Resumo de The Mahabharata ? An Inquiry In The Human Condition

At first glance this book, mainly because of its size, leaves the erroneous impression that it is yet again, another abridged and edited translation of one of our most favourite and popular epics, the Mahabharata. As the subtitle of the book indicates, `An inquiry in the human condition'. This ranges from a discussion of the core but simple questions about the materiality of life and its link to the spiritual, the foundational and organisational linkages of human life, and their intrinsic relation with the universal whole and ends with more complex conceptual issues of Time, human endeavour, causality and the nature of freedom. For those initiated into ideas about life and the universe emanating from the Indic civilisational ethos and are familiar with terms such as `dharma', `karma', `svartha', `sukha', `duhkha', `kama', `varna', `ashrama', `kala', `svabhava', `shistachara', `moksha' and the like, this book provides a challenging new perspective within which this conceptual world should be read. For those generally familiar with the terrain but have now begun to want to get to grips with these concepts because of the sudden upsurge in our contemporary world to go back to `ancient' truisms, this book should be compulsory reading. For both Chaturvedi Badrinath has provided an excellent introduction to set the stage for how he sees the Mahabharata's methodological avenues unfold the complex and varied conditions of human living. Inherence in life The author is not taking the Mahabharata as a text located somewhere in the distant past. He continually emphasises that this text is not so much about abstract ideas as it is about a method inherent in life itself, which it does not see as an artificial construct of the mind. He thus clearly etches out for us how this text should be read as a site where the conceptual burden of contradictions, dilemmas, debates and contestations have been played out and thence graphically narrated. And, these, it is suggested, were not unique to the protagonists of the epic alone but are found symbolically still resounding our sensibilities in all domains of our activity ? be it spiritual, economic, social, psychological, political and so forth. He writes: "the concerns of the Mahabharata are the concerns of everyday life everywhere." Natural unity Each of the chapters in the book extracts relevant passages presented in original with translations by the author on the 18 or so major areas of inquiry. It is heartening to note that all the chapters begin with introductory remarks on the theme being highlighted and, for both the informed and the novice at the end of the book we have an exhaustive `Index and Concordance' that helps the reader along. In this well-presented book two significant points may be critically highlighted suggestive of why Badrinath undertook this mammoth enterprise. One is his serious anxiety, and he is quick to make us acutely aware of it, that as modern social scientists we inherit ways of looking at reality which is flawed as it gives a falsified view of human reality. This is so because most modern philosophic assumptions integrated into the scientific method are built on a logic that understands human reality in polarities, that is, it only enables us construct a binary world view of "either/or". Drawing on the Mahabharata he suggests that attributes of human life cannot be seen in fragments and in fact, this text shows how they form a natural unity and wholeness. In fact, the moment one fragment is disentangled from the other, disorder emerges (`adharma'), which, in turn, gives rise to violence of the `other'. Nature of self This leads on to the second central point highlighted by the author. If inquiry into the human condition is not about fragments of human life or reality, he pertinently brings to the fore the central theme of all Mahabharata conversations, namely, that they are all "an inquiry into the nature of `self' in relation with the other", since d upon, is all about a system of relationships, personal, social, political each resting on an ethical ground that was sustained by order or dharma. It is thus pointed out that from this emanate all other conversations exploring the human condition in the Mahabharata revolving around the dichotomy of the particular with the universal, discussion on `dharma' and truth, the importance of `vani' (speech) in the search for truth, the relative notions of fate and freedom, the dilemma of violence and conflict between right and wrong as also between right and right, the necessity of `kshama' (forgiveness) and reconciliation, the issues of social order and bondage, the paradox of self-interest, pleasure, happiness in relation to those of the `other' and finally, the search for knowledge of reality. The explanations on `desha' (place), `kala' (time), `patra' (individual concerned) in relation to history, meaning and context, and the highlighting of the intellectual and spiritual presence of women in exploring the human condition are two aspects of discussion in the book that would be of considerable contemporary interest. Finally, in all our endeavours Badrinath points out that the Mahabharata provides us a discourse on the "language of experience" but not without this flowing into the "language of transcendence" and it is this message, rising up raw history and empty abstractions, that makes it a must read text; different as it is from others in the tradition and those outside it.

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