Transmitting "Mahabharatas": Another Look at Peter BrookAuthor(s): Alf HiltebeitelSource: TDR (1988-), Vol. 36, No. 3 (Autumn, 1992), pp. 131-159Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1146239 .Accessed: 04/04/2011 08:50

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Transmitting Mahabharatas

Another Look at Peter Brook

Alf Hiltebeitel

Introducing his six-hour televised version of the Mahabharata in a two- minute wraparound, Peter Brook tells his viewers, "I heard it the way Indians do, [.. .] from an old Sanskrit scholar."1 Most viewers probably felt reassured by Brook's statement, which he would seem to have voiced as an affirmation that his personal introduction to the epic was rooted in an authentically Indian mode of transmission: something direct from the text. Even the cognoscenti, who would know that most Indians do not first hear the Mahabharata from old Sanskrit scholars, much less old French Sanskrit scholars, and still less from a text, much less one in Sanskrit, would give Brook the benefit of the doubt: after all, he intended to identify his inspiration with something that at least approximates an Indian model or source.

I propose that we let the doubt linger. I begin with a discussion of my first involvement with Brook and his Mahabharata project. My contacts with Brook's project were minor, but my experience was not unlike those of others. I should warn from the start that in the main incident to be discussed, my experience was very disturbing and has left me with issues that I have wrestled with now for over nine years.2

I will then compare Brook's unquestionably rich imagining of the Ma- habharata with an Indian mode of imagining it, which I have studied in connection with the cult of Draupadi, the epic heroine worshiped as a goddess, in Tamilnadu, South India. Indeed, as we shall see, "imagining" the Mahabharata is acknowledged as a decisive feature of the process of epic transmission in this cult. At festivals for Draupadi, the Mahabharata is normally transmitted in three modes: as ritual, performed mainly by local villagers; as narrative, performed by a specialist bard familiar with a classical Tamil version of the epic; and by actors of a drama style known as terukkuttu, literally "street drama" (Hiltebeitel I988a: 35-46).

It is in this third, dramatic mode, that the epic is most freely and "play"-fully reimagined. This is because the dramas are relatively un- restricted by transmission of local ancestral ritual traditions, or by the classical precedents of a fixed Mahabharata text. Naturally, it is the dra-

The Drama Review 36, no. 3 (T135), Fall 1992

I3I

132 AlfHiltebeitel

matic mode, the terukkuttu, that can be most meaningfully discussed in connection with the Brook Mahabharata.

Finally, I will try to address the question of what it means for those who know and perhaps teach about epic and drama that the Brook Ma- habharata will in all likelihood be for some time the way Americans (un- like Indians) first hear about India's "great epic."

Evenings at Pakkiripalaiyam On the way back from India in June 1982, I stopped off in Paris to

visit my colleague Madeleine Biardeau, with whom Brook had been con- sulting on the epic (Carriere and Brook I987:vii). She had arranged an evening meeting between me and Brook. We first gathered at her apart- ment, where, at my suggestion, I showed Brook and his companions- his scriptwriter Jean-Claude Carriere and his secretary Marie-Helene Estienne-a series of slides, fresh from my past year's fieldwork, of a terukkuttu Mahabharata drama. The slides were taken at the village of Pakkiripalaiyam, the home village of the R.S. Natarajan Nataka Capai (Drama Company). I had engaged this terukkuttu troupe to perform six nights of dramas for my research in January and April 1981.

His only response by mail to my persistent inquiries was a closing note in a letter dated 31 January I984, in which he said that his numerous family problems [. ..] were "nothing when compared" to the "hell" of Peter Brook's visit.

I selected the drama called Turonaccari Yakacalai (Drona's Sacrificial Hall) because it introduces a number of humorous folkloric innovations into its portion of the epic story, covering events from the birth of Drona's son Ashvatthaman (born, according to the drama's novel twist, from the spilt seed of Shiva, fed to a mare) to the birth of Draupadi, the epic's chief heroine (Hiltebeitel I988a:I90-95). I wanted to stress that the vitality of the Mahabharata lies not only in its classical Sanskrit version, or versions, but in its transmission through vernacular forms that allow considerable free rein in reimagining the story. Brook and his party were entertained by the folk variants. And, although I certainly assume no credit for it, eventually a number of folk epic, or at least non-Sanskritic, themes were incorporated into their drama.

What Brook, Carriere, and Estienne were most interested in, however, was the role of the Kattiyankaran: the "buffoon" or "jester" in the teruk- kuttu, who maintains the narrative thread by introducing the drama, its episodes, and characters; comments on and stirs up the action as a recur- rent onstage presence and foil of the heroes; rephrases the versified songs in straightforward prose so that the audience can readily follow the action; sometimes incongruously assumes major roles; and frequently introduces strains of anachronistic political satire, popular cinema song and dance, theological irreverence, and low comic interludes into the performance of the often austere and tragic tale.

Mahabharatas 133

At that point in I982, Brook was pondering the question of how to sustain narrative continuity on the stage, and had not yet settled on, or, as far as I know, even conceived of, the Boy character (descendent of the heroes) who carries the narrative thread in the Brook drama through his conversations with Vyasa, Ganesha, and Krishna. A Kattiyankaran-type of solution was thus tossed about in conversation. The upshot of this exchange was, however, that Brook asked whether I could arrange for him to see some terukkuttu Mahabharata in person. I said that I would try to make arrangements through my fieldwork assistant, C.T. Rajan, for him to see the same troupe. Brook then treated our party to a sumptu- ous dinner at an excellent seafood restaurant.

After that, I made arrangements by mail, left matters between Brook's team (through Marie-Helene Estienne, his secretary) and C.T. Rajan, and never heard from Brook or any of his party about the matter again. This

puzzled me, since I also had to wait a long time for Rajan's confirmation that the meeting took place. I know only that it occurred sometime in the fall of I983.3 Rajan was reticent on what had transpired. His only response by mail to my persistent inquiries was a closing note in a letter dated 31 January I984, in which he said that his numerous family prob- lems (his wife's sickness, the recent death of his father, quarrels over family property) were "nothing when compared" to the "hell" of Peter Brook's visit: "It's an untold story. I will let you know the whole thing in person."

1. The Kattiyankaran announces the beginning of the terukkuttu drama Turonaccari Yakacalai

(Drona's Sacrificial Hall). The author showed slides from this drama, here performed by the R.S. Natarajan Drama Company, to Pe- ter Brook, Jean-Claude Carriere, and Marie- Helene Estienne in June 1982. (Photo by Alf Hiltebeitel)

I34 Alf Hiltebeitel

Not until my next visit to Tamilnadu, in summer 1984, did I learn from him what had happened. The two of us then went to see the directors of the aforementioned Pakkiripalaiyam drama troupe, whom Rajan had

engaged for Brook, to restore contacts and to allow me to apologize to them in person. The troupe directors, the brothers R.S. Natarajan and R.S. Mayakrishnan, who had been my two chief informants on the teruk- kuttu from 1977 till then, and with whom I had shared many of the most marvelous and delightful moments of my life, wore pained looks of disbelief, and stoically refused to discuss the incident. For my sake, they said, they would rather forget it.

For several years, I retold Rajan's account only to individuals, a number of whom, especially scholars of Indian drama (Philip Zarrilli, Wayne Ashley, and later Richard Schechner), urged me to make the story known. Finally, in the summer of 1987 I asked Rajan to recall the incident on tape. This was the last visit I was to have with him, since he died in 1988 at the age of 50.

To gauge his personal input into his description of events, it will suffice to note the following pertinent facts about him. He was a Tabulation Officer in the Office of the Director of Census Operations in Madras, and thus an employee of the Central Government of India; the author and editor of various census publications on Tamil ethnography; a man for whom the privileges and duties of his official status were important; a one-time short-term film producer; and someone who was well prac- ticed in the Indian art of hospitality. In editing his account, I rephrase his English where it is not crucial to conveying the tone of his expression, and restrict his expressions of indignation only to those that concern events, thus ruling out evaluations of character. Far more than an assis- tant, he was my friend since virtually our first meeting in 1975, and I have dedicated my last book to him.

Rajan began by telling how he was contacted by Estienne in Madras, given ballpoint pens for himself and his daughter, and asked to arrange with the aforementioned dramatists R.S. Mayakrishnan and R.S.Natara- jan for an evening of terukkuttu as part of a much larger tour by Brook and his party through Tamilnadu. Rajan had not expected to be asked to accompany Brook on such a long tour, on which he would be Brook's only Tamil-speaking interpreter. He never told me whether he first thought of this as an unwelcome duty or a pleasure, but he did indicate that he was not impressed by the pens.

After meeting Estienne, Rajan telegrammed the dramatists, paid for their bus trip from Pakkiripalaiyam to Madras out of his own pocket, and arranged with them on short notice to perform condensed versions of scenes from six dramas over three hours in one night.

The tour-basically a temple, palace, and museum tour of the main Brahmanical centers of the south, with Rajan as interpreter-then set out in three cars from Madras. The party consisted of Brook, Estienne, Brook's son, Rajan, and a group that Rajan called "Peter Brook's men," which probably included Carriere and may have included some actors from Brook's company (see note 3). The main southward stops were at Tanjore and Madurai, and the return journey to Madras passed back through Tanjore on the way to Chidambaram, Pondicherry, and Maha- balipuram.

Things went smoothly until the return to Tanjore, where Brook fell sick for "a couple of days" with dysentery and a "running fever." During this time he took "complete rest" with his son and Estienne in attendance.

