Towards an Architecture of the Mahabharata

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Towards an Architecture of the Mahabharata

• Vishwa Adluri
• Hunter College, CUNY
• vadluri_at_hunter.cuny.edu
• WWW.Presocratics.Org

• Paper presented at the International Seminar on
• The Mahabharata Its Historicity, Antiquity,
  Evolution Impact on Civilization
• Organized by the Draupadi Trust, Delhi, April 2012

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• Notre seule source, ce sont les manuscrits
  eux-mêmes, donc, en dernière analyse, les stemma.
  Nous navons donc pas le droit de répudier leur
  témoignage sous le prétexte quil nous paraît
  absurde.
• R. Marichal, La critique des textes
• Our only source are the manuscripts themselves,
  then, in the final analysis, these stemma. We
  therefore do not have the right to repudiate
  their evidence under the pretext that it appears
  absurd to us.

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A. The Mahabharata Archetype
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A. The Mahabharata Archetype (contd.)
Slide 1 Textual tree of Adiparvan versions,
illustrating the stemmatic relationships
Source Sukthankar 1933
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A. The Mahabharata Archetype (contd.)
Slide 2 Illustrating the distinction between the
space of meaningful discourse (sense and
reference, and sense) and nonsense (neither sense
nor reference)
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A. The Mahabharata Archetype (contd.)
Slide 3 Unrooted phylogenetic tree illustrating
the separation of the Mahabharata tradition into
three broad groups Southern, Northern, Kasmiri,
and the position of the CE vis-à-vis these three
(source Phillips-Rodriguez, Howe, and Windram
2009)
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A. The Mahabharata Archetype (contd.)

• Vishwa Adluri Joydeep Bagchee, eds., Reading
  the Fifth Veda Studies on the Mahabharata,
  Essays by Alf Hiltebeitel, vol. 1 (Leiden E.J.
  Brill, 2011)
• When the Goddess was a Woman Mahabharata
  Ethnographies, Essays by Alf Hiltebeitel, vol. 2
  (Leiden E.J. Brill, 2011)

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A. The Mahabharata Archetype (contd.)

• Vishwa Adluri, ed., The Critical Edition and its
  Critics A Retrospective of Mahabharata
  Scholarship, Special issue of the Journal of
  Vaishnava Studies 19,2 (Spring 2011).

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A. The Mahabharata Archetype (contd.)

• Vishwa Adluri Joydeep Bagchee, The Nay Science
  A History of German Indology (Oxford Oxford
  University Press).
• Vishwa Adluri Joydeep Bagchee, Philology and
  Criticism A Guide to Mahabharata Textual
  Criticism (forthcoming).

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A. The Mahabharata Archetype (contd.)
Slide 4 Illustrating the distinction between
witness texts, source texts, and archetype
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B. From Archetype to Architecture
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B. From Archetype to Architecture (contd.)
Slide 5 Structure and divisions of the
constituted text
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B. From Archetype to Architecture (contd.)
Slide 6 Division of the Mahabharata into 3
triads of 6 chapters each
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B. From Archetype to Architecture (contd.)
Slide 7 The return to the Sauti-Saunaka frame in
the Naraya?iya
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B. From Archetype to Architecture (contd.)
Slide 8 The circular narrative architecture of
the epic, illustrating the exit from the text of
niv?tti and the continuation on into prav?tti
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B. From Archetype to Architecture (contd.)
Slide 9 Organization of prav?tti into four
Gestalts or Genera, each with its respective
remainder, form of immortality, and defect
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C. Expansion versus Architecture
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C. Expansion versus Architecture (contd.)
Slide 10 A fanciful interpretation of the epics
genesis (source Gupta and Ramachandran 2007)
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C. Expansion versus Architecture (contd.)
Slide 11 Comparing interpreters different
attitudes toward the epic Part 1 K?atriya Epic
versus Brahmanic Revision
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C. Expansion versus Architecture (contd.)
Slide 12 Comparing interpreters different
attitudes toward the epic Part 2 Addition versus
Loss
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C. Expansion versus Architecture (contd.)
Slide 13 Comparing interpreters different
attitudes toward the epic Part 3 Versions versus
Levels
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C. Expansion versus Architecture (contd.)
Slide 14 Comparing interpreters different
attitudes toward the epic Part 3 Versions versus
Levels
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C. Expansion versus Architecture (contd.)
Slide 15 Vyasas narrations of the Mahabharata,
showing how Saunaka in the Astikaparvan forges
together the Astika narrative with Vaisa?payanas
narration
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• 1. The thesis of different versions of the epic
  is
• A creation of 19th century (German) Orientalism.
• Part of a search for heroic Aryan origins.
• Projection of German fantasies of a militaristic
  masculine culture onto the ancient epic.
• Part of a program of vilification of indigenous
  intellectual traditions (as Brahmanism or
  Hinduism).

