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From Dasarajfta
· . to Kuruksetra
•
Making of a Historical Tradition
KAN.AD SINHA
I f
• I
' 1, J
,, j • ,.
OXFORD
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Thepoet who couldturn thegrief of a birdintopoetry ...
The seerwhocouldmake an encyclopediaof human experience
out of afamily feud ...
The namelessbardswho kept millennium-oldstoriesalive...
And thosewhostill keepon tellingthe stories.. .

I"
,Contents
'I
Foreword ix
Romila Thapar J l .,: • r. : I•
Preface · , xvii
List of DiacriticalMarks'Used xxiii
List of Abbreviations XXV
I
I .
1.' The Mahabharataand the End of an Era I
1.1 Where the 'Past' Ends, Where the 'Future' Starts:
The Journey from Dasarajfia to Ku~etra I
1.2 Understanding an Itihiisa:A HistoriographicalSurvey 11
2. Bharatas, Purus, Kurus, and'the Vedas: A Poiitico-textual
, ,, I I ' '
History · 43
· 2.1 The ~gvedic Poets and Their World 43
2.2 Visviimitra'sPoetry 49
2.3 Thus SpakeVasiHha 52
2.4 Sudiisand the Ten Tribes:Reflectionson the Dasarajfia '
57
2.5 'The Kurus and the Later Vedas 63
2.6 From Saudiisasto SunaJ:isepa: Visviimitraand Vas~µia in
the Later VedicWorld 66
3. The Great Saga of the Bharatas 81
3.I Searching for a Lost History of 'Time': Layeringthe .
Mahabharata 81
3.2 Heroes, Forest, and the VedicDeities: Revisitingthe
Khai:,qavadahana Ill
3.3 Dice, Duel, and Dharma:ContextualizingYudh~r}lira's
Rajasuya 129
3.4 When the BhupatiSought the Gopati's
Wealth:Locating the
MahabharataEconomy 152
3.5 Cousins, Clans, and Kingdoms:Studyingthe
Kur~etra War 159
3.6 Constituting the 'Fifth Veda':The VoiceofVyiisa 179

viii CONTENTS
4. New Text, New Era, New Hero: Viisudeva Kfgia and

His Svadharma 237
4.1 Krsna or the Krsnas?: Questioning a Deified Hero 237
4.2 'Th~re Is No S~~g without Kanu': Sourcing Vasudeva ~I_la 244
4.3 'I Arn Born as Thy Friend': ~I_la the Cowherd 256
4.4 Vasudeva, Prativiisudeva, and the False Vasudeva:
Tracing the Rise of a Legend 276
4.5 From Butter Thief to Jewel Thief: ~I_la the V~t_1iDiplomat 302
4.6 Leader, Teacher, and Envoy: K~I_lain the 'Udyogaparvan' 311
4.7 Svadharma,Karman,and ~I_la: (Re)reading the
· BhagavadGita , 333
4.8 'Yatrayogesvarab krl1Jab
yatraparthabdhanurdharab':
~I_la at Kur~etra ~nd
.. Beyond . . 388 )
5. The Bhriratabeyond the Bhiirata War. ' 423
5.1 Saunaka and the Suta:Bhargavizing the Bharata 423
1
! 5.2 Visvamitra vetsus ¥asi~r}la:Reshaping a Vedic Legend 437
5.3 ~~~~;~i~11iflg,lje~o,ofteB~r~s; . . , 450
5.4 From the Lost Itihasaof tlie Bharatas to the Great
Epic ofBharata: An Epilogue •461
t' •. , (' -
Bibliography 475
Index 499
..
I •
,
' '
• I
'.
Ut I'

Foreword
• RomilaThapar
I have read KanadSinha'sbook FromDiisariijflato KuruJc-retra: Making

of a Historical,Tradition with considerableinterest as it presents·an ex-
tensionof our understanding'of the texts he uses as sources. His pro-
posedreconstructionof eventsis suggestiveof fresh ways of envisaging
Ithis segmentof the past. It is a significantdeparture from _moststudi~s
reconstructingthe history of the second and first millenrua BCE as his
focusiS'on the questionof how the sources reflect what we today refer
to as either history,historicalconsciousness,or historical tradition. His
purposeis not in provingwhetheror not 'the various persons described
and the eventsnarratedwerehistoricaland did actuallyexist and happen.
Thisis whatis oftenspokenof when the questionof the historicity of the
Mahiibhiirata,for instance,is raised:His is a far more probing question,
namely,how the MahiibHiirata reflectssocietyat given moments of his-
toricaltime. The issueis not whether the epic encapsulatesreliable his-
tory but rather whatit tellsus abouthow people in the past viewed what
theyregardedas their past. Weneed to take this viewseriously;although
not necessatilyas reliablehistorybut as how at a certain time a certain so-
cietyperceivedwhatit constructedas its past. An important distinction is
thereforemadebetweenhistoryas we'understand it today and historical
traditionsas theyhavebeen understood in earliertimes. The distinction
appliesto manyearlysocieties.
Theseviews(!fthe past, as found in the text, took many centuries to
evolve.Then,at a certainpoint, they were taken as given.This is normal
wi_th the manyreflectionsbroughtto bear on constructionsof the past. In
~1s the form and purpose of the compositionhad a role. The epic form
1scharacterizedas beingopen. A singlepoet or bard may originallyhave
composeda long narrativepoem, but often the related compositions of
othersar_estitchedinto it-what we now callinterpolations.It, therefore,
may ~egmas the articulationof a single author and is often attributea
to a smgleauthor, but in effect,with various additions, it becomes the
Scanned withCamScanner
X FOREWORD
extendedstatement of a societyand generallyof the elite of that society.

In the process,the text is seen to be interpretingthe past and, whiledoing
so, keepingin viewthe perspectiveof the present. The text thereforebe-
comesa complicatedinterplayof the past and the present. This contrib-
utes to the making of a tradition. Theepic is seldomonly a contemporary
description.It is more often an attempt to capture what a societylikesto
recallabout its past, and this may be done at more than one point in time.
. Theinterpolationsare at least of two recognizablekinds. One explains
in further detail that part of the narrative or activitiesthat have perhaps
become unfamiliar to later generations.An exampleof this is the mar-
riage of Draupadi conforming to polyandry.It had to be explained,and
this is done in a varietyof }Vays. Or sometimesthe '4sctlssionsof the time
are 'reflectedin the narrative.For example,the subject that is being much
debat~dby scholars these days is that.of the scene where, after the con-
clusion'of the battle at Kur~etra, Bhi~ma,still lying on a bed of arrows,
is·trying to per~uade Yudh~piira to accept the validity of riija-dharma
(SiiJ:ltiparvan Mbh:,:xiI); Yudhi~piirais averseto taking up the kingship
after~e· termination of,thebattle,becausehe disapprovesof violenceand
kingshipii) va'rioµswaysinvolves-theuse of violenceby the king.
. Thiswas·not.aquestion that was central to the Vedasnor to the domi-
nant ~atriya ethos-~at peryaded heroic society,but it was nevertheless
centralto the thinking 6f the n~wsects-the Sramai;iasof various kinds-
~at werequestioningVedicBrahmanismand whom the briihma,µiswere
to refer.to as the,niistikas.1 The debate continued through the Mauryan
period as is evident from the eqicts of Afoka and into the post-Mauryan
period•as,,for,example, indicated,by the Hathigumpha inscription of
Kharavela,as well as·in ·other,sources.Since the Santiparvan was a later
addition to the Mahiibhiirataand is generallydated to the post-Mauryan
period; it is plausible that this debate is linked to what appears to have
been current debateson the subject of violenceand non-violence.
Apart,from the debate on ahi,risii,Kanad Sinha reminds us that the
conceptsof iinr§a,rsyaarid anukrosa,compassionand empathy,were also
discussed,both µi the putting together of the text and currently in its ana-
lyses.Theseideas are also not alien to Bud<Qiistthought. Discussionson
the need for compassionand'empathyoften subsequent to the debateson
the legitimacyof violenceseem to hover over the narrative even when not
being spoken about. Could it be argued that the recital of the narratives

ofconflictreplete with violence h POR!!woRn I
, w ere such x
lutionsto problems, are intended t0 l conflictsdo nOt
ead t ki PrOVide s
tenceand eventuallyto discarding th b . 0 a nd of purgar10 .o-
. 7 e eltefth . . n of V10-
solut1ons. at Violentconn·ic1scan be
1he Mahabharatain some way b
. f s can e seen fl
from the societyo the Rg Vedato th as re ectingtheIran ·1·
· at of the 1 1 s110n
allyalso the post-Vedic as is reflect d . a er Vedasand occas·
e m the muJr I ion-
accretionsto the story.The transition fi ip e narrativesthat are
rom onekind Of
wasnot a simplelinear movement I JI Societyto another
· na suchchan ·
wascarried forward and in what for . d gesonehasto askwhat
man whatwasd· d
,beliefthat everything was present in th h _iscareddespitethe
e c angedsocietyTh' ·
in our own times when we insist that 'trad· . , · IS 1sreflected
' ttions ar · ·OI
centuriesago,and have survivedint ct d e age d, werecreated
a an unchangedto th d
forgettingthat traditions are more fir tJ . e present ay,
equen y mvented ·· 1
contemporaryproblems posed by social d uJ al precisey to meet
. . bl h an c tur change,and there-
foremevtta y ave to change according]vB t th h .
• · db · · • ,. u ec angehastobelegit-
im1ze y g1vmg1tan ancient ancestry., , , ,
A fundamental change'in politicalformsis presentin the c~nflict.de-
scribedin the epic, which is, as KanadSinhapointsout, the·conflictbe-
tweenthe legitimacy of lineage essential . to.clan
. societyan.dthegrau
d al
changeto a focus on primogeniture that becomesa requirementin mon-
archy.One could add to this the explicit·hierarchyof statuscentralto
caste.I have elsewhere referred to it as the gradualmutationfromclan-
basedor lineage-based societies to kingdomsrepresentingthe coming
intoexistenceof states. It representsfoundationalmutationsin the struc-
tureof societies.A few recent studiessuggestthat this is nowa subjectof
interestto historians. ,1
Changeof.course is not limited to what evolveswithina singlecul-
ture.It is affectedboth by those that are dissenterswithinthe cultureas
wellas those who live in the vicinitybut have'distinctivdydifferentpat-
ternsof living.These latter are recognizablythe 'Other'.Thoserecorded
asthe Other in the Vedic sourcesare the'aiisas.Evenwherethe diisawas
thesubordinate,there wasneverthelessan interfacebetweenthecultures,
and some of the differencesthat creep int~·eliteculturalitemsare taken
fromthe culture of the Other. Thereis the exampleof the dasyab-putrab-
brahmanathe brahmanawhowas the son ofa diisi,suchasKav~aAil~a,
and yet ~~s inducted ~to the brahmat;avart;a.Inevitablythe question