Mahabharatas 135

At the next stop, Chidambaram, when the party toured the Chidam- baram temple, Brook started asking what Rajan referred to as "some

funny questions," or "very undue questions." Rajan could not recall illustrative examples. Suffice it to say that he felt that this was the first indication of a change in Brook's demeanor in situations that called for Rajan's services as interpreter.

We now come to the heart of the matter. The next morning the group headed to Pondicherry. Brook spent the day seeing friends, some of whom he invited to attend the dramas that evening at Pakkiripalaiyam, about I6 kilometers inland. At 5:00 P.M. the augmented party set out for the village. As Rajan told it:

There, I had made arrangements specially for some scenes from Mahabharata, which were liked by them, and which were fixed by Marie-Helene [Estienne], advised by Mr. Peter Brook. [. . .] I had [. . .] instructed [the artists] to stage them in a better way, all the scenes, better than what they had shown to Professor Alf Hilte- beitel. So [. . .] they were ready to stage the dramas [. . .] in front of the Draupadi-amman temple. [. . .]

So we arrived at Pakkiripalaiyam around seven o'clock. The art- ists were dressing up in the greenroom. They were using the school as the greenroom. They had put up a small stage in front of [. . .] the village school, next to [. . . the] Draupadi-amman temple. So it was quite a nice place. They had even made publicity to the villagers to assemble there. [. . .] Peter Brook agreed [to] it. He wanted [the people], because unless there is a crowd, the artists will not be induced to stage in a big mode. [ . .] So they need at least some crowd. So I had asked them to intimate to the villagers to assemble there around eight or nine.

But [. . .] Peter Brook wanted to stage [it] earlier. At seven o'clock he wanted to start. So there the trouble started. The artists preferred late timings, whereas Peter Brook preferred early tim- ings. Usually it is the norm or it is the tradition in Tamilnadu ei- ther to stage the terukkuttu of Ramayana or Mahabharata only in the late hours, say, starting about either after supper, nine o'clock, or ten o'clock. [. . .] All the artists preferred not to stage it be- cause [. . .] they were not getting the mood by that time. Any- way, for my sake, or for Professor Alf Hiltebeitel['s sake, they agreed], because the artists came to know that Peter Brook was sent by Professor Alf Hiltebeitel from the U.S.A., and they have a very good respect for Alf Hiltebeitel. Taking it for granted that Peter Brook would be a nice gentleman, [ . .] they agreed to stage by seven o'clock. [. . .] And there was also some crowd, to our surprise. [. ..]

[The first drama was] Tiraupatai Malaiyitutal, the "Marriage of Draupadi." [. . .] So when the scene, first scene, started, Malaiyi- tutal, Peter Brook's men were sitting on the front [facing the stage]. Then the crowd followed. I was sitting along with them in the second row, and people were all behind us. There were petro- max [gas lanterns] as well as one or two electrical lights. And the artists started the scene.

And immediately Peter Brook invented, asked, started raising some questions, loudly, which the crowd didn't agree [with]. Then the artists also didn't like that. I stopped the scene tempo-

136 AlfHiltebeitel

rarily. Against the norm, or against the tradition, I stopped the drama and convinced Mr. Peter Brook, saying that this is a scene, this is a scene, this is a story, this is a story of Mahabharata. [. . .] So the crowd started shouting, why all this in the middle, some disturbances? And the artists also got funked. And they were not inclined to stage further, to proceed. [. ..]

Again I convinced Mr. Peter Brook, saying, "Be calm for one or two scenes. Then you raise your questions. Don't intervene in the middle. You understand the story, first see what they are ex- hibiting. Scene by scene you can comment to your men. And you can take notes, and if you don't understand the script you can ask me, and I will translate into English," I told them.

But he, he's not agreeing to that. He says that one by one you have to stop the scene and then you have to inform me. But that is not possible. Because it is a drama. It has got a cogency. [. . .] But Peter Brook was not for that. [. ..] He is not following the norm of a drama, the norm of a scene. [. . .] Somehow I consoled him. [. ..] And then I advised him to be calm. And then I asked, I requested him to see further the third scene, fourth scene, fifth scene, because I heard him to require six scenes. [. . .]

I had in fact made [arrangements for] the important scene of Mahabharata, Tuyil Urital [Draupadi's Disrobing]. It's a fantastic scene. [. . .] But Peter Brook-I got wild. I got angry with him that he started questioning in between; while the drama is going on, he is asking to stop it suddenly. "Stop stop stop," he says. When the artists come with a song, and when the musical instru- ments are going on, he says, "No, stop it. I don't want this." So he is asking some question. [. ..]

So he created a sort of a very mad scene in the village, in the whole of Pakkiripalaiyam. In the whole of Pakkiripalaiyam, the villagers got wild. And they started to mock at me. And they are criticizing me, "Why this officer, this man, this gentleman, had brought these people from Europe or America? Why he's making fun of? What he made all these dramas? And what are these artists here to act?" [To paraphrase: Why did Rajan, this officer and gen- tleman, bring these people? Why is he (presumably Brook) spon- soring the dramas? To mock them? What are the dramatists here for: to act or to be humiliated?]

So the public started questioning. Had it continued, I think I would have gotten stone[d], ah, brickbatting, or some stone- throwing by [the] public. So definitely, though I requested them, in spite of it Peter Brook got his men, "Come on, let's go. We should go to some other troupe. I don't want this troupe," he started telling.

So he is asking me, "Is there any other troupe in the village, Pakkiripalaiyam, staging it?" Luckily that night there was a nearby hamlet in the same Pakkiripalaiyam village, [.. .] another troupe was staging some drama-not concerning Mahabharata, but Ra- mayana. [. . .] Suddenly, while the scenes are going on here, he stopped it. "I don't want to further continue. [. . .] I don't want to see here. So you stop it. Whatever amount you want [. . .] I can pay, and you can settle down accordingly." So he instructed his secretary, Marie-Helene.

So it was all in turmoil. [. ..] Then somehow I managed the

Mahabharatas I37

scene. One can imagine when all the crowds, villagers, are assem- bled there. This Peter Brook made all sorts of nuisance. [. ..] I re-

quested the artists, asking their, begging their, apology [i.e., their

acceptance of Rajan's apology], and in fact I asked them to pardon me, and me, on my behalf, and Professor Alf's behalf, I asked them to excuse the scene and the situation, so I have to carry on with this troupe, Peter Brook and his men, I have to take them to the next place. [...]4 They suffered alot. They [had] specially in- vited some one or two [of the] best artists of other troupes also. On my request, they arranged it. [. . .] They borrowed one or two artists on loan basis, [who had to be] specially paid. [. . .] He

paid some amount, not to the full satisfaction of the artists. All the artists were disappointed. They were in a completely, in a woebe-

gone state. Very pitiable, sorrowful. Peter Brook made this. [. . .] So I have to take them in the cars to the next hamlet where

some scenes are going on in the Ramayana. It was only Valatavur, nearby, a kilometer, only one kilometer from our Pakkiripalaiyam, the stage. So I took them there [at] midnight. [. .]5

There also he [Brook] didn't see calmly and quietly. Even [while the] drama was being staged, when the entire village was assem- bled, for about one furlong there-a huge crowd-these people went there, and there they were standing and asking some ques- tions, and they were shouting in the middle. He started asking me, "What is that scene?"

Brook said to the clerk: "I can talk to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Come on. You, you oblige. You have to give the reservation. Otherwise I'll complain to [the] Prime Minister. I can talk from here to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi."

I have not heard what exactly the scene is [that is] going on. So he started asking me to ask what scene is going on there on the stage. I do not know that. [. . .] As a stranger we have to see-to sit and see-the scenes, then, [. . .] after ten minutes, after seeing we can make out what scene it is. But immediately [. . .] he is asking what scene is going on. When we are not able to satisfy him to tell the scene exactly, he gets angry, he gets frustration. I don't know why. What is the reason for getting angry?

So, immediately he said, "You can suspend everything, and then we can proceed for Mahabalipuram." I obliged. [. . .] I took them to Mahabalipuram. The whole night we were in the car, about two or three hours from there. I took them around three o'clock early morning.

At Mahabalipuram, at 3:00 A.M., Brook got into an argument with the receptionists at the TTDC [Tamilnadu Tourism and De- velopment Corporation] hotel, claiming he had reserved rooms by a telegram that they claimed they had not received. Brook said to

138 Alf Hiltebeitel

the clerk: "I can talk to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Come on. You, you oblige. You have to give the reservation. Otherwise I'll complain to [the] Prime Minister. I can talk from here to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi." Then immediately he [the clerk] asked, "Can you talk to your President of America from here?" "Yes, I can talk," he says. [. . .]

Is it necessary to name a big democratic country's Prime Minis- ter's name, and just for a reservation-its a very very petty affair?

Rajan, who had to wake up the clerk, asked him not to mind, and was able to arrange cottages for everyone. Before he settled in himself, Marie-Helene Estienne told him he would not be needed the next day; he should make his own way back to Madras, which he did the next morning, without, as he stressed, being allowed to take leave of Peter Brook. Rajan then concluded this account:

So it's a funny plan, which came like a dream in the night, they came and [were] gone. So I can say it's a mad crowd, asking for some unusual things. They want to see some unusual happenings in the world. I don't think they have come to study the Mahabha- rata or Ramayana and learn some ideas or learn some themes about this Tamilnadu people. So they have come-perhaps they could have come as a tourist and gone elsewhere. I don't think they came to see these dramas of Mahabharata or Ramayana.

