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Tuesday, November 22, 2016

My thoughts on Mahabharata and Draupadi vastraharan

It is useful to evaluate the story of Draupadi Vastraharana in multiple layers of the Mahabharata from historical context. Since these earlier texts are non-existent, they have to be inferred, although there is much scholarship on the Jayam, the Bharata and the Mahabharata available.

The earliest Jayam is from the late Vedic and post vedic times of maybe 800 BC to about 300 BC and should be read with the Vedic Brahmanas, Baudhayana and Gautama dharma sutra which are the most ancient of the dharma shastras. In all of these the wife is the property of the husband and he has the right to gamble her away if he so desires - and the winner has the right to the woman (disrobing being just a euphemism). The purpose of the original story is to highlight that what is right according to the dharma sutra may not really be right - it was initially a straightforward play highlighting many social rules which contradict the principles of natural justice and should be read as such. Iin this time Krishna was not yet a God either to the Vedic people nor to the story itself - Krishna is just a person of doubtful Aryan parentage and to whom all kinds of trickery is ascribed (which is why he is called Krishna - his colour emphasises his deceit, but serves to illustrate as to how ends can justify means - including trickery. The laws of the dharma shastra contradict what seems right to the people listening to the story - since the Pandavas are good and Kauravas are bad. On the face of it, what Krishna does in the Kurukshetra war is trickery - but it still correct!!! His upadesha in the Gita probably ended 2/3rd of the way into the 2nd chapter in the original version, mostly reflecting upanishadic thought about Atma and its nature. The Jayam was much shorter than the Bharata and of course dwarfed the Mahabharata.

The second layer of Mahabharata is a more complex story of the Bharata - probably between 300 BC to 300 AD - where the story starts to get a bit muddled because the people were adopting a Hinduism which was in transition, a time when Buddhists were in power and new Gods were emerging from South India, Kushans, Indo Greeks and Scythians - a time when Panini grammar and writing had come to India permitting enlargement of the Jayam to the Bharata - the dharma was still of the original sutra literature but the people were following a more modified Hinduism to which these original dharma rules were not so strictly applicable. Therefore the epic story was getting newer interpretations which were still more confusing. The Bharata was a slowly enlarging manuscript and the Gita was enlarged by the addition of the Karma marga portions which are a post upanishadic and very complex philosophy of action - this reinterprets the actions of the story which also got enlarged. Krishna was still not a God in the story although to the common people the name Krishna coincided with the most popular God after Shiva (who probably predates Krishna). In this period the Bhagavatas and their Bhagavan dominated the region around Delhi. It is because of these contradictions, that the Puranas in their earliest versions started getting written to explain away the contradictions in the epic and the Bharata enlargement coincided with the earliest of the Puranic explanations.

The final version of the Mahabharata emerged post Gupta period - the Guptas were Vaishnavites and the Hinduism we know took its final current form in this period. During this time the Mahabharata took its current form with great enlargement. Now Krishna was a God, one of the most popular Gods of the time with Royal patronage. So the story took a twist because how could Draupadi have a vastraharan when Krishna is there in the story? So he saves her supernaturally and the concept of Bhakti and prapatti enters into the story. Gita reached its current form with addition of the Bhakti portions - because of which the three parts of the Gita based on Upanishadic Gyana, Karma and Bhakti marge are intertwined and encapsulate all of Hindu philosophy in a beautiful concise form. Puranas reached their current form during this time and because of the contradictions, they explain actions in too many different ways causing more confusion - since the explanation adds to the confusion. Samkhya philosophy and rebirth is an essential part of the Vaishnavism of this period and its addition to the story causes further complication, since Dashavatara and Krishna as rebirth of Vedic God Vishnu now gets added. The bare-bones of the story remain the same, but a Bhakti Vedantic explanation of the entire story including the vastaharan, addition of Krishna birth story into the Mahabharata and modification of the story in tune with Samhkya theory i.e. karma not from action perspective but karma from rebirth perspective occur. A deep sense of trying to explain everything in a way different from what the original story teller intended mean that without proper understanding of the three layers of the Mahabharata, the story can never be properly understood or debated - since the explanations are trying to push the Bhakti philosophy and Samkhya philosophy rather than the original Upanishadic philosophy (which is very different from Samkhya)

At the end of the day, the story is just a story - things happen. We seek to understand all the reasons behind the actions - and in the process we gain wisdom. In any theatrical play, the story provokes thought - nothing provokes more thought than Mahabharata - whether it is actions of Yudhistira, Bhishma, Arjuna, Krishna - everything is complex and requires a lot of analysis.

