GENDER AND NARRATIVE IN THE

MAHĀBHĀRATA

The Sanskrit Mahābhārata is one of the most important texts to emerge

from the Indian cultural tradition. At almost 75,000 verses it is the longest
poem in the world, and throughout Indian history it has been hugely influen-
tial in shaping gender and social norms. In the context of ancient India, it is
the definitive cultural narrative in the construction of masculine, feminine
and alternative gender roles.
This book brings together many of the most respected scholars in the field
of Mahābhārata studies, as well as some of its most promising young
scholars. By focusing specifically on gender constructions, some of the most
innovative aspects of the Mahābhārata are highlighted. Whilst taking
account of feminist scholarship, the contributors see the Mahābhārata as
providing an opportunity to frame discussion of gender in literature not just
in terms of the socio-historical roles of men and women. Instead they analyse
the text in terms of the wider poetic and philosophical possibilities thrown up
by the semiotics of gendering. Consequently, the book bridges a gap in text-
critical methodology between the traditional philological approach and more
recent trends in gender and literary theory. It will be appreciated by readers
interested in South Asian Studies, Hinduism, Religious Studies and Gender
Studies.

Simon Brodbeck and Brian Black are researchers in the Department of the
Study of Religions at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University
of London. Brodbeck is the author of several scholarly articles on aspects of
the Mahābhārata; Black is the author of The Character of the Self in Ancient
India: priests, kings, and women in the early Upanisads.
˙
 ROUTLEDGE HINDU STUDIES SERIES
Series Editor: Gavin Flood, University of Stirling
Former Series Editor: Francis X. Clooney,
SJ, Harvard University

The Routledge Hindu Studies Series, in association with the Oxford Centre
for Hindu Studies, intends the publication of constructive Hindu theological,
philosophical and ethical projects aimed at bringing Hindu traditions into
dialogue with contemporary trends in scholarship and contemporary society.
The series invites original, high-quality, research-level work on religion,
culture and society of Hindus living in India and abroad. Proposals for anno-
tated translations of important primary sources and studies in the history of
the Hindu religious traditions will also be considered.

EPISTEMOLOGIES AND THE LIMITATIONS OF

PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY
Doctrine in Mādhva Vedānta
Deepak Sarma

A HINDU CRITIQUE OF BUDDHIST EPISTEMOLOGY

Kumārila on Perception
The ‘Determination of Perception’ Chapter of Kumārilabhatta’s Ślokavārttika
Translation and Commentary ˙˙
John Taber

ŚAM KARA’S ADVAITA VEDANTA

˙ A Way of Teaching
Jacqueline Hirst

ATTENDING KR S N A’S IMAGE

˙ ˙ ˙ as Devotional Truth
Caitanya Vaisnava Mūrti-sevā
˙ Kenneth
˙ Russell Valpey

ADVAITA VEDĀNTA AND VAIS N AVISM

˙ ˙
The Philosophy of Madhusūdana Sarasvatı̄
Sanjukta Gupta
 CLASSICAL SĀM KHYA AND YOGA
˙
An Indian Metaphysics of Experience
Mikel Burley

SELF-SURRENDER (PRAPATTI) TO GOD IN ŚRĪVAIS N AVISM

Tamil Cats and Sanskrit Monkeys ˙ ˙
Srilata Raman

THE CAITANYA VAIS N AVA VEDĀNTA OF JĪVA GOSVĀMĪ

˙ ˙
When Knowledge Meets Devotion
Ravi M. Gupta

GENDER AND NARRATIVE IN THE MAHĀBHĀRATA

Edited by Simon Brodbeck and Brian Black
 GENDER AND
NARRATIVE IN THE
MAHĀBHĀRATA

Edited by Simon Brodbeck and

Brian Black
 First published 2007
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
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This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 2007 Editorial selection and matter, Simon Brodbeck and Brian
Black; individual chapters, the contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or
other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Gender and narrative in the Mahabharata / edited by Simon Brodbeck
and Brian Black.
p. cm.—(Routledge Hindu studies series)
Listen but do not grieve : grief, paternity, and time in the laments of
Dhrtarastra / Emily T. Hudson—Eavesdropping on the Epic : female
listeners in the Mahabharata / Brian Black— Arguments of a queen :
Draupadi’s views on kingship / Angelika Malinar – How do you
conduct yourself ? : gender and the construction of a dialogical self
in the Mahabharata / Laurie L. Patton—Among friends : marriage,
women, and some little birds / Alf Hiltebeitel—Gendered soteriology :
marriage and the karmayoga / Simon Brodbeck—Bhisma as
matchmaker / Nick Allen – Bhisma beyond Freud : Bhisma in the
Mahabharata / James L. Fitzgerald—“Show you are a man!” :
transsexuality and gender bending in the characters of
Arjuna/Brhannada and Amba/Sikhandin(i) / Andrea Custodi—
Krsna’s son Samba : faked gender and other ambiguities on the
background of lunar and solar myth / Georg von Simson – Paradigms
of the good in the Mahabharata : Suka and Sulabha in quagmires of
ethics / Arti Dhand.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Mahabharata–Criticism, interpretation, etc. 2. Gender identity in
literature. I. Brodbeck, Simon, 1970– II. Black, Brian, 1970–
BL1138.27.G43 2007
294.5′923048—dc22

ISBN 0-203-02964-X Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0–415–41540–3 (hbk)

ISBN10: 0–203–02964–X (ebk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–41540–8 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–203–02964–0 (ebk)
 TO THE MEMORY OF JULIA LESLIE,
A WONDERFUL WOMAN, COLLEAGUE
AND SCHOLAR
 CONTENTS

Notes on contributors xiii

Preface xvii
Acknowledgements xviii
Family tree xix

1 Introduction 1
SIMON BRODBECK AND BRIAN BLACK

The Mahābhārata 1
Gender and narrative in the Mahābhārata 10
This book and beyond 24

2 Listen but do not grieve: grief, paternity, and time in the laments
of Dhrtarāstra 35
˙ ˙˙
EMILY T. HUDSON

Dhrtarāstra laments the news of Duryodhana’s death: the

˙
lament˙˙ as summary in the Ādiparvan 36
Listen but do not grieve: Dhrtarāstra laments Bhı̄sma’s fall in the
frame of the Bhı̄smaparvan˙ 42˙˙ ˙
Conclusion 47 ˙

3 Eavesdropping on the epic: female listeners in the Mahābhārata 53

BRIAN BLACK

Introduction 53
Mahābhārata as the universal Veda 54
Phalaśrutis 55
Characterizing the audience: the king as primary listener 56
From the Yajamāna’s wife to the Dharmarāja’s wife 60
Gāndhārı̄: listening in the court 62
Draupadı̄ as listener: the education of the dharma queen 66

ix
 CONTENTS

From listening to speaking 70

Conclusion 72

4 Arguments of a queen: Draupadı̄’s views on kingship 79

ANGELIKA MALINAR

Duryodhana the winner versus Yudhisthira the loser 82

˙˙
Self-assertion versus forgiveness in 3.29–30 83
What about retribution? 86
Draupadı̄ the heretic 88
Conclusion 90

5 How do you conduct yourself? Gender and the construction of a

dialogical self in the Mahābhārata 97
LAURIE L. PATTON

The larger issues 97

The dialogue between Draupadı̄ and Satyabhāmā 100
Draupadı̄ as Sairandhrı̄ 105

6 Among friends: marriage, women, and some little birds 110

ALF HILTEBEITEL

Subtales and soliloquies 111

Birds and friendship 117
Friends among friends 126

7 Gendered soteriology: marriage and the karmayoga 144

SIMON BRODBECK

Gendered genesis and its soteriologico-narrative ramifications 146

The case of Yudhisthira 150
˙˙ 162
Listening to the wife
Conclusion 165

8 Bhı̄sma as matchmaker 176

˙
NICK ALLEN

Perfect polity 182

Framing of the whole sequence of matchmaking 183
The Rígsþula (‘Ríg’s list’) 184

9 Bhı̄sma beyond Freud: Bhı̄sma in the Mahābhārata 189

˙ ˙
JAMES L. FITZGERALD

x
 CONTENTS

Introduction 189
The end of Bhı̄sma 190
˙
Towards a ‘langue’ of narratives of Indian family relations 198

10 ‘Show you are a man!’ Transsexuality and gender bending in the

characters of Arjuna/Brhannadā and Ambā/Śikhandin(ı̄) 208
˙ ˙ ˙˙
ANDREA CUSTODI

Arjuna/Brhannad.ā 211
˙
Ambā/Śikhan d.in(ı̄) 216
˙
Concluding reflections 222

11 Krsna’s son Sāmba: faked gender and other ambiguities on the

˙˙˙
background of lunar and solar myth 230
GEORG VON SIMSON

Introduction 230
The story of Sāmba 231
Psychology versus theology 233
Reasons for the rsis’ wrath 233
˙˙
A European parallel: the legend of emperor Nero 234
The prehistory of Sāmba’s birth 235
Soma, the musala, the erakā grass, and lunar mythology 236
Sāmba and the lunar circle; the five heroes of the Vrsni-Andhakas 239
The moon as measurer 241 ˙ ˙˙
Sāmba as vidūsaka (Harivamśa) 242
˙
Sāmba’s virūpatva 243 ˙
The vidūsaka in the Nāgānanda: new-moon imagery 244
˙
Purānic sources: Sāmba introduces the sun cult from Śākadvı̄pa 245
˙
Sāmba and Gunavatı̄ (Harivamśa) 245
Sāmba and the˙ cycle of the year˙ 247
Sāmba, Śikhand.in, and the solstices 247
Sāmba and the˙ North American trickster 249
Conclusion 250

12 Paradigms of the good in the Mahābhārata: Śuka and

Sulabhā in quagmires of ethics 258
ARTI DHAND

Śuka 259
Sulabhā 261
Comparing Śuka and Sulabhā 263
Himsā and ahimsā on moral terrain 270
The˙ ethics of karmayoga
˙ 273

xi
 CONTENTS

Appendix: Concordance of Critical Edition and

Ganguli/Roy translation 279
Glossary 285
Bibliography 291
Index 318

xii
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Until his retirement in 2001, Nick Allen was for twenty-five years Lecturer/
Reader in the Social Anthropology of South Asia at the Institute of
Social and Cultural Anthropology at Oxford, and a Fellow of Wolfson
College. His D.Phil., based on twenty months’ fieldwork in East Nepal,
focused on the mythology and oral traditions of a Tibeto-Burman ‘tribal’
community. Apart from Himalayan comparativism, he has published
on the origin and macro-history of kinship systems and on the French
tradition in sociological thought (see his Categories and Classifications,
2000). However, in recent years his main research interest has been in
Indo-European cultural comparativism, and in particular in the idea of a
common origin lying behind Sanskrit and ancient Greek epic traditions.

Brian Black received his B.A. in philosophy at the University of California

at San Diego, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in the study of religions at the
School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London,
where he is currently a researcher. His primary scholarly interests are the
Upanisads, the Mahābhārata and the Buddhist Nikāyas. He has taught
˙
a number of courses on the texts and philosophies of Hinduism and
Buddhism at both SOAS and Birkbeck College. He is author of the book
The Character of the Self in Ancient India: priests, kings, and women in the
early Upanisads.
˙
Simon Pearse Brodbeck was born in Lancaster and studied at Clare College,
Cambridge, King’s College, London, and the School of Oriental and
African Studies, London, where he obtained his doctorate with a thesis on
the philosophy of the Bhagavadgı̄tā. He taught in the Asian Studies
Department at the University of Edinburgh, before returning to London to
work on the Arts and Humanities Research Council Mahābhārata research
project which led to this book. He has written papers on religious experi-
ence, on various aspects of the Bhagavadgı̄tā and Mahābhārata, and on the
philosophy of cricket. His current projects are studies of the Mahābhārata’s
patrilineal ideology and of its ring-compositional structures.

xiii
 N OT E S O N C O N T R I BU T O R S

Andrea Custodi received her doctorate from the George Washington

University’s Human Sciences Program, with concentrations in South
Asian religious studies, Lacanian psychonanalysis, and feminist theory.
Her dissertation, ‘Dharma and desire: Lacan and the left half of the
Mahābhārata’, brings this interdisciplinary focus to bear on themes of
gender, sexuality, and subjectivity in the epic, and seeks to apply Lacanian
theoretical innovations to psychoanalytic discourse on the subcontinent.
Dr Custodi is currently Executive Director of the South India Term
Abroad (SITA) Program, a consortium of U.S. colleges and universities
that conducts an undergraduate academic and cultural immersion program
in Tamil Nadu.
Arti Dhand is Assistant Professor at the Department and Centre for the
Study of Religion, University of Toronto. She is the author of Woman as
Fire, Woman as Sage: sexual ideology in the Mahābhārata (State University
of New York Press, in press). She has also written several articles dealing
with the ethics of gender and violence in the Hindu epics.
James L. Fitzgerald is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of
Tennessee. He studied for his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago under the
supervision of J.A.B. van Buitenen, and is now the editor and principal
translator of the ongoing University of Chicago Press translation of the
Poona Critical Edition of the Mahābhārata, which was interrupted by van
Buitenen’s death in 1980, but which continued in 2004 with the publication
of The Mahābhārata, vol. 7: The Book of the Women; The Book of Peace,
part 1. In addition to his translation work, Fitzgerald has authored a
number of ground-breaking scholarly articles on the Mahābhārata, most
notably ‘India’s fifth Veda: the Mahābhārata’s presentation of itself’
(1985, 1991) and ‘The Rāma Jāmadagnya “thread” of the Mahābhārata:
a new survey of Rāma Jāmadagnya in the Pune text’ (2002).
Alf Hiltebeitel is Professor of Religion, History, and Human Sciences at
the George Washington University. His research has focused on the
Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyana, regional Indian folk epics, and the cult
˙
of the goddess Draupadı̄. Influenced by the French scholars Georges
Dumézil and Madeleine Biardeau (whose work he has translated), he has
authored a great many articles on India’s epics, and two books on the
Mahābhārata: The Ritual of Battle: Krishna in the Mahābhārata (1976)
and Rethinking the Mahābhārata: a reader’s guide to the education of the
dharma king (2001). He is a co-editor of Is the Goddess a Feminist? The
politics of South Asian goddesses (2002, with Kathleen Erndl). His work
continues to focus on the classical period and the Tamil Draupadı̄ cult.
He is currently working on a book titled Dharma, and on various essays on
the epics following up his Rethinking the Mahābhārata.
Emily T. Hudson received her M.A. in the History of Religions from the

xiv
 N OT E S O N C O N T R I BU T O R S

University of Chicago and her Ph.D. from the Graduate Division of

Religion at Emory University. Currently she is a Lecturer on South Asian
Religions at Harvard Divinity School. Situating herself methodologically
at the crossroads of religious ethics, the history of religions, and religion
and literature, she has research interests in Sanskrit literature and literary
theory, Greek epic and tragedy, and comparative religious ethics. She is
the author of ‘Heaven’s riddles or the hell trick: theodicy and narrative
strategies in the Mahābhārata’ (2006).

