The prehistoric Sanskrit epics the Mahabharata and Ramayana both make up the Itihasa and Mahakavya, a norm of the Indian scripture. Undeniably, the epic triumphed, and the verse remained dominant up to recently as the preferred form of Hindu literary works. The language of the texts referred to as Epic Sanskrit contains the most ancient phases of classical Sanskrit following the newest stage of Vedic Sanskrit that can be found in the Sharuta Sutras.
Largely accepted as one of the most fundamental sources of South Asia religious, political and social thought study, the Mahabharata is dubbed as one of the main tools for transmitting dharma, which is the religious, moral and social duty or virtue in the Indian traditions. Undoubtedly, dharma’s subtle nature is the primary theme or the central problem of the Sanskrit epic. However, many maybe mislead even by merely a cursory reading to think that it does not have much interest in communicating anything conclusive regarding dharma and instead, that it is more concerned with projecting the different ways that it can be transgressed. In the bottom line, the Mahabharata narrates a tale that includes a fierce, fratricidal battle that almost destroys the world at the end.
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The following essay will explore the correlation of aesthetics, religion, and ethics in the classical Indian literature and literary theory through the lens of one of the most celebrated and enigmatic texts that came from the Sanskrit epic tradition, the Mahabharata. Essentially, it discusses the aesthetic of suffering through different components that blend to give meaning to the text.
Mahabharata
The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics from ancient Hindu, alongside its epic alike called the Ramayana, which is a foundational text of classical India. The epic has about 100,000 quatrains, making it about seven times the length of Odyssey and Iliad combined (Brockington 2003). Different scholars often compare the significance of the Sanskrit epics in the global literature to Shakespeare’s works, Quran, Greek epics and tragedies, and Bible. The Sanskrit epics contain the Bhagavad-Gita that many consider being the fundamental Hinduism statement and is among the most translated and famous texts globally. The tale of Mahabharata, similar to most Greek epics has provided many literary adaptions with the material, particularly the Sanskrit drama. It has been replayed into different Indian native languages and recapped through various visual presentations, dramatic performances, musical works, and until recently, podcasts. During the 1990s, most Indian televisions broadcasted the Doordarshan Mahabharata serially, and it was one of the most popular programs to be presented on the Indian television (Damrosch & Pike 2009). Because the story has been narrated and recapped in different languages and mediums, it suffices to say that the Mahabharata is not a single text but a highly vibrant tradition that has spanned over two thousand years.
Unfortunately, not so much is known on the composition of the Sanskrit Mahabharata. For instance, basic questions like the period when the text was composed, or the composer are still not known. Vedic texts, which are some of the most ancient Sanskrit works of Hindu that dates as old as the last centuries of the second millennium BCE, refer to the names of some of the dominant characters of the story and refer to the fight for power (Brockington 2003). However, the story that can be reconstructed from the manuscript sources dates from a significantly later time. According to the ancient tale, Mahabharata’s author is Vyasa, who is also covering up as a character in the story. However, many researchers consent that the epic was compiled over many centuries, from the first half of the first millennium BCE to the fourth century CE (Damrosch & Pike 2009). Some recent scholars view the current text as the careful compilation of a final redactor. As per this view, the Mahabharata is considered as a work of conscious design despite being the product of different authors from different times in history.
Until recently, many scholars knew that the original text was an oral composition before being committed to writing later. However, today most scholars agree that Mahabharata in its current form was composed in an environment where both orality and writing were mixed in multifaceted ways (Damrosch & Pike 2009). Alf Hiltebeitel, a religion, human science, and history professor has gone an extra mile to argue that morality in the Sanskrit epics is a literary trope that needs to be known against redaction and writing background (Hiltebeitel 2001). The most ancient extant manuscript of the Mahabharata dates back from the medieval period after the development of the southern and northern recensions. Noteworthy, the Critical Edition is a product of the collation of a huge number of manuscripts from the two major extant recensions. The main goal of the Critical Edition editors was to redevelop what they believed was the father of all the manuscripts that they collated and examined, a goal that they could ultimately approximate.
The Aesthetics of Suffering
One major medium that the Mahabharata qualifies as a literary text is because it shows the meaning better through what it does, as opposed to what is says. In regards to what it does, it means the fact that its literary strategies are meant to have an effect on the audience. One major way that the Mahabharata does what is does is by the aesthetics of suffering. The main reasoning behind the way that the Mahabharata qualifies as a literary work is through the aesthetics of sufferings, and it is made up of different components that blend to give meaning to the text. The concept of suffering is a dominant theme and a predominant poetic principle that guides the inner momentum of the primary narrative is suffering (duhkha) (Brockington 2003). Saying that the most dominant theme of Mahabharata is about suffering is in some degree, stating the palpable. After all, the Mahabharata narrates the story of a vicious fratricidal battle that almost destroys the entire world as we know it. Virtually all the characters in the epic, whether bad or good, all either meet violent deaths, which are often caused by blood relatives or lifelong friends, or are survivors of the war and live out their days overwhelmed by grief due to the loss of their friends or family members. Surprisingly, even so, some studies have considered the epic in this light.
