Gender and Narrative in the Mahabharata by Black Brian Brodbeck Simon

Author:Black, Brian,Brodbeck, Simon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2011-10-26T16:00:00+00:00

Here again is the dharmic mask. Perhaps Rāma wants no longer to do what he had/has to do. After kingdom troubles, he left the kingdom; after wife troubles, he would leave the wife. Perhaps Lakṣmaṇa would have been next – but Sītā, like Draupadī, will not be abandoned: at her call, Wind, Fire et al. confirm her purity, and Rāma’s deceased father bids him take back the kingdom too. He cannot refuse.

If Rāma is to be seen in allegorical terms, like Yudhiṣṭhira and Nala, as a mokṣa seeker, a would-be renouncer, then Sītā and the kingdom are his prakṛti, his body – Sītā is replete with telluric symbolism. Like Yudhiṣṭhira, Rāma shies away from the burden of kingship (of patrilineal householdership writ large, and/or of embodiment writ sideways – the burden of rakṣaṇa). Like Yudhiṣṭhira and Nala, after suffering he tries unsuccessfully to throw it all away. But while Rāma’s scene with Sītā ends his exile, and he takes up his kingdom forthwith, Yudhiṣṭhira must wait, and fight.87

With regard to the stories of Yudhiṣṭhira, Nala, and Rāma, one might wonder whether the Mahābhārata sets up renunciation/exile/attempted wifeabandonment as a necessary and prescribed stage in the archetypal king’s career, in the manner of the āśrama system with its successive stages. On the whole I think not. Although at some level there is a symbolic need for the king to experience and subdue the wilderness (Falk 1973; Parkhill 1995), this can happen in a variety of ways. The drama of the wife-abandonment stories adds to their didactic effect, but surely they are told at least partly in hope that audience members and future kings may learn from these characters’ mistakes, and not repeat them. We see such a possibility when the Pāṇḍavas hear the story of how Sunda and Upasunda fought over a woman, and so take measures not to fight over Draupadī (1.200–4). On the other hand, the situation in which Yudhiṣṭhira hears Nala’s story and Rāma’s shows that these stories may also reassure kings who have made grave mistakes, demonstrating that it is not all over yet.

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