PART 1

Introduction

I became aware of this masterpiece of a book, On the Meaning of the Mahabharata by Shri V. S. Sukthankar, when Joydeep Bagchee mentioned it as a must-read for anyone with an inkling of interest in the Mahabharata (MB). This was in a Mahabharata lecture series by Joydeep Bagchee and Vishwa Adluri. I got the book, read it, and thought of making a small correction in Bagchee’s statement that, it is a must-read for anyone calling oneself an Indian, nay, a human being (of course, with a knowledge of English reading). If I had my say in the education system I would make this book a compulsory reading, after translating it into all Indian languages, in every school curriculum. I remember books like ‘The Tale of Two Cities’ or ‘David Copperfield’ as ‘non-detailed’ reading in our school and then proceeding with discussions on the French Revolution or the conditions of Victorian England. Great books, no doubt, but the issues dealt rarely made sense to my delicate mind.

If only we had something like this book whose message could give us a deeper understanding of ourselves and our country. This book by VS Sukthankar is a wonderful exposition on the meaning of the Mahabharata in four lucid chapters. It gives us more than enough reasons to understand why the MB is simply the most important literature of our land. It also tells us why the MB belongs to all Indians irrespective of ‘varna’, ‘jati’, tradition, and language. Sukhthankar brilliantly communicates to us the message of the MB at different levels, from the plain narrative to the highest philosophical ideal. MB has perhaps a role to play in the moulding of any human being from when the brain begins to understand language to the point of death.

Amazingly, such is the strength of our deracination that this book of 1957, as a compilation of lectures delivered in 1942, came to my reading list only in 2019. The MB, termed as the fifth Veda, is filled with hundreds of stories with connected loops of narratives; it describes history, men, kings, gods, philosophy, administration, political theories, and righteous living. It is an encyclopaedia covering all aspects of human life. The most famous statement describing the MB says, ‘What is in this work may be found elsewhere, but what is not in this work is to be found nowhere.’ This unique work’s message represents the epitome of truth as long as humans exist in this present form of evolution. And Sukhthankar tells us why.  

VS Sukthankar  

Vishnu Sitaram Sukthankar (1887–1943) was an eminent Indologist and scholar of Sanskrit. He initially trained as a mathematician at Cambridge after completing his basic education in Bombay. He turned his interest towards Indology and obtained his doctorate from Germany which occupied an important place in Indological studies in the nineteenth century and the first few decades of the twentieth century. After briefly working in the Archaeological Survey of India, he returned to Britain in 1919 to re-join his family.  

In 1925, Sukthankar became the General Editor of the Critical Edition of the Mahabharata at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune. The Critical Edition involved the great labour of many scholars and intellectuals studying and collating the many manuscripts of the MB in different languages. The first part of this monumental work was the Adi Parva (the first of the eighteen books of MB) published in its entirety in 1933. This involved collating about 60 partial manuscripts of the Mahabharata in ten different scripts belonging to two major recensions (Northern and Southern). A framework of ‘Textual Criticism’, evolved mainly by Sukthankar’s efforts, brought out finally the Critical Edition of the whole Mahabharata in 1966, two decades after his death. The Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute has done a huge service to the cause of our nation and its heritage in this landmark publication. This work is the base foundation for many future scholarly studies. Later, Oriental Institute at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in the years between 1951 to 1975 brought out a Critical Edition of Ramayana based on Sukthankar’s principles of textual criticism. In January 1943, Sukthankar had an invitation to deliver a series of four lectures on the meaning of Mahabharata at the University of Bombay. Unfortunately, on the day of the fourth and final lecture, he died suddenly.

These lectures remained lost to the world for a period of fifteen years. In 1963, a combined effort involving LV Sukthankar (son of VS Sukthankar) and members of Asiatic Society of Bombay like Dr BG Gokhale, GC Jhala, Vasumati Parekh, NC Parekh were successful in publishing the manuscripts of the lectures in the form of a book, On the Meaning of the Mahabharata. These lectures represent the pinnacle of lucid thinking, crisp writing, and effective communication any human being can hope to achieve.

