re-conceptualizing ‘change’: a breakage in need-desire economy

7/29/2019 Re-conceptualizing Change: a Breakage in Need-Desire Economy

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Re-conceptualizing Change: a Breakage in Need-Desire Economy

A study of the Conflicting Complicity of Garhapatya & Yati in the Ashrama

System ofThe Mahbhrata

Anirban Bhattacharjee

Abstract:

[The article proposes a re-reading of the ashramasystem of the Mahbhrata lookedthrough the lens of need/desire economy and ventures into the process how the

economy of the need has constantly been produced for ages to uphold the older scheme

of Brahmanical society, governed by some sacred laws of the Samhitasand a network

of elaborate rituals catalogued in the Purva Mimamsa. Mahbhrata offers incessant

panegyrics to the order of the householder which has been considered as the best

ashramain the Dharmasutrasand Smrititexts. Performing Nitya, Naimittikand Kamya

karmas in the Brahmanical system is being adjudged as a metaphysical ploy of

continuing social reproduction as it is crucially predicated upon the exception of auto-

direction of action. The entire system seems to have a deep antipathy toward the

renouncer. In the Laws of Manu and Koutilyas Arthasastra too, the stage of yati or

sannyashas been treated with a ploy of deference. The figure of the Bhikshuor Yati,

therefore, points toward a breakage within the mutually implicated structure of

need/desire economy and stands out as a threat to the existing politic of family, society

and the state. It is one episode in the entire Mahbhrata that probes into this

mechanism behind the ascetic rejection of societal attempts to convert asceticism into

an institution of old age and reflects on this gesture of negation that has its umbilical

relation to the Shraman revolution in India, ushering in a veritable change in the

hierarchised orthodox Brahmanical system. My article attempts to unfold how a

Sannyasins desire for denial in praise of solitude and salvation operates as an aporic

fissure emerging out of the structural complicity of the need/desire economy. It offers

an analysis of this aporetic moment that can disintegrate the incessant process of

(re)production [of ones self], leading to a qualitative change in the sphere of social,

cultural and political economy.]


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pfZ pkS pMu pjew hrw floSaz 1

jL Efeocz 3/1/1

The Mudaka Upanishad, one of the most important post-Buddhist Upanishads, meant for

Sannyasins that incessantly throws a flood of light on thejnana marga and leads the aspirant

to the highest rung in the ladder-hhchh iha [3z2z9]-offers a graphic description of the

nature of human existence: Two birds living together, each the friend of the other, perch

upon the same tree. Of these two, one eats the sweet fruitof the tree, but the other simply

looks on without eating. 2 The individual (bird) affected by Avidya, Kama and Karma is

drowned in grief and it is his/her feeling of impotency and a lack that motivates variable

forms of desires and actions leading to corresponding results; a fresh misery is added to the

pre-existing lot.However, from the commonest standpoint, the entirety of the individuals

experience, now and then connected with and separated from the objects of its desire,

actuates the whole universe of manifestation.But when all the effects of merit and demerit

of actions are burned up by the fire of knowledge and the universe is realized to be the same

as the essence of the spiritual infinite, the individual self with-draws from attachments and

sorrows into renunciation, meditation and wisdom, unhampered by any function alien to the

nature of the Self. While journeying across the tempestuous sea toward the coast of Japan,

Rabindranath, dazzled by the wild beauty of the landscape happened to ponder over this

figurative expression of the Mudaka Upanishad to convey the simple mass of bliss he thenexperienced in his voyage:Efeoc mMR, HL Xm cC fM BR, al jd HL fM Mu, Bl HL

fM cMzk fM cMR alC Bec hs Bec zLee al p h Bec, j Bec zje ol jdC HC

cC fM BRz HL fMl fuSe BR, Bl HL fMl fuSe eCzHL fM iN Ll, Bl HL fM cMz-

--iN fM k pj EfLlZ eu LS LlR, a fdea hCll EfLlZzBl fMl EfLlZ qR Bj-

fcbz3 [He wrote that these two birds actually inhabit all human beings the bird which

