Meaning of the Mahabharata

Originally posted by: ltelidevara

Hello Sir Namaste.Nice to meet some one who reminds the Great Sukthankar whom I respect a lot.

I am fortunate to read the book you said " On The Meaning Of The Mahabharata " by the Great Sukhthankar. I respect his splendid contribution towards the creation of " BORI Critical Edition Of MBH"

Yes. He could have lived for more years.We would have been blessed with his insight and guidance towards our Epic treasure.

Of late there are many misinterpretations on the Epic that are misleading young minds into believing the right as wrong and wrong as right. The TV serials are adding fuel to it by showing the Epic charecters in poor light.

Sukthankar's book helps those who cherish the desire to understand the Epic in its true sense.

It helps us to tread nearer to Ved Vyasa's vision.

I would like to quote from On The Meaning of MBH about Arjuna  my all time hero.

" It is not sufficient to think of Arjuna as the Pandava Hero,and Krishna as the Yadava chieftain.

They should be regarded as Nara " The Man Par Excellence " and Narayana the Lord himself.

They should be identified as Jeevatma and Paramatma.

Infact there is no duality between them.That is why Krishna is one of the names of Arjuna."

I agree. Given below is a summary of the book for the benefit of all lovers of our Great Epic:

 

A SHORT REVIEW OF VS SUKTHANKAR'S 'ON THE MEANINGS OF THE MAHABHARATA'

In the first chapter, Sukthankar discusses the bewildering array of facile (sometimes absurdly far-fetched) interpretations offered by Western critics, who lack the special mental faculty (one may call it the Oriental subtlety!) needed to appreciate, even comprehend, the delicate essence of the epic. After reading the chapter, one realises how misplaced were the efforts of some of the illustrious 'Indologists' of the last two centuries. For all his pioneering studies, Christian Lassen would have us believe that Krishna was inessential to the essence of the original epic. Sorensen clutched at the elusive straw of Jaya, the supposed warrior 'epic kernel' of 8800 slokas, and came up with an even shorter husk of 8000, through drastic pruning. Hopkins followed up on this 'atomistic' method and saw 'a nebulous mess of incongruities, anachronisms, accretions and interpolations!' In between them, Adolf Holtzmann had come up with his 'Inversion Theory', suggesting that originally the Kauravas were the virtuous side which, despite having been rejected by Sylvain Levi, Oldenberg, Hopkins et al, still seem to have some adherents. Only Dahlmann, the Jesuit scholar, saw in the epic an organic unity and homogeneity that was missed by many of his Western peers. Significantly, publication of the Critical Edition, of which Sukthankar himself was the pioneer-editor, effectively put an end to such free-wheeling interpretations!

Chapters 2, 3 and 4 cover the three layers of Interpretation which constitute the intuitive Indian ways of exploring the meaning of the epic. Oldenberg, for all his pronouncement of the epic as 'a chaos', rightly felt that in the Mbh "breathe the united soul of India and the individual souls of her people." Sukthankar agrees, yet adds that the Mbh is "more than all that." The three chapters present such a comprehensive and cogent analysis of the three levels of interpretation in such a tight manner that the best way to summarise the same would be to give the crux of the layered meanings as provided by Sukthankar himself in his retrospective end-note:

"In the course of these lectures it has been my endeavour to demonstrate that there are three clear perspectives from which the Mbh can be viewed. There is the matter-of-fact viewpoint. On this material or mundane plane, it is the lively story of a fierce war of annihilation said to be waged between two families of cousins,... a story which in all probability... has some historical basis, which is however, entirely in the background. On (this) plane, the main interest of the poem is centred on character. Next, there is... the Dharmic viewpoint. On this ethical plane, the war is regarded as a conflict between the principles of Dharma and Adharma, the Pandavas standing for Dharma, the Kauravas for Adharma, they being the incarnations of the Devas and the Asuras respectively, and the war ends in the victory of Dharma (yato dharmas tato jayah). There is, thirdly and lastly, the suggested transcendental or metaphysical viewpoint. ... On this transcendental plane, which is the viewpoint beyond Dharma and Adharma, beyond Good and Evil, the epic develops what may be termed the philosophy of the Self. In doing this, the epic poets stage a war between the Higher Self and the lower self of man, symbolised by the family of cousins, who are fighting for the sovereignty over the kingdom of the body. In this conflict the Superman (Nara, Arjuna as jeevaatma), under the guidance of the Superself (Narayana, Sri Krishna, as Paramaatma), realising the fundamental identity between the individual self (jeevaatma) and Superself (Paramaatma), cleaves with the sword of knowledge his own Ignorance. "