xii FOREWORD
that comes to mind is that such instances would have resulted in, to some
1 extent, the interface of cWtures. What ,were the likely changes that this
might have brought about in either of ~e two societies? .
Epic literature of earlier times frequently focuses on conflict between
the important clans in a region, and this encapsulates much of their pat-
tern ofliving-that is, their culture. In the Mafa.abharata, the Kurus and
the Pandavas battle for land rights in the Doab. The actual area that each
comes.'t~ control· is.not extensive but with the listing of allied and hos-
tile clans on each side, whether actually present or not, the strife in the
epic t*es bn a 1biggerdimension thari what might have been involved
in "realisticterms.::rhis is another characteristic of ~e epic form: a small
conflict can,easily,be enlarged into a far bigger confrontation with par-
ticipants from eveny,part of the known geography. How this geography
is expanded is of inuch hist~rical1interest. A dramatic illustration is pro-
vided in the Qdysseyof Homer, where a large part of the Mediterranean is
inqu'cted into the narrative.· . , , . , ·,
The other way of extending the geography is to send the protagonists
into exile for,a period. The location of the exile need not be too distant
but preferably should have the potential of being culturally alien so as
to,introduce expanded geographies and multiple cultures.'This gives
scope tc:rthe •imagination of the bard to invent diverse societies with
aliicense to colour realism•with·fantasy where needed. The ostensible
purpose of this is to entertain the audience, but it can also be used as
expressing a commen,t on·the society of the protagonists. Exile to the
forest in both the Indian epics is to a'place where the pattern ofliving,
the culture, is different from that ofrthe protagonists. The latter may
be sympathetic to this pattern or may treat it as antithetical. If it is the
former, the people of the forest become allies, but if it is the latter, 'they
have to be subdued, , , , . 1, .:· • ,
Arjuna's experiences as he travels and his marriages to various women

were to some degree a comlneritary on the culture bf the Pandavas as was
Bhima's marriage to Hi4imba. The voyage home of.Ulysse~ from ~roy to
I~aca was-~matter of a few weeks, but the poet extends it to a few years
with the ship constantly being taken off course by wind and wave. The
c~ltures they me~t with in these travels are diverse and extraordinarily
different from ·their own:· Distant places have always been an excuse to
let the imagination run,· Exile extends the context and implies that the

nrratlngof epic events is not to b POREwoan ...
11 • f e restricted I ll:111
lo presentvignettes o situations th • t alsoall
. at ma t: owsthe b dJ
the,nainnarrative. Y ot,1erwisem . ar poet
ere1y divertfr
1heentry of ~l)a of the y rsni 1 . om
. 'fi . .. c an t.ntoth
calleda s1gm cant accretion. It ha b . e storywaswh .
s een sug st at mightb
inallyhave been one of the central fi ge ed thathe ma .e
• , . b gtlreswhenth Ynot orig-
posed.Bythe tune It ecame a much knownand e storywasfirst com-
to havebeen tak en up by 'the Bharg quotedepic it a
. th . . avaswho fou d . ' PPears
into the epic e Vat~l)avacult of Vasud n it possibleto weave
. 'd th eva.Manyqu f
evencons1 ers e possibility of thi h . es 10nsariseif one
. s appenmg.Wh .
it necessaryto grve authority and publi 'ty Yat this pointwas
Ct to the cult of Krs ?
toricalcontext would have been that of th . .1:ia.Thehis-
st
sukthankar'sdating of the Mahabharat heP~ -Mauryanperiodgiven
. a as avmgbeencom dd
the period from 400 BCE to 400 CE Thi .. pose uring
' . s was a time whenthe S .
religionswere tiding high with the patr f ramal)Jc
, onageo an emperorand b
quentroyalty as'.well,·and.that·of wealthy · h , su se-
. mere ants.Asokasedictssu -
gesttensionbetween the·brahmanasand the r. d g
. . · ::.rama7Jas,an othersources
indicatea conflict.
Theepic genre, because it is open to interpolations,canSU Ort more
. ' t' t • • • ' \L pp
.than o~e narra Ive even ~ ,Itscurrent CriticalEdition.Thereis the orig-
inal epic of the dash of.clans and the ultimatevictoryof the Pal).<)avas.
Builtinto this,isrthe n?ITativeof Vaig1avismthroughdivinizing~i:ia
andgivinghim a mote central ro1e.'Thisis in part reinforcedbythesome-
whatdifferent trajectory of what have been calledthe narrativesections
and the didactic sections,:wheresome·ofthe lattei:seemto be add-ons.
Thishas been discussed by many scholarsof tlie epics,amongthemV.S.
Sukthankar,and R.N. Dandel<ar.However,the differentiationcannotbe
madein a literal manner where all the early sectionsare taken as nar-
rativeand all the later sections as didactic,or alternativelyall the narra-
tivesare taken as early and the discussionsas didacticand thereforelate.
KanadSinha'sstudy takes care not to automaticallyassignthemas early
orlatewithout considering other features.Thisinvolvesa carefulanalysis
ofboth the'text and its context. ' .
Thecore of the narrative revolvesaround whatprobablywereto begin
Withhanded-down narratives claiming to be memoriesof the cl'.111 s~-
. , b what confusingsince it
cieties.The use of the term ltribe' can e some .
t ,resentat that time.Some
canincludeaspects of a society that were no P
xiv FOREWORD
historiansthereforepreferto use the term 'clan society'either prior to the

beginningsof kingshipand castesocietyor contemporarywith the initial
evolvingof both. ·· ·
One of the more interestingaspectsof the Vedicand epic texts are the
referencesto the·processesof migration and settlement.These31resome-
timesmajor episodesand the descriptionscan be quite dramatic.The de-
scriptionof the burning of the Khar:i~ava-vana in the Mahabharatacould
not havebeen capturedin a more drapiatic fashion.·It is virtually a battle
againstnature with #le burning of the forest and. the dying of the ani-
mals'in the flames.So severewas the devastation th~t those animals that
werenorma~ythe prey of the predator~werenow together,both predator
and its prey,jointlyseeking refugefrom the fire. Burning.the forest was
the tedinique of clear~grland and operiing up a new area to settlement
and cultivation.Toe settlers were groups of migrants looking for places
to settle.So;the Khandava-vana
. .. . .
had to be burnt
' , to clear
'
the location for
censtructing the town of.Indraptastha.·Aparttfromthe town/ the rest of
the clearingwould have been cultivate4,leaving•theedge of the forest as
pasturage.
• TheSat~patha.BrahmaiJatmentions a migration from the Doab to the
middle ~anga plain led by achiefcalledVideghaMafhava.He too, on ar-
rivalin the region,ofwhat came to be calledVideha,began the process of
settlem~ntby fitst ~urning,the foresrand clearing the marshes. It is said
that he carried Agni in his mouth, a highlysymbolicstatement as it could
refer to the·worshipofiAgni or else, as some·ha":esuggested, to the lan-
guage6f the migrating arjas comingfrom.the Doab. ,
;:,Kanad.Sinha'sstudy dtaws-not,only on,his!careful reading of ·the
Mahabharata-and related texts but also on liis extensive reading of much
that has been written ·on th~ Mahabharataas well as on epic as a genre
in other early cultures and histories.;Hisreading covers both early writ-
ings on ·the subject and 1also more recent works. Such extensive reading
has now become essential as it opens up so,m.my new avenues·of re-
search.•.Therehave been wide-ranging works on various_aspects of the
Mahabharataand these have taken the study of the text way beyond what
it was in the past century. That ,scholars should be familiar with these
studiesis essentialto further the understanding of the epic. ·
Kana4_Sinha'sstudy is impressiveboth because of his reading of the
texts and because of the kinds of questions he asks and the answers he

-----111111
FOREWORD XV
·des that help to illumine the text. His questionsare challengingand

ProVl
h and his answers to these beckon us towards new perspectivesof
fres '. i·ngthe texts. And that is what is required at the cuttingedgeof
eiarn1n
research.
NewDelhi
September2020

Preface
1
I 'This book has developed out of my PhD thesis · Therefiore, 1•t cannot begm
without the acknowledgement that it would not be anywhere without the
care and guidance of iny-supervisor Prof. Kunal Chakrabarti, who had
.
been a pillar of support and my·go-to person over the past decade. He
was the first person to listen to the initial draft of my PhD proposal, and,
till the submi~sion, his suggestions and guidance have been invaluable
in shaping up this thesis as well as several aspects of my life. I am ex-
tremely grateful to Prof. Kumkum Roy for guiding me in preparing my
historiography, and sections of this book grew out of two seminar papers
I had done with her. At every stage of my research, I have benefitted from
the feedback and comments of Prof. Ranabir Chakravarti regarding aca-
demics,literature, and beyond. I am thankful to Prof. Vijaya Ramaswamy
for introducing me to the idea of reading devotion as dissent and for her
thoughtful insights about shaping up my research proposal; I mourn her
untimely demise before this book materialized. Dr. Supriya Varma had
kindly guided me through the reports of the excavations at Hastinapur
and Atranjikhera. Many of my teachers at the Centre for Historical
Studies, including Profs R. Mahalakshmi, Aditya Mukherjee, Janaki Nair,
Neeladri Bhattacharya, Raj at Datta, Najaf Haider, Indivar Kamtekar, and
Heeraman Tiwari, have been ready to help always, and I have gained a lot
from their valuable comments in the formal setting of seminars and con-
ferences as well as in informal discussions. Prof. Romila Thapar, whose
writings had oriented me towards the methodological approach adopted
in this thesis, has always been kind enough to offer her comments and
lead me towards new research questions; she most graciously agreed to
write the foreword for this book. As she is introducing the book, any fur-
ther attempt o,n my part to introduce it will be redundant.
t would have been an
The preface, therefore, could end here, b u t th a .
c . hD th · turned into a book 1s
un,rur and incomplete story. After all, a P esis .
· b t also about the culm1-
not only about the work done over a few years, u al
. tful ,·ourney where sever
nation of a long journey. It has been an even

xviii PREFACE
helping hands have been invaluable in channelizing it to the course it has

taken, and the acknowledgement cannot but be a humble opportunity to
express my gratitude to all of them. The list is long and must start with
my parents, Mr. Asanta Sinha and Mrs. Nupur Datta Sinha, who have not
only allowed me complete freedom about every choice in my academics
and life,and have remained extremely supportive in everything I choose
to do, but also were the first people to introduce me to the contents of
the Indian epics through stories, children's books, and my mother's
daily recital of the Gita.Thanks to listening to my,mother teaching her
students Bengali ,classics, ,for example, .Michael,,~·fadhusudan 1Dutt's
Meghanadavadhdkabya9r' Ral>indranath ,Tagore's .Kartµik.untisa,fivada
and GandharirAbedan, I first. came to realize how the epics were not
about singular monolithi~ narratives but could be read and reFreated in
multiple ways. My.grandmother, Mrs. Pratiniarani Datta, had been the
earliest recipient of my first childish engagement with my favourite texts
and remained a keen listener until she passed away. I have been fortunate
to enjoy all the privileges the youngest member of a generation enjoys in
an Indian jbint·family, and niy work has always b'een received with ap-
preciation, encouragement, and enthusiasm by my family members, both
paternal and mate_rnal,•including the ones with a background in history
and the ohes pursuing completely different professions.' It is unfortunate
that some of the niost enthusiastic enquirers of my research, particularly
my cousin Atanu Sinha, have left us before they could see its culmination.
In the final days of finishing the thesis and in the long process of turning it
into a book, my wife Debasree Sarkar's patient support and active efforts
have been a great help. , ,,
,It is difficult to decide when my serious engagement with the topic of
my,research started. Perhaps it was the day in my childhood when the
ricksnaw.:puller named Samar Sinha, who ,would satisfy every asthma-
induced whim of mine, took'me to the' local bookshop. The owner of
the shop, :fyfohammad •Mosharaf Hossain; had always been generous in
handing civer to me any bookthat caught my faricy, and from him I had
received the volumes of Krttibasa's Bengali Riima)'alJaand Kasiriim Das's
Bengali Mahabharata,,whicn introduced me to the world of epic gran-
deur, even tho'ugh in the vernacular ..Toe curiosity generated then blos-
somed into genuine interest in the conducive atmosphere of my school,
Ramakrishna Mission , Vivekananda Vidyaniandir, •Maida, where my ·