This is a sad story. One of the reasons to tell it, however, is that it is the worst of its kind. It is also a matter of accountability, as was insisted by Phillip Zarrilli and Deborah Neff in summation of a I986 TDR ac- count of similar but less flagrant incidents involving Brook in India (Zar- rilli 1986:92, 99). Brook virtually demands that we hold him accountable by writing the following:

[E]very region has its form of drama and almost every form- sung, mimed, narrated-touches or tells a part of Mahabharata. Wherever we went, we met sages, scholars, villagers, pleased to find foreigners interested in their great epic and generously happy to share their understanding. (Carriere and Brook I987:xv)

Zarrilli's interview with Neff and Probir Guha, Calcutta-based director of the Living Theatre, which should be consulted as background to this article, supplies Rustom Bharucha with ammunition to add to his own summary of the most recurrent complaints about Brook in India:

There are many stories which have circulated in Indian theatrical circles about how Brook promised to invite a I6-year-old Chhau dancer from a village to Paris, and then forgot about him; how he and his actors invariably failed to respect the ritualistic context of performances; how they were so concerned with their own sched- ules that they rarely found the time to interact with Indian people; and perhaps, most ignominiously, how they handled money in their deals with Indian artists. (1990:118)

Such patterns were all paralleled in Pakkiripalaiyam. The matter of Brook's promise to the I6-year-old Chhau dancer is recounted by Guha,

Mahabharatas I39

who was Brook's intermediary with the boy and the boy's Bengali villag- ers. Guha took pains, on Brook's behalf, to convince the villagers that the boy's trip to Paris "will help your village if you let him go." Only after about a year, in response to Guha's questioning, did Brook write Guha that he had changed his mind and would not need the boy. By this time the boy had been humiliated, and Guha's credibility with his drama- tist and village contacts was deeply compromised (Zarrilli I986:93-95). So was Rajan's credibility with the humiliated actors and outraged villag- ers of Pakkiripalaiyam, and mine with both the actors and Rajan, who candidly says on tape, for my ears to register: "So [I did this] because my respects always were there, previously, when my friend, Professor Alf, wrote to me. But now I have the lowest idea. And I may not believe in the future whoever is to descend from the States or other places recom- mended by my friend." Rajan was recalling that he had happily hosted two American friends of mine on earlier visits to Madras.

Likewise, Brook's interactions with the terukkuttu dramatists were largely limited to time and money, in both of which he was stingy, and power, by which he was blinded as to the cultural and religious aesthetics of the dramas he was interrupting. Though the scenes were not per- formed in a festival context, they were staged in front of the Draupadi temple on the same spot where dramas are performed at this village's Draupadi festivals: facing the goddess in the temple sanctum. The actors wanted to begin at 9:oo P.M. because it is ritually appropriate, and because the early night hours help to bring on what Rajan calls a "mood": an allusion to a major concept in Indian aesthetics and dramaturgy that the terukkuttu links with religious possession. The actors created enough of a sacred atmosphere (including the petromax lantern) to suggest that they do not make any absolute secular-sacred distinction between shortened performances sponsored by Westerners and festival performances spon- sored by village patrons. But Brook ignored all this. He interrupted the terukkuttu music and songs, which are integral to the genre and its in- spired "moods."

This is, of course, where Brook's actions at Pakkiripalaiyam go far beyond anything reported elsewhere. It is not just that Brook was insensi- tive to the religious atmosphere of the dramas. Despite the interculturality and cross-cultural claims and achievements of his drama, which his Vyasa calls the "poetical history of mankind" (Carriere and Brook 1987:3), Brook was culturally insensitive in the extreme to the actors of Pakkiripa- laiyam, whom he humiliated in front of their fellow villagers and fellow terukkuttu artists from other troupes. Did Brook think his sponsorship of these dramas entitled him to interrupt them as if he were the director? Had he conceived of the performance as a workshop for his actors, with- out telling anyone beforehand? Can you have a workshop with people before you have shown them you are willing to take in their work?

Moreover, it is suggestive that Brook saved his greatest insensitivities for Indian villagers. At one point in his interview with Guha, Zarrilli says, "[I]n some, perhaps, many cases of Brook and his company's time in India, things were done appropriately. By and large that was certainly the case in Trivandrum. Brook's people sought and received the master's permission in the most appropriate way, and the one person training at the C.V.N. worked hard during his weeks there." The C.V. Narayanan Nair Kalari, the kalaripayattu "gymnasium" where Zarrilli himself trained, is a major dominant Nayar caste institution in urban Trivandrum with an institutionalized protocol. To Zarrilli's mitigating point, Guha

2. Pictured here is the

Kattiyankaran, Kripi (played by R.S. Nata-

rajan), and Drona in Turonaccari Yakaca- lai. Before setting forth to bathe, Drona instructs his childless wife Kripi that she will obtain a son

if she fulfills a vow to feed guests by giving them whatever they re-

quest. (Photo by Alf Hiltebeitel)

shoots back: "My point is this. If Brook brings this Mahabharata to India and goes to the villages where he worked and shows people what he has done with their materials, then he is really being honest. And if he doesn't do it, then I would call it cultural piracy" (Zarrilli 1986:98).

In dealing with villagers, Brook acted as if he thought the talent and

pride of rural actors was ephemeral and a matter of indifference; that

having taken what he wanted from them, their lives would dissolve back into an undifferentiated rural mass, about which no one who mattered

really cared, no one in Calcutta or Madras, much less in Paris, or Wash-

ington, or New York-that is, as if no one would ever mention what had happened. As his invocation of Indira Gandhi at Mahabaliparum makes all too clear, the India he identified with was that of the cultured and political elite: the many corporations and intercultural associations that sponsored his Mahabharata there, as elsewhere.6 Says Bharucha,

Among the numerous directors, writers, and artists who have vis- ited India in recent years, either in connection with films on the

Raj or for their personal research, Peter Brook has probably left one of the most bitter memories among many of his Indian hosts and benefactors. Of course, he continues to have "friends" (con- nections) in the highest places, many of whom have gushed about the French production of the Mahabharata (though their knowledge of the language, I suspect, was questionable). But among the many Indians who helped Brook to see traditional performances, meet gurus, arrange workshops with actors-none of whom re-

Mahabharatas 141

ceived an invitation to Paris-there is a sad consensus of having been used by Brook, of being "ripped off" as the Americans would say. (I990:II7-I8)

Imagining Mahabharatas

In 1986, Rajan and I worked together with J. Rajasekaran-rock and blues singer extraordinaire, and coordinator, in Madurai, Tamilnadu, of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Year in India Program-to film a village Draupadi festival at which the Pakkiripalaiyam troupe of R.S.

Natarajan and R.S. Mayakrishnan performed the dramas (Hiltebeitel I988b). One morning, Rajasekaran, our sound engineer, interviewed the two brothers:

RAJASEKARAN: What do you think of your job? Do you do it with

enjoyment. Do you like it? Do you find it prestigious?

MAYAKRISHNAN: This is a profession of art [kalai-tolil). We cannot think anything bad about this profession. We think about this job as

something great. [. . .]

RAJASEKARAN: So you feel proud of this profession.

MAYAKRISHNAN: Ah, we feel proud of it. We should let the art grow. Through the art we should tell the people what we know. So what we earn from that, we should live on it. So we think very proudly of this

profession. We don't think it is low. [. ..]

RAJASEKARAN: How long have you been performing this Kuttu? From what age did you start?

MAYAKRISHNAN: About age I5.

RAJASEKARAN: So you both started really young. Who was your guru?

MAYAKRISHNAN: Just our imagination (karpanai). And also we have seen other teachers (accariyars). Then we use our own imagination.

RAJASEKARAN: Did your father perform Kuttu?

MAYAKRISHNAN: No, no.

RAJASEKARAN: Oh, so nothing like that. Then what was he doing?

MAYAKRISHNAN: Handicrafts, and agriculture.

RAJASEKARAN: You mentioned about some accariyars who helped your imagination. Can you name a few of them?

MAYAKRISHNAN: They are all dead and gone.

RAJASEKARAN: What are their names?

MAYAKRISHNAN: Vitur Elappa Accariyar, Tuntur Tantava Accari-

yar. They are all famous people. From them we learned. Then we used our imagination.

It is important, in view of what has been discussed up to now, that R. S. Mayakrishnan wants to stress that terukkuttu is nothing "low," that it is a prestigious art form deserving of a respect it rarely gets outside of

I42 Alf Hiltebeitel

Tamil villages, and that, in its transmission, "imagination" plays a greater role than discipleship. Even if his own gurus or accariyars might have

put such ideas into his and his brother's minds, the important point is his emphasis on imaginative creativity within the dramas. While this covers everything from staging, costume, and props, to interaction with the audience, it definitely includes innovation with the story, as is evident from the fact that his and his brother's troupe never, in my experience, perform a drama the same way twice. Such variations only multiply from troupe to troupe.

As examples of such reimaging, I turn to the drama Patinettampor (Eigh- teenth-Day War), which I saw this troupe perform twice, first in 1977 and then in I986, both in festival contexts, the latter recorded on video (Hiltebeitel I988b: Part 2). I emphasize innovations in the 1986 perfor- mance.

Eighteenth-Day War is the play that normally closes a Draupadi festival cycle of Mahabharata dramas, marking the end of the war. Duryodhana, felled by Bhima's low blow to his thigh, and dying, makes Ashvatthaman his fifth and last army marshal after Ashvatthaman has promised Duryo- dhana he will kill the Pandavas. In the 1977 performance, Krishna antici- pates Ashvatthaman's fury and takes the Pandavas away from their army camp for the night, leaving their sons-Draupadi's children-for Ashvat- thaman to kill in their stead.

