3.

6 Constituting the 'Fifth Veda': The Voice of Vyasa

In the previous sections of this chapter, we have contextualized the Mahabharata as a text representative
of the transition taking place in the period of the Later Vedas. Now, in this concluding section, we may
have a look at how the text itself perceives this transition. However, to do so, it is necessary to interrogate
the question of the authorship of the text. Who is the author of the Mahabharata? The traditional answer
is Vyasa. However, as David Shulman and Madeleine Biardeau have argued, "Vyasa' is not a name but an
epithet which means an 'arranger' or 'divider' or 'diffuser' The proper name of the poet is supposed to be
Krsna Dvaipayana. What did Kṛṣṇa Dvaipayana arrange or divide or diffuse? Primarily, he is sup- posed to
be the arranger or the divider of the Vedic corpus in three/four Vedas and hence called 'vedavyasa.
However, as Biardeau notes, he is also regarded as the diffuser of the epic-Puranic tradition, the primary
symbol of the authoritativeness of the epic and Puranic texts.391 Therefore, he is not only the supposed
author of the Mahabharata but also the supposed author of all the major Puranas (and many Upapuranas)
composed in the first two Christian millennia.

Interestingly, though Vyasa is not just the supposed author but a principal character in the Mahabharata,
the story is not told in his voice. As already discussed, the Mahabharata contains two frames of
storytelling. In the inner frame, it is Vaisampayana, a disciple of Vyasa, who tells the story to the Kuru
chief Janamejaya. In the outer frame, the story of Vaisampayana's telling is retold by the suta bard
Ugrasravas to the assembled sages at the Naimișa forest for a twelve-year-long satra organized by the
Bhargava Kulapati Saunaka. Apart from these two principal frames, there are instances when the authorial
role is transferred to others. Thus, the sūta Sanjaya narrates the war to Dhṛtarastra, and Bhisma gives long
discourses to Yudhisthira in the 'Santiparvan' and the 'Anusasanaparvan. Therefore, when we speak of
the authorial voice in the Mahabharata, we must be careful about which author we are talking about or
which voice. What do the author figures of Vyasa, Vaisampayana, and Ugrasravas rep- resent? Is the text
a poetic account or a bardic narrative for the Kuru court or a refashioning of that narrative suitable for a
primarily brahmana audience? The text probably contains all of these elements if we are to believe in the
various layers in its creation.

However, Alf Hiltebeitel has come up with an ingenious suggestion that 'the Mahabharata was composed
between the mid-second century (BCE) and the year zero'392 by a
group/committee/syndicate/symposium. A major factor behind this conviction of Hiltebeitel is his belief
that the Mahabharata had originated as a written text. Contrary to the general idea of several scholars,
recently well synthesized by John Brockington, that the origin of the Mahabharata lies in bardic oral
tradition that went through a Brahmanical takeover before its commitment to writing, 394 Hiltebeitel
dismisses the possibility of a preliterate oral epic and argues for a kind of literate orality' with the
composition done by a group of brahmana scholars proud of their knowledge of grammar and their ability
to possess a written text of what they perform orally.395 He identifies this group of scholars with the
satra-performing bramands of the epic's outer frame, who he considers more likely to provide a key to its
composition than Janamejaya and Vaisampayana of the inner frame. 396 Vyasa, Vaisampayana, and
Ugraśravas are fictional characters created by these authors-a fictional author and two 'unreliable
narrators' who act as oral performers.397 Taking a cue from Michel Foucault's idea of an author function,
Hiltebeitel shows how the fiction of Vyasa, a time- travelling intergalactic located in otherworldly
hermitages accessible only by thought,399 plays a crucial role in the proliferation of meaning through a
new literary technique in which the 'author' plays the role of the regulator of the fictive by suddenly
entering the story in crucial junctures to mark his significant role in controlling the narrative and regulating
the characters.400 Therefore, outside the inner (genealogical/historical) and outer (cosmological) frames,
the fiction of Vyasa provides an outer- most authorial frame also defining the ontology of the text. 401
However, it is the cosmological' outer frame which to Hiltebeitel is most pivotal in outlining the
'chronotope' through which the Mahabharata fuses its spatial and temporal indicators 402 and in
recognizing the real authors of the text. The brahmanas who represent themselves as situated in the
'Naimisa Forest' (a word derived from nimesa or nimiga, meaning a moment and a wink, respectively), the
"Momentous Forest, or the 'Forest of Literary Imagination, where ancient purana is absorbed into a new
stream that connects past, present, and future in the twinkling of an eye, where bards like the "hair-
raising' Lomaharsana and his 'frightful-to-hear' son Ugrasravas can enchant the rsis,403 are the ones really
in charge of the composition and not the bards.404 These brahmanas might have named the various
processes and roles in the making of the text by the fictions of Saunaka and his co-satrins, Ugrasravas,
Vyasa, and his disciples, and the Naimisa satra itself. 405 But the work is a product of a committee (satrins)
whose inner core contained a philosopher, a dharmasastra connoisseur, possibly a retired brahmana
general, and of course the master of the house (kulapati) who kept them all to a common purpose. The
emplotment might have been done by an author in three years (as Mbh 1.56.32 says that Vyasa composed
the Mahabharata in three years), and the bard might represent the narrative skill, but the rest of the
committee would have been brahmanas, 406 These brahmana authors had ghost-written the
Mahabharata in collaboration with the fictional Vyasa under the cover of the Naimişeya rşis.407 Their
voice can be glimpsed through at certain places, for instance, where Saunaka laughs out in amusement
after Ugrasravas ingeniously invents an etymology of the name Jaratkaru and comments that 'it fits'
(1.36.3-5) even though the interpretation would not fit any etymological test. Who narrates this
conversation and Saunaka's laughter? Who praises such a daring sense of 'fit'? There Hiltebeitel traces
the brahmana ghost-writers of the Mahabharata. 408

Of course, if we accept Hiltebeitel's proposition, then there is no possibility of placing the Mahabharata
in a Later Vedic context of the oral bardic traditions. Hiltebeitel finds nothing to support the idea that the
Mahabharata grew in three different stages often associated with the names Jaya, Bharata, and
Mahabharata, respectively. The text uses these three names synonymously, and any contrast between
the last two names is by no way supported by the text.409 Hiltebeitel contextualizes the Mahabharata
with the backdrop of the low-born rulers of Magadha, particularly the Mauryas, who had patronized the
heterodox religions but had often acted as despots and patricides, engendering a hostile response from
the brahmanas, 410 It is in the ambience of the pro-Brahmanical rule my of the Sungas and the Kanvas,
though not necessarily under their patronage, that such a text would be created by the brahmanas,
speaking about the ideal situation where rulership would be ksatriya and also depicting the demise of the
old ksatriya order represented by figures such as Duryodhana, Jarasandha, Bhisma, and Vṛddhakṣatra.
Hiltebeitel notes that the Mahabharata characters are not known to the Vedic corpus and that Panini is
the only author to mention the Mahabharata and some of its characters (Vasudeva, Arjuna, Yudhisthira)
before the date he postulates for the text (mid-second century BCE to the year zero) and claims that 'by
Mahabharata he (Panini) probably refers to a story known in one or more genres, though he could mean
an otherwise unknown personal name, and with Arjuna and Vasudeva he probably alludes to a local
cult:412 Thus, the Vedic connections of the text are explained away as recalling of an older order by the
authors through their knowledge of the Vedas. The brahmana authors modelled the old ksatriya order,
which it envisions as well as loathes, on 'India's first state, the Kuru-Päñcăla kingdom of the 'early post-
Rigvedic period. Janamejaya, the king of the inner frame, is no more than a great king from the past,
idealized as a royal audience.
But the problems in Hiltebeitel's proposition are several. None of the three frames spoken of by Hiltebeitel
represents the Mahabharata as a written text. Why the Mahabharata necessarily has to be a written text
to begin with, when the entire Vedic corpus could be composed and trans- mitted orally, and the itihasa-
purana is a tradition as old as the Vedic tradition (as shown in Chapter 1) is not understandable. The
contrary seems much more plausible, since the discussion in the previous sections clearly show how the
context for the main narrative of the Mahabharata is the Later Vedic clan society. Why Panini should refer
to an otherwise un- known personal name by Mahabharata has not been explained. The reference to
Vasudeva and Arjuna can very well be about a local cult, but the characters needed to be well known for
such a cult to develop. Apart from the Mahabharata, do we know of any other tradition that may account
for a cult of Vasudeva and Arjuna together? Moreover, such an explanation cannot be given to the name
"Yudhisthira. The argument that apart from Panini, no pre-Maurya author refers to the Mahabharata
characters of the main narrative is also grounded weakly. Pariksit and Janamejaya, so famous in Later
Vedic literature, and Vaisampayana himself (mentioned in the Asvalayana Gṛhya Sutra as
mahabharatacarya) are as important Mahabharata characters as any. Same can be said about Samtanu of
the Tenth Book of the Rig Veda and Krsna Devakiputra of the CU. Certain Mahabharata characters also
feature quite prominently in the Buddhist and the Jaina cannons, parts of which are possibly pre-
Maurya,415 Hiltebeitel himself discusses the occurrence of Dhṛtarastra Vaicitravirya in the KS.