PREFACE xix
teachers, especiallymy headmaster Swam.S
th I umanasananda,providedall
e support necessaryfor nurturing myloveforhum ·t· .
1cr· . . .an11esmgeneraland
Sans it texts m ~articul~r:I_amparticularlygratefulto Mr. Maheshwar
Bhattacharyafor mculcatmgmus a spirit of rationaland criticalth "nlcin
.. al.. I g
and ongm ~ntmg and t0Dr.1RadhagobindaGhoshfor.guidingmyfirst
ende~vours to understand the Sanskrit language.Thus, my amateurish
ideas about ~istorical research were forming,and my friends-Supratim
Nandy;TapasShil,SagnikSaha,TamoghnaMajumdar,PriyabrataHalder,
PriyaJt?Ghosh, Sandipan Chakraborty,ShreyaSarkar,and manyothers-
had to be patient listeners. , ,
lt was at the PresidencyCollege,Calcutta,that Dr.KaushikRoybluntly
pointed out to us,•in the very first ·class,the differencebetween ama-
teurish historical interest in certain texts and criticalhistoricalstudy of
particular sources.,,Afew days later, Pro£ Rajat Kanta Rayhad taken us
around the collegeto remind us of a legacy,of commitmentto truth and
rational thinking, that the 'Deroziancommunity'stood for.Teacherslike
them, as well as the ones Iike,ProfsSubhashRanjanChakraborty,Uttara
Chakraborty,JayashreeMukherjee,and SugataNandy,were the reasons
why,alongsidelearning the businesstrick of predictingand memorizing
the answers of the set of questions.the;CalcuttaUniversitywas likelyto
ask, we developed a keen interest in trying to grasp and understandthe
'historian's craft'.During my collegedays,it becamemy·habitto talk to
'Subhashbabu'andl'Uttara ma'am'beforetakingany major academic.de-
cisionand to share with them everypieceof writingI couldcomeup with.
Therefore,it is heartbreaking,for me that Uttara ma'amhas been taken
awayfrom us before this book could comeout. . · ,·
But when was Presidencyonlyabout its teachers?Growingtip around
the tradition of tlie,balance of the 'three Ps: parashona(study),prem
(romance): and politics: received·from,our seniors, we hardly realized
when the aspirations of historical researchpervaded our minds at both
the conscious and the unconscious levels to such a degree that even
the chitchats and jokes shared with friends such as Sanmitra Ghosh,
DipanjanMazumdar,and Apurba Chatterjeebecamefull of allusionsand
references to our budding research interestsand historicalperceptions.
Followingone such casual conversation;TorsaChakrabortyi_ntrodu_ced
me to Pro£ Nrisinha Prasad Bhaduri,:whohas not only contributedrm-
mensely in popularizing epic studies to the Bengalireadership but has

XX PREFACE
also helped me immensely in engaging with the epics. I had shared

the first rudimentary ideas about what this book discusses with Elora
Tribedyand JayatiHalder,both of whom helped me with their ideas,and
the former has continuously supplemented my textual interest with rel-
evant information from the field of archaeology,especially the findings
from he; first-hand field experience'atAhichchhatra. •
, As l,llYjourney moved to the JawaharlalNehru University (]NU), not
just an educational institution but ,an identity one gradually adopts and
can hardly get out of, I became part of afraternity not limited to my very
own Centre for Historical Studies. I fondly remember how Prof. S.K.
Sbpory,the former vice·chancellor,would bring to my notice·any new re-
search on my fieldof interest he would·comeacross. Prof. Santosh Kumar
Shukla; of the Special Centre for Sanskrit Studies; was my pathfinder
in the wilderness ofrVedicSanskrit. Profs•Robert P. Goldman and Sally
J. Sutherland Goldman, of the University of Berkeley,California, have
been kind enough'.to providethorough critical comments and suggestions
about any piece of writing I had shared with them. I am'thankful to Profs
Simon·Brodbeck, _BrianBlack;1 and John Brockington and Dr. Vishwa
Adll.irifor liberallysupplyingme with their writings whenever I faced any
difficultyin accessingthem.,! am grateful to Profs Suchandra Ghosh and
Uma Chakravarli, my PhD examiners, for their detailed reviews and in-
siglitfulcomments which helped me reshape the book. As bits and pieces
ofrmy research s_tartedt~ be presented in various seminars and confer-
ences, !•graduallyben~fittedfrom exchange of ideas with many brilliant
minds, including•Profs.Michael Witzel, B.D. Chattopadhyaya, Patrick
Olivelle,Upinder Singh, and Daniel Bell.
. •Ihave be!}efittedno less from being with ll!Ystudents than from being
with my teachers. I must thank all my students from Miranda House, St.
Stephen'sCollege,•Presidency University,•Udaynarayanp\JrMadhabilata
Mahavidyalaya,and the Sanskrit Collegeand University for b_eingthe best
company of my life sd far.My former colleagues Dr. Bharati Jagannathan
(of Miranda House) and Dr. Naina Dayal (of St. Stephen's College) have
been consistent 'in advising, guiding, and scolding me to keep both my
teaching and' research on track. Dr. Valson Thampu (former principal,
St. Stephen'sCollege), Dr. Arabinda Ghosh (principal, Udaynarayanpur
II Madhabilata Mahavidyalaya), and Prof. Paula Banerjee (former vice
!

PREPACE XXi
chancellor, the Sanskrit College and University) ha b'

. . . ve een tremendously
supportive m helpmg me balance my teaching and research.
Just like the Mahabharata,is not just about the Bharata War but
a
also about panoramic view of everything that it considers signifi-
cant about dharma,artha,kama, or mok~a,a thesis coming out ofJNU
cannot be about the routine exercises of academic research alone. It is
equally a product of the night-long debates, discussions, and adven-
tures, nocturnal walks around the Ring·Ro~d. heated discussions over
cups of coffee at Ganga,Dhaba.'or 24x7-with•Arcliisman Chaudhuri
and Biswadev·Banerjee, Byapti Sur and Anwesha Saha, Titas De Sarkar
and Shounak Ghosh, Siddhartha Mukherjee and Deepro Chakraborty,
Pintu Parui and Amartya Pal, Virendra Singh Charan and Vipin
Krishna, Mahashweta Chakraborty and Shatavisha Mustafi, friends
from the discipline and beyond. Suvajit Halder and Dev Kumar Jhanjh
provided tremendous logistical, intellectual, and emotional support in
' ,.r. ' . ,• r J I 1 • 1 • 1,..•..! '11 1, ,, • ;
times of need. Friends like Ritadhi 'Chakfavarti and Saronik Basu en-
' I 'f '~ 'l ' , ' '
sured that resources in the foreign lioiaries· were never inaccessible.
Last but not the least, I must thank Ashis Kumar Das for his constant
supply of photocopies and printouts that made research at JNU seem ·
so easy. This book comes out at a time when the teachers and students
' ofJNU are facing one onslaught after another while standing strong as
a bastion against fanaticism, unreason, and authoritarianism. It being
the space that inevitably inculcates in one the spirits of tolerance and
free thinking expressed in every academic production coming out of
the campus, this -book would have been incomplete without a full.
throated thanksgiving to JNU.
This book is the culmination of a long eventful journey, a journey
blessed with the help and cooperation of numerous brilliant minds and
excellent souls, some of whom I have mentioned and many more I might
have missed out. The final round of help came from the staff of the Oxford
University Press-including Nandini Ganguli, Nadita Krishnamurthy,
Emma Collison, and Rajakumari Ganessin-who did a marvellous job
amidst a pandemic to keep this book project going. The overwhelming
task of preparing an index was possible only because of the tireless help
from Debasree, and prompt support from Suvajit,Anuja Saha, Shubhranil
Ghosh, Debankita Das, and Sreetama Sau. The journey had its ups and

XXii PREFACE
downs, highs and lows, satisfactions and disappointments. Yet, the dis-
appointments seem too meagre in front of the immense amount of help,
goodwill, love, and affection I received in the journey and scarcely de-
served, For.what I did'not get, I would like to repeat the words ofTagore:1
Whatyouhavegivenmewithoutasking: · t,,,. · , ,, ·
The sky,the light, the mind, body and life- 1 • ,., •• ·,.
·Dayby day you are·turning Irie into worthy of that great gift,· · 1 , ,
Savingme from tlie danger ~~ wishing for.t~o much., . ·1
I ask wholeheartedly in extreme desire, you have saved me, through
deprivation. .J .. I,, ,,.
. ..., '
-ir!
'I I I' ." t!:1:·~ I{!~, ·1..1: ,

1
,.
-
,
I ;.
u,! r :,, 1,,;-!; L,1 !,
.
)I
' 1
,I I /1 ., 1, 1 r; I , r
Note
J ,. ir I 1 , y ) .1 i ·_ . ; ,. , ,
I. My translation of a passage from Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali, Patra Bharati
Kollcata,2010 edition, Song No. 2, 16. · ' ' ' •' · ''" ' p.
•• I ! t J!'._j JJ, l. ,, 1f
I l 'I H
I . I I
! ) ,,
',.
'
• J l ,r
I I
:,ti ., r'
I,
..!J .
'
' ..
,t

List of Diacritical MarksUsed
Method of Transliteration from Sanskrit to English
3TT
3l Jfl~ t-~-;,;:tt:?ft'C!'~ 3ftat 3l:
a a_iiu u r f e ai O au atµ a}:i
cf, ~ lf ~ .s
ka kha ga gha tia
~ ~ ~ ~ ";51"
ca cha ja jha fta
c 0 s '. "?; ur
ra rha 4a 4ha l).a
a ~ ~ ~ -;r
ta tha da dha na
-q ~ GI" 'if lf
pa pha ha bha ma
<l" ~ ~ q
ya ra la va
ltT ~ ({ ~
sa ~a sa ha
/"

Abbreviations
AB AitareyaBrahma,;,a
ASS AsvalayanaSrautaSutra
AV Atharva VedaSarrihita
AGS AsvalayanaGrhyaSutras
BGS BaudhayanaGrhyaSutra
BSS BaudhayanaSrautaSutra
BU Brhadara,;,yaka Upaniiad
cu ChandogyaUpaniiad
GB GopathaBrahma,;,a
iu IsaUpaniiad
JB JaiminiyaBrahma,;,a
JUB JaiminiyaUpaniiadBrahma,;,a
KB KausitakiBrahma,;,a
KS Ka{hakaSarrihita
KU Ka{haUpaniiad
MS Maitraya,;,iSarrihita
MSS Manava Sra~taSutra
MU Mu,;,qakaUpaniiad
PB PaficavirrisaBrahma,;,a
~v ~g VedaSarrihita
SB SatapathaBrahma,;,a
sss SaitkhayanaSrautaSutra
Su SvetijsvataraUpaniiad
TA TaittiriyaAra,;,yaka
TB TaittiriyaBrahma,;,a
TS TaittiriyaSarrihita
E KanadSinha