But it is important to realise also that the Dharma of the Vedic Brahmana was extremely regressive and not at all palatable to the modern mind - we seek to find goodness in the Veda but whether it is caste system or the complex rules of the Brahmana condensed into Baudhayana - people are not equal, women have a lesser place in society and are the property of the father and husband - and the purpose of the story is in fact critical - to show how these regressive rules are meant to be broken rather than adhered to .

In that sense - Mahabharata is a very modern story indeed. Its a thought provoking play, enough to spend a lifetime analysing. To me it has always been the greatest play and greatest story ever written. It would be amazing to have it remade as a historical tele play - but with nuanced rather than crude interpretations as with the earlier versions. 


Thursday, November 17, 2016

Mark Twain on India


http://www.gutenberg.org/files/5812/5812.txt

The Parsees are a remarkable community. There are only about 60,000 in Bombay, and only about half as many as that in the rest of India; but they make up in importance what they lack in numbers. They are highly educated, energetic, enterprising, progressive, rich, and the Jew himself is not more lavish or catholic in his charities and benevolences. The Parsees build and endow hospitals, for both men and animals; and they and their womenkind keep an open purse for all great and good objects. They are a political force, and a valued support to the government. They have a pure and lofty religion, and they preserve it in its integrity and order their lives by it.



The criminal side of the native has always been picturesque, always readable. The Thuggee and one or two other particularly outrageous features of it have been suppressed by the English, but there is enough of it left to keep it darkly interesting. One finds evidence of these survivals in the newspapers. Macaulay has a light-throwing passage upon this matter in his great historical sketch of Warren Hastings, where he is describing some effects which followed the temporary paralysis of Hastings' powerful government brought about by Sir Philip Francis and his party: "The natives considered Hastings as a fallen man; and they acted after their kind. Some of our readers may have seen, in India, a cloud of crows pecking a sick vulture to death--no bad type of what happens in that country as often as fortune deserts one who has been great and dreaded. In an instant all the sycophants, who had lately been ready to lie for him, to forge for him, to pander for him, to poison for him, hasten to purchase the favor of his victorious enemies by accusing him. An Indian government has only to let it be understood that it wishes a particular man to be ruined, and in twenty-four hours it will be furnished with grave charges, supported by depositions so full and circumstantial that any person unaccustomed to Asiatic mendacity would regard them as decisive. It is well if the signature of the destined victim is not counterfeited at the foot of some illegal compact, and if some treasonable paper is not slipped into a hiding-place in his house." That was nearly a century and a quarter ago.


An article in one of the chief journals of India (the Pioneer) shows that in some respects the native of to-day is just what his ancestor was then. Here are niceties of so subtle and delicate a sort that they lift their breed of rascality to a place among the fine arts, and almost entitle it to respect: "The records of the Indian courts might certainly be relied upon to prove that swindlers as a class in the East come very close to, if they do not surpass, in brilliancy of execution and originality of design the most expert of their fraternity in Europe and America. India in especial is the home of forgery. There are some particular districts which are noted as marts for the finest specimens of the forger's handiwork. The business is carried on by firms who possess stores of stamped papers to suit every emergency. They habitually lay in a store of fresh stamped papers every year, and some of the older and more thriving houses can supply documents for the past forty years, bearing the proper water-mark and possessing the genuine appearance of age. Other districts have earned notoriety for skilled perjury, a pre-eminence that excites a respectful admiration when one thinks of the universal prevalence of the art, and persons desirous of succeeding in false suits are ready to pay handsomely to avail themselves of the services of these local experts as witnesses." Various instances illustrative of the methods of these swindlers are given.