Similarly, to argue that the Vedic context of the Mahabharata is maintained through the knowledge of the
Vedas that the authors of the Mahabharata possessed demands the poets to be extremely efficient as
historians, an overbearing expectation from the poets of a preliterate society in the assumed absence of
an older bardic tradition to at least colour their historical imagination. Moreover, if the authors were
deliberately placing the events at a Vedic past of clan societies, why did they succeed in doing that in some
sections but not in some others, such as the 'Santiparvan' and the Anusasanaparvan, where the becomes
a well-organized state society, cannot be explained. Moreover, assuming the Mahabharata to be a
Brahmanical reaction against the Maurya heterodoxy from the period of the Brahmanical Sungas also
seems to be overrating both Maurya heterodoxy and Sunga orthodoxy. There is enough evidence of the
Mauryas patronizing the heterodox religions, but none to suggest that they showed any less favour to the
brahmanas. The brahmanas and Sramanas got equal mention and respect throughout the Aśokan edicts.
If we have to believe in the legends that Candragupta became a Jaina, we cannot ignore the influential
legends about his being mentored by the brahmana Canakya as well. The Arthasastra, at least parts of
which were probably composed during the Maurya period and possibly under Maurya patronage, $17 is
as Brahmanical a text as any. Thus, there is no strongly grounded his. torical evidence to suggest that the
Mauryas were antagonistic to the Brahmanical religion. Rather, they probably followed an eclectic
religious policy patronizing different religions.

Similarly, the Sungas might not have been as anti-Buddhist as they are believed to be, given that many
famous Buddhist sites such as Bharhut and Sanchi thrived under them. Moreover, the Sungas did not
command an empire as large as the Mauryas did. They succeeded a disintegrated Maurya Empire in the
Magadha region and parts of Central India. However, there is no reason to definitely assume that the
Mahabharata was composed in the territories controlled by the Sungas and the Kanvas. A large part of
North India, including the regions where the Mahabharata events are located, was ruled in the post-
Maurya period initially by the king Kharavela of Kalinga, who was a devout Jaina, and then the Kusanas, a
power of Central Asian origin, whose coins show a highly eclectic religious ambience in which several
religions, including both the Brahmanical religion and Buddhism, were granted patronage.

With this background in mind, Hiltebeitel's idea of a symposium of angry brahmanas writing down the
Mahabharata in response to the memory of Maurya heterodoxy, reflecting upon the Later Vedic ksatriya
clans of whom no bardic tradition existed, seems to have little credibility. One wonders why Saunaka and
his twelve-year satra, which Hiltebeitel himself shows to be highly metaphorical and symbolic, will be
taken with such historical seriousness, when all other characters and events (many of whom are present
in other texts and traditions as well) are regarded as fictitious. It is also strange that everything about
Vyasa and his author ship is considered as fiction of the outermost frame, but the stray reference to his
composition of the text in three years is taken seriously as the time span for the emplotment of the text.
In fact, if we follow C.Z. Minkowski in defining a frame story as a story about the telling of an- other story,
418 it is doubtful if we can consider the authorial interventions of Vyasa-fictional, actual, or mythological-
as the outermost frame. The Vyasa frame does not definitely answer the question who tells the story of
Ugrasravas of the outer frame the way the outer frame answers the question who tells the story of
Vaisampayana of the inner frame. Rather, if Vyasa represents any frame at all as the author or a character
or both, that is the innermost frame whose story Vaisampayana tells in the inner frame. It is a frame
because it possibly encompasses a bardic war narrative represented in the temporary transfer of authorial
power to the suta Samjaya during the war.

Of course, the author-character Vyasa emboxes Samjaya's telling in a frame where Samjaya's war report
is a result of the special divine vision and immunity granted to him by Vyasa who also appears in the text
to secure it when the immunity is threatened. However, that Samjaya's vision aiding him as a war reporter
might also have been grounded in his capacity as a professional suta is also indicated in places that show
him as capable of a special vision irrespective of Vyasa's boon. Thus, he was one of the five viewers of
Krsna's theophany at the Kuru court and the one to know and reveal the real supernatural selves of Krsna
and Arjuna, 420 He could predict that Sikhandin would fell Bhisma even before anybody knew the secret
behind it.421 He could view the Pandava forces in a trance even before being gifted the divine vision. 22
However, around Samjaya's war narrative, the innermost Vyasa frame builds the ontology of the text
Mahabharata, the story that Vaisampayana tells Janamejaya.

McGrath has clearly pointed out the difference between the poetic- performative traditions represented
by Samjaya and Vyasa on the one hand and Vaisampayana and Ugraśravas on the other. He takes a cue
from Gregory Nagy's distinction between the adoidos, who composes his verse during performance, and
the rhapsoidos, who recites from memory what he has previously heard from the other poets. Therefore,
the adoidos necessarily precedes the rhapsoidos in time.423 The source of the adoidos is spontaneous
creativity, or poetic vision, while the rhapsoidos develops on what he had heard and rehearsed. In the
Mahabharata, Vaišampayana and Ugrasravas perform as the rhapsoidos, narrating what they had heard
from other poets and performers. Vyasa and Samjaya, on the other hand, bank completely on their poetic
vision. In other words, Vyasa and Samjaya are visually or experientially inspired, while Vaisampayana and
Ugrasravas are merely audially inspired. Thus, Vyasa's comprehension was based on his powerful vision
to directly experience the past, present, and future (pratyakṣadarki... bhutabhavyabhavisyavit). Samjaya,
even before Vyasa transferred his power to him before the war, claims to have a similar poetic vision
(aham ca jānāmi bhavisyarûpam/ pasyami buddhya svayam apramattaḥ/ drstis ca me na vyathate
purani).426 Though Vyasa's performance is not directly recorded in the Mahabharata, the text develops
Samjaya's character as a powerful bard and still presents the war books-around which the text was
probably composed-as Samjaya's performance in the Kuru court of Dhrtarastra. The later poets paid their
tribute to Samjaya as well, nearly imparting on him the 'immortality' ac- corded to the eternal poet Vyasa,
since Samjaya was said to have escaped the forest fire that had killed his patron Dhṛtarästra and
undertaken a journey towards the Himalayas which often symbolizes eternity in Indian tradition. 427

The outer frame, as Minkowski says, is brief and insubstantial, much less carefully elaborated and much
less organically connected with the main story Bruce M. Sullivan has also noted how these sections
narrated by Ugrasravas do not concern the Bharata War directly and seem to be self- consciously later
than the parts narrated by Vaisampayana.Therefore, historicizing the outer frame of the text, deliberately
ignoring the multiple other frames from Samjaya through Vyasa and Vaisampayana up to Ugrasravas, is
methodologically problematic. If we add to that the way Hiltebeitel goes on to imagine the composition
of the committee that wrote the Mahabharata, with a philosopher, a dharmasastra connoisseur, a retired
brahmana general, and so on again taking the representation of some characters and elements in the text
with seriousness and arbitrarily ignoring the others, without any evidence whatsoever, we may come to
the conclusion that Hiltebeitel, in his attempt to bring out the fiction of Vyasa serving the author function'
of the Mahabharata, ended up creating a new fiction of his own.

Therefore, we may return to the question of the authorship of the Mahabharata, whose main narrative
clearly addresses the context of the Later Vedic clan societies, particularly of the Kuru-Pañcala realm.E.
Washburn Hopkins says: There was no one author of the great epic, though with a not unknown confusion
of editor with author, an author was recognized, called Vyasa. Modern scholarship calls him the Unknown,
or Vyasa for convenience. The fact that the present text of the Mahabharata is not the work of a single
author, but contains multiple layers of authorship, is well established within the text itself. However, the
attribution of the authorship to the figure of Vyasa is not a simple confusion. 'Vyasa' cannot be the author-
figure created just for convenience because the implications of the attribution of the authorship to him
could be highly inconvenient for the group that controlled the text for the longest period of time.

The Mahabharata, at times called the 'fifth Veda, has entered the Brahmanical corpus and undergone
thorough Brahmanization. The most natural attribution of such a text would be a divine 'apauruseya' or-
igin. But that has not been the case. The brahmanas could not attribute the text to any divinity or even a
'purely' brahmana author. Rather, it has been attributed to an author-character born of a premarital union
be- tween a brahmana and an outcaste fisherwoman. What could have been the reason for such a highly
uncomfortable attribution? The answer prob- ably lies in the popularity of such attribution in public
perception which did not allow the brahmana redactors to revise that bit.

However, there are more issues with the figure of Vyasa. He is celebrated as the author of the
Mahabharata and the editor-compiler of the three/four Vedas, author of the Harivansa and the Puranas,
and possibly the philosopher of the Brahmasutra. These are texts composed over at least a time span of
two millennia if not more. As a result, Vyasa-to most scholars has become a mythical eternal author rather
than a real author working in a real historical context. Sullivan views Vyasa--the creator of the epic, editor
of the Vedas, and grandfather of the epic heroes-as equivalent to Brahma-the Universal Creator,
Grandfather, and the author of the Vedas." He cites the Vayu Purana (II.15.74-75) to show that Vyasa has
been identified as a quarter portion of Brahma and shows a lot of parallelism between the two.434
However, Hiltebeitel rightly points out that though the parallelism succeeds, Sullivan strains to find out
an incarnational relationship between them.435 J.L. Mehta views Vyasa as a prototype of an author. He
is a strange absentee author of 'being and be- coming, whose work carries no signature, 'worthy of the
deconstructive lucubrations of a Derrida!36 Mastering the art of pratismrti, he views how the future
unfolds, being-as indicated in the Visnu Purana-indeed no other than lord Nārāyaṇa himself. But, again,
the Puranic reference to an incarnational relationship is very difficult to establish from the text.

Many scholars have tried to view Vyasa as a symbol. For J.A.B. van Buitenen, he is a kind of a universal
uncle' whose contributions to Vedic, epic, and Puranic texts are intended as a 'symbolic authorship:
Mangels views him as the 'spokesman' of the epiker in the text. 439 Sullivan also understands Vyasa as
'the symbolic representation of all the epic poets, the Rsis of the fifth veda, who perceived the
correspondence between the epic they were composing and the myths and rituals of their heritage: 440
Robert P. Goldman notes the interesting contradiction of accepting Valmiki-traditionally known as the
author of the Ramayana-as a historical personage, but not Vyasa. He says that there is no real evidence
to contradict the fact that the central portion of the Ramayana had a single author and no reason to doubt
the unanimous tradition that the name of the author is Valmiki. But, similarly, there is no inherent reason
to argue against the single authorship of the presumed Bharata nucleus of the Mahabharata and the name
of that single author being Krsna Dvaipayana who has in fact, by appearing as a principal character in the
narrative, made a greater claim to contemporaneity with his work than Valmiki did.

