Without entering into the question of whether there is ethics as such in the two epics, I would like to argue that it might be possible to distinguish between their ethical orientations. These different orientations, I would further argue, could be characterized as deontological in the case of the Rāmāyaṇa and consequentialist in the case of the Mahābhārata, where by deontological one means “an approach which prescribes obedience to particular norms” and consequentialist refers to an approach which “requires the actors act so as to maximize the realization of values endorsed by the theory”.

The deontological nature of the ethical orientation of the Rāmāyaṇa is apparent in the person of Rāma himself. A recent work on Hinduism, for instance, concludes its abridged narrative of the events of the epic as follows:

Here, in summary, are the colourful and exuberant episodes of a great story beloved of Hindus across sectarian boundaries for generations and generations. A tale of heroes and villains – including animals and ogres – of war and passion, devotion and duty, wondrous feats and fell deeds. And at the centre of it all is undoubtedly the figure of Rāma, the very model of dharma in its different aspects: dutiful king (even at the cost of personal tragedy), protector of the vulnerable, avenger of the wronged, obedient son, faithful husband, loving brother, magnanimous enemy. His compassion and friendship extend to the disadvantaged, to animals and even to conciliatory ogres. Thus, at the beginning of his exile, he accepts the assistance of and embraces Guha, the low-caste chief of the Niṣādas; in the forest he is gracious to Śabarī, the low-caste woman ascetic; he befriends the monkeys in his journey southwards towards Laṅkā; and he welcomes the ogre Vibhīṣaṇā who acknowledged his righteous cause.[1]

In order to appreciate this point one must appreciate the danger of the consequentialist position – namely, the risk of moral relativism. On the other hand, the deontological approach entails the risk of moral absolutism. Hence the problems with Rāma’s subjecting Sītā to ordeal by fire, her banishment and so on. The consequentialist approach is subject to an opposite danger: moral rules become flexible in the light of the telos of the moral system, and with it the danger of arbitrariness has to be faced once rules are allowed to be broken. In the Mahābhārata the rules are broken:

Arjuna and Sātyaki were rightly accused by Gāndhārī for their acts of violence against the king Bhuriśravā. It was condemned as wrong then and there by friends and foes alike. It was against a Kṣatriya’s code of conduct in war. It was a sin against a specific dharma. So was Bhīmasena’s act of hitting Duryodhana on his thigh. Bhīmasena’s plea that he was bound by a vow to break by mace Duryodhana’s thigh and fell him in the battle because of the immodesty shown to Draupadī was not accepted in the Mahābhārata. The vow itself was wrong and the act following it was a sin against a specific dharma. Kṛṣṇa also silently accepted the accusation of aiding and abetting in the sin. He reasonably apprehended that Bhīmasena would not be able to defeat the skill of Duryodhana. He was in no doubt that Yudhiṣṭhira again had committed a mistake by inviting Duryodhana to a duel and giving him the choice of arms and opponent. Kṛṣṇa covered this human failure and accepted the blame from his elder brother Balarāma and Gāndhārī. Contrast with this tale of Balāka the hunter, told to Arjuna by Kṛṣṇa himself during the incident of Arjuna’s vow (Karṇa 70). He killed a blind animal while it was drinking water. But this earned him merit instead of sin because he destroyed the fearful killer that the animal was.[2]

Just as the deontological approach runs the risk of becoming morally rigid, the consequentialist approach runs the risk of becoming morally convenient, and raises the following question:

Should it be that one taking a vow could break it, that there is nothing such as personal and social morality? Is the entire common-life moral structure that contingent? If so, it would not be possible to carry on our everyday life, for this would destroy the mutual confidence people have regarding promise-keeping.[3]