Angelika Malinar is Lecturer in Hinduism at the School of Oriental and

African Studies, University of London. She is the author of Rājavidyā: Das
königliche Wissen um Herrschaft und Verzicht. Studien zur Bhagavadgı̄tā
(1996), editor of Time in India: concepts and practices (2006) and co-editor
of Charisma and Canon: essays on the religious history of the Indian
subcontinent (2003). Since completing her habilitation on the concept
of prakrti in Sāmkhya philosophy, she has taught at the Universities of
Tübingen ˙
˙ and Berlin. She has conducted several collaborative research
projects that have resulted in major publications, for instance on the
Nārāyanı̄ya section of the Mahābhārata, on Hindu monastic institutions
˙
in Orissa, and on the relationship between religious and aesthetic
experience in Hinduism.
Laurie L. Patton is Winship Distinguished Research Professor in the Human-
ities at Emory University. Her scholarly interests include the interpretation
of early Indian ritual and narrative, comparative mythology, literary theory
in the study of religion, and women and Hinduism in contemporary India.
She is the author of Bringing the Gods to Mind: poetry and performance in
early Indian sacrifice (2005) and Myth as Argument: the Brhaddevatā as
˙ women and
canonical commentary (1996); the editor of Jewels of Authority:
textual tradition in Hindu India (2002) and Authority, Anxiety, and Canon:
essays in Vedic interpretation (1994); and the co-editor of The Indo-Aryan
Controversy: evidence and inference in Indian history (2005, with Edwin
Bryant) and Myth and Method (1996, with Wendy Doniger). Her trans-
lation of the Bhagavadgı̄tā is in press with Penguin Books. She is also
the author of a volume of poetry: Fire’s Goal: poems from the Hindu
year (2003). She is currently at work on a book, Grandmother Language,
focusing on the status of women and Sanskrit in contemporary India.

Georg von Simson studied Indology and Classical Philology in Mainz and
Göttingen, and was Professor of Indian Languages and Literature at the
University of Oslo (Norway) from 1977 to 2003. He lives after his retire-
ment in Göttingen (Germany). Apart from Buddhist Sanskrit (language
and literature), one of his main fields of interest is the Mahābhārata, its
text transmission, the (mythic) time structure of its plot and the epic’s
underlying myth in general. He pays particular attention to myths that are

xv
 N OT E S O N C O N T R I BU T O R S

based on the experience of the seasons of the year (calendar myths) and of
astral phenomena. His publications include Einführung in die Indologie:
Stand, Methoden, Aufgaben (1979, 2nd edn 1993, co-editor and co-author
with Heinz Bechert), ‘Die zeitmythische Struktur des Mahābhārata’
(1994), and ‘Characterizing by contrast: the case of the Buddha and
Devadatta, Bhı̄sma and Karna’ (2003).
˙ ˙

xvi
 PREFACE

The Routledge Hindu Studies Series, published in collaboration with the

Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, intends primarily the publication of con-
structive Hindu theological, philosophical, and ethical projects. The focus is
on issues and concerns of relevance to readers interested in Hindu traditions
in particular, yet also in the context of a wider range of related religious
concerns that matter in today’s world. The Series seeks to promote excellent
scholarship and, in relation to it, an open and critical conversation among
scholars and the wider audience of interested readers. Though contemporary
in its purpose, the Series recognizes the importance of retrieving the classic
texts and ideas, beliefs and practices, of Hindu traditions, so that the great
intellectuals of these traditions may as it were become conversation partners
in the conversations of today.
The study of the Hindu epic literature has developed in recent years with
philological studies showing the layering and development of this corpus and
more accurate dating allowing the texts to be placed in historical context.
Not only philological work but hermenutical work also needs to be done and
the texts re-interpreted in the light of concerns of new generations and new
locations. In this book on the Mahābhārata, Simon Brodbeck and Brian
Black have significantly developed the study of the text. Assuming philo-
logical rigour, the contributors attempt to go beyond philology in raising
questions of contemporary relevance, particularly about narrative and gen-
der. The authors have shown in some detail for the first time how complex
narrative structures and embeddings are used in the epic. They have also
shown how the text deals with issues such as gender in a complex way by
bringing to bear on it questions of contemporary, social relevance. Not only
is this book a contribution to Indology, it is an important contribution to
gender studies and other cultural studies. Indeed, any general accounts of
gender or theories of text that do not take into account the Indian material
are of limited value and this book will need to be read by cultural theorists
in other areas. The authors are to be congratulated on producing a very
significant contribution to the study of the Indian epics.
Gavin Flood
Series Editor
xvii
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The editors would like to acknowledge the support of the Arts and Human-
ities Research Council (formerly a part of the British Academy), which
funded the research project at the School of Oriental and African Studies
from which this volume proceeds. The project, Epic Constructions: gender,
myth and society in the Mahābhārata, was conceived by the late Julia Leslie,
whose formative input and interest we will never forget. Since Julia’s death,
we have been glad of the support of the Centre for Gender and Religions
Research, particularly through Brian Bocking’s overall supervision of the
project and Sîan Hawthorne’s technical assistance. We are grateful to all those
who contributed to the Epic Constructions conference in July 2005, and most
especially to the contributors to this book, who have indulged and accom-
modated our spotted and inconstant visions with unerring good humour. We
are grateful also to our respective families and numerous colleagues who have
rendered assistance too various to be detailed here; to the Brooklyn Museum
who gave their kind permission for the use of the cover picture; and to the staff
at Routledge for sharing our enthusiasm for the volume.

xviii
 FAMILY TREE

Many characters are omitted. Brahmins are in bold; gods, apsarās and rivers
are in italics; ‘
’ denotes female; ‘=’ denotes marriage; arrow denotes
impregnation; ‘*’ indicates intervening generations.

xix
 1
INTRODUCTION

Simon Brodbeck and Brian Black

This introduction is intended to contextualize the book as effectively as is

briefly possible, bearing in mind that different readers will be approaching it
from different directions and with different backgrounds. It contains indica-
tive sections on the Mahābhārata, and on Gender Studies and its interface
with the text, before turning to consider the structure and layout of the rest
of the book.

The Mahābhārata
The Mahābhārata is a long narrative text in Sanskrit which tells the story of
the five Pāndava brothers before, during and after the war at Kuruksetra
(Kuru’s Field˙ ˙ or the Field of the Kurus, near present-day Delhi and˙ the
Yamuna-Ganges doab) between the Pāndavas (and their allies) and their 100
paternal cousins (and their allies) over ˙the
˙ kingship of their ancestral realm.
The ‘mahā ’ in the title indicates the text’s size and importance,1 and the
‘bhārata’ indicates that these two sets of cousins, descendants of King Kuru,
are also descendants of King Bharata, whose name is now interchangeable
with that of India itself (see Family Tree). As this suggests, the Mahābhārata,
along with the Sanskrit Rāmāyana (the Career of Rāma, with which it is
˙
often grouped for study as a Sanskrit ‘epic’), is something of a national text;
it has recently been called ‘the quintessence of every thing that is Indian’
(Sanyal 2006: 197). The eighteen Kuruksetra armies are drawn from – and
the Pāndavas’ various pilgrimages take them˙ wandering over – most of the
˙ ˙
subcontinent, and versions of the Mahābhārata story recur throughout India
in a wide variety of literary, performative, ritual, and political contexts.2 The
precise relationships between these various Mahābhārata traditions and the
Sanskrit Mahābhārata are in many cases difficult to determine, but they will
not concern us in this book, which focuses tightly upon the old Sanskrit text.
More specifically, it focuses upon the text as presented by the Poona Critical
Edition3 (Sukthankar et al. 1933–66), which was prepared by minutely com-
paring as many existing Sanskrit Mahābhārata manuscripts as could con-
veniently be found, and by thus producing a ‘reconstituted text’ consisting of

1
 S I M O N B RO D B E C K A N D B R I A N B L A C K

broadly that material (nearly 75,000 verses) which the many manuscripts
were found to have in common, supplemented by a critical apparatus of
footnotes and appendices representing the additional material (occurring in
some or even most of the manuscripts) which was presumed to have accumu-
lated over time in the various manuscript traditions. All the Mahābhārata
references in this book are to the Critical Edition unless otherwise stated.
The ‘reconstituted text’, it is supposed, may approximate an ancient
Mahābhārata (there has been much discussion of this supposition and of the
procedural details of the Poona project,4 and various scholars have suggested
textual amendations): exactly how ancient is a matter of considerable debate,
but few would suggest a date later than the sixth century ce, and many
would place it – or parts of it, certainly – a number of centuries earlier. This
‘reconstituted text’, which has also been published in free-standing form
(Dandekar 1971–5), has yet to be entirely translated into English, the efforts
of Johannes van Buitenen for Chicago University Press having been inter-
rupted by his death in 1979 and only recently taken up by James Fitzgerald
and his team.5 In the meantime, although the Sanskrit text of the Critical
Edition is now also available on the world-wide web (J.D. Smith 1999a), the
most widely used English Mahābhārata is the ‘Roy Edition’ (Ganguli 1970,
first published 1883–96, also now online),6 which readers may correlate with
the Critical Edition references given in this book (and elsewhere) by using the
concordance in the Appendix.
The Mahābhārata comprises eighteen books ( parvans) of varying propor-
tions. Its main story follows the Pāndavas from their birth, childhood, and
polyandrous marriage to Draupadı̄,˙7˙ through their deepening breach with
their cousins, through the eighteen-day Kuruksetra war (in which all 100
˙
cousins are killed) and its aftermath, to their deaths and even to their after-
lives. This Pāndava narrative is not told at a fixed pace; it is punctuated and
˙˙
embellished along the way by the many sub-stories and diverse teachings
which the characters within the narrative tell to each other. These sub-stories
are a vital aspect of the Mahābhārata; they are often called upākhyānas,
though many names are used (Hiltebeitel 2005a: 464–76). They are fitted
carefully by their tellers to their hearers, at once diverting and pedagogical,
and the characters develop and grow partly by means of them. Some are
tales of Bhārata ancestors; some are situated teachings of one kind or
another; some are back-stories of characters who also figure in the main
Pāndava story (some of whom we meet also in other texts); some are stories
of ˙gods
˙ and demons, or notable brahmins or snakes or kings of yore; yet
their motifs tend to be of a piece with the Mahābhārata as a whole. In paral-
lel to their effect upon the characters who hear them, they seem also to provide
a kind of interpretive commentary applied by the authors and available dir-
ectly to the text’s audience. Otherwise unconnected stories or episodes from
widely separated points in the text can be juxtaposed and compared by the
redeployment of names or distinctive motifs. And the Pāndava narrative,
˙˙

2
 I N T RO D U C T I O N

despite its sheer extent, is in the final analysis a sub-story itself, for it is
presented in the Mahābhārata as told by Vaiśampāyana to King Janamejaya,
great-grandson of the Pāndavas, on the occasion ˙ of his (Janamejaya’s) snake
˙ ˙
sacrifice (sarpasatra), and as heard there by Ugraśravas and re-told, along
with the story of the snake sacrifice and one or two others, to Śaunaka and
other brahmins assembled for a protracted ritual satra in the forest of
Naimisa. In every case the narratives are formally presented as dynamic
˙
interactions between the teller and the told; and the told may intervene
repeatedly to direct the teller or to ask for details or commentary. This tele-
scoping technique of nested narrative frames stretching into and out of the
Pāndava story, as well as giving the text an intra-commentarial property,
˙ ˙ the ‘authorial voice’ to remain obscured behind a sequence of inverted
allows
commas; and it is this, in part, which makes the Mahābhārata such an
intriguing text to explore and interpret. The text highlights the question of
its own authorial voice by containing a putative author as a character within
several levels of its own narrative: Krsna Dvaipāyana Vyāsa is the great-
uncle of the Pāndavas and their father’s˙ ˙biological
˙ father; he appears at many
˙ ˙
points in their story to give them advice and assistance of various kinds;
and he later puts the story together for posterity, teaching it to several of
his pupils and witnessing Vaiśampāyana’s performance of it in person at
Janamejaya’s snake sacrifice.8 ˙
Broadly speaking, the Mahābhārata’s most obvious principal concerns are
the problems and possibilities of government, most explicitly at the level of
society, but also ranging beyond the human into the cosmic level involving
various gods, as well as focusing more tightly within the household and
ultimately within the individual. Social government pivots around the figure
of the king, who should be of the ksatriya varna, the class of warrior-
aristocrats, which is said primordially ˙to have been ˙ created from the chest
9
or arms of the cosmic man. The necessity for a king is stated very clearly by
the Mahābhārata at various junctures (e.g. 12.59; 12.67–71), and the question
of who is to be king in the Kuru capital Hāstinapura brings out issues
of primogenitive birthright and of behavioural fitness. On the first issue,
Dhrtarāstra, older brother of Pāndu, was incapable of fully discharging the
˙ function
kingly ˙˙ ˙ ˙ so the two effectively took it in turns,
because he was blind,
superintended by their uncle Bhı̄sma; but both of the eldest cousins in the next
˙
generation, Dhrtarāstra’s son Duryodhana and Pāndu’s son Yudhisthira, are
˙ ˙ ˙
about the same age. Before their story is told in full,˙ ˙ we are given˙ ˙ tales of
odd behaviour in many previous generations of the royal line (Bhı̄sma, for
example, abdicated his primogenitive claim to the throne and vowed ˙life-long
celibacy in order that his aged father might marry again), and there is a sense
in which irregularities of dynastic succession are something of a family
tradition.
Here follows a summary of the Pāndava story as told in the text’s eighteen
˙˙
books.10 When Pāndu dies in the Himālaya and his five sons are brought by
˙˙

