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THE MAHABHARATA OF VYASA
The Complete Bhisma Parva
Transcreated sloka-by-sloka from Sanskrit by P. Lai
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Two birds sit
on the golden bough
of the pippala tree.
One eats
the sweet fruit
The other watches.
Both are happy.
One is happier.
Which?
Soctasualara
Upanisad IV : 6
Limited Hardback : Ml4MV? Limited Flexiback .‘Ml MV
A special edition, limited to 50 copies, numbered and signed by the
transcreator, and with an original hand-painted frontispiece of Bhisma’s
lying on a bed of arrows on Kuruksetra by an anonymous patua-artist
of the Puri Jagannatha Temple, is available for Rs. 1500. The painting
in each special edition volume is an original, not a reproduction.
ISBN 81-8157-548-2 (HB)
ISBN 81-8157-549-0 (FB)
© 2006 P. Lai
The transcreator asserts his moral right to be
identified as the owner of this intellectual property.
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P. Lai is honorary Professor of English in St. Xavier’s College, Calcutta.
He was Special Professor of Indian Studies at Hofstra University, New
York, 1962-63, and has lectured widely on Indian literature at English,
American, and Australian universities. He was a delegate from India
to the P. E. N. International Writers Conference in New York injune
1966, and Visiting Professor in the University of Illinois for the spring
semester of 1968. Transcreated the Brhadaranyaka and
MahanaranayanaUpanisads on ajawaharlal Nehru Fellowship award
in 1969-70. Visiting Professor of Comparative Literature, Hofstra
University, spring 1971. Distinguished Visiting Professor and
Consultant, Albion College, April-May 1972. Prentiss M. Brown
Distinguished Visiting Professor, Albion College,January-May 1973.
Robert Norton Visiting Professor, Ohio University, September 1973-
June 1974. Visiting Professor of Indian Culture, Hartwick College,
September-October 1975. Eli Lilly Visiting Professor, Berea College,
February-May 1977. Honorary Doctorate of Letters, Western
Maryland College, 1977. Currendy at work on the complete English
version of the Mahabharata. Born 1928, married Shyamasree Devi
1955; has a son Ananda, and a daughter Srimati. Recipient of the Padma
Shri award in 1970. Delegate to Asian Poets’ Conference, Bangkok,
1988; Cambridge Literary Seminar, 1989; Harborfront Poetry Reading
Series, Toronto, Canada, 1989. Appointed Suniti Kumar Chatterji
Lecturer of the Asiatic Society, Kolkata injune 2005. St. Xavier’s
Lifetime Professor of Excellence award, 2005. Conferred Doctorate
of Literature by University of Calcutta in 2006 for “literary scholarship,
specially the seminal English transcreation of the Mahabharata.”
Seventy five cassettes (each of 90 minutes’ duration) of P. Lai reading
his transcreation of Vyasa’s Mahabharata are available from
writers
In October 1999 P. Lai began a sloka-by-sloka public
workshop.
reading of the transcreated epic to a miscellaneous group every Sunday
morning for an hour at the Library of Dharma and Culture in Calcutta
to illustrate the importance of Vyasa’s work as an inspiring oral
experience and not just a print-culture masterpiece, the long-term
reading project to proceed till the hundred thousand and plus slokas
are exhausted. 350 hour-long CDs of this recording, taped live are
available from WW.
^eJfa^uckurA.
In a short Preface to the first edition of my English version of the
Bhagavad-Gita (published by in 1965) I wrote:
writers workshop
ttI first translated the Gita in 1947, in rhymed English verse.”
[Numerous extracts, including a generous portion of Canto 10, were
printed in the St Xavier’s College magazine TheXaverian, December
1947]. “It was an adolescent experiment and though a couplet or
two may not have sounded too bad, the iambs and anapaests in
general appeared to be contrived, precious, and terribly archaic.
