TIME THAT RIPENS AND ROTS ALL CREATURES: TEMPORALITY AND ITS TERRORS IN THE SANSKRIT MAHABHARATA

Studies in the Literary Imagination, Fall 2008 by Hudson, Emily T

The Sanskrit epic the Mahabharata is a beautiful and sophisticated narrative, labyrinthine in character and encyclopedic in scope.1 Widely acknowledged to be one of the most important sources for the study of South Asian religious and social thought, it tells the tale of a violent, fratricidal war between two sets of cousins, the five Pandavas and the hundred Kurus. These cousins are fighting over the kingdom of the Bharatas (hence the title of the epic, the Mahabharata or "The Story of the Great Bharatas"), and their conflict ends in the near decimation of both armies, and indeed the entire world.2

Aside from the Mahabharata's vast length - at 100,000 verses it is approximately eight times as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey combined perhaps the most remarkable feature of the epic is its relentlessly dark vision. The Mahabharata tells a story, after all, that centers on familial strife; irresolvable dilemmas; a virtuous queen's violation at the hands of her cousinbrothers; and a brutal war in which fratricide and patricide become the norm. As Ugrasravas, one of the Mahabharata's several narrators notes, the story of the Mahabharata was composed "to produce tears and terror in the minds of good people" (1.2.195).3

In this paper I want to explore a pervasive strategy that the Mahabharata uses to transmit its dark vision: the deployment of perhaps its most terrifying "character," the specter of time (kala). Throughout the text, time appears in the guise of several disturbing incarnations: a rat gnawing on a rope (1.13 and 1.41); a snake coiled at the bottom of a pit (11.2.1-8.1); an old woman smeared with crimson ointments, chanting dismal tunes (10.8.64-65). In the epic, time is also terrifying because of the adverse ways in which it impacts the lives of individuals. Characters often attribute their suffering and misfortunes to the forces of time, and often, when characters walk open-eyed into certain doom, the narrative voice declares that they were impelled by time.

The Mahabharata, in addition to being a "tale of time" is also, in Ricoeur's words, "a tale about time" since, as I will argue, the experience of time that it produces is central to the moral and aesthetic messages of the text.4 Because of the diversity and range of the conceptions of time in the text, I will narrow my focus to three concerns: First, I will explore two dominant theories of time, the system of world ages or "yugas" and the epic's "doctrine of time," kalavada. Second, I am interested in what the epic's narrative strategies "do" with time, that is how the text through its strategies manipulates our experience of time. Third, I will reflect upon the insights that these two avenues of inquiry yield in terms of the relationship between time and human despair in the text.

2. TWO THEORIES OF TIME: YUGAS AND KALAVADA

J. A. B van Buitenen, the epic's English translator, characterizes the Mahabharata in the following way:

the epic is a series of precisely stated problems imprecisely and therefore inconclusively resolved, with every resolution raising a new problem until the very end, when the question remains: whose is heaven and whose is hell? (29)

Most of the riddles to which van Buitenen refers center on two related issues: human agency, its powers and limits, and the complexities, if not impossibilities, of the path of virtue. To what extent do human beings have the freedom to make decisions and act, and to what extent are they bound like puppets on a string to forces beyond their control? To what extent does being good and following the right course of action (i.e., following dharma) insure good results? Precisely why, in spite of many characters' good intentions, did events turn out in the disastrous way that they did? As I mentioned above, one among several answers that the text provides is that they were caused by time (kala). Precisely how and why is time responsible? By examining two major theories of time in the Mahabharata: the system of four world ages or yugas and the epic's doctrine of time, kalavada, I propose an answer.

2.1 THE THEORY OF THE YUGAS

The term yuga refers to a mythical-historical system of four world ages, beginning with the Krta yuga and ending with the Kali yuga. Each yuga is preceded and followed by a "dawn" and a "twilight" that connect the ages together. According to one formulation, the Krta yuga lasts four thousand years plus four hundred years of dawn and as many of twilight; then comes the Treta of three thousand years, the Dvapara of two thousand, and finally the Kali of one thousand years (plus their corresponding dawns and twilights). At the conclusion of this four-vwga-cycle, the world is destroyed and the whole cycle begins anew.

The four yugas are named after the throws of the Vedic dice game and their names indicate the gradual moral and physical degeneration of humankind. While dharma, or moral conduct, is said to stand on four legs in the Kita yuga, it stands on three in the Treta, two in the Dvapara, and finally only on one leg in the Kali yuga.