Sri Aurobindo. Vyasa: Some Characteristics (Notes on the Mahabharata) // The Harmony of Virtue: Early Cultural Writings (1890-1910)

Sri Aurobindo

The Harmony of Virtue

Early Cultural Writings — 1890-1910

Section Four. Valmiki and Vyasa
Notes on the Mahabharata

Vyasa: Some Characteristics [1]

The Mahabharata, although neither the greatest nor the richest masterpiece of the secular literature of India, is at the same time its most considerable and important body of poetry. Being so, it is the pivot on which the history of Sanskrit literature and incidentally the history of Aryan civilisation in India, must perforce turn. To the great discredit of European scholarship the problem of this all-important work is one that remains not only unsolved, but untouched. Yet until it is solved, until the confusion of its heterogeneous materials is reduced to some sort of order, the different layers of which it consists separated, classed and attributed to their relative dates, and its relations with the Ramayana¹ on the one hand and the Puranic and classic literature on the other fully and patiently examined, the history of our civilisation must remain in the air, a field for pedantic wranglings and worthless conjectures. The world knows something of our origins because much labour has been bestowed on the Vedas, something of our decline because post-Buddhistic literature has been much read, annotated and discussed, but of our great medial and flourishing period it knows little, and that little is neither coherent nor reliable.

All that we know of the Mahabharata at present is that it is the work of several hands and of different periods — this is literally the limit of the reliable knowledge European scholarship has so far been able to extract from it. For the rest we have to be content with arbitrary conjectures based upon² an unwarrantable application of European analogies to Indian things or random assumptions snatched from a word here or a line there, but never proceeding from that weighty, careful and unbiassed study of the work, canto by canto, passage by passage, line by line, which can alone bring us to any valuable conclusions. A fancy was started in Germany that the Iliad of Homer is really a pastiche or clever rifacimento of old ballads put together in the time of Pisistratus. This truly barbarous imagination with its rude ignorance of the psychological bases of all great poetry has now fallen into some discredit; it has been replaced by a more plausible attempt to discover a nucleus in the poem, an Achilleid, out of which the larger Iliad has grown. Very possibly the whole discussion will finally end in the restoration of a single Homer with a single poem, subjected indeed to some inevitable interpolation and corruption, but mainly the work of one mind, a theory still held by more than one considerable scholar. In the meanwhile, however, haste has been made to apply the analogy to the Mahabharata; lynx-eyed theorists have discovered in the poem — apparently without taking the trouble to study it — an early and rude ballad epic worked up, doctored and defaced by those wicked Brahmins, who are made responsible for all the literary and other enormities which have been discovered by the bushelful, and not by Europeans alone³ — in our literature and civilisation. A similar method⁴ of “arguing from Homer” is probably at the bottom of Professor Weber's assertion that the War Parvas⁵ contain the original epic. An observant eye at once perceives that the War Parvas⁶ are more⁷ hopelessly tangled than any that precede them except the first. It is here and here only that the keenest eye becomes confused and the most confident explorer begins to lose heart and self-reliance. Now whether the theory is true or not, — and one sees nothing in its favour, — it has at present no value at all; for it is a pure theory without any justifying facts. It is not difficult to build these intellectual card-houses. Anyone may raise them by the dozen if he⁸ can find no better manner of wasting valuable time. But the Iliad is all battles and it therefore follows in the European mind that the original Mahabharata must have been all battles. Another method is that of ingenious, if forced, argument from stray Slokas of the poem to the equally⁹ stray and obscure remarks in Buddhist compilations. The curious theory of some scholars that the Pandavas were a later invention and that the original war was between the Kurus and Panchalas only and Professor Weber's singularly positive inference from a Sloka¹⁰ which does not at first sight bear

अष्टौ श्लोकसहस्राणि अष्टौ श्लोकशतानि च ।

अहं वेद्मि शुको वेत्ति सञ्जयो वा न वा

aṣṭau ślokasahasrāṇi aṣṭau ślokaśatāni ca

ahaṃ vedmi śuko vetti sañjayo vetti vā na vā

the meaning he puts on it, that the original epic contained only 8,800 verses¹¹, are ingenuities of this type. They are based on the Teutonic art of building a whole mammoth out of a single and often problematical bone and remind one strongly of Mr. Pickwick and the historic inscription which was so rudely, if in a Pickwickian sense, challenged by the refractory Mr. Blotton. All these theorisings are idle enough; they are made of too airy a stuff to last. (Only a serious scrutiny of the Mahabharat made with a deep sense of critical responsibility and according to the methods of patient scientific inference, can justify on in advancing any considerable theory on this wonderful poetic structure.)¹²

