Dharma

Chapter 9: Dharma and Bhakti

CHApTEr 9 Dharma and Bhakti One of the results of making narrative central to our discussion of classical constructions of dharma was that we would inevitably be questioning not only the relation between dharma and mokṣa, as many have done, but that between dharma and bhakti. We have seen that the epics make bridges between these two concepts, notably in portraying the spirituality of women and warriors. And we have seen that the Bhagavad Gītā makes the relation between dharma and bhakti one of Kṛṣṇa’s “central” teachings and modes of “knowing.” Now, if we take the two epics and Manu as roughly contemporary, the question of how these three ambitious poems treat this relation becomes intriguing.The most satisfactory theory posits that the epics, led by the Mahābhārata, navigated a bhakti “swerve” that Manu was aware of, but was obdurately opposed to mentioning. It is an advance to see Manu remapping traditional legal routes through a new cosmology and terrain that has fresh epic markings (eons, ages through which dharma declines, kings making their age, thinking kings if not queens, a hallowed land of the Kurus, not to mention disastrous ancient dice games [9.227]), but with their bhakti overtones unmentioned , most likely by intent. “Avatars” and Sages As we saw in chapter 8, the Gītā’s treatment of dharma zeroes in on a relation between time, divinity, and dharma that comes to be associated with the concept of avatāra or divine “descent.” The revelation of Kṛṣṇa’s world-swallowing theophany is an indication that Viṣṇu’s incarnations not only restore dharma from age to age but, as in Kṛṣṇa’s case, also have a terrifying aspect that preserves dharma through Time’s world destructions. The Gītā then goes on to tell us Dharma and Bhakti 125 that cosmic cycles of creation and destruction are survived by Ṛṣis and Munis who, having attained perfection, “have the same nature (dharma)” as Kṛṣṇa. Presumably, such sages would know what they are talking about on matters of dharma and bhakti, and we shall begin this chapter meeting two of them, Mārkaṇḍeya and Nārada, in the Mahābhārata (the Rāmāyaṇa also knows them). One way of thinking about the epics’ bhakti swerve would be to see it as outsourcing dharma to such celestial and “ancient” Ṛṣis and to a descending god whose company they keep. As with the Gītā, the Mahābhārata never uses the term avatāra. But it provides early accounts of all but one of the figures later named in lists of the ten avatars—the omitted one, not surprisingly, being the Buddha. For our purposes it is enough to note that both epics know Rāma as an incarnation of Viṣṇu, while the Mahābhārata also knows Kṛṣṇa in this way, and speaks of the future savior Kalki, a Brahmin, as “the fame of Viṣṇu.” Mārkaṇḍeya tells the stories of both Kalki and Rāma to the Pāṇḍavas and Draupadī in the forest, the former while Kṛṣṇa is visiting them (Mahābhārata 3.180–189). Mārkaṇḍeya drops by at the same time as the “time-knowing” Nārada, who smilingly prompts him to begin. Once, when all that remained of the triple world was the endless waters of the cosmic dissolution , Mārkaṇḍeya, swimming all alone, saw a child sleeping on a leaf of a banyan tree.Swallowed and regurgitated by this babe,he learned,to his astonishment, after wandering in the worldly byways of the child’s cosmic body,that the child was none other thanViṣṇu–Nārāyaṇa sleeping through the dissolution. Awakened, the child tells Mārkaṇḍeya of his greatness as Nārāyaṇa, starting out with the same “surge” verse we heard from Kṛṣṇa in Ring 4 of the Bhagavad Gītā, its only other occurrence in the epic (Arjuna has yet to hear Kṛṣṇa repeat it): Whenever there is a waning of dharma and a surge of adharma, O sage, then I create myself. When demons bent on harm spring up invincible to the chiefs of the gods, and terrifying Rākṣasas, then I take on birth in the dwellings of the virtuous and, entering a human body, I pacify it all. Mārkaṇḍeya then says the child was none other than this...