CHENNAI: From my viewpoint as a modern reader, the Mahabharata is perhaps at its weakest as a literary work whenever it abandons the epic-historical plane — its base story, so to say — for its mythological, or even religious, purposes. This happens, putatively, to explain something for which the writer(s) of the work find the epic-historical plane insufficient. But the fact that they have an ulterior agenda — establishing the idea of brahmin prophecy, or emphasising the power of gods, or presenting the fact that the gods prefer the Pandavas — isn’t difficult to see.
Modern readings of the Mahabharata are largely about demystifying these ‘divine’ digressions. And they ought to be that. The novelizing project around Mahabharata — to take parts of the overall epic and rewrite them as novels — is an ever-alive one, and often involves reducing the role played by gods in the story and exploring the psychology of the main characters in the epic-historical plane. M T Vasudevan Nair’s Randamoozham, for example, tells the story from Bhima’s viewpoint, such that Krishna is a local king and not a god. A modern writer knows that divine intervention is a cop-out of a plot device. We may call this a Western axiom, though, given that we are essentially talking of Aristotle’s Poetics when we express reservations about divine intervention in dramatic works.
The latest example of of a ‘divine’ digression in my reading is Arjuna’s travel to the Himalayas after a year or so of the Pandavas’ forest exile. Arjuna undertakes the journey at Yudhistira’s behest, who has been informed of its necessity by none other Vedavyasa. The Pandavas are apparently weaker than the Kauravas at this point and need to bolster their arsenals with some divine weaponry.
Arjuna goes to the high Himalayas, meets with the king of gods, Indra, and makes a demand for the weapons. Indra tells him that the weapons he asks for are too powerful, and their grant requires a meeting with Shiva. But that meeting isn’t possible without ‘terrible austerities’. So Arjuna begins to fast, and reaches a stage where he is surviving only on air.
Shiva disguises himself as a hunter before approaching Arjuna. He seems to have some fun, it seems. The two end up shooting a boar at the same time, leading to conflict. There is a fight, in which Shiva obviously emerges the winner. After the (rather unnecessary) drama, Shiva grants a supreme weapon to Arjuna. After this episode, the others — Indra, Yama, Varuna, and Kuber — bestow Arjuna with other weapons.
What is jarring in the entire episode is how Shiva and the lesser gods tell Arjuna, rather blatantly, that he was the rishi Nara in an earlier life, the human companion of the divine Narayana. This knowledge itself is as good as any weapon, for it is made clear to Arjuna that he is invincible. Arjuna is also comforted knowing that that Karna will be slayed by his hand in battle.With the outcome such a forgone conclusion, how could the ancients keep their interest in the story, I wonder!