1
TheMahiibhiirataandtheEndofan Era
1
1.1 Wherethe 'Past Ends,Wherethe 'Future>
Starts:
TheJourneyfromDasariijnato Kur~etra
The period froni c. 1000 to 600 BCE is marked by a kind of vacuum in

Indian history. 'Prior to that stands the age·of the ~g Veda,character-
ized by a predominantly pastoral economy supported by rudimentary
agriculture, tribal sociopoliticalorganization,a sacrificialreligion, and
Ve.!}'little social stratification.!However,in c. sixth century BCE, when
Vardhamana Mahaviraand GautamaBuddhawerepreachingtheir ideas,
the North Indian landscape was witnessinga fully developedcomplex
state society of the mahajanapadas, settled agrarianeconomy,luxurious
urban centres, and rampant speculativeand philosophicaldebates.The
transition, definitely,did not happen•overnight,and the four centuries
that lay in between must havewitnessedone of the most significantshifts
in Indian history-the shift from lineage to state, as noted by Romila
Thapar.1
Thus, this period-conveniently· called the Later Vedic Age-
~een as a time when the Aryan ~ettlers mo~ed east~ards
from Brahmavarta to Aryavarta, when agriculture gamed relatively
more importance~than pastoralism, when the cattle-raiding chief-
tain o a me the tax-claiming monarch bhu ati en
the validity of ,the sacrificial Vedic reli ion be an to be uestio d.
owever,1~hishighly· significant history can hardly be recove~e~as
all the. safely dateable sources relwng to the period arereligious
literafiire. · 1•· • l ·
The information discussedhere is mainly gleanedfrom Vedictexts,
which are religious in nature a~d provide only occasio~al:11'd_in~~
dental information about historical events. Though lackingm h1st_o
ical consciousnessor.orientation, they are favouredas sourcematenals
Fromlllsarojna
toKuru~etra.
Kanad
Sinha,
OX!ord
University
Press.
C Oxford
University
Press
2021.
DOI:
10.1093/oso/9780190130695.003.0001

I 2 FROM o,i.§ARAJNA TO KURUK�ETRA
by several scholars because of their better preserved state and relative
freedom from 'textual corruption'. However, a parallel tradition, caUed
itihasa-pur a tta, consciously recording traditional history, existed at least
from the Later Vedic Age. It was an oral tradition, primarily based on
the compositions of the bards like the siitas, magadhas, and kusilavas,
who might have received patronage from the ksatriyas who held political
authority. However, the texts containing remnants of this tradition
n�ely the Ramaya�1a, the Mahabharata, the Hariva,risa, and the
eighteen/nineteen ma1or Puranas-received their resent sh h
later, er several revisions, alterations, additions. and interpolations,
mainly at the hands ofJhe brahm(l(la,uyjia_prq_vided a religious charaf!_er
to these texts. This is why scholars such as A.B. Keith, V. Gordon Childe,
and H.C. Raychaudhuri doubt their usefulness as historical source ma
terial. Childe views them as 'hardly an unpolluted source of history'.2
Moreover, they contain several serious errors, for instance, depicting
coUateraJ rulers as.sqccessors. F.E.' Pargiter, on the other hand, strongly
criticized this tendency of depending more on Vedic texts than on the
Purruµc tradition: 1� • " ,. ,
'..JC • •I ., '
Hitherto opinions about ancient India have been oased on a study of the
Veda and Vedic literature without much regard for historical tradition
outside that,,.,. To make the former the chief and more authoritative
basis ofhistorical reconstruction is much the same as to write European
history maihly from theological works-an undertaking $at would not
•.receive amoment'sac'ceptance. 31. , , r· • · nil
f J'• l 1 J.. .Jtl• -: d1
1
"" 1. I •' t
' The way' Pargifer and some othe� scholars uncritically accept the en
tire Ptirat_tic 'tradition..:...against niany verifiable historical facts an
d
without separating the different layers of. the composition pf th
e con
cerned texts-is not fully acceptable/I ,Pargiter's 1 the
sis ,depended' on
the conviction· that Vedic tradition represented
the Brahinanical tra
dition, which lacked historical consciousness,
while the P uranic tradi
tion (at least the genealogies and ballads abou
t kings) contai�ed more
historically oriented /qatriya traditions
preserved by the suta bards.
However, despite acknowledging that the
J4atriya tradition was 'even
tu�y Brahmanized, he did not consider
_ that the presently available
Purar.uc texts, produced not earlier than
mid-first millennium CE, are as

--- THE MAHABHARATA AND THE END OP AN ERA 3
much Bra~manical production as the Vedic literature is and neglected

the necessity to corroborate the information with the parallel Buddhist
and Jaina traditibns which he dismissed as religious.As a result, Pargiter
ended up constructing a historical narrative based on one kind of reli-
gious tradition, ignoring all other which were actually older and better
preserved, and his genealogiesand narratives could be exposedby com-
paring them with the information gathered from other sources. This
problemwasfacedby the Indian scholarswho tried to followPargiterand
to construct early Indian genealogicaltables on the basis of the Purai:ias.
S.N. Pradhan had to repeatedly rectify the errors in the Purai:iictables
on the basis.of the information gathered from Vedic,Buddhist,and Jaina
sources,leaving much room for doubt about the details of the informa:
tion for which.no such corroborative or corrective source is available.5
A.D. Pusalkar, arguing against dismissing Pural)ic tradition altogether
and preparing a chronologicalarrangement for traditional history up to
the Bharata War,divided in eight phases,and ranging from 3100to 1400
BCE, himself acknowledgesthat while the Purai:ticaccounts show a pic-
ture of massiveconquests acrossthe subcontinentand up to South India
and Sri Lanka by kings like Mandhatr, Sagara,and Rama, contempo-
rary records up to the end of the Vedicperiod show that the Aryans had
not advanced much beyond the central plains of North India till then.
Therefore,the authenticity of the Purai:iictradition was suspect even in
the eyes of some 'oftheir ardent supporters.6 Under such circumstances,
works such as P.L.Bhargava's,attempting to synchronizePural)ic chro-
nology with the information known from Vedicsources and accounting
for the mismatch as textual corruption in the hands of the priestly class
who canonized the present texts, becomes a tacit acknowledgementof
the unreliable nat~re of the presently availablePurai:iictexts and the pri-
ority of the Vedicsources over them.7
'. However,Pargiter's objection al>outthe handling of the sources still
hol!lsground. Though none of the aforementionedworks succeededin
presentinga reliablehistorical narrative, they rightlypointed out that an-
cient'India might have contained historical traditions of secular origin,
which may offer us valuableinsight if their content can be ploughed out
fro·mtheir canonized Brahmanicalforms.Thaparpoints out the character
of this historical tradition as 'embeddedhistory: more representativeof a
lineage-basedsociety,as differentfrom 'externalisedhistory' producedby

4 FROM D,HARAJNA TO KURUK~ETRA
state societies. 8 Scholars sometimes undertook ambitious projects to fill

up the vacuum. H.C. Raychaudhuri sought to reconstruct the history of
the Kuru kings Pariksit and Janamejaya and bf the Janakas ofVideha on
• 9
the basis of stray references found in Later Vedic texts. However, much
of the vacuum still remains. 10 '
, The Mahiibhiiratais traditionally called an itihii.sa,the closest Sanskrit
equivalent to 'history'. However, treating the Mahabharata as a historical
text is a problematic task. The dating of the Mahiibhiirata, a text com-
p~d over more than a thousand years, which acknowledges to ~~ve
undergone at least three retellings, is almost impossible. Therefore, the
d~t perception that ancient Indians failed to produce a history re-
mains almost intact. · -- ·
Drawing from comments made by medieval travellers and histor-
ians like Al-biruni and Firishta, both the scholars· and the administra-
tors wo~king fa colonial India (the categories,were often overlapping)
firmly believed in India's lack in historical consciousness. A.A. Macdonell
emphatically proclaimed, 'Early India wrote no history because it never
11
made any'. E.J. Rapson's opinion sounds a little bit tempered but shares
similar sentiment: .
I I ; '
Iri all the large and ,varied literatures of the Brahmans, Jains and
Buddhists, there is not to be found'a single work which.can be com-
paredrto the Historiesin which Herodotus recounts the struggle be-
tw~en the Greeks and the Persians or to the Annals in which Livy traces
the growth and progress of Roman power ... But this is not because the
people of India had no history ... We know from other sources that the
ages were filled with stirring events; but these events found no system-
atic record. 12
J
. The first generation of Nationalist historians accepted this framework

th
Wi out much objection, since their perception of history was also shaped
by the model presented by colonial education. Therefore, R.C. Majumdar,
usually very proud of the achievements of the early Indians, grimly ac-
cepts the absence of historical texts:
It is a well-known fact th .
.. . . _ at with the single exception of the
Ra1atarang11J1
... there is no historica) text in Sanskrit dealing with the

• THE MAHABHARATA AND TH E END OF AN ERA '
wholeor even parts of India. But ideasof h · t . .

ts ory and h1stoncallitera•--·
ture werenot altogetherlacking.13 ~ la
Theonly notable exceptionto this tendency h .

