Mans.hu

Of life and all its colors

About everything that amazes and confounds me.

About / Blog / Contact

Categories

Kairata Parva: Where Draupadi asks if forgiving or punishing is better – Quicknotes

by Leave a Comment

Arghabhiharana Parva
They had to give the first sacrifice to someone, Bhishma said Krishna should get it but Shishupala objected to it. Sahadeva said this is right and he challenged anyone to oppose it. No one did but every one was angry.

Shishupala Wadha

Krishna kills Shishupala.

Dyuta Parva
This is the gambling chapter and a little surprisingly after they’ve lost everything, Dhritarashtra restores the wealth and kingdom of Pandavas and sends them back.

Anudyuta Parva
Duryodhana complains to Dhritarashtra and the king agrees to call the Pandavas back and play dice one final time for the stake of the 13 year exile.
Pandavas lose and go to the exile, interesting story on how each of them leave.

Aranyaka Parva
Aranyaka means forest.  Pandavas go to the forest followed by brahmans and Yudhishthara is worried how he will sustain these brahmans and this is where another Brahman gives him a teaching about the evils of attachment and living dispassionately and performing acts because they need to be performed and not because of desire.

In this chapter Vidura and Krishna Dwayapayana or Vedavyas himself advises Dhritarashtra that he should reinstate the Pandavas but they are unable to convince Duryodhana. A sage Maitreya comes and tries to reason with Duryodhana but he doesn’t listen, Maitreya tries to scare him saying that Bhima is so powerful that he just killed he rakshasa Kirmira but Duryodhana though worried doesn’t listen to him.

Kirmira Vadha Parva
Bhima wrestles with Kirmira who is Baka’s brother who was related to Hidimba and kills Kirmira as well and they start living in that forest.

Kairata Parva
Very long chapter about the Pandavas initial stay in the forest.
Krishna pays them a visit, promises that at the end of 13 years, all Kauravas will die. He recounts his story about his fight with Shalva who lived in the flying city Soubha.
It’s also where Draupadi asks Yudhishthara why isn’t he angry seeing the bad condition of his brothers and accuses him of having no anger left since anger is very important part of being a Kshatriya.
She recounts the story of Prahlada and Bali and the lesson about whether forgiveness or punishment is better.

Yudhishthara says anger destroys everything and only forgiveness and conciliation can save the world.

Draupadi says he’s confused about this. She says that Yudhishthara always follows dharma even in the forest but he was led astray by a simple game of dice. She also says that the supreme creator God is rewarding Kauravas while punishing Pandavas and this is unfair and she can’t understand this.

Yudhishthara says blaming God is atheism and she shouldn’t do it. You should follow dharma for the sake of following Dharma and not because of its fruits and he asks her to cast aside her doubts.

Draupadi disagrees again and says that he must at least make an effort to win the kingdom back. Bhima backs her and says that dharma, artha and kama should be served equally and that serving just one out of three like Yudhishthara is wrong and weak.

Yudhishthara says that he doesn’t blame Bhima because it’s his fault that this calamity has occurred but they have already made a pact and that pact should be followed. He tells Bhima that he should have burned Yudhishthara’s hand in the Sabha when he wanted to and had a chance (he waa restrained by Arjun) and now it’s too late.

Bhima urged him to fight again and not be a coward so to speak. He said they have been in the forest for thirteen months, consider that thirteen years and consider the vanvas done. Yudhishthara reflects but this time he says that the Kauravas have a large army and lot of allies and can’t be defeated at the current moment. Bhima agrees to this and silently accepts it.

At this point Vyasa visits Yudhishthara and tells him he has divined Yudhishthara’s fear and has come to dispel it. He tells him that Arjun should visit Indra, Rudra, Varuna and Yama and thereby acquire weapons that will help him defeat the mighty warriors like Karna, Drona, Bhishma according to law. He also advised Yudhishthara to move.

Jarasandha Story – Quicknotes

by Leave a Comment

When Arjun and Krishna helped Agni burn the Khandava forest there were six survivors: Ashwasena, the snake son of  Takshaka. Maya whom Arjun spares and who is also Vishvakarma and builds the Pandavas palace. He also gives bheem his club and Arjun his conch.

Four peacocks who are sons of the Rishi Mandapala who takes the form of a peacock to have sex with their mom and have offspring so that he could go to heaven. Mandapala prayed to Agni that he won’t harm his kids, and Agni agreed. One of these kids is actually Drona.

Narada talks to Yudhishthara about how to run a country in the Sabha Parva

After he has told him how to run a country Yudhishthara asks him if this is the best sabha he has seen. He describes in detail all sabhas he’s seen and mentions where great kings go. Upon this Yudhishthara asks if he’s seen Pandu his father and if he has any message for him. Narad has seen Pandu and his message is to do a Royal Sacrifice or Rajasayu Sacrifice where a king instated himself as emperor of all other kings. Such a sacrifice was also done by Harishchandra and as a result he enjoys a special place in Indra’s Sabha.

Jarasandha Vadha Parva
Yudhishthara thinks about doing the Rajayasu but he’s not sure because this means that all kings have to be defeated and he’s not sure if it can be done. He asks Krishna and he says that he can only be successful if he defeats Jarasandha first. Jarasandha has been really cruel and has driven all the Yadav kings out of Mathura. Yudhishthara is surprised and asks how is it that someone can beat Krishna and wants to know who Jarasandha is.

