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Critical Studies in the Mahabharata (V. S. Sukthankar Memorial Edition, Vol. I) c12: A Statement Regarding the Progress of the Critical Edition of the Mahābhārata

Critical Studies in the Mahābhārata (V. S. Sukthankar Memorial Edition, Vol. I) c12

Language
English

A Statement Regarding the Progress of the Critical Edition of the Mahābhārata

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[Read by Dr. V. S. SUKTHANKAR, on the occasion of the presentation of the Āraṇyakaparvan to Shrimant RAJASAHEB of Aundh on 5th January 1943.]

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MR. CHAIRMAN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,

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It is now more than seventeen years since I took over charge of the Mahābhārata work and reorganized, on somewhat different lines, this Department of the Institute, having profited by the experiences and experiments of my predecessor, the late lamented Mr. UTGIKAR. During this interval the Institute has published Critical Editions of four complete Books of the Mahābhārata : Ādiparvan (1933), Virāṭaparvan (1936), the Udyogaparvan (1940), and now the Āraṇyakaparvan (1942). These four parvans comprise, according to the Parvasaṃgrahaparvan, about 28,400 ślokas. In addition to this a fascicle of the Sabhāparvan edited by Prof. Franklin EDGERTON of Yale University (U. S. A.), which has been ready for some time and which could be taken up for printing only owing to the very generous special grant of Rs. 10,000 recently made by the Government of Bombay, is being published today. Furthermore, the press-copy of the Bhīṣmaparvan, which is being edited by Rao Bahadur Dr. S. K. BELVALKAR, is almost ready and is now undergoing final revision at the hands of its editor. It will be ready for being sent to the press very shortly. In fact the work is advanced as far that it can be got ready for the press within three months. But can we send it to the press? Not unless we can find a generous donor prepared to pay for the cost of the printing of the new volume, in these days when the cost of printing has almost doubled. The present financial situation of the Department is such that we can just manage to get the press-copies ready; but the large world of scholars outside the walls of this Institute, eagerly awaiting the appearance of our now-famous yellow-covered fascicules, must unfortunately be kept waiting until more funds are available.

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Any way, during the past 17 years the Institute has critically dealt with the first 6 parvans of the Great Epic : the Ādi, Sabhā, Āraṇyaka, Virāṭa, Udyoga and Bhīṣma. The six parvans make up a total of about 36,800 ślokas, out of an aggregate of 82,150 ślokas, a portion which is approximately 45% of the entire Mahābhārata, excluding, of course, the Harivaṃśa, which I have kept out of my calculation in order not to frighten you too much. Even this is no mean achievement, I think. The part of the epic critically dealt with so far is, I imagine, in bulk about four times as great as the Greek epics, Iliad and Odyssey put together and one and a half times as our Rāmāyaṇa.

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That a work of this nature and these dimensions is not one man's job is very very evident. Many friends, collaborators, sympathisers and patrons have contributed to such measure of success as has been achieved so far, and they include among them princes and potentates, curators and librarians, printers and parvan-editors, not to speak of the General Editor and his modest staff of collators in the background. Surely, the most potent among these multifarious contributory factors have been our generous patrons, who, out of regard for this venerable monument of Indian antiquity, this great and lustrous heritage of Bhāratavarṣa, have in the past liberally supplied the Institute, through all these years, with funds to carry on this costly but vital work.

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Ladies and Gentlemen, I must tell you frankly this is a costly work. All good work costs money now-a-days! Good manuscripts cost money. Good printing costs money. Good editors cost money.

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The British nation once paid out one million pounds for one rare Ms. of the Bible. Would India pay a similar amount for any book? Why not? Are the British people greater lovers of books, greater lovers of literature, greater lovers of religion, greater lovers of knowledge than we Indians? Certainly not. Great Britain is a small nation, a young nation, compared to India. And our love of knowledge, love of literature, love of scriptures, is greater. We are the inheritors of the great book, this "book of books" composed at a time when Great Britain was not yet entered on the map of civilized nations. And the entire cost of making this Critical Edition of the Mahābhārata is only one million rupees—and not pounds—which is only 1/15th of the cost of the Bible. We have collected and spent already 5 lakhs of rupees. We want now only 5 lakhs more. And we are not pessimistic about it. We have no reason to be that. When the war clouds have passed away, better days will surely dawn for us; then the thoughts of men will again turn to the preservation and growth of cultural values. We shall then, I am confident, enjoy the same generous support from patrons of learning as we have hitherto enjoyed and that will help us to carry to completion one of the most important of our national projects.

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If you want me to point out to you just one man who is responsible for originating and furthering the project, he is sitting in front of you, I mean, Shrimant Balasaheb Pant Pratinidhi, the RAJA OF AUNDH.

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The question may occur to you. Is it worth all this expenditure? Whether we realize it or not, we still stand under the spell of the Mahābhārata. Amid the deepest strands that are woven in the thread of our civilization, there is more than one that is drawn originally from Bhāratavarṣa and from Sanskrit literature. And well in the centre of this vast mass of literature, there stands this deathless, traditional book of divine inspiration, unapproachable and far removed from possibilities of human competition.

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There is a danger that in our pseudo-scientific mood, we may be tempted to discard this great book, thinking that we have outgrown it. That would be a capital blunder! That would in fact mean nothing but an indication of our will to commit suicide, national suicide, the signal of our national extinction. For never was truer word spoken than when the late German Indologist Hermann OLDENBERG said that “in the Mahābhārata breathe the united soul of India, and the individual souls of her people.” And why is that? Because the Mahābhārata is the national saga of India. It is, in other words, the content of our collective unconscious. And just for that reason it refuses to be discarded. We must therefore grasp this great book with both hands and face it squarely. Then we shall recognize that it is our past which has prolonged itself into the present. *We are it*: I mean the real WE! Shall we be guilty of strangling our own soul? NEVER!

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