In fact, the Mahabharata represents Vyasa as the poet of that nucleus only and not as symbolic of all the
poets contributing to the tradition. The text says the Vyasa had created the Bharata collection without
the minor stories. It was promulgated by his disciples Sumantu, Jaimini, Paila, Suka, and Vaisampayana in
their own ways. In the Asvalayana Grhya Sutra, four of these-except Suka, Vyasa's son-appear together,
and Jaimini and Vaisampayana are described as the teachers of Bharatal Mahabharata.445 Incidentally,
an alternative version of the story, or at least the 'Aévamedhikaparvan, attributed to Jaimini, is still
extant.446 In support of the idea that the story can be followed in many layers, the text declares that
there are brahmanas who learn the Bharata from Manu on- wards, others from the tale of Astika onwards,
and still others again from the tale of Uparicara onwards.

Moreover, Vyasa is also a figure known from the Later Vedic times and even outside the texts attributed
to him. He is known as a teacher of Jaimini in the Samavidhana Brahmana as well. In the GB, he makes the
comment that one who knows the Atharva Veda-incidentally it is the text that praises the Kuru king
Parikṣit as a contemporary-knows all 449 Most intriguingly, Vyasa Päräsarya, in the TA, says that one
without de- sire does not die,450 a teaching very close to the maxims of the Bhagavad Gita. More
interestingly, a figure called Dipayana or Kanha Dipayana is quite well known in the Buddhist and the Jaina
canons as well. In fact, in the Kanha Dipayana Jātaka, he appears in the context of the story of
Animandavya, a sage who was mistaken as a thief and partially impaled, that appears in the Mahabharata
as well and is identified as a Bodhisattva which in the Jataka tales means a previous incarnation of the
Buddha, 451 There is an interesting story about the killing of the sage Kanha Dipayana by the Andhaka-
venhus (Andhaka-Vrsnis) in the Ghata Jataka and the Samkicca Jātaka.452 The Jaina tradition also makes
the rage of the sage Dipayana (Dvaipayana) responsible for their destruction, after he was stoned to death
by some Yadavas.453 The suggestion is interesting. Of course, Vyasa is traditionally regarded immortal in
the Brahmanical tradition. But that seems to be homage to the immortality of his literary creation,
because even the Arthasastra says that the Vrsnis perished because they had maltreated Dvaipayana 454
We shall deal with this legend further when we discuss the Vrsnis in Chapter 4. But these examples would
suffice to argue that Kṛṣṇadvaipayana Vyasa was already a well-established figure across traditions from
the Later Vedic period onwards up to the Maurya period, and some connection was already established
between the Mahabharata tradition and Vyasa and his disciples. By the early Christian centuries, the
Buddhist Asvaghosa, who also tells an otherwise unknown story of Vyasa being kicked by the prostitute
Käsisundari, 455 was well aware of the tradition of Vyasa's arrangement of the Vedas in four groups. 456
Therefore, by the time the Mahabharata finally under- went Brahmanization, Vyasa's position as the
composer of the nucleus of the text and arranger of the Vedas was probably too well established across
traditions to alter.

Probably, Vyasa was already regarded as the towering intellectual figure of the Later Vedic period when
the initial bardic recording of the Bharata War tradition, the arrangement of the Vedas, a systematization
of the itihasa-purana tradition, and the emergence of the Vedantic- Upanisadic philosophy all took place.
Therefore, the principal scholarly contributions attributed to Vyasa may not be as distant in time from
each other as it appears, if we consider that Vyasa is credited with the origin of these texts and not with
the final shape they attained. In this context, it will be highly interesting to note what the nucleus of the
Mahabharata narrative, located in the Later Vedic Kuru realm where the Vedic Brahmanical orthodoxy
and orthopraxy were taking shape. with the emergence of the varna system, may imply, being attributed
to a person who, by the notion of varna, would not be a brahmana but the result of a socially unacceptable
union between a brahmana and an outcast.
In fact, while Sullivan has taken Vyasa as an epitome of a dharmika brahmana, 7 Fitzgerald is right in
treating this conclusion as hasty and incomplete,458 Vyasa's birth was not of a pure brahmana, and he
avoids one of the principal duties of a dharma-abiding brahmana-taking a wife and leading a
householder's life. Hiltebeitel has noted the ambiguity about Vyasa's relation with the Vedic-Brahmanic
tradition. He is the divider of the Vedas, the foremost Vedic authority of his time, composer of the 'Fifth
Veda, and teacher of both the Mahabharata and the Vedas. But he is not a Vedic seer. He is known to
some Later Vedic texts, but no verse of any Vedic text is attributed to him. It is not even told in the
Mahabharata how and when he learnt the Vedas. 459 Thus, Vyasa represents both a close
correspondence with and a difference from the Vedic tradition. His work and the Vedas were recited on
the same occasions, but the brahmanas told stories based on the Vedas, while his disciple-who could also
be a bard like Ugrasravas-told the tale of the Mahabharata.460 In fact, Vyasa himself seems to be more
of a bard than a brahmana. The Mahabharata describes him as a composer of epic-Puranic tales under
the patronage of the Kuru king after the Bharata War:

vyasaś ca bhagavan nityam vasam cakre nrpena hal kathal kurvan puränarşir devarṣinṛparākṣasām//

(The resourceful Vyasa always made a home with the king, and made epics about the seers of the old
days, divine sages, kings, and Raksasas.)

These were tales recited alongside the Vedic stories in a Vedic ritual but not absorbed in them. Thus,
Vyasa's reflections on the Vedic society came not only along with the Mahabharata, but--as Hiltebeitel
puts it nicely-through it:462 Vyasa, the arranger of the Vedas, might not be the one who followed them
thoroughly. Rather, he created a Veda of his own.
the "Veda of Kṛṣṇa(dvaipayana),463 the 'fifth Veda'464 The sociopolitical landscape of Later Vedic India
was complex. On the one hand, the first institutionalization of the varṇa system was taking place, while
on the other, the ritualistic Vedic sacrificial religion was facing the first voice of dissent from the
Upanisadic rsis. The Upanisadic tradition allowed itself to be incorporated into the Vedic corpus as its
fourth subdivision, but it questioned the infallibility of the Vedas and pointed out the futility of sacrificial
ritualism. On the political plain, rudimentary Kuru-Pancala kingships were seeking legitimacy from the
brahmanas who were demanding hereditary monopoly of spirituality for themselves and hereditary
kingship for their patrons. But the ganasamghas-like the Yadava-Vrsnis--were carrying forward the
tradition of tribal egal- itarianism. The conflict of the two orders is represented in the conflict of the Vrini
chief Krsna with the Magadha king Jarasandha (discussed in details later), but still the ganasamgha was
strong enough to emerge victorious and its chief important enough to be venerated in the most important
ritual of kingship-Yudhisthira's rajasuya. Thus, it was a two-way struggle between Vedic-Brahmanical
order based on heredity and the older order (also supported by a large section of the Upanisadic thinkers)
based on ability. In this situation, fraught with possibilities, we can locate Vyasa, the poet born outside
the varna order and who seems to have been much allied with the Upanisadic way of thinking. Not only
has Vyasa been associated with the Brahmasutra later but the CU celebrates his tradition as the 'fifth
Veda' and refers to his hero Krsna Devakiputra-who is known to have synthesized the Upanisadic
philosophy in the Gita-as a student of the Upanisadic scholar Ghora Angirasa. 465 Thus, Vyasa tells not
just the story of a Kuru-Pañcāla political clash where the Pañcalas were aided by a branch of the Kurus but
also the story of a clash between hereditary succession claimed by Duryodhana (the eldest son of the king
Dhrtarastra) and succession by ability claimed by Yudhisthira (a son of queen Kunti by 'Dharma') who had
no blood relation with the Kuru clan. As discussed in the section titled 'Searching for a Lost History of
"Time': Layering the Mahabharata' of this chapter, in the mythological framework of the text, we can see
it as a clash between Suryavamsa and Candravamsa principals. Simon Brodbeck and Brian Black rightly
describe the main issue of the text as the conflict of primogenitive birthright and behavioural fitness.66
Primogeniture ap- pears to be a new idea in kingship, not yet completely established. The tribal notion of
selecting the ablest as the chief was still present, by virtue of which the great king Bharata chose
Bhimanyu-son of Bharadvaja- as his successor, neglecting all his own sons.467 The system continued up
to the period of Samtanu in whose favour his elder brother, Deväpi, abdicated the throne. However,
Samtanu's passion for the fisherwoman Satyavati brought a disjuncture. Devavrata (Bhisma), who was the
fittest to succeed to the throne, made a vow to Satyavati's father, assuring the unborn children of
Satyavati the throne, Bhisma's famous vow unfolded into a crisis, as both the sons of Satyavati died young
Born of niyoga, Dhṛtarastra the eldest of the next generation princes-was denied the throne on account
of his blindness, and the younger Pandu became the king. However, this choice of the abler over the
legitimacy of primogeniture frustrated Dhṛtarastra whose son Duryodhana fought hard to establish his
claim to the throne.

