head on his wifes lap, it turns dusk. Worried that her husband will miss the evening ritual, she awakens him.
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Incensed, the sage threatens to forsake her at once. The tortured woman begs him not to leave as she had been given to him in marriage in the hope that she would beget a son from him who would save the snakes from destruction. Then the sage says, There is [asty ea] a child in you, fortunate woman (asty ea garbha subhage tava; 1.43.38). In time, the woman gives birth to a son. As his father had said of him, while he was still in his mothers womb, There is (astty uktv), the child became known as stka (nmstketi; 1.44.20). The reference to Saram, the messenger of the gods, is especially significant. In the gveda,120 Saram is sent as a messenger of the gods121 to the Pais, a group of anti-gods who steal the gods wealth (divine cattle and horses, i.e., the rays of the sun)122 every evening. Saram journeys across the waters of the cosmic stream, Ras, down to the Pais hiding place123 and warns them to return the cows. They refuse and in the war that follows, Indra breaks open their enclosure124 and recovers the stolen light. Saram, who tracks down the Pais and aids in the recovery of light, manifests as a savior in the myth (cf. Olson 2007: 251). As Hewitt,125 Woolsey126 et al. note, Saram and Hermes share many functions:127 both are messengers, both are linked to the task of (hermeneutic) recovery, and both guide the soul on its afterlife journey. Duncker, drawing upon Kuhn, notes that the names Saram and Hermes are cognate: Hermes is no doubt derived from ; Sanscrit sar, to flow; Zd. har, to go. The two dogs of Yama, which watch the road of the souls (vol. 3, 50), are called Sarameyas, i.e. belonging to Sarama; Kuhn has accordingly identified Sarameyas and (Duncker 1883: 179).128 The initial episode of Janamejayas sacrifice and Sarams warning suddenly gives way to three pedagogic narratives concerning the teacher Dhaumya yoda and his students. These three pedagogic narratives are then followed by a further narrative dealing with Uttakas education in hermeneutics. Uttakas teacher, Veda, one day calls him and says to him: whenever anything is lacking in our house, I wish you to make up for it.129 While he is away, Vedas wife has her period and Uttaka is asked to inseminate her. But unlike Vysa, who engenders the main characters in the text, Uttaka refuses to inseminate his teachers wife. Somewhere between blind obedience and complete randomness, lies the delicate task of interpreting a text.130 Uttaka reasons that Veda did not intend him to go so far in providing for what is missing. He thus interprets Vedas words, in contrast to the first generation of students who blindly follow their teachers instructions. Uttakas
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refusal to inseminate Vedas wife is especially significant when seen against the background of Vysas response. Satyavat, the queen mother, asks Vysa to beget sons upon Vicitravryas wives in order to ensure the genealogical lines survival. Vysa complies, siring Pu and Dhtarra. The epics creator is thus also the progenitor of its principal characters: the Pavas and Kauravas. He creatively inseminates his narrative at several levels and triggers the main events related in the text. Uttaka, in contrast, maintains his distance from the narrative: he appears only at the epics end, following the death of its principal characters (by the time of Janamejayas sarpasatra, all of the Pavas are dead as is Parikit). He nevertheless triggers action on another level by instigating the snake sacrifice. Whereas Vysa is the author-father, Uttaka represents the interpreter-student, appearing after the events related in the text have come to a close in order to interpret their meaning. In contrast to Vysa, Uttakas function is not to engender action at the textual levelto inseminate the narrativebut to engender action at the meta-textual, i.e. hermeneutic, level through a retrieval. Veda returns home and declares Uttakas education complete: I grant you leave to go. You will find complete success.131 But Uttaka refuses to go without presenting him with his teachers fee (gurvartham; 1.3.97). Veda sends him to his wife, who asks for Pauyas wifes earrings.132 On his way, he encounters a man on an oversized bull. The man tells him to eat the bulls dung. Uttaka hesitates, but the man says: Eat it, Uttaka, do not hesitate. Your teacher himself has eaten it in his time.133 Uttaka complies, and continues his journey. He finds Pauya and asks for the earrings. The king sends him to his wife, who gives him the earrings but warns him that Takaka, the king of snakes, may try to steal them. As Uttaka returns home, the snake indeed steals the earrings. Uttaka pursues him into the netherworld,134 where he sees marvelous sights: two women weaving black and white threads into a cloth, a wheel being turned around by six boys, and a handsome man. Uttaka praises them with verses and the man grants him a favor. Uttaka replies: The Snakes shall be in my power!135 The man tells him to blow into the horses anus (etam avam apne dhamasveti; 1.3.156). Uttaka does so and smoke rushes out of its orifices. Fearful of fire, Takaka returns the earrings to Uttaka. Uttaka returns to his teacher and narrates the story. He then says: I wish to be enlightened by you, sir: what is the significance of this?136 Veda explains the symbolism to Uttaka: the two women are dht and vidht, the black and white threads night and day. The wheel with twelve spokes is the day,
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the six boys the seasons, the wheel itself the year. The man is Parjanya (the rain-god) and the horse Agni (the fire-god). The man on the bull was Indra, the bull itself Airvata, the king of snakes (ngarja; 1.3.174). Uttaka was able to survive the netherworld because the dung he ate was amta (the nectar of immortality). Following this education in the art of interpretation, the teacher then gives him leave to go. Uttaka then goes to Hstinapura, where he triggers the snake sacrifice.137 If we now return to the problem of the diparvans double beginning, we will see how the Pauyaparvan offers another way of entering the narrative: one that is neither cosmological nor genealogical, but hermeneutic. By embedding Vysas original narrative in the first level of sacrifice Janamejayas sarpasatraand then embedding this sacrifice in a further sacrifice, aunakas twelve-year sacrifice, the epic duplicates the outermost level of the text, thereby creating a forked structure in which is then placed the textual apparatus: contents, summary and hermeneutic and pedagogical tools. We thus have the following structure to the diparvan:
Chart 2: The Forked Beginning of the diparvan.138 By opening the jaws of the text,139 the redactors are able to place a hermeneutic apparatus in a kind of non-narrative space that is both inside and outside the text. By including the hermeneutic apparatus inside the text, they are able to redeem its claim to being all-encompassing;140 by placing it outside the text, they are able to bring the text into the readers horizon.
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This surfeit of beginnings shows just how absurd the attempt to establish the original beginning on the basis of specious text-historical criteria is. Van Buitenen, for example, in his introduction to his translation of the diparvan, pronounces:
While it is easy, and indeed natural, to be skeptical of many of the beginnings of the true beginning, the fact that they are there carries its own relevance. At an early enough date The Mahbhrata was conceived as standing close to the beginning of national history, so that it was only appropriate to include right at its beginning all kinds of still earlier matter. Thus The Mahbhrata became the central storehouse of Brahminic-Hind lore; it could only have done so if it were widely considered to be what the editors of the critical edition of the text proudly claim it is: The National Epic of India. (van Buitenen 1973: 6)
But such a view once again privileges the idea of a single and simple beginning. A plurality of beginnings need not indicate accretion. Instead, if a plurality of beginnings violates our expectations, it reveals our expectations as linear and progressive. In a cyclical conception of narrative which mirrors the cyclical conception of eonic time, a plurality of beginnings does not violate narrative logic. In fact, only that narrative is authentic which always ends and always begins. The Mahbhrata is always ending and always beginning: already in Vysas composition and Vaiapyanas recitation to Janamejaya, the Kuru dynasty has ended, the great war has ended, and the great dvpara yuga has also ended. However, in the utterance of the bard and the renewed interest of the sages of the Naimia forest, the narrative begins anew. The point here is to recognize that the epic is aware of its own structure. Thus it says, There are brahmins who learn The Bhrata from Manu onward, others again from the tale of The Book of stka onward, others again from the tale of Uparicara onward.141 These multiple beginnings only evoke the temporality embodied in the epic: the cycle of stories mirrors the cycle of eons. Thus one has to be Janus-faced to enter and grasp the narrative logic of the epic. This condition is declared by the epic itself: Learned men elucidate the complex erudition of this Grand Collection; there are those who are experienced in explaining it and others in retaining it.142 Those who retain it are skilled in memory (smti) and those who are skilled in explaining it are skilled in hermeneutics. This is the twin task of the introductory nature of the list of contents in particular and the diparvan in general. Smti goes backward into the past, while hermeneutics goes forward, bringing the text to us in the future. The smti task of memory, i.e., the philological task,143 which looks backward, is described in verses 51-94, and the hermeneutic
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task or the philosophical task, which is not textual but eschatological, is described in verses 95-160. In the smti section, the bard provides a historical summary of the authors origin, the epic itself, the transmission from author to bard, and the origin of the Pavas and Kauravas and their battle. Viewing these several beginnings as so many additions to a core text diverts from a philosophical point. These several beginnings should be understood not as mechanical accretions but as the work of an author who, by providing different points of entry into the text, provides different avenues of interpretation. Thus, one could begin reading the text genealogically, cosmologically, or philosophically. I have therefore argued for taking seriously the epics self-conscious imitation of the structure of cyclical time. Indeed, the text is carefully constructed to show that becoming is circular and that origins lie after ends. If, however, becoming is a closed loop with neither absolute origins nor ends, where do we begin? How do we enter the hermeneutic circle? We are presented with a textual problem as well as a cosmological problem: where to begin? The solution is in both cases the same: begin many times. Yet, how are we to understand all these beginnings? What enables us to understand a beginning if there is no absolute arch, an inceptive principle? The Mahbhrata presents two solutions: 1. The beginning can be understood in terms of a previous beginning, or 2. It can be understood metaphorically. Thus the narrative beginning of 1.57, referred to as auparicardi, defers to the sacrificial beginning at 1.13 (stkdi), which in turn defers to the cosmological and genealogical beginnings at 1.1 and 1.4, jointly referred to as manvdi. The cosmological and genealogical beginnings are coeval and hence defer mutually to each other. The outermost beginning, however, is clearly the hermeneutic beginning, which, as I have argued, occurs both inside and outside of the text: the text is like an open-jawed snake, with the hermeneutic beginning reaching out to the reader. Janamejayas narrative, strictly speaking, exists outside the core epic narrative: Janamejaya here is an abbreviation or a code for the entire Vaiapyana narrative and indeed for the reader herself. Sarams warning of an unseen danger (adam; 1.3.8) is meant for the reader because the Pauyaparvan, which occurs between the epics two beginnings, is ultimately the part of the text closest to the reader.
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Chart 3: The Structure of the Mahbhrata. The diparvan showing how Vysas authoritative narrative is embedded in two sacrifices representing two narrations, one embedded within the other. The outer most level is duplicated to embed the textual apparatus: contents, summary and hermeneutic tools.
9. Return to the Problem of Text-Historical Criticism In the previous two sections, I outlined a hermeneutic approach to the text, which takes the texts self-understanding seriously and attempts to understand the text out of the text itself rather than applying preconceived notions to the epic. In this section, I return to Oberlies thesis of a three-stage historical
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expansion of the epic to elucidate the inability of the text-historical method to account for the epics complexity. Oberlies views typify the problems with a reductive text-historical approach to the Mahbhrata. Crucially, Oberlies analysis fails to account for the double beginning of the diparvan. Rather than seeing the twin beginnings of the diparvan as intentional and appreciating the careful compositional logic that guides this doubling of the outermost frame narrative, Oberlies sets out from the basic premise that the twin beginnings cannot both be equally original. Instead, he proposes that we understand the frame narratives historically, i.e., as evidence of separate versions of the text. In particular, he claims that Mahbhrata 1.4 does not reference Janamejayas sarpasattra, this frame is not woven with the sarpasattra-frame, and hence represents a later insertion into the text (Oberlies 2008: 91).144 In Oberlies reconstruction of the epics frame narratives, the Pauyaparvan (1.3) links up directly with the stkaparavan (1.13) and, together, may have been the original frame narrative of the Mahbhrata (ibid., 94). Further, Oberlies claims that this original frame narrative would have been structured as a so-called neck-(saving)-narrative [Hals(lsungs)erzhlung],145 while the narrative of the snake sacrifice would have been inserted as a switch-narrative [Schalterzhlung] in the Ruru-story of the Paulomaparvan (ibid., 94). Thus, we have the following structure to the Mahbhrata: 1st beginning: 1.1ff. Manu-version: 1.1.50ff. 2nd beginning: 1.4ff. Ruru-story: 1.4.8-1.4.12 (switch-narrative) stka-version: 1.3/1.13ff. (neck-saving narrative) Vasu-version: 1.57ff.146 Oberlies approach has the advantage of allowing us to map these three versions of the epic onto a simple chronological scheme: the Vasu-version would constitute the oldest epic layer, the stka-version would have constituted a simple frame that would have allowed for this original narrative to be relayed through the use of a narrative device (i.e., a neck-riddle), and