In 1986, Krishna handles matters entirely differently. Having pondered Ashvatthaman's scheme, and knowing that Ashvatthaman's power is de- rived from Shiva (born from Shiva's sperm, Krishna recalls here7; pos- sessed by Shiva, and incarnating a portion of him, in the Sanskrit epic), Krishna realizes that Ashvatthaman cannot be deterred, and determines to do a trick (tantiram). He halts a saint (muni) named Pankavarishi, who is known by his reputation as "the saint who doesn't lie" (poy-colata- munivar). Krishna tells this holy man he is going to hide the Pandavas in a pit, and urges him, "You must tell a lie for my sake."

"But I am the one who doesn't lie. How can I do that?" asks the muni. "You don't have to lie," says Krishna. "All you have to do is sprinkle

some water on top of the pit. The five Pandava kings will be underneath. While you are squatting there, Ashvatthaman will come running and will ask you, 'Sir (Aiya), who are you?' Tell him, 'I am the rishi who doesn't lie, Pankavarishi.' Then he'll ask you, 'Have you seen the Pandavas any- where?' So you know what you will have to say? 'Yes, the Pandavas are under my asshole (cuttu).' As you will say, so they will be under your asshole, but Ashvatthaman will think you are being arrogant, and he'll go look elsewhere."

The sage who never lies agrees to do Krishna's bidding, and soon, tricked by the sage into looking elsewhere for the Pandavas, Ashvattha- man finds their children instead, and, in his frenzy, and because it is dusk, he kills them by mistake. One may recall that matters are different in the Sanskrit epic, where it is night rather than dusk, and where Ashvatthaman does recognize the Pandavas' children as he kills them (I988b: Part 2).

In both performances, an important scene then follows. In contrast to the Sanskrit epic, where Ashvatthaman knows he has killed the Pandavas' children and reports so to Duryodhana, who accepts this as a better re- venge than none, in the terukkuttu (and in earlier Tamil versions of the epic itself) Ashvatthaman still thinks he has killed the Pandavas them- selves when he brings their heads to Duryodhana. It is Duryodhana who recognizes them, and in a redeeming change of character, rather than

Mahabharatas 143

rejoice, he curses Ashvatthaman for his mistake, and enters a deep lament for his nephews, in whose deaths he recognizes the end of the Kuru- Pandava line (Hiltebeitel 1988a:42I-23).

Now these children are, of course, Draupadi's children. In the 1977 version of this play, and in performances I have seen by another troupe, Draupadi starts to put up her hair in anticipation of fulfilling her vow to oil it with blood from Duryodhana's wounded thigh. But when she sees her slain children (beheaded in the dramas rather than mutilated, as in the Sanskrit epic), she laments bitterly, again unfurls her hair, and makes a second vow that she will not retie her hair until she is brought Ashvattha- man's head. Eventually, thanks again to the intercessions of Krishna, who knows Ashvatthaman cannot be killed, she accepts as substitute the tiara that Duryodhana gave Ashvatthaman when he made him his last marshal.

Only then does she finally approach Duryodhana's corpse to oil her hair with his blood (424-25).

In the I986 performance, however, Draupadi never laments her chil- dren or demands the death of Ashvatthaman. Rather, she and Krishna

engage in a discussion that handles the themes of birth, death, the mother- hood of the goddess, and the final message of the Mahabharata, in other, but no less striking ways:

KRISHNA: The vow that was taken then is to be fulfilled today. Why? The ones who were Rakshasas are the Kauravas now. The ones who were the gods are now the Pandavas. She who was once Shri-Devi, I made her to be born as Draupadi. I was Rama once, now I am born as Krishna. Now three-fourths of my work is fin- ished. Duryodhana is lying here. My dear younger sister, ac-

cording to what she has said in court, must tie up her hair. That is always on my mind. Bring her here.

ATTENDANT (approaching): Bhagavan, thinking about his sis- ter in his mind, calls, inviting his younger sister Yakatevi. Then Yakatevi came. (Hiltebeitel I988b: Part 2)

This name for Draupadi means "the goddess of sacrifice," a name recalling her epic name in Sanskrit, Yajnaseni, "She whose army is con- nected with the sacrifice," which can also be used in terukkuttu dramas under the suggestive Tamil form, Yakaceni, "She whose army is the sacrifice" (Hiltebeitel I988a:392). Draupadi's exchange with Krishna con- tinues.

DRAUPADI: Is is the i8th day today. On the day of the warriors lying on the battlefield (patukalam), why did you ask me to come?

KRISHNA: Tell me, what is your vow?

DRAUPADI: Yes, I have to finish my vow.

KRISHNA: How?

DRAUPADI: This sinner [Duryodhana] must die. I have to tie my hair. I will take his blood and smear it as oil in my hair. The side bones I will make into a comb. Taking the intestine, I will make it into a garland. I have to finish my vow; it is my duty.

KRISHNA: OK, let's go to the battlefield and see to your heart's content all those who died there. Let's go.

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Circling the stage, Krishna shows Draupadi various heroes' remains, and tells how they died. At last Draupadi asks him to show her Duryo- dhana. Krishna tells her, "Just turn around and see." To her shock, Drau- padi sees Duryodhana lying on the musicians' platform with an upraised closed right fist.

KRISHNA: OK, according to your vow, tie up your hair.

DRAUPADI: But I cannot do it. Why is his hand closed?

KRISHNA (smiling): Yes. A man is born. He has his hand closed.When a person dies, the fist is stretched open. How beauti- fully my younger sister asks this question! DRAUPADI: But this man has one fist closed. There is a reason for it. What is the reason?

Krishna, smiling all the while, then tells Draupadi that Duryodhana died while counting five things-closing one finger at a time; had he done the five things differently, he would have won the war.8 Having thus revealed Duryodhana's last thoughts in fine detail, Krishna reassures Draupadi that even if Duryodhana had done these five things, Krishna had five things to counteract them: he had seen to it that each of the Pandavas held one weapon in reserve to counteract the five things Dury- odhana died counting on.9 Finally, Krishna and Draupadi's dialog con- cludes:

KRISHNA: So don't worry about anything. Duryodhana is dead. Sit on his chest and finish your vow.

DRAUPADI: OK, I will finish my vow. But please stand be- side me.

KRISHNA: Don't be afraid of anything. Duryodhana is dead. Sit on his chest and finish your vow.

The musicians and chorus start to sing in praise of Krishna as "Go- vinda." Draupadi bends over Duryodhana, moves her cupped hand back and forth from his thigh to her hair, and Krishna then garlands her with flowers while she holds a tray of turmeric powder and a camphor flame. The drama closes with Krishna addressing the audience, as terukkuttu characters so often do, as an epic assembly or court (capai; Hiltebeitel I988b: Part 2).

If much of terukkuttu transmission lies in such imagining, let us ask how the epic has been reimaged here. I focus on the innovations.

The scene opens with low humor. Krishna saves the Pandavas by hid- ing them in a pit beneath a saint's asshole. What is this new "trick?" Perhaps it recalls how the Pandavas and their mother Kunti escaped from the lacquer house, where Duryodhana tried to have them burned to death. They escaped through a tunnel dug for them, leaving a drunken woman and her five drunken sons to be burned to death in their stead. Emer- gences from tunnels or pits can be symbols of rebirth. In each case, while the five Pandavas are reborn, five others die: no drunkards this last time, but the Pandavas' sons with Draupadi.

After Duryodhana laments the loss of these children, his nephews, we then meet Draupadi herself in the culminating dramatic scene of her festi-

Mahabharatas I45

val. She is introduced as the incarnation of the goddess Shri, the goddess of sacrifice, and sister of Krishna; Krishna shows her the battlefield and assists in the fulfillment of her vow. She never mentions her dead children in this I986 version. That has been left to Duryodhana. But, as if by compensation, we are introduced to an even more profound mystery involving mothers and children.

Draupadi feels that she cannot dress her hair with Duryodhana's thigh blood, and all the rest (rib-comb, intestine-garland), because the dead Duryodhana, with his closed fist, reminds her of a baby who has just been born. Moreover, his blood-yielding open thigh ties in with an obstetric symbolism of another sort. Draupadi has vowed not to tie up her hair until she can do so with Duryodhana's thigh blood. This is because he had bared his thigh to her after the dice match, and invited her to take him as her new husband, while she was menstruating.

The period of Draupadi's 13-year vow is thus equivalent to an extended period of menstrual defilement, which the hair-binding brings to a close. Duryodhana's hemorrhaging thigh supplies the means to bring Drau- padi's extended menstruation to an end. Her hair-tying is part of her return to becoming an auspicious mother rather than a horrific mother, though not of her sons, who are slain, but of her devotees. Through the years of exile and during the war, the disheveled Draupadi has, in earlier dramas and in Draupadi cult folklore, taken on the "form of Kali," which her hair-tying now deactivates. So as she prepares to dress her hair with Duryodhana's blood, she is on the verge of appearing once again, or one last time, like Kali, as a mother who delights in the blood of her own children.

The exchange with Krishna about Duryodhana's closed fist, a scene which the drama introduces so ambiguously just after Draupadi's own children have met their deaths in the war their mother required, thus serves both to reinforce this image and to mollify it. Draupadi's mother- hood extends not only to her children and her devotees, but to Duryo- dhana, whom the terukkuttu dramas have redeemed, as he lies dying, in his lamentation for the very children Draupadi would normally lament herself-her own children-in the usual versions of this war-ending scene.