Duryodhana, despite his degradation to the status of a 'villain' in public perception, contains elements of
a tragic anti-hero who wanted his birth- right and stood steadfast in his ksätradharma (virtues of a good
ksatriya). At the very moment preceding his death, after being fatally wounded by Bhima in an unlawful
manner, Duryodhana thus summarized his life and virtues in an extremely heroic manner:

I have studied the Vedas, bestowed gifts according to ordinance, ruled the earth with its oceans and
stood at the head of my enemies. Who is more fortunate than me? What ksatriyas regard as our desired
dharma I have won by meeting my destruction in battle. Who is more fortunate than me? I have won
human pleasure worthy of gods, and hard for kings to come by. I have reached the ultimate wealth and
majesty. Who is more fortunate than me? Unshakable Kṛṣṇa! I am bound for heaven with my friends
and kin. You will live on to grieve, all your purposes destroyed.

The poet's respect for the virtues of his anti-hero is reflected in the shower of flowers from heaven, after
Duryodhana's statement, bringing shame to Krsna and the Pandavas, Even in his very last moments,
Duryodhana remained steadfast in his dignity of a great king and warrior in addressing his surviving
followers-Asvatthaman, Krpa, and Krtavarman:

Having protected the earth I now approach this conclusion! How fortunate that I never turned back from
combat, no matter what happened! How fortunate that I was slain by sinners, and that, too, using the
worst trickery! How fortunate that I always fought with courage and perseverance! How fortunate that
I see you escaped from that destruction and come to me safe and sound-that is the best thing to me! Do
not grieve at my death out of friendship! If the Vedas are authoritative, have conquered imperishable
worlds.

Duryodhana, in the Mahabharata, is often the champion of the Vedic Brahmanical order, often even
displaying supernatural abilities. In a strange passage, he claimed to possess matchless celestial energy:

Supreme indeed is the fiery might the celestials possess, but my own the Gods cannot match, know it,
Bharata. While the world looks on, I shall with my incantations steady the earth's mountains and peaks
if they are shattered. The terrifying, thundering gale and avalanche of rocks that spell the destruction
of the sentient and insentient, the standing and moving-I shall slay them any time, before the eyes of
the world, out of sheer compassion for the creatures. Chariots and foot soldiers will march over water
that I have frozen, any time at all: I am the sole mover of the affairs of Gods and Asuras! Whatever may
be the country in which I have business with my grand-armies, the waters will speed me there, wherever
I want.
Duryodhana's death has been described as a moment when the entire cosmos reacted with heavy wind
and seismic movements, meteors and showers of dust, sounds of drums, conches, and animals, and rivers
flowing backwards, $75 What were all these about? Was Duryodhana a repository of pre-Vedic shamanic
powers, of unearthly forces the Brahmanical world abhorred, as indicated by the eerie incident of the
Danavas of the underworld reassuring him when he felt low after his humiliation at the Dvaita Forest?
McGrath thinks so. However, a completely opposite interpretation also seems plausible. Was
Duryodhana, in a way, the ideal Vedic king who could, thus, represent the orderliness of the cosmic
forces? Angelika Malinar has shown such a possibility, explaining Duryodhana's strange claims as the ones
of a 'spellbinder of royal power' comparable to Prthu Vainya, the ideal Vedic king who had instituted the
earthly order and had stabilized the waters. In fact, Duryodhana backs up his claim of supernatural power
with a statement of his good governance:

In my domain, no danger lurks from snakes and such, king; because of me, no fearful things beset the
sleeping creatures. Parjanya rains when they wish for those who dwell in my domain. All my subjects
are most law-abiding and there is nothing that plagues them.

Duryodhana's magical power was perceived by Yudhisthira as divine (daivi maya) and not demonic.This
would explain the cosmic reaction at Duryodhana's fall, followed by gandharvas, siddhas, and apsarases
singing in the sky while fragrant breezes moved and a great shower of auspiciously smelling flowers fell
on the dying hero." The Mahabharata asserts that Duryodhana had rightfully earned his place in the
heaven by following ksätradharma.

David Gitomer rightly notes the importance of the plays of Bhasa in this context. Bhasa, who possibly
composed his plays in the second century CE, flourished in a period before the traditionally accepted date
of the final Brahmanical redaction of the Mahabharata. The source of his six plays on the plots derived
from the Mahabharata thus was either an oral tradition or an older version of the Mahabharata. In his
plays, Duryodhana appears in the full grandeur of a righteous and legitimate king. In Dutavakya, he stands
steadfast for ksatriya virtue, against the harbinger of the alternative idea, Kṛṣṇa:

Kingship is enjoyed by great princes by conquering their foes in battle. It cannot be had by begging, nor
is it conferred by the poor upon this world. If they (Pandavas) desire to become kings, let them venture
forth on the battlefield, or else let them at their will enter a hermitage.

In Pañcaratra, Bhasa almost reverses the Mahabharata to make Duryodhana an epitome of virtue and a
great patron of Vedic Brahmanism, praised by Bhisma for his righteousness, who gives away half of his
kingdom to the Pandavas to fulfil a pledge to Dronal The greatest celebration of Duryodhana, however,
comes in the Urubhanga where Duryodhana lives and dies a king who performed the Vedic rites,
supported his kinsmen, showered favours on even the foes, never cheated his dependents, and bowed
his head only in front of his father.45 Thus Bhasa adopted the Duryodhana of Vyasa, who was a tragic
victim of changing times, aware of the power of the preacher of that change- Krsna, but still ready to
contest him:

I am mindful of the power of Krsna, whose tejas is immeasurable, but he has not shaken me from
following the kṣatradharma. have entirely won him. I am not to be grieved for at all.

No wonder that despite the Mahabharata's overall presumption that Yudhisthira was the ruler desired by
the subjects, it also records how all the people of Hastinapura wailed in grief when they received the news
of Duryodhana's death. 487 Even long after his death, a brahmana remembered in the Kuru court that the
people were maintained well by King Duryodhana (duryodhanenäpi rajñā suparipälitäḥ), which is not a
little achievement for a king.

However, what Vyasa celebrates in his work is not the tragedy of the Brahmanical virtue of Duryodhana
but the jaya of a new virtue, epitomized by the heroes of a new kind. In the very beginning of the political
tur- moil, the poet himself entered the politics to copulate with the widowed wives and a dasi of the
childless king Vicitravirya. Out of the three sons born, the author's favourite was the son of the dasi who
copulated with the dark and ugly sage willingly. With a hurt male ego, the poet attributed the physical
deformities of the two royal princes to the reluctance of the queens to copulate with him.The däsiputra
Vidura still could not get the throne, but became a powerful minister to champion the cause of the
Pandavas and was often helped by another däsiputra, Yuyutsu (a son of Dhṛtarastra by a dasi), in this
project.

As the story unfolded, a certain Ekalavya lost his thumb for daring to surpass the ksatriya princes in
archery. But unlike the poet of the "Uttarakanda' of the Ramayana, who celebrated the assassination of
the sudra ascetic Sambúka, Vyasa did not celebrate the brahmana guru who preserved the order but the
'gurubhakti" of the outcast disciple:

Forever devoted to the truth, with happy face and unburdened mind, he cut off his thumb without a
moment's hesitation, and gave it to Drona.

Drona, Krpa, and Asvatthäman-despite being brahmanas-chose their martial ability as means of livelihood.
However, the life that typically characterized this contest between birth and ability, so crucial to the world
Vyasa represented, was Karna.

According to McGrath, Karna is the most typical Indo-European 'hero' in the Mahabharata,492 He
understands the hero as 'a martially and verbally gifted figure with some kind of divine genealogy who is
separated or isolated from his community and returned to that community only after death, via the
medium of praise and lament:493 McGrath finds Karna's heroism in his lineage, his divine and intrinsic
armour, and his adherence to the ksatriya code of valour. Moreover, his character seems not to have been
overlaid by 'later' doctrinal considerations of Vaisnavism, making him an 'unalloyed' and 'original' version
of an 'epic hero' Much like Achilles, Karna had power but lacked status. Like an archetypal ksatriya hero,
he banked on his code of valour (tejas) to acquire the heroic laments and remembrance in an 'epic' (katha)
of his own, which would render him immortal fame (kirti). 'Karna's epic, which McGrath thinks to have
been subsumed under the more Vaisnavized 'Arjuna's epic, is considered by him as the best representative
of the heroic model of ksatriya behaviour in a "bronze-age society 495 Karna, in McGrath's opinion, rep-
resents a 'heroic model neither overtly Vedic (exemplified by Indra) nor excessively Hindu (exemplified by
Krsna) in its orientation. Thus, Karna is neither a basic and elementary hero as Bhima nor a super naturally
and devotionally endowed hero as Arjuna but a typical 'bronze age martial hero' whose death
immortalized him through praises and laments, am punt med de alge

McGrath's thesis raises some valid points, such as the role of narrative epic (katha) in rendering the mortal
hero an immortal fame Kirti- different from the more materially based 'glory' (vasas). His characterization
of Karna as a transitional hero between the Vedic and the Puranic also makes perfect sense. However, as
discussed earlier, McGrath's entire understanding of an Indo-European hero is coloured by the model of
the Greek heroes. As a result, many of his ideas do not fit in the Indian context. More importantly, though
Karna was obsessed with the 'fame' or kirti attainable by martial valour on which the ksatriya code was
based. an attempt to consider him as an archetypal ksatriya hero would overlook the crucial point that he
was denied ksatriya identity throughout his life. The crucial question around Karna's life was not if he was
an ideal ksatriya but whether one became a ksatriya by his birth or social status or by his ability. Being the
first-born son of Kunti, Karna had a rightful claim to the throne, at least a more rightful claim than
Yudhisthira. Yet, that remained unknown to the world during his lifetime and even to him for the greater
part of his life. Therefore, Karna's life was about questioning the convention in which status was based on
supposed heredity and not on ability. Karna, therefore, stood not so much between the Vedic heroism of
Indra and Puranic heroism of Krsna but between the hereditary katriya heroism of Duryodhana and the
varṇa-neutral alternative heroism of Yudhisthira. Karna belonged to both the worlds, had both the
heredity and the ability needed for being the king, but was denied his claim to both. There lies the irony
of Karna's character, especially of his ksatriya-hood.