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the third Manu-version would have introduced a further level of enframing and allowed for the integration of four lists of contents147 into the epic. This smooth progression of narrative and frame elements is marred only by the insertion of the second beginning, i.e., Ugraravas second arrival in the Naimia forest at Mahbhrata 1.4, which interrupts the original stkaparvan, otherwise characterized by a clearly structured frame narrative. But in spite of its appealing simplicity, Oberlies model has major draw backs: 1. It cannot account for why these later redactors felt it necessary to duplicate Ugraravas arrival in the Naimia forest. 2. Even if we assume, as Oberlies does, that they felt the need to introduce a switch-narrative in the form of the Ruru-story in the Paulomaparvan in order to enable the link to the older stkaparvan (1,13), it is unclear why they could not just have included this one episode without duplicating the diparvans beginning. 3. Further, it begs the question to claim that the Ruru-story was inserted in order to enable a transition between the first half of the stka frame (i.e., Mahbhrata 1.3; the Pauyaparvan in our present epic) and the second half (Mahbhrata 1.13), when in fact these two halves would have constituted an unbroken whole prior to this insertion. 4. Alternatively, if one assumes that this continuity was interrupted by the insertion of the second beginning at 1.4, thus necessitating the insertion of a switch-narrative to restore the lost continuity, then one is once again confronted by the puzzle of the Mahbhratas twin beginnings. 5. A closer examination of Oberlies argument in fact shows that he, too, sees this section (i.e., the chapters from 1.4-11) as the real insertion. Following Ugraravas second arrival at the Naimia and aunakas request that he narrate the genealogy of the Bhgu lineage (1.4-1.5.10), The story of the Bhrgavas... then fills up the entire remainder of the Paulomaparvan (1,5-12). This section of the diparvan only relates to the section of the Mahbhrata that encloses it (1,3 and 1,13ff.) insofar as in chapter 1,11 the discussion suddenly returns to the story of Janamejayas Sarpasattra (Oberlies 2008: 94). 6. In that case, however, the introduction of the concept of a switchnarrative does not in any way help clarify the insertion of a second beginning or the narration of the Bhgu genealogy from 1.4 to 1.12. Nor does it clarify why these redactors would have split apart the original stkaparvan into the Pauyaparvan and our current stkaparvan. 7. In fact, a more detailed examination of the Pauyaparvan demonstrates
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the untenability of Oberlies claim. Apart from the circumstance that there is a single reference to a sarpasatra toward the end of the Pauyaparvan (1.3.190), the two parvans are completely dissimilar in character. The Pauyaparvan is mainly prose; it begins with the story of Saram followed by three pedagogical narratives; the bulk of the book is concerned with the story of Uttaka, a student of the brahmin Dhaumya yoda in the second generation; the etiology of the snake holocaust presented in the Pauyaparvan is completely different from that presented in the stkaparvan; and it is the brahmin Uttakas rivalry with Takaka and not the Parikit/Takaka conflict as in the stkaparvan that provokes this first reference to the sarpasatra. There is no evidence to suggest that the Pauyaparvan and the stkaparvan may originally have been one book. 8. If the Vasu-version is to be ascribed to the genre of history, what about the stka-version? Is it fictional or historical? As Oberlies sets up the relation of the Vasu-version to the Hals(lsungs)erzhlung of the stka-version, this endless story whose most famous literary paradigm is The Thousand and One Nights, the latter is plainly fiction, albeit fiction created around the original historical core, i.e., the Vasu-version. But is the fact that stka narrated it also fiction? And, if so, who is the author of this little mise-en-scne? Did stka really once arrive at Janamejayas sarpasatra and save Takakas life, or is this also a fictional narrative? 9. If the latter, then the real expansion of the Mahbhrata, its meta morphosis from history to myth, cannot have occurred through the expedient of a Hals(lsungs)erzhlung, but must have occurred through the persons who introduced the Hals(lsungs)erzhlung itself as a literary motif. In other words, Oberlies introduction of a so-called stka-version fails to resolve the problem it was intended to be a response to, namely, of how the original epic (Oberlies Vasu-version), which Oberlies assigns to the genre of history, could evolve into the mythic account we have at present. The suggestion that Takakas Scheherazadian fate provided the occasion for a massive expansion of the epic and the interpolation of masses of mythic and didactic material into the original epic falls apart once one realizes that this requires us to assume that such a situation actually occurred. Oberlies is caught in a bind of his own making: he must attribute the expansion of the historical epic to stka and then Takakas near-death encounter must have really occurred, or acknowledge that this situation is fiction and then the expansion must be attributed to the authors of the stka narrative. In either case, one of the two frame narratives falls out of consideration as irrelevant: either the stka narration is the historical linchpin that allows us to understand the texts expansion and the Ugraravas narration
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is just a shell, or the Ugraravas narration is the historical linchpin that allows us to understand the texts expansion and the Hals(lsungs)erzhlung is itself decapitated. 10. Conclusion: Establishing Criteria This paper has argued for a hermeneutic approach to the epic that takes the epics own self-understanding seriously as a text of fundamental philosophical, cosmological, and theological significance. I have argued that the two beginnings must be read in the context of this overarching program and cannot be deleted, moved, or otherwise edited to suit contemporary prejudices regarding texts. The analysis articulated aboveof the double beginning as a meaningful component of the epics narrative structureconfirms the CE editors decision to retain the double beginning, and is indirect testimony of the rigor of their editorial praxis. Borrowing an expression from Mahadevans excellent article in this volume, I may say that, just as there are three rails in Mahbhrata criticism, there are also three rails of Mahbhrata interpretation: the first is the CE which provides us with an archetype that allows us to unearth the basic narrative architecture of the epic; the second is Biardeaus method of studying the epic within the totality of significations that Biardeau has called the universe of bhakti,148 a method that has been ably continued by her students Hiltebeitel, Bailey, Couture and others; and the third is the hermeneutic approach, which uses the text itself to interpret the text. Given this state of affairs, one ought to set up some minimal criteria for future Mahbhrata scholarship, especially in light of the fact that, since the CE, certain approaches such as the search for various Ur-Bhratas are an intellectual embarrassment. These scholarly theories bring nothing new to the table: neither in terms of new ideas, nor new evidence, nor in terms of a better understanding of the epic. They are, as Hiltebeitel has argued in his contribution to the present volume, like a hydra that refuses to die. Merely cross-referencing other scholarship does not establish the truth of these views. Academic citation has the definite function of corroborating insights, not of accepting what is advanced as a hypothesis in one paper as established fact in another.149 With the completion of the CE, one must begin separating out the few, relatively minor corrections of the CE editors decisions from circular and reductio ad absurdum arguments. A prime example of this, as Hiltebeitel has shown in his article in this volume, is the notion of a Katriya epic. Whatever appears not to fit some outmoded prejudice, be it of an Indo-European epic tradition or a hypermasculine katriya saga, is excised or
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attributed to later layers. Of this cut-and-paste game with layers, one can only say what Sukthankar observed of 19th-century criticism. Asking what is the secret of this book of which India feels after nearly two thousand years that she has not yet had enough? Sukthankar responds:
It would be a rather hazardous conjecture to suppose that such a thing might perchance happen also to the works of the critics of the Mahbhrata, for within less than half a century the lucubrations of these wiseacres have approached perilously near the limbo of oblivion, from which they are periodically snatched out by the industrious pedagogue and the curious antiquarian. (1957: 29-30)
Occams razor helped philosophy immensely. Likewise, in literary criticism, it is useful to assume the text as we have it as a text with some coherent meaning, unless proved otherwise. Borrowing Austins terminology, it is best to assume that the M0 exemplar had a basic architecture that is continued in a significant measure in all M+N moments. One must attempt to understand this architecture before excising any element as an interpolation. Interpolation is not explanation: it is an acknowledgement of our failure to explain the text. As an interpretive category, interpolation should be our absolute last choice. As an alternative to the dogmatism of the Lassen school, I have been working since around 2007 on the idea of the Mahbhrata as a project with a purpose, i.e., as a self-conscious attempt to preserve Vedic knowledge and disseminate it on a pan-Indian basis, while retaining its esoteric character by concealing it among a mass of narratives. There is now general consensus that the epic is much more Vedic than previously thought, and my recent and forthcoming articles demonstrate a consistent encoding of Vedic sacrifice into the text. These overlappings can hardly be accidental, nor would it make much sense to take up an original bardic epic150 and insert so much Vedic/Brahmanic material into it. Regarding the thesis of Brahmanic interpolation, Lassen and Goldstcker are the prime culprits,151 but the myth of Brahmanic contamination or Brahmanic corruption refuses to die out: 20th century revivals include Fitzgerald (1983) and Oberlies (1995 and 2008).152 Understanding the Mahbhrata as a project with a purpose allows us to comprehend the massive scribal effort and the effort at pan-Indian dissemination behind the epic, both so ably described for us in this volume by Mahadevan, as also the presence of jointures in the text that seem to have been designed to allow for local variation and insertions. Let me conclude with one final statement on the Mahbhratas double beginning. Why does the epic feel the need to place its own hermeneutic tools
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within the text, in the curious space opened up between the two beginnings? The answer to this question must, once again, be sought in the epic itself. As Mahbhrata 1.56.33 and 18.5.38 demonstrate,153 the Mahbhrata takes its claim to being an all-encompassing text quite seriously. Hiltebeitel has already argued that the statement Whatever is here may be found elsewhere; what is not here does not exist anywhere (MBh 1,56.33; 18,5.38) is not an encyclopedic slogan but an ontological claim about what counts as real, as the heterodoxies do not (Hiltebeitel 2011a: 11). One consequence of this self-understanding, however, is that the text must contain everything within itself necessary for understanding it: the text is the sole remainder that is transmitted across time and space and hence must contain its own hermeneutic apparatus within itself. Ultimately, the double beginning is a consequence of this immense task: to create a kind of nonnarrative space that allows for the transmission of a hermeneutic apparatus along with the text. I have further shown that such an interpretation takes the texts own self-understanding seriously as the ea which textually lives yugntare. There is nothing outside the text, not even instructions on how to read the text. As I have shown, the first three parvans are inserted into a space in the epic, allowing them to be transmitted along with it. How are we now to understand the frames in this new interpretive architecture if not as historical? But that is another beginning.
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Structure of the epic First level of enframing: the Naimia satra Anukrama iparvan First beginning: Mbh 1.1.1-19 List of contents: Mbh 1.1.67-94 List of contents: Mbh 1.1.95.195 Ugraravas narration Mbh 1.1.20-212 Parvasa graha 1.2.1-243 List of contents Mbh 1.2.34-64 List of contents Mbh 1.2.71-234 Pau yaparvan Mbh 1.3.1-195 Second narration of the Mbh. Paulomaparvan Second beginning: Mbh 1.4.1-1.5.3 Oberlies switch-narrative (Schalterzhlung) Ugraravas narration Mbh 1.5.4-1.12.5
Upaparvans Oberlies analysis
Oberlies redaction
Justification for thesis
The first dialogical level is that of the first frame narrative, which narrates the context of the second narration of the Mbh.
3. Manu version beginning at 1.27ff.
Ruru narrative, concluding with a reference to stka 1.8-12
Peculiarly, Mahbhrata 1,4 begins with the same words as in 1,1. But at Mbh 1,4 Janamejayas sarpasattra is not spoken of, i.e., this frame narrative is not interwoven with the sarpasattra frame. In this second introduction, the sages gathered at the sattra request Ugraravas to wait until aunka comes, and to recite that which he [aunaka] wishes. As this one then enters (1,5.1), he does not request Ugraravas to recite the Mahbhrata, but he wishes to hear the story [Geschichte] of the Bhrgavas (1,5.3). This then fills up the entire remaining Paulomaparvan (1,5-12). Further, this section of the diparvan has to do with the section of the Mahbhrata (1,3 and 1,13ff.) enclosing it only insofar as in chapter 1,11 suddenly the discussion comes to the story [Geschichte] of Janamejayas sarpasattra. The link to the older stkaparvan (1,13) is generated with the help of the Ruru narrative, a very late insertion into the Mahbhrata.
Appendix
2. stka version beginning at 1.3ff. (lacks the outermost frame and the first dialogical level and the list of contents). That is why now, as the Mahbhrata is handed down, the narration of the snake sacrifice has been inserted as a switch narration [Schalterzhlung] in the Ruru story [Geschichte] of the Paulomaparvan.
This version, which began with the narration of Janamejayas snake sacrifice was, in turn, enframed with the narrative of the 12 year Naimia sattra and thereby the first dialogical level brought in, the title of the work Mahbhrata introduced, which of course is found principally on this dialogical level (see p. 90-91), and this [i.e., the title] associated with the name of the composer, Vysa. This was fused with a second stka-version circulating in Vedic circles that possessed the narrative of the snake sacrifice of Janamejaya as a (simple) frame. But that this was not the original state is suggestedbeyond the young age of the Ruru narrative and of the entire Paulomaparvan [...]by the following considerations: the actual continuous narration of the Mahbhrata begins at Mbh 1,53.35: hanta te kathayiymi mahad khynam uttamam, kadvaipyanamata mahbhratam dita. And one expects to actually [eigentlich] find the frame of the narration before this starting-point. Therewith the stkaparvan may have been the original frame narrative of the Mahbhrata.
Oberlies story [told] to save someones neck (Hals(lsungs)erzhlung)