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 S I M O N B RO D B E C K A N D B R I A N B L A C K

their mother Kuntı̄ to grow up with their cousins at Hāstinapura, it becomes

clear that Duryodhana is aggressively jealous of his role as favoured prince,
and the Pāndavas leave Hāstinapura with Kuntı̄, survive an assassination
attempt, and ˙ ˙ marry Draupadı̄. Dhrtarāstra partitions the ancestral king-
dom at Bhı̄sma’s suggestion, the Pān ˙ davas
˙ ˙ building themselves a new city
˙ ˙ ˙
at Indraprastha in the provinces (Book 1, Ādiparvan, The Book of the
Beginning). In Book 2 (Sabhāparvan, The Book of the Assembly Hall) the
Pāndavas gain ksatriya popularity and allies when Yudhisthira, the eldest
Pān˙ d˙ ava, has the˙ rājasūya ritual performed, but Duryodhana ˙ ˙ fiercely resents
˙ ˙
them and, ganging up with his best friend Karna, his maternal uncle Śakuni,
and his brother Duhśāsana, he coerces his blind ˙ father into presiding over a
˙
dice match at which Yudhisthira bets and loses his wealth and kingdom, his
brothers, himself, and Draupadı̄. ˙˙ Draupadı̄, who is brought into the hall,
suggests that Yudhisthira’s betting and losing of her should be null and
void, because at that˙ ˙point he had already bet and lost himself; but she is
verbally and physically insulted. The drama escalates and Dhrtarāstra annuls
the match; but after Duryodhana’s remonstrations he agrees ˙ to another,
˙˙ at
which the Pāndavas lose their wealth and kingdom and are sent into exile
with Draupadı̄. ˙ ˙ The exile is for twelve years (Book 3, Āranyakaparvan or
Vanaparvan, The Book of the Forest), plus one year in disguise ˙ (Book 4,
Virātaparvan, The Book of Virāta). Having served the term of exile, the
return˙ of the Pāndavas’ kingdom is ˙ refused, and they prepare for war (Book
˙ ˙
5, Udyogaparvan, The Book of the Effort). In the war – famously prefaced by
the Bhagavadgı̄tā (Mahābhārata 6.23–40) – the Pāndavas’ seven armies are
outnumbered by their cousins’ eleven, and in order ˙ ˙ to triumph they are
driven to fight ruthlessly and mercilessly by their strategic consultant Krsna
Vāsudeva, felling four successive generals of Duryodhana’s forces: their ˙˙ ˙
‘grandfather’/great-uncle Bhı̄sma (Book 6, Bhı̄smaparvan, The Book of
Bhı̄sma); their martial arts tutor ˙ Drona (Book 7, ˙Dronaparvan, The Book of
Drona); Duryodhana’s friend Karna,˙ who unknown˙ to them is their own
˙
elder˙ brother, Kuntı̄’s abandoned pre-marital
˙ son (Book 8, Karnaparvan, The
Book of Karna); and their maternal uncle Śalya, plus Duryodhana ˙ himself
˙
(Book 9, Śalyaparvan, The Book of Śalya). Aśvatthāman, Drona’s son,
butchers most of the remaining warriors in their beds to avenge his˙ father’s
death, and is banished in return (Book 10, Sauptikaparvan, The Book of the
Sleepers). Book 11 (Strı̄parvan, The Book of the Women) illustrates, in the
immediate aftermath of the battle, the extent and human implications of
the war for the non-combatant relatives. Yudhisthira’s first wish now is to
retire to the forest and let his brother Arjuna be ˙ ˙ king, but he is persuaded
to take up the throne, and is instructed at length in matters of kingship
and salvation by Bhı̄sma before the latter, mortally wounded previously
on the tenth day of ˙the battle, finally dies (Book 12, Śāntiparvan, The
Book of Peace, and Book 13, Anuśāsanaparvan, The Book of Instructions).
Yudhisthira then has the aśvamedha ritual performed to expiate his war
˙˙

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 I N T RO D U C T I O N

crimes and consolidate his rule over the reunited ancestral kingdom (Book
14, Āśvamedhikaparvan, The Book of the Horse Sacrifice). Years later
Dhrtarāstra and the elder generation retire to the forest and pass away (Book
15, ˙ Āśramavāsikaparvan,
˙˙ The Book of the Residence in the Hermitage);
Krsna Vāsudeva’s warrior relatives kill themselves off in a drunken brawl
˙ ˙ ˙ 16, Mausalaparvan, The Book of the Pestle); and the Pāndavas retire
(Book
and die (Book 17, Mahāprasthānikaparvan, The Book of the Great ˙ ˙ Journey),
meeting up with Duryodhana in the hereafter (Book 18, Svargārohanaparvan,
The Book of the Ascent to Heaven). ˙
In a contrast of various ksatriya masculinities, Yudhisthira’s virtuous
abstraction, Bhı̄ma Pāndava’s˙ passionate but good-hearted ˙ ˙ brawniness,
˙ ˙
Arjuna Pāndava’s cool heroism, and Duryodhana’s uncompromising and
ambivalent˙ manners
˙ (sometimes noble, sometimes shocking, at once tra-
ditional and unworkable) are nicely juxtaposed within one generation.
Yudhisthira plays the public role of the proper, righteous king (he is also
called ˙Dharmarāja,
˙ which can mean exactly that), but this role depends also
upon his brothers, most specifically Bhı̄ma, who kills every one of the 100
cousins, and Arjuna, who disposes of most of Duryodhana’s other allies
and whose grandson Pariksit becomes the family heir. The context of the
Pāndava story’s recital is Pariks˙ it’s son Janamejaya’s snake sacrifice (see
˙ ˙
Mahābhārata 1.3–53, where Janamejaya ˙ begins to massacre all snakes to
avenge his father’s death but is eventually dissuaded, aborting the attempt):
this is doubly appropriate because not only is the story recited a story of
Janamejaya’s ancestors, but it is also a story of the ksatriya king’s delicate
and ambivalent relationship to violence – state violence˙ on the one hand, and
the violence of the unruly on the other.11
Heavenly and ethereal hosts assemble from afar to witness the Kuruksetra
war, which is described in bright detail as a wondrous marvel. The extent ˙ of
the destruction is astonishing (1,660,020,000 warriors die, according to
Yudhisthira’s count at 11.26.9–10, and an additional 24,165 go missing), and
˙˙
both before and after the heat of battle the Pāndava story is suffused by
sorrow and confusion over the event. Yudhisthira,˙ ˙Dhrtarāstra, and his wife
˙˙
Gāndhārı̄ lament prominently.12 Blame is apportioned ˙ variously
˙˙ by the sur-
vivors and non-combatants; Vyāsa (amongst others) often suggests that
no one but Time (kāla) is ultimately responsible, and there is a persistent
rumour that Krsna Vāsudeva, who instigates the various ruses by which the
outnumbered Pān ˙ ˙ ˙ dava armies triumph and who at Bhagavadgı̄tā 11.32 tells
Arjuna that he himself˙˙ is Time, might hold the key. Vaiśampāyana prefaces
his narration of the Pāndava story with the revelation that ˙its various princi-
pal characters were earthly ˙˙ incarnations of devas and asuras (gods and
demons): the asuras infiltrated the ranks of human kings and caused great
distress to the lady Earth, so a heavenly mission was organized, culminating
in the Kuruksetra showdown. On this view, the war was the hidden business
of the gods led ˙ by Indra and Visnu-Nārāyana (see Fitzgerald 2004b); and as
˙˙ ˙

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 S I M O N B RO D B E C K A N D B R I A N B L A C K

Alf Hiltebeitel has shown (1976: 60–76; 1984; 1991b), four of the characters
who most effectively drive the Pāndava narrative towards its outcome go by
the name ‘Krsna/ā’ (Dark One: Kr ˙ ˙ sna Vāsudeva, Krsnā Draupadı̄, Krsna
˙ ˙ ˙
Dvaipāyana Vyāsa, and Arjuna). The ˙ ˙ ˙ war’s participants
˙ ˙ ˙ and their associates
˙˙ ˙
on the whole are ignorant of this higher dimension, but are nonetheless
exercised by various theories of the relative influence of daiva (the business
of the gods, whatever it may be) and purusakāra (autonomous human
action).13 ˙
Although the Mahābhārata generically resembles the Rāmāyana in many
respects, and both are written in similar Sanskrit (see Oberlies 2003), ˙ trad-
itionally the former is usually classed as itihāsa, the latter as (the first)
14

kāvya. The Mahābhārata seems to have the more robust intent (see Fitzgerald
1991), featuring a greater wealth of didactic matter within its narrative, and
it considers itself to be comprehensive on all matters pertaining to the four
purusārthas (dharma, artha, kāma, and moksa – briefly: propriety, profit,
˙
pleasure, and liberation),15 maximally purifying ˙ to hear or dwell upon, and
no less in fact than the fifth Veda, widely accessible in contrast to its pre-
decessors. This claim places it in a definite relation to the Sanskrit past –
its debt to Vedic cosmological, sacrificial, and social-hierarchical narrative
idioms is clear throughout – but the opening up of the discourse to a wider
cosmopolitan public beyond the dvija (‘twice-born’, that is, well-born and
Vedically educated) elites may be correlated with a new socio-political con-
text after the rise of the kingdom of Magadha (most famously under the
imperial Mauryas Candragupta and his grandson Aśoka), and of Buddhism
and other non-Vedic religious movements (see Thapar 2002: 98–325; Kulke
and Rothermund 1998: 41–91). Although the Mahābhārata’s treatment of
‘Buddhism’ and ‘Jainism’ is rather cryptic,16 the text clearly indicates a new
religious vision (see John Brockington 1998: 232–312; Sutton 2000), which
incorporates glorious heavens as well as the possibility of complete escape
from all rebirths, and which, while not sustainedly antagonistic to the trad-
ition of renunciation, primarily depends upon the disinterested and trans-
figured performance of social and cosmic obligations – the karmayoga
expounded by Krsna in the Bhagavadgı̄tā – in a spirit of bhakti, that is,
˙ ˙ ˙ service. In this the text embodies what Greg Bailey has
loyalty or reverential
called ‘a blending of ideologies’ (1985: 11), these ideologies being those of
pravrtti (the business of mundane, generative effort, of social and cosmic
˙
maintenance) and nivrtti (the contrasting stopping or running-down of the
wheel, particularly the˙ wheel of individual rebirth). The text features certain
religious activities which are comparatively invisible in Vedic literature,
such as the visiting of tı̄rthas (holy places, usually bathing places) and the
pursuit of asceticism and yogic discipline, sometimes with the comment (e.g.
3.80.34–40; see also 12.192–3) that such activities are cheaper and more effi-
cacious than the commissioning of a yajña (Vedic ritual sacrifice). But while
the Mahābhārata incorporates important elements of Vaisnava and Śaiva
˙˙

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 I N T RO D U C T I O N

mythology and presents both Visnu and Śiva as suitable objects of exclusive
devotion, its explicitly religious ˙material
˙ appears in service to the Pāndava
story: it has the Harivamśa, which focuses on Krsna Vāsudeva’s family˙ ˙and
his divine exploits as a ˙youngster, as its khila or ˙appendix.
˙˙ 17
Although these
exploits are alluded to within the Pāndava story, they are not narrated there.
The Sanskrit Mahābhārata has ˙been ˙ attracting scholarly attention for
at least a thousand years: Śaṅkarācārya and other medieval Vedānta theo-
logians produced famous commentaries on the Bhagavadgı̄tā, and Nı̄lakantha
in the seventeenth century wrote a commentary on the entire Mahābhārata ˙˙
(Kinjawadekar 1929–36). The study of the text within ‘Western’ universities
(see John Brockington 1998: 41–81) followed upon the British economic
interest in India and contemporary developments in comparative philology,
including the 1786 announcement by William ‘Oriental’ Jones of a close
genetic kinship between Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Gothic, Celtic, and Persian.
Much of the ensuing work on the Mahābhārata exists only in German;18 the
first sustained scholarly writings on it in English were those of E. Washburn
Hopkins at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twen-
tieth. Hopkins rejected the ‘synthetic’ approach of Joseph Dahlmann, who
suggested that the Mahābhārata was the product of a single author-redactor,
and instead suggested, in line with the ‘analytic’ scholarly majority, that the
text developed over a period of some several centuries, an old narrative core
having been successively revised to fit with the changing times, and aug-
mented by subtales and didactic passages – a view which is encouraged
by the intra-textually diachronic re-presentation of the Pāndava story at
Janamejaya’s snake sacrifice several generations after the Kuruks ˙˙ etra war,
and then at Śaunaka’s gathering in the Naimisa Forest. ˙
˙ of gender, the remainder of
Before we turn in the next section to the study
this section will briefly mention some other recent (post-1990) trends in
Mahābhārata scholarship insofar as they bear upon the studies included in
this book. The early difference of views over the composition of the text
(the ‘synthetic’/‘analytic’ disjunction) has had an enormous influence within
Mahābhārata scholarship right down to the present day, and may seem to
encompass not just how the text came to be, but also what it actually is and
what kinds of methodology do and do not spring to mind for its study. For
although in one sense there is no difference between Dahlmann’s Mahābhārata
(the product of a single genius) and Hopkins’s (the product of centuries of
accumulation) – both are the same Mahābhārata – nonetheless Dahlmann’s
text seems suited to holistic literary analysis, and Hopkins’s to analysis in
terms of the diachronic development of Indian ideas, but not necessarily vice
versa.19 The dominance of the ‘analytic’ approach for most of the twentieth
century20 is consonant with the normative stance of academic Indology,
which has been closely aligned to the discipline of history (historical lin-
guistics, historical anthropology, history of religions, history of philosophy);
nonetheless we write today in the ongoing wake of a vibrant critique of the

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 S I M O N B RO D B E C K A N D B R I A N B L A C K