simply looks on is one that is merged in an unfettered delight of itself the bird with a

vision inheres anI-substance always within itself.] Rabindranath brilliantly argues that the

deepest human desire is to track this I-substance in its a-destinal wandering across mutating

bodies, to realize it-Self in its fullness and entirety. Indeed, the very existence of the

phenomenal world, in the Upanishadic vein, presupposes a cosmic desire that gives birth

to all things, moving and unmoving-p Dra mLeepS Caz [Ialu Efeoc] 1z1z1z4Again

in formulating a theory of desire in human being Rabindranath wrote cC CR, latter

published in a collection of essays titled fbl pu [1912].5 In his formulationthe economy

of desire immediately incorporates a corresponding notion, the idea of human need; though


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there is a generic tension in conceptualizing these closely connected categories, the

problematic involves separate registers of definition. Desire implies one wants something as

s/he is wanting in it and need is the impulsion to conserve what you already have. In the

Bhagavad-Gita, a technical term is used to capture the inter-play of this co-constitutive

binary, i.e.kNrj [9/22]---kNx Afp ffZw rjrZw [nwLl io] 6-acquisition of the new

and preservation of the old. 7

The fantastic binarisation of the need/desire economy basically voices the strongest desire of

man- his desire for immortality which is empirically impossible and logically fallacious.

Socrates speech in Platos Symposium offers a veritable solution to this ontological problem

in terms of an epistemological connivance. The speech starts with the results of Socrates

discourse with Agathon in which the nature of Love is seen to be a striving based upon a

lack (201e, cf 201b d). 8 In this narrative performance Diotima brilliantly posits the

mythos concerning the genesis of Love: on the occasion of celebrating the birth of

Aphrodite, a banquet was given. This brought the god Plenty and later the goddess Poverty

(203b).9During the course of the drinking, Poverty seduced Plenty and conceived Eros, who

partakes of the natures of its parents; he takes after his mother in having need as a constant

companion. From his father, however, he gets his ingenuity in going after things of beauty

and value, his courage, impetuosity and desire for knowledge [203 d].10

The erotic object istherefore structured by an incomplete irresoluteness that strives for the permanent

possession of goodness along with immortality and it does so through a beautiful medium

(207a). 11 This erotic activity can take place either within the body or within the soul. In the

former case we have temporal duration through family genesis or popular fame and in the

latter case we can give birth to fairer and more deathless children (209 c). 12 In fact, the

question of unrequited narcissism that inheres a structural need operates always with a

certain kind of displacement. But any breakage within the mutually implicated structure of

need/desire economy can immediately disintegrate the incessant process of (re)production

[of ones self] and would stand out as a threat to family, society and the state.

Now we would venture into the process how this economy of need is being produced to

uphold the older scheme of Brahmanical society of the Mahbhrata, governed by some

sacred laws of the Samhitas and a network of elaborate rituals catalogued in the Purva


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Mimamsa, in which the principal protagonist is none else but the twice-born householder.

Indeed the word ashrama, as Pandurang Vaman Kane has brilliantly observed, does not

occur in the samhitas and the Brahmans. 13 But this cannot be stretched to mean that the

stages of life denoted by this word in the sutras were unknown throughout the Vedic period.

From the times of most ancientDharmasutras the number ofashrams has been four, though

there are slight differences in the nomenclature and their sequence. 14 The word

Brahmacari occurs a few times in the RgVeda and the Atharva Veda; the Taittiriya Samhita

and the SatapathBrahman mentioned the stage ofBrahmacarya in which the individual

goes through the discipline of the will and the emotions, makes himself acquainted with the

literary traditions of the past and learns obedience, respect, plain living and high thinking. In

fact, the stage ofBrahmacarya was well known in the remotest past. The fact that Agni is

said to be the grihapati of our house and again in the famous pjm hd verse in the RgVeda

which is employed even today in the marriage ceremony the husband says to the bride when