And much speaks for the fact that in this [frame narrative] not Vaiapyana but stka was the first narrator of the Mahbhrata and that the narration was designed as a socalled story to save someones neck [Hals(lsungs)erzhlung].
st kaparvan 1.13.1-53.26
Second level of enframing: Janamejayas sarpasatra Vaiapyana narrative
diva vatara aparvan Continuation of Ugraravas/ aunaka dialogical level (1.53.27-36) Vysas arrival at Janamejayas satra Mbh 1.54.1-24 Beginning of Vaiapyana/ Janamejaya dialogical level 1.55.1 and continued until 18.5 (except 12.327; 331; 335 and 15.42-43) diva vatara aparvan List of contents: Mbh 1.55 Core Mahbhrata 1.57.1 onward
The snake king sways in the highest danger, and in order to save his neck [Hals], stka narrates a story [Geschichte]the Mahbhratauntil the life threatening danger for Takaka is past. In the form of the Mahbhrata present today, however, it is a song of praise of stka to Janamejaya that moves the latter to fulfill stkas wish for a suspension of the sacrifice (Mbh 1,50-51).
The second dialogical level is that of the second frame narrative, which narrates the context of the second narration of the Mbh.
First narration of the Mbh.
1. Vasu version beginning at 1.57ff. (lacks the inner frame as well as the outer frame and first four lists of contents).
There existed an unframed version of the Mahbhrata the Vasu-versionwhich began (perhaps with a brief list of contents [Mbh 1,55 (see p. 85)]) with the introduction of Vaiapyana as the speaker (Mbh 1,54.21, 57.75)
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Endnotes
1. All Mahbhrata citations refer to the Critical Edition (CE) text (Sukthankar 1933). All translations refer to the Chicago edition (cited as van Buitenen 1973). 2. Obviously, I mean the narrative plot and not some historical core to which was later added. The origins of the latter view can be traced back to Lassens attempt to reconstruct Indian history, geography, and ethnography on the basis of the epic. It becomes a staple of Germanic or Germanophilic interpretations of the epic, especially as it allows for a distinction between an ryan element and an Indian element. On the history of the core plus accretions model, see Vishwa Adluri & Joydeep Bagchee, The Nay Science: A History of German Indology (n.d). 3. This aspect is usually lost in reductive analyses of the epic such as those that argue for a historical core as the original epic or as the Bhrata epic. As Austin points out in this volume, such approaches are hopelessly circular, with everything that does not fit the particular scholars views of the epic being excised as late. I discuss a recent instance of such circular reasoning in my review of A. Malinar, Bhagavadgt: Doctrines and Contexts (Adluri 2010b). 4. On the distinction between time (kla) and eternity as a central organ izational principle of the epic, see my Sacrificial Ontology and Human Destiny (n.d.). 5. For a recent discussion of the relation of daivam to pururtha, see Woods 2001. 6. On the Mahbhrata as a compendium on the pururthas, see 1.56.21 (arthastram ida puya dharmastram ida param / mokastram ida prokta vysenmitabuddhin //); see also 1.1.46-47 (vedayoga savijna dharmo rtha kma eva ca // dharmakmrthastri stri vividhni ca / lokaytrvidhna ca sabhta davn i //) 7. Cf. 1.1.196-197: adhytma ryate yac ca pacabhtagutmakam / avyaktdi para yac ca sa eva parigyate // yat tad yativar yukt dhynayogabalnvit / pratibimbam ivdare payanty tmany avasthitam // 8. Scholars estimate that perhaps only 1/3 of the text is dedicated to the Kuru narrative, with the remainder containing philosophical or didactic material. Hopkins, for example, distinguishes between an epic proper of roughly 20,000 verses and the moral, political, religious, and metaphysical dissertations (1916: 325) in which this epic is embedded, but does not clarify why only the former constitutes the epic proper. Hopkins also famously propounded a distinction between the epic and a pseudo-epic (Hopkins 1906: pass.), based, perhaps, on a narrow identification of epic with a heroic narrative (Heldensage). On Hopkins
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contributions to epic chronology, see Sukthankars response: I will say candidly that for all intents and purposes this pretentious table is as good as useless (1957: 9). 9. For a recent consideration of the some of these issues, see Reich 2008. 10. On the doctrine of cyclical time in the Mahbhrata, see Vassilkov 1999; for details of how the epic replicates the cyclical structure of time, see my discussion of Uttaka as the link that forges the end of the narrative with its beginning (Adluri 2010b). 11. This has been a basic tenet of Western (and, especially, German) schol arship on the epic since Oldenberg and Winternitz articulated the premise that the epic is an ungeheuerliches Chaos (a monstrous chaos; Oldenberg 1922: 1) and a litterarisches Unding (a literary nonsense; Winternitz 1909: 272). For a discussion of how these prejudices have shaped much Western scholarship, see Hiltebeitel 2001: 1-31. Hiltebeitels entire book is, in a sense, a rejection of these premises. See also the editors discussion of the Orientalist prejudice behind Oldenbergs and Winternitz criticism in the respective introductions to Hiltebeitel 2011a and 2011b. 12. See Minkowski 1989 for a discussion of the principles behind such embedding. 13. Hiltebeitel has drawn attention to the presence of yet another frame situated on Mount Himavat, which he calls the uka-Vysa frame, that would in a sense be outside of even the Naimia frame (see Hiltebeitel 2004, 2005). Hiltebeitels suggestion is appealing, as it could potentially allow us to draw together the omniscient narrator who recounts Ugraravas comings and goings and the epics traditional author, Vysa, but more work needs to be done here. For my present purpose, it suffices to note that the author Vysa, the narrator Vaiapyana, and the bard Ugraravas are all contained within the narrative itself, with the reader alone, represented by Gaea, outside the epic (see Adluri 2010a for a discussion of the textual issues this raises). 14. The epic uses many words for snake, without noticeable difference in meaning. The term usually used for snake is nga, a serpent-demon supposed to have a human face with serpent-like lower extremities (MonierWilliams, sv). Ngas are not ordinary snakes, as they frequently exhibit anthropomorphic features and are endowed with wondrous powers. Takaka, for example, the main snake featured in the Pauya- and stkaparvans is a skygoing snake; his son Avasena is said to possess the power of my or illusion. In the snake underworld, Uttaka also encounters technological implements such as a wheel (cakra; 1.3.48) and a loom (tantre; 1.3.47, 48). Although Cozad (2004)
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and Vogel (1926) make a distinction between nga and sarpa, in the epic, at least, the two terms are often used interchangeably. 15. Namely, Parikit and Parikits son Janamejaya. Parikit is descended from Arjuna via Abhimanyu. 16. Cf. Minkowski 1989: 7 and 21. According to Minkowski, the Naimia forest setting provides a situation ne plus ultra that overcomes the danger of regress, but does not fully clarify how this is so. I find Brodbecks suggestion that we are, in a sense, the Naimieya is more helpful, as it takes the reader seriously as a component of the epics logic. See my Sacrificial Ontology and Human Destiny in the Mahbhrata for a discussion of the significance of the reader to the epic. See also Adluri 2010a on the addition of Gaea to the epic as its first reader for some important reflections on how reader and text work together to articulate an all-encompassing logic. 17. Things are somewhat more complex than this initial presentation suggests, of course, as there is not just one but two Ugraravas narrations; see below. Also see Brodbeck 2009: 244-245 and Brodbecks contribution in the present volume. 18. Ugraravas narration, of course, implicitly continues in the background, as Vaiapyanas entire narration is being narrated by him. I thank Simon Brodbeck for this observation. 19. Austin rightly points out that there are significant differences between the framing structure of the beginning of the epic and its close in the eighteenth major book (personal communication), a circumstance that has important bearings on my thesis of the circular structure of the epic. I would caution against expecting perfect symmetry between the diparvan and the Svargrohaaparvan. Austin is probably right that the Ugraravas cycle is not fused to its beginning as one might expect given the epics concern with maintaining a cyclical narrative architecture; it is not Ugraravas who fuses the epics end to its beginning, but Uttaka, as I have already shown (see Adluri 2011c). Much more work needs to be done here, especially on the question of why the Uttaka cycle is already closed out in the fourteenth major book (the vamedhikaparvan) rather than waiting till the end. Austin 2009 provides a good overview of some of the kinds of questions raised by the epics final major book. 20. I.e., first in relation to the reader. From a temporal perspective, however, the outer frame is the second. I retain the convention of counting the frames from the outside in throughout this article, in contrast to some scholars who count outward from the central narrative. The latter more accurately represents the temporal sequence of the two narrations, but is less evident to the reader,
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who encounters the beginnings in narrative rather than chronological order. 21. Credit for noticing the importance of the Naimia frame must, above all, go to Hiltebeitel (1998 and 2001). 22. A number of manuscripts explicitly attribute the narration beginning 1.1.4 to the bard, inserting sautir uvca or sta etc. The CE leaves the identity of the narrator unresolved. I cannot agree with Tsuchidas claim that the stkaparvan in its oldest form must have begun with the introductory passage which in the present text of the Mahbhrata occupies the initial position in the Paulomaparvan. In other words, we should suppose that the Paulomaparvan was not simply placed before the stkaparvan, but inserted between the introductory passage and the main portion of the stkaparvan (Tsuchida 2008: 20). If the second beginning (which Tsuchida terms U2) was indeed the original beginning and only later extended backward to form the first beginning (Tsuchidas U1), there would have been no reason to retain this original beginning (i.e., U2) nor, indeed, to highlight it in the Parvasagraha (cf. yat tu aunakasatre te bhratkhynavistaram / khysye tatra paulomam khyna cdita param; 1.2.29). Mehtas suggestion of two equally original beginnings is preferable, although Mehta then defers to a specious historical justification; see Mehta 1973. 23. But aunaka is referred to as ghapati at 1.4.11. Van Buitenen translates both as family chieftain, fudging the distinction; cf. also aunakasya kulapater at 1.1.1, which van Buitenen again renders family chieftain aunaka. 24. lomaharaaputra ugrarav sta pauriko naimiraye aunakasya kulapater dvdaavrike satre; 1.1.1. 25. The Bhgus or the Bhrgavas are a group of brahmin seers or is thought by some to have been the redactors of the Mahbhrata. For the thesis of a Bhrgava recension, see Sukthankar 1936-7; see also Goldman 1977; opposed to it, see Hiltebeitel 1999; reworked in Hiltebeitel 2001: 105-118. 26. For a discussion of the ideas behind the logic of a triad of sacrifices in the Pauyaparvan, see Adluri 2011c. 27. See especially Tsuchida 2008 and Oberlies 2008. For Brodbecks justified critique of Tsuchidas over-simplification of the Mahbhratas narrative structure, see his entry in this volume. I discuss Oberlies onion skin model of the epic in detail below, as it typifies the problems with so-called texthistorical analyses. 28. See section 8 below on the significance of the first three books and, especially, of the third book, the Pauyaparvan, to the epics hermeneutic and pedagogic program.
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29. manvdi bhrata ke cid stkdi tathpare / tathoparicardy anye vipr samyag adhyate; 1.1.50. 30. I.e., at 1.53.10, although there is a second description of the conclusion of the sacrifice at 18.5.26-29. 31. Van Buitenens approach reflects a basic prejudice of modern scholarship that the epic, at its core, is concerned with a historical eventthe conflict between the two rival branches of the Kuru patrilineal line (cf. van Buitenen 1973: 3)and that philosophical and hermeneutical matter such as that contained in the diparvan, the rayakaparvan, the Bhagavadgt, and the anti- and Anusanaparvans must be a later addition to what was originally in essence a simple historical narrative. Van Buitenen is especially critical of what he calls the third perimeter, a term that includes Ugraravas narration in the Naimia forest and the run-up to Janamejayas snake sacrifice but not the sarpasatra itself, to which van Buitenen is prepared to accord a qualified historical authenticity (cf. 1973: 3). 32. I thank Joydeep Bagchee for all translations of Oberlies. 33. To further complicate matters, Oberlies footnotes this very line with the comment besides these, however, there must have definitely existed others, manifestly also one thatalthough not exclusively was nonetheless overwhelminglycomposed in Triubhs (ibid., n. 41). But in that case, why does the hint, if it is to be understood historically, conceal this information from us? Does Oberlies mean this is only a partial hint? And if so, i.e., if the hint conceals just as much as it divulges, why ought we take it at face value? What evidence do we have for these other versions if this hint does not record them? Does this additional evidence corroborate this hint? 34. Hiltebeitel (2001) has already shown that the epic poets make use of orality as a literary trope, i.e., that the epics literary form is intentionally structured so as to give the impression of being an oral epic or one with an oral background to it. Perhaps the epic poets are being just as playful when they allow us to discern hints of history in the epic. In any case, we must take these hints with caution. If we can speak of history at all here, it is of the epics fiction of history. It is almost as the epic, somehow anticipating 19th century historicism, already sets up its project to defeat straightforward historicist readings. In fact, the one hint the epic really does gives us is when it calls itself itihsapura (1.1.204). As Greg Bailey points out (personal communication), traditional etymology derives pura(va) from pur and nava (= the narrative of the past renewing itself). The term itihsapura would then be a designation for the continuous transformation of history (itihsa) into myth (pura), i.e., of