Krishna tells him that a king named Brihadratha used to live in olden times and he had two wives whom he pledged to love equally. He couldn’t have any sons so he was very sad and when a Rishi came to his kingdom he served the Rishi and the Rishi said he’ll give him a boon. Brihadratha said he doesn’t want any boom because he has no child and can’t continue his lineage so the Rishi thought about this and mediated and a mango fell in his lap. The Rishi gave the mango to the king and said that feed this to your queen and she’ll have a son. Since the king loved both queens equally he couldn’t give the mango to just one queen and sliced it in half and gave it to both queens. Soon after both queens became pregnant and were delighted. But when the conceived they each had half a baby, one arm, one leg, one half of a face etc. They were very saddened by this and asked the midwife to throw the half babies away.
The midwife did as instructed. There was a demon woman who lived in this kingdom and she came across the two halves and got hold of them with the intention to eat them. But as soon as she placed them together, the two halves joined and the baby became full and became very strong and powerful, and heavy with the body of a stone. This demon woman then returned the baby to Brihadratha the king and this baby was called Jarasandha because the demon woman’s name was Jara and Sandha means joining.  This king had the boon that he could only be defeated in a wrestling match.

So Krishna says let me Arjun and Bhim go and fight him.

Bhim fights Jarasandha for 14 days and finally becomes victorious.

Digvijay Parva

After killing Jarasandha, Pandavas start their Rajayasu and four brothers go in four directions while Yudhishthara stays at home.

This is interesting because the text describes the areas they conquered and it includes references to almost all of India excluding the North East. Towards the West it goes roughly towards Pakistan I think and the South to Kerala and Andhra though not Sri Lanka. Strangely, it refers to land of Greeks and Romas in conquests of Sahadeva who went South. No explanation is given of this inconsistency.

Rajasayu Parva
Describes the opulence of the ceremony but only thing that caught my eye is that it talks about Maharatha Machella as one of the attendees which isn’t a very typical name in this text.

The Mahabharata

by Leave a Comment

My only goal for 2016 is to finish reading The Mahabharata. Specifically, the translation by Dr. Bibek Debroy which runs into 10 volumes, and is 6,088 pages in total.

The Mahabharata is one of the great pieces of literature ever written, and I am incredibly amazed at the stories in the book.

It is ten times the size of the Iliad and Odyssey combined, and along with Ramayana is one of the two great Indian epics. It is considered, ‘itihaas’, which is translated as history, but it is more accurate to translate it as ‘this is indeed what happened’. Obviously, they didn’t actually build palaces that ran miles high or have magical weapons, but according to Dr. Debroy, one gets the sense that there is truth to the incidents, and some of them really happened.

The story was probably written over a 1,000 years by multiple authors, and was perhaps crystallized between 800 BCE and 400 BCE. The Mahabharata itself states that it was written by Krishna Dvaipayana Vedavyasa. The completed book has about 90,000 shlokas, and it is said that Krishna Dvaipayana Vedavyasa taught it to his disciple Vaishampayana.

The story is recited by Vaishampayana to King Janmajeya who is Pariskhit’s son. Parikshit in turn was Abhimanyu’s son and was bitten by a snake, and Janmajeya wants to know why Parikshit was bitten by the snake.

Dr. Debroy’s translation is based on the critical edition by the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) in Pune which started a translation in 1919 and completed it in 1966. This is known to be the critical edition in Sanskrit and since it is written by a board of scholars and researchers, Dr. Debroy has taken it as the basis for his book.

He points out that some popular beliefs have been removed from the critical edition because this is a scholarly work. For instance, it is said that Vedavyasa dictated the story to Ganesha who wrote it down. Ganesha had one condition that Vedavyasa wouldn’t stop in the telling of the story, and Vedavyasa threw in the counter condition that Ganesha would understand each verse before he wrote it down. As a result Vedavyasa threw in some cryptic verses to flummox Ganesha and give himself time to think.

Another interesting thing that Dr. Debroy notes is that while today the term Aryas are used to point out ethnicity, it was used to denote those who spoke Sanskrit in the olden days, and Mlecchas were those who didn’t speak Sanskrit, and he found verses spoken by Vidura one of the harder ones to translate perhaps because he was a Mleccha.

He also talks about dating the Kurukshetra war, and tells the reader that there is no dispute on the fact that Mahapadma Nanda ascended the throne in 382 BCE, and the Puranas have genealogical lists which state that 1,050 years have elapsed since the death of Pariskhit and Mahapadma Nanda’s ascension so the Kurukshetra war happend around 1400 BCE, also worthwhile to note that archaeological data has been used to bring forward the date of the Kurukshetra war to 900 BCE.

Popular belief has it that Ramayana happened before Mahabharata, and it is consistent with the fact that Rama was Vishnu’s seventh reincarnation while Krishna was Vishnu’s eighth reincarnation, and that the Ramayana took place in the Treta yuga while the Mahabharata took place in the Dvapara yuga, what’s more, there is a summary of the Ramayana in the Mahabharata.

However, Dr. Debroy states that the society described in Mahabharata is more primitive than the society described in Ramayana and the war itself is much more genteel and civilized in the Ramayana. Even the geographical knowledge is much more limited both towards the east and the south in the Mahabharata when compared to the Ramayana. Dr. Debroy says that there is a plausible hypothesis that the earliest versions of the Mahabharata were written before the earliest versions of the Ramayana, and there were a lot of embellishments later on. To such an extent that the original story only contained Yudhisthara and Bhima, and even Arjun was a later addition to show the the supremacy of Lord Indra. He says that Draupadi loved Arjun a little more than all the other brothers and as a result was denied admission into heaven. But throughout the story, she falls into trouble several times, and at all times calls on Bhima and never Arjuna.

Finally, the Mahabharata is incredibly complex, and shows all human emotions possible, and the text itself states that what is not found in the Mahabharata will not be found anywhere else. So far, this is incredibly true, and I am really looking forward to finish this great epic this year!