Dhrita-Rashtra

David Epstein

June 14, 2001

 

Chapter 1, Verse 1:

 

“On the field of Truth, on the battlefield of life, what came to pass, Sanjaya, when my sons and their warriors faced those of my brother Pandu?” With those words begins the Bhagavad Gita, the epic story ostensibly about warfare and the secession of royalty. It is a part of the Mahabharata which is the longest poem ever written.

 

The Mahabharata is about a king who dies, but the eldest son (Dhrita-Rashtra) doesn’t become king because he is blind. Instead, another son (Pandu) becomes the king; however, he too dies. The blind king (Dhrita-Rashtra) raises the sons of Pandu, including Arjuna, in the royal palace. He picks the eldest son to be heir apparent. His own eldest son, however, is the embodiment of evil and desires the throne for himself. This leads to an epic battle between the “good guys”, the followers of Pandu’s son, and the “bad guys”, the followers of Dhrita’s son. Of course the good guys prevail.

 

I don’t understand how the Bhagavad Gita fits in with the greater Mahabharata. Still, I will write some comments about what I read in the Bhagavad Gita. Just as I’ve been doing with stories from the book of Genesis, these will be “first impressions” of mine.

 

The first thought that comes to mind is that the story is about warfare. This contradicts my misperceptions about Indian literature dealing with romanticism, mysticism, and all of that. My Indian friends have been telling me that while these subjects are often dealt with in the Vedas, Upanishads, and Vedanta, etc, epic battles are quite common in their holy literature. I guess I had to read it for myself to believe it.

 

Returning to the opening words uttered by Dhrita-Rashtra, we realize that the “field of truth” is a metaphor for our quest to find meaning in our daily lives. Truth is out there in the field, no doubt. Yet this quiet image is shattered with the subsequent phrase: “the battlefield of life”. That field is no tranquil paradise; it is where warfare is launched. Truth emerges from the battles that are fought in that venue.

 

In a respect, this parallels the dialectics of Hegel and Marx, dialectics that portray an inevitable struggle between opposing forces where the resulting “synthesized” force could be viewed as representing some semblance of “truth”. While Hegel and Marx didn’t use ‘truth’ to describe the emerging force, the use of conflict theory is present in both their works and in the beginning of this epic story.