Bibek Debroy has carefully avoided the trap into which Gurcharan Das fell very easily. In his attempt at defining dharma (righteousness), as propounded in the Mahabharata, Das went for an elaborate explanation of the concept of dharma with references to various contemporary business and political events and characters (The Difficulty of Being Good: On the Subtle Art of Dharma). That made his book popular, but whether it could explain the intricate concept of dharma in the Mahabharata with all its ramifications is still debatable.
Debroy’s project — to translate the Mahabharata — is even more ambitious. However, he has made no pretence of trying to explain the inexplicable. Yes, he also talks about dharma, but he defines it in a manner that shows his understanding of Sanskrit and the Hindu context of its usage. He hits the nail on the head, when he says that dharma in the Mahabharata is “individual” and contextual. There are no “clear, normative indications of what is wrong and what is right, because there are indeed no absolute answers”, Debroy argues. There are instances that he cites from the Mahabharata to show how the response of Arjuna and Bhishma is different to a similar situation and yet neither of them, it would seem, can be accused of not following dharma.
All this is in the introduction to Debroy’s translation of the first volume of the Mahabharata. The introduction is significant and indeed a major highlight of the book under review. The introduction sets the tone for the text that unfolds in the 15 sections translated from the original Mahabharata as written and compiled in the name of Krishna Dwaipayan Vedavyas over a period that Debroy argues should span over a thousand years between 800 BCE and 400 ACE.
The introduction also sets at rest some doubts over whether the Mahabharata preceded the other Hindu epic, the Ramayana. Debroy points out that incidents and characters figuring in the Ramayana do resurface in the Mahabharata. It is, therefore, widely believed that the Mahabharata was written after the Ramayana, the epic that revolved around the holy war between Rama and Ravana after the latter abducted the former’s wife, Sita.
There are, however, doubts about this thesis. The Mahabharata refers to many battles that are over cattle, which represents a more primitive form of property than land. Could it be then that the Mahabharata was written before the Ramayana? Debroy’s understanding — a fairly convincing one — is that the earliest version of the Mahabharata must have been composed before the earliest version of the Ramayana and the events of the Mahabharata occurred before the events of the Ramayana. Mind you, the Mahabharata was written over a longer time span of over thousand years.
The translation of the first 15 sections of the Mahabharata leaves the reader with two immediate thoughts. One, the entire story of the Mahabharata is narrated in flashback, a narrative technique that allows the epic writer the flexibility of moving back and forth in time offering critical interpretation of events that are not always feasible in other storytelling formats. Two, Debroy has just begun a gigantic project — the first volume under review has only 15 sections and to complete the Mahabharata’s translation, he has to complete 83 more sections of almost similar length, which would take not less than half a dozen more such volumes!
To Debroy’s credit, he has kept the English translation easy and simple. Footnotes, explaining the significance of several different names used for the same protagonists, are helpful. The epic’s bias against Dhritarashtra and his clan (or the Kauravas, though Debroy rightly argues that even the Pandavas were part of the Kaurava dynasty) comes through clearly in several sections. For instance, the narrator’s sympathies lay with the Pandavas when Arjuna is being challenged by Karna at a ceremony to mark the completion of their education under the tutelage of Dronacharya.
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The narration of Draupadi’s swayamvara brings out the exquisite skills of a master storyteller. A little before Arjuna “wins” Draupadi at the swayamvara, the eldest of the Pandavas, Yudhisthira, leaves the scene. This is significant. As Arjuna and Bhima take Draupadi home and tell their mother that they have brought something for her, Kunti without turning back to see what they are referring to tells them to share it among the brothers. While she is crestfallen realising the implication of her utterance, the brothers implore Yudhisthira to make Draupadi his wife. Yudhisthira looks at his brothers, senses the desire in each of them for Draupadi and then decides that she will be the wife of all the five brothers, to ensure no conflict among the brothers arises on this score. So much drama takes place, but all of this without any commentary!
Debroy makes it obvious that he is a big fan of the Mahabharata. That bias is perhaps the book’s only flaw. He says the Mahabharata is much more real than the Ramayana. After completing the Mahabharata project, he should undertake a similar exercise for the Ramayana. He is likely to change his view.
THE MAHABHARATA
Volume 1
Translated by Bibek Debroy
Penguin Books.
496 plus 40 pages; Rs 550
