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Subalternity in the Social Structure of the Mahabharata - Joysree Das

 


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.