If I am right about this kind of imagining of the Mahabharata, it is one that works intratextually and intertextually, with deep theological overtones, and with the play taking in the audience.

Intratextually, where it innovates, the new parts reflect the whole, allowing one to see both the whole and the parts, as well as other parts, in new ways. Like the Sanskrit epic, the terukkuttu Mahabharata is recursive, nonlinear, always doubling back on itself. One is reminded of A.K. Ra- manujan's image of the Mahabharata as being like a crystal. Coming upon the Encyclopedia Britannica article on crystals, while looking for something else, Ramanujan sensed an uncanny similarity to the Mahabharata when he read: "Few things in nature are more perfect than a crystal, in which immense numbers of atoms or molecules are stacked in perfect alignment. Yet, surprisingly, many of the most important properties of crystals are due to the few odd places where the crystal structure goes wrong. Many crystals could not have grown at all without having imperfections."10

Intertextually, it moves freely from the Mahabharata to other texts. For instance, the theme of the five closed fingers has a famous counterpart in the story of the great Shri Vaishnava theologian Ramanuja's arrival before the corpse of his precursor Yamunacharya. Seeing three fingers closed on

146 AlfHiltebeitel

Yamuna's hand, Ramanuja asked whether Yamuna had died with any unfulfilled wishes, and was told by the latter's disciples that there had indeed been three: to write a Vaishnava commentary on the Brahmasutra, to express his gratitude toward Vyasa and Parashara, and to show his great affection for the Tamil saint Nammalvar. When Ramanuja said he would try to fulfill these wishes, the dead Yamuna's three fingers straightened out, and Ramanuja was acclaimed as his successor (Carman I974:30).

Similarly, the terukkuttu Mahabharata moves equally freely between different Mahabharatas: oral/written, classical/folk, local/regional, even Tamil/Telugu and Tamil/Sanskrit. Indeed, we have seen that in a typical festival, the Paratam (Mahabharata) is performed in three overlapping and interreferential modes, each with its different "stories": as drama, recita- tion, and local ritual. Though a festival will normally follow the dramas from a beginning (with several possibilities) to an end (the death of Dury- odhana), the term Paratam can refer to the recitation as a whole (which frames the dramatized portions with earlier beginnings, ampler middles, and later endings), to any episode that is recited or enacted in a drama, or to the festival as a whole, including especially the village rituals. And where new tales introduce the traditional epic figures to new heroes, heroines, and adventures, the new story may define itself as Paratam, even having Draupadi herself make the designation.1 Each and every mode of Draupadi cult Paratam, finally, is an offering to Draupadi the goddess, so for her to confirm an innovative story as Paratam is hardly insignificant.

Theologically complex, it is a Mahabharata that plays at Draupadi festi- vals, but does not single out or even center on one theological strand, a goddess strand, to the detraction of other deities in the Hindu devotional universe. The roles of Krishna and Shiva are no less reimaged than Drau- padi's, but always in ways that retain the same tensions one finds in other Mahabharatas, including the Sanskrit.

Finally, the play spills over into the audience, which is always at least the "court" of the staged kingdom, and often the source of props, or the scene of possessions induced by the play.

Now there is no reason that the Brook Mahabharata should be imagined in any way comparable to the terukkuttu. The Brook drama is clearly not an offering to a goddess, and it sets its audience at a respectful dis- tance. Nor would there be much point in pursuing differences on the assumption that Brook didn't like the terukkuttu. He clearly didn't see enough of it to have formulated meaningful dislikes. It is worth noting, however, that he tells of having experienced an "unforgettable shock" upon first seeing a dancer make his appearance from behind a hand-held curtain in the kathakali Mahabharata theatre of Kerala. For Brook, the kathakali was "something mythical and remote, from another culture, nothing to do with my life" (Carriere and Brook I987:xiii). One finds the curtain entrance (tirai varutal) and the dance also in the terukkuttu (see Frasca 1990:7-8).

Yet the Brook Mahabharata is not without reminders of the terukkuttu, though they are probably unconscious. These include both dramatic ges- tures12 and thematic reworkings. In the latter case, where it is a question of the script, one must credit Carriere as well as Brook. One example will serve to show how two such different imaginations could innovate similarly, despite the cultural and aesthetic distances between them, and suggest some of the riches that might have been opened to Brook had he

regarded the imagination of the terukkuttu as something to share rather than to upstage and reject.

In the Isth book of the Sanskrit Mahabharata, there is a section known as the Putradarshana Parvan, the "viewing of the sons." It is I6 years after the war. Dhritarashtra, Gandhari, Kunti, and Vidura (omitted from all Brook versions) have gone to live their last days in the forest. The Pan- davas, with their wives and courtiers, go out to meet them there, and spend over a month, before Vyasa arrives. Upon his arrival, Vyasa offers the blind Dhritarashtra a boon, and Gandhari, with her bandaged eyes, asks Vyasa to let Dhritarashtra, Draupadi, Subhadra, and others see their sons and husbands, who all died at Kurukshetra. Vyasa blesses Gandhari and says she will see her sons. He uses his ascetic power to make all the slain warriors rise in their resplendent bodies from the waters of the Ganges, and he gives Dhritarashtra the boon of celestial vision so that he can see his sons as well. When the vision is gone, Vyasa then enables those whose husbands have died to join them in heaven. The Pandavas take their last, sad farewell of their elders (only Dhritarashtra and the two women remain, Vidura having merged into Dharma-Yudhishthira), and soon after they have left, the three walk knowingly toward the forest fire that consumes them.

This is a summary of a fairly long and moving episode. Let us see what Carriere and Brook have done with it.

Kunti, Dhritarashtra, and Gandhari find themselves by a river, an un- named river. Gandhari sighs. Dhritarashtra asks whether she is sad, and she says the smells remind her of her childhood. Dhritarashtra says she must regret the home she left to marry, and their marriage:

3. The Kattiyankaran, Shiva (disguised as the rishi Cankumar and

played by R.S. Natara-

jan), and Narada. Shiva comes in disguise to

confirm Narada's asser- tion that Kripi has a

beauty mark which Shiva thought was to be found only on his own

wife Parvati: a fish- shaped mole on her right thigh. (Photo by Alf Hiltebeitel)

148 Alf Hiltebeitel

DHRITARASHTRA: You were cheated. You were married with- out being told I was blind. I destroyed your life.

GANDHARI: At first you thought that I couldn't hold out, that I'd take off the band. You could have ordered me to take it off. You were the king, you could have said to me, "At least look at your children." But you never said it.

DHRITARASHTRA: I felt your anger. I always felt it close to me. I still feel it. (Gandhari says nothing.) Our life is nearly over. Take off your band.

GANDHARI: No.

DHRITARASHTRA: You can't die with your eyes closed. Take off your band. It's an order. (Gandhari stands but does not take off the band.) Have you taken it off?

GANDHARI: Yes.

DHRITARASHTRA: What can you see?

GANDHARI: I can't see anything clearly. My eyes must get ac- customed to the light.

DHRITARASHTRA: And now?

GANDHARI: Yes, I begin to distinguish shapes, trees, the sky, two birds go by. (She goes to Kunti.) It's you, Kunti?

KUNTI: Yes, it's me.

GANDHARI: I've never seen you.

KUNTI: I've never known the look in your eyes. (Gandhari cries.) GANDHARI: Ah!

DHRITARASHTRA: What?

GANDHARI: I've just seen a whole army rise from the river. All my sons, smiling, their wounds healed, reconciled. An immense wave of men, all white, mounting into the air. I can't see them anymore. The river is quietly closing again.

DHRITARASHTRA: There's a fire somewhere in the forest.

Vyasa does not figure here. The Pandavas and Draupadi are not present. It is not Gandhari who asks something from Dhritarashtra, that he be able to see his sons, but Dhritarashtra who asks something of Gandhari, that she be willing just to see again, but really that she forgive him. The sight of the slain warriors rising from the river of salvation has become but a moment's vision behind her blindfolded eyes. But what else is new here? The touching scene between the two women. The answer to a question that the Sanskrit epic leaves unanswered (a new growth upon the crystal): Dhritarashtra got his boon, but how did Gandhari see her sons? Did she take off her blindfold? The Sanskrit epic does not answer this question. She just saw them. As Carriere and Brook realized, it is "left to the imagination."

But most of all, what is new here is a closing meditation on childhood, children, motherhood, and death. We know it is Gandhari's scene when

Mahabharatas 149

Dhritarashtra says, "You can't die with your eyes closed," just as we know it is Draupadi's scene when she so "beautifully" asks her "older brother" Krishna how Duryodhana could have died with a closed fist.

What, then, should we think of the fact that the Brook Mahabharata will be at least for some time the way most Americans are introduced to India's "great epic"?

For Americans, a Mahabharata for the First Time

What, then, should we think of the fact that the Brook Mahabharata will be at least for some time the way most Americans are introduced to India's "great epic"?