-!
. .
amongt e Nationalisthis-
torians• was. U.N. Ghoshal.
.
He had
-- -.t:.
nainstakinglypomte
• d out that there
wereh1sto!"1cal narratives present in early Indian 1·t 1erature, even though
not in a very organized form. Therefore,the Vedicliteraturecontained
genealogical
___ tablesof teachers
- .. -·. and · ofth e ch.1ef:s
_ students, as wellasp raises
and th:i~ achi~veil_!f:~ts i_~diina:.stutihymns of the ~g Vedaand the gatha
and narasa111s 1 hymns of Later Vedicliterature.The narrativesknown as
~ itihiisasand puriitJaswere self-consciously~ore historicalin orien-
tation. Thus, there are occasional referencesto historicalincidents such
~e Battleof Ten Kings, in the ~V itselfand allusionsto stateme~tsof
r_§listi~ authorities, historical examplesof efficacyof rituals,historic;tl~
exp~<m.s~ gf_theegiergenS£_9Jcertain rituals, and memories of the-
olo ·cal dis utes and·intellectual debates. us, ~~pite m_any_defe<:~, a
mass of genuine tradition was collectedan ·mTmorized.c--..3 Similarly,
•
early
Buddhistliterature in Pali does not contain any full-lengthhistoricalbi- '
ographyof the Buddha but treats him as a•man and preservesscatteie'
historicalmemoties and traditions about the most important incidents' ' ~
,.hislife.The Pura1_1ic genealogiescontain t~y defectsto be relied .'. ,
but neverthelessthey were attempts to preservea traditiorialmemo . Afl.
thesetraditions contribute to e eventu m go ear y tan ·sto-
riographyas manifested in Bii1_1a's biqgraphyof KingH~a or, in a more~
systematicmanner, Kalhar,ia'schronicleabout the historyofKashrnir.14~ ~
_,..
Howev~r,Ghoshal remained an exception. The dominant attitu'
hardly changed in the relativelyrecent attempts to account for this ~ ·
sence of history by various justifications,in~luding_ a ~tb~erate_hid~
of the low-casteorigin of the ruiersJ>)'.. the pnestly ehte, b_1furcatton ~e
~ the low-c~~~ru12ers of scribal records and the brahma1_1a intelli-
gentsia,16the Mirnarpsiischool of philosophyunderplayingthe role of
history,l7 the Westernvarie!r_~.f~owledgecalled'history' not beingim-
portant in the fudi~7'enario, 18wilful amnesia to forgetsubjugationby
foreignrulers 19and the colonial power cutting_off the newlyeducated
,
fromtheir traditional past.20 -~--=-~•
~~~
• ···
However,our conception of history has drastically changed from
~
the period when Macdonnell or Rapson was writing. History is hardly
'•JP a .It/

6 PROM DASARAJNA TO KURUK�ETRA
seen any more as a Positivist enterprise whose task is collecting a

huge amount of supposedly objective facts. Still, there has been little
re-examination of the stereotype of ancient India not having any his
torical literature in the light of the new turns in our understanding of
history.
If we take history as an intellectual form, as Jan Huizinga defines it,
in which a civilization renders account to itself of its past, and consider
historical memory as a creation of the interplay of the past with the pre
sent, 21 the early Indian tradition called itihiisa-puriitJa may very welJ
qualify as history. Probabl , there was no historical text composed in an
cient India to qualify as 'history' in its sense as an Occidental academic
discipline. However, Romila Thapar has shown in her book The Past
efore Us that even the entire corpus of Ocoidental histonca ffifcfiiion
can hardly be accommodated within any sing!_e definition of hi�tory.
The understanding, definition, and methodology of history practised by
Herodotus and_ ?ther Classical histori�s �ere_s_!ar½:)y_different f:!:_om the
_
discipline practised by the Medieval European church historians or the
post-Renaissance and post-Enlightenment Positivistic history popular
ized in the nineteenth century.22 Similarly, there we�e diverse methods
of perceiving the past. within the Mesopotamian, Chinese, or Islamic
cultures. Al-biruni's comment about the Indians not having any history
may therefore be a result of his unawareness of the historical traditions
of the Indian society and his search for a parallel to his familiar model
of history. His main informants being the ritual specialists did not help
him either. 23 Therefore, Thapar thinks that historical consciousness does
n
not need to conform to any particular model. It begins with a society
showing consciousness of both past and future and starting to record the
past. 24 She rightly says:
To argue over whether a particular society had a sense of history or not

on the basis of our recognition of the presence or absence of a partic
ular kind of historical tradition-one which has been predet ermined
as being properly historical in perpetuity-seems somewhat beside the
point. It is more purposeful to try and ascertain what each culture re
g�ds as its historical tradition and why it does so; and to analyse its
c�stituents and functions as well as assess how it contendurith-com
peting or parallel traditions. 25

THE MAHABHARATA A
ND THE END OP AN ER!!)
following this approach, we can agree With Th 1
Indian texts reflect a consciousness of histo apar that many earl
· t ence
ame into eXJs · recogmzable
· forms of h' and . subse uentJ ther
c 1stonca1w •r
iclieSof texts were used in early times to r ~g. Both var
. econstruct th
drawn upon as cultural, political, religious O th e past and wer
' ro ersuchr
ious ti.mes,in various situations, and for a . esources at var
variety of reas 26 • 1 ., •. ·. ,
India, thus, had a good range of historical t d' . ons. Anc1en rl"'-f',A,UU
ra itions emanatin fi lMi)n...
senseof the past and Jndmllngthe t1neeessent al g rom
traaifion, namely consciousness of the past eve~t aspe~s of a historical
. s as re evant or signifi
whichwould tend to reflect elements of the idea of aii

. · , caus ty; and the re-
coralng of these events m a form which meets th .
- 27 ~ • e reqwrements of that
society. A histoncal tradition is therefore an authe n ti'c record , if not of
actual
. events, then certainly
. of the believed<assumpti·o ns about th e past.
~t 1sc~eated fr~m the !mtellem1al and soda!·assumptions of a society.
Co9sc10uslyselected events are enveloped in a deliberatelycreatedtradi-
tionwhich may only be partially factual. 2s
Since the different interpretations of the past are shapedby the so-
cialand intellectual background of the compilers of the traditions, the
choiceof the materials and their interpretations differ.Early India seems
to have at least three distinct historical,traditi earl
rio : e ~dic-Brahmank· the bardic tradition called itihiisa:;Jlur.ana
(Brahmanizedlater), and the Sramanic within which:the Buddhist and
the Jaina traditions can be differen ta e . ccurrence of an event/tra-
dition across these traditions invariably would empower them with
a greater'daim of historicity, but each of these traditions represents a
uniquehistorical consciousness in its own right.
The b'eginning of Indian historical traditions can be traced in. its
earliestliterary composition, the ~g Veda.Though the text'sprimary con-
cern was not recording history, certain Vedicpoets left valuable histor-
icalaccounts about their families and patrons. Such information often
helpsus to reconstruct bits of early Indian history. For instance, the his-
tory of a significant political event, the dasarajflaor the Battle of Ten
Kings,can be satisfactorily reconstructed from the accounts given by the
poet-priestsof both the contending parties, Visvamitra and Vas~tha. The
e~mark, demarcating the hegemony of the Bharata tribe
Scanned with Cams

canner
8 PROM D,i.§ARAJNA TO KURUK�ETRA
the victo� oftheir chief
over vast regions ofthe North Indian plains after
ually, the Vedic comp�s
Sudas over a confederacy of ten tribes. Grad
nts and Tha ar · · s
felt a need to record certain historical accou
of the Vedic texts as
the diinastutis, giithas, niirtisat iS, and iikh
flS yiinas
reas the s t u wer e
the earliest forms of'embedded historf. ,Whe
29 dana tis
gifts given by the gener ous p a trons and the giithas
celebrations ofJavish
ts (ritual or military}
and niiriisamJis repetitions of brilliant achievemen
a tive for
by certain i�dividuaJs, the iikh yiinas were properl y fo�med nar� �
ves were identifi ed
narration d uring the sacrifices. Some of these narrati
tr:uth
as itihiisas (it happened like this), indicating that they had some
claim about their historicity unlike the other a
khyanas. The akhyanas
about Pururavas and Urvasi (RV 10.95) or Sarptanu and DevapURV
30
10.98) are examples of such itihasas.
However, itihasa was aJso considered a ·separate discipline in its own
right from a very early period. It was ·considered . a tradition different
from the Vedic one but of almost equal importance. The Atharva Veda
considers it as emanating from th!! Supreme Being, just like the Vedas.31
The Brhada ratJya ka Upani!ad treats it on par with the Vedas, 32 whereas
the Chiindogya Upani!ad calls it the 'fifth Veda'. 33 The AJvalayana Srauta
Sutra (X.7), the Gopatha Brahma,:ta (I.IO), the Sankhayana (I.24.8), and
Asvaliyi ana Grhya Sutras (IV.6.6) prescribe the hearing of itihiisa in cer
tain ritual contexts. 34 The Arthasiistra indudes it in the curriculum of
princely education. 35 The early composers and transmitters e itihdsa
were various bardic groups such as the sutas, mdgadhas, and kusilavas,
w o were e custodians of its sister tradition purdtJa (tales from old) as
well. Both the traditions were orally transmitted initially.Later, they were
formalized and wntfen aowrnun:ler-Brahmaniea!-contiot, T herefore,
g aually ey ost eir origin character. The present Purai;ias,
� for in
stance, are characteristically devotional Brahmanical texts
rat her than
accoun so e pas .,
What was the character of itihiisa? Is there any
text retaining some
elements of that tradition? The traditi
onal definitions of itihiisa take
it very close to what. we now unde
_ rstand as historical tradition. T he
I
Nafyafii5fra, for instance, almost defines
it as a dialogue between t he
� _st _and the present by saying that itihasa is the past being visualized as
a
if it is happening in the pres

ent.36 The tradit ional definition of itihasa,
quoted by Taranatha Tar
kavachaspah. m. h.1s Vacas
• patyam, describes 1t
(/
THE MAHABHARATA AND THE END OF
AN ERA 9
as �omprehensive discipline which not only cont
ains the accounts of
the past but can provide.guidelines for social duti
es political economy,
pleasure,•and salvation:
dharmarthakamamolqa�1a,r, upadesasamanvitam/
purav(ttakathayuktam itihasa,r, pracalqate. 37 1
The Nirukta of Yaska shows that the truth-claim in itihasa had been a
source of lively debate from a ·very early time. The school called the
aitihiisikas focused on historicil)j while the nairuktakas insisted that the
itihiisas should be interpreted figuratively.38 Though the discipline called
it11iiisa was not exactly a part of the Sramat).ic tradition, its truth-claim
"!as. so well known that the Jaina scholar Jinasena defined it as relating
that which actually happenecP9 Thus, itihiisa had a claim of authenticity
but not the lgn.,d of factual authenticity around which Positivist histori-
o graphy was formed. As Sibesh Chandra Bhattacharya has p inte�Wu
� ""- ,,_.
(J
itihasa is much more explicitly didactic in nature than history. It teaches, � �
and it teaches by example. Itihasa is not interested in the past for its own
sake, it i s not interested in the whole of the past, but in what is exemplary.
Th_,f past that is devoid of didactic value is not given a place in itihasa.40
Therefore, the histo�ical tradition named itihasa narrated what it believed
tobe authentic account of the pa st, but the claim to authenticity l�ot
in factual or chronolo gical ac;curacy but in the lesson to be learnt a�u
--·
dharma, arfha,•kama, and molqa from an exemplary and comprehensive
account of the past. . .. , .. ,
, The only co!llplete text de�cribed jn India� tradition as an itihasa is the
Mahabharata.41 In fact, the Mahabharata has a central position within
early I�dian historical tradition. It revolves around an event which
marks the culmination of the Vedic historical tradition and the starting
point of the Puranic one. A s mentioned earlier, the Early Vedic per,i,Qd
witnessed the establishment of Bharata hegemony. The Bharatas an.cl