Now

The answer is provided in the incident involving Arjuna and Yudhiṣṭhira (Karṇa 70). Arjuna had taken a vow that should anyone dare to tell him to surrender his Gāṇḍīva (the sacred and fearful bow of Arjuna given him by God) to someone else he would kill him. Wounded and disgraced in defeat, Yudhiṣṭhira was beaten back by Karṇa, who was mercilessly destroying the Pāṇḍava army. He very much wanted Arjuna to face Karṇa and kill him before the Pāṇḍava(s) were destroyed. But Arjuna was engaged in fighting elsewhere in the battlefield. When Yudhiṣṭhira found Arjuna, he reproached him angrily and told him that he was unworthy of the Gāṇḍīva and had better give it to someone else and retire. Arjuna took out his sword. Kṛṣṇa intervened. Hearing of his vow, he reproached him that taking such a vow was an act of foolishness leading to another foolish act against dharma, against the truth of nonviolence. True, Yudhiṣṭhira’s reproach would not matter much had there not been such a thoughless vow. Now this was one aspect of the incident. Kṛṣṇa then asked Arjuna to keep his vow by severely insulting Yudhiṣṭhira, the most respected character in the Mahābhārata after Bhīṣma. His brothers and Draupadī and Kṛṣṇa himself were obedient and respectful toward him. He was called Dharmarāja, ‘the king of dharma’, by all. Therefore, to insult such a revered person was like killing him. Arjuna did that but broke down in remorse for doing so and was about to kill himself. Kṛṣṇa again stopped him. Self-killing is a greater sin that what Arjuna did to Yudhiṣṭhira. Let Arjuna speak loud and boast about himself; for that would be annihilating his own self, a punishment. Arjuna did so and then fell at the feet of his revered elder brother.[4]

In accordance with a deontological approach Arjuna would have slain Yudhiṣṭhira. However, a series of consequential manoevres avert such a fate. Thus both the epics advocate the pursuit of Dharma, but arguably the Rāmāyaṇa is more deontological and the Mahābhārata consequentialist in its approach.

It could be considered odd – that the West, with its far more violent record, feels turned off by the martial context of the Bhadavadgītā, while the milder Hindu remains unfazed by it! How else are we to assess the following comment, even if not entirely accurate according to some.

More exposure to the Smārta sect came near the end of the 1930’s when the Bhagavad Gītā was introduced to the West as the holy bible of the Hindus. The metaphysical and philosophical circles and intelligentsia in America could not believe that an excerpted section of the Mahābhārata preaching violence could be anything but detrimental to future generations in the West. This has proven to be true in many, many cases, right up to the supreme court level. The swāmīs in those early years tried to justify God Krishna’s telling his devotee to kill his relatives, his guru, and that all would be well in the end because the soul never dies, and those who were killed would reincarnate. Western people were at that time, and still are, innocent and believing, having never been taught the art of divine deception. So, when Lord Krishna was seen to tell the warrior Arjuna to have a good night’s sleep, free from conscience, that did not go over well at all. Contemporary swāmīs made fruitless efforts to philosophically justify the Gītā, but their arguments and explanations were not convincing. [1]

The author goes onto say:

This was before the West experienced the Second World War, and people were still very religious, moral and thoughtful about these matters. The Gītā was rejected for the lofty Upanishads of the Veda that were being made available in English. Yet, in this century the Smārtas, along with many Vaishṇavas, have taken the Bhagavad Gītā as their promotional scripture, a text which is not a true scripture at all, but an epic poem from the Mahābhārata condoning was, critically called by eminent swāmis ‘the book of carnage,’ giving permission for violence.[2]

But is this reaction really that modern? The ancients were already concerned with the violence in the Mahābhārata and according to one tradition the sages requested Vyāsa to compose another work which corrected this impression. The Bhāgavata Purāṇa is said to have been composed as a result.

It is best to begin by shooting the question straight – does the Bhagavadgītā preach war and violence?

The Bhagavadgītā is part and parcel of the Mahābhārata, so how the Bhagavadgītā is interpreted should not be divorced from the interpretation of the Mahābhārata as a whole, the epic within it is more or less centrally lodged.

How then is the Mahābhārata to be interpreted? Here is one answer. One begins by noting that

The present edition of the Mahābhārata itself speaks of three beginnings: manvādi, beginning from Manu, corresponding to the first twelve sub-parvans (sections) of the present work; āstikādi, beginning with Āstika, compromising sub-paravans thirteen to fifty-three, uparicarādi, from sub-paravan fifty-four onward.