First of all, a word is in order on the original live performance. I enjoyed the two stage productions I saw: first in Los Angeles and then in Brooklyn. What I liked most was the open eye and ear it gave to so many varied Mahabharatas, whether from texts, other dramas, scholarly insights, or oral traditions; its character as a work in progress. I would love to have an annotated account of the sources that Brook and Carriere drew on. Folkloric sources, for instance, are evident at several points: the women on battlefield; the fish target for Karna at the tournament; the washing of Draupadi's hair in Duhshasana's chest blood. For an epic in which women hardly ever talk to other women, the drama has invented beautiful exchanges between Draupadi and Amba, and, as just cited, be- tween Kunti and Gandhari. What I liked most about those first two viewings was the excitement I felt as I was kept guessing. There was this excitement and uncertainty regarding many levels of the production: the choice and handling of episodes, sequencing, staging, decor, costuming, and props, but above all, language. In viewing the play, one had the feeling that one was viewing something open, unfinished, and very much alive. As Carriere tells us, "When rehearsals began, in September 1984, the play was written, but there was as yet no definitive structure. Throughout the nine months of rehearsal, incessant changes were made" (Brook and Carriere I987:ix). So often Carriere found a brilliant way both to distill an epic speech, phrase, or image, and at the same time make something new out of it.

Regrettably, barring unforeseen revivals, the nine-hour drama will not be an option again for American audiences. The published script of the drama, as translated by Brook (Carriere and Brook I987), will be all that remains of it. It will be the best source for introducing the Brook Mahabharata as fully conceived, but even it lacks some memorable epi- sodes that were done onstage: the death of Jayadratha, very finely ren- dered, and sadly to be missed in all remaining versions; and a scene too transparently evocative of nuclear war, which the ruthless New York critics may have thankfully convinced Brook to drop (see, for example, Dasgupta 1987:115; Simon 1987:110; see also Bharucha I990:I o).

The six-hour video and three-hour film versions will thus be the likely means of introduction. Though the two are edited from the same footage,

I50 Alf Hiltebeitel

they are very different. The video version has more of the feel of the drama, but of the drama having been squeezed. The cinema version pares the story down to what might be called "The Tragedy of Karna and Duryodhana." Brook's Shakespearean instincts seem to have been set free in this version and, of the two, I like it the best for that reason. In limiting the story to a double tragedy, it takes advantage of the two most forceful young male actors in the company-George Corraface as Duryodhana and Jeffery Kissoon as Karna-for the larger-than-life close-ups.

But neither the cinema nor the video version matches the drama's openness; its live, experimental quality; its imaginativeness. It would seem that with the exception of the verses chosen to portray the Bhagavad Gita-on which Brook wisely consulted with Barbara Stoler Miller, who provided him with the improved Gita text-there was little or no new research on the epic, no rethinking based on epic sources, for the cinema or television versions. Rather, the changes made for cinema and TV were concessions to timing. This did not discourage changing the epic story to effect new transitions, some of which-notably, the Kicaka episode-are amusing and reasonably successful. But it did mean terminating the flow of inspiration from the epic in favor of inspiration from the cutting table. Rather than the amplitude and continued creative experimentation that characterized the nine-hour drama's engagement with the Mahabharata, one is left with these shorter versions that, unfortunately, give the sense of a final, and much diminished, form.

To characterize the imagining of the Brook Mahabharata more gener- ally, however, we should begin with some sense of what it was trying to do. Brook and his company took on a daunting double challenge. In Brook's words, they sought not only to "suggest the flavor" of India but to "find a way of bringing this mSterial into our world and sharing these stories with an audience in the West" (Carriere and Brook I987:xvi, xiv).

Now, Brook and his company clearly did take in plenty of India, and of Indian Mahabharatas. Although Indian reviewers are divided on the amount of Indian "flavor" Brook captured,13 I would say there was at least one way in which he was remarkably successful. This is in the repeated, innovative use of the elements fire, earth, and water on the stage: firebrands, circles of fire; the cracked earth clay floor; the onstage pool. The first thing to note, however, is that these elements, especially in the way they interrelate-as they do in Indian cosmogonies, temples, landscapes, and homes-virtually disappear in the cinema and television versions. These versions attempt to make up for this loss by introducing new indicators of Indianness: notably the earthern cavelike setting which the Boy enters at the beginning and leaves at the end, having thus heard the entire story in a sort of cave; and by an increased use of Indian icons, mantras, and background songs in Sanskrit. The cave setting, however, leans on a risky cliche, reminding one of A Passage to India (though, of course, it might remind us also of certain pits and tunnels). The songs and mantras work better than the icons, which are not identified, and are in any case anachronistic.

As to "sharing these stories with the West," and with Westernized international audiences, I will discuss three Indian complexes that Brook and Carriere clearly determined to simplify for Western sensibilities: the reincarnation-caste-lifestage-goals complex, the lunar dynasty-cosmic time complex, and the theological complex that centers on Krishna.

Mahabharatas I5I

As Bharucha has observed, Brook and Carriere clearly made a choice: to render a Mahabharata that had something to do with Westerners' lives, it would be necessary to eliminate wherever possible any reference to reincarnation and caste (I990:99-IOI). The same would seem to apply to such configurations as the four life stages (student, householder, forest- dweller, and renunciant) and the four purusharthas or goals of human life (love, wealth, righteousness, and salvation). These normative Hindu themes are all woven through Indian Mahabharatas. It is, of course, im- possible to omit them entirely and still have much of a Mahabharata, so exceptions were left to remain. Amba must reincarnate as Shikhandin.14 Though one never hears of life stages, everyone does grow older-20 years at a time. The first three goals of life-desire, wealth, and dharma-find appropriate voices, but no one seems to entertain the goal of moksha, salvation. Finally, as to caste, Parashurama cannot effectively fulminate against Kshatriyas unless he is also evidently a Brahman; Karna cannot be humiliated at the tournament where he first challenges the Pandavas unless it is mentioned that he is a Suta, a "driver's" son. Where only such exceptions remain, however, they have no frame of reference, no resonances with other similar figures in the drama. For instance, it is misleading that Ekalavya, Drona, and Ashvatthaman are portrayed as if their caste didn't matter.

Carriere's script does supply enough references to cyclical time and the concept of ages (yugas) for one to know that they form a backdrop to the tale. But the connection between this cosmic backcloth and the Kauravas and Pandavas' dynasty, the Lunar Dynasty (a term never used), has no articulation whatsoever. The fact that this dynasty has a particular cosmic and salvific significance is lost to us. In its place, the rivalry between the Kauravas and Pandavas provides the occasion for a discourse about "history" and the continuation of a "race."

The term "race" occurs repeatedly and inappropriately in places where

"dynasty," "dynastic line," "family," or "lineage" would be fitting. The "race" involved would presumably be "Aryan," which raises some dis- turbing questions. In any case, it is misleading. It is a discourse about the

"saving of a race," which is paradoxical since, while it has nothing to do with precolonial India, it is presented through a Mahabharata with a multiracial cast. In typical colonialist terms, race stands in for caste as a means of rendering Indian social and historical dynamics intelligible. No doubt Brook is trying to say that all men are brothers, and that the race saved is the human race. But the message gets tangled up by the distor- tions of the Indian terms.

It is "history," however, that most transforms the tale. In the opening wraparound of the television version, Brook tells us, "It's real historical fact transformed into myth." Now, to call the Mahabharata "the poetical history of mankind" is a striking image. But to insist that it devolves from "real historical fact" is at best controversial, and at worst irrele-

vantly linear. And when Ganesha describes Shiva as "the destroyer, the

burning Shiva always present when history ends" (Carriere and Brook

I987:40), the distortion has virtually become Biblical. As Bharucha points out, a strained linearity is also imposed through the drama's three parts, supplying a beginning, middle, and end. "If Brook had given some im-

portance to the cyclical nature of time that pervades the Mahabharata, he would have rejected the validity of dramatizing the epic in a predomi-

4. Kripi (R.S. Natara- jan) welcomes her guests and offers to feed them. Shiva (R.S. Mayakrish- nan) demands that Kripi serve him rice and serve it naked so that he can see the fish-shaped mole in her thigh. This per- formance was done on 16 April 1982. (Photo by Christopher Welbon)

nantly linear narrative. Nothing could be more foreign to the Mahabharata than linearity" (I990:1o4-105)-or, as Richard Schechner has suggested, an Aristotelian sense of closure (199I).

The Boy descendant brings these issues into focus. He hears of the salvation of his "race," and of his ancestors' past as the "poetical history of mankind." But we aren't told who he is, whereas we are informed about the corresponding figures in the Mahabharata, Parikshit and Jana- mejaya.15 Unlike them, he supplies no story or stories within which to tell "the" story, to frame the main story with the reflexive symbolism of Janamejaya's snake sacrifice, which Janamejaya performs to avenge Parikshit's death by snakebite, and at which, like the Boy, he hears the Mahabharata of his ancestors. Rather than being a near descendant of the Kauravas and Pandavas like Parikshit (Arjuna's grandson) or Janamejaya (Parikshit's son), the Boy learns that it is only after "centuries and centu- ries" that he descends from Uttara, Parikshit's mother (Carriere and Brook 1987:230; also in the TV version). Rather than sharing the same symbolic ritual world as his forebears, performing a snake sacrifice that recalls their sacrifice of battle, the Boy has become everyman. He has become us-with our historicized, racialized consciousness, removed from the story by "centuries and centuries" rather than by a recent turn- ing of the yugas.

Similarly, but from the other end of time, Brook's Arjuna says to the beautiful Apsaras Urvashi, "I respect you like a mother," as the reason he won't make love to her. But we are not told why she is "like a mother" to him: that she is his hyper-great grandmother, having been, near the dawn of time and near the beginning of the Lunar Dynasty, the

Mahabharatas I53

wife of his remote ancestor Pururavas. This episode is of course meant to explain why Arjuna is cursed to become a eunuch. But the motivation is reduced to the plane of Urvashi's lust-she could have come from

anywhere, though not any time-and Arjuna's ascetic resolve. Indian idioms of collapsible time and stories within stories are thus reduced to

linearity and psychology. Finally, there is the theological complex centered on Krishna. James L.