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the renewal of time itself. The epic, as I have argued throughout this paper, is aware of the irrelevance that threatens all history; through its complex narrative strategies (framing, double beginnings, beginning at the end), it is constantly attempting to overcome this irrelevance, and defeat historicism. 35. Brodbeck makes the point especially well in his recent book; see Brodbeck 2011. 36. This is, of course, simply untrue, since history is equally metaphysical in that it elevates the individual empirical object to a well-determined thing (wohlbestimmtes Ding), which not only contains within itself the ground of all our cognition but also more than a finite intellect can ever come to know of it. In other words, history does not do away with transcendence; it simply displaces the idea of transcendence into material reality. For a penetrating analysis of the epistemological and metaphysical prejudices at the root of the modern faith in the empirical individual, see Schmitt 2003; see also Gadamer (2004) for an excellent overview of the rise of historicism. 37. Conflict between Arjunas and Takakas respective lineages is a recurrent motif in the diparvan. Arjuna, from whom Janamejaya is descended via Parikit, destroys Takakas home and kills his wife, herself a daughter of the Snakes (bhujagtmaj; 1.218.6). Takaka himself escapes because, at the time of the burning of the Khava forest, he was away in the Field of the Kurus (kuruketre bhavat tad; 1.218.4). His son Avasena also succeeds in escaping through his terrible power of illusion (my ... ghor; 1.218.10), but Arjuna curses him to never find shelter (apratiho bhaved iti; 1.218.11). The conflict between Arjuna and the snakes also recurs in the central battlebooks, specifically in the Karaparvan. Kara is said to aim a serpent-mouthed arrow (sarpamukha; 8.66.5) of the line of Airvata (airvatavaasabhava; 8.66.6) at Arjuna; some mainly northern manuscripts go even further: the snake is identified as Avasena, who, having escaped the destruction of the burning Khava forest, now enters Karas arrow seeking revenge (cf. app. 1, no. 40). On snake-related imagery in relation to Kara, see Hiltebeitel 2007. 38. Snake and human genealogies seem to be particularly susceptible to such cross-overs. Nahua, an early ancestor of the Kuru line, is cursed to become a snake when he strikes sage Agastya either with his foot or feet (versions vary; cf. 12.329.38; 5.17.11; and 13.103.20). Dhtarra is often referred to as a snake in the epic (cf. 1.3.142; 1.31.13; 1.52.13; 2.9.9; 4.2.14; 5.101.15; 8.24.72; 16.5.14) and Janamejaya himself occurs once as a snakes name in the Mahbhrata (2.9.10; cf. also Pacavi Brhmaa, Baudhyana rauta Stra, Baudhyana Ghya Stra which list Janamejaya as one of the snakes to officiate at the first sarpasatra; for the full
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citations, see Minkowski 1989). Avasena is also the name of one of Dhtarras sons (1.108.9). Especially significant in this context is the close assocation between Arjuna and the snakes: some of the most prominent snakes in the epic (Karkoaka, ea, Vsuki, and, especially noteworthy, Takaka; cf. 1.114.60) are said to be in attendance at his birth; and Arjuna himself is married to a snake, the ng princess Ulp, who drags him underwater and will not release him until he consents to father a son on her (1.206.12-32; cf. also 1.2.91). Irvn, Arjunas son of Ulp, later plays a minor but crucial role in the Kuruketra battle, sacrificing his life in order that his father and paternal uncles may win the war. On Nahuas fall, see Hiltebeitel 1977. 39. Peculiarly, Mahbhrata 1,4 begins with the same words as in 1,1. But at Mbh 1,4 Janamejayas sarpasattra is not spoken of, i.e., this frame narrative is not interwoven with the sarpasattra frame. In this second introduction, the sages gathered at the sattra request Ugraravas to wait until aunaka comes, and to recite that which he [aunaka] wishes. As this one then enters (1,5.1), he does not request Ugraravas to recite the Mahbhrata, but he wishes to hear the story [Geschichte; perhaps history?] of the Bhrgavas (1,5.3). This then fills up the entire remaining Paulomaparvan (1,5-12). Further, this section of the diparvan has to do with the section of the Mahbhrata (1,3 and 1,13ff.) enclosing it only insofar as in chapter 1,11 suddenly the discussion comes to the story [Geschichte] of Janamejayas sarpasattra. The link to the older stkaparvan (1,13) is generated with the help of the Ruru narrative, a very late insertion into the Mahbhrata. That is why now, as the Mahbhrata is handed down, the narration of the snake sacrifice has been inserted as a switch narration [Schalterzhlung] into the Ruru story [Geschichte] of the Paulomaparvan (Oberlies 2008: 94). 40. On the absence of justification for claiming that the Pauyaparvan was originally part of the stkaparvan, see section 9 below. 41. I say more about the problems Oberlies is contending with in section 9 below. 42. On the concept of neck-riddles or capital-riddles (Halslsungsrtsel) see Elias 1995; see also Meyer 1967. The neologism Hals(lsungs)erzhlung appears to be Oberlies invention, created in analogy to the German Halslsungsrtsel but with an extended narration replacing the traditional riddle, Rumpelstiltskin providing, of course, the most famous example of a Halslsungsrtsel and The Thousand and One Nights of a Hals(lsungs)erzhlung. In both cases, the objective is the same: to save either ones own or anothers neck. How exactly this applies to Takaka Oberlies does not clarify. It is unlikely that he means to
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suggest that there is some riddle to be solved at the end of stkas narration as is the case in Rumpelstiltskin, but I also doubt he means that king Janamejaya falls in love with stka as the Scheherazade parallel would suggest. Brodbeck notes that Oberlies point makes sense if we accept the equation of stka with Vaiapyana (personal communcation, see also Brodbeck 2009, esp. 173-174); on the problems with this equation, see below. 43. Oberlies 2008: 94-95. Contrary to popular belief, snakes do possess necks, although they are highly atrophied (the majority of a snakes body is comprised of an extremely extended thorax). But I take it that Oberlies does not mean us to take the Hals(lsungs)-aspect literally. 44. I.e., its core historical narrative of the Vasu-version. 45. King Vasu is present from Mbh 1,57i.e., the immediate beginning of the Vasu versionas a (typical) cultural founder [Kulturstifter] and the time in which he rules as a golden age [Goldenes Zeitalter] (on this see in detail in another passage). This will (ultimately) be the reason why this version of the epic began with his story [Geschichte] (Oberlies 2008: 95, n. 52). 46. Oberlies argues for the priority of the Vasu-version on the grounds that [t]his will (ultimately) be the reason why this version of the epic began with his story [Geschichte] (95, n. 52), but the argument is a non sequitur. The claim is only tenable, if one already assumes in advance that every epic is necessarily built up on or around some historical narrative, as Oberlies, in fact, does; cf. especially the claim in Oberlies 1998 that in the Mahbhrataas in so many heroic epics [Heldenepen]historical and quasi-historical facts are transformed through a narrative template (139, n.51). 47. Oberlies reconstruction does answer some questions, in particular, the question of how the original historical Vasu-version could give rise to the highly mythologized and theological epic we have at present (cf. van Buitenen on inept mythification; 1973: xx), but these are concerns endemic to German Lutheranism rather than being reflective of genuine issues in the epic; see my discussion of Oberlies motivations below. 48. Oberlies, in fact, concedes that the epic is carefully redacted (cf. Oberlies 2008: 75-78), but then defers to specious text-historical justifications for this seeming order. Here one again sees a massive historicist prejudice at work that has so marred German epic scholarship. 49. For a useful discussion of hermeneutics in recent philosophy, see Malbon 1983. The term hermeneutics shares a linguistic root with the name of the Greek god Hermes, the messenger of the gods and the inventor or discoverer of language and writing. The three basic meanings of hermeneuein are: (1) to
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speak (or express or say), (2) to explain (or interpret or comment upon), (3) to translate. The foundational Hermes process at work in all three cases is thus the same: in all three cases, something foreign, strange, separated in time, space, or experience is made familiar, present, comprehensible; something requiring representation, explanation, or translation is somehow brought to understanding is interpreted (quoting and heavily paraphrasing Malbon 1983: 212) 50. Paraphrasing Wittgenstein, one could perhaps formulate a principle of the form: Whereof there is no manuscript evidence, thereof one must remain silent. In Wittgensteins Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus, where the principle originally appears (Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent, 7; Ogden trans.), the principle functions to separate meaningful combinations of signs from nonsensical combinations. In our present case, its function would be to separate scholarship from unverifiable speculation. 51. The prejudice appears to be innate to modernity; on Annas criticisms of Plato, see Annas 1981, and, for my rejoinder, see Adluri 2010c. 52. See Mehta 1973, and, more recently, Tsuchida 2008 and Oberlies 2008. Tsuchidas work is riddled with logical fallacies such as petitio principii, ignorantia elenchii, and at least one ad hominem attack (cf. Tsuchida 2008: 6); I cannot discuss Tsuchida in the present paper, but I take up Oberlies work, which is based mainly on Tsuchidas, in detail in section 9. 53. On Nlakahas editorial principles, cf. Sukthankar 1933: lxv-lxx. In Sukthankars words, Nlakahas guiding principle, on his admission, was to make the Mahbhrata a thesaurus of all excellences (culled no matter from what source (ibid., lxvii; emphasis in original). For a useful introduction to Nlakahas work, see Minkowski 2010. 54. Sukthankar 1933: lxxxvi; emphasis in original. Even though Sukthankar hesitates to acknowledge both beginnings as genuine, he remains true to the principles established for the reconstruction of the CE text. 55. Ibid., v. The criterion of appropriateness, unfortunately admits of no objective quantification or evaluation; as a subjective category, it has been utterly abused in text-historical criticism to make the text conform to specific ideologies or perceptions of what an ideal Ur-Bhrata would have looked like. 56. Cf. Sukthankar 1933: 93. Before loma, K3 V1 B (except B3; B1 in brackets) Dn3 D1.4.6 Nlp ins. sautiruvca (cf. Nl. comm.); T (T2 with prefixed r) G4-6 M2.4 (with prefixed r).5 sta. With the exception of , manuscripts from all major groups are present in this list.
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57. See Mahadevans contribution in this volume for evidence of the antiquity of the text as recovered in the CE; based on the three rails of criticism, Mahadevan suggests a date of 3rd to 2nd century BCE for the CE text, putting it substantially further back than the four centuries of evidence of the manuscripts. If the two beginnings are not original, they must have been added prior to the date supplied by Mahadevan, and that is to say, prior to the CE, which is to enter the realm of Austins hypothetical M-N text(s). Needless to say, that puts us in the realm of unverifiable speculation, based on nothing more than some scholars intuitions of some kind of original heroic epic (Heldenepos), a prejudice that can be traced back to 19th century German longings for ryan or Indo-Germanic origins; on the origins of the Indogermanisches Urepos hypothesis, see Vishwa Adluri & Joydeep Bagchee, The Nay Science: A History of German Indology (n.d.). 58. By this I mean, of course, that the critic must provide manuscript evidence, rather than speculate about a text that could have been, should have been. Such speculations do extraordinary harm to the discipline of philology, as they completely undermine all scholarly canons: it would seem that, misled by the maxim of text-critical reconstruction brevior lectio praeferenda est (the shortest text is to be preferred), some scholars have taken it to the extreme of hypostatizing shorter and shorter texts to the point of volatilizing the text as we have it entirely. Our problem, then, is not so much one of Einschaltungen in the epic as the irrational Ausschaltung of the manuscript evidence in search of a hypothetical text that is no text. Fitzgeralds hypothesis of a PavaBhrata perfectly illustrates the problems with this approach (see Fitzgerald 1983 and 2010). 59. See Hiltebeitels contribution in this volume. 60. I owe the idea of reading communities to Alf Hiltebeitel, who has been especially instrumental in redirecting our attention to the reception of the text among its traditional reading communities as a crucial element in understanding the text (see Hiltebeitel 2005 and 2006; on the significance of Hiltebeitels turn to a consideration of the reception of the epic, see the respective introductions to Reading the Fifth Veda (Hiltebeitel 2011a) and When the Goddess was a Woman (Hiltebeitel 2011b). 61. Cf. van Buitenen for the suggestion that if it pleased the manuscript owner he could insert in his loose-leaf book a couple of leaves containing a variant version of one of those stories without compunction (1973: xxix). 62. In fact, even if we were to assume a redactor as Tsuchida, Oberlies et al. do, there is no reason why the redactor, who undertook to collate, edit,
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and unify an entire library of stories and retellings, could not have simply eliminated one beginning. Tsuchida and Mehta both proffer putative reasons for why he could not or did not wish to do so, but this is to enter the realm of psychobiography. Tsuchida proceeds ex hypothesi throughout; the following passage provides some indication of the circular and self-referential nature of his arguments: It goes almost without saying that these two sub-Parvans attained their present shape only as the result of a gradual and intricate process of enlargement. One can, nevertheless, fully grasp what the original compiler of the prologue intended to present with his compilation. His main purpose was to narrate Janamejayas celebration of the sarpasatra and other events which finally converge on the start of Vaiapyanas recital of the epic. Most probably it was this very compiler of the prologue who elaborated framework U-2 in order to put his own genesis of the Mbh into the mouth of some authoritative narrator. To the question of whether this compiler ever consulted any other independent version U, now lost, or whether he simply followed the current tradition of Ugraravas narratorship of the epic and puric texts one cannot give any exact answer, though the latter supposition seems more plausible than the former. The compilers, indeed, who laid out frameworks U-1 and U-2 must have been still quite well-acquainted with the ancient bardic tradition. But there is no need at all for us to think that they also belonged to the same class of sta as Ugraravas, Lomaharaa and Sajaya. Most probably the epic texts they handled in their compilatory activities had already been transmitted in written form. It would thus be futile to look for any direct vestige of the oral tradition in the frameconstruction of the present Mbh (Tsuchida 2008: 9; italics mine). 63. Text-historical reconstructions of the process by which the double beginning arose are entirely conjectural and subjective. M. Biardeau has rightly drawn attention to brahmins memories (Biardeau 2002, 2: 747-749). While I cannot agree with her on the issue of orality, one must take her suggestion seriously: it is hardly likely that brahmins capable of reciting the entire epic from memory would not be aware of the dissonance among its first four opening parvans. Nor is the stereotype of brahmins committed to an unchanging textual corpus realistic, as Nlakahas edition demonstrates. If the double beginning was added to the text at a certain stage in the Mahbhratas history, then it was as part of a highly sophisticated redactorial and hermeneutic programan alternative, however, I reject, as the archetypal redactor is an invention of 19th century text-historicism based on models of textual transmission and growth that are simply inadequate to the reality of the Indian context.