The Critics of Mahabharata

The first chapter takes down brutally the German Indologists like Hermann Oldenberg who believed the MB to be ‘monstrous chaos.’ The German Indologists, a powerful group studying the Indian texts, had a serious view of the MB as originally consisting of a simple ‘core’ or ‘nucleus’ describing a war story between the Pandavas and the Kauravas. Later, there was an addition of a huge number of stories, philosophies, characters, and events thanks to the efforts of story-tellers, specifically the evil Brahmins. One Indologist, Hopkins, had 200,000 verses with him and yet he goes on to say that the MB is a ‘text that is no text.’ For him, the MB enlarged and altered by every recension, chapter after chapter, in a land without any sense of history. Poets simply added their pet gods, men, events, poetry, and philosophies to evolve an original Ur-MB into a complex epic which did not make sense.

German Indologists climbed on each other’s shoulders to make higher and higher claims about the MB and cut off pieces as they saw fit in search for the core MB without the interpolations. In this method of ‘Higher Criticism’ or ‘Analytical Criticism’, the Gita became a later addition, at times even comprising of just 20 verses. Some saw the Gita ending with the second chapter, the later ones simply being additions. One group believed that there was an ‘inversion’ in the MB over the centuries-the Kauravas were the true heroes; Pandavas, with polyandry in their tribe, being the true villains. Krishna was not a god at all but became one by these corruptions. And it was the job for the genius of an army of Indologists to strip the MB of all the superficialities to get to the original core of the poem. Many Indian counterparts unfortunately subscribed to these toxic narratives of the German Indologists. One German Indologist believes the MB to be in praise of King Asoka!

This effort of German Indologists to purge the interpolations takes a severe beating in the hands of Sukthankar. He rubbishes the efforts and shows that such studies come from a superficial understanding. He calls these studies as wild aberrations and speculations causing intense violence to the status of MB. Analyzing many of such narratives, Sukthankar shows clearly the spuriousness of their efforts and establishes that the MB has a well-defined coherent unity as one individual conceived the unity of a plan between the different parts of the poem, thus rendering successive expansions out of the question. The MB was a finished product by no later than 5^th century BCE. Only one Jesuit scholar, Joseph Dahlmann, according to Sukthankar, came closest in the understanding of the MB. Most of the other efforts were arbitrary, supported by the flimsiest of arguments, without a basis in neither the work itself nor Indian tradition. In contemporary times, the great Indian philosophers, Vishwa Adluri and Joydeep Bagchee in their The Nay Science emphatically and correctly reject the German Indologists in an extremely detailed manner. There is no doubt about the dubiousness of the entire German Indology project which still finds takers in contemporary American Indology. 

Mahabharata On the Mundane Plane

The next lecture is a wonderful summary of the story of the MB itself without considering its deeper philosophy. The heart of the MB is a story of warring cousins who grow up from childhood together. Ultimately, a quest for power leads to a war of gigantic proportions, the Kurukshetra war, which then leads to near-total death of the warring factions. Krishna is an Avatara and sides with the wronged and the good Pandavas; where the Kauravas are the villains. Despite all the machinations of the evil Kauravas and plenty of suffering of the Pandavas, including a twelve-year banishment to the forests, it is the Pandavas who finally win. The MB runs into 100,000 verses with 200,000 lines which is eight times that of Iliad and Odyssey put together, and three and a half times of the entire Bible.

Hundreds of stories and didactic material weave into this basic story to create a huge treatise covering law, philosophy, religion, custom, geography, cosmology, and culture of the land and its people. The loops of narratives in the descriptions; the author himself, Vyasa, playing a key role in the story; gods and saints entering and leaving the narratives at different times freely mixing with the mortals; courageous women coaxing their men to fight; these were all elements comprising a coherent whole which most Indians never questioned. The telling of the story is in a matter of fact manner and we never seemed to have any problems with that. The Western Indologists, however, had severe problems as their minds could not grasp it and thus attempted to break it into smaller elements.

