Sunday 14 December 2008

Riddles in Mahabharata

- Ramesh Mukhopadhyaya

It has been said that Vedavyasa the composer, at the
instance of Brahma the creator invoked Lord Ganesha to take
down the narrative. Lord Ganesha agreed to act as a stenographer
of Vedavyasa. But if Vedavyasa faltered to dictate continuously
Lord Ganesha would give up the assignment. Well, Vedayasa
agreed to the terms of Lord Ganesha on condition that the latter
must not write a single verse without understanding its import.
Consequently, whenever Vedavyasa had to stop a while in course
of his dictation, he would introduce a riddle known as Vyasa-
Kuta in the course of his narration. And the Lord had to panse a
while to decode the same. In this way it is said that there are
some 8200 verses scattered through-out the narrative, that baffle
the readers. If 8200 verses scattered all about the narrative are
ambiguous, the whole of the narrative becomes ambiguous. It is
claimed that Vyasa, Ganesha and Sukdeva only three persons
know the real import of those verses. Consequently by admission
of the Mahabharata itself the whole narrative is ambiguous.
(This is an excerpt from the book on Gitas by Ramesh Mukhopadhyaya)