Among the epic and stories of great battle, the Mahabharata has certain sections where smaller stories and myths exist to illustrate the larger point about origins of something or explain why things are the way they are. Some characters might seem familiar from other myths or the fables bring to mind other fable texts such as the Panchatantra or the Jataka Tales. Outside of the specialists who read and research the epic, no one has probably heard of them. In her latest book The Dharma of Unfaithful Wives and Faithful Jackals: Some Moral Tales from the Mahabharata, Wendy Doniger brings together stories from the relatively unexplored sections in which the dying Bhishma responds to questions from Yudhishthira, the eldest of the Pandavas. The stories Bhishma narrates relate to esoteric things such as tigers, jackals, dogs, sages (and their wives and disciples). Doniger explains why she has brought them together:
Embedded in the often mind-numbing ethical discourse of Books Twelve and Thirteen are a number of good stories that are frequently very funny and occasionally quite weird. And these stories don’t simply illustrate a moral lesson; the characters have a complex interiority. When Yudhistra asks Bhishma a particularly tricky ethical or political question, he often replies, ‘Actually, there is an old story about this very point…’ and tells the story. Apparently, someone had the very good idea of leavening all that ponderous moralizing with stories, somewhat like the parables in the New Testament, which are often so much more memorable than the moral teachings. These Indian stories, however, are generally a good deal quirkier than the Biblical parables, as well as more imaginative and often far more complex.
And just like that, the stories unfold: Doniger first presents some context, then the question posed by a character (mostly by Yudhishthra to Bhishma), followed by the story itself. One example should provide an understanding of the structure:
Yudhishthir asked Bhishma: ‘Since women are false, as we read in the Vedas, why do the texts speak of the shared dharma of husband and wife?’ Bhishma replied: ‘On this subject they tell thai ancient history about the conversation between Ashtavakra and Disha.’
In the story, the Brahmin Ashtavakra is sent by the sage Vadnya to the Himalayas to honour an old woman before he allows Ashtavakra to marry Disha, his daughter. It turns out to be a test of Ashtavakra’s character: the old woman tries to seduce him. She says to him:
Brahmin, women cannot help but indulge their desires, but men have self-control. I am drunk with desire; make love with me as I make love with you. Get aroused, great sage, and unite with me … I will be in your power; make love with me and you will enjoy all the pleasures of the gods and of mortal men. For women have no duty and no reward beyond that of uniting with a man. Women goaded by desire act according to their own will; they are not burnt even when they walk over very hot sands.
There is a happy ending: Ashtavakra resists, and returns to Vadanya who has already received a report from the woman about Ashtavakra’s character. Wedding bells go. But the story becomes important for contextualizing the misogyny prevalent in the epic.
For some stories, there are counter stories. One is about the importance of taking it slow, not rushing into action. But there is also a story about the importance of acting quickly. There is a story about the cunningness of jackals, and then there is a story about the wisdom of a jackal. There are stories about lustful women, and there are stories about “good” women and wise mothers. What binds them all is, as Doniger puts it, their weirdness, and arguably, because of that, have not aroused much interest: their existence is not tied to the larger story of the epic, and does not draw from it either.