One then proceeds by noting that according to the famous scholiast Madhva:

The reading of the Bhārata, in so far as it is a relation of the facts and events with which Śrī Kṛṣṇa and the Pāṇḍavas are connected, is āstikādi, or historical. That interpretation by which we find lessons on virtue, divine love, and the other ten qualities, on sacred duty and righteous practices, on character and training, on Brahmā and the other gods, is called manvādi, or religious and moral. Thirdly, the interpretation by which every sentence, word or syllable is shown to be the significant name, or to be the declaration of the glories, of the Almighty Ruler of the universe, is called auparicara or transcendental.[1]

It is clear, then, that the Mahābharata may be interpreted at (1) a literal level, (2) a moral level and (3) a spiritual level. It could then plausibly be argued that, at the story-line level, Arjuna is literally urged to engage in combat. That, at the moral level, the martial context of the Gītā epitomizes the struggle between good and evil which goes on in the human heart, the way Mahatma Ghandhi interpreted it when he said

The fight is there, but the fight as it is going on within. The Pandavas and the Kauravas are the forces of good and evil within. The war is the war between Jekyll and Hyde, God and Satan, going on in the human breast. The internal evidence in support of this interpretation is there in the work itself and in the Mahabharata of which the Gita is a minute part. It is not a history of war between two families, but the history of man – the history of the spiritual struggle of man. I have sound reasons for my interpretation.[2]

At the spiritual level the Gītā may be decoded as follows.

Arjuna, the superman under the guidance of Kṛṣṇa, the Super-self, emerges successful in this conflict, after he has destroyed with the sword of knowledge the ignorance embodied in his illegitimate desires and passions symbolized by his relatives, teachers, elders and friends ranged on the other side. In this interpretation Śrī Kṛṣṇa is the Paramātman, and Arjuna the Jīvātman. Dhṛtarāṣṭra is a symbol of the vacillating ego-centric self, while his sons symbolize in their aggregate the brood of ego-centric desires and passions. Vidura stands for Buddhi, the one-pointed reason, and Bhīṣma is tradition, the time-bound element in human life and society.[3]

I was visiting my lawyer friend. As soon as he let me into the chamber I remarked: “Have you decided to grow a beard?” It was an obvious question for a man in his condition.

“You know,” he began, after he had offered me a seat and settled into one himself, “I am the member of a theatre group and my role requires a person with a beard. So my director suggested that I grow one, instead of wearing a made-up one.”

I began to muse why I hadn’t joined an elocution society, I am so dissatisfied at the way I make conversation, when I do, that is. My silent soliloquy ended as he resumed speaking.

“Have you heard of Yiddish?” he suddenly asked.

“A German dialect used by the Jews”, I ventured and then bit my tongue. Why didn’t I say sociolect? See, I do need those lessons after all.

“Only it was spoken all over – in Germany, Poland, Ukraine – kind of Jewish Lingua Franca”, he ever so gently corrected me. “It started along the Rhine around eleventh century. Has a vast literature.”

“Have you ever heard of Salinger?”

My thoughts went to a news item about an affair of a famous author with a younger girl – apparently dug out to show Clinton was not reinventing the wheel with Monica…he used my silence to fill the gap himself.

“He won a Nobel Prize”

I must have looked mildly surprised, for he added: “The only one awarded in Yiddish.”

If Yiddish was so well entrenched as a language among the Jews – why Hebrew then?

He read my mind.

“Hebrew of course was there as the language of ritual, but everything else was done in Yiddish. In 1908 a resolution was passed that Yiddish should be the language of Israel.”

Was Yiddish like Hindi? His talk flowed on regardless of my self-interrogation.

“Of course, for Theodore Herzl the language could only be German. But history marches to its own drumbeat. It was Hebrew which ended up being Israel’s language. It’s a miracle.”

I had long thought so - reviving a dead language. I finally said: “The first time I learnt of this was as a teenager. An Indian leader returned from a visit to Israel and said: if the Jews can revive Hebrew, why can’t we revive Sanskrit?” Then I let out a soft laugh.

