By Karen O’Brien
On November 28, 2018, the Sanskrit Reading Room was led by Dr Philipp Maas (University of Leipzig), who read the story of the king Māndhātṛ in the Mahābhārata (MBh 3.126). Māndhātṛ’s tale appears in the third book of the epic and occurs within the wider narrative context of a pilgrimage that is undertaken by the Pāṇḍavas in order to prepare for the upcoming struggle. This pilgrimage section of the Mahābhārata contains nine interconnected stories, including the story of Māndhātṛ. Scholars now recognize that the Mahābhārata underwent several stages of redaction, and the passages of Māndhātṛ most likely belong to the younger parts.
Until recently, the importance of narrative passages in the Mahābhārata was not always recognized. Dr Maas emphasized that such narrative segments not only enhance the plot, but can also serve a didactic function. The great epic was a vital witness to the social-political consolidation of Brahmanism that occurred during the Kuṣāṇa and Gupta eras. And so the story of the Brahmanic king Māndhātṛ not only illustrates the duty of a king, but the superiority of Brahmanism itself. In this case, the epic’s tale of Māndhātṛ is constructed in relation to another well-known account – that of the Buddhist King Māndhātṛ.
Māndhātṛ (with orthographic variation) was a well known figure in Buddhist literature, particularly in the Divyāvadāna and also the Jātakas of the Pāli canon. In these sources, Māndhātṛ is a primeval king, a cakravartin, or fully established world ruler. Such were his supernatural powers that he was able to make jewels fall from the sky. His lifespan was asaṃkhya and he visited the world of the gods. However, although he ruled the heavens, he became too greedy and then fell to earth. The moral in this Buddhist tale is that that there is a limit to craving – and that even the most powerful rulers have to die.
Let us now turn back to our Māndhātṛ in the Mahābhārata, whose story most likely post-dates some of the Buddhist accounts of his namesake. We picked up our reading from the tale of King Yuvanāśva, a rich and powerful earthly king who lived in the forest where he carried out ascetic mortifications. Since he had no children, some Brahmins had prepared specially ritualized water intended as a fertility potion for the king’s wife. However, by accident, the king, thirsty after his austerities, came across the water and drank it to quench his thirst.
We began our reading at verse 15, in which we are told that the king became happy by fulfilling the desire to quench his thirst and thereby attained nirvāṇa. We paused here to reflect on how the word nirvāṇā appears very rarely in the Mahābhārata. According to the Digital Corpus of Sanskrit (http://www.sanskrit-linguistics.org/dcs/), across some one million words in the Mahābhārata, there are only 21 occurrences of nirvāṇa. In contrast, a Buddhist text such as the Mūlamadhyamakārikā features nirvāṇa as one of its most frequent terms. In Buddhism, nirvāṇa is of course the final liberation, the cessation of desire, and eternal happiness. Māndhātṛ’s attainment of such a prosaic form of nirvāṇa – the mere drinking of cold water followed by sleep – is the first indication that there is a dialogue between our story of Māndhātṛ and the Buddhist doctrinal background.
Verse 25 related what happened next to King Yuvanāśva. As a consequence of drinking the specially prepared water, he himself became pregnant. To give birth, his left side split open and a radiant son like another sun came out. The head of the gods, Indra, came to see the baby, who grew incredibly tall, had full command of the Veda, and had all weapons and knowledge at his disposal merely by thinking. Again, these details are reminiscent of the birth of the Buddha in texts such as Aśvaghoṣa’s Buddhacarita. Dr Maas posited that the author of the Mahābhārata story knew the Buddhist version of Māndhātṛ and created a new version of the tale in order to propagate a completely different message. We explored the significance of why the birth story should take place in a male body. Within the construction of the MBh story, it showed that the rituals of the Brahmaṇic ascetics were so powerful that they were efficacious even for a man.
Having discussed the significance of nirvāṇa and the motifs of the birth story, our next term of focus was dharma. In stanza 32 we are told that Māndhātṛ is said to rule with dharma. Given the polyvalence of dharma within both Brahmanism and Buddhism, the meaning of this term was difficult to pin down in our Māndhātṛ verses. Dharma is, of course, integral to orthodox Brahmanism, but, given the other narrative engagements with Buddhist doctrine, the possibility of a double reference to Buddhist dharma did not go amiss.
As we read on, further details consolidated the thesis of parallel constructions between the Brahmanic and Buddhist stories of Māndhātṛ. Verse 35 describes how Māndhātṛ piled up mounds, citacaitya – caitya being a familiar Buddhist term for stūpa, a heap of stones that marks a sacred spot. In the explanation of how the baby suckled Indra and received his name, we encountered the rare periphrastic future form together with a personal pronoun (māndhāteti) that generated the name of the main character. Added to this was the claim that Māndhātṛ shared the throne with Indra. These details in the MBh narrative all had parallels in the Buddhist sources.
Step by step, the tale of Māndhātṛ in the Mahābhārata rewrote the significance of the Buddhist story from a Brahmanic perspective. Dr Maas pointed to Wilhelm Halbfass’ chapter ‘Dharma in the Self-Understanding of Traditional Hinduism’ (in India and Europe) to contextualize the way in which the Brahmanic concept of dharma in this period was focused on preserving the status quo, consolidating power, and shifting attention away from Buddhist dharma. The Mahābhārata’s story of Māndhātṛ illustrated that Brahmanical dharma was the means to success – and that this secured the continuation of the social order and of harmony in the universe.
Further reading:
Maas, P. (In preparation) ‘Propagating Power: The Tīrthayātraparvan of the Mahābhārata in Context’
Sanskrit Reading Room 