Irawati Karve and Yuganta: an anthropologist's Mahabharata

I've been reading Irawati Karve's Yuganta, a collection of essays on the Mahabharata and its characters. Had read a couple of these essays as an adolescent when I was heavily into Mahabharata-related literature (straightforward translations as well as analytical works by Krishna Chaitanya and others) and I remember feeling a mild annoyance towards them at the time. Karve's approach is very much that of the anthropologist – mercilessly practical, often giving the impression that she has the characters and their motivations under a microscope in a lab. Though she speaks of the Mahabharata with genuine fondness ("I am indeed fortunate that I can read today a story called Jaya, which was sung three thousand years ago, and discover myself in it"), her treatment of the characters is at the other end of the spectrum from that of Kamala Subramanian, whose tender, empathetic Mahabharata was my favourite version of the epic for many years, and who did her best to present the best qualities and personal struggles of most of the characters.

It's important to note that Karve's approach is a historical one, based on the belief that the seed of the story was an actual event that took place around 1000 BC; this is, of course, tempered by the idea that the epic in its original form was vastly different from the embellished, repeatedly reworked version we have today. Her thesis is that the original work was one of the last examples of a pragmatism in Indian literature that was subsequently lost. In her essays she doesn’t at all deal with the religious aspects of the Mahabharata, treating them as a later interpolation: she makes the point that the Krishna of the original epic – a powerful and shrewd Yadava king who was indeed the prime mover for many of the key events in the story – bore little resemblance to the Krishna who emerged in subsequent centuries ("the flute-playing lover of milkmaids, the divine child") as Indian literature became more sentimental, more centered around what she calls "the dreamy escapism of the Bhakti tradition". (Some of the phrases she uses in this context are pleasingly irreverent: "in later times, when Godhead had been thrust upon Krishna..." and "later authors made Bhishma speak the banalities of the Shantiparva".)

Note: In my readings of the Mahabharata I've personally been interested in Krishna much more as a conflicted avatar, not always fully aware of his role, struggling to reconcile his human feelings and attachments with the Big Picture (a bit like Gandalf in the Tolkien Universe, having only a dim recollection that he is an incarnation of Olorin, the powerful Maia) than as a cocky God-figure manipulating the other characters like puppets. But this is one of the first times that I've come across a Mahabharata-Krishna who can be defined in strictly human terms, without raising the question of his divinity at all.

Bheeshma and Karna

Though I find Karve's essays much more stimulating now, I can't help being simultaneously amused and discomfited by her treatment of two of the Mahabharat's most complex and esteemed characters: Bheeshma and Karna. In the essay titled "The Final Effort", she makes the provocative point that Bheeshma, by sacrificing conjugal happiness and his rights to the throne, put himself in a position where he acquired moral superiority over the other characters (who led more conventional lives) – so that it was never possible for them to question his actions. And that, under the pretext of being responsible for the house of the Kurus, he far overstayed his welcome – continuing to dodder about as a granddaddy/great-granddaddy figure to generations of princes long after he should properly have given up worldly life and retired to the forest with his step-mother Satyavati. "That is what a Kshatriya was supposed to do...but this rule applied to ordinary family men immersed in their own affairs. Did Bhishma think he was immune because he belonged to that category of men who sacrifice the self and live only for others?...In the last chapter of his life it looks as if he deliberately sought out responsibilities that were not even his."

In this context, Karve makes another astute observation:

Bhishma was famed as a man who was completely unselfish...a man who lived for the good of his clan, not himself. When a man does something for himself, his actions are performed within certain limits – limits that are set by the jealous scrutiny of others. But let a man set out to sacrifice himself and do good to others, and the normal limits vanish. He can become completely ruthless in carrying out his objectives. The injustices done by idealists, patriots, saints and crusaders can be far greater than those done by the worst tyrants.

In her view, almost all the significant women characters in the epic are victims of Bheeshma's injustices – notably Kunti, Gandhari and Madri, princesses of noble houses who were all married off to undeserving and/or cursed men and yoked to the house of Hastinapur where they found nothing but unhappiness.

However, she's even harsher with poor Karna. Though she admits at one point that he appears to be "a noble person and a true friend", she casually dismisses the episodes that most of his fame is built on, and which are such crucial parts of Indian folklore: when he promised Kunti that he would not kill any of his brothers except Arjuna, she says he was motivated not by generosity or love but by contempt; the giving away of his kavacha and kundalas to Indra was apparently nothing but a self-conscious attempt to prove himself better than others; and he was an overrated warrior and a poor military strategist, given to running away from the battlefield. Incidentally, Karve treats Karna’s tirade about the immorality of the Madraka women, mentioned in this post, as a later addition to the text. It makes no sense, she says, because people routinely ate beef in those days, and the standards of "morality" in this passage are defined more by contemporary standards than those prevalent at the time of the epic. (The RSS can start sharpening their tridents again.)

There's much more to say about Yuganta but I'm pressed for time now (going out of town for a few days) and will save it for another post. But do pick the book up if you're interested in a perspective on the Mahabharata that runs against the conventional wisdom handed down to us through Amar Chitra Kathas, granny's tales and TV serials – and especially if you've ever wondered what the epic might have been like in its original form, and the nature and purpose of the alterations that crept into it over the centuries. Whether or not you agree with Karve’s interpretations, Yuganta is certainly a valuable look at how different the Mahabharata is when sentimentality/melodrama (of the sort that in Karve's view became popular long after the original epic was written) have been siphoned out of it. (I'm not making any judgement call about which form is better, but they are notably different.)

Related post: Old tales, new renderings