In his early years, he tried to show his martial ability against the celebrated prince Arjuna but was denied
the opportunity because of his sup- posed low birth by two brahmanas (Krpa and Drona)." Throughout his
life, Karna struggled for a chance to receive the recognition of his valour which was denied to him because
of his supposed sütaputra status. But he was never disrespectful to that identity. Rather, even after
Duryodhana crowned him a king, he bent his head at the feet of his foster father, the suta Adhiratha.498
Before the war started, he gave away his only inherited aid-his divine armour and earrings-to the deceitful
Indra, an event highly celebrated in Bhasa's Karnabharam. Then, suddenly, Kṛṣṇa and Kunti opened up a
world of success and prosperity to him by revealing his true identity as the son of Surya and Kunti. This,
of course, would mean that Karna, not Yudhisthira, would be the claimant to the throne as the eldest son
of Kunti (since he-as a son of the kanina type-would be considered a legitimate son of Pandu). Moreover,
Karna's position would be virtually unchallengeable, given that few would be able to stand against the
combined military ability of Karna and Arjuna. It would also entitle Karna to a share in the polyandrous
arrangements with Draupadi. But Karna rejected this golden way to luxury and preferred to die for his
loyalty to the man who had valued him for his ability rather than his birth, Duryodhana. He rejected his
divine and princely parentage for the love displayed to him by his selfless foster parents:

Adhiratha, a sûta, no sooner did he see me Than he carried me to his home, Madhusudana, And
proffered me to Radha, with love! Poured forth at once, and she accepted my piss and shit. How could
a man like me deny her the ancestral offering?"

Out of love for me the milk of Radha's breasts

Aditya Adarkar notes how the epic poet praises him as a 'proud and splendid man' whose mind did not
falter, who stood fast by truth. Of course, the life of Karna signifies much more than just steadfastness in
truth. Uma Chakravarti thinks that Karna (as well as Vidura) represents a figure at the margins of the
kṣatriya household in a text where power was the restricted privilege of the brahmanas and the ksatriyas.
Cast away at his birth, Karna lost his native ksatriya status and acquired a suta status from his adoptive
parents. Being a sutaputra, he could only be a 'hanger on' at the margins of a kṣatriya household and not
a serious contender for śri (neither the fortune of royalty nor its titular goddess in her earthly incarnation
of Draupadi). Even though Duryodhana sup- ported Karna's bid to acquired ksatriyaness' through martial
valour, the bid would fail. When Karna rejected the offer of switching over to the Pandava side, the text
assured that the royal power would remain out of the sutaputra's reach. Even at the moment of his death,
Karna was re- membered primarily as a sutaputra 5 Uma Chakravarti comments:

In the final analysis, Karna's life and his death is that of a warrior who tried to rise to the status of a
kshatriya through heroic skills but could not make it. Not content to sing the praises of the heroes as a
suta, or drive their chariots, even as he refused to give up his adoptive suta identity he could not live his
life as a kshatriya warrior in a royal household- the earth drank his blood as a suta and was quenched.

However, did Karna really fail to make it? After all, both Krsna and Kunti had offered Karna ksatriya status,
and Krsna's proposal clearly acknowledged his entitlement to the throne (and to the Sri-incarnate
Draupadi). The poet of the Mahabharata did not really represent Karna as unworthy of either. But the
offer was unworthy of acceptance to him. Karna was respectful to his adoptive suta parents through
mutual love and never let go of that identity. But, in his action, he was a ksatriya, a hero, and not a suta
who would sing the glories of the heroes and drive their chariots. Karna stood up for kṣatriya-hood as a
status acquired through skill, not inherited. Hence, he refused his entitlement to the throne as a born
ksatriya and preferred to die in commitment to his (ac- quired) ksatriya dharma on the battlefield. Karna
made it to ksatriya- hood not on the basis of his ksatriya birth but by virtue of his heroic death, without
surrendering his sūta identity. Thus, at the moment of Karna's death, while the Pandavas rejoiced at the
death of the 'sutaputra, the suta composers of the Mahabharata noted with pride that a blazing luminosity
left Karna's body and entered the sky (dehät tu karyasya nipätitasya tejo diptam kham vigahyacirena),503
Karna did not rule. But his death established him as a real hero of eternal glory, uniting him in splendour
and luminosity with the sun god, his supposed biological father and favourite deity. Though he was denied
his ksatriya-honour for his supposed suta identity, he died a ksatriya hero, not because the secrets of his
birth were revealed but because of his actions and choices. The recognition, though in secret, came even
from Bhisma, the typical ksatriya hero who always derided Karna, during the fag end of his life, when he
blessed him with the achievement of the worlds attainable by ksatriya dharma: "kşatradharmajitän lokan
samprapsyasi na samsayah.

Karna did not rule, but Yudhisthira did. And the biggest challenge to the notion of hereditary varya in the
text comes from him. Vyasa's dubious birth possibly provides a background to what T.R.S. Sharma marks
as his obsession with the question of true brahmaṇa-hood.505 Yudhisthira, Vyasa's hero, thus opined that
the notions of caste could hardly stand a test, since

jatir atra mahasarpa manusyatve mahamate/samkarāt sarvavarṇānām duspariksyeti me matily//

sarve sarväsväpatyäni janayanti yada narah! vän maithunam atho janma maranam ca saman nṛṇām
.
(I think, great and wise Serpent, birth is hard to ascertain among hu- mankind, because of the confusion
of classes when any man begets children on any woman: language, intercourse, birth and death are
common lot of all men).

Yudhisthira asserted that warna was determined by observance of task, and, hence, a brahmana was one
in whom cultured conduct was postulated 507 Yudhisthira, thus, was a complete contrast to Duryodhana.
He was doubtful about varnaframa, more given to pacifism and renunciation than to his inherent
kṣatradharma, always questioning the rationale of warfare, and fundamentally Upanisadic rather than
Vedic in his ideas. Therefore, we see that after a long discourse about the relative merits of dharma, artha,
and kama among the Pandavas and Vidura--where Vidura, Nakula, and Sahadeva extolled dharma, Arjuna
spoke in favour of artha, and Bhima in defence of kama Yudhisthira subordinated all these values to the
Upanisadic ideal of moksa

In fact, Yudhisthira, the dharmaraja, was definitely not a follower of the traditional varnasrama-based
notion of dharma. However, despite his Upanisadic leanings, he was not a renunciant either. Did he then
represent a new notion of dharma? Mukund Lath has identified this new notion in a concept called
anṛśamsya (non-cruelty). He thinks that this was an ideal of the pravṛttimärga (path of action) espoused
by the Mahabharata, in contrast to the better-known ideal of ahimsa (non-violence) which was more
suitable for the nivṛttimärga (path of renunciation),510 Of course, ahimsa had been a cardinal virtue in
non-Brahmanical Sramanic religions, such as Jainism and Buddhism, which also espoused renunciation.
Following Lath, Hiltebeitel has also noted that anṛśamsya has been celebrated as the highest dharma nine
times in the Mahabharata (III.67.15, III.203-41, III.297.55, III.297.71, V.32.11, XII.220.109, XII.316.12,
XIII.47.2, XIII.159.6), more than any other ideal, including ahimsa which is called the greatest dharma four
times (1.11.12-14, III.198.69, XIII.116.1, XIII.117.37-41),511 He also connects the idea as a response to the
fact that the Magadha kings (including Aśoka), who patronized the heterodox religions celebrating ahimsa,
had been absolutist despots and murderers of their fathers and brothers, 512

Sibaji Bandyopadhyay takes a cue from Lath and Hiltebeitel and maintains this contrastive framework
between ahimsa and anṛśamsya, considering anṛśamsya as a critique of non-violence. Is anṛsamsya then
an alternative to ahimsa, a response to the Sramanic religions such as Jainism and Buddhism, with little
connection with the Later Vedic con- text of the Mahabharata narrative? It would seem so if one were to
focus on the long discourse on anlamsya delivered to a proud brahmana by Dharmavyadha, a righteous
meat-seller of Mithila, who practised an "im- pure' profession for livelihood but lived according to the
tenets of dharma in his personal life. Here, Dharmavyädha strongly pointed out the impossibility of
adhering to complete ahimsa and extolled anṛśamsya as an alternative, 514 Much of Bandyopadhyay's
discussion on anffamsya is based on this particular episode.

However, if we look beyond this highly didactic and late section,515 we may see that the concept of
anṛśamsya has a gradual development in the central narrative of the text, and it plays a crucial part in
what Hiltebeitel calls "the education of the Dharma-king. In fact, if the central narrative of the
Mahabharata has something to do with the establishment of Yudhisthira as a new kind of hero, the role
of anṛśamsya is crucial in the process.

Hiltebeitel has also noticed that the term 'anṛśamsya' appears for the first time in the Mahabharata not
in the context of Yudhisthira but as advice to Vyasa himself. When Vyasa agreed to beget children on the
widows of Vicitravīrya, Satyavati asked him to perform the act with ansamsya and anukrosa,516 In fact,
both Lath and Hiltebeitel note that anukrosa is an ideal crucial for understanding the nature of angsamsya.
Anukrosa, translated as 'commiseriat' by Hiltebeitel, literally means 'crying with another, a kind of
consideration or empathy for beings. However, Vyasa does not seem to have succeeded in performing
the task with anṛśamsya and anukrosa then. It seems not. Vyasa got angry inconsiderately when Ambika
and Ambalika were repulsed by his appearance and smell. Rather than dealing with their revulsion with
empathy, Vyasa ended up holding them responsible for the physical deformities of their sons. The
Mahabharata narrative thus starts with the failure of its author to fulfil an ideal set in front of him by his
mother. Subsequently, the author celebrates the story of a hero, Yudhisthira, who did not fail.