They exhibit deep cunning and total depravity on the part of the swindler and his pals, and more obtuseness on the part of the victim than one would expect to find in a country where suspicion of your neighbor must surely be one of the earliest things learned. The favorite subject is the young fool who has just come into a fortune and is trying to see how poor a use he can put it to. I will quote one example: "Sometimes another form of confidence trick is adopted, which is invariably successful. The particular pigeon is spotted, and, his acquaintance having been made, he is encouraged in every form of vice. When the friendship is thoroughly established, the swindler remarks to the young man that he has a brother who has asked him to lend him Rs.10,000. The swindler says he has the money and would lend it; but, as the borrower is his brother, he cannot charge interest. So he proposes that he should hand the dupe the money, and the latter should lend it to the swindler's brother, exacting a heavy pre-payment of interest which, it is pointed out, they may equally enjoy in dissipation. The dupe sees no objection, and on the appointed day receives Rs.7,000 from the swindler, which he hands over to the confederate. The latter is profuse in his thanks, and executes a promissory note for Rs.10,000, payable to bearer. The swindler allows the scheme to remain quiescent for a time, and then suggests that, as the money has not been repaid and as it would be unpleasant to sue his brother, it would be better to sell the note in the bazaar. The dupe hands the note over, for the money he advanced was not his, and, on being informed that it would be necessary to have his signature on the back so as to render the security negotiable, he signs without any hesitation. The swindler passes it on to confederates, and the latter employ a respectable firm of solicitors to ask the dupe if his signature is genuine. He admits it at once, and his fate is sealed. A suit is filed by a confederate against the dupe, two accomplices being made co-defendants. They admit their Signatures as indorsers, and the one swears he bought the note for value from the dupe. The latter has no defense, for no court would believe the apparently idle explanation of the manner in which he came to endorse the note."


There is only one India! It is the only country that has a monopoly of grand and imposing specialties. When another country has a remarkable thing, it cannot have it all to itself--some other country has a duplicate. But India--that is different. Its marvels are its own; the patents cannot be infringed; imitations are not possible. And think of the size of them, the majesty of them, the weird and outlandish character of the most of them! There is the Plague, the Black Death: India invented it; India is the cradle of that mighty birth. The Car of Juggernaut was India's invention. So was the Suttee; and within the time of men still living eight hundred widows willingly, and, in fact, rejoicingly, burned themselves to death on the bodies of their dead husbands in a single year. Eight hundred would do it this year if the British government would let them. Famine is India's specialty. Elsewhere famines are inconsequential incidents--in India they are devastating cataclysms; in one case they annihilate hundreds; in the other, millions. India had 2,000,000 gods, and worships them all. In religion all other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire. With her everything is on a giant scale--even her poverty; no other country can show anything to compare with it. And she has been used to wealth on so vast a scale that she has to shorten to single words the expressions describing great sums. She describes 100,000 with one word --a 'lahk'; she describes ten millions with one word--a 'crore'.



These reports of Thug expeditions run along interminably in one monotonous tune: "Met a sepoy--killed him; met 5 pundits--killed them; met 4 Rajpoots and a woman--killed them"--and so on, till the statistics get to be pretty dry. But this small trip of Feringhea's Forty had some little variety about it. Once they came across a man hiding in a grave --a thief; he had stolen 1,100 rupees from Dhunroj Seith of Parowtee. They strangled him and took the money. They had no patience with thieves. They killed two treasure-bearers, and got 4,000 rupees. They came across two bullocks "laden with copper pice," and killed the four drivers and took the money. There must have been half a ton of it. I think it takes a double handful of pice to make an anna, and 16 annas to make a rupee; and even in those days the rupee was worth only half a dollar. Coming back over their tracks from Baroda, they had another picturesque stroke of luck: "'The Lohars of Oodeypore' put a traveler in their charge for safety." Dear, dear, across this abyssmal gulf of time we still see Feringhea's lips uncover his teeth, and through the dim haze we catch the incandescent glimmer of his smile. He accepted that trust, good man; and so we know what went with the traveler. Even Rajahs had no terrors for Feringhea; he came across an elephant-driver belonging to the Rajah of Oodeypore and promptly strangled him. "A total of 100 men and 5 women murdered on this expedition."