taking hold of her hand that gods gave her to him for garhapatya establish that the second

stage of the householder was well known to the ancient RgVeda. 15 What is most important

that there is nothing in the Vedic texts, as P.V. Kane observes, expressly corresponding to

vanaprastha.16 The Tandya Mahabrahmana beautifully employs the term Baikhanas

denoting the vanaprasthy who is supposed to be convinced of the futility of human

appetites and the pleasures of the world and is, therefore, called upon to resort to a forest life

for pondering over the greater problem of the life hereafter and to accustom himself to self-abnegation, austerities and a harmless life. However, the fourth category provides an

interesting play of significations: Yati in the Vedic scripts appeared as a shimmering

signifier indicating a point of rupture that encodes multiple meanings. As in the Mudaka

Upanishad the term kaux [3/1/5] has been translated by Max Mller as spotless

anchorites17; in Rammohan RaysEnglish Works [First Edition], it becomes votaries freed

from passion18 and subsequently, with certain displacement votaries who forsake religious

rites(3/2/6) 19; Radhakrishans Principal Upanishads simply uses the term ascetic to

denote it. 20 The problem of translation becomes even more complicate if we hark back to

the slokas fromRgVeda, Atharva Veda, Koushitaki Upanishadand the Aitereya Brahman.Rg

Veda X.72.7 says: O gods, when you filled the worlds as the Yatis did, you brought the sun

hidden in the sea. 21 In the Taittiriya Samhita, we read: Indra threw away Yatis to the

hyenas and wolves; they devoured them to the south of Uttaravedi. 22 Again Atharva Veda

II. 5.3. unhesitatingly declares. Indra, who is quick in his attack, who is Mitra and who

killed Vrtra as he did the Yatis. 23 The passages actually suggest that theyatis were people


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who had incurred the hostility of Indra, the patron of the Aryas, that they were slaughtered

by theAryas with the help of Indra and those who could escape slaughter subsequently were

won over and became the worshippers of Indra. It then becomes really problematic to

conflate these two dynamics in which yati appeared as non-Vedic sorcerers24 and again as

the fourth ashram ofsamnayasa leading to the realization of the supreme goal ofmoksha.

It is interesting to note that the very term ashrama does not at all occur in the Bhagavad-

Gita, 25 in which the central problem lies in the question that is raised at the very beginning

and serves as the frame of reference for the entire dialogue, relating to the controversy

regarding the relative values of karma and the renunciation of karma itself. Arjunas

abandonment of war can be read as tantamount to the abandonment action and implicitly, to

the abandonment of ones duties (svadharma). It is clear that Arjunas dilemma issues from

two contradictory impulses of our value systems: dharma (interpreted as the obligation to

perform ritual and social activities) and Samnyasa (abandonment of rites as a precondition

for achieving liberation). This conflict within the tradition is recapitulated in the opening

verse of the fifth Chapter:

pwepw LjZw Lo ! fekN nwppz

kv nux Haux HLjae hq peQajzz26

You praise the renunciation of actions, Krishna, and then also their performance. Tell me for

certain which is the better of them. 27 A close reading into the text would reveal that the

dilemma is constituted of an institutional opposition between the householder and the

renouncer. There the relevance of the ashrama system is obvious. The Bhagavad-Gita,

however, does not see this dilemma in institutional terms: indeed, the very term garhasthya

is conspicuously absent in it. The argument Bhagavad-Gita puts forward takes shape in a

more abstract level which seek to show that true renunciation does not consist in the physical

abstention from activity but in the proper mental attitude toward action. As it undeniably

hinges upon the classical Brahmanical system, it was incumbent on Arjuna to perform the

duties of the state; renunciation was the exclusive preserve of the fourth ashrama. We will

immediately show why the existing Brahmanical system had deep antipathy toward the

renouncer.