In fact, the birth of the Pandavas themselves has been set in the con- text of a failure to practise
änglamsya. The curse that had caused Pandu's impotence was brought forth by his killing of a sage and
his wife who were copulating in the disguise of deer. The killing itself was not condemned, for it was
normal for a ksatriya king to hunt deer. The act was lacking in anlamsya because Pandu did not have the
consideration to wait until the deer finished making love. Yudhisthira, the eldest surrogate son of Pandu,
therefore undertook a difficult journey to establish an ideal his father and grandfather had failed to live
up to.
We hear Yudhisthira speak of anṛsamsya for the first time in a very un- usual context--as one of the
qualities of Draupadi before staking her at the dice game. We shall see later that Yudhisthira's assumption
about Draupadi was not right in this case. Anṛśamsya might have been a virtue Yudhisthira had already
started to regard in high esteem and expected in his wife, but it was certainly not something that Draupadi
had much respect for. However, that Yudhisthira's regard for anṛśamsya had gradually increased would
be evident when he would declare it to be the highest dharma to Dharma disguised as a heron-Yaksa in
the Aranyakaparvan's That he was now ready to live his ideal could be seen when, given the option of
saving the life of only one of his brothers, he chose to save Nakula (and not Bhima or Arjuna without
whose valour he would never get his kingdom back) out of consideration for his already deceased
stepmother Madri. Of course, Dharma was pleased with Yudhisthira's angsamsya, and he passed the test
convincingly, Gradually, anrsamsya became the cardinal value of Yudhisthira's life, which he kept on
preaching and practising. When Yudhisthira seemed to have lost his composure temporarily, after the
death of Ghatotkaca in the war, the author him- self intervened to remind him of his virtues, including
anṛśamsya Even after the battle, he continued to rule with anṛśamsya, being empathetic to the war
widows and the mothers who lost their sons, as well as to the poor, blind, and helpless. Such was the
extent of his angsamsya that he was considerate and empathetic even to Dhṛtarastra who, along with his
sons, had been the cause of all his sufferings. In the final journey of his life, the mahaprasthana,
Yudhisthira's anysamsya faced its final test, which he had also passed with distinction by not agreeing to
choose heaven if it meant leaving out the dog that had accompanied him throughout his journey The poet,
of course, is emphatic about the view that the journey of Yudhisthira's anysamsya did not end with his
mortal life, nor did the multiple tests that such a virtue needed to undergo end with his life on earth.
Therefore, reaching the heaven in his earthly body. and seeing his brothers and Draupadi suffering in hell,
Yudhisthira decided to forego heavenly pleasure at once, to share the torment of hell with his lifelong
companions, for he declared that where his brothers and his dear Draupadi were, that was his heaven.
Finally, Yudhisthira earned another round of praise from his father Dharma for not swerving from his heart
even after reaching heaven.

Ansamsya, therefore, is a philosophy of non-cruelty and considerate empathy for all beings, including low
borns or former foes, half-raksasas or the lowly and the destitute, a dead woman (Madri) or even a dog,
as Hiltebeitel has noted.532 Moreover, it is a value to be practised by the capable who undergo multiple
tests in life and beyond and has nothing to do with the varna assigned by birth. Hence, it is stated that
angsamsya can be found among the people of all varnas.533

It is worth noting that nowhere in the referred instances is anṛlamsya presented as a counterpoint to
ahimsa. Rather, we see the gradual establishment of Yudhisthira as a counterpoint to Duryodhana, the
strict adherent of his prescribed varnadharma, the violent kṣatradharma (for following which he won the
promised reward of heaven). In fact, Hiltebeitel's list of the various acts considered nṛśanisa (cruel) in the
Mahabharata- including Purocana's attempt to burn alive the Pandavas in the lacquer house (1.36.3),
Sisupala's verbal attack on Krsna, Bhisma, and the Pandavas during the rajasuya of Yudhisthira (II.42.6-
11), Kaikey's intrigue to send her stepson Rama into exile (III.261.32), Kicaka's attempts to molest the
helpless Draupadi (IV.29.5), the Pandavas', conspiracy to disarm Drona by deceit and killing him unarmed
(VII.166.19), and Jayadratha's role in killing the young Abhimanyu (XIV.77.38)5-clearly shows that what
anṛśamsya opposed was not the ahimsa of the Sramanic religions but the cruelty inherent in the violent
conflicts in ksatriya clan society. Therefore, Yudhisthira faced most of the counterarguments not from any
non-violent ascetic but from his own mother and wife, Kunti and Draupadi, both firm believers in the
ksätradharma.

McGrath rightly notes that 'women in epic Mahabharata, more than male heroes, speak what is
considered to be social truth: what is right for ksatriyas and what constitutes good behaviour 535 It is the
action of the women that 'weaves the tissue of kula clan, and the women's speeches sustain and refine
the values of both kin and varna 536 Thus, placed in the context of a clan society, Vyasa's heroines are
quite vocal and assertive, particularly in the defence of kşatradharma. Devayani compelled King Yayati to
marry her and left him at her will. 537 Sakuntala fiercely criticized her husband Duḥşanta in an open court,
when he refused to accept her and her child.538 Gangă continued to kill one child after another and left
her husband the moment she was questioned.539 Satyavati instructed her premarital son and her
daughters-in-law to cohabit for offspring. 540 Bhisma's abduction of Amba, for his brother Vicitravirya,
led to Amba's violent attack on Bhisma and the ultimate vow to avenge her insult by killing him. Though
both Satyavati and Kunti abandoned their premarital children, Vyasa and Karna, respectively, the mother's
right over the child was considered equal to the father's in both the cases. 542 Gandhari not only berated
both Dhṛtarästra and Duryodhana for not following the path of dharma but also admonished Bhima for
his unlawful blow to kill Duryodhana and the indecent act of drinking Duḥsasana's blood.544 She even did
not spare Kṛṣṇa for his lapses. 545

Kunti, who controlled her five sons throughout her life, appears to have been an even stauncher adherent
of ksätradharma. In the 'Udyogaparvan, she tried to instigate the pacifist Yudhisthira to fight by praising
ksatriya virility 546 Criticizing the notion of anṛśamsya, she said:

na hi vaiklavyasamsṛṣṭa anṛśamsye vyavasthitaḥ/ prajāpālanasambhūtam kim cit prapa phalam

nrpah//
(A king infected by cowardice, who does not act ruthlessly, does not win the reward that results from
the protection of his subjects.)
She would rather see Yudhisthira deliver his patrimony by any kind of
stratagem:
pitryam amsam mahavaho nimagnam punar uddharal sämnå dänena bhedena dandenatha nayena call
(Unearth your ancestral share that lies buried, strong-armed son! Do it with persuasion, bribery,
subversion, punishment, or policy.)

Kunti had no respect for Yudhisthira's considerate policies which, she thought, would only drown his
ancestors if he did not fight. To inspire him, she also narrated the story of another aggressive mother,
Vidura, who had urged her lazy son Sarjaya to fight for and recover his lost patrimony. However, the most
striking female character in the epic was no doubt the principal heroine, the polyandrous Draupadi. Sally
J. Sutherland Goldman contrasts the outward expression of Draupadi's aggression with the inward
aggressive masochism of Sità in the Ramayana,Whenever there was a need to protect herself, Draupadi
was not reluctant to be aggressive. We have already discussed how her questions perturbed the Kuru
court during the dice match and how she rescued not only herself but also her husbands. She was also
continuously critical of Yudhisthira's passivity. In the 'Aranyakaparvan, she lamented to Krsna:

garhaye pandavams tv eva yudhi śreṣṭhān mahābalan/ ye klisyamanām prekṣante dharmapatnim

yasasvinim// dhig balam bhimasenasya dhik pārthasya dhanuṣmatām/ yau mam viprakṛtām kudrair
marṣayetām janardana//

(I detest the Pandavas, those grand strongmen in war, who looked on while their glorious consort in
Law was molested! A plague on the strength of Bhimasena! A plague on the bowmanship of the Partha!
Both stood by, Janardana, when churls manhandled me.)

She also complained:

naiva me patayaḥ santi na putra madhusudanal na bhrataro na ca pita naiva tvam na ca bandhavaḥ//
ye mam viprakṛtām kṣudrair upekṣadhvam visokavat//
(I have got no husbands, no sons, Madhusudana, not a brother nor a father, nor you, nor friends, if you
mercilessly ignored me when I was plagued by the vulgar.)

When Jayadratha tried to assault Draupadi, she physically resisted him and then wanted to avenge her
insult by killing him. Infuriated by Yudhisthira's passivity, she urged Bhima and Arjuna:

kartavyam cet priyan mahyam vadhyaḥ sa purusadhamah! saindhavapasadah papo durmatiḥ

kulapāmsanaly//

(If you want to do me a kindness, kill off that wretched abortion of the Saindhavas, the evil, ill-minded
defiler of his race).

Similarly, when in disguise in the Matsya realm, she was sexually as saulted by Kicaka, the king's brother-
in-law, in front of the passive Yudhisthira, she became vocal in rage against her husbands and even ad-
monished King Virăța and his court, despite being in the disguise of a mere maidservant:

Where on Earth are the great warriors roaming in disguise, they who were the refuge of those who sought
shelter? How can those powerful, boundlessly august men like castrates suffer that their beloved and
faithful wife is kicked by a sûta's son? Where has their intransigence gone, where their virility and
splendor, if they choose not to defend their wife who is being kicked by a blackguard? What am I to do
with Virața Se here who sees the Law violated, an innocent woman kicked, and allows Kit? King, you do
not act like a king at all in the matter of Kicaka, for your Law is the Law of Dasyus and does not shine in
the assembly! Neither Kicaka nor the Matsya abide in any way by their own Law. I don't blame you, King
Virata, in the assembly of the people, but it is not right that I am struck in your presence, Matsya! Let the
courtiers bear witness to the crime of Kicaka.