‘analytic’ approach, and in the realization that the Sanskrit Mahābhārata,

notwithstanding its internal variety and inconvenient bulk, is a natural inclu-
sion in any broad category of world literature. Hiltebeitel has suggested,
building on the work of Sheldon Pollock on the Rāmāyana and responding
˙
to various famous scholarly dismissals of the Mahābhārata’s literary merits,
that ‘the largest inadequacy in Mahābhārata scholarship . . . is simply the
failure to appreciate the epic as a work of literature’ (1999b: 156); he has
followed this with suggestive essays in such appreciation, accompanied by a
conception of the text’s written composition over a few generations (2001a;
2004b), and scholars are increasingly taking advantage of the new interpre-
tive possibilities his lead opens up (Brodbeck and Black 2006: 3). We must
bear in mind that although any theory of the text’s composition does inevit-
ably encourage certain types of textual analysis over others, any and all such
theories,21 howsoever accepted they may or may not be, remain immensely
speculative when compared to the fact of the text itself.
As noted above, it is common for the Mahābhārata to be studied in terms
of the diachronic development of Indian ideas (Proudfoot 1979; Ježić 1986),
and here questions of the mutual influence of texts come to the fore. Apart
from the intuitive tendency to study the Mahābhārata in concert with the
Rāmāyana (John Brockington 1998; Hiltebeitel 1994; 2005a; Shulman 1991),
˙
many recent studies address some aspect of the Mahābhārata’s relationship
with the Vedic literature which is commonly thought to predate it, and/or the
Dharmaśāstra and/or Purāna literature which is commonly thought to over-
˙
lap and postdate it.22 One strand of scholarship addresses the text in terms of
a broad ‘Indo-European’ tradition through its demonstrable connections
with old heroic literature from, most commonly, Greece and north-western
Europe; but the wider field of ‘comparative epic’ is as yet little charted,
perhaps largely because of the polyglossia required.23
One of the most distinctive and persistent themes in the text is that of
repeated, large-scale, but inconclusive human destruction; the business at
Kuruksetra is just one in a series of various near-genocides, as explored by
˙
Chris Minkowski (1991) in the context of the snakes, by Alf Hiltebeitel
(1999b) in the context of the Bhārgava brahmins, and by Jim Fitzgerald
(2002a) in the context of Rāma Jāmadagnya (who killed all ksatriyas twenty-
one times, but they kept coming back). This theme, which is˙ also evident as
reported by commercial and independent media throughout the world today,
certainly strengthens the Mahābhārata’s claim to contemporary relevance.
Also, as many scholars each in their various ways have shown,24 this theme is
very much tied up with the idea of ‘sacrifice’ (yajña) in the Vedic philosophy
of ritual, which is difficult to interpret on the basis of the surviving Vedic
texts because many of these were intended only for the use of certain of the
ritual’s specialized officiants.
With regard to the historicity of the events portrayed in the Mahābhārata,
we do not and cannot know enough to say how true the story might be.25 The

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sense in which a story such as the Pāndava story could possibly be true is
˙˙
difficult to gauge. With its apparently magical realism (pots as mothers, gods
as fathers, etc.), some might wish to ‘demythologize’ it before asking the
question; but plausibility is in the eye of the beholder. In any case, we cannot
say how accurate the narrative transmissions within the text would be
(Ugraśravas repeating what Vaiśampāyana has said, and so on). But wher-
ever individual persons inferred from ˙ a range of data (royal inscriptions, the
accounts of foreign visitors, other genres of text, etc.) have come to be
regarded as historical figures reasonably predating the text, it is reasonable to
ask whether any Mahābhārata character might be some more or less precise
or caricatured representation of them, even if at such a distance in the
past this is effectively a process of comparing one caricature with another.
The past few years have seen several attempts to understand Yudhisthira
and/or Arjuna Pāndava in juxtaposition and counterpoint with Aśoka ˙˙
˙ ˙
‘Beloved-of-the-gods’ Maurya, who according to his inscriptions cham-
pioned the cause of ‘dhamma’, i.e. dharma (albeit with more sympathy for its
‘Buddhist’ than its Vedic varieties), and was painfully responsible for a
large massacre in eastern India.26 There have also been attempts historically
to locate the cultural provenance of the Pāndavas (‘pānd.u’ means ‘pale’;
Parpola 1984; 2002). But explorations of the˙ ˙text’s ‘socio-cultural
˙ milieu’
(Pande 1990; Moorthy 1990; John Brockington 1998: 159–231) vary in terms
of the extent to which they assume that the society depicted within the text
reflects the society within which the text was created; and, as we shall see, this
is a particular problem when considering questions of gender.
The vast majority of recent Mahābhārata studies have approached the text
selectively; that is to say, they have not focused on the text as a whole (under-
standable, with a text of such proportions), but on some specific aspect of it.
There are recurring lines of attack, which often appear in combination: to
focus on one specific character or group of characters,27 or one specific
parvan, or some other demarcated textual unit or units,28 or one specific
narrative moment or episode or type of episode,29 or one or a group of
related ideas, usually signalled by certain verbal formulae.30 These micro-
studies are invaluable and as they continue to be produced they will and do
make it more and more possible for sound holistic theories to be ventured
and assessed.
Micro-studies concentrating on individual Mahābhārata characters have
been particularly well placed to explore gender-related issues, a trend in the
scholarship that has become more and more commonplace in recent years.
There have been numerous article-length studies focusing on one or more
female characters,31 many of which come from a feminist perspective, high-
lighting the epic’s androcentric assumptions, its gendered stereotyping, and
the ways in which female characters are represented in a male-authored
text. There have also been a handful of studies on male characters in the
Mahābhārata that explicitly address issues of masculinity and sexuality.32

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 S I M O N B RO D B E C K A N D B R I A N B L A C K

Building on the renewed appreciation of the text’s literary merits, one of

the most dynamic trends in recent Mahābhārata scholarship has been a focus
on organizational features of the text’s composition. Current speculations
include the suggestions that the text is modelled on the Vedic ritual in terms
of its structure and function (Minkowski 1989; Hegarty 2006); that the text
features symmetrical ring-compositions and to some extent maps its various
‘divisions into eighteen’ – the eighteen-book text, the eighteen-day war, and
various eighteen-chapter sections – onto each other (Dennis Hudson 2001;
Tubb 2002; Brodbeck 2006); that the text features interlinking and inter-
connected sets of stories that are strung together by means of their sequen-
tial placement (Thomas 2006a); and that aspects of the narrative and some
of the characters are modelled carefully upon the solar and lunar cycles (von
Simson 1994; 1999; and Chapter 11 below). There has also been important
work on the text’s poetic style and metrical form.33

Gender and narrative in the Mahābhārata

While individual chapters within this book build on various studies and
insights representing the vast array of research on the Mahābhārata, the
book as a whole focuses particularly on the themes of gender and of textual
and narrative construction, offering a number of speculations on the vari-
ous ways in which these themes are intertwined. It is well known that
Gender Studies has become an increasingly fashionable field during the past
decade, but our motive in addressing issues of gender is not to subject the
Mahābhārata to the most recent trend in Western scholarship, nor is it to be
unnecessarily probative. Rather, this focus grows out of an increasing aware-
ness that gender is of fundamental importance throughout the Mahābhārata.
Indeed, one could say that, along with dharma and varna, gender is one of
˙
the most central and most contested issues in the text, and, as the following
chapters will demonstrate, discussions regarding gender operate on a number
of different levels and are manifested in multiple ways without the text
providing one consistent and definitive view.
Although this book approaches the Mahābhārata with questions about
gender in mind, it does not locate itself specifically within the field of Gender
Studies, and we do not claim that there is one theoretical foundation upon
which all the chapters rest. In fact, although this section of the Introduction
situates the Mahābhārata and the book in relation to some prevailing ideas
within the field, few of the following chapters engage with the work of Gender
Studies scholars directly. Rather, we have encouraged Mahābhārata scholars
to undertake research on gender issues and gender constructions within the
text. By gathering and framing the results,34 this book attempts to bring
scholars of Gender Studies and Literary Criticism into contact with the
more traditional philologically oriented discipline of Mahābhārata Studies,
and vice versa. The Mahābhārata is one of the definitive cultural narratives in

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the construction of masculine and feminine gender roles in ancient India,

and its numerous tellings and retellings have helped shape Indian gender and
social norms ever since. The epic not only frames discussions of gender in
terms of the social roles of men, women, and other gendered identities, but
also in terms of the artistic employment of symbols, tropes, and metaphors
that may or may not have any direct connection to males and females and
pre-existing masculinities and femininities outside the text. Although we
claim to explore gender in the context of the Mahābhārata in new ways, this
contribution is one small part of an ongoing dialogue exploring gender in
India’s grandest text. We hope the material collected here will inspire further
explorations on similar issues by Mahābhārata specialists and Gender Studies
scholars alike.

What is gender?
In their recent survey of Gender Studies, David Glover and Cora Kaplan
have commented upon the ubiquitous use of the word ‘gender’ in scholarly
discourse: ‘ “Gender” is now one of the busiest, most restless terms in the
English language, a word that crops up everywhere, yet whose uses seem to
be forever changing, always on the move, producing new and often surprising
inflections of meaning’ (2000: ix). Although the word ‘gender’ has featured
in the English language since the days of Chaucer (ibid.: x), its contemporary
connotations are quite new. Since the writings of feminist scholars in the
1970s and 1980s, the word ‘gender’ has frequently been used in tandem
with the word ‘sex’ in a similar oppositional relationship as that between
‘culture’ and ‘nature’. Whereas ‘sex’ is understood as a biological identity,
‘gender’ has been employed to refer to a social identity; ‘sex’ is what makes
a human being male or female, but ‘gender’ is what makes someone mascu-
line or feminine. Accordingly, sex is understood as universal, while gender is
culturally specific.
This distinction has been important in the work of a number of feminist
writers because it is a way of acknowledging anatomical differences between
women and men, while arguing that valuations based on these differences are
cultural, and therefore capable of changing. Kate Millet, for example, has
argued that gender distinctions not only pertain to different kinds of behaviour
for men and women, but also could be seen as cultural differences: ‘male and
female are really two cultures and their life experiences are utterly different’
(1972: 31). Gayle Rubin has also generally accepted this nature/nurture
explanation of sex and gender, defining what she calls the ‘sex/gender system’
as ‘the set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality
into products of human activity, and in which these transformed sexual
needs are satisfied’ (1996: 106).
This tension between sex and gender has also been at play in the trajectory
of feminist scholarship influenced by psychoanalysis. Whereas Sigmund

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 S I M O N B RO D B E C K A N D B R I A N B L A C K

Freud’s theories of the Oedipus and Electra complexes, which placed much
emphasis on anatomical differences between the sexes, have been interpreted
by many as propounding a biological determinism, theorists such as Jacques
Lacan have reworked some of Freud’s ideas in ways that de-emphasize their
biological implications. Lacan focused on the symbolic and linguistic impli-
cations of anatomical differences between the sexes, associating masculinity
with the symbol of the phallus, rather than with the physical penis. As such,
for Lacan maleness is not merely a physical identity, but a cultural one too.

[The phallus] is the embodiment of the male status, to which men

accede and in which certain rights inhere – among them a right to a
woman. It is an expression of the transmission of male dominance.
It passes through women and settles upon men.
(Rubin 1996: 131)

With the emergence of the field of Gender Studies, scholars have ques-
tioned the neat divide between sex and gender. Michel Foucault’s work
(1979) on the history of sexuality, in particular, challenged the notion of ‘sex’
as a biological fact, claiming that sex does not have an existence prior to its
conceptualization in discourse, and concluding that sex is not easily reduced
to a biological category and thus should be viewed as a social practice.
For feminists and scholars of Gender Studies, one of the most important
implications of Foucault’s work is that both ‘gender’ and ‘sex’ are cultural
categories. Glover and Kaplan conclude:

Sex and gender are therefore intimately related, but not because one
is ‘natural’ while the other represents its transformation into ‘cul-
ture’. Rather, both are inescapably cultural categories that refer to
ways of describing and understanding human bodies and human
relationships, our relationships to our selves and to others. Sex and
gender necessarily overlap, sometimes confusingly so.
(2000: xxvi)

In recent years, Gender Studies scholars have paid less attention to the
distinction between sex and gender, instead focusing on the complex ways in
which class and race, as well as economic and political systems, contribute
towards the shaping and defining of gendered identities. Judith Butler has
been one of the most influential scholars in theorizing gender in these ways.
In her groundbreaking work Gender Trouble: feminism and the subversion of
identity Butler sees gender as a symbolic form of ‘public action’, an effect
produced by regularly repeated speech and behaviour:

[G]ender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an

exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts. The effect of

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 I N T RO D U C T I O N

gender is produced through the stylization of the body and, hence,

must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures,
movements, and styles of various kinds constitute the illusion of
an abiding gendered self. This formulation moves the conception
of gender off the ground of a substantial model of identity to
one that requires a conception of gender as a constituted social
temporality.
(1999: 179)

Accordingly, gender is not an essence, nor does it constitute a stable identity.

Rather, gendered identities are tenuous and provisional, and can never be
demonstrated once and for all; they exist, as Butler emphasizes, only insofar
as they are performed and re-performed. This is not to say that gender is
therefore a matter of choice. Gendered identities might be unstable, subtly
and constantly changing, but this does not mean that individuals can com-
pletely control their gender. Any given culture has a set of expectations and
rewards, reinscribed through institutions, social practices and political struc-
tures, for how men and women should speak, act and internalize their
identities.
So, what then, is gender? Do these recent theories assist our understanding
of gender, or do they merely complicate the picture to the point where we no
longer know what we are talking about? If we are looking for a hard and fast
definition, then obviously such theories make gender less understandable and
less accessible. However, even if both gender and sex are cultural, with no
ontological distinction between them, this does not mean that the words have
the same connotations. There is still a tendency to use the word ‘gender’ to
refer to social roles and behaviour; whereas ‘sex’, even if not biologically
determined, tends to refer more to anatomy, reproduction, and coitus. While
mindful of the theorists who continue to challenge even a tentative binary
opposition between sex and gender, it is important to point out that this
book is about gender more than it is about sex: it is more concerned with
social and cultural representations than with intercourse and reproduction.
Treating gender as something to be queried, as an identity that is always
fragile and conditional, we hope that we can open up a number of fruitful
avenues of exploration into the Mahābhārata.

