In the content warning for ‘The Goddess of the River’, Vaishnavi Patel writes that Mahabharata has every terrible act ever imagined. In The Dharma of Unfaithful Wives and Faithful Jackals, Wendy Doniger lays this truth threadbare. Read this book, full of weird tales from the Mahabharata, with a sack of salt propped by your bedside and a huge bar of sweet chocolate to swallow down the bitterness of the ages. Let me share why.
The vastness of the Mahabharata
Divided into 18 books, Mahabharata has more than 75,000 verses, all written in Sanskrit. The first 11 of these books are about the royal clan of Kuru. The 12th and 13th books elaborate views on religion, morality, duty, and so on.
This is the part where Bhishma, on his deathbed, shares stories with Yudhishthira. It also serves as a go-to handbook for kings and how they should rule, providing views on political and economic success. When Yudhishthira asks Bhishma a particularly tricky ethical or political question, he often replies in this vein: ‘Actually, there is an old story about this very point,’ and goes on to tell the story.
Doniger, in her introduction, writes that as a mythologist, she is more interested in stories which go against the dharma, moralising and preaching. That’s where the 12th and 13th book come into spotlight for these are the ones that portray the rule-breakers.
Told in these tomes are both sort of funny stories. Funny haha and funny weird. I found that these stories don’t simply shove a moral lesson down your throat but their characters display the true complexity of human nature. Dongier compares these stories to the one in the New Testament but opines that ‘these Indian stories, however, are generally a good deal quirkier than the Biblical parables, as well as more imaginative and often far more complex. The characters in them are more conflicted and the plots have more twists.’
The weird tales from the Mahabharata
So, what are these weird tales from the Mahabharata? They feature animals as well as humans (the wives and the women, if you may). The 36 stories revolve around ethics and their erosion. The ones with the animals read like this:
How did the tiger’s mother dissuade him from killing the pious jackal?
How did the mouse escape from the cat, the owl, the mongoose, and the hunter?
Why did the sage turn his dog into a leopard, and then back into a dog?
How and why did the old guru’s young disciple enter the body of the guru’s young wife, in his attempt to control and protect her?
The stories around men divide them by caste: Brahmin (priest), Kshatriya (royal warrior), Vaishya (merchant or farmer),and Shudra (servant). We also encounter people that are ranked outside of this caste system like Chandalas, Nishadas or Shvapakas (Dog-cookers). With men as the plot device, we are taken through stories of creation of death and the origin of human evil, those that glorify some king of the past. It’s a heady sort of ride, to say the least.
How Mahabharata portrays its women
Many of the stories in The Dharma of Unfaithful Wives and Faithful Jackals are about wicked women; a few are about good women. Some about animals are really about women, such as the wise mother of the gullible tiger. That being said, a lot of these stories are strangely misogynistic about the ‘evil residing in women’.
How Vipula Entered Ruchi to Control Her
How Bhangashvana Became a Woman
How Satyavati’s Mother Corrupted Her Daughter’s Pregnancy
How Ashtavakra Resisted Seduction by an Old Woman
How Ahalya Sent Uttanka to the Underworld to Get Earrings
How the Procrastinator Saved Gautama from Killing his Wife
How Sudarshana, the Son of Fire, Let His Wife Oghavati Sleep with Dharma
How Jamadagni Protected his Wife Renuka from the Sun
How Utathya Got his Wife Back from Varuna
How Durvasas Tormented and Rewarded Krishna and Rukmini
How Narada married King Srinjaya’s Daughter
A strange portion in Mahabharata suggests violent punishments for both men and women who have been promiscuous. Among these are the young student who sleeps with his old guru’s young wife, an offence taken very seriously.
‘He should be killed by having him embrace a red-hot hollow metal column.’ Or ‘He may cut off his own penis and his testicles and holding them in his hand, walk southwest until he drops dead. When a woman does this, she must suffer from the similar punishments.
Many of these ideas are carried verbatim into Manusmriti.
In these weird tales from the Mahabharata it is the women who are primarily blamed for the sexual transgressions of both sexes. Some of them, however, revere women but only when they do their duty. Bhishma says: ‘All women, always, are of two sorts, good and evil. The good women are fortunate, honoured, the mothers of the world, and they uphold this earth, with its forests and groves. The ones who are not good have evil intentions; they behave badly and destroy their families. They can be recognised by the evil marks that arise spontaneously on their limbs.’
Reading these strange tales from the epic Mahabharata, you slowly realise, is miles away from BR Chopra’s adaptation.