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In sharp contrast to the Ramayana and the Bhagavad-Gita, the Mahbhrata contains an

enormous amount of material relating to the ashramas. The problems inherent in using that

information for historical purposes become clear in Van Buitenens assessment of this

brilliantly fascinating and enigmatic non-textwhich he considered as a library of opera, 28

with a substantial amount of additions, blending and interpolations. What is the

Mahbhratas view regarding the ashramas? is, therefore, a question that is both improper

and impossible to answer. The best we can do is to note the variety of opinions and views

recorded there and attempt to relate them in some way to the broad history of the system. A

careful reading of the entire epic, as Patric Olivelle observes, yields 160 occurrences of the

term ashrama; many of them are of course stray references to the well-known institution. 29

It is, nevertheless, confirmed by numerous occasions that the authors of the didactic portions

of the compendium used to assess the value of corresponding institutions or activities in

terms of the Vedic ashrama-system. An intellectual survey of the older Brahmanical

literature and theItihasacan provide valuable information regarding theological attempts at

legitimizing those institutions within the framework of dharma. One interesting reference

can be found in the discussion when Suka presents Vyasa with the dilemma that Vedic texts

enjoin us both to perform rites and to abandon them (kuru karma tyajeti ca), a dilemma

similar to that of the Bhagavad-Gita. Vyasa replies by showing that both those injunctions

can be carried out by following the ladder of the ashramas [MBh 12.233-37].

30

Interestingly, in the verbal battle between Atavakra and Bandin at which each has to list

classes containing progressively larger number of items, when they reach four Bandin refers

to the four ashrams--casustayam brahmananam niketanam. In the panegyrics of Siva where

he is called the best of each class, he is called the householder among the ashrams

(asramanam grhasthah: MBh 13.14.155). In fact, there are several texts that make no

mention of a passage from one ashram to another and, judging from the context, appear to

regard the ashrams as permanent states of life. Thus in the story of Yayati, Astaka asks

Yayati: By what conduct does a householder attain gods, by what a mendicant and he who

serves a teacher, by what a forest hermit set on the path of the virtuous? 31 Yayati responds

by giving a brief description of the each that follows the usual order and places student-hood

first; but it is noteworthy that in the question the order is not followed. An interesting

passage on the ashrams is found in the dialogue between Bhrgu and Bharadvaja in the

Moksadharma Parva of the Mahbhrata (MBh 12.184-85).Bhradvaja asks Bhrgu to teach

him the practices specific to each of the four ashrams (12.184.7). Bhrgus discourse on the


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ashrams that follows is in the sutra style of prose, and it is especially significant because it is

undoubtedly a remnant of an old Dharmasutra. 32 It describes the duties of the four

ashramas, but does not address the issue of when and how one enters them. The order of

enumeration is the usual one, although the use of the expression gurukulavasa (living at the

teachers house) for the first ashrama is reminiscent of Apastambas acaryakula (Ap.Dh

2.21.1).33 But the significant point is that the description of each ashrama concludes with the

rewards that a person who performs its duties attains after death. The probable conclusion

here is that the ashrams are regarded as permanent states rather than temporary stages.

The Ashramabasik Parva, however, provides a nuanced focus on the economy of

banaprastha as the puissant king Dhritarastra, divested of all stupefaction of mind, left the

kingdom and began to practise vows and penances like a great Rishi, reducing his body to

skin and bones, for his flesh was all dried up, bearing matted locks on head, and his person

clad in barks and skins. Gandhari and Kunti started living in the observance of blazing

penances on the bank of the Bhagirathi, with matted locks on their head, practicing severe

austerities, and emaciated with sleeping on blades of Kusa and Kasa. [Ashramabasik-

Parvan, Sec: xx-xxi]34

But interestingly the narrative itself is so exceedingly possessed by a

certain sense of absence in the royal household upon the retirement of the chief of the