their allies the Purus gradually evol_ved in the Kuru tribe. Jhe Kuru s an�
ilieir P�dominated the Later Vedic landscape. The MahabhijfJl!a
isine'Ttihiisa of the K�s in the period between the reigns of Samtanu
(the last Kum chief known to the �g Veda) and Pariksit the
Kuru chief
celebrate as a contem orary in the Athar vq Veda) . Two o f the promi
nent Vedic akhyanas known as itihasa, those of Purii.
ravas-Urvas i and

10 FROM DA.SARA.JNA TO KURUK~BTRA
Sa_rptanu-Devapi,are also integrally connected with the Mahabharata

narrative. Can the Mahabharata then serve as our major source to doc-
ument the history of the transition which took place in the_Later Ved·~
2eno. d?
,_ . . .
The text itself took its role as itihasa very senously. Thus, It promJses to
have fulfilled its role most comprehensively, according to the traditional
definition of itihasa:
dharmeciirtheca kiime ca mo/qe ca bharatar~abha/

yad ihiistitad anyatrayan nehasti na kutracit//
(Bull among Bharatas, whatever is here, on Law, on Profit, on Pleasure,

and on Salvation, that is found elsewhere. But what is not here is nowhere
else.)42
Not only that, the text also is consciously proud of generating an effec-
tive communication between the past and the present:
-
ffacakhyubkavayabkecit sa,r,pratyacalqate~-:;;
pare/
({:khyasyanti tathaivanyeitihiisam imarr,bhuvi/1
(Poets have told it before, poets are telling it now, o~er poets shall tell
this itihasaon earth in the future.)43
Moreover, ~Mahabharata knows itself as a text of transition, a wit-

ness to the shift from the Dvapara Age to the Kali Age.44 Traditionally
also, the Bharata War is regarded as a watershed. In Purru;i.ic litera-
ture, incidents pnor to the Bharata War are usuall narra ed ' lliepast
tense, w · e incidents after it are generally in the future tense. In early
Indian historical consciousness, the battlefield of Kur~etra marks a
highly significant boundary where the 'past' ends and the 'future' be-
gins. However, can we use the present text of the Mahiibhiirata to un-
derstand which great shift it deals with, how it portrays that shift, and
what is the text's commentary on it? We will seek the answer. However,
as indicated already, the history that culminates at Kur~etra has a long
prehistorr: Therefore, our work will focus not only on the decisive mo-
ment of the Bharata War but also on the long journey from the diisarajfla
to Kur~etra.

THE MAHABHARATA AND THE END OP AN ERA 11
1.2 Understanding an ltihasq:

A Historiographical Survey
While we have outlined our intention to look at the Mahabharataas an

itihasa,,we must also remember the enormous body. of research that
has developed around th,e text. In this section, we shall attempt to out-
line'some of the.major interpretations of the text.{Ete biggest obstacle
to' using the Mahabharatafor historical purpose is dating. It is a text that
internally.acknowledges three retellings. It must have undergone many
more before its final codification after a journey~hich is at least a millen-
ruum long. Its mammoth size ~d self-conn:dictor:y nature led .Maurice
Winternit~ to describe it as 'literary nonsense: 45 R.C. Dutt laments the
loss of,the 'epic nucleus, wliile som<:scholars try to find the nucleus by
distinguishing old and new layers.46
_ 1Christian:Lassen speaks of an older text named Bharata,composed
between 460 and 400 BCE and .mentioned in the Asvalayana,Grhya

Sutra,to which were added.the 'Krishnite' elements.47 Walter Ruben saw
~l).a-:whose conflict wi~-the Magadha king,Jarasarµdha might have
some historical basis-as a superimposed inessential absentee hero on
48
the Pal).c,lava-Kaurava_narrative. R.N. Dandekar. also thinks that the
bardic tradition of the sutas got crystallised around the hi~torical battle
ofKur~etra in an epic,namedJaya, to which was redacted the new and
popular practical religion of~(l.a. 49 ,
However, removing Kf~l).afrom the epic without destroying its core is
hardly possible, and the attempt sometimes takes absurd proportions. For
i_nstance,though ~!)a does not fight in the Bharata War, generally taken
as the central event of the text, he plays a major role in the downfall of the
four great Kaurava warriors-Bh~ma, Drol).a, Karl).a,and Duryodhana.
Ruben, in order to construct a ~l).aless Mahabharata, argues that Salya's
death at the hands ofYudh~thira-in a 'just combat' and without ~l).a's
intervention-represents the oldest single battle of the original epic.50 It
is absurd to suggest that a Kuru-Paficala or Kuru-Pal).c,lava battle was de-
cided by.the death of the least important of all Kaurava commandants,
who was not even a member of the Kuru clan. J. Kennedy's attempt to
distinguish several ~!)as-one of solar myths, another non-Aryan hero
of Indus Valley, yet another derived from the legends of Christ, and so
on-is not at all convincing. 51

12 PROM DA~ARAJNA TO KURUK~ETRA
Soren Sorensen tried to construct an ur-text of the Mahiibliiirata,with

8,800 slokas.52 But this number is found in a very Jate tradition about dif-
ficult slokasof the Mahiibhiirata.E. Washburn Hopkins dates the com-
position of the epic between 400 BCB and 400 CE and assumes five phases
of composition. His general assumption is that a Mahiibhiiratatale was
constructed around the 1Pa1;t<;favas,and it incorporated other legends be-
tween 400 and 200 BCB: K~Qa was not yet considered the Supreme Deity.
Between 200 BCB and 200 CB, the text was reworked with K~Qa as the
Supreme Divinity. Puranic material and didactic matters were added to
the text between 200 and 400 CB. In this phase, the last books were com-
posed, the first book was enlarged, and the i\nusasanaparvan' w!s sep-
arated from the 'Santiparvan'. This dating is more or less accepted. 53 But,
V.S.Sukthankai points out that Hopkins did not show any.concrete evi-
dence to defend his phases. 54 ' ·
. AdolfHoltzmann and, following him, Leopold von Schroder note the

misdeeds by the Pa1;t<;lavas and ~Qa in the epic and use them to argue for
an 'Inversion Theory: suggesting that the Kauravas were the initial heroes
of the epic wnich was later inverted by Vai~1;tavapriests. 55 However, the
misdeeds of the Kauravas are no less than those of tlie PiiQ<;f avas, and
56
therefore Sukthankar considers this theory· unacceptable. Moreover,
as Oldenberg has pointed out, the instances of trickery by the Devas in
the Vedic myths cannot mean thatVedic poetsoriginally sided with' the
Asuras. 57 Thus, he tries to trace the old version, corroborated by Vedic
references, as a representation of some events of the Vedic Age.58
F.E. Pargiter considers the Mahabharata·as a historical account of
Kuru-Pancala and briihmatJa-lqatriyaconflict, 59 a view supported by
George Grierson 60 but opposed by A.B., Keith. 61 Criticizing this ap-
proach, D.D. Kosambi says that the Mahiibhiirataconverted bifling inci-
dents into world-shattering events. He views in the text a transition from
food~gathering to food-producing society and representation of inter-
actions with the auiochthonous Nagas. The epic began as a Kuru lament
converted into a Pa1;t<;lu song of victory, absorbed Naga myths during ac-
culturation, acquired fresh myths from the Mathuran ~QNaga, and
was eventually Brahmanized by the Kasyapas and the Bhrgu~
All these_viewsare usually bracketed under the i\nalytical Theory' of
understandmg the Mahabharata.They are quite valuable since they ap-
proached the text critically and addressed the need to stratify the text to

THE MAHABHARATA AND THE END OP AN ERA 13
contextualizeitshistoricallayers.However,none of theseaforementioned
studies could provide a satisfactory methodology to do so. Extreme
views,like that of Pargiter,can easilybe nullifiedbecauseof the nature of
the text. An overwhelmingamount of mythicalelements,a long period
of composition of over a millennium with severaladditions,alterations,
()missions,and interpolations,confusedgenealogicaldetails,and mixing
up of fact with fictionare someof the pertinent criticismsof acceptingthe
text as history in its present form. On the other hand, the overambitious
'Inversion Theory' and Kosambi'sanalysisremainjust interestingspecu-
lations due to a dearth of supporting evidence.,Washburn Hopkins's
stratificationis still largelyfollowedbut lack of a clear-cutmethodology
for dating the layersleavesroom for questioningthe chronology.
Some other scholars speak againststratificationof the text. Earlyme-
dieval commentators such as Anandavardhanaand Abhinavaguptasaw
the entire text as a singlewhole.63 JosephDahlmanninitiateda 'Synthetic
Theory' claiming unity of the text-with both the narrativeand the di-
dactic sections-which he viewsprimarily as a didactic work invented
not later than fifth century BCE to propagate the maxims of law.64
However,the manuscript used byDahlrnarnicouldby no meansbe a pro-
duction of the fifth.century BCE, and he overstretchedthe point oflegal
symbolism (like explainingDraupadi'spolyandryas commonownership
in a joint family).
Ludwig/attempts to explain the Mahiibhiirataas a season-myth65
without making it dear why a poem of about200,000linesshouldbe com-
posed to allegoricallyrepresent some nature myth.~ankar takes the
text of the Mahiibhiirataas'a whole which has three levelsof meaning-
~undane, ethical, and metaphysical.The mundane plain is about effec-
tive characterization, the ethical plain representsthe struggleof dharma
anJ adharma, and the metaphysicalplane-mainly the BhagavadGita
represents the Upanisadicidea of the unity of ;iviitmanand paramiitman.
The 'epic nucleus' withits histo[is;;ill content, he thjnks, has been swal-
lowed up by the Bhrgys!i} _ _
Patricia M. Greer argues for an inherent integrity of the Mahabharata,
'th b ilJ'antly constructed narrative pattern which is self-referential,
wiar1 .
67
plastic in time and space, wonderfully rich, and tightly_fabnca~ed.. For
K. Kunjunni Raja, the text in its present form has a un1tydespite diver-
sity, based on the ultimate Janta rasa.68 A.K. Ramanujan analyses the

..-_----------■--------
14 PROM o.HARAJNA To KURUK~ETRA ,
structure of the text in its repetitivepatterns about characters, events,ac-

tions, and consequencesof actions.69 RadhavallabhTripathi also prefers
to viewthe Mahabharataas a syntheticwhole.70
However,still the need to stratify the text could not be neglected by
even Sukthankar.Rather, he became the General Editor of the Critical
Edition'ofthe text, the most ambitiousattempt to reach the original text.
Therefore,the need of an analytic~ approach is inevitable in a historical
study,evenif approachingthe text as a synthetic whole can be usefulfrom
the liferarypoint of view. , · ·.
Thecreationof the CriticalEdition itselfhas been viewedby some sup-
porters of the 'SyntheticTheory'as the termination point of the analytical
studieson the Mahabha,rata. After all, a thorough laborious exercise by
Sukthankarand his colleaguesproduced a te~ which is an approxima-
tion of the oldestpossiblemodel from which the varied availablemanu-
scripts of the Mahabhiirata,receh'.ed their present shape. With a single
text fu hand, these scholars would like.to-focus on•studying it herme-
heuticallyand on.'lower criticism'based on the' reading of the text itsclf
rather than on 'fiigliercriticism'.guided 6y philology and various tools of
historicalanalysisoften·usedto stratifythe'text. VishwaAdluri, one of the
inajor recent advocatesof the model, .vehem_ently opposes higher criti-
cism on the ground that 'higher,criticismcreates a "new text" according
to the author's particular ideologicalpreference, arguing duplicitously
for a text that never existed while denying the text that actually exists'.71
Adluri thinks that, in ·doing so, higher criticism employs 'fantastic and
unscientific'figures of speech,·such as layers, threads, cores, accretions,
interpolations,rings, and nodes.72 This kind of exercise,after the crea-
tion of the CriticalEdition, is an 'intellectualembarrassment' to Adluri.73
He thinks that higher criticism is. 'unscientific'_a'.ndoften 'ideologically
ta~ted; ,while'lowercriticismis an honourable endeavour to which great
mmds have dedicatedconsiderablelabor'.74In fact, Adluri takes a strong
sta_nce againstany kind of historicalanalysisof the text, arguing that ·
