The Grand Ithihasa - The Mahabaratha

This lockdown , I was able to read both the Ithihasa - The Ramayana and The Mahabaratha. While I have heard and read short tales from both the Ithihasa, this is my first full reading of an unabridged version. Having read, I thought of sharing a short 900 words introduction to The Mahabaratha, which hopefully will spur you to read this wonderful composition. You can approach and read these two Ithihasa as a believer of Dharma or a lover of literature or a human with an inquisitive mind. 

Ithihasa means ‘this is indeed what happened’. Itihasa isn’t myth or fiction. It is a chronicle of what happened; it is fact, or so runs the belief. The Ramayana and The Mahabharata are considered Ithihasa and happen in two different time periods. Sri Rama of the Ramayana belongs to the Solar Dynasty and is the fore runner. Puru clan of The Mahabaratha belong to the Lunar dynasty and lived many hundreds of years later. While the public perception is that the former is composed as poetry and the latter as prose. This isn’t quite correct. The Ramayana has segments in prose and the Mahabharata has segments in poetry. Ithihasa are part of the smriti tradition. At the time they were composed, there was no question of texts being written down. They were recited, heard, memorized and passed down through the generations. This smriti tradition had composers. The Ramayana was composed by Valmiki, regarded as the first poet or Adi kavi. 

The composer of the Mahabharata was Vedavyasa or Vyasadeva. He was so named because he classified (vyasa) the Vedas. Vedavyasa or Vyasadeva isn’t a proper name. It is a title. Once in a while, in accordance with the needs of the era, the Vedas need to be classified. Each such person obtains the title and there have been twenty-eight Vyasadevas so far.According to popular belief and according to what the Mahabharata itself states, it was composed by Krishna Dvaipayana Vedavyasa (Vyasadeva). But the text was not composed and cast in stone at a single point in time. Multiple authors kept adding layers and embellishing it.

The text of the Mahabharata tells us that Krishna Dvaipayana finished this composition in three years. This doesn’t necessarily mean that he composed 90,000 shlokas in three years. The text also tells us that there are three versions to the Mahabharata. The original version was called Jaya and had 8,800 shlokas. This was expanded to 24,000 shlokas and called Bharata. Finally, it was expanded to 90,000 (or 100,000) shlokas and called Mahabharata. Krishna Dvaipayana didn’t rest even after that. He composed the eighteen Maha Puranas, adding another 400,000 shlokas. After composing the Mahabharata, Krishna Dvaipayana taught it to his disciple Vaishampayana. However, there is another round of recounting too. Much later, the sages assembled for a sacrifice in Naimisharanya and asked Lomaharshana (alternatively, Romaharshana) to recite what he had heard at Janamejaya’s snake-sacrifice. His proper name is Ugrashrava. Within the text itself, two people are telling the tale. Sometimes it is Vaishampayana and sometimes it is Lomaharshana. 

Mahabharata is about the lunar dynasty. The lunar dynasty begins with Soma (the moon) and goes down through Pururava, Nahusha and Yayati. Yayati became old, but wasn’t ready to give up the pleasures of life. He asked his sons to temporarily loan him their youth. All but one refused. The ones who refused were cursed that they would never be kings, and this includes the Yadavas (descended from Yadu). The one who agreed was Puru and the lunar dynasty continued through him.

Puru’s son Duhshanta was made famous by Kalidasa in the Duhshanta–Shakuntala story and their son was Bharata, contributing to the name of Bharatavarsha (now known as India). Bharata’s grandson was Kuru. Kuru’s grandson was Shantanu. Through Satyavati, Shantanu fathered Chitrangada and Vichitravirya. Krishna Dvaipayana (composer of The Mahabaratha) and Bhisma are step sons of Shantanu. Shantanu’s grandsons are Dhritarasthra and Pandu.  

Dhritarashtra’s sons were called Kouravas and Pandu’s son were called Pandavas. We often tend to think of the Kouravas as the evil protagonists in the Mahabharata story and the Pandavas as the good protagonists. Since Kuru was a common ancestor, the appellation Kourava applies equally to Yudhishthira & his brothers and Duryodhana & his brothers.The Pandavas won the Kurukshetra war, which went on for 18 days. However, their five sons through Droupadi were killed. So was Bhima’s son Ghatotkacha, fathered on Hidimba. As was Arjuna’s son Abhimanyu, fathered on Subhadra. Abhimanyu’s son Parikshit inherited the throne in Hastinapura, but was killed by a serpent. Parikshit’s son was Janamejaya.

When Parikshit was killed by a serpent, Janamejaya organized a snake-sacrifice to destroy the serpents. With all the sages assembled there, Vaishampayana turned up and the assembled sages wanted to know the story of the Mahabharata, as composed by Krishna Dvaipayana. Janamejaya also wanted to know why Parikshit had been killed by the serpent. That’s the background against which the epic is recited.

While the original Ithihasa was composed in Sanskrit, there are many different versions or recensions of The Mahabharata in different languages across India. However, between 1919 and 1966, the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) in Pune produced what has come to be known as the critical edition. This is an authenticated text produced by a board of scholars and seeks to eliminate later interpolations, unifying the text across the various regional versions. Thus, interpreted in terms of BORI’s critical edition, the Mahabharata no longer possesses the 100,000 shlokas it is supposed to have. The figure is a little short of 75,000 (73,787 to be precise).Hari Vamsha is described as a khila or supplement to the Mahabharata and BORI includes it as part of the critical edition, though in a separate volume. With the Hari Vamsha, the number of shlokas increases to a shade less than 80,000 (79,860 to be precise).

There are only five unabridged translations—by Kisori Mohan Ganguly (1883–96), by Manmatha Nath Dutt (1895–1905), by the University of Chicago and J.A.B. van Buitenen (1973 onwards), by P. Lal and Writers Workshop (2005 onwards) and the Clay Sanskrit Library edition (2005 onwards).

I read the translation of BORI critical edition in English by Bibek DebRoy , who is a prolific translator par excellence and currently Chairman of PM’s Economic Council. This is a magnum opus in 10 volumes and more than 6000 pages. 

Do go and read the grandest Ithihasa - The Mahabaratha.