Slide 16a Summary of the results of our
investigation thus far
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• 2. The thesis of different versions of the epic
• Lacks all support in the epic itself.
• Ignores the fact that a text can have different
  levels of meaning.
• Ignores the epics explicit claim to being the
  thought entire (mata? k?tsna?) of Vyasa.
• Makes no distinction between what can be shown
  historically-archaeologically (e.g., settlements
  or Painted Grey Ware, etc.) and what cannot be
  shown historically-archaeologically (i.e., is
  only a textual point).

Slide 16b Summary of the results of our
investigation thus far
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• 3. This is a literary, poetical, and aesthetic
  claim
• It should not be caricatured to mean that there
  was a historical Vyasa and that we mean that this
  personage wrote the entire thing.
• It does not rule out historical or archaelogical
  investigations, but shows that we must exercise
  caution regarding what such investigations can
  show.
• Specifically, we must be cautious against the
  attempt to take the text hostage for a pugnacious
  political ideology such as Aryan theory or
  Indo-European theory.

Slide 16c Summary of the results of our
investigation thus far
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Slide 17 Motif of ascent and descent The Vasu
narratives in the Adiparvan and Naraya?iya
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1. The story of liberation. Garu?a is born into
   servitude, along with his mother Vinata. The very
   reason given for his birth is to liberate Vinata.
   In doing so, he also shatters the wheel of pain
   that separates mortals from the pot of
   immortality.
2. Liberation occurs through the structural motif of
   an ascent. This ascent begins on a mountain.
3. The liberation includes two segments one to
   Indras heaven to steal am?ta, and another to a
   height beyond Vi??u. Let us call these two
   ascents the Indra segment and Vi??u segment
   respectively.
4. These two ascents are related to each other as a
   series, not as parallel alternatives.
5. A tree and a flag-pole are closely associated
   with these two ascents.
6. The tree turns out to be an unsteady support, and
   Garu?a is forced to discard it. Vi??us
   flag-pole, in turn, is achieved through
   equanimity (Garu?as even-keeled flight) which
   impresses Vi??u.
7. The Vi??u segment is achieved by explicitly
   forsaking the Indra segment. Garu?a explicitly
   asks for immortality without the aid of am?ta. No
   one is saved by it in this narrative.
8. The Indra segment is antagonistic to ??is who
   practice tapas. Indra mocks them but they best
   him by creating Garu?a. The antagonism reveals a
   deep divide, the one of prav?tti and niv?tti.
9. Indras sovereignty is one of prav?tti, powered
   by sacrifice and vulnerable to fall. Such a
   sacrifice is the prav?tti-powering sacrifice.
10. Garu?as attainment to a region above Vi??u is a
    different kind of achievement. It is one of
    niv?tti.
11. In order to proceed on the path of niv?tti,
    Garu?a must overcome the four genera of becoming
    sacrifice, cosmology, genealogy and war.
12. Garu?a represents a different kind of sacrifice,
    a non-Agni i.e., a non-prav?tti sacrifice. Let us
    call it niv?tti-conducive sacrifice.
13. The Indra segment also prominently features a
    friendship Indra seeks out Garu?as friendship.
14. The Vi??u segment leaves the Indra segment
    intact. Indra is not unseated, his claim to the
    immortality of am?ta is challenged but not
    toppled.

Slide 18 Summary of Garu?as ascent
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• 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.
• Mahabharata 1.1.187-190.
• In this book, K???a Dvaipayana has uttered a holy
  Upani?ad. And K???a Vasudeva 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.
• Mahabharata 1.1.191, 193-195.

Slide 19 Time and Eternity as the basic concerns
of the epic
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Towards an Architecture of the Mahabharata

• Vishwa Adluri
• Hunter College, CUNY
• vadluri_at_hunter.cuny.edu
• WWW.Presocratics.Org

• Paper presented at the International Seminar on
• The Mahabharata Its Historicity, Antiquity,
  Evolution Impact on Civilization
• Organized by the Draupadi Trust, Delhi, April 2012