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64. For a more detailed analysis of the significance of the number eighteen, see Sarin 2004. 65. dvdaa vari; 1.204.8 and 1.205.30. Van Buitenen translates: twelve months. 66. Oberlies 2008: 75; but see Oberlies 2005 on the issue of whether 12 months or 12 years are intended. 67. On Rurus doubling as a metaphor for self-reflection leading to the arrival of being (stka), see Adluri & Bagchee (n.d.). 68. On doubling as a feature of being itself, see my recent book (Adluri 2011a). 69. Austin rightly points out that many of these features could also occur in a narrative based on linear conception of time (personal communication). A detailed analysis of doubling as a feature of being itself would take me far afield of the present paper (see, however, Adluri 2011a), so I will just note that the Mahbhratas use of doubling is not restricted to the observation that things recur in time but has the function of showing that the universe is a copy without an original or, in Platos words, the universe is a copy of a copy. It is this philosophical aspect to doubling that is important here. 70. I gratefully acknowledge Simon Brodbecks hint that the idea of expansion is the epics own fiction; in retrospect, my previous draft (which had the words Acknowledging that) conceded too much. 71. On the problem of positing absolute origins, see section 8 below. Every serious attempt at understanding the epic must take the hermeneutic framework provided by the epic itself seriously; without taking seriously indications such as the separation of being and becoming (1.1.187-190 and 1.1.191, 1.1.193-195), the separation of eonic time from the eternity of Brahman (1.1.37-38 and 1.1.27-28), and the difficulty of making a beginning in a narrative conception that does not allow for absolute beginnings in time, there can be no meaningful interpretation of the epic, in spite of the masses of critical scholarship produced on it. 72. Hiltebeitel 2001; see esp. the chapter Conventions of the Naimia Forest for its rewarding discussion of the importance of the Naimia frame, long neglected by the analytic school, to the epic. 73. janamejayasya rjare sarpasatre mahtmana / sampe prthivendrasya samyak prikitasya ca // kadvaipyanaprokt supuy vividh kath / kathit cpi vidhivad y vaiapyanena vai; 1.1.8-9. 74. rutvha t vicitrrth mahbhratasarit; 1.1.10. There is also a suggestion in the second beginning that Ugraravas is not as yet fully proficient
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in the narrative: aunaka asks whether he has learned (adhe; 1.5.1) whatever had been learned long ago by his father, and seems to be testing either his memory or his understanding at select intervals in the narrative (cf. 1.14.1-3; 1.31.1-3; 1.36.1-2). In contrast, the Naimia sages treat Ugraravas much more deferentially, as someone well-versed in the narrative, and Ugraravas response reflects a quiet confidence (cf. it is the delight of the learned; 1.1.26) that is perhaps absent in the second narration. 75. dvaipyanena yat prokta pura paramari / surair brahmaribhi caiva rutv yad abhipjitam // tasykhynavarihasya vicitrapadaparvaa / skmrthanyyayuktasya vedrthair bhitasya ca // bhratasyetihsasya puy granthrthasayutm / saskropagat brhm nnstropabhitm // janamejayasya y rjo vaiapyana uktavn / yathvat sa is tuy satre dvaipyanjay // vedai caturbhi samit vysasydbhutakarmaa / sahit rotum icchmo dharmy ppabhaypahm; 1.1.15-19. 76. On the epics popular title as a str-dra-veda or a Veda for women and dras, I find Blacks discussion in a forthcoming article especially useful. Black notes that Although the Critical Edition does not contain the well known description of the epic as a text for women and dras, the Mahbhrata does seem to regard itself as delivering a universal message. In addition to the numerous phalarutis throughout the text that address audiences beyond those who are male and of the twiceborn classes, Vysa himself, in the ntiparvan, instructs his disciples to teach his story to members of all four varas (12.314.45). In light of the authors own instruction to his students, what better way to reach a diverse and inclusive audience than to have Brahmanical knowledge communicated by someone of lower birth. Indeed, without making any claims about the real history of the text, this scenario seems to be the one that the Mahbhrata tells about its own transmission: originating among brahmins, but learned by stas such as Ugraravas who, implicitly, share such tales and legends with a wide audience, particularly when they frequent popular pilgrimage sites, such as the ones Ugraravas visited before arriving in the Naimia Forest (Black, forthcoming: 11). On the term str-dra-veda itself, Black notes that the description appears in the Bhgavata Pura (1.4.25), which says that Vysa composed his story out of compassion for women, sdras, and uneducated twiceborns. Nonetheless, there are a number of individual phalarutis throughout the text that offer rewards for dras and women (ibid., n. 16). 77. See Brodbeck 2009: 244-245, esp. n. 40. See also Brodbeck in this volume: there were two Naimia Forest recitations: one by Ugraravas to aunaka, and a later one by Ugraravas to the is. This is clear when Ugraravas, addressing the
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is, refers to his dialogue with aunaka as having already happened. 78. yat tu aunakasatre te bhratkhynavistaram / khysye tatra paulomam khyna cdita param; 1.2.29. 79. Cf. van Buitenen 1973: 439. Told at aunakas session: but he is yet to do it; below, 1.4-5; 13. 80. A study of the terms vistarea and puna suggest that duplications in the narrative are due to a desire for poetic retelling rather than being insertions of different versions of stories. aunaka, for example, frequently requests longer, more detailed accounts (vistarea) from the bard, who then follows up his initial narration with a longer version. The word vistaram is used at 1.2.29 to express the relation of the sections of the text that precede the Paulomaparvan to the Mahbhrata from this book onward. It reappears at 1.2.126 and claries the entire sub-narrative of the Rmyaa as an elaboration. In the Paulomaparvan, the bard provides a summary genealogy of the Bhgus. aunaka then asks for further details of Bhgus son, Cyavana. Ugraravas complies and later says that he will present a full account (vistarea pravakymi; 1.8.3) of all of Bhgus descendants, including Ruru. aunaka later explicitly requests a fuller account of stka of Ugraravas (saute kathaya tm et vistarea kath puna; 1.14.1). This pattern is repeated in the stkaparvan (vistarea punar vada; 1.45.1 and sarva vistaratas; 1.48.3) and in the divavataraaparvan (vistararavae jta kauthalam atva me; 1.56.2 and sa bhavn vistareem punar khytum arhati; 1.56.3). The next time the word vistarea appears, it is within the inner narrative: Janamejaya rather than aunaka addresses the dvijottama Vaiapyana (etad icchmy aha rotu vistarea dvijottama; 1.71.2). 81. etat parvaata pra vysenokta mahtman / yathvat staputrea lomaharain puna // kathita naimiraye parvy adaaiva tu; 1.2.70-71. 82. Brodbeck 2009: 245, n. 40. 83. The latter/later satra is iterable because although it only happens once in the text, it can happen each time the text is presentedbe this to many listeners of a reciter at once, or to one silent reader at once (personal communication). 84. Without the addition of the reader, who represents consciousness and life, the text remains dead, a corpus suitable only for autopsy (Greek autopsein = to see for oneself). Approaches that seek to reduce the text to nothing more than a corpus available for text-historical dissections are thus incapable of appreciating the sublime logic of this great epic, as Sukthankar already demonstrated (see Sukthankar 1957). Sukthankars On the Meaning of the Mahbhrata should be made required reading for anyone attempting his or her hand at Mahbhrata criticism.
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85. This is a practice attested to in the recitation of mantras; in the Gyatr mantra, for example, it is customary to recall the god (Savit), then the i or sage to whom the mantra is traditionally attributed (Vivamitra), and then the meter (gyatr). Its occurrence here in the Anukramaiparvan hints at the epics self-conscious understanding of itself as a mantra; on the Mahbhrata as a mantra, see my Sacrificial Ontology and Human Destiny in the Mahbhrata. 86. niprabhe smin nirloke sarvatas tamasvte / bhad aam abhd eka prajn bjam akayam // yugasydau nimitta tan mahad divya pracakate / yasmis tac chryate satya jyotir brahma santanam; 1.1.27-28. 87. The term bhavagt is mine. Although Dhtarras bhavagt precedes the Bhagavadgt from the perspective of textual order, from a chronological perspective it is actually later, occurring after Bhmas fall and after the end of the Kuruketra battle. Dhtarra has already heard the Bhagavadgts soteriological philosophy, but appears to have gained nothing from it, as his lament and Sajayas subsequent reprimand demonstrate. 88. kaa yuddhe daa e rut me; trayo smka pavn ca sapta / dvyn viatir hatkauhin; tasmin sagrme vigrahe katriym // tamas tv abhyavastro moha viatva mm / saj nopalabhe sta mano vihvalatva me; 1.1.158-159. 89. klamlam ida sarva bhvbhvau sukhsukhe // kla pacati bhtni kla saharati praj / nirdahanta praj kla kla amayate puna // klo vikurute bhvn sarvml loke ubhubhn / kla sakipate sarv praj visjate puna / kla sarveu bhteu caraty avidhta sama // attngat bhv ye ca vartanti spratamtn / klanirmitn buddhv na saj htum arhasi; 1.1.187-190. 90. atropaniada puy kadvaipyano bravt / bhagavn vsudeva ca krtyate tra santana / sa hi satyam ta caiva pavitra puyam eva ca // vata brahma parama dhruva jyoti santanam / yasya divyni karmi kathayanti mania // asat sat sad asac caiva yasmd devt pravartate / satati ca pravtti ca janma mtyu punarbhava; 1.1.191, 193-195. 91. This is not to deny the richness of the epics contents, but to underscore the problem of mortality as the epics enduring and central concern. Austin rightly points out that the epic is also concerned with themes of the problem of dharma, necessity of violence, renunciation, the divinity of Ka etc., none of which can simply be reduced to the other (personal communication). My point, however, is not so much that there is one single problem in the epic as that there is a basic concern with being in time expressed in the form of the question how now to live? that provides the motive force for many of the issues Austin rightly cites. Questions of dharma, of violence, renunciation, etc., only make
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sense against the background of this basic problem of being in time; which, of course, is not to reduce them to this problem but to acknowledge the infinite richness of the problem. 92. catvra ekato ved bhratam ca ekam ekatah / samgataih suraribhis tulm ropitam pur / mahattve ca gurutve ca dhriyamam tato adhikam // mahattvd bhravattvc ca mah bhratam ucyate / niruktam asya yo veda sarva ppaih pramucyate; 1.1.208-209. 93. Samantapacaka is another name for Kuruketra or the Field of the Kurus where the battle between the Kauravas and Pavas was fought. It gets its name five lakes from the legend that Rma Jmadagnya filled five lakes with the blood of the katriyas. Curiously, throughout the Anukramaiand Parvasagrahaparvans, this site is referred to by its older name rather than as Kuruketra: Ugraravas, asked to narrate his doings, recounts that he was present at Janamejayas sarpasatra where Vaiapyana recited the Mahbhrata, after which he journeyed to Samantapacaka (1.1.11; cf. also 1.2.1) the site of the great battle between the Kauravas and Pavas. In fact, the name Kuruketra never occurs within the Ugraravas narration proper (i.e., excluding the Vaiapyana narration, which is embedded in the Ugraravas narration), with the exception of the third minor book, the Pauyaparvan, which is embedded between the two beginnings (1.3.1, 144, 145). It is almost as though Ugraravas narration, which is soon to explode into the massive account of the violent conflict between the Kuru princes, is looking back more to its mythic and sacrificial predecessor, Rma Jmadagnyas slaughter of the katra, than forward to the upcoming events of the Kuru bheda narrative. 94. Credit for noticing the significance of the yuga scheme, and its relation to the avatra myth, must go to Biardeau (1976). See also Coutures recent essay on avatra, continuing Biardeaus excellent work, as relating to the concept of divine play (Couture 2001). As though anticipating that the main weakness of Western critical scholarship would turn on its inability to appreciate the centrality the Mahbhrata as divine play, see Sukthankar (1957: 25): How could European savants, lacking as they do in their intellectual make-up the millenia old background of Indian culture, ever hope to penetrate this inscrutable mask of the Unknowable pulling faces at them, befooling them and enjoying their antics? 95. puram akhila tta pit te dhtavn pur / kaccit tvam api tat sarvam adhe lomaharae // pure hi kath divy diva ca dhmatm / kathyante t pursmbhi rut prva pitus tava // tatra vaam aha prva rotum icchmi bhrgavam / kathayasva kathm et kaly sma ravae tava; 1.5.1-3. 96. yad adhta pur samyag dvijareha mahtmabhi / vaiapyanaviprdyais
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tai cpi kathita pur // yad adhta ca pitr me samyak caiva tato may; 1.5.4-5. 97. Cyavana means moving, the being deprived of, falling from any divine existence for being re-born as a man (Monier-Williams, sv). It derives from cyu which means to come forth from, to drop from, to fall down, to die, to be deprived of, to perish (Monier-Williams, sv). The Mahbhrata itself high lights this etymology in elucidating Cyavanas name: And the child she bore alive in her womb, O descendant of the Bhgus, angrily fell [cyuta] from his mothers womb and thus became known as Cyavana (tata sa garbho nivasan kukau bhgukulodvaha / ron mtu cyuta kuke cyavanas tena so bhavat; 1.6.2). Etymologies are a crucial element in understanding the epic, as aunakas question to the bard in the stkparvan demonstrates. aunaka asks the bard: This I wish to hear. Pray tell me the etymology of jaratkru. When the bard resolves the word into jar and kru and interprets the word as monstrous destruction (cf. jaratkru niruktam tvam yathvad vaktum arhasi // jar iti kayam hur vai druam kru samjnitam; 1.36.2-3), demonstrating that he has grasped the soteriological ontology implicit in the Jaratkru narrative, aunaka laughs out loud and says That fits! (upapannam iti; 1.36.5). One must read this passage in the full light of a previous occurrence of etymology in the text, in which the word Mahbhrata is etymologically related to salvation: Once the divine seers foregathered, and on one scale they hung the four Vedas in the balance, and on the other scale The Bhrata; and both in size and weight it was the heavier. Therefore, because of its size and weight, it is called The Mahbhratahe who knows this etymology is freed from all sins (catvra ekato ved bhratam ca ekam ekatah / samgataih suraribhis tulm ropitam pur / mahattve ca gurutve ca dhriyamam tato adhikam // mahattvd bhravattvc ca mah bhratam ucyate / niruktam asya yo veda sarva ppaih pramucyate; 1.1.208-209). For a fuller discussion of how the etymologies of the names in the Paulomaparvan encode a philosophical message, see Adluri & Bagchee (n.d.). I thank Christopher Austin for pointing out that tying playful etymologies to salvation is routine procedure in the Brhmaas (personal communication). 98. For an analysis of the Ruru narrative, especially in its soteriological aspect, see Adluri & Bagchee (n.d.). 99. asty ea garbha subhage tava; 1.43.38, 100. astty uktv gato yasmt pit garbhastham eva tam / vana tasmd ida tasya nmstketi virutam; 1.44.20. I thank Gregory Bailey for this translation (personal communication). 101. I discuss both these narratives in greater depth in my Sacrificial Ontology and Human Destiny in the Mahbhrata.