She vented out her disgust about Yudhisthira to Bhima, her only husband who tried to protect her:

aham sairandhriveseya caranti rajaveśmani/pag saucadasmi sudeṣṇāyā akṣadhûrtasya kāraṇāt!!

(Because of that gamester I run about in the royal palace in the guise of a chambermaid, cleaning up
after Sudesņā.)

Draupadi would not undergo a fire ordeal like Sitä to prove her chastity. Rather, it was the abusers who,
according to her, deserved the vengeance of her ksatriya husbands. Thus, she had no remorse in asking
Bhima to crack Kicaka like a pot upon a stone (bhindhi kumbham iväśmani) or tear him out as an elephant
tears out a reed Clearly, she was not in agreement with Yudhisthira's perception of anrsamsya and
detested such an idea. She would not consider a ksatriya without righteous anger a valid entity (na
nirmanyuh ksatriyosti loke) and berated weakness. In the series of debates, she had on such topics with
Yudhisthira in the forest. she not only praised the path of rightful action (svakarma kuru må gläsiḥ karmana
bhava damsitah),561 which probably meant performing prescribed varna duties, but also openly
proclaimed violence:

yo na darŝayate tejaḥ kṣatriyaḥ kāla ägate! sarvabhūtāni tam pārtha sada paribhavanty uta// tat tvayā
na kṣamā kāryā satrun prati kathañcanal tejasaiva hi te śakya nihantum nātra samsayaḥ!
(A ksatriya who does not show his authority when the moment comes all creatures will despise forever
after. Partha! Don't show patience to your enemies under any conditions, for with authority alone you
cancut them down, no doubt about that!)

In fact, the poet describes the character of Draupadi as one who is perpetually offended particularly with
Yudhisthira (abhimānavati nityam višesena yudhisthire), which is testified by Draupadi's comment,
*asocyam nu kutas tasya yasya bharta yudhisthiral' (What pity doesn't a woman deserve who has
Yudhisthira for her husband?), Repeatedly complaining about Yudhisthira's lack of anger, she forcefully
argued why neither extreme vengefulness nor extreme forgiveness was desirable and one had to maintain
a balance of both in his dealings, She went to the extent of arguing that gentleness, patience, uprightness,
and tenderness-the cornerstones of Yudhisthira's cherished dharma-were futile.567

However, even these persistent complaints could not swerve Yudhisthira from the ideal of anṛśamsya.
Dismissing Draupadi's allegation that righteousness did not produce any result, he emphatically claimed
that he performed dharma not because of its rewards but because it was the right conduct and his
inherent nature. 565 Delivering a long dis- course on the problematic nature of anger and why forgiveness
was preferable to cruelty,569 he declared that anger was the slayer of human beings (krodho hanta
manusyānām)570 and should be forsaken (tyajet krodham purusah) The birth of creatures was rooted in
peace. 572 Arguing that patience and forgiveness were markers of a superior virtue, he pointed out the
difference between himself and Duryodhana:
Suyodhana is not capable of patience, and therefore can find none: I am capable of it, and therefore
patience has found me. This is the way of those who have mastered themselves, this their eternal Law, to
be patient and gentle, and thus shall I act.

He did not succeed in convincing Draupadi who mocked the Divine Ordainer for bestowing on Yudhisthira
what she considered nothing but delusion (moham).574 Bhima had joined her in calling Yudhisthira's
pacifism impotent (kliba)575 and urged him on to follow the path of cruelty and violence 576 However,
Yudhisthira remained unmoved.

Yudhisthira's anrsamsya therefore seems to be an alternative to the ideal of martial heroism, which
celebrated violence and cruelty of the ksatriya clan society rather than a critique of heterodox non-
violence. The opposition to the ideal was located not in the heterodox religions but in his surroundings,
particularly in his cousin Duryodhana, his mother Kunti, and-most vocally-his wife Draupadi. Yudhisthira
never accepted that violence could ever be righteous, though he could be persuaded to fight a war for the
sake of his rightful claim when all attempts at peace failed. However, the worst sufferer of this battle was
Draupadi, the most vocal advocate for the battle. She lost her father in the battle, and the night attack by
Aśvatthäman on the Pandava camp-probably the most nṛśamsa of all the incidents in the Mahabharata
narrative-took away the lives of her brothers and all her five sons. This was the pivotal moment that
showed the vagary of violence, since a war to avenge the humiliation of Draupadi produced the worst
consequences for Draupadi herself. Given her natural inclination, she initially wanted a violent revenge,
the death of Asvatthaman. However, eventually, she settled for the gemstone on Asvatthaman's head and
placed it on Yudhisthira's head. Thus, the cycle of cruelty and violence ended when the crown gem of the
nṛśamsa Asvatthaman was passed on to the antsamsa Yudhisthira, and the irony that this transfer was
prompted by Draupadi herself, who was hardly in agreement with Yudhisthira's idealism till then and who
had lost all her children as a result of her cherished belief in martial heroism, probably marked the final
establishment of anṛśamsya as a new form of heroism in the text.
Shirshendu Chakrabarti, in a different context, points out how Yudhisthira, often accused of irresolution,
represents a new idea of agency' I or 'freedom' in the predominantly deterministic world of the
Mahabharata. Chakrabarti compares Yudhisthira's heroic agency with Hamlet, to understand him through
the Renaissance idea of self- interrogation as the freedom specific to man. Yudhisthira was always aware
of ethical alternatives. He was plunged into moral dilemma out of deliberate choice and not because of
circumstances. He interrogated accepted codes and dwelt on the margins. He remained suspended in self-
questioning between the code of the ksatriya and that of the brahmana, extending thereby the margins
of either. He did not subscribe to any received code, order, or coterie. He listened to all the sages but
chose none as his guru. He ultimately reflected and acted on his own: he was the true agent, his agency
anchored in self-questioning selfhood.579 While agreeing with Chakrabarti's premise, we must note that
the ideal of anrsamsya was the guiding principle in Yudhisthira's unique reflection and action and,
therefore, the foundation of his alternative heroism.

Vyasa was the poet of a new time, a new ideal, the end of an era. His poetry represents not only the
transition from the age of clan society to an age of well-developed polity but also a transition in which the
attempts to organize polity and society according to birth was not much effective, except in theory. Pande
broadly notes the transition depicted in the Mahabharata:

The traditional Varna system was becoming unreal in practice, and at- tempts were being made to define
and question the social order even as technology was changing tools and weapons, trade and towns were
emerging as a factor in social and cultural consciousness, smaller Janapada states were leading to larger
empires, the Vedic religious tradition was being subjected to scepticism and criticism, the doctrines of
Karman, Samsara and Nivrtti posed a challenge to the ritualistic order, new types of spirituality were
emerging, and attempts were being made of new philosophical syntheses.

Though this description is too simplistic, the days when kingship would be a monopoly of the ksatriya clan
chiefs, bound by a code of valour and depending on the ritual support of the brahmanas, was indeed
coming to an end. Within roughly five centuries of the date we have surmised for the origin of the
Mahabharata narrative, the throne of Magadha, the most illustrious kingdom of India, would not remain
beyond the reach of a barber, Mahapadma Nanda. In fact, post-Nanda India would hardly see ksatriya
kingship, at least not till the Early Medieval period when the Rajput clans would emerge with a claim to
ksatriya status. New channels of legitimization and patronage would be provided by the heterodox
religions which would question the very basis of the caste system. Almost ignored by the Vedic tradition,
the low-born Vyasa was the rsi of this fifth Veda, a Veda for the women and the sudras, greater than the
combined weight of the four Vedas,58 a text which, rendering the Vedas insignificant, claims to contain
everything conceivable about all the four quarters of life: dharma (social order), artha (power and
resources), kama (mate- rial pleasure), and moksa (salvation):

dharme carthe ca kame ca mokṣe ca bharatarṭabha/ yad ihästi tad anyatra yan nehästi na tat kvacit.

Standing on this crossroads of ages, Vyasa provides a new dharma, not of varna duties or martial violence
but of non-cruelty, empathy, and consideration. As the rşi of the fifth Veda, Vyasa proclaims:

matapitṛsahasrani putradarasatăni cal

samsăreșy anubhutani yanti yäsyanti căpare// harṣasthanasahasrani bhayasthanasátani calddivase
divase mudham avisanti na panditam// ürdhvavahur viraumy esa na ca kas cic chroti me/dharmad
arthas ca kāmas ca sa kim artham na sevyate// na jātu kāmān na bhayan na lobhad dharmani tyajej
jivitasyāpi hetoḥ!nityo dharmaḥ sukhaduḥkhe tv anitye jivo nityo hetur asya tv anityaḥ//
(Thousands of mothers and fathers, and hundreds of sons and wives, experiencing world (or santsdra)
have gone. And others will go. There are a thousand situations of joy and a hundred situations of fear.
They affect the ignorant daily, but not the wise. With uplifted arms I cry this aloud, but no one hears
me. Artha and kama are from dharma. For what purpose is it not served? For the sake of neither desire
nor fear nor greed should one ever abandon dharma, even for the sake of living. Dharma is eternal, but
happiness and suffering are not eternal; the soul is eternal but its cause is not eternal.)

