Philosophical incantations (Itihāsa and Epode). The power of narrative reason in the Mahābhārata

ABSTRACT

Both the itihāsa-s of the Mahābhārata and the Platonic philosophical ‘epode’ are often used to persuade in conditions where emotion threatens to incapacitate the person for argumentative discourse. Narrative reason has its own conditions of success and failure, opening up a discursive arena in which all kinds of utterances are welcome. Emphasizing the psychagogic function of the ‘once-upon-a-time’ reason, it is worth asking who the real protagonist of the story is and whether the story has a duty or a dharma of its own to fulfill. Dharma and all the dilemmas it brings along with it constitute one of the fundamental problems that make up the whole Mahābhārata. In this essay I wonder about the dharma of the Mahābhārata itself—a literary work which gives itself the name ‘triumph’ (jaya)—and the cultural mission it fulfills in the lives of those who hear it, read it, study it, and share it with others.

KEYWORDS:

• Persuasion
• dharma
• Plato
• imagination
• myth
• allegory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Wilhelm Halbfass warns against the misunderstanding of associating the Vedic concept of ṛta, which refers to a natural, cosmic and transcendent law, with the concept of dharma. ‘The fact that the sun does rise with regularity does not mean that the sun is following or fulfilling its own dharma. […] Dharma it is the continuous maintaining of the social and cosmic order and norm which is achieved by the Aryan through the performance of his Vedic rites and traditional duties’ (Halbfass, 1988, pp. 315–316). In his study of the notion of dharma in the Mahābhārata, James L Fitzgerald (2004b, p. 673) agrees with Halbfass: “In particular I agree with Halbfass’ emphasizing that the word dharma is not a descendent of Vedic ṛta and does not refer to some kind of free-standing, overarching cosmic natural law. I see little or no basis in the Mahābhārata justifying this wide-spread understanding of dharma”.

2. All the translations in this essay of the Śāntiparvan are taken from James L. Fitzgerald (2004a), The Mahābhārata. 11. The Book of Women. 12. The Book of Peace. Chicago University Press.

3. In the context of this collective attempt at persuasion, Vyāsa (MBh, 12.34.5) will remind Yudhiṣṭhira that war has only been ‘an instrument of Time’, therefore, neither he nor his brothers have killed anyone, they have only carried out the designs of Time expressing itself through living beings.

4. Thus, in MBh 12.11.1 Arjuna tells him the story of Śakra (i.e. Indra) and some ascetics, but Yuddhiṣṭhira remains indifferent and in MBh 12.18.1 Arjuna tries to persuade him with another ‘ancient story’ (purāvṛttam itihāsam…) about the conversation the king of Videha had with his wife. After a long attempt at persuasion through this story, Yudhiṣṭhira answers his younger brother with condescending words, stressing that he knows well the ‘two paths’ prescribed by the Vedas, that of renunciation and that of deeds (i.e. the nivṛtti and the pravṛtti-mārga), as well as numerous learned treatises about dharma, appreciating subtleties in them that Arjuna ignores (MBh 12.19.1). Obviously, this kind of response does not take place when it is Kṛṣṇa, Vyāsa or Nārada who persuade him with stories.

5. For example, among the eight characteristics of Platonic myths noted by Most (2012, p. 16), the second is that their narrator is older than his listeners.

6. Let us not forget, however, that reincarnation can give rise to ‘inverse ties’ in which the age of the individual can be misleading. These are the ties in which the son is wiser than the father, precisely because he is older, that is, because he has participated in more ‘comings and goings’, in more lives, than his own father in the current life. This happens to Sumati, in the Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa (10-10-44), when he asks his father to stop giving him advice, for he is no child, he has already experienced too many reincarnations and knows how to act. In this conversation the family ties are reversed and we realize that biological age and the age of consciousness or memory do not always go hand in hand.

7. In the Bombay or vulgate edition of the Mahābhārata, published by Citraśala Press Edition, the ancient version of this myth covers chapters 52–54 of the Droṇaparvan, whereas in the critical Pune edition the myth is relegated to the first appendix of the Droṇaparvan. Alf Hiltebeitel (1990, p. 346) questions the editor’s decision to relegate this story to an appendix, for in his opinion there would be no reason to regard this Vyāsa narrative as an interpolation.

8. As I have discussed in another essay in Spanish (Ferrández Formoso, 2022), a long chain of sympathetic pacifications takes place in this myth. Failing to find a solution to the problem of overpopulation, Prajāpati allows himself to be overwhelmed by anger (roṣa) and with his immense fire/energy (mahātejas) begins to kill creatures indiscriminately. Then Śiva intervenes to pacify him, asking him to grant the creatures the possibility of returning to life after death (i.e. the saṃsāra), so that their destruction is not irreversible. From the fire of this anger that is appeased within Prajāpati will be born the goddess of Death, who must also be pacified, not because of anger, but because of the sadness that prevents her from performing the task she is ordered to do. It is added at this point, one more degree of pacification, if we take into account that this myth that Bhīṣma refers to Yudhiṣṭhira is being told by the sage Nārada to King Avikampaka to pacify his anxiety (aśāntipara) for the death of his son.

9. Most (2012, p. 18) considers the sixth characteristic of Platonic myths to be that they ‘often have an explicit asserted psychagogic effect. […] Even if Socrates is not completely convinced himself that the myth of life after death he recounts in the Phaedo is true, nonetheless he holds fast to it, using it like a magical incantation that fills him with confidence (Phaedo, 114d)’.

10. For example, Ferrari (2012, p. 67) notes: “Since there is nothing in the content of the myth to render it especially unmythical, and since, at its conclusion, Socrates issues a caveat about its complete veracity that is similar to the one he attaches to the Phaedo myth (114c), I assume that Socrates’ unusual insistence that what he is saying is logos rather than muthos is provoked by the need to pre-empt Callicles’ unusual strong scepticism”.

11. Even the myth of the birth of the goddess of Death to which I referred earlier is a story that Nārada swears to have heard himself (MBh,12.248), and so he relates it to King Avikampaka.

12. Brisson (2004, p. 27) claims that a ‘myth plays the role of a paradigm according to which, by means of persuasion rather than education, all those who are not philosophers—that is, the majority of human beings—are led to model their behavior’.

13. About this Catalin Partenie (2004, p. xix) explains: ‘But our human nature, Plato suggests by telling us so many myths, often permits us only to approximate to truth, and only indirectly, through a fictional narrative. This means that sometimes, for Plato, myth is only the device available to enable us to explore matters that are beyond our limited intellectual powers. Myth may be false in its fantastical details, but it may mirror the truth’.

14. The role that Vyāsa plays in terms of the metanarrative structure of the MBh is of marvelous complexity. He is at once referent, narratee, and the original narrator thanks to whom we know the story through Vaiśaṃpāyana. But his status as original narrator is associated with his status as author of the MBh and is inseparable from the pivotal role he plays as a character in his own itihāsa. As Sullivan (1990, p. 2) points out: ‘Vyāsa is doubly the creator of the MBh, its author, for not only is he the reputed composer of the text but is also the creator of the Bhārata family on which the story is centered’. For an in-depth study of this author/narrator/referent/narratee, see Sullivan (1990).