We have now followed the big official book through, and we understand what Thuggee was, what a bloody terror it was, what a desolating scourge it was. In 1830 the English found this cancerous organization imbedded in the vitals of the empire, doing its devastating work in secrecy, and assisted, protected, sheltered, and hidden by innumerable confederates --big and little native chiefs, customs officers, village officials, and native police, all ready to lie for it, and the mass of the people, through fear, persistently pretending to know nothing about its doings; and this condition of things had existed for generations, and was formidable with the sanctions of age and old custom. If ever there was an unpromising task, if ever there was a hopeless task in the world, surely it was offered here--the task of conquering Thuggee. But that little handful of English officials in India set their sturdy and confident grip upon it, and ripped it out, root and branch! How modest do Captain Vallancey's words sound now, when we read them again, knowing what we know: "The day that sees this far-spread evil completely eradicated from India, and known only in name, will greatly tend to immortalize British rule in the East." It would be hard to word a claim more modestly than that for this most noble work.


The Indian trains are manned by natives exclusively. The Indian stations except very large and important ones--are manned entirely by natives, and so are the posts and telegraphs. The rank and file of the police are natives. All these people are pleasant and accommodating. One day I left an express train to lounge about in that perennially ravishing show, the ebb and flow and whirl of gaudy natives, that is always surging up and down the spacious platform of a great Indian station; and I lost myself in the ecstasy of it, and when I turned, the train was moving swiftly away. I was going to sit down and wait for another train, as I would have done at home; I had no thought of any other course. But a native official, who had a green flag in his hand, saw me, and said politely: "Don't you belong in the train, sir?" "Yes." I said. He waved his flag, and the train came back! And he put me aboard with as much ceremony as if I had been the General Superintendent. They are kindly people, the natives. The face and the bearing that indicate a surly spirit and a bad heart seemed to me to be so rare among Indians--so nearly non-existent, in fact--that I sometimes wondered if Thuggee wasn't a dream, and not a reality. The bad hearts are there, but I believe that they are in a small, poor minority. One thing is sure: They are much the most interesting people in the world--and the nearest to being incomprehensible. At any rate, the hardest to account for. Their character and their history, their customs and their religion, confront you with riddles at every turn-riddles which are a trifle more perplexing after they are explained than they were before. You can get the facts of a custom--like caste, and Suttee, and Thuggee, and so on--and with the facts a theory which tries to explain, but never quite does it to your satisfaction. You can never quite understand how so strange a thing could have been born, nor why.



All day long one has this monotony of dust-colored dead levels and scattering bunches of trees and mud villages. You soon realize that India is not beautiful; still there is an enchantment about it that is beguiling, and which does not pall. You cannot tell just what it is that makes the spell, perhaps, but you feel it and confess it, nevertheless. Of course, at bottom, you know in a vague way that it is history; it is that that affects you, a haunting sense of the myriads of human lives that have blossomed, and withered, and perished here, repeating and repeating and repeating, century after century, and age after age, the barren and meaningless process; it is this sense that gives to this forlorn, uncomely land power to speak to the spirit and make friends with it; to, speak to it with a voice bitter with satire, but eloquent with melancholy. The deserts of Australia and the ice-barrens of Greenland have no speech, for they have no venerable history; with nothing to tell of man and his vanities, his fleeting glories and his miseries, they have nothing wherewith to spiritualize their ugliness and veil it with a charm. There is nothing pretty about an Indian village--a mud one--and I do not remember that we saw any but mud ones on that long flight to Allahabad. It is a little bunch of dirt-colored mud hovels jammed together within a mud wall. As a rule, the rains had beaten down parts of some of the houses, and this gave the village the aspect of a mouldering and hoary ruin. I believe the cattle and the vermin live inside the wall; for I saw cattle coming out and cattle going in; and whenever I saw a villager, he was scratching. This last is only circumstantial evidence, but I think it has value. The village has a battered little temple or two, big enough to hold an idol, and with custom enough to fat-up a priest and keep him comfortable. Where there are Mohammedans there are generally a few sorry tombs outside the village that have a decayed and neglected look. The villages interested me because of things which Major Sleeman says about them in his books--particularly what he says about the division of labor in them. He says that the whole face of India is parceled out into estates of villages; that nine-tenths of the vast population of the land consist of cultivators of the soil; that it is these cultivators who inhabit the villages; that there are certain "established" village servants--mechanics and others who are apparently paid a wage by the village at large, and whose callings remain in certain families and are handed down from father to son, like an estate. He gives a list of these established servants: Priest, blacksmith, carpenter, accountant, washerman, basketmaker, potter, watchman, barber, shoemaker, brazier, confectioner, weaver, dyer, etc. In his day witches abounded, and it was not thought good business wisdom for a man to marry his daughter into a family that hadn't a witch in it, for she would need a witch on the premises to protect her children from the evil spells which would certainly be cast upon them by the witches connected with the neighboring families.