Sukthankar feels that the brightest element of the epic poem is the usage of the meter par excellence. Only Indians and Greeks could master the art of evolving a simple and elegant measure for lengthy poems without getting repetitive. Not only that, the linguistic Indian meter could generate endless variety, always appearing as new. The asymmetrical combination of four pairs of tetrads is a poetic genius in writing the MB, says Sukthankar. The perfect expression of the poem in the form of meter makes the work real, spontaneous, and convincing.

The main characters of the MB are distinct in their characterization throughout the poem. The Pandavas are just, moderate, and generous; the Kauravas are envious, arrogant, and malignant; Karna is proud, malignant with a streak of generosity; Dhritarashtra is weak and vacillating; Vidura and Drona are always with a sense of justice and loyalty; Bhishma is the picture of perfect nobility, benevolence, and asceticism; and Draupadi is gracious womanhood with the purity of character. The highest peak of idealism, the Perfect Man, is undoubtedly Bhishma. His sense of justice, asceticism, duty, and loyalty stands unparalleled in the entire epic.

Karna has a tragic story, but that does not absolve him of the negative qualities he had. He surprisingly had a streak of generosity, but even that arises from pride and arrogance. It was not in the true spirit of charity. Unfortunately, he has been glamorised as the wronged one to extreme levels by our contemporary storytellers and filmmakers. In Telugu films especially, the depiction of Karna, Duryodhana, and even Shakuni, have severe distortions. Shakuni was pure evil, and the influential films showing him in good light, as a supporter of Pandavas in a surreptitious manner, is violence to the original.   

Vidura is a victim of his circumstances just like Karna, but he is completely different in terms of his wisdom and judgement. The most typical personality, of course, is Dhritarashtra who is a mix of good and evil and constantly vacillates between bad decisions, regret, correcting himself, and again falling prey to bad decisions because of blind love for his son. Krishna is different from Dhritarashtra in that he is beyond both good and evil. Sukthankar thus briefly narrates the principal characters of the story in a captivating manner. The importance of MB extends obviously beyond the mundane plane. There is something about the poem which has stood like a rock in the public conscience and is part of the shared geography of this land despite a lapse of thousands of years. What is this everlasting message of the MB to which the people still connect to and call it their own? The answer lies in the ethical and philosophical planes of the poem.

PART 2

Mahabharata On the Ethical Plane

So, what does the MB mean on an ethical level? What is the eternal reason message for humanity across time and space which suffuses the entire corpus of the MB? According to the text itself in the Adi Parvan, the MB is the expression of a state of tension between two orders of beings- one moral, represented by the gods incarnating as heroic individuals; the other ‘unmoral’, represented by the Asuric or demonic forces. The object of the former is to destroy the latter and thus the MB is the archetype of all wars of the past, present, and the future. Sukthankar stresses that this aspect of the MB as a projection of the cosmic background is not well known or understood, despite being evident in the epic.

The cosmic nature of Krishna is that of an Avatara undoubtedly. He is the Ishwara, Brahman of the Vedantins, and Purusa of the Samkhyas. The Pandavas are incarnations of god on a lower plane: Yudhishtra of Dharma, Bhima of Vayu which makes him related to Hanuman, Arjuna of Indra, and Nakula-Sahadeva twins of the Asvins. Yudhishtra is a supreme embodiment of Dharma. But, why did he lie regarding Ashwatthama to Drona to disarm the latter, say the naysayers? Cherry-picking of Indian scriptures and massive texts of the MB can always project the narrow biases to create alternative narratives; these people fail grandly to understand the larger context and meaning. Arjuna is a favourite of Indra and is the only Pandava to visit Indraloka in a mortal frame.

The Kauravas are incarnations of the Asuras or the anti-gods. Kalipurushah and its inseparable associate Dvapara are the evil forces who are born as Duryodhana and Shakuni respectively. Danavas, Rakshasa, and the Daityas are born as Kshatriyas to help fight Duryodhana’s enemies. The Aranya Parvan of the MB, the episode of the twelve-year banishment of the Pandavas clearly reveals this. The blind king Dhritarashtra was an incarnation of Hamsa, a son of Arishta, who represents evil and calamity. The brothers of Duryodhana were Pulastya demons.