Fitzgerald, who found Brook's Krishna disturbingly "incorrect," puts it this way:

The Sanskrit Mahabharata represented a divine will responsible for the war and a divine form with a majesty commensurate to the war's horror. [Brook's] Mahabharata has forsaken that theology. Krishna's role here, the claims made about him and by him, his re- lationship to the Pandavas and his manipulation of events leading up to and through the war never crystalize into a single pattern of sense. Krishna's cunning is here only a scandal. The evil of this war is unredeemed. This Mahabharata seems to have no point. It seems to be only a perverse tale of misadventure, of puzzling doom. (Fitzgerald 1987:13)

Fitzgerald argues that the Brook-Carriere script "dissolves the subliminal support the Mahabharata gives to its central ethical argument that the awesome cosmic continuum that the epic heroes, that we, inhabit is the locus of our 'salvation' even as it is the locus of our agonizing finitude" (I7). If, as I have argued, "salvation" is omitted from the goals of life and, in another sense, from the mission of the Lunar Dynasty; if the "awesome cosmic continuum" is reduced to a "realer" history; then the epic's "central ethical argument" for war, which is propounded above all by Krishna, leaves us with a Krishna who can only be "completely enigmatic and elusive" (I2; see especially Carriere and Brook 1987: 107-o8, 23I).

I agree with Fitzgerald. One of the main ways that Indian Mahabharata traditions sustain their theological complexity is by not centering them- selves on one theological strand to the detraction of other deities in the Hindu devotional universe. The Brook-Carriere Mahabharata, on the con- trary, gives us a virtually monotheistic Mahabharata. Yes, other gods are mentioned where they need to be: the Pandavas' sires; Brahma and vari- ous divine classes who are said to appear from Krishna's body during his Kaurava court theophany; the invisible Dharma questioning Yudhishthira by the poisoned pond. And some gods even appear as characters: Ganesha, as scribe; the Sun, to sire Karna; Shiva, to reward Arjuna's tapas; Hanuman, to thwart Bhima's mountain quest for a flower to give to Draupadi (though not in the TV version). But their appearances are unintelligible. We come to know only the bare minimum about them, and nothing about their relation to Krishna. In all such matters, the script reduces theological complexity to the minimum. Only in one quite lovely scene do Carriere and Brook reimagine the story with a new theological complexity. This is when Ganesha's elephant head turns out to have been but a mask for Krishna. Here the message could not be clearer: there is only one divine presence from beginning to end.16

This is a severe theological shortcut through the Mahabharata. What has been systematically omitted-except in the teasing indications that Krishna might be an avatar of Vishnu-is the epic's treatment of the theme

154 Alf Hiltebeitel

5. When Drona, Kripi, Ashvatthaman (played by a baby plucked fom the audience), and Kat-

tiyankaran return from the river, Drona finds Kripi's story hard to be- lieve. After she serves the rice, Shiva, seeing herfish-shaped mole, ejaculates in the rice and leaves with Narada.

Kripi then orders her ser- vant (the Kattiyankaran) to feed the semen-rice to a mare. The mare gives birth to Ashvattha- man . . . all in the time it takes for Drona's

morning bath. (Photo by Alf Hiltebeitel)

of avatarana and its connection with the lifting of the goddess Earth's burden.17 In the Sanskrit epic, and in countless reiterations in the teruk- kuttu, the goddess Earth goes to Vishnu to appeal that he relieve her of the burden of sustaining the demons who have been born in human form upon her. When Vishnu takes the form of Krishna in response, it is part of a vast descent of the divine and demonic into human form that includes nearly every major figure in the epic poem. Thus not only are the divine births of the Pandavas and Karna part of this avatarana, so are many important "descents" that the Brook Mahabharata deems dispensable. As we just saw in the terukkuttu, the Kauravas are incarnate Rakshasas; Ashvatthaman is the incarnation of a portion of Rudra-Shiva; Draupadi is the incarnation of Shri; and so on.

The Carriere script includes the burden of the earth theme. Krishna tells Yudhishthira, "I heard the earth complain." We don't learn that it was as Vishnu that he, Krishna, heard the earth. What did the earth say? "Men have become arrogant. Every day they give me fresh wounds. There are more and more of them, ever more violent, driven by thoughts of conquest. Foolish men trample me. I shudder and I ask myself: 'What will they do next?'" There is no indication that the arrogant men include incarnate demons. Yudhishthira then asks, "What can save the earth?" And Krishna tells him that he has heard from his spies and from the earth herself that only a just king-that is, Yudhishthira-can do so (Carriere and Brook I987:41-42). The rescuing of the earth lies not in the hands of the descended gods but of a virtuous, demythologized, and decontex- tualized king.

Mahabharatas I5 5

In the same vein, when Ashvatthaman slays Draupadi's children, he tells Duryodhana that "the god welded this sword to my hand and infused my body with his power" (Carriere and Brook 1987:223). Which god? We are denied the knowledge that it is Shiva. Instead of recognizing the important link between Ashvatthaman and Shiva, the Brook Mahabharata eliminates it.

Finally, as regards Draupadi, we never hear of her birth from fire, her incarnation of Shri, her many affinities with Krishna, or her family of origin, the Panchalas. That she is the sister of the phantomlike Dhrishta- dyumna is acknowledged only in a line added to the cinema and TV versions. We never hear that she is also the sister of Shikhandin, or what motivates the three of them as members of one family. Without all this, when Draupadi makes her first appearance to join hands with the Pan- davas in marriage, the scene can only be gimmicky. And so is the appar- ent attempt to belatedly reassemble some of the fragmented story in the announcer's introduction to each of the three TV parts, before Brook's wraparounds, which tells us, against a screen filled with flames, that "a fiery and courageous woman pledges support to five brothers."

It is above all the downplaying of Shiva and the goddess that allows the Brook Mahabharata to be misleadingly monotheistic. This brings me to one last set of issues concerning Krishna. When I first saw Brook's nine-hour drama in Los Angeles in October 1987, despite savoring every minute, I knew quickly that this Krishna disappointed me. I formulated my feelings to my companions-fellow Mahabharata scholars James Fitz- gerald and Bruce Sullivan-as follows: He's not blue, and he never smiles. Perhaps we must do without a blue (or green) Krishna, though I'd never seen one before. As far as I know, no Indian Mahabharata ever asks Krishna why he's blue. But on the international stage, it would be a distraction, and our "everyman" Boy would probably find it irresistible to ask the question, which is best left unanswered. But I don't think we can do without a Krishna who never smiles. I don't think we can do without a Krishna who is beautiful, or who makes us aware of some aspect of his beauty.18

Upon closer examination, my impression that Brook's Krishna never smiles must be qualified. In the Carriere script, he is supposed to smile twice. When the screen is held before him for his theophany in the Kuru court, he is supposed to be smiling, while Bhishma describes him as "laughing" (Carriere and Brook 1987:146). He does not, however, smile at this point in the TV production. And at the death of Ghatotkacha, he is supposed to seem joyful and dance (192), which we do see him doing on TV: actually laughing, while dancing with two firebrands, and ex- plaining to Arjuna, "To preserve your life, I sent him to his death. To- night I am breathing in joy. I was born to destroy the destroyers and I became your friend out of love for the world" (I92). Finally, there is a slight glimmer of a smile when Krishna delivers the Gita.

These are all appropriate moments for the divine smile, though it may be noted that they are limited to scenes implying destruction. The point is, they are not enough. And given their destructive contexts and implica- tions, they only reinforce the impression that this is not only not a less than beautiful Krishna, but a world-weary, dour, and even sinister Krishna.

Let us take our cue from scenes of innovation, where the story is reimaged. Krishna takes on new machinations, and not only in word but in deed: telling Bhishma to be silent at the dice match (leading to the disrobing of Draupadi), and transporting the arrow that finally fells

156 Alf Hiltebeitel

Bhishma (in effect, violating Krishna's promise to be a noncombatant). If one is to make Krishna responsible for more than he already is, there should be a theological purpose. The Brook-Carriere innovations only make Krishna more inexplicably and unpleasantly puzzling.

Let me then conclude with the following observations. First, Brook admits to intending his Mahabharata for Western audiences. Granting that this is a valid objective, we can say that to the degree, and in the ways, that this is done well, he has succeeded, and in the ways he has done it badly, he has failed. I would say that of the three areas just discussed, the success is of a diminishing order. I would sense that enough of the caste-lifestage-reincarnation complex is hinted at for a Western audience to grasp that it is getting a simplified version, for which it can pursue the matter elsewhere if interested. But Brook's racialization, linearization, and theological narrowness are embedded in the story as intended recod- ings of what the Mahabharata is about. To my mind, they fail to present anything "authentic" or "Indian" about the Mahabharata.

