Ajaya: Epic of the Kaurava Clan – Roll of the Dice
By Anand Neelakantan,
Leadstart Publishing, 456 pages, $20
History, they say, is written by the victors. So, how would history look if written by the vanquished?
This is the consistent theme in Indian writer Anand Neelakantan’s works. In his first book, “Asura: Tale of the Vanquished”, Neelakantan told us the story of the “Ramayana”, one of India’s major Sanskrit epics, through the eyes of the villain (as we know it) — the demon king Ravana. In his second work, “Ajaya: Epic of the Kaurava Clan — Roll of the Dice”, Neelakantan attempts a far more difficult job, by telling us the tale of the “Mahabharata”, India’s other major epic, from the point of view of the Kaurava prince Duryodhana, who is the villain in the traditional rendering of the original work.
For the non-initiated, the “Mahabharata” is the longest epic in the world. Its longest version consists of more than 100,000 shloka or more than 200,000 individual verse lines (each shloka is a couplet). About 1.8 million words in total, it is roughly ten times the length of the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey” combined. The main story details the rivalry between the Pandavas and Kauravas, who are royal cousins contending for the throne of Hastinapura, the biggest kingdom in ancient India. The epic also contains several philosophical anecdotes, the most famous being the “Bhagvad Gita”, considered the greatest work in Hindu philosophy.
The story as we know it traditionally depicts the Pandavas as the epitome of virtue and the Kauravas as the evil ones. Perhaps this paragraph from the website Mythicthinking.org sums up the world view about Duryodhana best: “Duryodhana represents the shadow, which is appropriate for the son of the unconscious. He possesses all of the negative characteristics the Pandavas suppress. He cheats, lies, and has no concern for any of the suffering his actions may cause. His character is the antithesis to all heroic traits.”
Neelakantan selects this character to be the central protagonist of his work. However, instead of the dark traits commonly associated with him, Duryodhana (called Suyodhana in the book, as Su in Sanskrit denotes good and Du means evil) is depicted as an open-hearted, kind person. The Pandavas, on the other hand, represent the religious orthodoxy, whose paramount concern is to establish the supremacy of the clergy in society.
The goodness that Neelakantan depicts in Duryodhana is not unique to this work alone. Several works throughout history have depicted the Kaurava prince as a noble man. “Oorubhanga”, a play by the classical Sanskrit poet Bhasa, depicts Suyodhana as a fallen hero who is brave, honest and courageous. A similar work is “Gadhayudha” by medieval Kannada poet Ranna — where Suyodhana is called Mahanubhava and the war is described as a fight between two noble men (Bhima and Suyodhana) and not as one between good and bad.
Two temples are a tribute to the noble character of Duryodhana. The Kaurava prince is worshipped as a deity in Har-Ki-Doon Valley in the Himalayan state of Uttaranchal. It is said that after the death of Duryodhana in the battle of Kurukshetra, the people of the region wept so much that the tears became a river, known as Tamas, locally called Toms. Till date, people of the region do not drink water from the river, as they believe that the tears still flow in the river.
Also, in Kerala, the Poruvazhy Peruviruthy Malanada Temple is dedicated to Duryodhana. The temple has no idol of the deity but only a platform. It is said that Duryodhana was passing through the area in search of the Pandavas when he sought water from a low-caste woman, whose descendants serve as priests at the temple to this day.
In the “Mahabharata” itself, there is a reference to the people of Hastinapura struck dumb with grief at Duryodhana’s death in the Shalya Parva.
Several scholastic analyses also challenge the traditional theory of the Pandavas being good and the Kauravas led by Duryodhana being evil. In his essay, “Playing Duryodhana’s Advocate”, Nicholas O’Connell says: “Duryodhana’s character represents the consequences of following an earthly, self-oriented path as ordained by the more conservative, ritual-centric Vedic texts. Through adherence to warrior morality he achieves power, wealth, and a noble death. The Pandavas … devotion to Krishna leads to their ultimate victory over Duryodhana, illustrating the superiority of the new Vedantic system to the older warrior code.”
David Gitmer of the University of Chicago echoed similar sentiments in his paper titled “King Duryodhana: The Mahabharata Discourse On Sinning And Virtue In Epic And Drama”. “The Pandavas themselves are … authors of various misdeeds, largely tricks committed in battle through the urgings of their cousin, the warrior hero Krishna ... As Krishna becomes a god, the Vaisnava authors who glorify him try to establish a pro-Pandava moral valence in the face of immoral actions by both sides, the wrongdoings by Duryodhana tend to be subsumed under a single flaw which is trans-ethical … that flaw is opposition to Krishna Vasudeva. Theologically, this has usually been taken to mean blindness to Krishna’s divinity.”
However, if there is one central theme to “Ajaya”, it would be the orthodox caste system that has served to stifle creativity and merit, a problem which continue to plague India to this day. The inability of Karna to learn the art of war because of his lowly birth is testimony to how the caste system was only serving the upper castes to the detriment of others. Today, when we hear of caste elders ordering the rape and torture of youngsters deemed “deviant” with respect to the established norms, we remember how the low-caste Ekalavya was asked by the Brahmin guru Drona to cut off his right thumb as a price for daring to transgress the caste norms by secretly learning the skills of archery. If India has to rise to the heights its ancient civilisation once conquered, the country must learn to cast aside the taboos of the past — that is the bottom line of “Ajaya”.