This section aims to explain the role that suffering played as an aesthetic principle and with the function that it does as such, especially in reorienting and disorienting the understanding of conceptual segments like fate, time and dharma, as well as the relationship to different Sanskrit epic principle character, especially Yudhishthira. A basic argument that will be presented henceforth is that when particular conceptual character or segments are contrasted with examples of intense suffering, which tend to explode the understanding of that character or segment. This is mainly true of dharma or characters that are closely related to dharma, including Krsna and Yudhishthira. For instance, a persistent question that the epic raises is why the dharmic path is implicated in too much sorrow. Bringing together the notion of suffering or sorrow on one side and the operation and creation of a literary work, on the other hand, is a prototypically Indian way of literature conception. For instance, the Ramayana which is traditionally considered as the very first poem starts by describing its style of poetic expression generally as born of sorrow (Brockington 2003). Valmiki, the ostensible author of the epic is saddened after he sees the slaying of male birds, and the way the female partner of the bird lamented in sorrow. Valmiki then goes ahead to compose a work of literature called the story of Rama in sloka verse that is mainly structured on the theme of suffering (Brockington 2003). The pun presented in sloka is intentional.
The theme of suffering performs its aesthetic job in the Mahabharata through epic narrative strategies. Generally, a narrative strategy refers to defined instructions deployed by a text to guide its audience. The audiences who are willing to be guided by such instructions is sensitive spectator or reader. To put is more precisely, a narrative strategy is a dynamic interaction between the content and the form of the text and the resulting impact on the sensitive spectator. Most importantly, there are many situations where form ruptures or undermines the content. In this case, the meaning shifts from the asymmetric relationship between the two and how this impacts the listener or reader. An important description of the type of work that this lopsided relation between surprisingly comes from Philip Glass, the musician. Glass describes the composition of musical scores for films as accurately observing the distance between the music and the image (Damrosch & Pike 2009). Additionally, Alex Ross further explains that in other words, rather than attempting to make music and image serve similar ends, they can be played against each other to let the difference come and emotional experience by itself (Hiltebeitel 2001). Similarly, one way that the narrative strategies of the Mahabharata function is to create a distance between the image and the telling or the content and the form, and the emotional experience arises from the disjuncture between the two.
The aesthetics of suffering are the different ways used by the epic’s narrative to use the theme of suffering from influencing the sensitive audience in different ways that are ethically important. It operates in two main literary spheres namely conceptual categories and characters. The primary characters in the Mahabharata include human beings who have been torn apart by conflicts and confused by reality; their confusions and frailties from time to time lead them into different predicaments that are marked by grief and sorrow (Damrosch & Pike 2009). Indeed the protagonists in the epic usually find themselves in one of two contexts vis-à-vis the aesthetics of suffering. The first context is the situation that involves a dilemma where characters are forced to make hard decisions the consequences that contain the potential for enormous suffering. The character in question in this case regardless of how virtuous inevitably makes a bad decision or reacts to the situation in a way that makes matters exponentially worse. The second context is the situation that occurs after making bad decisions, and the consequence has already happened and characters are reeling with sorrow.
In general, there are four different characters that operate in the two contexts above. First characters are the victims who are suffering through psychological or physical pain and who usually normally show their despair by lamenting. The second character is the agent of suffering who cause others to suffer, mostly unwittingly or through bad decisions. Third, are the passive characters who observe as other people suffer in distress situations but do nothing to help. The last character is the wise advisors against the grief who try to dispel the despair of others. Noteworthy, most of the main characters from the epic belong in more than one of the discussed categories. For instance, Yudhishthira is a victim, passive witness and a potential agent of suffering (Damrosch & Pike 2009).
In the two situational contexts, for instance, situations where the characters are involved in catastrophes and dilemmas, the aesthetics of suffering works into major ways. The first way is to disorient any unilateral understanding of the proclaimed virtuous characters and thereby any comfortable or easy to understand in moral guides. The second one is to reorient the audience to a new way of viewing the world through the lens of the numerous arguments of the epic against the grief that are depicted when a character is mourning the sudden and tragic demise of a friend or family member. The advisers of the grief urged the lamenters to overcome their sorrow by understanding the fact that every being that existed or will exist suffers. The implication of this case is that to go past a person’s suffering; one must witness and accept the fact of global suffering.
In respect to the second sphere, which is the sphere of conceptual categories, the aesthetics of suffering refers to how the narrative strategies manipulate the sensitive audience or reader’s hopes, expectations and desires about central concepts in the epic largely, although not exclusively, through portraying the issue of suffering to the foreground at the vital strategic moments (Damrosch & Pike 2009). What is usually at stake is the reliability and validity of certain conceptual categories that structure how the audience or the readers grasp the world of text, most significantly dharma. Through the utilization of scenarios of palpable suffering to call into question the efficacy of conceptual categories, the epic’s narrative strategies can reach out and significantly disorient the sensitive audience or readers by rupturing their understanding of the different categories (Bailey 1983). Through this process, the strategies of the epic can reorient the audience to see in a different perspective and thus know the world.