“They also laughed when ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­attempts were made to revive the Hebrew language. Then came the first family in which Hebrew was the mother tongue. Now when I hear people make baby-talk in Hebrew – it’s just unbelievable”

Ya – but in India people still laugh at the idea of Sanskrit.

I had concluded the business with the lawyer, who happened to be Jewish. I don’t quite know how the conversation turned to the Holocaust, but it did.

“Ah, yes, but you know, after a point the statistics don’t seem to mean much. One needs an actual account to bring it to life, like the diary of Anne Frank.”

I was reminded, as he took the name, that some missing pages of her diary had been found. They were critical of the marriage and were held back by the father. So dishonour once again proved to be worse than death? The thought passed, and by then my lawyer friend has resumed speaking.

“And some even deny the Holocaust. Now I cannot be the witness of the Holocaust in Auschwitz and Prague but I am witness to the Holocaust in our own village in Ukraine. Ours was the only family to survive.”

The atmosphere in the room changed; in fact the room changed from a legal into an archival chamber as it were. I was now sitting on the edge of my seat. I didn’t want to say anything, I just wanted to listen.

“They came and took the gypsies, they came and took the Jews, they came and took the Ukranians and the Ukranian police came and helped take them.”

My mind wandered through the corridors of Hindu history. Did not our own likewise do us in? And aren’t the Gypsies really Hindus to begin with?

“They took them and shot them. My grandparents came back from the United States. They knew what they were doing. They feared assimilation. They were killed. They used to have what they called an ‘action’” –he used the German pronunciation – “People will be rounded up and shot, my father was rounded up. He had a sense of humour. He said to them: why are you killing us in such a small batch. You will have to carry the corpses to where the large group is. Why not kill us there. We will walk there ourselves.”

They shot the person next to my father. My father fled – making a zig-zag pattern because that is what he had seen in some movie, not realizing people had machine guns now! They still missed. He ran across the field and went into the river until it reached his neck.

But he did not know how to swim. What now? Someone came by on a boat and asked him to explain his curious situation. My father could not say he was running away from the Germans, that would give him away. He made up some Jewish ritual which required him to do what he was doing. He was taken aboard.”

My vocal chords finally became functional. I was wondering all this while what it felt, as I kept changing the word Jew to Hindu in my mind as he spoke. I said rather slowly: “When did the nightmare end?”

“When the Russians came in 1945. It all began in 1942 when the Nazis turned on the Russians and Ukraine was occupied.”

The Jewish Holocaust – three thousand years and then three years. A Hindu holocaust – a thousand years of foreign rule and then two years of partition. Or is the comparison overblown or has it been blown away to maintain communal peace in India?

My reverie was suddenly interrupted as he concluded. “So as I was saying, Dr. Sharma. I cannot vouch for the veracity of the Holocaust in Germany or Poland. But I know it happened in a village in Ukraine”.

He perhaps even had evidence to prove it but I thought the deposition was proof enough. Have the victims of Partition been deposed? Such as are amongst us? In the case of the Jews the no-sayers will deny it had occurred, in the case of the Hindu they won’t let you ask the question if it occurred, much less find out?—at least so I am told on every visit to India.

Much has been written in recent times regarding the encounter of Droṇa and Ekalavya in the Mahābhārata. The story, too well-known to be retold, is regularly cited as an expression of caste oppression within Hinduism. From a sociological and specially Marxist perspective, it has been presented as a case of the exploitation of the tribals by the higher castes – specially by the Brāhmaṇas and the Kṣatriyas in the form of Droṇa and Arjuna. This is a useful perspective. Not everything in a tradition may serve, or may even have been intended to serve, as an example. Parts of it could also have been meant to serve, or at least can also serve, as a warning of how things might go wrong. After all Jesus too suffers.

However, the question arises: what has been the tradition’s own take on this incident in the past? It seems to me that in this context a key and clarifying question has gone unasked. It is this: who is the tradition’s hero – Droṇa or Ekalavya?

Allow me to share with you one deployment of this episode within the tradition, which may help us answer the question. It has to with an incident in the life of Rāmānuja. It is mentioned in the popular thirteenth century hagiographical work of the Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition – the Guruparamparāprabhāvam or the Splendour of the Succession of Teachers. This passage has been cited in these ruminations earlier as well.