Kurus into the forest, it almost fails to produce a definite economy of the vaikhanas, a

cessation ofgarhapatya, an alternate mode of religious living.Again, with reference to the

ashramadharma, perhaps the most significant episode of the Mahbhrata is Yudhisthiras

despondency that poignantly provides the setting for the great Santiparvan.35Yudhisthira,

dejected after the carnage of the war, decides to renounce the kingdom he had won at so

great a cost. Just like Arjunas decision not to fight at the stipulated moment when the two

armies of the arch rivals are ready to charge, this decision of Yudhisthira is placed within a

broader context and presented as a choice between action and non-action, social

responsibility and renunciation. But as it happens, one after the other his brothers and his

wife scold, plead with, and cajole him to abandon the foolish path he has chosen! Theexisting schema of Brahmanical society promotes the economy of need by prioritizing the

state of a householder and the obligation to fulfil the dharma of his/her state. Arjuna himself

admonishes Yudhisthira by narrating a beautiful legend [MBh 12.11]. Once some young men

of noble birth became renouncers even before they had grown beards, thinking that it was the

dharma. Indra then became a bird to instruct them in the true dharma. Indra begins by

praising the difficult path of those who eat left-overs (vighasasin). The young renouncers


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think that Indra is praising their way of life, whereas his praise is, in fact, directed at

householders, who are true eaters of left-overs. The householders ashrama is praised as

the only great ashrama in theMahbhrata [MBh 12.11-15]. It is also the most difficult; as

the gods attained the highest state by doing what is duskara, so will householders. Whenever

the opposition between life and the world and its renunciation is presented as either a

theological issue or an existential problem in the life of an individual, the classical

Brahmanical system permitted their resolution both by presenting renunciation as suitable

for the old and the retired and by upholding the householders life as the best ashrama--the

most altruistic, the most difficult and the most virtuous.

Indeed almost all theDharmasutras and smriti texts constantly produce marmoreal eulogies

on the state of a householder: Nqnjv fl djx e e fex fexz [hpja 4z2].36 He has to

perform nitya sacrifices regularly without any desire for personal gain; but the very non-

performance of these ritualistic acts will incur sin-vihitasyananusthanan ninditasya ca

sevanat/anigrahac cendriyanam narah patanam rcchati[3.219]. 37 However Sayanacarya

remarks in his introduction to Taittiriya Samhita that even the nittya sacrifices also yield

fruits, which are unavoidable. Naimittiksacrifices are held at par with theNitya sacrifices, in

the sense that they are not performed with reference to fulfilling any personal desire, but

when occasions occur they are to be performed compulsorily [Taittiriya Samhita, 2/2/2]. 38

When these above-mentioned ritualistic sacrifices prescribed in the Vedas areepistemologically linked with the structure of need economy that purports the re-

production of the existing conditions of production, 39 Kamya Karma introduces certain

amount of volition on the part of the sacrificer (Sabara on the Jaiminiya-Sutra, 6.3.9). 40

Thus Karma in Brahmanism becomes a metaphysical ploy of continuing social reproduction

as it is crucially predicated upon the exception of auto-direction of action. Denying

subjectivities is the real politic of Brahmanical society. Again the economy of social re-

production presumes the continuation of existing caste-system in which the Brahman, even

from the point of view of Civil Law, enjoys certain special privileges [Manu Smrti, 8.37] and

a vast body of people (the Sudras) are excluded from performing sacrifices. 41 And this

social stratification or Varna-dharma is always being linked with the temporal ordering of

life. On the question of the temporal contiguity of the four ashramas, there are three

different points of view:


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Badha: there is only one ashram viz. that of the householder, brahmacarya being the

preparatory to it. This view is held by the ancient dharma sutras of Gautama and

Baudhayana. 42

Samuccay: it talks about the orderly co-ordination of the four ashrams; Manu is the prime

supporter of this view [4.1, 6.1.33-37, 87-88]. 43

Vikalpa: there is option after brahmacarya; a man may become a parivrajaka immediately

after he finishes his study or after householders way of life. The ancient pre-Buddhist