The Mahabharata was the ideal story to be recited in Janamejaya's Snake Sacrifice by Vaisampayana.
Minkowski describes the Snake Sacrifice as an artfully chosen frame story that appropriately foreshadows
the wider theme of the epic that it introduces.4 The sarpasatra itself, of course, has Vedic precedents, and
Janamejaya is a well-known Later Vedic figure. However, rather than being a rite to exterminate all Nagas,
it seems to be a Vedic rite practised by many communities, including the Nagas. The rite is known to
various Vedic texts.55 Interestingly, some of them mention among the previous performers of the rite
Janamejaya as well as his principal adversary Taksaka 586 Why this Vedic rite had been refashioned by
the authors of the outer frame to locate the narration of the inner frame is a question worth some
consideration.

The sarpasatra in the Mahabharata is not a stray incident but is located within a chain of events depicting
the clashes between the Kurus and the Nagas. Of course, in the sarpasatra narrative the Nägas appear like
real snakes. However, that they were an ancient community, well-documented historically till at least the
Gupta Age, has been discussed earlier.587 Some of the major Naga figures, such as Dhṛtarastra Airavata,
588 Takṣaka,59 and Arbuda Kadraveya590 are well-known characters in Vedic literature. One of them,
Arbuda Kädraveya, is also considered the poet of Rig Veda X.94, while Taksaka seems to be a Later Vedic
figure, well known to the Atharva Veda. Minkowski rightly says that

[t]he sarpasattra is nothing new. It is not the invention of a late redactor of the epic. In fact it has more
Vedic precedent than the Bharata story itself.

Interestingly, the Baudhayana Srauta Sütra locates the original sarpasatra at Khandavaprastha, not only a
part of the Kuru kingdom but also the original abode of Taksaka in the Mahabharata.592 Even more
interestingly, the sarpasatra of Janamejaya took place at Taksašila, the place where the Khändava Nagas
might have shifted their base after they were driven away from the Khandava forest. This assumption is
strengthened by the experience of Onesikritas, a companion of Alexander to India in the fourth century
BCE, who encountered a community of huge number of snakes and snake worshippers at Taxila In the
Mahabharata, the Nagas had an overall troubled relation- ship with the Kurus, despite Arjuna's marriage
with Ulupi.595 The animosity started with the eviction of Takṣaka's family from the Khandava forest by
Arjuna and Krsna, including the killing of Taksaka's wife by Arjuna, Asvasena, Taksaka's son, wanted to
avenge the death of his mother by aiding Karna in killing Arjuna, but Karna refused the aid.Taksaka,
however, killed Arjuna's grandson, Parikșit. Janamejaya's vow was to kill Taksaka and exterminate all the
Nagas. Thus, it became a series of seemingly endless violence that culminated in the sarpasatra of
Janamejaya. However, the satra was halted midway by Astika, a half- brāhmaṇa half-Naga This became
the occasion for Vaisampayana's narration of the Mahabharata.

Therefore, an ongoing feud with a chain of violence, halted midway by a neutral person, is the best
occasion for the recitation of an epic of anṛśamsya which shows how violence and vengeance fail to bring
any resolution and lead to catastrophe, whereas non-cruelty and empathy establish dharma. Vyasa had
woven his itihasa around the clash between primo genitive birthright and behavioural fitness in the Kuru
kingdom and came up with the new ideal of anṛśamsya. Now, Vaisampayana narrated the epic of
anṛśamsya to a Kuru king committed to vengeance, with a number of background stories of vengeful and
violent feuds between the Nagas and the Garudas, the Devas and the Asuras, Rahu and the Sun and the
Moon, and culminating in the fraternal feud between the Pandavas and the Kauravas. It seems that
Vaisampayana had succeeded in conveying the message of his teacher. When his narrative ended, the
rites of the sarpasatra were stopped the message of anysamsya, the voice of Vyasa, triumphed over the
code of ksatradharma and the bloodthirst of vengeance.
in However, it would be wrong to assume that the Mahabharata is just an epic of anṛśamsya. Rather,
anṛśamsya seems to be a vital component in a new understanding of dharma that Vyasa propounded. To
explore the grand design of that dharma, let us return to Vyasa at the moment of his first significant
intervention in the Mahabharata narrative. We have noticed earlier how Vyasa had failed in the task of
impregnating Ambika and Ambalika with anṛśamsya and ended up cursing the unborn children with
deformities because of the repulsion their mothers had shown in cohabiting with the ugly, smelly sage.
These curses would seem to have far-reaching consequences since it was Dhrtarastra's blindness that had
deprived him of his throne and created all the complexities leading to the Kuru family feud. Is the
Mahabharata then as much a story of Vyasa's failure as it is of Yudhisthira's success? Or is there any other
meaning to the episode that caused Dhrtarastra's blindness?

Arti Dhand emphasizes the crucial role that Vyasa plays in the Mahabharata. He is much more than an
author function. He is the virtual creator of the Mahabharata in all its three senses-the text, the Bharata
clan, and the Bharata War. In fact, Vyasa created the Mahabharata world: materially (by biologically saving
the Bharata clan from extinction), efficiently (by instigating the conflict leading to the Bharata War, by his
curse), and transcendentally (as the author of the text), and al- most assumed the role of God for its
textual universe. In such a scenario, what is the significance of Vyasa's cruelty towards Ambika and
Ambalika?.
Dhand considers misogyny to be a possible explanation. Vyasa, after all, is not just the narrator who
reports or the poet who imagines the Mahabharata, he is also a major character in the text with a unique
pattern of action. Vyasa the author shows Vyasa the character as extremely distant from women. Not only
was Vyasa curiously unmarried, but he had spent the minimal time in the womb and did not need any
rearing from his mother.602 While his only moment of being seduced, by the Apsară Ghrtaci, led to the
birth of a son, Suka,603 that son had be- come famous for his abstinent asceticism triggered by Vyasa's
discourses against familial and sexual life.604 Though Vyasa impregnated Ambika and Ambalika, they
failed to produce what the niyoga was planned for: good, flawless heirs. Though he had blessed Gandhari
with one hundred sons, her prolonged pregnancy assured that Duryodhana would be born after
Yudhisthira (complicating his chances of succession) and she had to witness the death of all the one
hundred sons (the daughter, Duḥsala, not part of Vyasa's blessing of one hundred sons, survived). In his
actions as a character, Vyasa had little consideration for the sentiments of the Pandava women when he
allowed Asvatthäman to direct his missile to their wombs. 606 He even did not hesitate to urge the
Kaurava widows to commit suicide by drowning themselves. 607 Then, was Vyasa a misogynist and his
treatment of Ambika and Ambalika a result of that?608 That would be a hasty conclusion about a poet
whose work displays an unequalled focus on women's sentiments and agency in ancient Indian literature.

After all, a closer scrutiny of the episode would reflect that Vyasa's seeming cruelty was not extended to
all women. As Dhand points out, it is the dasi Ambika had sent as her surrogate, the mother of Vidura,
who emerged as the real hero of the episode. Intervening in the long- standing debate in Indian philosophy
between pravṛtti (action) and nivṛtti (renunciation), Vyasa advocated a bold middle ground which
persuaded people to perform necessary action but without desire or at- tachment.609 Such action needed
mental firmness and commitment to duties irrespective of situations. Therefore, Vyasa wanted Ambika
and Ambalika to undergo a year of self-purification and preparation, the time Satyavati could not
grant.610 Then Vyasa had forewarned Satyavati that the princesses would have to bear with his
ugliness.611 The two princesses failed in their tests of detachment and commitment to duty. After all, the
niyoga was a duty they were supposed to perform in an emergency and not exactly an occasion of sexual
gratification. The children suffered not a curse but the consequences of this failure. On the other hand,
the low-born dasi passed the test with complete detachment, and the resulting pleasure led to the birth
of a perfect offspring.612 Here, even if the context was of patrilineal and genealogical necessities, the
women of high birth were defeated in their test of detachment and mental purity to the low-born dasi.
This victory was celebrated by Vyasa, a däsiputra.

Of course, even the poet could not transcend his time. The däsiputra Vidura, though the most competent
and the poet's favourite, could not be the king.613 But Vyasa told the itihasa of a transition that would
change the social scenario. At the end of the Mahabharata, the situation would change. Yudhisthira would
be able to at least consider the däsiputra Yuyutsu as his successor.614

The emergence of Yudhisthira as a hero of a new age is thus part of a process that dictates the ontology
of Vyasa's work. Yudhisthira himself needed training in that ontology, the training of complete
commitment to duty and detachment from results. That was what made him fight a war while retaining
his pacifism, to show anysamsya even to his erstwhile enemies, to ignore the lure of heaven for the sake
of his loved ones or a loyal dog.
Yet, the question remains about who oversaw this training of Yudhisthira? Vyasa, no doubt, intervened in
crucial junctures. But his job was primarily to record or reflect on the transition than to direct its courses.
Yudhisthira exemplified anṛśamsya, an extremely useful value to match the standards required by a new
ideal of dharma which encouraged action with detachment. But who set the standards? If Yudhisthira was
the protagonist of angsamsya, who was the protagonist of the greater ideal of performing actions with
complete detachment, nişkama karma, which-if the TA is to be believed-Vyasa earmarked as the way to
immortality?

Answering this question will make us ponder if the primary concern of the narrative was the Kuru-Pañcăla
clash over succession issues in the Kuru kingdom, what was its involvement with a person who was neither
a Kuru nor a Pañcala, and if neither was concerned with monarchical succession nor was a great champion
of anṛśamsya. In other words, what role does Vasudeva Kṛṣṇa play as a hero (if not 'the hero') of the
Mahabharata narrative? How would the charioteer who allegedly led a reluctant warrior towards violence
in the Bhagavad Gita become so important in the text so insistent on the importance of anṛśamsya? Did
he also have a new ideal, a new message, to contribute to a new epoch? We seek the answer in the next
chapter.