· [n]o one denies that modern· historical sciences in the sense of

'Geisteswissenschaften' have provided a .wealth of information in di-
versefields,~ut_whatis oftenoverlookedis that these sci~ncesare byno
me_ans asobJ_e~tive
astheyclaim.Theiroriginis itselftied to specifichis-
toncal cond1tions,to an intellectualclimateand to specificneeds and

THE MAHABHARATA AND THE END OF AN ERA 15
aims. W~at the histor~calmethod claims to be the only 'objective'ap-
proach, it forgets that it too has a history.Bybelievingthat it sets itself
ab~ve all prejudices;it fallsprey to the greatestprejudiceof all:that of
bemg free of prejudice.75
Therefore, ~dluri decides that hermeneuiics is therichest amoI_!gall

textual approaches, since it is the 'most scientificand the most gentle(wo)
@anly'.76 Simon Brodbeck has. also opined that the creation ,of the
_ C:riticalEdition has exhausted the possibility of analyticallystudying the
Mahabharata.77 • ,
A•major•problein with-Adluri's opinion is his.misunderstanding of
the d~gpJine of bi story His criticism is .valid for some of the early an-
alytic attempts in studying.the text,in an atmosphere where Positivistic
searc!i for-'objective'and 'scientific''facts'_dominated historicalexercises.
However, the discipline of history has moved much b~yond the way a
~ankean Positivist would have approached it about a coupleof centuries
back. Clearly,·Adluri's understanding of history somehow missed the
,J, ...~ developments· in the two iritervening cerifuries.History, after all, i; no
longer perceived as 'historical sciences'rclaimingto present an accumu-
lated body of objective,.scientific facts.-~ historian denying that every
history is a product of its (and the historian's)context and that no history
can be absolutely oJ?i._ective or unprejudiced will be taken with little seri-
ousness nowaday~us; by pre~enting arguments that would have hit
the bull's eye in the nineteenth century, in a twenty-first-centurywork,
Adluri 1has caused himself a, great 'intellectual embarrassment'.While
no student with sensitivity to literature would deny the importance of
hermeneutics, Adluri's advocacy of the method being the most 'scien-
tific;'also points out how he failed to get out of the frameworkPositivism
had created in the nineteenth century.·While no historical work can be
without the. prejudices of the historian, Adluri's veiled claim of herme-
neutical ·analyses being 'scientific' and unprejudiced.deserves little se-
rious engagement, less so-wlien he h,imselfhas demonstrated the extent
(?fprejudice working in his writing by giving the verd'.ct~at only lower
criticism is an 'honorable endeavour' in which 'greatmmds devotedcon-
siderable labour but pigher criticism is not so. .
However,the creation of the _CriticalEdition is no doubt a pomt ~fcul-
mination in the analytical•studies of the Mahabharata.The creallon of
16 PROM D.HAR.AJNA TO KURUK~ETRA·
a single available text, possibly approximating the oldest archetype for

the extant manuscripts, is also extremely useful for reading the text usin
hermeneutics and various other tools of literary criticism. However, th:
purpose of historically enquiring a text/tradition does not end in the con-
struction of a text. The purpose of the historical enquiry, after all, is not
just to see what the text might have looked like at' a certain point in his-
tory b'ut also to learn how it came into being from a bardic oral tradition.
It is true that sometimes historical analysis goes'overboard and tries to
artificially create a text that never existed at the cost of the text tliat exists,
for instance, the attempts to create an ur-Mahiibhiirataor Holtzmann's
'.InversionTheory' or Muneo Tokunaga'sattempt to relocate Bh~ma'sdis-
course to Yudhi~µiirato a different context in an assumed earlier version
of the Mahiibhiirata.7. 9 Such reconstructions' are problematic; not because
they claim any objective singular fact· but because they present specu-
lations.regarding earlier versions of the text without any corroborative
evidence from any existent,manuscript or external sources. But there is
ample scope, and necessity, to historically enquire into the coming into
being of a massive tradition like the Mahabharataand the process of its
textualization, which is in no way in contradiction with literary criticism
of the existent t~xt·as a whole: After all, the Critical Edition itselfis a hypo-
thetically constructed text that never existed before its coming into being
in the twentieth century. That the 'Analyticand Synthetic methods are not
mutually exclusive is best illustrated by,the fact that Alf Hiltebeitel,a big
supporter of the hermeneutical .model, himself made different attempts
to historicall~ontextualize.the time andpiocess of the Mahabhardtg's
creation. 80 -: •'
If we now shift our attention to ,the studies which viewed the
Mahabharataas a unified text, much attention has been paid to the myth-
ical and religious aspects of the epic. Stig Wikander and Georges Diimezil
view the , epic' as reminiscent of •ani old 'lndo-European mythology.
YudhiHhira, Bhima and, ·Arjuna, an'd Nakitla and Sahadeva, respec-
tively, represent,the three niajor aspects oflndo-European religion and
society: the sacerdotal-legislative (Mitra/Dharma), the martial-kingly
(Indra and Vayu), and the fertile-popular (the Asvins), which later as-
sumed the shape of the duties of the brahmalJllS,lqatriyas,and vaisyas.
DraupadI is the primeval female deity associated with the male gods of
81
these three functions, comparable with the Iranian goddess Anahita.

THE MAHABHARATA AN
D THE ENO OF AN ERA 17
However, many of these connecti .
tification of Dhrtarastra p- d ons ~e questionable, like the iden-
. . . , a1_1
. u, and V1dura as Bhaga Varona d
Aryaman. Draupadi is clearly identified with S - . th ' . · ' an
n m e epic, and the
presence of th e solar figure-Kama-on th vil 'd . . .
· e e s1 e 1snot likely 1n an
In d• o-Europeanmyth.JanGondacriticizedD" umezil's se1ective . use of ma-
82
tenal, and F.B.J.Kuiper points out that the th t'
- d . . ree- 1er structure within
the Pat_1
. . avas-as md1cated by Wikander and D..urnezil-1s• secondary
to their contrast,
, .
as a. group;
.
s·
to the Kauravas·83 Im ilarIy pro blematlc
. 1s
.
Gesta Johnsons 1denhficahon ofDhrtara~tra as Varuna.114.
N.J. Allen, who has extended Diimezil's model· of three functions
to a developed model of four functions in analysing Bhi~ma'srole as
a matchmaker, also notes striking similarities between the journeys
of Arjuna and, O~ysseus, regarding particularly their dealings with
women, to argue for common Indo- European inheritances. 85 However,
there are much more to these voyages apart from those dealings, and-
for tlie Mahabharata-Arjuna's wandering is nothing but a tiny section.
Julian Baldick goes even further in seeking a universal theme for several
epics, but sometimes his comparisons are a bit overambitious,.such as
the one between Kumbhakar1_1a and Hector. 86• Josette Lallement's sug-
gestion of Virgil's borrowings from the 'Mahabharata'is also not very
conclusive. More important comparative studies on epics include Pavel
Grinster's, 87 which emphasizes the uniformity of motifs and plots in
heroic epics, and Yaroslav Vassilkov's, whicli traces all three forms of
historical development of an epic-archaic, classical, and late-in the
88
'Mahiibhiirata:
Fernando Alonso Wulff, in his recent works, has resurrected the claims
of the Eurocentric thinkers and Evangelists of the nineteenth century
who claimed that most of the notable works of the early Indian authors
were modelled on/borrowed from Occidental literature. This kind of at-
titude, expressed 'in Weber's claim of the Riimiiya~,a
being an imitation of
the Iliador Lorinser's attempts to show the BhagavadGitiias a paraphrase
of the New Testament,is resurrected by Wulff's claim that
[t]he Mah~bharata was written with a great qu~tity (an~ quality} of

Greek materials near at hand, speciallyusing the Ilradas a kind of gwde-
. , · t Nevertheless it is important to stress that the
Jme or re1erence pom • ' .
Mahabharata's author/s use this Greek 'repertoire' brilliantly,creating

18 FROM D,HARAJNA TO KURUK~ETRA
a new and unique world for a new political, religious and ideological
purpose.89 ,
Wulff stresses on the Mahabharatastory about how.the Earth was

overburdened by powerful lqatriyas, necessitating the incarnation of
the divine and demonic beings as the various Mahabharatacharacters to
~use a great war which would involve massive killing and would mark
the coming of the decadent Kali Age. He notes iis similarities with the
Cypria'srepresentation of the secret behind the Trojan War: the Earth,
being overburdened by the human race, requested Zeus for help, and
Zeus plotted successive wars in Thebes and Troy. Zeus's plan involved
the birth of the son of a goddess and a man (Achilles) and the supernat-
ural birth of a beau~ and powerful woman (Helen). The ensuing battle
ended the 'age ofheroes'.and brought a decadent age.90
. There is no doubt that.there is a similarity between these stories,
but the two texts ~fold in very, different ways. For instance, while the
plan of Zeus culminates, in two wars, the Mahabharata involves only
one Great War. Wulff tries to present the.destruction of the Yadavasin
the 'Ma~alaparvan' as the second.war, but the 'text shows it as nothing
i:nore than a heated intra-family fighting during a picnic ..To'further the
range of the similarities, Wulff·thinks that Achilles and Helen have their
counterparts in the son ~fa goddess and a man (B~ma) and a beautiful
woman with supernatural birth (Draupadi), respectively. His stretched
comparison between Helen and Draupadi cannot move beyond the su-
pernatural quality of their births and their beauty,91 too common for epic
heroines. Wulff attempts a full-scale comparison ofBh~ma and,Achilles,
noting that both were born out of an unusual wedding brought about by a
divine manoeuvre, both had a water-goddess as mother who abandoned
the father's place at some point and killed all the brothers of the hero but
spared him, ho$ were raised in non-human environment, both were not
crowned as king despite deserving the throne,, both were not married,
both died at an odd age (Achilles too young and B~ma too old), both are
described as a shining warrior full oflight and a general of the forces, both
had problems with the king in power, both had an enemy-accompanied
bya deity-visiting his tent before his death, both were killed with arrows,
both expected and welcomed death, and both had elaborate singular fu-
nerals and were lamented by their mothers. 92

THE MAHABHAR
ATA ANo T
'Jhesimt·1anttes
. . are well noted but Iii! l!No
Op AN Ea
. mostofthe A 19
,,arriorbeinga general or being descn'b d mare toogen .
,. e as a '5h. enc A
ingularfuneral cannot be any co lningwarri· , · great
as . ncrete eViden or orhaVin
almostall births are results of diVine ce of borrow· . g
•l • manoeuvresi b tng.Since
annotbe a spec1a pomt to mention eith n oth theep·
c er.A mothe I tcs,that
is nothingunusual, and we can see Kunr I .r amentingherch·.ld
. t amenttngKa . i
JamentingAbh imanyu, and Gandhari lame . n:ia,Subhadra
. ·1 . . nttng Duryodh
someof the s1m1anhes are of course int . ana as well
eresting How •
comparativemythology has shown us that h : . ever,the fieldof
. sue s1milariti
amongvanous characters across cultures F . es canbe seen
· or mstance h
notedthe similaritiesbetween Bhismaand Achill ..' w ereasWulff
h - , . ·1 . . . . es, DumezilandAll
notedB 1~massim1anttes with Sarpedonin th I/' d en
. • 1h e ta ,ZeusandOur
in Hes1ods eogony,Romulus of Roman myth I anos
. . 93 o ogy,and Heimdallof
the Eddiepoem R1gspula.The charactersshare
. . somecommonmotifs
aswellas some drastic pomts of differenceFor st m· • d
. . . , · ance,1tnee s blind
conV1ct1on to take Achilless
. extreme y·outh and Bh-JSm . as• extremeold
ageas a point of similarity or to think that Achilles,whosestrifewith
Agamemnonover the control of a womanis at the heartoftheIliad,can
bea modelfor the celibateBhi~mawhoserefusalto breakhisvowofcel-
ibacywasat the root of both his own deathand of theMahabharata war.