Apparently, while learning the meaning of the Tiruvāymoli from Tirumālai Āntān, Rāmānuja differed from his teacher’s interpretation of the verses several times, offering alternate explanations. After Rāmānuja offered a different interpretation for 2.3.4, his teacher ceased his instruction, saying that these were mischievous explanations, which he had not heard from Yāmuna. The stalemate was resolved by another disciple of Yāmuna, Tirukōttiyūr Nampi, who reconciled the teacher and disciple of Yāmuna. What is interesting to note is that Rāmānuja’a position had to be vindicated by another teacher’s recollection of the Yāmuna’s commentary, and there was no text against which to check it. The Splendor goes on to say that at a later time, Tirumālai Āntān again hesitated to accept a certain interpretation , but Rāmānuja said that he was a disciple of Yāmuna as the legendary Ekalavya was a disciple of Droṇa: a student who learnt from a master in spirit, without actually every being in his presence. So, even when there was no witness to attest that Rāmānuja’s opinion had been stated earlier by Yāmuna, the community assumed that whatever Rāmānuja stated would have been said by or at least permitted by Yāmuna.[1]

I think the answer is clear who the hero is. It is Ekalavya.

The point has to do with the dynamics of master-disciple relationship. The following parable of Rāmakrsna is instructive here:

A disciple who had a firm faith in the infinite power of his Guru walked over a river by simply uttering his name. Seeing this, the Guru thought, ‘Well, is there such a power in my mere name? Then how very great and powerful I must be!’ The next day, the Guru also tried to walk over the river uttering ‘I’, ‘I’, ‘I’, but no sooner did he step on the water than he sank and was soon drowned; for the poor man did not know how to swim even. Faith can achieve miracles while vanity or egotism brings about the destruction of a man.[2]

Most of us have been trained, as students of history, to virtually disregard the Purāṇas as a source of Indian history. The underlying reason seems to be the fanciful accounts in which they abound, which compromise their credibility as a source of sober history. It seems the time is now ripe to reassess the situation for several reasons. When early Western scholars set about the task of reconstructing Indian history, they preferred to rely on the extra-Indian sources for the history of India, as Hindus were not believed to possess a sense of history. Recent researches have shown that this might be a case of confusion between effect and cause. Scholars have argued that those parts of India which either escaped Muslim rule (Nepal) or remained on the fringe of it (Orissa) have a healthy tradition of maintaining dynastic history, very much along the lines of the Purāṇic lists. In Kashmir this tradition even survived the assaults of neighboring states. What is being suggested is that loss of Hindu political ascendancy may have also resulted in the loss of its archival record. Thus if the idea that Hindus had no sense of history needs to be revisited, the Purāṇas also need to be revisited as a source of it.

Western scholars relied on records of foreign observers in reconstructing ancient Indian history along with archeological, epigraphic and numismatic evidence, presumably in the belief that these foreign observers displayed a greater sense of history. However, if the accounts of the Greeks about India were translated into Sanskrit, they will read just like a Purāṇa. We are glad Faxian visited India, but despite the reputation of Chinese as a nation steeped in historiography, he does not even mention the name of the king through whose empire he passed. Xuanzang is richer in historical detail but his account, like that of Faxian, is full of accounts of Buddhist miracles, just as the Purāṇas are full of Hindu miracles. It is his account of Harṣa which is considered historical timber, and, among the Greek accounts, it is the account of Alexander’s invasion which is supposed to approximate history[1] and not everything the Greeks say. Similarly, it is the sections of the Purāṇas which deal with the record of dynasties in the Kaliyuga which we must turn to. Here too, as in the case of Greek or Buddhist accounts, we have to look for the right thing in the right place.

A third reason has also been proposed for turning, or returning, to the Purāṇas as a source of Hindu history. In the past, Vedic philosophical material had been given precedence over Puranic traditional material, although according to the Hindu tradition itself the Vedas should be treated as ahistorical and the Purāṇas as historical. One would not wish to press this point too far but it does suggest that ‘further progress in revising ancient Indian history could be expected from a study of Itihāsa-Purāṇas, rather than from an analysis of the ṚgVeda. One may ask rhetorically, by way of providing a parallel: what kind of reconstruction of Ancient Israel’s history could be done on the basis of the study of the Psalms, leaving out Genesis and Kings, or what reconstruction of European history is possible based upon a study of the earliest Rituale Romanum?’

