Studies on Mahabharata The Time Theory

STUDIES ON MAHABHARATA

The Time Theory

[Dr. Sir C. R. Reddy (1880-1951) was the first Vice-­Chancellor of the Andhra University and was greatly responsible for building it up as one of the reputed universities in India. He was a great educationist and considered to be one of our finest intellectuals. He was a scholar, an idealist and humanist and a prince of sarcasm. He made a deep study of Mahabharata and the present essay is the first of the series that Triveni is privileged to publish by the kind courtesy of Sri P. A. Reddi who has taken great pains in preserving the writings of his grand-uncle (Dr. Reddy)–Editor]

No question interests mortal humanity more than immortality. Our lives being cast in time, we change at the limitations it imposes and yearn for eternity and its limitless existence. But mere existence does not satisfy. We are endowed with feelings, the emotions of various kinds and without the gratification of the better sort, mere existence can have no attraction and so the problem of what happens after death has engaged the speculative powers of poets and philosophers of all ages, of all races and countries. This is a common problem of humanity, or rather the most important of its intrinsic questioning and efforts at solution. And how does the Mahabharata face this question?

I leave aside for the moment those deductions from the doctrines of Karma which are found in the Aranya Parva. It is said that if your sins outweigh your virtues, you will be reborn amongst the lower order of creatures, if the sins and virtues balance each other, you will be again born as a human being, if the virtues predominate, you will be raised in the coming existence to the status of a divinity. It is curious to know the estimate of human nature here given as one which symbolises an equal balance of good and evil. This is hardly in keeping with the other view which holds human being to be an emanation of divinity and as such essentially good. It may be contrasted also with the Christian view which holds human nature to be essentially evil and to be redeemed only by the grace of God. However, all this is more philosophy than Intuition. It is the poetic intuition that appeals to the human heart and let us see what shape these intuitions have taken in the great epic.

In the Maha Prasthanika Parva a most fervent and pathetic request is made by Gandhari and Dhritarashtra to the great Rishi, Vyasa, that he should, out of the abundance of his power, bring to earthly life again all the dead heroes of war and present them to the aged king and queen and the Pandavas and Kunti, and the widows and the big gathering of the bereaved there assembled. Kunti pleads for a sight of Karna whom she has grievously wronged and Gandhari plaintively says pointing to the hundreds of widows and sorrowed relatives there standing in humble obeisance: “Dear father, all these are yearning to see their beloved ones who were killed in the war. Touched by a deep commiseration, Vyasa agrees to recall the departed heroes to life, but only for the brief space of a day; and they are content. Accordingly the next morning Vyasa takes Dhritarashtra, Gandhari, Kunti, the Pandavas and the rest with him to the Ganges and in a loud voice beckons to Bhishma, Drona, Duryodhana, Karna, and all the dead heroes to emerge from the waters. They come in their divine bodies with garlands of celestial flowers hung round their necks, happy, smiling, cheerful and in a bustle of bliss. The bereaved relations are deeply gratified and the next morning the heroes depart, taking with them their wives, who, for the purpose, entered the waters of the Ganges, along with their husbands. That is the account.

There are few pieces of poetry to equal this in imaginative splendour and sympathy. Even a day’s earthly reunion suffices. The stricken heart is not willing to wait till after death to be reunited with the beloved. It yearns for that reunion here and now and a moment’s reunion here is worth an eternity of reunion in a speculative life beyond the grave. If so, does it not show that for the purpose of the human heart the earth is a greater moment and consequence than the heaven beyond our reach? And all that humanity longs for is not a blood less, though limitless, existence elsewhere, but an existence fraught with the Joy of emotion?

Similiar appears to me the significance of the famous Greek episode of* and yet there is the self-contradiction which the poet can evade and not reconcile. They appear, these departed heroes, but they do not appear to have greeted their earthly fathers and relations, there is no account of their joyous commingling, merely a looking at each other, and in existence in one neighbourhood, but without social relationship or a common life.

If the poet had made them relive their old earthly life once again, then it would mean a repetition and an elongation of the old existence with all its joys and sorrows. Heaven would be but a replica of the earth. Even this does not satisfy the human heart. Our emotions are perhaps irrational. We crave for the self-contradictory, however much logic may warn us against such a craving. We want heaven to be both different and the same as the earth.