Gender and narrative

One of the reasons why we have chosen to examine gender in conjunction
with narrative is to shift focus away from attempts to reconstruct a historical
reality. This is not to deny that the Mahābhārata is historically situated and
that its production as a text is indelibly connected to real social and political
events that took place in ancient India. Indeed, as a number of Gender
Studies scholars have argued, gender cannot be discussed in a social vacuum,

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 S I M O N B RO D B E C K A N D B R I A N B L A C K

but needs to be considered in tandem with political, economic, and religious

structures. However, due to the complexity of the Mahābhārata and the prob-
ability that it contains material composed in different historical periods – not
to mention a variety of regions and political regimes – it is very difficult to
establish concrete connections between the text and the social worlds from
which it might have emerged, particularly since those social worlds are not
directly accessible and must be reconstructed in the first place largely on
the basis of texts. Thus, while discussing gender as it intersects with social
factors such as dharma, varna, marriage practices, family relations, and
˙
soteriological paths, it is important to emphasize that the world of the
Mahābhārata is a literary world, and not a direct reflection or representation
of the ever-evasive ‘reality’ of ancient India.35
Furthermore, any discussion about gender in a literary product like the
Mahābhārata must necessarily address much more than the degree to which
the text represents real life. Gender roles in narrative literature are not merely
reflections of or instructions for the real world; they are always also artistic
and metaphorical literary devices, and sometimes gendered symbolism in the
text gives added meaning at a textual level without necessarily referring to a
social reality. For example, at the most basic level, gender exists grammatically
in Sanskrit, as it does in many languages, dividing nouns into masculine,
feminine, and neuter. Although the gender of an object is often quite arbi-
trary and may not reflect anything natural or essential about it, for poets and
philosophers the gender of words can be employed to enrich ideas of oppos-
ition and complementarity, particularly when common nouns or abstract
ideas are anthropomorphized. One of the most well-known examples from
ancient Indian sources is the rich imagery surrounding the philosophical
principles of purusa and prakrti. In the Sāmkhya philosophical school the
masculine word purus˙ ˙
a refers˙ to consciousness, while the feminine word
˙
prakrti represents primordial nature. Although often used in technical ways
that˙do not necessarily bring attention to the gender of the words, purusa and
prakrti can represent an oppositional relationship between a masculine˙ prin-
˙ associated with inaction and detachment, and a feminine principle,
ciple,
representing activity and passion. Similar characterizations are also present
in the depiction of male and female characters in a number of stories in the
Mahābhārata.
Another prominent example of gendered symbolism in the Mahābhārata
appears in theories and mythologies about kingship, which conceive the
physical extent of the kingdom as the goddess Earth, and the king as her
husband and protector (Hara 1973). Several other far-reaching examples will
be discussed in the chapters that follow; here it is enough to state that
although the mechanics of gender within the text obviously bear some rela-
tion to actual ancient Indian social realities, this relationship is very obscure
and indirect.
By focusing on narrative we also hope to bring attention to the artistic

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and literary merits of the Mahābhārata. Regardless of the length of its

compositional period, there are a number of aspects of the text’s organiza-
tion and structure that suggest it was woven together purposefully and
creatively. As such, it is not sufficient to explain contradictions and dis-
continuities in terms of the encyclopedic nature of the text or in terms of
contemporary cultural and ideological developments. This tendency can be
particularly distortive when considering issues of gender. To illustrate this
point, let us briefly review some debates about the Mahābhārata’s female
characters and the position of women in ancient India.
One of the first studies directly to address gender-related issues in the
South Asian context was A.S. Altekar’s The Position of Women in Hindu
Civilization (1938, second edition 1959).36 Focusing on the status of women,
Altekar argued that women in ancient India were highly regarded as com-
pared with those in other ancient societies such as Greece and Rome, but that
‘from about the beginning of the Christian era, Hindu society began to
assume a patronising attitude towards women’ (1959: 333). ‘Women once
enjoyed considerable freedom and privileges in spheres of family, religion
and public life; but as centuries rolled on, the situation went on changing
adversely’ (ibid.: 335). Recently, a number of scholars have questioned
Altekar’s claims and methods, bringing attention to the inadequacy of mak-
ing sweeping historical generalizations from a few select examples from
brahmanical sources. Yet, as Uma Chakravarti has commented, despite the
shortcomings of Altekar’s model, it continues to ‘influence and even
dominate historical writing’:

[Altekar’s] picture of the idyllic condition of women in the Vedic

Age . . . is a picture which now pervades the collective consciousness
of the upper castes in India and has virtually crippled the emergence
of a more analytically rigorous study of gender relations in ancient
India.
(1999: 80)

Indeed, a number of studies of female characters in the Mahābhārata have

assumed the ‘Altekarian paradigm’, reading the depiction of women in the
text as chronicling their declining status in ancient India. Pradip Bhat-
tacharya, for example, claims to see ‘an abrupt decline in the status of
woman which takes place as Draupadı̄ replaces Kuntı̄ as the central female
character in the epic’ (1995: 73). Similarly,37 Nancy Falk has attempted
to explain the contrasting behaviours of Draupadı̄, from devoted wife to
outspoken critic of her husband, in terms of the chronological layers of the
text:

The passages about ideal wifehood are probably more recent than
the memories of Draupadı̄ herself. She is a throwback; her stories

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 S I M O N B RO D B E C K A N D B R I A N B L A C K

come from a time when women were more highly respected than in
the days of the meek and submissive wifely models.
(1977: 91–2)

Although it is possible that chronology is a factor in these cases, both

explanations fail to explore the complex literary and artistic reasons why
gendered roles and identities are portrayed the way that they are. Despite the
fact that the text often makes totalizing remarks about ‘women’, the narra-
tive and its discussions about dharma complicate this view, suggesting that
there is not a monolithic strı̄dharma for all women in all situations, but rather
that expectations for modes of speech and behaviour depend on whether one
is a wife or widow, daughter or mother, sister or friend, renunciate or queen.
As such, the different portrayals of Draupadı̄ and Kuntı̄ could easily be
discussed in terms of their different roles as wife and mother, or the different
roles of their particular characters within the unfolding of the narrative.
This brings us to another reason for our focus on narrative, which is to
highlight the Mahābhārata’s main story and sub-tales rather than its didactic
sections. In addition to its various teachings on the specifics of spiritual
progress and of regal and martial comportment, the Mahābhārata has sev-
eral sections that are similar in style and content to the Dharmaśāstras, with
hundreds of verses of the Mānava Dharmaśāstra (also known as Manusmrti,
and variously translated as The Laws of Manu and The Law Code of Manu) ˙
also appearing in the epic. Much of this material, with its emphasis on
marriage, sexual relations, and daily rituals, as well as sections specifically
pertaining to the rites of women and rules of conduct between men and
women, supplies fertile ground for the examination of gender. However,
rather than concentrating on these prescriptive codes and explicit statements
concerning gender identities and relationships, in this book we are primarily
interested in how gender plays itself out in the characters, the unfolding
of the story, the social world within the narrative, and the structure and
symbology of the text as a whole.

Literary characters: females and males, femininities

and masculinities
On the level of characterization, the text features literary personae who flesh
out normative paradigms for both women and men. The ideal woman is
often portrayed in terms of the pativratā, the wife who is religiously devoted
to her husband. One of the most well-known Mahābhārata examples of the
pativratā is Sāvitrı̄, who, by means of cunning, perseverance, and eloquence,
outwits Death to save her husband. Another example is Gāndhārı̄, who
makes loyalty to her husband her highest aim (pativrataparāyanā) by wilfully
blindfolding herself when she marries the blind Dhrtarāstra, ˙resolving that
‘she would not experience more than her husband could’ ˙ ˙ ˙ (1.103.13, tr. van

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Buitenen).38 The ideal of the pativratā is perhaps best articulated by Draupadı̄,

as she instructs Satyabhāmā in how to be a successful wife: ‘My Law rests on
my husband, as, I think, it eternally does with women. He is the God, he is
the path, nothing else’ (3.222.35, tr. van Buitenen).
Masculinities and femininities are relational identities and are not best
understood in isolation. If the pativratā is the text’s principal explicit model
of femininity, it is complemented by the advocacy of a masculinity whereby
men are virile husbands and fearless warriors. After all, the Mahābhārata
is often considered a heroic text, even ‘manly’ (van Buitenen 1978: 168).
Leonard Zwilling and Michael Sweet have commented upon the close
connection between masculinity and virility as articulated in Vedic sources:
‘From the outset, we see that vedic society was strongly patriarchal in char-
acter and placed an extremely high value on male potency, procreative ability
being one of the means by which a man could achieve high social status’
(2000: 101). The Mahābhārata shares this association between masculinity
and procreation, characterizing the ideal male as a married householder who
has sons. An attribute that is often put forth as an ideal characteristic of the
married householder is that of raksana, or protection (of his wife and family);
˙ ˙ the ‘householder’ of the whole realm,
and this applies especially to the king,
whose protection must extend to all corners and all dharmic citizens, and
whose success in this endeavour is indicated by the realm’s productivity.
Additionally, there is a strong connection between masculinity and fighting,
and many characters are repeatedly39 obliged to demonstrate their man-
hood through their participation in battle. Most of the prominent female
characters act in ways that reinforce this model of masculinity, actively
encouraging their husbands and/or sons to fight. Draupadı̄ tells Yudhisthira
that a man is one who can take advantage of the weakness of others ˙˙
(3.33.53). Kuntı̄ recounts the story of Vidurā, who instructed her son not to
refrain from battle: ‘Don’t smolder – blaze up! Attack with a vengeance and
slay the enemies . . . One is a man to the extent of his truculence and
unforgivingness. The forgiving man, the meek man is neither woman nor
man’ (5.131.29–30, tr. van Buitenen).
Indeed, through violent self-assertion a ksatriya man becomes worthy of
delightful female company, be this the company ˙ of the apsarās (heavenly
nymphs) who entertain all those fallen nobly in battle, or the company of Śrı̄
(Prosperity, Fortune), the paradigmatic symbolic consort of the king (Hara
1996–7). Śrı̄, who in some ways resembles the courtesan (ganikā) as depicted
in the Kāmasūtra, chooses the man who pleases her most (this ˙ is the differ-
ence between victory and defeat), and features as a temporary and fickle
consort, not as a childbearer. This is in sharp contrast with Earth, who is
patient and longsuffering and whose role, once married to (i.e. conquered by)
the king, is to be devoted and productive. A number of Mahābhārata hero-
ines – including Draupadı̄, Gaṅgā, Śakuntalā, Damayantı̄, and Sāvitrı̄ – are
compared to Śrı̄, emphasizing their mobility, activity, and independence.

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 S I M O N B RO D B E C K A N D B R I A N B L A C K

Like Śrı̄, these particular heroines all choose their husbands, indicating
that they represent the royal power that is responsible for their husbands
assuming the throne.
The pativratā and Śrı̄ are two of the more prominent paradigms of femi-
ninity in the Mahābhārata. Both paradigms present women as important
complements to their husbands’ success. Both are restrictive, only represent-
ing women in relation to their menfolk; but in terms of the behaviour of
female characters, there is a sense in which neither paradigm is complete
in itself – situational considerations can sometimes cause a woman to shift
from one to another. Many pativratās are found sometimes to step out of
that role. As Stephanie Jamison observes,

In story after story women see what needs to be done, take com-
mand, and order the bewildered, hand-wringing male participants
into their supporting roles – and the enterprise fails only when one of
these ninnies messes up his part of the woman’s plan.
(1996: 15)

The conundrum for Jamison, as well as others, is how to make sense of texts
which offer stories of ‘resourceful, energetic, and verbally and dharmically
accomplished women’ (ibid.: 15), but which at the same time contain scores
of ‘misogynist maxims’ (ibid.: 12–14). King Duhsanta, for example, tells
˙˙
Śakuntalā, who claims that her child is his, that women are liars (1.68.72);
Nārada warns Yudhisthira against trusting women or telling them secrets
˙ ˙ and Bhı̄sma tells Yudhisthira that women will only
(2.5.73; see also 5.39.59);
˙ men (13.38.18,
be sexually faithful if restrained by ˙ ˙ 23). As Jamison explains,
these contrasting portrayals of women ‘do not seem to inhabit the same
conceptual planet’ (1996: 15).
Thus the Mahābhārata’s mainstream portrayals of female norms are
repeatedly questioned, challenged, and subverted by the speech and behaviour
of characters who do not conform to these models, and even by that of
characters who usually do. Similarly, a number of central male characters do
not consistently fulfil their roles in siring offspring or in protecting their
wives. One of the most important ways in which concerns over masculinity
are woven into the narrative is through the concern over progeny, with the
recurring motif of the king who, for one reason or another, cannot sire a
male heir. A solution that appears on several occasions in the Mahābhārata is
the practice of niyoga, which refers to a woman procreating with an
appointed male other than her husband, for the purpose of carrying on the
family line.40 One of the results of this practice in the Mahābhārata is that
many of the central male characters are not biologically connected to their
fathers. In terms of protection, the model of the responsible ksatriya house-
holder stands in dynamic contrast to the renunciant or quietist ˙ideal popular-
ized in particular by early Jains and Buddhists: from this perspective, which

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in the Mahābhārata is not limited to brahmins but is voiced by some of the

central ksatriya characters, the dharma of ksatriyas is cruel to others and
˙ to spiritual progress. Here we see ˙a stark opposition between the
antithetical
ideals of pravrtti and nivrtti.
˙
These examples ˙ the instability and contextuality of even the most
illustrate
mainstream portrayals of femininity and masculinity in the Mahābhārata.
Furthermore, some philosophical passages, most notably Sulabhā’s debate
with Janaka (12.308), put forth positions that question altogether the validity
of gender distinctions. So how are we to understand these conflicting por-
trayals of women and men? One of the advantages of using a hermeneutic of
gender to understand female and male characters in the Mahābhārata is that
this allows us to avoid conceptualizing ‘women’ and ‘men’ as essentializing
categories, and to focus instead on the different interacting models of female
and male behaviour, and the different methods by which these various ideals
are expressed.