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102. For a discussion of the significance of stka, who represents the soteriological power of being that is born through hermeneutics, see n. 119 below. stka is key to understanding why the first narration concludes with the stkaparvan and a new beginning is made from 1.57 onward, i.e., in the divavataraaparvan. For a more detailed discussion of how the epics opening books articulate a comprehensive soteriological program, see my Sacrificial Ontology and Human Destiny in the Mahbhrata. 103. By becoming, I understand the experience of change in its twofold aspect of coming-to-be (Greek gensis) and perishing (phthora). I use the overarching term becoming to convey the sense of a range of terms such as bhavbhavau (becoming, literally beingnon-being), vtti (disturbance), sasra (eternal recurrence), jayjayau (victory and defeat), lbhlbhau (gain and loss) and sukhadukha (pleasure and pain). I translate these with the term becoming. The epic also often uses the word kla (time) in place of bhavbhavau; in these cases as well, I translate with becoming. For references to bhavbhavau, see 3.148.9 (in relation to the yugas and the pururthas), 3.279.10 (in relation to pleasure and pain), 5.36.45 and 12.26.31 (on self-control and salvation), 5.39.1 (in relation to finitude and fate); see also 12.137.51, 12.221.94 and 12.233.11. 104. For a discussion of the four genera of becoming (sacrifice, cosmology, genealogy, and war or agn), see my Sacrificial Ontology and Human Destiny in the Mahbhrata. The four genera are crucial to understanding the Mahbhrata as the entire epic is articulated in terms of these four genera. The four genera are also key to understanding the epics dual claim to being both an itihsa (cf. itihsam; 1.1.24, 52, 204) and a Veda (cf. kra vedam; 1.1.205) as they provide a way of speaking about becoming without reifying it, as is the case in history. 105. The obsession with a historical kingdom has been a characteristic feature of German epic scholarship since C. Lassen (1837) who sought to reconstruct Indian ethnology and prehistory on the basis of the epic, the Kauravas and Pavas being identified with white Aryans [weisse Arier] and black aborigines [schwarzen Urbewohner] respectively and the epic as a whole being interpreted as the record of a historical conflict for white supremacy. Lassens racial hypothesis lays the fundament for over two centuries of German epic studies, beginning with Holtzmann, Sr. (1854), author of the infamous inversion hypothesis, according to which the Kauravas were the heroes of the original epic and were later denigrated by scurrilous Brahmanic redactors. Goldstcker (1879) sought to anchor Holtzmanns thesis in the text by distinguishing a Bhrata of 24,000 verses from the Mahbhrata of 100,000
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verses. Wecker (1888) continues this strain of Indo-Germanic thinking by setting up explicit comparisons between the Mahbhrata and the Nibelungenlied (Dhritaraschtra = Armenrich, Bhischma = Rdiger, Karna = Siegferd, Arjuna = Iring, Krischna Kesava and Krischna Draupadi = Kriemhilde, etc.). Finally, Holtzmann, Jr. (1892) saw in the epic evidence of a Brahmanic CounterReformation [Gegenreformation] against a supposed Buddhist Enlightenment, explicitly describing Aoka as a mixture of Frederick the Great and Lessing! The obsession with projecting Lutheran-Protestant values onto Buddhism continues in some more recent literature; a case in point being Bronkhorst 2011. 106. Not shown on this chart is the shared opening linelomaharaaputra ugrarav sta pauriko naimiraye aunakasya kulapater dvdaavrike satre (1.1.1 and 1.4.1)which holds the two beginnings together. 107. The imagery is Vedic, but I argue one can find similar descriptions in the epic as well; most notably, in the description of the churning of the ocean (1.16.1-40). 108. For raayaja, see 2.20.15 (svarga hy eva samsthya raayajeu dkit / yajante katriy loks tad viddhi magadhdhipa), 5.57.12 (aha ca tta kara ca raayaja vitatya vai / yudhihira pau ktv dkitau bharatarabha), 5.154.4 (raayaje pratibhaye svbhle lomaharae / dkita cirartrya rutv rj yudhihira ), 9.59.25 ( yuddhadk praviyjau raayaja vitatya ca / hutvtmnam amitrgnau prpa cvabhtha yaa). 109. Sacrificial remainders can be of multiple kinds, as I have already argued in my book Sacrificial Ontology and Human Destiny in the Mahbhrata. Parikit is the genealogical remainder, but there is also a textual remainder, namely, the Mahbhrata itself, which survives the previous cosmological cycle (dvpara yuga) to enter the next (kali yuga). 110. Cf. Bhagavadgt 3.13. yajaiina santo mucyante sarvakilbiai / bhujate te tv agha pp ye pacanty tmakrat // 111. Of course, immortality is of two types: the limited immortality offered by historical fame and the transcendence of being. Janamejaya, I argue, attains the higher immortality of being through the sarpasatra. For an articulation of my thesis of double transcendence in Plato, see Adluri 2011d. 112. Oldenberg does not tell us which verse except to note that it is from the Atharvaveda: A royal father and a royal son, both surrounded by great splendor. The poet of a poem preserved in the Atharvaveda tells us where they ruled: over the Kurus, precisely the tribe that stands in the center of the later Vedic period and the Mahbhrata (Oldenberg 1922: 8). 113. On stka as being, see my comments below.
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114. Original, of course, not in the sense of being temporally prior, but in the sense of having a logical and hermeneutic priority over the other beginnings. As Heidegger emphasizes over and over, human existence always already finds itself within a certain hermeneutic situation, a state of having been interpreted (Ausgelegtheit) that is the condition of its being able to carry out an explicit inquiry or discussion. It is in this sense that the Pauya narrative has a certain priority over the others: as the hermeneutic beginning it refers to the fact that we always already find ourself within a certain situation of interpretation and understanding that first enables explicit reflection on origins or causes, such as the reflection on cosmological or genealogical beginnings found in the Anukramiparvan and the Paulomaparvan respectively. For a concise treatment of the concept of the hermeneutic situation, see now Heidegger 2005 (Anhang III). 115. The exceptions are Upamanyus verses in praise of the Avins (1.3.6070), Uttakas verses in praise of the snakes (1.3.38-46), Uttakas verse in praise of the wondrous sights he sees in the underworld (1.3.150-153), and king Janamejayas response to Uttaka (1.3.183-184). 116. yat tu aunakasatre te bhratkhynavistaram / khysye tatra paulomam khyna cdita param; 1.2.29. 117. janamejaya prikita saha bhrtbhi kuruketre drghasatram upste / tasya bhrtaras traya rutasena ugraseno bhmasena iti; 1.3.1 118. On initiatory motifs in the Pauyaparvan, see Adluri 2010a; on sacrificial and pedagogic aspects, see Adluri 2011c. 119. As Janamejayas snake sacrifice unfolds, stka arrives at the sacrificial grounds and praises the king. The king offers him a boon and the brahmin asks that the sacrifice be stopped. The king implores him to ask for any other boon, but not to demand the sacrifices interruption. Takaka, the intended victim of the sacrifice, has begun his downward fall out of the sky into the sacrificial fire, when stka says to him three times Stay! Stay! (tiha tiheti; 1.53.5) and arrests the frightened snakes fall. The king then assents to stkas wish and ends the sacrifice. 120. On the gvedic background to the Mahbhrata, see Feller 2004. Feller demonstrates that the Pauyaparvan is especially rich in gvedic resonances, but does not discuss the Saram myth. See also Adluri 2009. 121. Cf. Bloomfield 1896: 425; Hopkins 1908: 505; Srinivasan 1973: 45. 122. V 10.108.7 identifies this wealth as g, ava, vsu (7.90 adds hraya to the list). However, cows and horses seem to be metaphorically identified with the dawn in this hymn, and the entire myth seems to be an aetiological
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description of the nightly disappearance of the sun and its reappearance with the rays of the dawn. For horses see Macdonell 1897: 31, 47. For cows see Srinivasan 1973: 53-4. Srinivasan notes: It is well known that terms meaning cow may be used metaphorically for rays of light, rays of dawn, dawns. The Indian lexical material is the earliest source to direct our attention to this figure of speech. Nighau 1.5 lists gva and usr as rami terms, and, Nirukta 2.6 reiterates this: sarve pi ramayo gva ucyante. In a list of animals associated with different gods in the capacity of vahanas, Nighau 1.15 mentions aruyo gva uasm. Srinivasan continues: How do we know that the Pais withhold the rays of the Dawn? The frequent use of usr and usriy in this context is our first indication. Both terms are derivatives of vas to shine In the myth of the Pais, usry = the cow as light (e.g. 7.57.7; 7.81.2) as well as the oblationgiving cow (4.50.5) (ibid.). 123. Although the Pais are identified as dsyus, suggesting a netherworld home, the myth does not explicitly support this interpretation. However, scholars (e.g., Srinivasan) have attempted to locate the Pais home in the western region of a lower world, a description that would also accord with the experience of the suns passage across the sky and nightly setting in the west. 124. Indra cuts through the enclosure (val; 10.67.6) where the cows have been hidden; he makes a path to drive out the cows (3.30.10; cf. also 2.14.3). Other passages, however, refer to Bhaspati, the Agirases, the Navagvas and Daagvas, as well as other priests in this context. On the identity of the Pais foes, see Srinivasan 1973: 49-52. 125. Throughout the Rigveda and Brhmaas the dog and Agni are both regarded as messengers of the gods. As Sramya, the Greek Hermes, he is both messenger and watch-dog, and both chronologically and mythologically he and Sarama, the dawn, stand, as Max Mller says, on the threshold that separates the gods of light from the gods of darkness (Hewitt 1890: 441-2). 126. In the Vedic religion a dog was sent by Yama to accompany the soul on its journey after death and two four-eyed dogs guard the road that leads to the abode of Yama. And the dogs of Yama were called Sarameyas, which in Greek form, according to Dr. Kuhn, became Hermeias or Hermes, deaths messenger, who was an infernal god, and conducted souls in their exit (Woolsey 1993: 219). 127. West notes the connection between the Greek god Pan and the Vedic god Psan as well as Pan and Hermes. Interestingly, the same complex of associations (cattle, conducting the souls into the netherworld, making things visible, guiding) applies to all three gods as well as to Saram. Some of
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Psans functions parallel those for which Hermes is noted rather than Pan. Hermes too is a good lookout, a god of roads and a guardian of flocks and herds. As [psuchopompos] he guides the dead on the path that they must go, and similarly Psan conducts the dead to join their ancestors (RV 10. 17. 3-6; AV 18. 2. 53-55, cf. 16. 9. 2) With his knowledge of ways and byways, Hermes can spirit away cattle or other property; he is the patron god of the sneakthief. But by the same token he is good at finding things that are hidden, he knows where animals have strayed, and he gets the credit if someone makes a lucky discoveryAs [mastrios] (Aesch. Supp. 920) he helps people track down their stolen property. Psan for his part is the patron of professional trackers, and can bring lost, hidden, or stolen goods to light [RV 1. 23. 13; 6. 48. 15, 54. 1-2, 8, 10; AV 7. 9. 4], and the same can be said of Hermes. So the Arcadian Pan and the Panhellenic Hermes overlap, and both have many features in common with Psan. Pan was held to be Hermes son. It seems likely that originally they were the same (2007: 282-3). Wests suggestion is especially significant given that aunaka, the interlocutor of the Mahbhrata, adopted a Bhradvja, seers who were especially known for their worship of Pan (cf. Sarmah 1991: 197). 128. See also Kramrisch 1975: 236. Although not definitely proved, her name seems to derive from sar, to speed. 129. yat ki cid asmadghe parihyate tad icchmy aham apariha bhavat kriyamam iti; 1.3.86. 130. Ugraravas and Uttaka thus respectively embody the double function of redactorial activity: 1. Preserving and transmitting the text. 2. Explaining the text. The Mahbhrata itself notes these dual functions: Having expiated upon this great erudition, the seer thereupon made a summary thereof; for the wise wish to retain it for this world, in its parts and its entirety. There are brahmins who learn The Bhrata from Manu onward, others again from the tale of The Book of stka onward, others again from The Tale of Uparicara onward. Learned men elucidate the complex erudition in this Grand Collection; there are those who are experienced in explaining it, others in retaining it (vistryaitan mahaj jnam i sakepam abravt / ia hi vidu loke samsavysadhraam // manvdi bhrata ke cid stkdi tathpare / tathoparicardy anye vipr samyag adhyate // vividha sahitjna dpayanti mania / vykhytu kual ke cid grantha dhrayitu pare; 1.1.49-51). 131. tad anujne bhavantam / sarvm eva siddhi prpsyasi; 1.3.92. 132. The link between earrings and hearing (ravanam) is suggestive. Fur ther, we may recall that the primary Indian characterization of scriptural or