This is brought out even better in the Swargarohana Parva. After the death of Draupadi and his brothers, when Indra meets Yudhishtira and asks him to ascend to the heavens in the chariot he had brought, Yudhishtira declines. (Refer to the verse “Thodumbu…….”).** He says: “My brothers have fallen dead and delicate Draupadi has to die of starvation. They came with me as my companions. Without them I cannot go to heaven with you. Oh! Thou of Merciful Aspect, make them accompany me and we will all go together.” Indra pleads the impossibility of reviving the dead but holds out a prospect of Yudhishtira’s being able to meet them in heaven, and Yudhishtira rejoins: “Of what good is heaven to me if I cannot reunite with my wife and brothers and enjoy myself in the company of those who were so dear to me while on earth. A heaven where I cannot be in the company of my brothers and wife and other relations is no heaven at all.” Well, Indra promises a reunion, and this reunion takes place after Yudhishtira assumes the divine form after bathing in the heavenly Ganges.

But what sort of reunion! We are told that Yudhishtira was taken round and shown all his earthly associates. He first beholds Krishna, now transformed into Vishnu, with Arjuna as Nara sitting by him in humble devotion. He sees Bhima gathered among the Maruths and Nakula and Sahadeva in the very form which they had on earth sitting with the Aswins. He passes by a woman of resplendent beauty illuminating everything around her like the new-born sun, and asks the Angel who was escorting him: “May I know, Honoured Sir, who this wonderful ­looking person is, who makes the heavens shine with her beauty?” And the Angel answers: “This is Draupadi, who, as ordered by Shiva, took birth on earth in order to see you and your brothers through the great mission of your existence.” Yudhishtira gratifies one of the greatest longings of his heart by having a glimpse of Karna, now shining as a thirteenth aspect of the Sun, and so on.

But is this reunion of a type to satisfy the human soul? Apparently there was no mutual recognition or greeting or any sort of re-establishment in any shape or form of the earthly associations, and all that without which human life could not be gratified. Arjuna does not greet him. There is no answering smile from Bhima and he cannot recognise his own wife, for in heaven there is no husband and wife – probably. And if Yudhishtira felt any satisfaction at all, it could only be a pale satisfaction of knowing that all those whom he loved were in a happy condition. Is that enough?

Here again the difficulty is the very nature and essence of the problem. If heaven is made a glorified edition of the earth, it becomes earth and there is no real heaven. If heaven is made different from earth, then our lives and emotions cannot be gratified and it becomes a mere existence, empty of content soulless, almost; and the poet is helpless therefore in the presence of this great riddle.

The Sankhya Yoga philosophy puts forth the view that the perfected soul lives eternally in a state of Kevalatva; that is to say, it is unique, individual, absolutely self-content and self-satisfied with no relations of any kind to any other body since relationship is a sign of our imperfection and our being incomplete without such relationship. And the particular emotion of the Kevalatva state they describe as Ananda, which is not pleasure, which is not satisfaction and the nature of which is not possible for us to realise. We can experience in that state or condition of existence. We cannot translate it into human phraseolgy. How closely the Kovalatva view resembles the theory of Monods must be obvious to the student of history or philosophy.

Finally there is the very curious treatment of the future of Duryodhana, Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula, Sahadeva, Karna, Draupadi and others are reabsorbed practically into original divinities from which they emanated as earthly existence. Duryodhana too emanated, according to the accounts in the Adi Parva, from Kali, who also, however bad he may be in his tendencies, is a divinity. But Duryodhana is not thus absorbed into Kali, which means the king of kings after undergoing the highest pleasures of heaven, the result of his virtues and the most hideous horrors of hell, the result of his vices, ultimately became absorbed in Kali. So, though an emanation of divinity he had to suffer heaven and hell like any ordinary individual, whereas the other emanations get absorbed. Here again there is a self - contradiction, as there is no reason given why one emanation should suffer as an individual while the rest are merely reabsorbed. The fact is the reabsorption theory does not fit in with poetic justice and the author probably felt that whatever your origin, since you acted as an individual in your life you must accept the consequences also as an individual. In one sense according to our Vedanta, all human souls are emanations from the Absolute God and if the reabsorption theory is to be accepted then we will all be automatically reabsorbed, whatever our virtues or vices. This does not seem to fit in with his views of life or the doctrine of Karma and having painted the Pandavas as exceedingly good people he has to make an exception in their favour, and thus falls into an inconsistent presentation of this great ethical and philosophical problem.

Since no self-consistent statement is possible, may it not be that the whole idea of the human soul which is the basic conception of this problem and its future is fundamentally erroneous and that there is no such thing as a human soul which survives bodily death, that the consequences of our action influence the future of our society and have no bearing on our own future, seeing that on this view there is no soul apart from the body to have a future? Society is an organism and if the individuals thereof behave in this, way or that, the health and the future of society will bear the consequence. A certain school of Buddhists took this view and I suppose modern science goes no further than this.

* Unfortunately the name of the episode was not mentioned by the author–Editor
** The verse referred to is from Andhra Mahabharata by the famous trio of poets.