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Draupadi among Rajputs, Muslimsand Dalits: Rethinking India’s Oraland Classical Epicsby Alf Hiltebeitel;Oxford University Press,New Delhi, 2001;pp xiv + 560, Rs 693.

MANDAKRANTA BOSE

This third and concluding volume ofAlf Hiltebeitel’s path-breaking study

of the Draupadi cult is more than a satis-fying rounding off of a vast project.Although the book continues the studywithin the same cultural universe, it ex-pands the study vastly across the largercontext of the martial oral epics of me-dieval India. For this Indian edition ofthe 1999 Chicago publication, OxfordUniversity Press deserves our gratitude.Closely examining a wealth of anthropo-logical, historical and literary material,Hiltebeitel uncovers thematic and struc-tural patterns in the epics that lead himto argue that they functioned as expres-sions of self-assertion on the part of the‘little kingdoms’, that is, domains periph-eral to the much discussed ‘great tradition’of India, and their resistance to the implicitimperial and colonising pressures of thattradition. Hiltebeitel correlates these oralepics with one another by threading throughthem the Mahabharata of the south IndianDraupadi cult while keeping in view theirambivalent negotiations with the classicalSanskrit epics. Important as these lines ofcomparative investigation are, Hiltebeitelraises the scholarly stakes still higher bytaking a turn towards a theory of oral epicsas a literary genre embedded in multiplecultural beliefs and practices.

While in a broad sense this is a workof comparative anthropology in an areathat has been explored by many, notablyby Brenda Beck, Stuart Blackburn, GeneRoghair and John Smith, Hiltebeitel’sscope is wider both because he includes

the epics that have been separately andindividually treated by other scholars andbecause in doing so he engages criticallyin debates with them. To be sure, he issometimes overcritical of his peers, forinstance, when he takes Smith to task forwhat he considers a facile invention ofhistoricity (p 13), or devotes the bulk ofchapter 2 to demonstrate what he takes tobe the failure of Beck, Blackburn andothers to understand the nature of an oralepic. He is also less than fair when hecomplains that other scholars ‘have treatedas insignificant’ the point that in each ofthe oral epics “central characters are re-incarnated heroes and heroines...of theSanskrit epics” (p 7); to the contrary, thisis one of Beck’s main points both in TheThree Twins and Elder Brothers. In gen-eral, though, Hiltebeitel’s points about theneed for constructing a larger perspectivefor viewing the epics are well taken andhis own work here provides ample mate-rial for doing so as well as the necessarycomparative framework.

Hiltebeitel studies the epics on two levelsof comparison. On one level he comparesthe five regional martial epics with oneanother to show how the respective plotsand the characters enacting the action arehandled as variants of similar paradigms.On another level he compares their shapeand substance with the structural as wellas thematic and ideological patterns of theclassical Sanskrit epics. Revealing on onehand the patterns common to the Draupadinarrative and other regional oral epics,Hiltebeitel also shows on the other howthe plots derived from the classical epicsare reconfigured and characters reshapedto reflect local history, religion and po-litical energies. One of the patterns heexplicates at length is the recycling ofcharacters from the classical epics throughthe oral epics in a manner that satisfieslocal requirements. Such reincarnationsare often ironic in that the reborn figuremay be the opposite of the original in avariety of ways. A particularly illuminat-ing example offered in chapter 4 is that

of Phulvanti who is Surpanakha reborn(p 95), Hiltebeitel shows how suchreworkings answer the needs of regionalpolities. The resulting perception ofregionality throws in to relief the pro-cesses whereby the autonomous identitiesof rajputs, dalits and Muslims, i e, peoplesperipheral to the ‘great tradition’, areasserted through the simultaneous mim-icry and displacement of that central tra-dition. What, then, is the relationshipbetween the Sanskrit classical epics andthe oral, martial epics? Hiltebeitel arguesand supports his argument with a wealthof evidence that the relationship was notone of confrontation but of negotiation,which set up the Mahabharata and insome instances the Ramayana as sourcesof narrative paradigms and personalitymodels for the ‘little kingdoms’ to articu-late their own historical experiences ofconflict and continuity, as in the story ofPrithiraj in ‘Alha’ (chapter 5). That articu-lation has been driven, in Hiltebeitel’sview, by the dominant tale and charactermodel of Draupadi in her various reincar-nations, giving rise to a cult developingas a self-reflextive tool of survival. Thattool, common to the oral epics, is essen-tially a narrative which affirms that evenin military debacle the apparently brokenmutuality of the king, the goddess and herincarnations actually survives in hiddenways and “even in defeat, somethingsurvives in the tellings” (p 192).

One of Hiltebeitel’s most interestingpoints is that regional oral epics attemptto complete what their fostering culturesperceive as the unfinished business of theclassical epics. In this sense, the reinventionof Draupadi in the Mahabharata of hersouthern cult is a sequel to the original‘Mahabharata’ but by no means its ideo-logical extension. In other words, regionalepics rework the main stories from theirclassical predecessors, although not somuch the actual classical texts as theiroral, folk versions. But in doing so theyembody altogether different sets of themes,character values, ethical positions andpolitical perceptions. This process of re-working necessarily skews the ethicalpatterns and relationships celebrated inthe classical sources. Clearly, as Hiltebeitel

Heroines of Little Kingdoms

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argues, the oral epics cannot be subjectedto formulaic readings that promote ‘a ration-alised and historicised hermeneutic’ (p 94).Rather, a sensitivity to inversions, ambiva-lence and irony is likelier to yield a greaterwealth of perceptions about peripheralcultures and their life of the imagination.