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authoritative texts is ruti (lit. that which is heard), suggesting that Uttakas quest is symbolic of the recovery of sacred meaning or insight. There is another aspect to the story that strengthens the association of earrings with ruti. Staal notes that the Vedic text, the Aitareya rayaka (5.5.3) states that a pupil should not recite the Veda after he has eaten meat, seen blood or a dead boy, had intercourse or engaged in writing (1979: 122-3). In the Uttaka narrative, Uttaka is unable to see Pauyas wife because he has eaten food previously and is therefore in a state of pollution. Besides relating the earrings to ruti, there are other alternatives: one is to look at the story of Karas earrings, but that is another story. 133. bhakayasvottaka / m vicraya / updhyyenpi te bhakita prvam iti; 1.3.104. 134. Snakes in the Mahbhrata are a symbol of hermeneutics: 1. The image of a snake looping back on itself, although not explicitly provided by the epic but familiar from Gnostic imagery, provides the most impressive description of the texts self-reflexive character. 2. The snake cycle in the Mahbhrata functions as a hermeneutic laid over the core narrative. Understanding the fate of the snakes lets us understand the fate of the Kuru dynasty. The snake genocide is a foil for the upcoming human genocide that reveals its underlying logic: although most of the snakes are destroyed, a remnant escapes: Takaka, who is the sacrificial remainder. 3. The snake realm is the realm of hermeneutics where the inner workings of the universe (fate, time, space and destiny) become visible. This realm requires interpretation in order for its real meaning to become visible. Interestingly, Ngrjuna, a Buddhist from South India born into a brahmin family, is said to have descended into the snake netherworld to obtain The Hundred Thousand Verse Prajpramit Stra, following which he acquired the name Ngrjuna. The repetition of a descent into the snake realm in pursuit of wisdom is worth noting, as is the fact that the Mahbhrata is also traditionally said to be comprised of 100,000 verses. 135. ng me vaam yur iti; 1.3.155. 136. tad icchmi bhavatopadia ki tad iti; 1.3.171. 137. The great sarpasatra is thus not an actual sacrifice of snakes, but nor is it a parable for the defeat of snake-worshipping peoples (see Cozad 2004, Kosambi 1964, Pargiter 1913). Instead, it should be read as a parable for interpretation, through which activity the soteriological power of being becomes manifest. It replicates the Kuruketra battle at a meta-textual level, allowing us to understand the cosmological and eschatological significance of this battle. 138. Not shown on this chart is the shared opening linelomaharaaputra ugrarav sta pauriko naimiraye aunakasya kulapater dvdaavrike satre
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(1.1.1 and 1.4.1)which holds the two beginnings together, or the fact that the Uttaka narrative connects the epics hermeneutic beginning with its end through his two biographies, one in the Pauyaparvan and the other in the vamedhikaparvan; for a fuller discussion see Adluri 2011c. The epic is thus not as open-jawed as in this schematic presentation: it is circular, with its end forged to its beginning, as shown in the next chart. 139. Cf. Garuas theft of the som, which he envelope[s] without drinking it (aptvaivmta pak parighyu vryavn; 1.29.11). The basic idea is the same: the hermeneutic key to the text, the secret of immortality, is contained in the texts mouth. The fact that Garua rejects amta and asks that the snakes be his food instead is also suggestive. Cf. now my comments on Janamejaya above. 140. Cf. 1.1.48. everything has been entered here, and this describes this Book (iha sarvam anukrntam ukta granthasya lakaam). 141. manvdi bhrata ke cid stkdi tathpare / tathoparicardy anye vipr samyag adhyate; 1.1.50. 142. vividha sahitjna dpayanti mania / vykhytu kual ke cid grantha dhrayitu pare; 1.1.51. 143. Obviously, by philology I do not mean what is understood as scientific or critical philology. Contemporary philology is as far-removed from the meaning of this word as it is from the genuine smrta tradition; on the meaning of philologia (love of the logos) and its essential connection with philanthrpia (love of humanity), see Platos Phaedo 89d-e. Plato, who is the first to use the term philologia, links philologia to the argument for the immortality of the soul and sets apart the philologos (the lover of speech, of which Socrates is, of course, the paradigmatic example for Plato) from the misologos (the hater of discourse) who is characterized by misanthrpia. 144. Die Kapitel 1,4 bis 1,12 sind ein Einschub in eine bestehende textliche Umgebung. 145. The snake king Takaka sways in the highest danger, and in order to save his neck, stka narrates a storythe Mahbhratauntil the lifethreatening danger for Takaka is past. Ibid., 94-95. 146. I have focused here on the main elements of Oberlies reconstruction, but his actual scheme is far more complex. I provide an overview of his complete thesis in the appendix. 147. I.e., at Mahbhrata 1.1.67-94, 1.1.95-159, 1.2.34-69, and 1.2.71-234. 148. The Mahbhrata is, as Biardeau so elegantly puts it, le monument principal, et sans doute le plus ancien, de la bhakti (1981: 78, n. 1.), and it
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therefore must be read, as I have argued in this paper, in the context this selfunderstanding rather than being forced to conform to arbitrary and extraneous models. 149. I have in mind especially Oberlies reliance on Tsuchida, even though the latters work is riddled with logical flaws (including an aad hominem attack against Mehta). In many ways, it would have been preferable if Oberlies had cited his own work, or attempted to arrive independently at the case he wants to argue rather than deferring to Tsuchida; cf. Oberlies 2008. For earlier criticisms of Oberlies citational praxis, see Grnendahl 2002. 150. See Hopkins, Fitzgerald, and other defenders of the oral composition hypothesis. 151. For a discussion of Lassen and Goldstcker, see the editors introduction to Hiltebeitel 2011b: x, n. 15, see also xxvii, n. 72. 152. The thesis is hardly new as it was first advanced by Lassen in 1867, followed by Goldstcker in 1879, Holtzmann in 1892, and made into a cottage industry by Hopkins (1899 and 1906). It has continued since then in some form or another as a fundament of Germanophonic epic scholarship. 153. dharme crthe ca kme ca moke ca bharatarabha / yad ihsti tad anyatra yan nehsti na tat kva cit // Bibliography Vishwa Adluri. 2011a. Parmenides, Plato and Mortal Philosophy. London: Continuum Publishing. . 2011b. Hermeneutics and Criticism. In Ways and Reasons for Thinking about the Mahbhrata as a Whole. Ed. Vishwa Adluri. Pune: Bhandarkar Oriental Institute. . 2011c. Hermeneutics and Narrative Architecture in the Mahbhrata. In Ways and Reasons for Thinking about the Mahbhrata as a Whole. Ed. Vishwa Adluri. Pune: Bhandarkar Oriental Institute. . 2011d. Art-Critic and Warrior: Book X of the Republic on Becoming a Platonic Philosopher. Paper presented at Xavier University. . 2010a. The Perils of Textual Transmission: Decapitation and Recapitulation. Seminar, no. 608, special issue titled The Enduring Epic: A Symposium on Some Concerns Raised in the Mahbhrata: 48-54; translated into French as Les dangers de la transmission textuelle: dcapitation et rcapitulation by G. Schaufelberger.
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. 2010b. Review of The Bhagavadgt: Doctrines and Context, by Angelika Malinar. History of Religions 50,1: 102107. . 2010c. The Importance of Being Er. Proceedings of the IX Symposium Platonicum; Platos Politeia, vol. 1. International Plato Society: 144-150. . 2009. Review of The Sanskrit Epics Representation of Vedic Myths, by Danielle Feller. Asiatische Studien/ tudes Asiatiques A 63, 2: 480-3. . n.d. Sacrificial Ontology and Human Destiny in the Mahbhrata. Unpublished manuscript. & Joydeep Bagchee. n.d. From Poetic Immortality to Salvation: Ruru and Orpheus in Indic and Greek Myth. Forthcoming in History of Religions. & Joydeep Bagchee. n.d. The Nay Science: A History of German Indology. Annas, Julia. 1981. An Introduction to Platos Republic. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Austin, Christopher. 2009. Janamejayas Last Question. Journal of Indian Philosophy 37: 597625. -. 2011. Evaluating the Critical Edition of the Mahbhrata: Inferential Mileage and the Apparatus Materials. Journal of Vaishnava Studies 19,2 (Spring) 71-86. Bagchee, Joydeep. 2011. Inversion, Kafication, Brahmanization: The Explanatory Force of Some Extraordinary Figures of Speech. Journal of Vaishnava Studies 19,2 (Spring): 127-141. Biardeau, M. 2002. Le Mahbhrata: Un rcit fondateur du brahmanisme et son interprtation. 2 vols. Paris: Seuil. . 1981. LHindouisme: Anthropologie dune civilisation. Paris: Flammarion. . 1976. tudes de mythologie hindou, IV. Bhakti et avatra. Bulletin dcole Franaise dExtrme Orient 63: 111-263. Black, Brian. Forthcoming. Forthcoming.Transitions and Transmissions in theMahbhrata: Revisiting the Ugraravas/ aunaka Frame Dialogue. In Revisiting Transitions in Indian History. Ed. Ranabir Chakravarti & KumkumRoy. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Bloomfield, Maurice. 1896. Contributions to the Interpretation of the Veda. The American Journal of Philology 17,4: 399-437. Brodbeck, Simon. 2009. The Mahbhrata Patriline: Gender, Culture and the Royal Hereditary. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. -. 2011. Analytic and Synthetic Approaches in the Light of the Poona Edition of the Mahbhrata and Harivaa. Journal of Vaishnava Studies 19,2 (Spring) 223-250.
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Bronkhorst, J. 2011. Buddhism in the Shadow of Brahmanism. Leiden: Brill Publishing. Couture, Andr. 2001. From Vius Deeds to Vius Play, Or Observations on the Word Avatra as a Designation for the Manifestations of Viu. Journal of Indian Philosophy 29: 313326. Cozad, Laurie. 2004. Sacred Snakes: Orthodox Images of Indian Snake Worship. Aurora, CO: The Davies Group. Duncker, Max. 1883. History of Greece: From the Earliest Times to the End of the Persian War, vol. 1. London: R. Bentley & Son. Elias, Michael. 1995. Neck-Riddles in Mimetic Theory. Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture 2: 189-202. Feller, Danielle. 2004. The Sanskrit Epics Representation of Vedic Myths. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Fitzgerald, James. 1983. The Great Epic of India as Religious Rhetoric: A Fresh Look at the Mahbhrata. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 51,4: 611-630. . 2010. No Contest between Memory and Invention: The Invention of the Pava Heroes of the Mahbhrata. In Epic and History. Ed. David Konstan & Kurt A. Raaflaub. London: Blackwell. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 2004. Truth and Method. London: Continuum. Goldman, R. P. 1977. Gods, Priests, and Warriors: The Bhgus of the Mahbhrata. New York: Columbia University Press. Goldstcker, Theodore. 1879. Literary Remains of the Late Professor Goldstcker, vol. 2. London: W. H. Allen. Grnendahl, Reinhold. 2002. On the Frame Structure and Sacrifice Concept in the Narayaniya and Tirthayatra Sections of the Mahabharata, and the Craft of Citation. Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlndischen Gesellschaft 152, 1: 309-340. Heidegger, Martin. 2005. Phnomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles. Anzeige der hermeneutischen Situation. In Martin Heidegger, Phnomenologische Interpretationen ausgewhlter Abhandlungen des Aristoteles zur Ontologie und Logik. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann. Hewitt, James. 1890. Notes on the Early History of Northern India. Part IV. Essay on the Pre-Vedic History of India and the Identity of the Early Mythologies of Europe and Asia, Founded on a Study of the Brhmaas and of Sacrificial Observances. The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (Apr.): 319-481.
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Hiltebeitel, Alf. 2011a. Reading the Fifth Veda: Studies on the Mahbhrata. Essays by Alf Hiltebeitel, vol. 1. Ed. Vishwa Adluri & Joydeep Bagchee. Leiden: Brill. . 2011b. When the Goddess was a Woman: Mahbhrata Ethnographies. Essays by Alf Hiltebeitel, vol. 2. Ed. Vishwa Adluri & Joydeep Bagchee. Leiden: Brill. . 2011c. On Sukthankars S and Some Shortsighted Assessments and Uses of the Pune Critical Edition. Journal of Vaishnava Studies 19,2 (Spring): 87-126. . 2007. Krishna in the Mahbhrata: The Death of Kara. In Krishna: A Source book. Ed. Edwin F. Bryant. 2376. New York: Oxford University Press. . 2006. The Narayaya and the Early Reading Communities of the Mahbhrata. In Between the Empires: Society in India 300 B.C.E. to 400 C.E. Ed. Patrick Olivelle. 227255. New York: Oxford University Press. . 2005. Weighting Orality and Writing in the Sanskrit Epics. In Epics, Khilas, and Puras: Continuities and Ruptures. Proceedings of the 3rd Dubrovnik International Conference on the Sanskrit Epics and Puras, Sept. 2002. Ed. Petteri Koskikallio. 81111. Zagreb: Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts. . 2004. More Rethinking the Mahbhrata: Toward a Politics of Bhakti. Indo-Iranian Journal 47: 203-227. . 2001. Rethinking the Mahbhrata: A Readers Guide to the Education of the Dharma King. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. . 1998. Conventions of the Naimia Forest. Journal of Indian Philosophy 26: 161-171. Reconsidering Bhguization. In Composing A Tradition: Concepts, Techniques and Relationships. Proceedings of the 1st Dubrovnik International Conference on the Sanskrit Epics and Puras, Aug. 1997. Ed. Mark Brockington & Peter Schreiner. 155-168. Zagreb: Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts. . 1977. Nahusa in the Skies: A Human King of Heaven. History of Religions 16,4: 329-350. Hopkins, E. W. 1916. Mahbhrata. In Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. 8. Ed. James Hastings. New York: Charles Scribners Sons. . 1908. The Mediatorial Office of the Vedic Fire-God. Harvard Theological Review 1,4: 507-512. . 1901. The Great Epic of India: Its Character and Origin. New York: Charles Scribners Sons. Klostermaier, Klaus. 2007. A Survey of Hinduism. Albany: SUNY Press.
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Kosambi, D. D. 1964. The Autochthonous Element in the Mahbhrata. Journal of the American Oriental Society 84,1: 31-44. Kramrisch, Stella. 1975. The Indian Great Goddess. History of Religions 14,4: 235-265. Mahadevan, T. P. 2011. Three Rails of the Mahbhrata Textual Tradition. Journal of Vaishnava Studies 9,2 (Spring): 23-69. Malbon, Elizabeth Struthers. 1983. Structuralism, Hermeneutics, and Con textual Meaning. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 51,2: 207-230. Mehta, Mahesh. 1973. The Problem of the Double Introduction to the Mahbhrata. Journal of the American Oriental Society 93,4: 547-550. Meyer, Hansjrg. 1967. Das Halslsungsrtsel. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Wrzburg. Minkowski, C. Z. 2010. Nilakanthas Mahabharata. Seminar, no. 608, special issue titled The Enduring Epic: A Symposium on Some Concerns Raised in the Mahbhrata: 32-38. . 1989. Janamejayas Sattra and Ritual Structure. Journal of the American Oriental Society 9,3: 401- 420. Oberlies, Thomas. 2008. (Un)ordnung im Mahbhrata: Rahmenerzhlungen, Gesprchsebenen und Inhaltsangaben. Studien zur Indologie und Iranistik 25: 73-102. . 2005. 12 Monate oder 12 Jahre der Verbannung? Zur Komposition von Mbh 3,90-140. Bulletin dtudes Indiennes 22-23: 273-285. . 1998. Die Ratschlge des Sehers Nrada: Ritual an und unter der Oberflche des Mahbhrata. New Methods in the Research of Epic. Ed. Hildegard Tristram. Tbingen: Gunter Narr Verlag. Oldenberg, Hermann. 1922. Das Mahbhrata: Sein Inhalt, Seine Entstehung, seine Form. Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Olson, Carl. 2007. The Many Colors of Hinduism: A Thematic-Historical Introduction. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Pargiter, F. E. 1913. The Pura Text of the Dynastics of the Kali Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reich, Tamar C. 2008. Sacrificial Violence and Textual Battles: Inner Textual Interpretation in the Sanskrit Mahbhrata. History of Religions 41,2: 142-169. Sarin, San. 2004. Mahbhrata: The Numbers 18 and 108 through Akauhi. Indologica Taurinensia 30: 237-252. Sarmah, Thaneswar. 1991. The Bhradvjas in Ancient India. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
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FRAME NARRATIVES AnD FORKED BEGInnInGS: OR, HOW TO READ ThE DIPARVAn*