Finally, one must decide for oneself whether there is a connection be- tween the divided India of Brook's Indian travels and research-divided between rich and poor, between contacts and the contacted, between high and low, between the cosmopolitan centers of elites and the performers and audiences of villages-and the "flavor of India" that emerges from his Mahabharata. To my mind, there certainly is, and it is not simply a matter of elites and non-elites, indeed, of orientalizing, exoticizing, enigmatizing, and recolonializing. At bottom, the Mahabharata presents an image of unity, reconciliation, and, according to Abhinavagupta, has the "flavor" (rasa) of peace. In Indonesian shadow puppet theatre, all Mahabharata episodes close with the image of the world tree, in which dualities are resolved. Brook's Mahabharatas show a movement away from such a vision, as can be glimpsed from the ways his different ver- sions are brought to closure. The original play followed the Sanskrit Mahabharata with a beautiful scene of the reconciliation of the heroes in heaven. The cinema version, however, ends with the enigmatic death of Krishna, with the Boy running out of time to ask the dying god ques- tions. And the TV version ends just before the final reconciliation, with Yudhishthira brooding in an underworld mist at the injustice of the Kau- ravas' enjoying heaven while his brothers and Draupadi remain momen- tarily in hell. These enigmatic, brooding, existentializing endings are Brook's, not the Mahabharata's. To my mind, they are the outcome of a Mahabharata that has increasingly lost touch not only with the text, but with the flavor of a culture that finds in that text images of peace, reconcil- iation, and unity-images that could nowhere have been appreciated bet- ter than in the terukkuttu dramas Brook interrupted.

Notes

i. The scholar in question was Philip Lavastine (Carriere and Brook I987:vii, xiv). A.K. Ramanujan's words are irresistible here: "In India and Southeast Asia, no one ever reads the Ramayana or the Mahabharata for the first time. The stories are there, 'always already"' (1991:46).

2. My only other involvement with the project was to work with Barbara Stoler Miller, Brook's principal scholarly consultant on the epic, as one of four others who met under a National Endowment for the Humanities grant as consultants on transforming the stage Mahabharata to television format. This group met once in the summer of I988. Neither Brook nor any of his representatives was present.

Mahabharatas I57

3. It was probably during the same I983 tour that Brook and his party, which in- cluded actors, went to Kerala and West Bengal (see Zarrilli 1986:92).

4. From here to the end of this paragraph, I have inserted from later in the tape Rajan's response to my question about how much the actors were paid. Bharucha

(I990: 18-19) raises the important Orientalist issue of who "leads" whom in con- nection with Phillip Zarrilli's interview ofProbir Guha (Zarrilli 1986, also concern-

ing Brook's 1983 tour). Bharucha cites the dancer Awanthi Meduri's criticism that, "By guiding the conversations with Guha, putting leading questions to him, Zar- rilli in fact became Guha's spokesman. [. . .] In trying to vindicate us thus, he made us victims." Comments Bharucha, "It would have been better if Guha had addressed his own people in India, using his own language." Bharucha also tells of his conversation with "a very intelligent, Marxist critic [...] personally humili- ated by Brook-he was shaking with rage as he told me his story." Asked what he did, he said: "'Nothing. What to do? He's our guest"' (II8).

As regards what is transcribed here, Rajan's main narrative of events at Pakkiri-

palaiyam was delivered without lead questions. The only points affecting this ac- count at which I "led" him were to suggest that he start with the first meeting with Estienne, to jog his memory about events at Mahabalipuram, and to ask about payment of the actors. Rajan was in no hurry to tell me this story, and although he agreed with me that it should be told, and accepted that I would "re-present" it and him, he would surely not have done it this way on his own. It would indeed be better were I translating something he had said or written in his own language, to his own people. Though he had certainly not been silent among family and friends, like the Marxist critic, he had the ready category of the

"guest" in which to put the matter behind him. His English on the tape sometimes

attempts a formal, rhetorical, and literary tone, as if he knew he would be quoted. 5. Rajan says just after this that they left for the other hamlet at I0:00 or 11:00 P.M.

It would make sense if he meant that he left for the hamlet at one of those times, and for Mahabalipuram at midnight (see below). But the tape does not make this clear.

6. According to Bharucha (I990:II8), Brook's Indian sponsors included the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, the Handicrafts and Handlooms Exports Corpora- tion, and Air India.

7. As mentioned earlier in connection with the play Drona's Sacrificial Hall, Ashvattha- man is born from Shiva's sperm.

8. The five things Duryodhana should have done were: sacrifice Aravan; have Karna release his "fourth missile" (obscure); finish the recitation of his "mantra of regen- eration" (canjivi mantiram) while under the lake, before his final duel with Bhima; make Ashvatthaman marshal earlier; and get Vidura to fight with his powerful bow, which Vidura had broken when Duryodhana once taunted him because he had offered to feast the Pandavas.

9. If Duryodhana had managed to revive his army with his canjivi mantiram, Arjuna would have destroyed it with his pashupata weapon; had Nakula ever used his "sword of wisdom," he would have destroyed a whole army in a single day; Bhima had a danda (rod) weapon he never used; Yudhishthira had a "moon-faced Shakti arrow" that he used only to kill Shalya, but which would have killed everybody had he used it earlier. Sahadeva's weapon is not described.

io. From a panel on the Brook Mahabharata at the Asia House, New York City, 31 October 1987.

ii. See Hiltebeitel (1991:418-20). In the ballad Aravalli Curavalli Katai, first the fight with the two Rakshasis of the title is called a Paratam, and then Draupadi says at the end, "Till the end of the Kaliyuga, your story will be remembered. People will consider it as Paratam."

12. The television version now includes two reminders of terukkuttu that I don't remember from either the live performance or the film: Draupadi holding a flame lamp for each of the Pandavas, coming forth, to hold his hands over; and Abhi- manyu's death-dance, his legs drawn back behind him so that he can look, ac- cording to the terukkuttu, like a pestle grinding enemies on a mortar (Hiltebeitel g988a:402-o4).

158 Alf Hiltebeitel

13. Bharucha (I990:98-99) faults Brook for not sensing the nuances of "flavor" (rasa) itself in India (especially in cooking and aesthetics). Others complained about the costumes, the music, the mispronunciations of Sanskrit names, including Mahabharata.

I4. In a significant mistake found in the television version, but not in the published script of the theatre version, Amba is said to be the youngest of the three sisters abducted by Bhisma rather than the oldest. Amba, literally "mother" and a name for the goddess, is, as the unmarriageable "mother" (amba), the fitting antagonist of Bhishma, the unmarriageable "grandfather," at the heart of the Kuru lineage. Their irreconcilability foreshadows all the forthcoming disasters, since it leaves Dhritarashtra and Pandu, the children of Amba's two younger sisters, Ambika and Ambalika, as the heirs to the divided throne.

I5. Like Parikshit, the Boy is singled out by Krishna as having descended, somewhat miraculously, from Abhimanyu's wife Uttara (Carriere and Brook 1987:30); like Janamejaya, the Boy hears the story.

16. This is literally the case in the cinema version, which ends with the death of Krishna.

17. The text is elusive as to whether Krishna incarnates Vishnu (Carriere and Brook 1987:40, Io8).

I8. Bharucha sees matters differently: "We know that the Krishna of the Mahabharata does not belong to the bhakti tradition, but is it possible to imagine any Krishna without charisma?" (1990:106). For me, the Mahabharata and Ramayana are found- ing texts of the bhakti tradition.

References

Bharucha, Rustom 1990 "Peter Brook's Mahabharata: A View from India." In Theatre and the

World: Essays on Performance and Politics of Culture, 94-120. New Delhi: South Asia Publications.

Carman, John Braisted 1974 The Theology of Ramanuja: An Essay in Interreligious Understanding. New

Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Carriere, Jean-Claude, and Peter Brook 1987 The Mahabharata. Translated by Peter Brook. New York: Harper and

Row.

Dasgupta, Gautam 1987 "Rites and Wrongs." The Village Voice, October: III, II5-I6.

Fitzgerald, James L. 1987 "RE: The Mahabharata. . .". (Unpublished review of Carriere and Brook

I985 and of a performance of the nine-hour drama in Los Angeles).

Frasca, Richard Armando I990 The Theatre of the Mahabharata: Terukkuttu Performances in South India.

Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Hiltebeitel, Alf I988a The Cult of Draupadi. Vol. I, Mythologies: From Gingee to Kuruksetra.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press. i988b Director, Lady of Gingee: South Indian Draupadi Festivals, Parts I and 2.

Videotape. Washington, DC: George Washington University. Distrib- uted through University of Wisconsin South Asia Center.

1991 The Cult of Draupadi, Vol. 2, On Hindu Ritual and the Goddess. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Mahabharatas 59

Ramanujan, A.K. 1991 "Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on

Translation." In Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia, edited by Paula Richman, 22-49. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Schechner, Richard 1991 Personal communication.

Simon, John 1987 "A Jungle Grows in Brooklyn." New York Magazine, 2 November:

IIO-II.

Zarrilli, Phillip, ed. 1986 "The Aftermath: When Peter Brook Came to India." TDR 30, no. I

(TIo9):92-99.

AlfHiltebeitel is a professor in the Department of Religion at George Washing- ton University. He has written a two volume work on The Cult of Draupadi, published by the University of Chicago Press in 1988 and 1991. He edited the book Criminal Gods and Demon Devotees: Essays on the Guardians of Popular Hinduism (SUNY Press, 1989). Professor Hiltebeitel's current work is focused on the Indian epic and popular Hinduism.

TDReading

There have been several articles in TDR about Brook's Mahabha- rata. See the cluster of articles and interviews with Brook and his co-workers in vol. 30, no. I (TIo9), Spring I986. In that same issue, Phillip Zarrilli and Deborah Neff interviewed Probir Guha about Brook's "cultural imperialism." The matter was further ex- plored in a set of letters by Zarrilli, Neff, and Avanthi Meduri in vol. 32, no. 2 (TII8), Summer 1988. For another story regarding terukkuttu, see Rakesh Solomon's review of Richard Frasca's book in this issue of TDR.