Similarly, it is impossibleto imagineAchilleswithouthispossiblyhomo-
eroticfriendship.with Patroclus,and it is impossibleto conceiveBhi~ma
in anyrole remotely similar.WouldBhi~ma,whosecommitmentto the
codeof warfare (which he himself had outlined)led to his death,ever
degradethe dead body of his fallenopponentthe wayAchillesdisgraced
Hector'sbody is another questionWulff'shypothesisfailsto answer.
Todefendthe untenable,Wulffthinksthat whereparallelism doesnot
work,it is becauseof borrowingfrom someother Greekmyth.Thus,ac-
knowledging ·that Ganga, Bhi~ma'smother, does not resembleThetjs
(themother of Achilles),he thinks that Gangascharacteris modelled
on Aphroditeof the HomericHymn to AphrodI·te and somefeatures . of
Demeter.Followingthis line, he goes on making con fused parallelisms
. • t Belerophontes
in whichAsvatthamanbecomesDiomedesat somepom' . h hi
. O f th asva withwh1c s
m someother,and the TrojanHorse(because e k) 94 similarly
namebegins!). m . anothercontext(thatofthe noctumalattac . '
- d 5ometimesKrtavarman,
poorDiomedesis sometimesAsvatthamanan 9sEventhe
. d timesHerac1es.
whileArjunais sometimesOdysseusan some
20 PR.OM DASARAJNA TO KURUK~ETRA
extremely generic coincidences, such as that Narada praised Yudhighira's

palace in the Mahabharatawhile Telemachus,praised Menelaus's palace
in the Odyssey,are referred to as examples of borrowing, with the col;lrage
that is needed to imagine the young Telemachus as equivalent to the
eternal globe~trotting sage Narada. 96 Even the facts that positive virtues
are shared by the two antagonistic parties, victory is bittersweet, and the
survivors are depressed by the trauma of the war-which would have
been the case in any good literature anywhere in the world-are presented
in support of,Wulff's hypothesis. 97 Though Helen and Draupadi both
had multiple husbands,,imagining1Menelaus and Paris as brothers like
Yudhi~ptlra and Arjuna would take a level of insensitivity towards both
the texts which few will manage. The places where even such stretched
comparisons could not be made are seen as examples of borrowings from
Greek sources no longer available to us.98 i' •
' If, Wulff's model were true, it would have ,been astonishing to th_ink
what an authority on Greek mythology the author 1of the Mahabharata
would have been. However, any .conclusion based on such vague simi-
larities will be a joke, because any text can be reconstructed as borrowed
from some motif or other in one or the other myth of the entire repertoire
of a culture (especially }Vitha concession that where the exercise fails, the
borrowing is still assumed from a source now inaccessible). There.is no
doubt. that there were some similar motifs of heroic culture .
and contin-
gent myths oflndia and Greece: When the two cul~res met, there were
definite mutual influences as,well. However, why should that be a case
of direct borrowing, why necessarily one way (Greek to Indian), and
why the source of borrowing must be a Greek myth (and not Indian or
Semitic or Chinese or Egyptian or anything else) are questions :which beg
answers. As long as there are no satisfactory answers to such questions,
the most polite assessment of such .wor~ would be to designate them as
futile.
f .!vfadeleine Biardeau, on the other hand, focuses on .the ideology of
bhakti, and stresses on the concept of avatara.99 She believes in the in-
tegrity of the Mahabharataas a tradition rather than as a text and 9.ues-
tions the ~ntire analytical project of creating a Critical Edition, arguing
that there was never a single written text of the Mahabharataas an ar-
chetype from which all the manuscripts have evolved, but the various
manuscripts are simply written versions of the story. 100 Hiltebeitel shows

THI! MAHABHA
RATA AND TH
~~
the important presence of Krsn . I! l!No OP AN l!RA 2 '{O
"d th ... a m several c . 1 .t
and cons1 ers e complement ·ty . rucia episodes of th . :t
. . an of V1snu d S· e epic
the epic to be interpolated. He lik . · · an 1vatoo essential f, j . "
. . . • e B1ardeau
the text with rehg1ous ideas like pra1aya and • goes
or
- on to understand .,~ !
tance placed on K~l).a's divinity and Drau d-~~atar~, with high impor- 8 J
Heino Gehrts has viewed the ep· pa ts identification with Sri 101
IC as modelled ·
mainly as an extended ralJ·asuya 102B ddh on a sacrificial theme
· u adebB h '
tural unity of the Mahabharatain th asu as shown the struc-
. . e gradual develo f
acter of Yudh1~~h1raas its principal hero 103Adlu . pment O the char-
have shown how the text may provid h n _andJoydeepBagchee
tools for its holistic interpretation. 104 e ermeneuttcal and etymological
IJames Fitz erald
fli t) o-· ii
combines the views 0 f
( Dahlmann Deva-Asura
con c , umez , allegories of Ind 0 E
. - uropean deities), Biardeau
(unportance of avattita), .and Hiltebeitel (the significant role of th
~!).as:
. Vasudeva,_ Dvaipayana
_ ' and Draup ad-) . d .
I m a gran ·mterpreta-
ree
. Mahabharata
,ti~n that the . , is primarily a religious epic,
· a response o e
.Brahman1cal Renaissance
. . to the em ires of Pataliputra
. , wh"1ch patr on-
1zedthe heterodox religions. The principal agenda is to espouse an i eal
polity under a king who subjects himself under the brahmanaswhom
he supports materially and preserves from all harm. The id~al society
is conceived as one where all the var~asperform their specified duties.
The Brahmanical rage against the contemporary ruling class is presented
wit~~~filfve orn~ffiq,mc; un{awJulkicilii;iis
beingpnrge:r
bythe divipe lqatriyas allied with the brahmatJas.
The narration unfolds
in genocidal hatred of a sacrifice to kill all the world's snakes, with Rama
Jamaaagnya's genocidal ra!l}~g~_at@JMt !ll fas~triy_as a~ th~ backdrop,
gradually m-;;;~;;-ds theviolent purg~pfthti~ata
War.The demons born as the unlawful Dhartar~~ras are eradicated in a
mortal conflict with.the divine incarnations-the lawful Pal).<;)avas~who
appear in the epic both as children begotten by deities and as a com-
bined incarnation ofJruim.J:avourite of the brahmatJas, they are aided
by three 'dark','obscure', 'secret' holy agents-the V~l).u-incarnate K!1t:ia
Vasudeva, the Sri-incar~~te ~!).a Draupadi, and ~e Vedic brah'!1atJa
J<r~l).aDvaipayana Vyasa.1os However, Fitzgeralds ove~emphas1_s on
Divine and Demonic birth a secondary element to the mam narratiy.e,
made film overlook1fie'm'ainnarrative wher~!h$LJnaj..~ly
,· a~re to their pr~ibed var~,aduties.

22 FROM D.i.§ARAJNA TO KURUK~ETRA
Thus, various major researches on the Mahabharatabypassed or neg-

ated a possibility of historicizing the text. However, B.B. Lal shows that
the major sites of the epic event-including Hastinapura, Indraprastha,
Varai:iavata, Pai:iiprastha, Tilaprastha, Kur~etra, Mathura, and
Vairata-had a common habitational level in the Painted Grey Ware
(PGW) using culture which belonged to c. 1200-600 BCE.Moreover, ar-
chaeology attests the epic account of a flood in Hastinapura which led to
the shift of capital to Kautambi, and the latter site also shows evidence
of a late PGW culture. 106 Moreover, the great tity of Pafaliputra-the
prime city of Magadha, as well as of entire North India, from the fourth
century BCE-is not mentioned as the metropolis of the Magadha of
the Mahabharata.The Magadha king Jarasatµdha ruled not even from
Rajagrha, the capital of Magadha in the sixth century BCE, but from
Girivraja, the earliest power centre of Magadha, which indicates a date
prior to sixth century BCE.
B.D. Chattopadhyaya questions Lal's procedure and quotes V. Gordon
Childe to claim a priority of the Vedic sources over the 'polluted' epic-
Purai:iic tradition. The Vedic and the Buddhist texts show an unmistak-
able shift from tribe to territory, and what the archaeology of the epic
sites establishes is-to him-nothing but the archaeology of the emer-
gence of janapadas in the Ganga basin. He quotes Amalananda Ghosh's
note of caution in his editorial notes on the Hastinapur excavation report.
Ghosh, in his note, warns against taking the report as an official archaeo-
logical attestation of the epic narrative and points out that the only facts
the report can attest are that Hastinapura-the reputed Kaurava capital-
was occupied by PGW users in a period roughly synchronizing with the
original narrative of the epic; the site was indeed deserted because of a
great flood; and the same,ceramic is found in many early sites connected
with the epic. This information, to Chattopadhyaya, is not as important
as they seem, except in their usefulness as a corrective to the exaggerated
accounts of the epics. In fact, he thinks that a one-to-one correlation be-
twee~ archaeology and textual tradition is not possible. As Schliemann's
Troy 1s not the same as Homer's, the Hastinapura and Indraprastha of
archaeology hardly correspond with their epic description. Thus, meth-
odo~ogically,archaeology should be based on its own academic consid-
eration ~ather than in a pursuit to search for the epic heroes. A digging
at Kavenpattinam, for instance, should be the excavation of a site in the

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From Dasarajna to Kuruksetra: Making

of a Historical Tradition Kanad Sinha

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F~s,t f!i?onpu~~s]'f~ ~/021

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4. New Text, New Era, New Hero: Viisudeva Kfgia and

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I have read KanadSinha'sbook FromDiisariijflato KuruJc-retra: Making

extendedstatement of a societyand generallyof the elite of that society.

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Arjuna's experiences as he travels and his marriages to various women

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historiansthereforepreferto use the term 'clan society'either prior to the

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·des that help to illumine the text. His questionsare challengingand

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helping hands have been invaluable in channelizing it to the course it has

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also helped me immensely in engaging with the epics. I had shared

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chancellor, the Sanskrit College and University) ha b'

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'I I I' ." t!:1:·~ I{!~, ·1..1: ,

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Method of Transliteration from Sanskrit to English

ca cha ja jha fta

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The period froni c. 1000 to 600 BCE is marked by a kind of vacuum in

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much Bra~manical production as the Vedic literature is and neglected

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state societies. 8 Scholars sometimes undertook ambitious projects to fill

. The first generation of Nationalist historians accepted this framework

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wholeor even parts of India. But ideasof h · t . .

Theonly notable exceptionto this tendency h .

the period when Macdonnell or Rapson was writing. History is hardly

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seen any more as a Positivist enterprise whose task is collecting a

To argue over whether a particular society had a sense of history or not

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whichwould tend to reflect elements of the idea of aii

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if it is happening in the pres

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Sa_rptanu-Devapi,are also integrally connected with the Mahabharata

dharmeciirtheca kiime ca mo/qe ca bharatar~abha/

(Bull among Bharatas, whatever is here, on Law, on Profit, on Pleasure,

Moreover, ~Mahabharata knows itself as a text of transition, a wit-

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1.2 Understanding an ltihasq:

While we have outlined our intention to look at the Mahabharataas an

between 460 and 400 BCE and .mentioned in the Asvalayana,Grhya

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Soren Sorensen tried to construct an ur-text of the Mahiibliiirata,with