Yet to extricate the original epic from the mass of accretions is not, I believe, so difficult a task as it may at first appear. One is struck in perusing the Mahabharata by the presence of a mass of poetry which bears the style and impress of a single, strong and original, even unusual mind, differing in his manner of expression, tone of thought and stamp of personality not only from every other Sanskrit poet we know, but from every other great poet known to literature. When we look more closely into the distribution of this peculiar style of writing, we come to perceive certain very suggestive and helpful facts. We realise that this impress is only found in those parts of the poem which are necessary to the due conduct of the story; seldom to be detected in the more miraculous, Puranistic or trivial episodes, but usually broken up by passages and sometimes shot through with lines of a discernibly different inspiration. Equally noteworthy is it that nowhere does this part¹³ admit any trait, incident or speech which deviates from the strict propriety of dramatic characterisation and psychological probability. Finally, in this body, Krishna’s divinity¹⁴ is recognised but more often hinted at than aggressively stated. The tendency is to keep it in the background as a fact to which, while himself crediting it, the writer does not hope for a universal¹⁵ consent, still less is able to speak of it as a general¹⁶ tenet and matter of dogmatic belief; he prefers to show Krishna rather in his human character, acting always by wise, discerning and inspired methods, but still not transgressing the limit of human possibility. All this leads one to the conclusion that in the body of poetry I have described, we have the real Bharata, an epic which tells plainly and straightforwardly of the events which led to the great war and the empire of the Bharata princes. Certainly, if Professor Weber's venturesome assertion as to the length of the original Mahabharata be correct, this conclusion falls to the ground; for the mass of this poetry amounts to considerably over 20,000 Slokas. Professor Weber's inference, however, is worth some discussion; for the length of the original epic is a very important element in the problem. If we accept it we must say farewell to all hopes of unravelling the tangle. His assertion is founded on a single and obscure verse in the huge prolegomena to the poem which takes¹⁷ up the greater part of the Adiparva¹⁸, no very strong basis for so far-reaching an assumption. The Sloka itself says no more than this that much of the Mahabharata was written in so difficult a style that Vyasa himself could remember only 8,800 of the Slokas, Suka an equal amount and Sanjaya perhaps as much, perhaps something less. There is certainly here no assertion such as Prof. Weber would have us find in it that the Mahabharata at any time amounted to no more than 8,800 Slokas. Even if we assume what the text does not say that Vyasa, Suka and Sanjaya knew the same 8,800 Slokas, we do not get to that conclusion. The point simply is that the style of the Mahabharata¹⁹ was too difficult for a single man to keep in memory more than a certain portion of it. This does not carry us very far. Following the genius of the Sanskrit language we are led to suppose the repetition was intended to relate²⁰ aṣṭau ślokasahasrāṇi etc. with each name, otherwise the repetition has no raison d'être and it is otiose and inept. But if we understand it thus, the conclusion is irresistible that each knew a different 8,800. The writer²¹ would have no object in wishing us to repeat the number three times in our mind. If, however²², we are to assume that this verse means more than²³ meets the eye, that it is a cryptic way of stating the length of the original poem — and I do not deny that this is possible, perhaps even probable — we should note the repetition of vetti — ahaṃ vedmi śuko vetti sañjayo vetti vā na vā. The length of the epic as derived from this single Sloka should then be 26,000 Slokas or less²⁴, for the writer hesitates about the exact number to be attributed to Sanjaya. Another passage farther²⁵ on in the prolegomena agrees remarkably with this conclusion and is in itself much more explicit. It is there stated plainly enough that Vyasa first wrote the Mahabharata in 24,000 Slokas and afterwards enlarged it to 100,000 for the world of man²⁶ as well as a still more unconscionable number of verses for the Gandharva²⁷ and other worlds²⁸. In spite of the embroidery of fancy, of a type familiar enough to all who are acquainted with the Puranic method of recording facts, the meaning of this is unmistakable. The original Mahabharata consisted of 24,000 Slokas; but in its final form it runs to 100,000. The figures are probably loose and slovenly, for at any rate the first²⁹ form of the Mahabharata is considerably under 100,000 Slokas. It is possible therefore that the original epic was something over 24,000 and under 26,400 Slokas, in which case the two passages would agree well enough. But it would be unsafe to found any dogmatic assertion on isolated couplets; at the most we can say that we are justified in taking the estimate as a probable and workable hypothesis and if it is found to be corroborated by other facts, we may venture to suggest its correctness as a moral certainty.

This body of poetry then, let us suppose, is the original Mahabharata. Tradition attributes it to Krishna of the Island called Vyasa who certainly lived about this time and was an editor of the Vedas; and since there is nothing in this part of the poem which makes the tradition impossible and much which favours it, we may as a matter both of convenience and of possibility³⁰ accept it at least provisionally. Whether these hypotheses can be upheld is a question for long and scrupulous consideration and analysis. In this article I wish to formulate, assuming their validity, the larger features of poetical style, the manner of thought and creation and the personal note of Vyasa.

Later edition of this work: The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo.- Set in 37 volumes.- Volume 1.- Early Cultural Writings (1890 — 1910).- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2003.- 784 p.

¹ 2003 ed.: Ramayan