Jabala Upanishadis the only instace which brilliantly puts forward this view: On whatever

day he has spirit of renunciation, that very day let him renounce [yadahar eva virajet tad

ahar eva pravrajet (1.14)]. 44 In fact, as the intended addressee of these Smritis is the

householder, most of them unhesitatingly declarethat the order of the householder is the best

one.What is most important then is that if the desires of the masses are being channelized in

other direction that voice against the existing condition of society, some iota of displacement

occurs, leading to a qualitative change in the sphere of political economy. As the existing

Brahmanical system had deep antipathy toward the renouncer, the Dharmasutras and the

Mahbhrata have diplomatically treated the stage ofyati or sannyas with a ploy of

deference.Manu shrewdly posits that when a householder sees his (skin) wrinkled, and (his

hair) white, and the sons of his sons, then he may resort to the forest [Manu Samhita, 6.2].

The figure of the Sannyasi, Bhiksu or Yati therefore stands out as a threat to what is in

the need economy.

Indeed the rejection of the compromise proposed in the Brahmanical system that attempts to

blunt the fissure issuing out of the opposition between domesticity and renunciation has been

presented most vividly in a fantastic dialogue between a father, the guardian of the old order

and his son, representing the troubled and anguished spirit of the new religious order.

Maurice Winternitz has sharply pointed out that the story appeared in the Jain Eldue p

and Buddhist qfm SaL, before it was incorporated into the Shantiparvan of theMahbhrata. 45 Sibaji Bandyopadhyay in his highly acclaimed article, faflb46

sharply points toward the ascetic rejection of societal attempts to convert asceticism into an

institution of old age and shows that this gesture of negation has its umbilical relation to the

Shraman revolution in India that ushers in a veritable change in the hierarchised orthodox

Brahmanical system, representing a great springtide of philosophic spirit. To the sons

question regarding how a person should lead a virtuous life, the father replies:


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Begin thy course with study; store

The mind with holy Vedic lore.

That stage completed,--seek a wife,

And gain the fruit of wedded life,

A race of sons by rites to seal,

When thou art gone, thy spirits weal.

Then light the sacred fires, and bring

The gods a fitting offering.

When age draws nigh, the world forsake,

Thy chosen home the forest make;

And there, a calm, ascetic sage,

A war against thy passions wage,

That, cleansed from every earthly stain,

Thou mayst supreme perfection gain. 47

The son pondering over the unforeseeable haunt of Thanatos immediately retorts that death

does not respect human intentions; it may steal our life away at any moment. There is an

urgency to the quest for salvation: evenings duties we must perform in the morning,

tomorrows task we must complete today. Sacrifices are empty rites, and sons cannot redeem

their dead fathers. We alone are the architects of our own future. Thus this dialogue,

apparently moving in the Buddhistic range of thought, leads into the Atman-theory of the

Upanishads that questions the very performance of the sacrificial rites authorized by the

Vedic Mimamsa system. But where lies the germ of this implacable enunciation that

destabilizes the notion of temporal contiguity--brahmacarya-garhasthya-banaprastha-yati

and operates as a significant rupture that purposively shakes aside orthodox Brahmanical

systems?


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It was just two thousand and five hundred years back, a group of spotless anchorites

appeared in the Indo-Gangetic plane with the proclamation of absolute freedom from

religious belief and ecclesiastical monopoly that immediately broke loose the existing politic

of need economy. Here the progress of philosophy is indeed due to this powerful attack on

a historical tradition when men feel themselves compelled to go back on their steps and raise

once more the fundamental questions which their fathers had disposed of by the older

scheme. The revolt of Buddhism actually forms an era in the history of Indian thought:

forging logic as the main arsenal, Buddhism served as a cathartic in clearing the mind of the

cramping effects of ancient obstruction. S. Radhakrishan brilliantly captures the moment of

revolution: when attempts are made to smother the intellectual curiosity of people, the mind

of man rebels against it and the inevitable reaction shows itself in an impatience of all formal

authority and a wild outbreak of emotional life long repressed by the discipline of the

ceremonial religion.48

Again, Buddhistic tendency to represent the universe as a continuous

flow which is nissatta and nijjiva denies the existence of a true Self. Since redemption from

suffering and attainment of the Bodhisattva condition is the motive of Buddhas philosophy,

