THE MAHĀBHĀRATA S SOCIOCULTURAL IMPACT IN INDIAMichel Danino (micheldanino@gmail.com) Presented at a seminar on The Mahābhārata: Its Historicity, Antiquity, Evolution & Impact on Civilization, New Delhi, 26 &
The Mahābhārata is not just a gripping epic and a great teaching of Dharma. It is also a mine of anthropological information. Left: Some of the states mentioned in the text. (Source: K.S. Valdiya, Geography, Peoples and Geodynamics of India in Puranas and Epics, 2012)
1. Ethnographic data in the Mahābhārata Socially, the Epic presents a mixed society: numerous different languages, cultures, rulers and regions. 363 people are listed on different occasions, as janas or jātis. Jana = people, especially those forming a state. Jāti = a community of people, basically a segment of a jana (e.g., Kirātas, a jana, have several jātis). The Epic does not distinguish between caste and tribe, in fact has no concept of a tribe in the usual sense, which is a colonial construct. (Neither do the Purāṇas.) K.S. Singh: There is hardly any evidence to show that in the collective consciousness of India there is any difference between the two sets of janas.
The janas appear in the Epic (after R. Shafer, 1954): as part of geographical lists 231 the digvijaya list (Yudhiṣṭhira s victories won by his four brothers in the four directions) 212 those paying tribute to the Pāṇḍavas 296 those part of army formations 158 other data 108
The 363 janas are defined: in geographical terms (with reference to Jambudvīpa ). Some of the regions are regarded as holier than others, for instance the Kuru-Pañcāla and Matsya. in political terms, territorial units such as janapadas, varṣas or rāṣṭras. In ecological terms: living in mountains (Khasas, Haimavatas, Arbuadas, Vindhyamulakas...), near rivers (Kausijakas, Saindhavas...), from deserts (Marudhas...), from pastoral lands (Pasupas, Govindas...).
Janas in the East: Angas, Vangas, Kiratas, Chinas, Pundras... Janas in the North (Himalayas): Trigartas, Khasas... Janas in the West: Daradas, Pisachas, Vahilkas, Yadavas, Surashtras... Janas in the South: Cholas, Pandyas, Keralas, Andhras, Dravidas, Karnatas, Mushakas... Janas in the Northwest: Pahlavas, Sakas, Hunas, Yavanas, Kambojas...
2. The Mahābhārata and the making of India Everywhere I found a cultural background which had exerted a powerful influence on their lives. This background was a mixture of popular philosophy, tradition, history, myth, and legend, and it was not possible to draw a line between any of these. Even the entirely uneducated and illiterate shared this background. The old epics of India, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and other books, in popular translations and paraphrases, were widely known among the masses, and every incident and story and moral in them was engraved on the popular mind and gave a richness and content to it. Illiterate villagers would know hundreds of verses by heart and their conversation would be full of references to them or to some story with a moral, enshrined in some old classic. Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India, p. 67.
Mechanisms of integration Repeated attempts (in the Epic as in early history) to build empires. Marriage alliances across janas. Storytelling (e.g. Harikatha) traditions often received royal patronage. Complete freedom was given to local cultures to adopt, adapt, transpose, translate, re-create the two Epics. Creation of a sacred geography related to the Epics. Overall, an organic process beyond the control of a caste or political power. The result was the cultural entity called India, and the thought and belief system called Hinduism (which may be defined as the interface between Vedic and regional folk and tribal cultures).
The Mahābhārata and the South In the Epic, Cholas, Pāṇḍyas, Dravidas are often mentioned. Sarangadhwaja, king of the Pāṇḍyas, fights in the war on the side of the Pāṇḍavas. In inscriptions, Chola and Chera kings proudly claim descent from the lunar or the solar dynasties. An inscription records that a Pāṇḍya king led the elephant force in the Great War on behalf of the Pāṇḍavas, and that early Pāṇḍyas translated the Mahābhārata into Tamil (the translation is lost). The first named Chera king, Udiyanjeral, is said to have sumptuously fed the armies on both sides during the Bhārata war.
Pancha Pāndavar hero stone, Benagudi Shola, Nilgiris (Tamil Nadu), maintained by Irula tribals to commemorate the Pāndavas passing through the area.
Near Kodaikanal, a few caves bear the name of Pancha Pāndavar Pārai, the rock where the five Pāndavas [stayed]. Numerous Draupadi shrines in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Folk traditions of the South generated numerous retellings of the two northern epics in the form of popular ballads, some of which have been preserved in manuscripts. In Tamil Nadu alone, a recent survey (by A.A. Manavalan) enumerated about a hundred versions [of the Mahābhārata] that have come down to us in folklore forms. From the ninth century at least, a few inscriptions record the grants of lands and revenue for poets and discourse scholars on Mahābhārata.
