SUBALTERNITY IN THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF THE MAHABHARATA
Joysree Das
Associate Professor
Shree Agrasen
College
Dalkhola, Uttar Dinajpur, India
Abstract:
Mahabharata, first grand
epic in Sanskrit, authored by Krishna March 16 Dwayipayan Vyasa, has the credit of being an “itihasa” - it happened thus - in the
oeuvre of grand Sanskrit narratives in verse or mahakavyas. So the picture of society we get in this epic,
presents an extent the structure of the society that existed in India in the
times, the Mahabharata took form and was orally transmitted from one bard or suta to another. Without Putting to
test, the... historical of the Mahabharata, we can take into consideration the
social picture that we find in the epic and take it to be authentic, because
that social Structure to some extent still exist in contemporary India. This
Societal hierarchy embeds in it a dichotomy of power and powerlessness he
oppressed, oppressor and the central and the marginal the privileged 'self and
the non privileged “other”. The Mahabharata in spite of being patriarchal
brahmanic discourse, cannot put under cover the marginalized section of the
society lacking space subjected to oppression and denial, and this paper
attempts to survey the existence of certain members of this marginalized
sections in the social structure of the grand narrative, and examine the
condition of their subalternity.
Key words: Mahabharata,
Mahakavya, Marginalized, Subalternity.
Mahabharata, the timeless epic has shaped the cultural fabric
of India for generations. At the core of the epic is the story of the clan of Kuru,
its two rival factions, the Kauravas and the Pandavas “a feud
over property” which culminates in an 18 days war, in which the Pandavas win,
and the Kauravas are eliminated. But attached to the main story are
myriads of episodes proliferating that mirror, the social structure of ancient
India, the power wielding privileged sections at the "centre" and the
outcast, oppressed, exploited and the neglected sections as the
"other", alienated at the margin of the society. This essay attempts
to explore that social structure and tries to find out the societal space of
the voiceless marginalized and probe their subdued existence, in the social
structure of the grand epic, those that are called the subaltern or the dalits,
in the modern critical lexicon.
At the centre of the
social structure which we find in the Mahabharata, were the kshatriyas.
They were skilled warriors, owners of land and wealth, and as such the most
powerful section of the society. A reference of this warrior class is found in Rigveda,
in the mention of the Dasrajana war in Mandala 7 and Sukla
19. Here the war between Sudasa of the Bharata tribe and ten
other kings, of ten other tribes is mentioned. As we find here, kingship was
clan based, and the same system prevails in The Mahabharata.
To quote Romila Thapar:
“The Mahabharata brought into the story the many segments of the Lunar Line and
its narratives were pre-eminently stories of societies adhering to clan and
lineage organization”. The Mahabharata basically tells the saga of The Kurus
between Santanu and Paliksit. Parallel to if not superior to the Kshatriyas
the social scale, were the Brahmins. They were the repositories of Vedic
Knowledge, performers of sacred rites prescribed in the Vedas, but some
of them also acquired martial skills like Drona or Parsuram. The Brahmins
and the Kshatriyas were in close proximity to one another Janame jaya,
the son of Pariksit and the patron of the first full narration of the Mahabharata
was a Kshatriya, a king, and Vaisampayana, the first narrator of
the saga, was a Brahmin. The Vaishyas were the people who tended
cattle, cultivated land, were traders and money lenders and made donations (danam)
to the Brahmins. Yuyutsu’s mother, was a Vaishya, a maid
in Dhritarashtra’s household. The Sudras were physical workers or
labourers, who caught fish, ferried boats across rivers, were miners and
workers in other peoples or were drivers of land.
In The Mahabharata
they surface time again. It was a miner sent by Vidura who dug the
secret tunnel under the lac house of (jati griha) of Baranabat,
through which the five Pandava brothers and their mother Kunti
escaped. Again it was a boatman sent by Vidura who ferried them across
the river Ganga at night, when they escaped the burning lac house. Apart
from the horse significant to the four sections or Chariots of the society, who
were interdependent and, inclusive, were the insignificant other, the
indigenous tribes who lived in forests and mountains, the Nishads and
the Kirets. The poor Nishad woman and her five sons burned to
death, in the house of lac, in their sleep, as the Pandavas and Kunti
escaped they were left to die, insuring a safe passage for the five
brothers and their mother who felt certain that the charred bodies of the Nishads
would be mistakenly identified as their own, and that happened to be the case.
There is also the story of Ekalavya, a Nishad boy, who practiced
archery and excelled in skill, surpassing Arjuna, Drona's
favourite pupil. After being rejected by Drona, Eklavya practiced
archery in the forest before a clay statue of Drona, whom they revered
as his master or guru. On finding him, Drona exacted guru dakshina,
or the price to be paid to a master, which was the thumb of his right hand. Eklavya
gave away what his master asked for, and with it his hard earned skill of archery.
With his right-hand thumb gone, he would never be able to fit an arrow to a bow
to conclude with a few lines from the poem "Ekalavya",
originally in Odiya, by Samir Ranjan and translated into English by Durga
Prasad Panda,
“There has absolutely
been no change at all
between your times and
today.
Even after Snatching
away
your right hand thumb
finger
the mountain of hatred
hasn't yet crumbled to
pieces of the sea of caste feelings
hasn't yet dried up.”
Works Cited
Ranajit Guha, The Small
Voice of History, Collected Essays, edt. Partha Chatterjee, Permanent Black,
Ranikhet, 2010.
The Penguin History of
Early India, Romila Thapar, Penguin Books India, Gurgaon, 2003.
The Mahabharata, trans. John D. Smith,
Penguin Books India, Gurgaon, 2009.
Indian Literature, Vol. 64, No.1,
(January- February 2020).
Ten Kings, Ashok K. Banker,
Amaryllis, New Delhi, Fourth impression 2016.