ACROSS LANGUAGES AND GEOGRAPHIES
style, it is a breezy read.
In the opening section, Pattanaik categorises, somewhat controversially, the two epics as (or history, written as witnessed) and attempts to place them both geographically and temporally, finally concluding that a version of the events must have happened 3,000 years ago in the Gangetic Plains. He argues that the two epics have “underlying feminist themes”. Pattanaik lays out at length the concept of dharma, wisdom and the complexity of family life or exile. For me, the
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most interesting part of the book was the fleeting references to the “snake people”, the “monkey people” and “rakshsas’. Unfortunately, owing possibly to the structure of the book, the author doesn’t spend much time exploring who these groups of people could be. There is some talk of them being tribes being subdued or assimilated by Vedic cultures, but as several Ambedkarite scholars have posited, assimilation was probably by violent means and the cultures of these tribes eclipsed strategically as an act of subjugation.
To resolve two other questions the book raised in my head, I read it in conjunction with AK Ramanujan’s seminal essay, 300 Ramayanas, and BR Ambedkar’s 1948 treatise ‘The Untouchables Who Were They and Why They Became Untouchables?’
The first is about using the Sanskrit versions of the epics as the base for the comparisons. Ramanujan notes that it would be wrong to call the other versions “retellings” because that suggests there is one original version. It would have been great if more time had been spent on the nonSanskrit versions in the book. The second has to do with that dreaded C-word: Caste. Pattanaik deftly lays out the plotlines of the Buddhist Jatakas and notes the differences in the Hindu and Buddhist versions. But as Ambedkar notes, these two faiths were also engaged in a centuries-long fight for supremacy, which was also a proxy fight for the supremacy of the varna vyavastha, loosely translated as the caste system, and in the gradual assimilation and appropriation of Buddhist elements, its central anti-caste ideology was lost.
Pattanaik mentions the numerous incidents that reinforce the central tenet of the varna system: the inheritance of profession. He also notes killings and crimes against people considered lowly. But he mentions caste in passing, not as a central theme. This is a pity because possibly in the contrasting versions of the two epics across tongues and faiths lies the true story.