Sukthankar says that it is wrong to imagine these representations as ‘interpolations’, a favourite accusation of the Indologists. The ideas are deeply ingrained into the texture of the epic in the form received by us. The Western experts try to identify Krishna as a later interpolation into the text where a local god becomes an important character in the book. Some even try the opposite, Krishna was a normal chieftain and becomes a god in later corruptions. Sukthankar firmly rejects this and says that there is no passage in the epic which does not presuppose, or which contradicts, Krishna’s character as an incarnation of the Supreme Being- Vishnu or Narayana.

Like the Vedas, the MB is full of allusions of conflict between the Devas and the Asuras. The Vedas refer to the fights for the lordship of worlds, the MB conflict is for another principle; and that is Dharma or a moral-ethical law. The discussion of Dharma or the right conduct during different times is the underlying essence of the MB. The subtle message and the direct discourses on the topic of Dharma permeates the entire body of the MB. The conversation between Yudhishtra with his wife Draupadi, who questions him on the misery brought about by Dharma; and later, in the Yaksha-Prashna episode where a god puts him through a series of questions are the most detailed and nuanced discussions on Dharma in the entire MB.   

Yudhishtra explains his life’s philosophy of Dharma to his wife:

‘I sacrifice because it is my duty to do so. I act virtuously not to reap the fruits of virtue, but because of my desire not to transgress the ordinances of the scriptures, and beholding also the conduct of the good and the wise. The man who wishes to reap the fruits of virtue is a trader in virtue.’

The MB is a story of the eternal conflict between Dharma and Adharma, between Light and Darkness, between Right and Wrong. But what constitutes Right, or Light, or Dharma is always a difficult question.

Sukthankar then dwells upon the various definitions of Dharma in the Indian context; this is my favourite part in the book. Manusmriti says, ‘The Veda, the sacred tradition, the customs of virtuous men, and one’s own pleasure, they declare to be visibly the four-fold means of defining Dharma.’

At the bottom of various definitions, Dharma is a belief in the conservation of moral values. Amongst the various definitions, Sukthankar finds that of Dr Bhagavan Das the best:

‘That which holds a thing together, makes it what it is, prevents it from breaking up and changing into something else; that characteristic function, fundamental attribute, and essential nature is its Dharma. Scientifically, it is characteristic property; morally and legally, it is duty; psychologically and spiritually, it is religion; and generally, it is righteousness and law. However, it is Duty above all.’   

There are many instances in the MB where there is a serious questioning of Dharma: when Draupadi is at stake in the gamble; the killing of Drona and Bhishma through means which are questionable; the killing of Karna when he is stuck in unfortunate circumstances. Sukthankar says that these questions require a deep understanding of varnas, ashramas, rites, rights and duties of women, karma, sin, expiation, and so on to get a correct answer. In this regard, the answers are not outright justifications but come from deep and subtle levels, which is beyond the comprehension of any superficial reading of the text itself.

Human existence has four ends or goals: Dharma, Artha (material pursuits), Kama (sexual, emotional, and aesthetic pursuits), and Moksha. In Indian scriptures, there never has been a condemnation of material pursuits. Artha and Kama form the bedrock of human purpose, but the important thing is to look at all the four. Material pursuits are always in the framework of Dharma, and the final ideal is a transcendence-Moksha. The final purpose of a series of human lives is Moksha, a state of no further births and never an eternal life. Ashwatthama gets an eternal life as a curse for killing the sons of Pandavas in their sleep. Dharma should always be a source for Artha and Kama; if it comes to choose between the three, it is only Dharma. The Shanti Parvan of the MB, where Bhishma on his death bed advises Yudhishtra on statecraft and human values, is another wonderful exposition on Dharma.

Sukthankar says that, in fact, the constant endeavour of the poem is the consideration of four important subjects: the duties of a king (Rajdharma); conduct in times of stress and calamity (Apadadharma), emancipation from liability to rebirth, the highest goal of human existence; and liberality. Hence, there is a higher ethical purpose in the poem. In this projection on a cosmic background, and its dealing with the constant fight between Dharma and Adharma, the MB ends up having universal validity. The fixed axis on which the universe and existence gyrate is Dharma; this is the meaning of MB on an ethical plane.  