Finally, the concept of history itself needs to be somewhat broadened and we come back to the general point of looking for the right thing at the right place. “Rabindranath in an essay called ‘Bharatvarsher Itihasa’ wrote that those who say that there is no history but only political history, go to find an eggplant in a rice field. Not all fields yield the same crop, it is those who can appreciate that that are wise.”[2]

Indian scholarship, pursuing a trend set by Western scholarship, has produced a ‘critical edition’ of the Mahābhārata. Let us take a closer look at the whole idea, shielding our eyes from the blinding glare of the Western sun for a moment.

One immediately notes that the idea of a critical tradition in the Hindu context is

an artificial concept. Can there be a ‘critical edition’ of the kind of oral transmission that the itihāsa represents? Similarly, it is futile to seek out ‘the original text’ of either epic. Critical editions of oral epics are the constructs of scholars; with variant readings and addenda as footnotes they give us an idea of the main story-line as it has developed over time in style and content. This has its uses as we shall see, but on a level which sacred narrative often transcends.[1]

The point is fine as far as it goes, but does it go far enough? The text of an oral epic is not meant to be fixed in the same sense as the Vedic text – part of the point of the epic text could well be the scope permitted for improvisation – albeit formulaic, if one insists. The text is meant to be a magnet, which draws material to it and not a crystal, which must stand in pristine purity. And if the text of the epic is thus even conceptually somewhat fluid, and actually perhaps even more fluid – then does not the critical text end up in creating a text which did not exist in the first place? Western writings on Hindu themes often carry allegations of fabrication. Has the cycle turned full circle and the misguided pursuit of Western methodology have culminated in the recreation of what never existed? One does not wish to run down the enterprise of which the critical tradition is an outcome, but such considerations need to be taken into account.

The situation gets worse before it gets better. We are presented with a critical text of the Mahābhārata. Let us now turn to the Mahāhbhārata itself and see what it has to say about it. According to the Ādiparva (I.57. 74-75) of the critical text, Vyāsa the “great lord, eminent granter of boons, taught the Vedas, and the Mahābhārata as the fifth Veda, to Sumantu, Jaimini, Paila, and his own son Śuka as well as to Vaiśampāyana. It is they who in their separate ways made public the collections of the Bhārata.”[2]

To begin with then, the Mahābhārata is plural document available in at least five recensions according to the critical edition; now how can there be one critical edition of a text with five recensions to begin with? This conclusion is a bit overwrought but it makes an important point. It is overwrought because the critical text claims to restore only one version of it – the one publicized by Vaiśampāyana.

One is not out of the woods yet, however.

The introduction of the great epic informs us that Vyāsa imparted his poem first to his pupil Vaiśampāyana, who in his turn recited the whole of it at the time of the great snake-sacrifice of king Janamejaya. It was then heard by the Sūta Ugraśravas who, being entreated by the Rishis assembled at the sacrifice of Śaunaka in the Nimisha forest, narrates to them the whole poem at he learnt it on that occasion. Even according to this tradition, recorded in the epic itself, before it reached its present dimensions, it had passed through three recitations.[3]

It has plausibly been suggested that the work grew in size with each recitation. Could it then not be proposed, in view of this, that the Mahābhārata as a Hindu text is supposed to grow and not diminish, that its telos as it is understood in the tradition is at odds with the very goals of modern text-critical scholarship and to that extent, once again, the critical text, in rendering a great service to Indology has done a grievous harm to Hinduism by trying to convert a lengthening sari into a shortening skirt? Here again the blow can be softened. It might be urged that the critical text is only an attempt at a snap shot of one stage of the growth of the text – in the time of the Gupta period or roughly around 500 A.D. Nevertheless it is clear that, at every step, the idea of a critical text seems to go against the grain of the tradition – it is an example of pratiloma Indology.