Gender-bending characters
Another way in which normative gender roles are subverted and challenged is
through the Mahābhārata’s several gender-bending characters. The notion of
a third sex, or of a gendered identity that is neither male nor female, appears
in a number of sources from ancient India. As Zwilling and Sweet have
noted, a ‘three-sex model was an important feature of the ancient Indian
world view’ (2000: 99), with ambiguous categories such as napumsaka41 and
klı̄ba42 appearing in late Vedic texts. Zwilling and Sweet suggest˙ that at first
these concepts denoted a condition of defective masculinity that was the
result of magic or misfortune, but that by the post-Vedic period a third-sex
concept was in place. This meant that the third sex was no longer considered
merely the result of a curse or a physical accident, but could be considered
‘innate or congenital’. Zwilling and Sweet conclude that ‘in general the
third sex is a residual category, comprising a wide variety of non-normative
biological, gender role and socio-behavioural traits’ (ibid.: 123).
Despite the recognition of a third biological category in other sources,
however, the gender bending that takes place in the Mahābhārata does not
necessarily constitute a third sex, nor does it necessarily challenge the binary
framework. First of all, the most well-known cases of gender bending are
instances of transsexualism – changing from a man to a woman, or from
a woman to a man – rather than the assumption of a third-sex identity.
Moreover, the gender transformations that take place in the Mahābhārata
are often only temporary. Arjuna’s appearance as an effeminate dance
instructor in the Virātaparvan is only a temporary disguise (see Chapter 10);
˙ dinı̄,43 makes a deal with a yaksa to switch sexes only
Ambā, reborn as Śikhan
˙˙
for a limited time; and Sāmba masquerades as a woman ˙ only briefly.44 These
episodes seem more likely to be playful narrative tropes than examples or

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justifications of an alternative lifestyle. In other words, these episodes do not

challenge the foundations of sexual dimorphism or the social practices that
reinforce this binary model. As Zwilling and Sweet have illustrated,

the third sex is defined in opposition to the two other, more basic and
privileged sexes. Those without unequivocal masculinity or feminin-
ity – either because they lack reproductive capacity or mix gender
behaviour or physical characteristics – will fall into the residual third
or liminal category. Therefore, the third sex could not exist on its
own, but only as it participates in a negation or combination of male
and female traits.
(2000: 123)

Despite being a residual category, containing aspects of both masculinity

and femininity, gender ambiguity in the Mahābhārata is often employed
more in relation to notions of masculinity. This is illustrated when male
characters taunt their enemies to show they are men, with the label ‘eunuch’
(klı̄ba) repeatedly employed to describe a man who refrains from battle.
Female characters also reinforce this notion of masculinity by employing
similar taunts. Draupadı̄, for example, likens Yudhisthira to a eunuch and
then suggests that he is a ksatriya ‘without the rod˙ ˙ of rule’ (nādand.a, tr.
Fitzgerald) (12.14.13–14).45 ˙ ˙
However, in one case in particular an episode of gender bending offers
reflections upon the limitations of being a woman in the Mahābhārata’s
male-dominated social world. Ambā is captured by Bhı̄sma as a prospective
˙
wife for his brother; still in love with her previous boyfriend Śālva, she
is released by Bhı̄sma; but now neither Śālva nor Bhı̄sma will have her
back. Consequently˙ she is ‘totally disgusted with being a ˙woman’ (strı̄bhāve
parinirvinnā, 5.188.6), and she cannot exact revenge upon Bhı̄sma until she
˙ ˙ a man. As Goldman comments, she is no longer˙ able to be a
has become
virgin or a wife and thus she has ‘no socially viable alternative to the death
she chooses. It is this that gives rise to her strange vow to inflict upon the
author of her dilemma the consequences of his theft of her womanhood’
(1993: 392). Madhusraba Dasgupta explores Ambā’s character by compar-
ing her fate with that of her sisters, Ambikā and Ambālikā, whose ‘total
submission’ affords them sons, prestige and a place in heaven; by contrast,
‘Ambā’s resistance disrupted the social norm and brought her nothing but
trouble and unhappiness . . . For all her singleminded efforts, Ambā did not,
after all, have the satisfaction of exacting revenge on her own’ (2000: 51–2).

Gender and dharma

As mentioned above, one of the crucial positions shared by a number of
feminists and Gender Studies scholars is that gendered and sexual identities

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do not appear in a vacuum, but are intertwined with social institutions and
practices. As such, gender is not a fixed or isolated aspect of one’s identity,
but intersects and interacts in complex ways with one’s class, race, education,
religion, family, etc., and with the exigencies of particular situations. Similarly,
a number of characters in the Mahābhārata, notably Yudhisthira, Arjuna,
and Draupadı̄, manifest different modes of gendered behaviour ˙ ˙ at different
moments in the narrative. Indeed, part of the depth of these particular char-
acters is that they negotiate between contrasting gender norms. Yudhisthira
oscillates between being passive and aggressive, between contemplating ˙ ˙ the
life of an ascetic and fulfilling his role as king. Arjuna is both the virile lover
and the effeminate dance instructor; he has sexual relations with several
women, but his most profound bond is his friendship with Krsna.46 Draupadı̄
˙ ˙ ˙ and passive,
is both the outspoken critic and the ideal pativratā; she is active
articulate speaker and symbolic listener. It is well documented that many of
the pivotal episodes that face these characters – such as Yudhisthira’s staking
of Draupadı̄ at the Sabhāparvan dice match, Arjuna’s Bhagavadgı̄tā ˙˙ indeci-
sion about fighting, and Yudhisthira’s reflections prior to assuming the
throne after the war – revolve around˙˙ issues of dharma. However, less atten-
tion has been paid to the gendered dimensions of dharma – that is, the degree
to which the dharmic ambiguities of these and other characters are issues
of gender. One way that dharma combines with gender is by demarcating
clear behavioural differences between men and women. As Custodi points
out in her chapter in this book, ‘a lack of clear distinction between the sexes
has inauspicious resonances’ throughout the Mahābhārata. Yet interactions
between male and female characters, as Falk suggests, often provide a
narrative opportunity to question dharma: ‘the epic frequently develops its
representations of ambiguities in the dharma in the context of conflicts
between males and females’ (1977: 105). Episodes which feature male and
female characters in debate with each other, as well as situations where a
character appears out of step with their typical gendered identity, serve to
illustrate that dharma in the Mahābhārata is provisional and contextual. It is
universal in the sense that it applies to everyone, yet its application and
its particular form depend upon a person’s class (varnadharma), region
˙
(deśadharma), and family (kuladharma), as well as their gender.
By implication, gender roles can change according to particular social and
political situations. In the Śāntiparvan Bhı̄sma teaches Yudhisthira that des-
perate times call for desperate measures, that ˙ in times of distress˙ ˙ the normal
dharma rules do not necessarily apply. The rules for these extreme situations
are called āpaddharma.

The basic notion of āpaddharma involves behavior that is an excep-

tion to a requirement of dharma, a deviation from a particular rule
that may still be regarded as a secondary form of the rule. Such
exceptions are admissible because circumstances demanded the

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deviation for one reason or another, and the deviation can be han-
dled as a mere exception according to one interpretive understanding
or another.
(Fitzgerald 2004a: 153)

Although there is only one section in the text – the Āpaddharmaparvan47 –

that addresses the dharma for extreme circumstances in detail, Fitzgerald
points out that ‘there is a fairly widespread sense in the MBh that good
people can do things during such times that would normally be considered
wrong (adharma) and yet incur no permanent bad karma’ (2004a: 154).
Keeping this in mind, part of what can justify or explain the sometimes
aggressive and outspoken behaviour of female characters such as Śakuntalā
(at 1.68–9) and Draupadı̄ (at e.g. 2.60–2; 3.28–33) is that āpaddharma applies
to gender as well.48 Despite the fact that these two arguably break the
rules of mainstream strı̄dharma (the ‘dharma of women’), they both act
according to higher dharmas: Śakuntalā, despite arguing in front of an all-
male assembly and criticizing the king, can be seen as doing the right thing
in terms of continuing the family line or preserving the truth; similarly,
Draupadı̄’s outspoken criticism of her husband after he has bet and lost her
at dice can be seen in terms of the greater good of preserving the honour
of her family, or, at a cosmic level, of saving the Earth. Indeed, Draupadı̄
seems well aware of the principles of āpaddharma in her effort to convince
Yudhisthira to reclaim his kingdom: ‘the actual ways to success are declared
˙˙
to be various, as they depend on various times and conditions’ (3.33.55, tr.
van Buitenen).
Yet, despite the allowances of āpaddharma in opening up the possibilities
for acceptable speech and behaviour, gender roles remain less flexible in mat-
ters of moksadharma, the rules for attaining final spiritual emancipation.
According to ˙ mainstream brahmanical ideology, both men and women
should marry and produce male offspring, in order to guarantee a place in
heaven. As noted above, however, the tension between the pravrtti and nivrtti
ideals is a theme running throughout the Mahābhārata. Whereas ˙ ˙
marriage
continues to be expected for ksatriya men, brahmin men – even those
˙
who, like Vyāsa, are not renouncers – do not necessarily have to marry
to maintain their status and achieve their soteriological goals. Yet even as
nivrtti ideas opened up more possibilities for some men, both brahmin and
˙
ksatriya women were supposed to marry, and a woman’s soteriological goals
˙
continued to be linked with her connections to men. Even Subhrū – an
exceptional female renouncer who practised asceticism her entire life –
needed to be married, if just for one night, in order to go to heaven (9.51). In
light of this story, one wonders about the fate of the unmarried renounceress
Sulabhā after her debate with Janaka.

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 I N T RO D U C T I O N

Gender and textual construction

Another significant factor in the development of ideas of gender in the
Mahābhārata is the dialogical structure of the text. The Mahābhārata is pre-
sented as a series of nested conversations, many of which are consciously
presented as lenses through which other conversations at other narrative
levels might be reinterpreted. This particular arrangement might seem to
reinscribe social and gender hierarchies, as the text brings attention to the
authority of the narrators and the transformative possibilities for listeners.
The text’s many upākhyānas (subsidiary stories embedded and told within
the main story) tend to be told by authoritative males; only one upākhyāna is
narrated by a female character. And as the dialogical structure of the text
brings attention to the teller of stories, it also highlights those who listen,
thus pointing to the text’s projected audience and highlighting the gendered
dimension of the Mahābhārata’s reception. The text’s internal listeners
are usually men whose need to listen is also a need to know how to be
better men, that is, how to negotiate their own specific masculinity; but
as Brian Black and Alf Hiltebeitel point out in their chapters in this book,
some female characters, particularly Draupadı̄ and Gāndhārı̄, also figure as
prominent listeners.
The dialogical structure of the text has some other important literary
implications. Although there are many female characters who make crucial
speeches within the Pāndava story, all those speeches are presented by the
Mahābhārata as re-composed˙˙ by Vyāsa (the text’s putative author), and re-
presented by his disciple Vaiśampāyana, and then re-presented again by
Ugraśravas, and then re-presented ˙ again by the text’s actual authors (who
narrate to us the story of Ugraśravas’s narration). So as far as the female
voices within the text are concerned, we are dealing with a multi-layered
ventriloquism whereby such voices are filtered through a battery of nomin-
ally male subject-positions. Although in recent decades the question of
gendered ventriloquism has been an important topic on the interface of
Gender Studies and Literary Criticism, the Mahābhārata might appear to
provide, by way of its multiple and nested framings, its own explicit theoriza-
tion of this process – and to do so in a form which operates irrespective of
whether or not the gender of the text’s actual authors is known or indeed
knowable.
Although the text would look very different with a female narrator in the
outer frame, nonetheless the compounded maleness of its narratorial voice is
by no means undifferentiated. The main actors in the central drama are
ksatriyas, Vaiśampāyana and Vyāsa are brahmins, and the outer narrator
˙
Ugraśravas is a ˙sūta (a low-class court factotum, often translated – in both
cases potentially misleadingly – as ‘bard’ or ‘charioteer’), narrating for the
entertainment of a brahmin and his guests; so overall we have a super-
imposition of various narratorial identities. The effect of this is to splinter or

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diffuse the agency of the narration as a whole, in a way which seems to

mirror the splintering and diffusion of agency for the actions in the central
drama – which is parcelled out variously to the characters themselves (in the
context of their unique and accidental experiences), or to their deeper iden-
tities as reborn devas and asuras, or to their actions in past lives, or to prakrti
the substrate of all psycho-physical phenomenality, or to Krsna, or Time. ˙
˙ ˙ ˙
But if this narratorial diffusion presents a multivocal impression, as if the
specific idiosyncracies of each narratorial position have been averaged out
into something approximating to a view from nowhere, it is nonetheless a
view from a decidedly male nowhere.

This book and beyond

Continuing our introductory guide to the sense and purpose of the book, the
present section presents a kind of parvasamgraha – a prospectus and sum-
mary of the following chapters – as well as ˙ an explanation of the order in
which we have arranged them, and an indication of the specific thematic
linkages between them.
Placed first is a chapter by Emily Hudson which focuses on the intriguing
and little-studied character of Dhrtarāstra, as revealed through his conversa-
tions with Samjaya, his sidekick and ˙ reporter.
˙˙ One reason this chapter comes
˙
first is because its first section explores a passage from the first chapter of
the Mahābhārata, a flashforward presenting Dhrtarāstra’s lament – his
response to hearing the news of the death of his son ˙ Duryodhana
˙˙ – uttered
at the conclusion of the war. Hudson discusses the literary effect of the
placement of this lament, and its contextualization within a dialogue between
Dhrtarāstra and Samjaya which probes the extent to which Dhrtarāstra him-
self˙ might
˙ ˙ be responsible
˙ for the bloodshed. The text’s narrative˙ technique
˙˙ is
discussed also in terms of the structure of the four ‘battle books’ at the heart
of the text, which likewise play with the order of narrative presentation and
filter the battlefield events through the suffering and philosophizing of the
same two dialogue partners. The chapter calls out some of the Mahābhāra-
ta’s central issues – principally the issues of personal agency and the ripening
of deeds into consequences through time – and discusses them in relation to
the interaction of various narrative frames. The topic of father–son relation-
ships – here the relationship between Dhrtarāstra and Duryodhana – is a
prominent gendered theme in the Mahābhārata ˙ ˙and
˙ will be explored again in
several later chapters.
Taking up some of the same issues as Hudson, Brian Black’s chapter
examines the ways in which the Mahābhārata’s narrative presentation gives
an indication of potential female audiences both inside and outside the text.
Black suggests that the text’s authors intended it for a mixed audience, and
he does this through a study of the text’s various phalaśrutis – passages
which claim that hearing the text or certain portions of it results in specific

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 I N T RO D U C T I O N

benefits for the hearers – and by focusing on the women who listen to the
many stories and teachings within the text. With a particular focus upon the
characters of Draupadı̄ and Dhrtarāstra’s wife Gāndhārı̄, Black shows that
˙ subsidiary
the dialogues which frame the text’s ˙˙ discourses highlight the char-
acters who hear them and the effects that this hearing has upon them: ‘the
frame dialogues give us a social context for the transmission of knowledge’.
Although the king emerges as the paradigmatic listener and the person
whose edification is paramount, the pairing of the yajamāna (ritual patron)
and his wife in Vedic ritual texts, and of the king and queen in the court,
indicates that the queen is also an important listener, even if her presence is
not highlighted to the same degree. Black tracks the silent presence of
Gāndhārı̄ and Draupadı̄ listening to discourses in the proximity of their
husbands, and shows how this education furnishes them with the means of
making their own authoritative statements and active interventions as the
plot unfolds.
The final third of Black’s chapter prepares us for the next several chapters,
which constitute a cluster centred largely on the character of Draupadı̄; she
is viewed most obviously in terms of her partnership with the Pāndavas, her
˙ ˙ forms a
marital family, and in dealing with the issue of marriage this cluster
wider unity with the chapters that follow – in which marriage (or its absence)
continues to be an important theme in the story of several male characters,
notably Bhı̄sma.
Angelika ˙ Malinar focuses tightly upon one specific dialogue between
Draupadı̄ and her eldest husband Yudhisthira, which takes place near the
beginning of their years in exile, not long˙ ˙after Draupadı̄ has been humili-
ated at the dicing match, and which explores their options and their possible
next move. Malinar takes us through this dialogue point by point, carefully
laying out the steps of the argument. She discusses the exchange in terms of
the representative and performative dimension of royalty – that is, the need
for the king and queen to embody and demonstrate the core values by which
their society and realm is organized. Prior to the losses at dice, the relation-
ship between Yudhisthira and Draupadı̄ was dependent upon their social
status, but since they˙ are
˙ now no longer king and queen, their gendered roles
stand in need of re-negotiation on both sides. In tracing the trajectory of this
debate, Malinar emphasizes that the gender roles of the two parties are
relational and cannot be understood independently of each other or of their
social context; and although the dialogue does succeed in setting the couple’s
relationship on an even keel once more, ‘no typical “female” argument can
be identified’.
Laurie Patton’s chapter also concentrates in some detail upon specific dia-
logues involving Draupadı̄: her exchange with Krsna’s wife Satyabhāmā
towards the end of the period in exile, and her˙ ˙ exchange
˙ with Queen
Sudesnā, the wife of King Virāta in whose household the Pāndavas live dur-
˙ ˙ year in disguise. Drawing
ing their ˙ ˙˙
upon recent theoretical developments in