Women as Subjects and Objects

The most striking departure from theclassical epics is that the regionalreworkings centralise women and their livesas the springs of action both as the subjectsand objects of action. Hiltebeitel observesthat in the classical Ramayana andMahabharata the protection of the heroineand the failure of the male heroes in thattask are crucial to narrative development.The history of that failure resonates throughthe oral epics in the redistribution of theinitiative for action, which is shifted to thefemale protagonist, whose demands deter-mine the narrative’s outcome, as Hiltebeiteldemonstrates with persuasive effect inchapter 6 in his discussion of Bela whois Draupadi reborn. This inversion is oneof the ways in which the oral epics rupturethe hegemonic and totalising control of theclassical epics over social relations. Inarguing that they are thus counternarrativesto the classical epics even though they arederived from the classical epics, Hiltebeitelclearly uses some of Homi Bhabha’s theo-retical perspectives on how narratives arelocated within cultures. This is only oneexample of Hiltebeitel’s extension of thecomparativist view to a more rarefied planeof conceptual speculation.

A sign of this orientation to theory isclear in Hiltebeitel’s attempt in chapter 2to relate the cult epics to the general theoryof the epic, drawing upon early scholarssuch as C M Bowra and Alfred Lord whilekeeping pace with recent ones such asDavid Quint. In pursuing methodologicalprecedents, he follows Vladimir Propp’sstructural model of narratives with its eight‘functions’ (p 52). In view of these inter-ests, it does seem puzzling why he shouldassert in the same breath, “I will not stressepic as an analytic genre,” and “I do regardepic as a sufficiently useful analytic andcomparative term to allow us to continueto classify by it not only the two Sanskrittexts but a number of south Asian oraltraditions” (p 11, italics mine). Regret-tably, the confusion evident in this passageis not unique. Perhaps it is Hiltebeitel’s

the textual grounds for celebratingLaksmana’s asceticism (p 98). Admittedly,a work of this wide scope demands ascholarly method that leaves no stoneunturned, and few works in the field canmatch Hiltebeitel’s inspired excavations.But since books are after all written forreaders, even an expert reader could bepardoned for wishing that each of the chap-ters (except chapter 6, ‘The Nine-LakhChain’) would open with a clear transitionfrom the preceding. Further, given thesubtlety of the questions Hiltebeitel asksand the complexity of his investigative andinterpretive procedure, his concluding dis-cussion could have been fuller than thebarely four pages he spares for it. Whenat the end of his introduction Hiltebeitelpoints to “the need to reground some ofour thinking about rajputs, Muslims anddalits, to relocate some of our thinkingabout south and north India”, the readeris led to expect this regrounding and re-location at the end. Precisely how orwhether it is effected is never articulated.The concluding pages do not carry thediscussion to this wider platform of ‘re-thinking’ because Hiltebeitel’s concernremains focused on the transformativeprocesses within the epics. In a sense thisis not a fault, for Hiltebeitel might be seenas leaving the business of reaching con-clusions to the attentive reader whom hecan rightly expect to be enlightened by the500 plus pages of sophisticated argument.As he confesses in his last paragraph, eventhe question whether there is any signifi-cance in whether or not the oral epics spinout the unfinished business of the Sanskritepics is not resolved, and one must simplyaccept that the workings of the deities willremain hidden (p 511). Faced with suchsystemic inscrutability, the reader cannotperhaps expect a neat set of conclusionsfrom the author. True, the reader has morethan enough to work with but it would becomforting to know what, in simple terms,the author thinks.

somewhat convoluted prose – he hardlyever writes a simple sentence – rather thanany conceptual uncertainty, but it doesmake a many-sided argument hard tofollow, specially if the style is also some-times ambiguous, as here: “Each episodeoccurs before the heroes must rectify therupture that soon occurs, through the vio-lation of a heroine...” (p 152). Should wetake ‘violation’ as a task the heroes mustcarry out to ‘rectify’ the ‘rupture’ orunderstand that the rupture occurs ‘throughthe violation’?

These are, however, minor faults if faultsat all. The overwhelming strength of thebook is the correlation of vast amounts ofinformation about the individual oral epicswith the author’s felicitous and oftenbrilliant insights into particular episodes,each interpretive essay backed by evidencedrawn from the ‘text’ and its multiplecontexts. This, however, is also its weak-ness. There is no question that the com-plexity of Hiltebeitel’s highly detailedanalysis of each epic is necessary for track-ing structural and ideological patterns. Butthe minutiae of the evidence and theirinterpretive and comparative readingsalmost always obscure the broad lines ofargument, particularly because they arenot laid out too clearly even in the twoopening chapters. In chapter 2 Hiltebeitelseems to shift his focus between severaltheses and it is not certain what he wouldsee as the core of his argument. The threemain points that emerge are, first, the oralepics are self-representations of peripheralpopulations such as the rajputs, Muslimsand dalits; second, they continue theunfinished business of the classical epics,and third, this continuation is constructedaround the legend of Draupadi. These aresubstantial observations but it is hard tosee how they relate to Hiltebeitel’s ex-pressed interest in ‘questions about epic’(p 2), which seems to imply an overarchinginterest in a general theory of the epic asa literary form, an interest underwrittenby his insistence that in this book he hasgone back to literature as his homediscipline (p 7).

In any case, the chapters on the indi-vidual epics make little effort at keepingHiltebeitel’s theses clearly in view. Theyare obscured particularly by the debate heconstantly mounts with other scholars ondetails of interpretation or definition, andoccasionally by related but recondite di-gressions. An example is the paragraph on

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