Journal of Vaishnava Studies

How to Read the diparvan

* All figures taken from van Buitenen 1973

Journal of Vaishnava Studies

How to Read the diparvan

Journal of Vaishnava Studies

How to Read the diparvan

Journal of Vaishnava Studies

How to Read the diparvan

Journal of Vaishnava Studies

How to Read the diparvan

Journal of Vaishnava Studies

How to Read the diparvan

Journal of Vaishnava Studies

How to Read the diparvan

Journal of Vaishnava Studies

How to Read the diparvan

Journal of Vaishnava Studies

How to Read the diparvan

Journal of Vaishnava Studies

How to Read the diparvan

Journal of Vaishnava Studies

How to Read the diparvan

Journal of Vaishnava Studies

How to Read the diparvan

Journal of Vaishnava Studies

How to Read the diparvan

Journal of Vaishnava Studies

How to Read the diparvan

Journal of Vaishnava Studies

How to Read the diparvan

Journal of Vaishnava Studies

How to Read the diparvan

Journal of Vaishnava Studies

How to Read the diparvan

Journal of Vaishnava Studies

Upaparvans Oberlies analysis

Justification for thesis

3. Manu version beginning at 1.27ff.

How to Read the diparvan

Ruru narrative, concluding with a reference to stka 1.8-12

Oberlies story [told] to save someones neck (Hals(lsungs)erzhlung)

Second level of enframing: Janamejayas sarpasatra Vaiapyana narrative

First narration of the Mbh.

Journal of Vaishnava Studies

How to Read the diparvan

Journal of Vaishnava Studies

How to Read the diparvan

Journal of Vaishnava Studies

How to Read the diparvan

Journal of Vaishnava Studies

How to Read the diparvan

Journal of Vaishnava Studies

How to Read the diparvan

Journal of Vaishnava Studies

How to Read the diparvan

Journal of Vaishnava Studies

How to Read the diparvan

Journal of Vaishnava Studies

How to Read the diparvan

Journal of Vaishnava Studies

How to Read the diparvan