The Mahābhārata and the Northeast The two Epics have left numerous landmarks in the region. The Kirātas correspond broadly to the Indo- Mongoloids of the Northeast. Prāgjyotiṣa: founded by Naraka and his son Bhagadatta (who fights Arjuna in the Epic). Bhagadatta is a historical figure: he is mentioned in inscriptions, such as the Nalanda seal of Bhaskaravarman. After the war, Arjuna goes out to Manipura on a mission to placate the Nāgas and marries Ulūpī. A tradition identifies Ghaṭotkacha, Bhīma s son from Hiḍimba, with the Kachhari kingdom in Assam (whose capital Dimapur was a corruption of Hiḍimbapur ). The Bodos have a tradition of having given Rukmini, a Kirāta woman, to Krishna. They claim Bhagadatta and Hiḍimba among their ancestors.
K.S. Singh: If the Bodos have a view of their relationship with pan-indian traditions, this cannot be described as something imaginary, but has to be seen as people s efforts to link with historical traditions. Ajay Mitra Shastri: Ancient Pragjyotisha or the North- East had very intimate relations with the rest of India, of which it was an integral component, geographically and culturally, despite its own distinctive culture and physical elements.
The Mahābhārata and Kashmir Kalhana s Rajatarangini traces the origin of Kashmir s kings to Gonand I, a contemporary of the Great War. Krishna is portrayed as helping the widow queen Yaśovati ascend the throne after the king s death in a war. Jammu has numerous traditions related to the Epics and a folk version of the Mahābhārata. There is a tradition of Nāga worship which claims that a Nāga tribe lived there; Arjuna came, married Ulūpī and lived there for some time. Some of the tribals there worship the Pāṇḍavas and Draupadī as ishtadevata.
Conclusions on the Epic s ethnography A rich human tapestry thriving on endless diversity, but united through certain ethico-cultural concepts, such as dharma, mutual respect. No separate status for tribes. K.S. Singh: The Mahabharata notion of jana or people of a territory still endures.... People continue to identify themselves with the epic traditions, associate places with the visits of the epic heroes and to recall people s own role in the growing and developing epic traditions. This may be bad history but it is good myth and therefore good anthropology.... Indians are reported to have relatively large eyes. This may me because our eyes are popping all the time; there is so much beauty, so much diversity to behold!
3. Can the Mahābhārata s ethnographic landscape help date the Epic? In the 3 rd / 4 th millennium (a traditional date such as 3100 BCE), the Northwest is in the Early Harappan phase, which is hardly reconcilable with the Epic. As per current archaeological record, this phase is free from weapons of war, armed conflicts and military structures. It is a phase of convergence, not of disintegration as reflected in the Epic.
Map: First-millennium BCE sites in north India: compatible with the Epic s sociopolitical context. In the 3 rd / 4 th millennium, the Ganges valley is in the Neolithic, pre-iron era, with rural communities slowly spreading and establishing networks. This appears incompatible with the listing of numerous competing sociopolitical units with an advanced material culture.
The 16 Mahajanapadas or "proto-republics"
This is true also of central, east, northeast and south India, where material cultures are even more rudimentary in the 3 rd / 4 th millennium. Map: first-millennium BCE sites elsewhere in India
A date in the 3 rd / 4 th millennium BCE for the Epic s events would demand a massive amount of re-creation and embellishment so massive that those events might as well be taken to be fiction. The Mahābhārata s ethnographic map belongs either to the late 2 nd or the early 1 st millennium BCE more likely the latter, if we consider the archaeology of east, northeast and south India in particular. It bears repeating that the Epic s ethnographic landscape is intimately woven into its very fabric the lists of janas cannot be mere interpolations.
French historian Michelet on India s Epics India, closer than us to the creation, has better preserved the tradition of universal brotherhood. She inscribed it at the beginning and at the end of her two great sacred poems, the Ramayan and the Mahabharat, gigantic pyramids before which all our small occidental works must stand humbly and respectfully. When you grow tired of this quarrelsome West, please indulge in the sweet return to your mother, to that majestic antiquity so noble and tender. Love, humility, grandeur, you will find it all gathered there, and with such simple feelings, so detached of all miserable pride, that humility never even needs a mention. Le Peuple (in the 1860s)