“Another attempt in prose, five years later, became too flat The
original has the dignity and memorability of a chanted poem. Prose
is too thin a medium for it
“The essential structure of the Gita, however, is question-and-
answer. Aijuna questions; Krishna answers. The tone is lofty, but
intimate; highly serious, but friendly, sacred, but colloquially so. The
present translation tries to preserve the dialogue spirit of the Sanskrit,
a spirit marked by simplicity, grace, brevity, and clarity. I have tried
to retain the Gita’s sweetness of persuasion and strength of
conviction.
“Readers who discover in my version a certain dramatic quality
will be right in inferring that I see the sacred text of Hinduism as an
integral part of Vyasa’s epic of India. In the epic, the Gita appears
to have only one purpose: to get Arjuna to fight It is fitted neady
into the grand design of dharmaksetra KuruksetraT
A revised edition appeared in 1968, but I was not entirely satisfied
with eidier version. Aijuna’s behaviour on the batdefield — his refusal
to fight and kill his relatives - inspired and simultaneously baffled
me. It seemed to be out of character. Why should a Ksatriya hesitate
to do his military duty? I felt the answer must lie in the totality of
Arjuna’s character, and to discover that totality I embarked on a
major project: to transcreate the Mahabharata slokaby sloka, hoping
in the process to find at least a few clues to clarify at least one of what
I consider to be the three focal controversy-points in the Gita.
Sixty years and three hundred and thirty six transcreated
fascicules later, I have a few glimmerings, but still not the complete
answer (assuming that there is a complete answer). Aijuna is a
searching, because troubled, man, unlike his brothers who are
satisfied with conventional values. He is the only Pandava brother
Introduction 6
whose variety of erotic adventures suggests an almost restlessly
twentieth-century hero seeking self-fulfilment through sexual
satisfaction. He marries the princesses of Kaliriga, Cedi, Madra,
Magadha, and Yavana; in Hardwar he has a son Iravat by Ulupi, the
Naga princess; in Manipura he marries Citrangada and has a son by
her named Babhru-vahana; in Dvaraka he abducts and marries
Krishna’s sister Subhadraand has a son by her, Abhimanyu. Bhlma
(who marries the raksasl Hidimba) and the other Pandavas have a
wife each, apart from their common wife Draupadi. I suspect that
Arjuna’s mental makeup is worrying and questing, individualistic,
even protestant He cannot lose (because he possesses the invincible
Gan diva bow), yet he will not fight He prefers to be the world’s first
pacifist, a conscientiously objecting, bravely quaking and Quaker
Hindu. To call him a “eunuch”, as Krishna does [11:3], is an injustice.
It requires a very special kind of courage to be “shamefully weak” in
the Arjuna manner. For Arjuna stands for ahimsa, Krishna
recommends a war of dharma [11:31]; Arjuna in the Gita is, for
whatever reason, the humanist, and Krishna, for whatever reason, is
the militarist. And there is no reconciliation between these two
fearfully opposed philosophies.
Which leads to the second focal point of debate in the Gita — I
mean the nature of the Cosmic Revelation in Cantos 10 and 11.. A
careful reading of the Gita will show that Arjuna keeps on questioning
and arguing with Krishna until Canto 10. “You are confusing me
with contradictory advice,” he says [III : 2]. Quite naturally, for
Krishna at one point comes up with a startling suggestion — the
atm an is eternal: only the body dies; so go ahead and kill - you will
kill only the body, the atm an will remain unaffected [II : 19-21].
There could hardly be a better example of forked-tongue
speciousness, and Aijuna is justified in asking if such dynamic “action”
is not worse than his passive non-doing based on “knowledge” and
conscience:
“J anar dana-Kri shna!
According to you, knowledge is superior to action.
If that is so, Kesava-Krishna,
Why are you urging me to do this horrible deed?”
[ : ]
111 1
The truth of the matter surely is that no rational refutation is
possible of the essential humanist position that killing is wrong,
especially when such a stand is grounded in a clean conscience and is
cleanly argued. Some of the answers given by Krishna appear to be
evasive and occasionally not unsophistic. When logic fails, Krishna
