Whether it is a story, a novel or an Itihasa, whatever you read, a crucial thing to be reckoned with utmost attention is the time sequence of the events. What happened first, what happened next, what happened subsequently — mentally recording them and remembering them is a real challenge for a reader.
You may wonder why I call such a mundane thing a challenge. The flow of a story may or may not be sequential, depending on the writing style of the author. An event that happened at the beginning may be presented at the end of the story, or a story may begin somewhere in the middle and the earlier events may be narrated as a flashback. If the story is like a river where there are muddy whirlpools here and there, the reader will have to rearrange the events in the proper time sequence in his mind to rightly grasp the flow of the story.
The Ramayana story, that way, is relatively smooth from the point of view of the sequence of events narrated. At the start, it is said that the story of Sita was sung by Lava and Kusa, the sons of Lord Rama, at the time of Ashwamedha yaga conducted by Lord Rama. Thus Rama hears his own story from his children. If we leave this introductory narrative in Valmiki Ramayana, the story is otherwise linear. As Kamba Ramayana has left out this introduction, Tamil readers of Kamba are not subjected to even this little flashback aspect. Otherwise, the whole Ramayana Story goes smoothly forward in proper time sequence without any skewing.
On the other hand, the story of Mahabharata is very complicated. Here time has several layers. If something is mentioned in the story saying ‘such a practice existed in earlier times’ it adds another dimension, to a time period earlier to Bharata. Apart from that, the Bharatam story begins at a time, not of the main story’s prime characters, but at a period of King Janamejaya, the great-grandson of Arjuna! The narrative begins when Suta by name Ugrashravas, son of Romaharshana, offers to narrate the story of Mahabharata as heard by him to the rishis in Naimisaranya. He had heard the story from the mouth of Maharshi Vyasa’s disciple Vaisampayana, who had narrated the story, as compiled by his guru Vyasa, during the time when King Janamejaya conducted a specific Yagnya (Satrayaga). Thus the main story gets narrated only at the time of the 4th generation of Pandavas. Arjuna-Abhimanyu-Parikshit-Janameja is the lineage.
A small note about the title ‘suta’ attached to the name of Ugrashravas will be appropriate here. The meaning of Suta has been interpreted differently by different people. In the present context, the title suta means a bard or a pouranika — one who narrates Purana stories. We also come across in Bharatam that Karna was brought up by a Suta. Its meaning is different. We will be discussing that too later in our study.
Thus Vyasa, the author of the Mahabharata was not the direct narrator. It is not similar to Valmiki getting his Ramayana narrated by Lava-Kusa at the very time period of Rama, either. Here the story comes out three generations later (Janameya, son of Parikshit, Parikshit being the son of Abhimanyu and Abhimanyu being the son of Arjuna).
If we consider the very first generation of characters of the Mahabharatam story, it starts with King Yayati. In Yayati’s story, he crowns his fifth son Puru as his successor to the kingdom. He also deports his disobedient first son Yadu. And this Yadu forms his own kingdom and he is the forefather of the Yadu clan. Lord Krishna was born generations later in that Yadu clan.
In Yayati’s clan, after Puru, we come across the stories of Harischandra, Bharata, Kuru, Bharata and Santanu, a very long lineage indeed. Thus from Yayati to our Pandavas or Kaurvas, there have been about 44 generations! If we take the stories of Nakusha and Pururava, who were ancestors of Yayati, it would stretch to about 48 generations. Thus Mahabharata remains a massive itihasa containing the stories of so many generations! Assuming a timespan of about 30 years per generation, the story covers, considering the lifetimes of all the generations, a time period of about 1500 years!
In this context, a verse coming in the first chapter of Adi Parva of the Mahabharatam story comes to my mind: “When everything goes asleep, time remains awake. Nobody can transcend time. Time, unstoppable by anyone, passes through every object alike.” (From Vyasa Bharatam Tamil, First book, Anukramanika parvam, page 27)
In Tamil, we got a Kamban for Ramayana. What we got for Mahabharata was just Villiputhurar. There had been a poetic work of Bharatam by one Perundevanar earlier, but his work was untraceable. Most of what contained in another poetic work Bharata Venpa too are missing.
Villiputhurar had not handled Mahabharatam story as elaborate as Kamban had done for Ramayana. He had taken a few segments from Bharatam and elaborated them in Tamil. To sing Ramayana, Kamban needed some 10,000 (or 12,000, if we consider what were identified as superfluous / not part of original) verses. On the other hand, Vyasa’s Mahabharata, which is almost 4 times bigger than Valmiki’s Ramayana, has been condensed into just 4204 verses (as per Murray’s publication) or 4336 verses (as per Vai.Mu.Ko’s publication) in Tamil by Villiputhurar, in his Villibharatam work. So, it is easy to imagine how Villbharatam could not do full justice to Vyasabharatam.
Prof. Ira. Srinivasan, who had written elaborate commentary on ‘Nallappillai Bharatam’ has discussed this matter in detail in his introduction to the book. It was Nallappillai (a Tamil poet of the early 18th Century) who took up the onerous task of supplementing Villibharatam by adding some 10000 more verses of his own to the 4200+ verses of Villiputhurar and bringing out a wholesome Mahabharatam work in Tamil. This Nallappilai Bharatam can be said to be much closer to the original Vyasabharatam.
So, we face such complications in knowing the whole story through such poetic works. If some portions are still left out, we can go to the sourcebook and get the missing details. But one more problem with the poetic Tamil works is the way names of characters get distorted, in the poets’ effort to make them sound Tamil. Thousands of characters are involved in the story and matching the Tamil names with the original Sanskrit names itself turns out to be a big challenge!
To give an example, in Bharati’s Panchali Sabatham, there is a verse reading “potradan therondru thada Vaalikan koduththathum…”. In this verse, who is that Valikan? I had to undertake a daunting search to find it out. Finally, I got guidance from Ms. Vidya Jayaraman of Canada through the web. She said that ‘Valikan’ in Tamil refers to ‘Bahlika’ or ‘Vahlika’ in the original. My further search ended with learning that this Vahlika was King Chandanu’s second elder brother and thus a paternal uncle of Bhishma.
Another character that drove me hunting was ‘Ekalaivan’ in Tamil. Actually, he is Ekalavya in Sanskrit. There is a verse in Panchali sabatham as under:
Here Bharati has more or less sounded the original name (Ekalavya) and that indeed helped me to investigate deeper into his story.
Let us continue with it next month, in the next episode. Doesn’t Bharata state that even if we sleep, time doesn’t?
Author Profile:
Shri Hari Krishnan is an independent researcher in Mahābhārata based in Bangalore.
Translated into English by Shri. C.V.Rajan
Disclaimer: This article belongs to the author in full, including opinions and insights. Amrita University is not responsible or liable for the information contained in this article, or its implications therein
