The many stories of Rishi Agastya 

The Pandavas begin their pilgrimage by traveling eastward. After several stops, they reach rishi Agastya’s hermitage.

The Pandavas begin their pilgrimage by traveling eastward. After several stops, they reach rishi Agastya’s hermitage. There, sage Lomasha begins to recite stories about Agastya, a prominent sage of ancient times.
Lomasha tells the Pandavas mythical stories as and when they reach a spot of some significance. But his presence is less for the Pandavas’ benefit and more for ours — he is a literary tool employed to insert the stories that the writers of the Mahabharata wanted to be inserted.

In fact, the entire section of the Pandavas’ pilgrimage can be seen like this: it is either a plain filler, or an opportunity for the writers to include tales that further whatever agenda they might have had. Had the core story itself been the primary objective, a more dramatic form might have been the result. The writers would have found a way to show more interest in Hastinapura at this time, perhaps, to show how Duryodhana and his brothers were managing the kingdom.

To my mind, this neglect of the putative enemy’s conduct affects the quality of the epic itself: we are de facto asked to be invested more in the spiritual and sentimental education of the Pandavas than the story of their enmity with their cousins and the reprisals to follow.

Now, insofar as the Pandavas’ spiritual and sentimental education is synonymous with a complex understanding of dharma (ethics), the results are at least bearable. However, the supremacy of the priest-officiants over rulers repeatedly asserts itself as the most prominent theme in the Pandavas’ education. To that extent, brahmin supremacy and the upkeep of caste system can easily be called a key objective of the writers of the Mahabharata, one that often supersedes the requirements of the core story or its focus on the complexities of what is being called dharma.

At the risk of hurting the pride of some, let me just say that it is the longest epic not by virtue of the convolutions of its story or its detail and complexity, but because of the huge amount of filler content that finds its place in it simply for political reasons.

Rishi Agastya’s stories, as they are told to the Pandavas, only emphasise his supernatural powers. When his much-younger wife demands that he approach her with pomp and show, he goes to nearby kingdoms and asks the kings for their riches. His entitlement before the kings is never in question.

But the kingdoms are all in fiscal deficit, so the kings can provide nothing. The riches have to be obtained from a danava named Ilvara, who has gotten into this bad habit of making brahmins eat his brother Vitapa and then being killed as the junior danava tears through from within them. Ilvara tries the same trick on Agastya, but when he gives the signal to Vitapa, he hears not his brother tearing through Agastya’s body, but the sound of Agastya breaking wind after a good danava meal. That’s how filler-prone the story is right now.

Tanuj Solanki

Twitter@tanujsolanki

The writer is reading the unabridged Mahabharata

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