The reorienting or disorienting process is ethically important since the categories the designs are meant to influence are inextricably linked to the moral life. Undoubtedly, what unites most or all of the categories is because they are often called upon to provide a rationale for the possibility of suffering. For instance, when the characters in the epic lament the death of their friend or family member, they usually blame their suffering or sorrows on fate, time, karma or gods. Also, they might comfort themselves with the thought that the deceased will not have fun in heaven (Brockington 2003). Therefore, considering such context, the categories are summoned to justify, explain and make suffering palatable. However, the purpose of the aesthetics of suffering is to indicate that these categories do not succeed in making suffering palatable and comprehensible. Therefore, the task here is to confront the truth of suffering without using these categories as a conceptual crutch. Noteworthy, dharma is probably the most fundamental category in this regard. Most characters in the epic are under the illusion that they will be protected by dharma from their suffering. The reality in the word of the text is that nothing can protect a person from suffering (Brockington 2003). This is further understood through the presentation of time and fate, and the narrative strategies of the epic called Rapture.
The Mahabharata forms a threefold argument through its aesthetics of suffering regarding the significance of confronting the suffering, recognizing forces that cause it and apprehend the approximate psychological and emotional responded that enables one to move beyond it (Hiltebeitel 2001). Noteworthy, the term argument is loosely used in this case because the aesthetic of suffering of the epics is not trying to persuade to forcefully persuade as it reorients and disorients the sensitive audience toward deeper insight and knowledge. The function of the reorientation and disorientation process is to rework the audiences’ perception and hence responds to the world. Undoubtedly, the impact of the transformation of the prefiguration of the audience has epistemological results. The discovery of truth, for instance, the insights portrayed by the aesthetics of suffering text revolves around an epistemological shift, which is a radically emerging orientation to the world (Hiltebeitel 2001).
It is worth noting that the prefiguration project to the sensitive readers or audiences’ perception of suffering, and by large refiguring how they know the world, is mainly ethical. Ethics is conceived here as the threefold duty of confronting, responding and thus move past suffering. To confront suffering is the task of viewing suffering as an objective fact. The aesthetics of Mahabharata devotes a huge amount of attention to the scenes with immense grieving and sorrow, for instance, in dicing scene where Draupadi is abused (Bailey 1983), the brutal slaying of Abhimanyu and how it impacts Arjuna, Subhadra and others (Tiwari 1986), and the grieving of women as shown in The Book of the Women among other scenes (Tiwari 1986). In the listed scenes, the narrative strategy of the narrative encourages the sensitive audience or readers to courageously step forward and face the vulnerability of all human being too intense suffering. The mere fact that even the main characters who are virtuous suffer forces the audience to face the fact the protection cannot come from anywhere, not even from dharma.
Furthermore, confronting suffering involves developing a clear sense of the elements that lead to human misery. The Sanskrit epics explore a wide range of potential causes of sorrow including God or gods, time, human exertion and fate, but the message learned mainly on the causes of sorrow by watching characters through their failures and triumphs, and especially through their failures (Brockington 2003). Usually, the narrative voices in this context mainly focus on the quality of a state of mind or ability of a character to see. The quality of the mind and intelligence is given much attention in the Mahabharata. Characters are usually depicted as losing their minds to grief, anger, and jealousy. The two most significant tales related to this point are the speech that Krsna’s directed to Yudhisthira (Bailey 1983), and Bhima’s speech Yudhisthira (Tiwari 1986). Both Krsna and Bhima were trying to convince Yudhisthira not to grief anymore and accept to rule, and telling him that the battle at hand should be fought by the mind. Bhima holds that the battle that Yudhisthira is fighting involves the acceptance of the going and coming of creatures (Bailey 1983).
Conclusion
To conclude, Sanskrit epic through Mahabharata provides an extent argument in narrative form of the dangers of grief and other inappropriate situations through its aesthetics of suffering. The epic’s goal is to educate its audiences on how to meet tragedy and misfortune with courage. By doing this, it is impossible to lose their minds to despair, grief or other unrestrained human emotions that may hinder them from seeing the direct route out of the catastrophe. By driving in the idea that an overreaching task of the Mahabharata is to refigure the understanding of the audience on suffering, and thus the world, this essay aimed to the de-center discussion of ethics in the Mahabharata from dharma topic and refocused it on the theme of suffering and its relationship to dharma.
References
Hiltebeitel, A. (2001). Rethinking the Mahabharata: A reader's guide to the education of the Dharma King . University of Chicago Press.
Damrosch, D., & Pike, D. L. (2009). The Longman Anthology of World Literature (Vol. 6). New York: Pearson/Longman.
Brockington, J. (2003). The Sanskrit epics. The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing , 116-128.
Bailey, G. (1983). Suffering in the Mahābhārata: Draupadī and Yudhiṣṭhira .
Tiwari, K. N. (1986). Suffering: Indian Perspectives . South Asia Books.