That the Greek accounts of India contain mythical elements is well known.[1] It is a matter of some interest, though, that some of them have been shown to reflect Indian myths. The account of the gold-digging ants is a case in point. Herodotus writes:

102. There are other Indians bordering on the city of Caspatyrus and the country of Pactyice, settled northward of the other Indians, whose mode of life resembles that of the Bactrians. They are the most warlike of the Indians, and these are they who are sent to procure gold; for near this part is a desert by reason of the sands. In this desert, then, and in the sand, there are ants in size somewhat less indeed than dogs, but larger than foxes. Some of them are in possession of the King of the Persians, which were taken there. These ants, forming their habitations underground, heap up the sand as the ants in Greece do, and in the same manner; and they are very like them in shape. The sand that is heaped up is mixed with gold. The Indians therefore go to the desert to get this sand, each man having three camels, on either side a male one harnessed to draw by the side, and a female in the middle. This last the man mounts himself, having taken care to yoke one that has been separated from her young as recently born as possible; for camels are not inferior to horses in swiftness, and are much better able to carry burdens.

103. Is occupied with a short description of the camel.

104. The Indians then adopting such a plan and such a method of harnessing, set out for the gold, having before calculated the time, so as to be engaged in their plunder during the hottest part of the day, for during the heat the ants hide themselves under the ground. Amongst these people, the sun is hottest in the morning, and not, as amongst others, at mid-day, from the time that it has risen some way, to the breaking of the market; during this time it scorches much more than at mid-day in Greece, so that, it is said, they then refresh themselves in water. Mid-day scorches other men much the same as the Indians; but as the day declines, the sun becomes to them as it is to others in the morning; and after this, as it proceeds it becomes still colder, until sunset; then it is very cold.

105. When the Indians arrive at the spot, having sacks with them, they fill them with the sand, and return with all possible expedition. For the ants, as the Persians say, immediately discovering them by the smell, pursue them and are equaled in swiftness by no other animal, so that the Indians, if they did not get the start of them while the ants were assembling, not a man of them could be saved. Now the male camels (for they are inferior in speed to the females) slacken their pace, dragging on, not both equally, but the females mindful of the young they have left, do not slacken their pace. Thus the Indians, as the Persians say, obtain the greatest part of their gold; and they have some small quantity more that is dug in the country.[2]

E.R. Bevan offers the following comment on this description:

The account of the ants who throw up mounds of gold dust, which afterwards became a permanent element in the classic conception of India, was given in full by Herodotus. The facts on which the account was based seem now fairly clear. Gold-dust was actually brought as tribute by the tribes of Dardistān in Kashmīr and was called by the Indians pipīlika, ‘ant-gold’. When Herodotus says that the ants were the size of dogs and fiercely attacked anyone carrying off the gold, it has been plausibly suggested that the account was derived from people who had been chased by the formidable dogs kept by the native miners.[3]

The connection between gold and ants is clearly established in the Mahābhārata through the following verse (II. 54.4):

tad vai pilīlikaṁ nāma uddhṛtam yat pipīlikaiḥ

jātarūpam droṇameyam ahārṣuḥ puñjaśo nrpāḥ[4]

The relevant verse in the critical edition is translated as follows by J.A.B. van Buitenen.

…They brought the gold called pipīlika, which is granted as a boon by the pipīlaka ants, and they brought it by bucketfuls and (in) piles.[5]

The following question arises at this point: how is the account of gold-digging ants to be reconciled with the claims of Greek rationalism?[6] One could be inclined, without the Indian parallel, to include the story of the gold-digging ants among other fanciful accounts such as the monstrous animal martikhora ‘as large as a lion, with a human face, which shoots stings out of the end of its tails’,[7] or ‘fables as to monstrous races with one leg, with ears reaching to their feet, and so on’.[8] The occurrence of an Indian parallel rescues it from that fate and increases one’s confidence in Greek rationality. When, however, Bevan proceeds to explain how Herodotus’s account could be made to make sense – has one not moved to the realm of rationalizing what the Greek account says? The question is: to what extent is Bevan reporting and to what extent also ‘creating’ what is being reported.

The same process of rationalization may also be seen at work in the discussion of the account of Megasthenes.