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the fields of gender and psychology – most particularly in the work of Judith
Butler and Hubert Hermans – Patton demonstrates that the gender ideology
of the text is multifaceted, and that its characters are ‘constructed through
dialogue itself’. When in conversation with Satyabhāmā, Draupadı̄ describes
her attentiveness to her husbands in the manner of the stereotypical pativratā
(a woman whose vow is to her Lord). In analysing this speech, however,
Patton shows that ‘pativratā is a two-way street’: Draupadı̄ is highly con-
scious of the power dynamics within households, not least the power that she
herself holds, and her words invoke a wide variety of female gender roles.
This multiple performative emphasis is also brought out in the conversation
between Draupadı̄ (disguised as a maidservant) and Sudesnā, in which
˙˙
Draupadı̄ negotiates her employment in the palace and her relationship with
the queen: ‘Sudesnā is patron, friend, and rival, all in one single relationship.’
˙ ˙ by Alf Hiltebeitel, focuses on the Mahābhārata’s sub-
The next chapter,
stories and the role they play in the development of the text’s principal char-
acters – here, most saliently, Draupadı̄. After showing that the suffering
women in the text tend to blame their misfortunes on their unknown deeds in
past lives, Hiltebeitel deals in some detail with two stories which address
issues of friendship and marriage, particularly in the context of marital dif-
ficulties and the misbehaviour of husbands. Both stories feature birds: in the
first, the story of a family of Śārṅgaka birds, a couple are estranged and then
re-united; in the second, the story of ‘Adorable’ and King Brahmadatta, a
couple split up for good. The chapter then turns to the Mahābhārata’s main
story in light of these, dwelling on an amusing and risqué episode in Book 14
of the text, and exploring most particularly the close friendship between
Draupadı̄ (also called Krsnā, ‘Dark Lady’) and Krsna, but also the relation-
ships between Draupadı̄˙and˙ ˙ Arjuna and between Arjuna
˙˙ ˙ and Krsna. Arjuna
and Krsna are well known (to the text’s audience at least) as the˙deities
˙˙ Nara
˙ ˙ ˙
and Nārāyana, and through attention to some Upanishadic verses Hiltebeitel
suggests that˙ Draupadı̄ also has a parallel divine identity which transcends
her identification with the goddess Śrı̄: she is primal substance, the material
cause of all phenomena.
The book now leaves the specific character of Draupadı̄ behind; but
Simon Brodbeck’s chapter takes up the suggestion that the previous chapter
finished with, and explores the possibility that the Mahābhārata’s many stor-
ies depicting problematic male–female dynamics may be understood, at least
in part, as soteriological allegories. The goal of moksa – complete and final
incorporeal salvation, the deliverance of an approximately ˙ male soul from an
approximately female world of embodiment – is achieved as if mimetically in
early Indian narrative traditions, involving as it does the man’s renunciation
of his wife and family. The Mahābhārata problematizes this renunciative
soteriology, and Krsna in the Bhagavadgı̄tā suggests that salvation may be
˙˙ ˙
achieved without renunciation; Brodbeck shows that the text’s narratives
also reflect this philosophical development, with men tempted or attempting

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to renounce their wives but eventually achieving success without doing so. In
order to set up this analogy, Brodbeck explores a persistent Vedic and post-
Vedic cosmogony in which the world is the product of a union of gendered
poles; he then surveys the biography of Yudhisthira (who is notoriously
ambivalent with respect to his wife and his royal˙ ˙responsibilities), showing
that the gendered ideal of raksana – husbandly and kingly protection, the
male counterpoint to pativratā˙ –˙ is crucially consonant with Krsna’s new
non-renunciative soteriology, the karmayoga. ˙˙ ˙
The book now features a cluster of chapters concentrating in different
ways on the figure of Bhı̄sma. Nick Allen’s treatment concerns the celibate
Bhı̄sma’s role of organizing ˙ marriages for many of his patrilineal relatives,
˙
and seeks to determine ‘whether Bhı̄sma’s matchmaking presents any pat-
terning or structure’. Allen locates his˙ work within the field of cultural com-
parativism, and begins by reviewing George Dumézil’s work on this topic
and its dependence on a tri-functional Indo-European classificatory ideology
according to which specific types of marriage (for example, and as differenti-
ated in the Mahābhārata and the Dharmaśāstras) may be connected with
specific functions. He then explains how his own work has led to the refine-
ment of this schema into a five-functional model (briefly, transcendence; 1
the sacred; 2 force; 3 fertility; exclusion). Paying attention to minute narra-
tive details in the text, Allen assigns the marriages organized by Bhı̄sma to
their respective functions and finds a pattern of descending functional˙values
(3, 2, 1) in successive generations and of ascending functional values (1, 2,
3) in successive marriages within the same generation. He then shows how
Bhı̄sma’s first and last marriages (the first one was arranged in a previous
life)˙ frame this chiasmic unit with marriages representing the transcendence
and exclusion functions. The analysis is reinforced through brief discussion
of an Eddic poem, the Rígsþula, which shows a similar pattern in which a
central character promotes fertility associated with descending functions in
successive generations; and the chapter ends by reflecting on the implications
of such Indo-European correlations for the study of the Mahābhārata.
James Fitzgerald’s chapter is the first instalment of a larger study of
Bhı̄sma that he is undertaking and will continue elsewhere. The chapter
˙ with the scene where Bhı̄sma dies some months after being felled
begins
and fatally wounded in the battle,˙ and is lamented by his mother Gaṅgā; it
then moves back in time to the battlefield scene at Kuruksetra and Arjuna
Pāndava’s terrible deed (fear of which is the main narrative ˙ cause of the
˙ ˙
Bhagavadgı̄tā) of killing his most venerable patrilineal elder – a deed achieved
with the vital assistance of Śikhandin. Fitzgerald discusses Robert Goldman’s
Freudian and Oedipal interpretation˙˙ of the scene and its characters, and
its ramifications elsewhere in Mahābhārata episodes where Bhı̄sma fights
against his ‘father-figure’ Rāma Jāmadagnya and where Arjuna is˙ killed by
his son Babhruvāhana (only to be revived). Fitzgerald discusses William
Sax’s interpretation of the latter episode as dramatized in present-day

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Himalayan village ritual, and argues that Freudian-psychoanalytical theory

might profitably be used in order to explain the Mahābhārata story. He then
sets out the basis of an approach to this and other narrative material which
will ‘push past the bounds of the classical Oedipal triangle’, and which,
following the lead of Gananath Obeyesekere in particular, will understand
‘the psychodynamics of family relations’ in a sense not limited by Freud’s
Eurocentric model of the nuclear family. This approach seeks to locate ‘rep-
resentations of cathected objects of family relations’ within the realm and
pallette of narrative poetry, and to explore them in their interaction with
other structured conceptual elements within the narrative.
Andrea Custodi’s chapter continues the use of psychoanalytical theor-
etical perspectives to illuminate the Mahābhārata narrative, and is informed
in particular by the work of Jacques Lacan. It is the first in a pair of chapters
which address characters whose gender is ambiguous or variable, and which
advert back to the story of Bhı̄sma in contrasting ways. Custodi begins by
highlighting the frequency with˙which ksatriya warriors are called upon to
demonstrate their manhood, and links this ˙ with the ‘instability inherent in
phallic subjectivity’. Noting the prevalence of gender play in the Mahābhārata,
she proceeds to discuss two of its gender-bending characters. The virile war-
rior Arjuna successfully disguises himself during the year in Virāta’s king-
dom as Brhannadā, a dance teacher of definitively defective masculinity;˙
˙ ˙
Custodi explores the implications of Arjuna’s feminization in a variety of
contexts, utilizing the work of Wendy Doniger, Hiltebeitel, and Goldman.
She then turns to Ambā/Śikhandinı̄/Śikhandin, whose story, stretched over
two lifetimes, involves her change˙ ˙ of sex in
˙ ˙ order to take fatal revenge on
Bhı̄sma, the man who once wronged and disgraced her by abducting her for
˙
marriage and then dismissing her unwed. The ambiguity of this cathartic tale
is discussed, and the female-to-male sex change is viewed in light of its homi-
cidal intent: Custodi remarks that ‘this current of feminine vengeance . . . is
an important strand of femininity in the Mahābhārata’, and ‘drives the
major events of the epic’. In her conclusion she critiques Goldman’s Oedipal
analysis of epic stories, and shows how a Lacanian approach can help us to
understand the male desire to be female in a new light.
Georg von Simson’s chapter continues the specific focus on gender bend-
ing and, in common with recent chapters, deals with deep metaphors. He
addresses the minor character of Sāmba, a cross-dressing son of Krsna
whose antics (he pretends to be pregnant) result in the self-destruction of˙ ˙the
˙
Vrsni clan in Book 16 of the Mahābhārata. Von Simson probes Sāmba’s
˙ ˙ ˙ (he is given as a blessing by Śiva and Umā) and name – both of
origins
which demonstrate his essentially androgynous character – and explores the
imagery of the Book 16 episode in light of its Vedic resonances in order to
suggest that Sāmba represents the new-moon period of the lunar cycle, and
that his oddness as a male is an integral part of this representation. A series
of further considerations are introduced in order to support this theory: von

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Simson connects other Vrsni heroes with other sections of the lunar cycle,
and marshals evidence from ˙ ˙ ˙ the Harivamśa, various Purānas, and the drama
Nāgānanda as well as the Mahābhārata, ˙ laying out the˙ lunar symbolism.
Solar symbolism is intertwined with this, since the new (dark) moon occurs
when the sun and moon are close together in the sky (as viewed from earth).
In the Mahābhārata Śiva and Umā grant the births not only of Sāmba but
also of Bhı̄sma’s nemesis Śikhandin – born female, later a male – and, draw-
˙
ing on his previous studies of the ˙ ˙ Mahābhārata’s calendrical mythology, von
Simson links these characters with specific stages at opposite extremities of
the annual cycle.
The final chapter, by Arti Dhand, returns us to the issue of soteriology
raised by Brodbeck’s chapter, and to the issue of ethical responsibility raised
by Hudson’s at the start. It details and discusses two minor characters in the
text: the author Vyāsa’s son Śuka, who abandons his father in favour of
spiritual progress, and the female mendicant Sulabhā who maintains, against
King Janaka, that spiritual emancipation is impossible for one still living as a
householder. Both of these characters, Śuka and Sulabhā, are presented by
their narrators as having achieved moksa, which would imply the transcend-
ence of all worldly values; but, as Dhand ˙ shows by probing their stories in
terms of issues of gender and social class, in both cases ‘the brahmavādin’s
acts are yet circumscribed by social biases to which s/he pays a muted ideo-
logical deference’. Dhand pays particular attention to Śuka’s apparently
cruel treatment of his father, which seems intended to illustrate the degree of
aloofness required for spiritual progress; but, assessing the stories in ethical
terms, she shows that these two ‘Paradigms of the Good’, in their very
aloofness, abdicate their moral responsibility towards their fellow humans.
This soteriologically oriented aloofness is also visible in the karmayoga,
whereby the aspirant must perform his or her received social duties without
attachment and, crucially, without assessing their moral quality. In conclud-
ing Dhand recommends that, if the Hindu epics are to be used as authorita-
tive source texts for present-day traditions, they should first be thoroughly
ethically scrutinized.

* * *

A word or two may be in order here to consolidate the progress made by this
book and to sketch some likely lines of further study. In addition to the
themes of gender and narrative, the chapters in this book are joined together
by a shared appreciation of the integrity of the text and by a set of questions
regarding how its composition is related to its potential meanings or mes-
sages: how is the text organized and presented? How do particular scenes
unfold? What is the relationship between the parts and the whole? How and
to what effect does the text employ metaphors? What do particular stories
teach? Although there remain competing theories as to how, when, and by

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whom the Mahābhārata was composed and/or compiled, the chapters in

this book approach the text with a sensitivity to its literary techniques and
narrative strategies.
Since within the general topic of ‘gender and the Mahābhārata’ the contri-
butors have been free to choose what to write about, we may comment on the
subjects they chose and those they did not, even bearing in mind the
Mahābhārata’s claim to be about everything. Throughout the chapters two
main narrative axes are clear: the focus on Draupadı̄, and the focus upon
Bhı̄sma, particularly as regards his interactions with Ambā/Śikhandin and
˙
Arjuna. ˙ ˙ scene
But in the case of Draupadı̄, her experiences during the dicing
are treated only in passing. Some other gender topics are not dealt with
directly: although attention is paid to male–female, female–female and male–
male friendships, and to male–female enmities, there is less said about
female–female enmities (such as those of Kadrū and Vinatā at 1.14ff. and
Devayānı̄ and Śarmisthā at 1.73–80), and about male–male ones. With the
˙˙
exception of the relationship between Bhı̄sma and Arjuna, the subject of
same-sex violence, in many ways the central ˙ issue of the Mahābhārata –
particularly as it might involve King Janamejaya as he hears about his warring
ancestors – is not looked squarely in the face here. This is a recurring tendency
in Mahābhārata studies (begun perhaps by Dhrtarāstra, as we shall shortly
see), to look away from the dazzling mayhem at ˙the text’s˙ ˙ centre, the magnifi-
cently hideous flowering that stands and falls between seed and bitter fruit.
Nonetheless, same-sex fighting is a gendered business. In the case of Arjuna
and Bhı̄sma that is highlighted in this book, the conflict, being intrafamilial
˙
and intergenerational, inevitably invokes the double genders of human repro-
duction. Where same-sex fighters are not related, gender is nonetheless central,
since whatever gender the fighters might be, they tend to be fighting over some-
thing of the other gender. The female–female feuds just mentioned may be
seen as variants on a theme of ‘co-wife’ rivalry; and, as mentioned by several
of our chapters, whenever ksatriyas face up in battle the female is present as
Śrı̄, Earth and apsarā – that˙is, as stake, ground, spur, and prize.
In this connection it is worth noting that certain types of exploration of
the issue of male–male antagonism in the Mahābhārata might yield insights
concerning the traditional mode of operation of institutional academies
(involving a mannered, agonistic, and originally male-on-male dynamic,49
and the narrative extremes of charlatan and colleague); concerning these
academies’ relations with each other (in competition for funding and well-
schooled students); and concerning their operation and that of their members
within nation states which move with countless casualties on an international
field (again in a similar mannered and basically male-on-male50 dynamic,
involving the narrative extremes of misguided but merciless psychopath and
inalienable ally). However, this book’s focus falls predominantly within
the various dimensions of family life. In this context the issues involved
in being a father, mother, son, daughter, husband, or wife are of obvious

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human interest. Indeed, there is much more to be said with regard to the
Mahābhārata’s treatment of family life, of parenting in general, and of the
father–son relationship in particular: after all, the gender roles and con-
straints explored in the Dharmaśāstras and in both Sanskrit epics seem
predicated on the possibility of intergenerational patrilineal continuity.
There is much that is not in this book, but we hope that what is here will
help inspire an appreciation of the Mahābhārata as one of the most complex
and profound works in the history of the world’s literatures. In terms of
methodology the book demonstrates a range of approaches, any one or any
combination of which might be taken up and applied to a wider study of
gender in the Mahābhārata, and in other narrative texts too, from ancient
India and/or elsewhere and/or also from more recent times. Indeed, since our
lives begin and end in narratives in so many different ways, there might be
principles of ‘gender and narrative’ emergent from these studies of the
Mahābhārata which could enable us to reassess and come to new terms with
the ways we think about and are led to think about ourselves, and each
different other and kind of other, the wider objects – human, living, physical,
textual, or abstract – of our professional and non-professional activity and
discourse.

