Battlefield sagas

Epics have often been described as battle songs of the lost world. The value of long, winding narratives that rolled together myths and legends, ballads of heroism, ideas about cosmography, and the fate of humanity among other things, is largely measured in academic discourses or by the creative arts today. But can they shine a light on the present, at a time when two wars have engulfed the world?

In a century that once held out the promise of peace, blood and gore are back on the frontlines and there is an unholy scramble to recast the brutalities being inflicted on all sides along an imaginary axis of evil. In ways that once seemed impossible, the past is eerily inserting itself into the moment and the epics could help find meaning in the seeming randomness of the terror and horror that is being served up daily, on the doorstep and on our screens.

All epics had a war or multiple wars pinned to their storylines, framed within the binaries of good and evil. Not much appears to have changed in the way the present wars are being portrayed too. Be it Russia and Ukraine or Israel and Palestine, every side is taken in by the idea of a righteous war, an idea that was articulated and debated extensively in epics across the world.

The Mahabharata calls it dharmayuddha, the Iliad refers to the battle as one for justice, and the Shahnameh justifies wars that have divine sanction. The West African epic of Sundiata has its hero go to war to restore the glory of the kingdom of Mali.

A righteous war wields universal appeal. However, the epics weave layers of nuance into their rendition of such wars. The Persians, for instance, equated righteousness with the word of god. The Shahnameh speaks about Farr — an indefinable characteristic that is controlled by the sun god Mithra (also the god of friendship and contracts). Only rulers with Farr can rule and wars are inevitable when rulers get too arrogant or greedy and thereby lose their special powers. Hence righteousness comes with a shelf life, no leader (nation) can claim to have the gods on his side for eternity.

The dharmayuddha of the Mahabharata is not so much about divine approval because it is about establishing a moral order. Being good does not derive from being faithful to a god or an ideology; it is an idea that must be wrestled with and established on the mortal plane.

For instance, Krishna too is shown the folly of his actions on the battlefield. At one point, exasperated with Arjuna’s reluctance to fight against Bhishma, he threatened to kill the grandsire himself. But Arjuna held him back, reminding him that he was violating his own promise of not being an active participant in the war. The god is also questioned for his partisanship by Gandhari, who lost all her sons in the battle, and by everyone for instigating Bhima to disregard the rules of a fair fight when he killed Duryodhana.

No one is fighting the good war, not even the victors. Yudhishthira is questioned for his actions by a mongoose who tells him that it was more righteousness to be found in the sacrifice made by a poor farmer than in the Rajasuya yagna that he had organised to establish his supremacy. He told the king that his victory was meaningless because he had murdered his brothers to get to the throne.

The mongoose is not the only one speaking truth to power, the Mahabharata has several instances that question the validity of the dharma that the war was meant to restore. In the rage-filled rants egging both sides on in the present wars, few have the courage to do the same.

The Iliad spoke of a just war, one that was waged to right a wrong. Even though the trigger is the abduction of Helen, Homer builds upon the idea of injustice all through the epic. Achilles is filled with rage at the injustice meted out to him by Agamemnon. He refuses to fight for most of the war. Hera and Athena use every trick in the book to ensure defeat for the Trojans because they want to wreak vengeance against Paris, the prince of Troy.

The idea of a just war in the Iliad was the template that framed the Just War theory of Saint Augustine, which, very briefly, speaks about some wars as necessary to amend an evil. However, Homer also talks about the futility of war. As do the Mahabharata and the Shahnameh and almost every other epic. Even as they glorify the sacrifices of the heroes, the stories drive home the senselessness of the deaths and the loss of humanity that wars bring about.

In the Mahabharata, for example, Aswathama’s final assault on the Pandavas is preceded by questions about the legitimacy of tactics employed under the guise of fighting a dharmayuddha; in the Iliad, Homer forces a close look at the heroism of Achilles, who, consumed with grief and rage, drags the body of Hector all around the battlefield. It is in these moments that the epics shine a light on the true meaning of war, not in the claims made by the victors, nor in the capricious acts of the powerful.