Kamma (a subtle semantic switch) in that sense is intellectual and volitional, not a

mechanical principle, that prepares for nirvana through the path ofalobh (absence of lust),

advesa (absence of hatred) and amoha (absence of delusion). In Tevijja Sutta, Buddhas

slogan let me go forth from a household life into a homeless state49

therefore stands out as

a threat to the existing structures of family, society and the state. The rebellious son in one

luminous verse of the Shantiparvan actually appropriates the Buddhistic impulses and

channelizes his desire, in a defining moment of his life, in a different fashion that carries

over his non-finished subjectivity at its end. Not the mere repetition of a structural process

but his unswitching of himself from the existing politic of Brahmanism can, therefore, be

marked as an act of enunciating subject-hood. Like the great heresiarchs of the heterodox

schools and sages of the Upanishads, his primary aim is to achieve salvation from the round

of birth and death, which can only be attained after a long course of physical and mental

disciplining, often culminating in extreme asceticism, but this is chiefly of value as leadingto the full realization of the fundamental truths of the universe and reaching a state of

timeless bliss, in which his limited personality disintegrates or is absorbed into pure being.

Indeed sannyasins implacable gesture of rejection in praise of solitude and salvation

remains an aporic fissure emerging out of the structural complicity of the need/desire

economy. Here comes the impetus ofchange that throws away the old world out of hand:


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Thou dost advise that I should please

With sacrifice the deities.

Such rites I disregard as vain;

Through these can none perfection gain.

Why sate the gods, at cruel feasts,

With flesh and blood of slaughtered beasts?

Far other sacrifices I

Will offer unremittingly;

The sacrifice of calm, of truth,

The sacrifice of peace, of ruth,

Of life serenely, purely, spent,

Of thought profound on Brahma bent.

Who offers these, may death defy

And hope for immortality.50


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Notes & References:

All Mahbhratareferences are from the English translation ofTheMahbhrata(four volumes) by Kisari Mohan Ganguli, Munshiram Manoharlal

Publishers, New Delhi, 2004.

1. jL Efeoc, 3z1z1, Efeoc, Aehc J pfce: AamQc pe, paeb aioZ, jqnQc Oo, qlg fLne,LmLa, 1980, f: 239z

2. The Mudaka Upanishad, ed. & tr. by swami Krishnananda,http://www.swamikrishnananda.org/mundaka_0.html.

3. lhceb WLl, Sfe k, fh, 12 M, fx hx plLl, Xpx 1989, f:150-157z4. Ialu Efeoc, 1z1z1z, Efeoc, Aehc J pfce: AamQc pe, paeb aioZ, jqnQc Oo, qlg

fLne, LmLa, 1980, f: 327z

5. lhceb WLl, cC CR, fbl pu,lhclQehm, 13 M, LmLa, 1402, f: 421 z6. njNhca, nlio 9/22, Aehc J pfce: fjbeb aLioZ, ch pqa LVl, LmLa, 2001, f: 520z7. S. Radhakrishnan, The Bhagabad Gita, 2/45, Blackie & Son, India, 1970,

p.118.

8. Plato, Symposium, Tr. & Ed by, Robin Waterfield, Oxford University Press, 1994,p.40-41.

9. Ibid, pp.42-43.10. Ibid, p.44.11. Ibid, p. 49.12. Ibid, p.52.13. P.V.Kane, History of Dharmasastra, Vol.II, Part.1, Bhandarkar Oriental

Research Institute, 1974,Poona, p.418.

14. Ibid, p. 416.15. Ibid, p. 418.16. Ibid.17. F. Max Mller, TheMudaka-Upanishad, 3/1/5 & 3/2/6, The Sacred Books of

the East, 15, 39 & 41.


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18. Rammohun Roy, Moonduk Opunishad, 3/1/5, The English works of RajaRammohun Roy, Part II, Ed. Kalidas Nag & Debjyoti Burman, Calcutta :

Sadharon Brahmo Samaj, 1995, p.7.