Notes
1 Huberman has suggested that the ‘mahā’ may be allied with the text’s tendency
‘to refuse to be circumscribed by any singular perspective’ – that is, its being
‘consciously and blatantly intertextual’ (1996: 151, 152).
2 See, for example, Sax 2002; Saklani and Negi 2005; K.S. Singh 1993; Hiltebeitel
1988; 1991a; 1999a; Miller 1991; Sullivan and Unni 1995; 2001; Lothspeich 2006;
Pai and Kadam 1989; Chopra and Chopra 1988–90; Dandekar 1990: 151–289;
Narang 1995: 250–89.
3 Throughout this book the Poona text is referred to simply as the ‘Critical Edition’.
4 See Sukthankar 1933: lxxv–xcii, cii–civ; Biardeau 1968; 1970; Dunham 1991; van
der Veer 1999; Bigger 2002; Brodbeck 2006.
5 See van Buitenen 1973; 1975; 1978; 1981; Fitzgerald 2002b; 2004a.
6 There is also a complete English Mahābhārata translated by M.N. Dutt, recently
reprinted with parallel Sanskrit text (Dutt 2001). The Clay Sanskrit Library have
begun also to publish a bilingual version, based on the ‘Vulgate’ Mahābhārata, i.e.
the text which was commented upon by Nı̄lakantha (see Kinjawadekar 1929–36):
˙ ˙ volumes have appeared (W.J.
at the time of writing only two Clay Mahābhārata
Johnson 2005; Meiland 2005), but many more are in process.
7 On ancient Indian polyandry, see S.D. Singh 1988.
8 For recent work on Vyāsa, see Sullivan 1990; J.L. Mehta 1990; Hiltebeitel 2001a:
32–91, 278–322.
9 For the origins of the four varnas – brāhmana (brahmin), ksatriya, vaiśya and
˙
śūdra – from his mouth, arms, thighs, ˙ see Rgveda 10.90.11–12;
and feet, ˙ Mānava
Dharmaśāstra 1.31. The royal privilege of ksatriyas ˙is delicately explored by the
˙ characters of Karna, Vidura, and
text, most particularly through the ‘low-born’
Ekalavya. On ‘ethnicity’, see Goldman 1996 (also Mehendale 1984); ˙ on ‘race’,
John Brockington 1995.

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 S I M O N B RO D B E C K A N D B R I A N B L A C K

10 For longer book-by-book summaries of the Mahābhārata narrative, see W.J.

Johnson 1998: 87–103; Mahābhārata 1.2.70–234.
11 On this relationship as set in historical context, see Fitzgerald 2004a: 100–42; on
ksatriya belligerence, see Hara 1974; on the textual construction of the ksatriya
˙ see Hiltebeitel 2004a.
role, ˙
12 See especially Book 11 and the beginning of Book 12, and Chapter Two. On the
text’s humanistic depth, see Bailey 1983a; 1993.
13 On this conundrum, see Chakravarty 1955; Bharadwaj 1992; Hill 2001; Woods
2001; Vassilkov 1999.
14 On the text’s own use of the term, see Tokunaga 2005.
15 On the purusārthas, see Biardeau 1989; Krishan 1989; Flood 1997; Halbfass 2000;
Davis 2005.˙
16 See Lindtner 1995; Bailey 2004; 2005b; Szczurek 2005a; Hiltebeitel 2005b;
Söhnen-Thieme 2005; Bedekar 1968; Bronkhorst 1993: 31–77.
17 On the Harivamśa, see Matchett 1996; Couture 1996; John Brockington 1998:
˙
313–44; Koskikallio 2005: 297–433.
18 Important nineteenth-century figures include Christian Lassen, the Adolf Holtz-
manns elder and younger, Albrecht Weber, Alfred Ludwig, and Joseph Dahlmann.
19 Perhaps the best example of an approach which accommodates both of these
poles is that of Fitzgerald, who combines the proposal of successive redactions
with a keen eye for the dynamics and internal logic of the resulting text (2004a:
xvi; 2002a).
20 See again John Brockington 1998: 41–81, also 524–5. This approach may explain
the text’s apparent internal inconsistencies: see Mehendale 1995b; 2001.
21 One of the more interesting recent theories locates the Mahābhārata’s genesis in
the context of interactions at tı̄rthas between different types of textual performers
(Vassilkov 2002).
22 See e.g. Lidova 2002–3; Feller 2004; Olivelle 1993: 131–60; Brinkhaus 2000;
Biardeau 1997; Magnone 2000.
23 See Hiltebeitel 1976; 1982; Jamison 1994; 1999; Allen 1996; 1999; 2002; West
2005–6; Hughes 1992; Vassilkov 2001. It is to be hoped that this field does not get
too bogged down by the theorization or critique of vaguely indicative terms such
as ‘epic’ and ‘Indo-European’.
24 See Feller 1999; Minkowski 2001; Reich 2001; 2005a; 2005b; Tieken 2004.
25 For a sensitive challenge to the mutual opposition of the categories ‘myth’ and
‘history’, see Hirst 1998 (‘story is about self-perception and identity’, p. 109); see
also Thapar 1976; 1986. Madeleine Biardeau says of Vyāsa, ‘his mythic character-
isation does not exclude his historical reality; it simply keeps it out of reach’
(1968: 118).
26 See Selvanayagam 1992; Sutton 1997; Fitzgerald 2004a: 100–42. On Aśoka, see
Thapar 1961; Strong 1983. John Brockington has also related the Mahābhārata’s
story of Jarāsamdha to the decline of the Mauryas (2002: 78–86).
27 On Indra, see ˙John Brockington 2001; on Satyavatı̄, Ghosh 2000; on Bhı̄sma,
Harzer 2005; on Bhı̄ma, Gitomer 1991; on Arjuna, Pelissero 2002; on˙ the
Pāndavas and Draupadı̄, Goldman 1995; on Krsna, Matilal 1991; More 1995; on
˙˙
Duryodhana, Gitomer 1992; on Karna, Jarow˙ ˙ 1999;
˙ McGrath 2004; on Śuka,
Shulman 1993: 108–32. ˙
28 As well as its primary division into eighteen books (parvans), the Mahābhārata
also performs a self-inventory in terms of 100 upaparvans (‘minor books’,
1.2.34–71), and internally refers to various upākhyānas (subtales), samvādas (dia-
logues), and other types of sub-text. On the Dyūtaparvan (2.43–65), ˙see Söhnen-
Thieme 1999; on the Nala-Upākhyāna (3.50–78), J.D. Smith 1992; Shulman 1994;
von Simson 2005; on the Udyogaparvan, Greer 2005; on the Bhagavadgı̄tā,

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Malinar 1996; John Brockington 1997; Szczurek 2002; 2005b; on the Moksadhar-
maparvan, John Brockington 2000; on the Nārāyanı̄ya (12.321–39), Schreiner ˙
1997; on the Āśvamedhikaparvan, Reich 2005a. ˙
29 On the role of curses, see Ramankutty 1999; on ‘epic parthenogenesis’, M.C.
Smith 1991; on the Ekalavya episode (1.123), Shankar 1994; on the dicing scene,
Mary Brockington 2001; 2003; on the Pāndavas’ exiles, Parkhill 1995; on Karna’s
˙ ˙ Chapple 2005; on the conduct of˙the
rejection of his natal family, Adarkar 2005a;
war, Mehendale 1995a; on the horse sacrifice, Koskikallio 1995; on a variety of
episodes, Dange 1997; 2001; 2002.
30 On dharma, see Hara 1999; Bailey 2005a; Sutton 2005; Fitzgerald 2004c; on yoga,
John Brockington 2003; on sāmkhya, John Brockington 1999; on sāmkhya and
˙
yoga, Schreiner 1999a; on the yugas, González-Reimann 2002; on asakta ˙ karman
(non-attached action), Appelbaum 1990; Brodbeck 2004; in press b; on ānrśamsya
(non-cruelty), Lath 1990; Hiltebeitel 2001a: 177–214; on devana and ˙ daiva,
˙
Shulman 1992; on tejas, Magnone 2003; Whitaker 2000; 2002.
31 On Draupadı̄, see Falk 1977; on Sāvitrı̄, see Vidyut Aklujkar 1991; for a
comparison of Draupadı̄ and Sı̄tā, see Sally Sutherland 1989; on epic women in
general, see Bhattacharya 1995; on Sulabhā, see Vanita 2003.
32 On Janaka, see Piantelli 2002; on Arjuna, see Pelissero 2002; for a psychoanalytic
perspective on male characters, see Goldman 1978.
33 On style (broadly conceived), see Ramanujan 1991; Vassilkov 1995; 2001; J.D.
Smith 1999b; Huberman 1996; Shulman 1991; Cosi 2005; on metre, Sharma 2000;
Fitzgerald 2005.
34 Most of the chapters were first embodied as oral presentations at the Epic
Constructions conference, SOAS, University of London, 7–9 July 2005.
35 With regard to future explorations on the topic of gender relations in the epics,
John Brockington has written that ‘one limitation that will have to be borne in
mind is the interests of the authors and audience, which means that as with aspects
related to social groups the picture given in the epics may well not be realistic’
(1998: 520).
36 Johann Jakob Meyer had by then already produced his exhaustive work Sexual
Life in Ancient India (1930), which is based upon the Mahābhārata and the
Rāmāyana.
37 ˙
Other examples include Shah 1995; 2002. Altekar’s work is often deemed to have
been overdetermined by nationalist discourse, but more generally it may easily be
co-opted and exaggerated by those who would argue for ‘prehistoric matriarchy’,
an approach which has found favour in some feminist circles (see Eller 2000), and
which may to some extent be suggested by explicit statements of Mahābhārata
characters (e.g. at 1.113.4–20).
38 Aklujkar notes that many of the paradigmatic pativratās are ‘knowingly or
unknowingly’ treated unjustly by their husbands, and with the exception of
Draupadı̄ a common characteristic of the pativratā is silent suffering. The
pativratās ‘are somewhat passive women, who endure ordeals and yet come out
virtuous and devoted towards their husbands’ (Aklujkar 1991: 328). For further
discussion of pativratā see Aklujkar 2000.
39 The iterative nature of such demonstrations well illustrates Butler’s idea of
‘performativity’ (see above).
40 According to Arti Dhand, niyoga is employed when a woman’s husband is
‘deceased, infertile, or otherwise incapacitated’ (2004: 38). According to Gail
Sutherland, brahmins are the ideal candidates for niyoga because of their purity
and their cosmological equivalence to the source of creation: ‘To reassert Brāhmans
as the true means of propagation is tantamount to inaugurating a new golden age’
(1990: 93).

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41 The etymological meaning of napumsaka is ‘not a male’, but it came to mean

‘neither man nor woman’. According˙ to Zwilling and Sweet, however, ‘napumsaka
was a polysemous term, carrying connotations of lack of procreative/generative ˙
ability, androgyny, hermaphroditism and castration’ (2000: 104). Goldman
describes Arjuna’s manifestation as a napumsaka as ‘a feminized transvestite of
ambiguous sex and feminized gender’ (1993:˙ 380).
42 Originally klı̄ba meant ‘impotent man’; however, the word ‘came to be associated
with certain qualities which changed [its] referent from the category of sexually
defective males to that of beings of equivocal sexuality’ (Zwilling and Sweet
2000: 105).
43 As Ruth Vanita observes, women are rarely reborn as men, but are more likely to
be reborn as virtuous women. And when a man changes into a woman ‘the change
is much more ambiguous’ (2000: 18).
44 Other cases of sexual transformation include Ilā (1.70.16) and King Bhaṅgāśvana
(13.12). See Goldman 1993: 379–82.
45 Lacan’s theory of the phallus has interesting implications when considering the
dand.a, which Goldman describes as ‘the unambiguous phallic rod of sovereignty’
˙
(1993: 382). In the story of King Bhaṅgāśvana, for example, the king realizes that
s/he is not fit to rule after Indra has changed her/him into a woman (ibid.: 381–2).
46 As Ruth Vanita comments, although both are married to women, ‘[t]he two men’s
state is comfortably integrated into their love for one another, which is repeatedly
stated to be primary’ (2000: 4).
47 Mahābhārata 12.129–67, on which see Bowles 2004.
48 Similarly, Dhand has argued that niyoga ‘belongs best within the category of
practices excused by āpaddharma . . . niyoga represents an apparent violation of
the ethic of sexual fidelity to one’s husband. It is excused, however, because the
circumstances under which it is performed are exceptional and the need for the
survival of the lineage supercedes the mores of sexual chastity’ (2004: 39).
49 For this point we are gratefully indebted to Sîan Hawthorne (personal communi-
cation, August 2006).
50 Casualties of one kind or another are of all genders unavoidably, but this can seem
to be something of an embarrassment; human death-dealing, by Bhı̄sma’s dharma,
is supposed to be male on male. ˙

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