MB on the Metaphysical Plane  

Finally, Sukthankar explains the message of MB at the highest plane going beyond Dharma and Adharma. Dharma always wins in the end, but there is a transcendent unity where both Dharma and Adharma, the Good and the Bad, merge into one whole. This unity which is both transcendental as well as immanent in creation is the Brahman (also known as Paramatman, Atman). In the MB, there is a crystallization of the attempts made by the poets to understand, to formulate, and illuminate the elusive, paradoxical Reality. This Brahman is also the innermost Ruler of the individual in the deep recesses of the heart. And this Internal Ruler is none other than Krishna, says Sukthankar.  

Krishna is always anathema to the western critics; one calls him a ‘tricky mortal’ and a ‘bizarre figure.’ That Krishna represents the Brahman, the ultimate Reality is a consistent message of the MB, says Sukthankar, and this has been the opinion of many-core traditional commentators and not of a select few at the periphery. The majestic sweep of this subtle Indian conception has left the western critics ‘nonplussed and dumbfounded’, says Sukthankar without mincing his words. In fact, the chaos which they discover in the MB is a chaos in their minds which cannot comprehend the subtility of MB. It is unfortunate that many Indians wear western glasses and join the chorus in applying strange reasoning to the MB. There is no confusion and incoherence in the MB if one approaches it with respect.

For the Indian poet-philosopher and for the ordinary folk, there is absolutely no inconsistency in the twin depiction of Krishna as a Man who has become God, and a God who has become a Man. It is only the modern critic who, with different modes of thought, different cultural backgrounds, different norms of expression, approaches the MB with a suspicion, hesitation, and superciliousness. In the process, he comes across irresolvable anomalies and the text goes out of bounds of his comprehension. Dissecting the book into parts and throwing away passages which one deems as ‘interpolations’ is not the way to understand the MB.

Arjuna and Krishna represent the Nara-Narayana– the Superman and the God respectively. God in the sense of a Supreme Reality- the Brahman, which as mentioned before, is both transcendent and immanent. The ancient commentators are clear about Arjuna and Krishna representing the Jivatman (individual soul) and the Paramatman. The Jivatman fights the great battle of life to reach the state of Paramatman. The stories of MB finally are about the quest of a human being’s need to break the thousands of obstacles to reach a final state of peace and happiness. The representation of Krishna and Arjuna is explicit in the MB about which there is no confusion. Other characters have such representations too, maybe not so explicit, says Sukthankar.

Dhritarashtra represents the lower ego blinded by foolish infatuation; he is the perfect symbol of the vacillating ego-centric self, pandering to its base passions. Duryodhana and his brothers represent the aggregate of egocentric desires and passions like lust, greed, anger, hate, envy, pride, vanity, and so on. The Gita is clear on the three most important reasons for the downfall of man which are lust, greed, and anger (Kama, Lobah, Krodha). The Kurukshetra is nothing but the psychological conflict within man of the good and evil propensities. Vidura, the wise half-brother of Dhritarashtra is the wise Buddhi, the one-pointed reason which guides the lower ones to take the correct route. Bhishma undoubtedly is the symbol of tradition, the time-binding element in human life and society, on matters concerning Dharma.

In the symbolism of the MB, finally it is Krishna, a symbol of the Changeless First Principle, free from the operation of Maya, beyond Good and Evil, who is the symbol of hope and destiny of humankind. He says categorically that godhead or ‘becoming as I am’ is a difficult ideal but possible to achieve for those who follow any of the lines of Karma, Bhakti, or Jnana Yoga with complete sincerity. The best symbolism which Sukthankar feels in the Kurukshetra war is the chariot of Arjuna, where Arjuna is the confused rider, the horses are the senses, and the charioteer Krishna is the Supreme Self.