19. Ibid.20. S. Radhakrishnan, Mundaka Upanisad, III.1.5 & III.2.6, The Principal

Upanisads, Harper Collins publishers, India, 1998, p.687-691.

21. P.V.Kane, History of Dharmasastra, Vol.II, Part.1, Bhandarkar OrientalResearch Institute, 1974,Poona, p.418-419.

22. Ibid, p.419.23. Ibid.24. Ibid.

25. Patrick Olivelle, The Asrama System, The History and Hermeneutics of aReligious Institution, Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 2004, p.103.

26.njNhca, nlio 5/1, Aehc J pfce: fjbeb aLioZ, ch pqa LVl, LmLa, 2001, f: 315z27. S. Radhakrishnan, The Bhagabad Gita, 5/1, Blackie & Son, India, 1970, p.174.28. See: J.A. B. Van Buitenen, The Mahabharata, Book 1: The Book of the

Beginning, University of Chicago Press, London, 1983.


30. See: Santiparvan(12.233-37), The Mahbhrata(four volumes) by Kisari MohanGanguli, Munshiram Manoharlal, New Delhi, 2004.


32. Ibid, p.154.33. Ibid.34. See: Ashrambasik-Parvan(Book 15, Sec-xx-xxi), The Mahbhrata(four

volumes) by Kisari Mohan Ganguli, Munshiram Manoharlal, New Delhi, 2004.

35. Ibid, Santiparvan.36. Vyasa Smriti, 4/2, For a detailed discussion see: pln Qc hcfdu, janhPm, H,

jM B Lw, LmLa, fo 1368z

37. Purva Mimamsa from an interdisciplinary Point of View, ed. by, K.T. Pandurangi,Centre for Studiesin Civilizations, Vol.II, Part-6, Cp.11: Kinds of Vedic

Sacrifices, p.329.

38. Ibid, p.333.39. Marx to Kugelmann, 11July 1868, Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence,

Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1955, p.209.


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40. Purva Mimamsa from an interdisciplinary Point of View, ed. by, K.T. Pandurangi,Centre for Studiesin Civilizations, Vol.II, Part-6, Cp.11: Kinds of Vedic

Sacrifices, p.331.

41.jepwqa, Aehc J pfce: jehchcfdu, pwa fL il, LmLa,2010, f:556-8z42. P.V.Kane, History of Dharmasastra, Vol.II, Part.1, Bhandarkar Oriental

Research Institute, 1974, Poona, p.424.

43. Ibid.44. The Principal Upanisads, Ed by S. Radhakrishnan, Harper Collins publishers,

India, 1998, p.896.

45. Maurice Winternitz, A History of Indian Literature, Tr. By S. Ketkar, Vol. I, Cp.Epics and Purans, New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1972, p.417-

422.

46. nhS hcfdu, faflb, Axpl, fj ho, fbj pwM, LmLa, pVl, 2008, f:352-407z47. Maurice Winternitz, A History of Indian Literature, Tr. By S. Ketkar, Vol. I, New

Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1972, p.418.

48. S. Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy, Vol.1, Oxford India Paperback, 1999,p.273.

49. Tevijja Sutta, I, 47, S. Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy, Vol.1, Cp. Ethicalideal of Buddhism,Oxford India Paperback, 1999, p. 436.

50. Maurice Winternitz, A History of Indian Literature, Tr. By S. Ketkar, Vol. I, Cp.Epics and Purans, New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1972, p.421.

____________________________________________________________________________

Acknowledgement: My ideas throughout the paper have been much influenced by a

couple of Sibaji Bandyopadhyays highly acclaimed articles, faflb [Axpl, LmLa, 2008]

and Bae Lb [cn, nlcu pwM, LmLa, 1415]. The method of argumentation, however, has

drawn inspiration from Prof. Bandhyopadhyays class-lectures at Centre for Studies in

Social Sciences, Calcutta.

re-conceptualizing ‘change’: a breakage in need-desire economy

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