The name of the extreme southern point of the peninsula had also traveled to the Greeks before the time of Strabo. He knew it as the country of the Cōliaci, this was derived from the name in local speech, Kōri. The legend, when it made a woman the sovereign of the south, was probably reflecting the system of mother-right which has to some extent obtained there even to the present day. Some of the physical characteristics of the people of the south were known by report – that they were darker in complexion, for instance, than the Indians of the north. The facts of early maturity and of the general shortness of life were also known. In the legend narrated by Megasthenes, as we saw, the precocious maturity which Heracles had bestowed upon his daughter by a miracle continued to be a characteristic of women of her kingdom. They were marriageable, and could bear children, Megasthenes said, at seven years old. This exaggeration was presumably due to the fact of child-marriage. As to the general length of life, forty years was the maximum –again a fact, the relative shortness of life, exaggerated.[9]

An attempt seems afoot here to rescue Greek rationality by European rationalization.

We are all familiar with the Yakṣapraśnas. These are how the questions, which the Yakṣa put to Yudhiṣṭhira, are referred in shorthand among the cognoscenti of the Mahābhārata. Many readers will recall the episode: “The thirsty Pāṇḍava brothers set out in search of water, one by one but fail to return. Then Yudhiṣṭhira goes out in search of his brothers, to discover them lying unconscious by a pond. As he is about to slake his own thirst he is warned by the Yakṣa – who claims to be the guardian of the pond – to desist from doing so under pain of death. In the course of the ensuing dialogue the Yakṣa offers to revive one of his brothers if Yudhiṣṭhira is up to his interrogative challenge. The questions and answers which follow constitute one of the celebrated sections of the Mahābhārata.”[1]

A comparable incident can be identified during the course of Alexander’s campaign in India, on the basis of its account provided by Plutarch (c. 46-120 A.D.). Plutarch writes:

He captured ten of the gymnosophists who had been principally concerned in persuading Sabbas to revolt, and had done much harm otherwise to the Macedonians. These men are thought to be great adepts in the art of returning brief and pithy answers, and Alexander proposed for their solution some hard questions, declaring that he would put to death first the one who did not answer correctly and then the others in order.[2]

It is clear that here, as in the case of the Yakṣa, lives are at stake. Alexander plays the role of the Yakṣa. (Alikasundara is the Sanskritzed form of Alexander, just as Milinda is the Sanksritized form of the Indo-Greek King Menander.) The rest of the account goes as follows:

He demanded of the first, ‘Which he took to be more numerous, the living or the dead?’ He answered, ‘The living, for the dead are not’.

The second was asked, ‘Which breeds the largest animals, the sea or the land?’ He answered, ‘The land, for the sea is only a part of it’.

The third was asked, ‘Which is the cleverest of beasts?’ He answered, ‘That with which man is not yet acquainted’.

The fourth was asked, ‘For what reason he induced Sabbas to revolt?’ He answered, ‘Because I wished him to live with honour or die with honour’.

The fifth was asked, ‘Which he thought existed first , the day or the night?’ He answered, ‘the day was first by one day’. As the king appeared surprised at this solution, he added, ‘Impossible questions required impossible answers’.

Alexander then turning to the sixth asked him, ‘How a man could best make himself beloved?’ He answered, ‘If a man could being possessed of great power did not make himself to be feared’.

Of the remaining three, one being asked ‘How a man could become a god?’ replied, ‘By doing that which is impossible for a man to do’.

The next being asked, ‘Which of the two was stronger, life or death?’ He replied, ‘Life, because it bears so many evils’.

The last being asked, ‘How long it was honourable for a man to live?’ answered, ‘As long as he does not think it better to die than to live’.

Upon this Alexander, turning to the judge, requested him to give his decision. He said that they had answered each one worse that the other. ‘Since such is your judgment’, Alexander then said, ‘you shall be yourself the first to be put to death’. ‘Not so’, said he, ‘O king, unless you are false to your word, for you said that he who gave the worst answer should be first to die’.[3]

Why am I surprised that no historian so far has proposed that the Yakṣapraśnas in the Mahābhārata may have been modeled on this account?