One western critic Hopkins says, ‘if Vishnu commanded a hero to do this, who could question the right or the wrong.’ This is a typical western critic’s idea of Krishna prompting the heroes to commit certain supposed excesses in the Bharata war by calling it as a last resort of command of a deity and hence not have moral apprehensions. Sukthankar says this is ‘sheer nonsense’ emanating from a poor comprehension of the idea of Self with a capital ‘S’.

Many of the scenes of the MB appear unintelligible, uncouth, and grotesque to the superficial mind seeking inconsistencies. But they achieve a deep significance when the MB stories are analyzed on the metaphysical or the psychological plane of the mind. The keynote of the MB and the Gita is samatva, which means harmony or balance. Balance of personality which does not want a man to run away from his Dharma, but achieve a state of perfect happiness while living in the ambit of his varna and ashrama. The harmony of reason, will, and emotion is the way to a good life and reaching a destination which promises no return. The final statement of Sukthankar is a most brilliant summary of the book:

“The chaos which modern critics think they see in the Great Epic of India is but a reflex of the state of their own mind and not in the work at all, which on the other hand is a mighty pulsating work, clothing in noble language and with pleasing imagery a profound and universal philosophy, a glowing and rhythmic synthesis of life.“

Can there be a better statement? 

Concluding Remarks

I deeply enjoy English classic and non-classic literature and I have no problems in their inclusion in our school curriculums. However, like the ancient story, we are desperately searching for the jewels which are all the time around our necks. The MB is the brightest diamond of India standing unique, belonging to each one of us, irrespective of ‘caste’, ‘religion’, language, and gender.  Did the Pandavas and Kauravas really exist; where was the actual Kurukshetra; was Draupadi born from a sacrifice; did gods freely mix with humans; did Arjuna really visit the heavenly abode of Indra – these are all interesting questions which Indians forever speculate about. However, our dealing with history is different from that of the west. As SN Balagangadhara says, Rama or Krishna may or may not have existed, but Ramayana and Mahabharata are always true. The west cannot come to grips with this because of cultural differences; The west (and their colonised cousins from India) simply use different paradigms in understanding and approaching our scriptures. When lenses from another culture come to use for the study of Indian scriptures, there is a tremendous amount of intellectual violence to the scripture and to the culture.

Vishwa Adluri and Joydeep Bagchee in their The Nay Science carry forward the deconstruction of German Indological enterprise to much higher planes. VS Sukthankar brings German Indologists down to Earth and sets the tone. Adluri and Bagchee drive them to the deepest recesses of the Earth after thoroughly dismantling them first. Adluri says that the basic approach to study any text, especially Indian scriptures, is to primarily believe that the author knows more than the reader. This humility has always guided our traditional commentators and the general readers while reading the MB, and hence, there are no surprises when the MB has the status of the pancham Veda or the fifth Veda. The MB can be a source to moksha too. Indology is a malignant enterprise starting with the Germans and has now evolved into a finer and more refined form, especially in the American Universities, attacking our scriptures with the same intensity, if not more. It is funny how the discredited Freudian psychoanalysis gets an application in the study of characters in Indian texts. The Asuric forces are always active across time and space, but the message of the MB itself is clear that the Dharmic forces will always fight them. We must don the Kshatriya role and fight these inimical forces taking strength from the eternal message of the MB-Dharma is always victorious.     

References / Footnotes

1. https://hunter-cuny.academia.edu/VishwaAdluri/Resources: A link to the scanned version of Sukthankar’s book. (out of copyright and hence legal)

2. https://www.academia.edu/39571145/Prolegomena_to_Any_Future_Mahābhārata_Studies

3. https://www.academia.edu/37012141/17th_World_Sanskrit_Conference_Handout_pdf: the above two are brilliant papers of Vishwa Adluri and Joydeep Bagchee presenting an overview of their work rejecting Indological scholarship of the Mahabharata.

4. The Nay Science: A History of German Indology by Vishwa Adluri and Joydeep Bagchee, Oxford University Press, 2014. A complete deconstruction of German Indology.  

5. http://indiafacts.org/book-review-the-nay-science-by-vishwa-adluri-and-joydeep-bagchee/