Major Sleeman reveals the fact that the trade union and the boycott are antiquities in India. India seems to have originated everything. The "sweeper" belongs to the bottom caste; he is the lowest of the low--all other castes despise him and scorn his office. But that does not trouble him. His caste is a caste, and that is sufficient for him, and so he is proud of it, not ashamed. Sleeman says: "It is perhaps not known to many of my countrymen, even in India, that in every town and city in the country the right of sweeping the houses and streets is a monopoly, and is supported entirely by the pride of castes among the scavengers, who are all of the lowest class. The right of sweeping within a certain range is recognized by the caste to belong to a certain member; and if any other member presumes to sweep within that range, he is excommunicated--no other member will smoke out of his pipe or drink out of his jug; and he can get restored to caste only by a feast to the whole body of sweepers. If any housekeeper within a particular circle happens to offend the sweeper of that range, none of his filth will be removed till he pacifies him, because no other sweeper will dare to touch it; and the people of a town are often more tyrannized over by these people than by any other."



You have a long drive through the outskirts of Benares before you get to the hotel. And all the aspects are melancholy. It is a vision of dusty sterility, decaying temples, crumbling tombs, broken mud walls, shabby huts.



It has had a tumultuous history, both materially and spiritually. It started Brahminically, many ages ago; then by and by Buddha came in recent times 2,500 years ago, and after that it was Buddhist during many centuries--twelve, perhaps--but the Brahmins got the upper hand again, then, and have held it ever since. It is unspeakably sacred in Hindoo eyes, and is as unsanitary as it is sacred, and smells like the rind of the dorian. It is the headquarters of the Brahmin faith, and one-eighth of the population are priests of that church. But it is not an overstock, for they have all India as a prey. All India flocks thither on pilgrimage, and pours its savings into the pockets of the priests in a generous stream, which never fails. A priest with a good stand on the shore of the Ganges is much better off than the sweeper of the best crossing in London. A good stand is worth a world of money. The holy proprietor of it sits under his grand spectacular umbrella and blesses people all his life, and collects his commission, and grows fat and rich; and the stand passes from father to son, down and down and down through the ages, and remains a permanent and lucrative estate in the family.



I should have been glad to acquire some sort of idea of Hindoo theology, but the difficulties were too great, the matter was too intricate. Even the mere A, B, C of it is baffling. There is a trinity--Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu--independent powers, apparently, though one cannot feel quite sure of that, because in one of the temples there is an image where an attempt has been made to concentrate the three in one person. The three have other names and plenty of them, and this makes confusion in one's mind. The three have wives and the wives have several names, and this increases the confusion. There are children, the children have many names, and thus the confusion goes on and on. It is not worth while to try to get any grip upon the cloud of minor gods, there are too many of them. It is even a justifiable economy to leave Brahma, the chiefest god of all, out of your studies, for he seems to cut no great figure in India. The vast bulk of the national worship is lavished upon Shiva and Vishnu and their families. Shiva's symbol--the "lingam" with which Vishnu began the Creation--is worshiped by everybody, apparently. It is the commonest object in Benares. It is on view everywhere, it is garlanded with flowers, offerings are made to it, it suffers no neglect. Commonly it is an upright stone, shaped like a thimble-sometimes like an elongated thimble. This priapus-worship, then, is older than history. Mr. Parker says that the lingams in Benares "outnumber the inhabitants."