Dharma, Disorder and the Political in Ancient India: The Apaddharmaparvan of the Mahabharata.

• Author: Davis, Donald R. Jr.,
• Position: Book review

Dharma, Disorder and the Political in Ancient India: The Apaddharmaparvan of the Mahabharata. By ADAM BOWLES. Leiden: BRILL, 2007. Pp. xvi + 430. $171.

The present work is the first monograph devoted to the important and understudied topic of apaddharma, the laws for distress and emergency, in ancient India. The author is also the translator of the Karnaparvan of the Mahabharata in two volumes for the Clay Sanskrit Library. While the central focus of this study is the Apaddharmaparvan (ADhP) of the Mahabharata (12.129-67), there is also a significant opening discussion of apaddharma in dharmasastra and other early textual sources. Originally a doctoral dissertation at La Trobe University, this revised version presents a systematic and thorough overview shorn of the common pitfalls of such revisions. It is clearly organized and very well researched.

In chapters two and three of his book, Bowles provides the best state-of-the-field synthesis of dharma in Brahminical traditions that I have read. Chapter two reviews the narrow topic of apad in early dharma and artha texts. Bowles argues that dharmasastra texts generally present apad "subjectively" (p. 54), that is, in terms of how individuals may legitimately survive under conditions of duress or emergency, while arthasastra traditions tend toward the "objective" investigation of how to avoid, escape from, or profit from such calamities (p. 77). Chapter three in turn summarizes the historical development of the concept of dharma from the earliest Vedic instances to the putative period of the epics, ending with Asoka and the dharmasutra texts. The main point is to set up the by-now-familiar distinction between "the 'conservative' brahmanic conception of dharma, and the various challenges to this conception from non-brahmanic circles" (p. 132). In this chapter, Bowles takes full advantage of recent studies of dharma in early Indic contexts without himself treading into new arguments.

Chapters four and five concern aspects of narrative structure and strategy found in the ADhP. According to Bowles, the "rhetorical effort to consistently 'rename' the Realpolitik of the brahmanic model of kingship as dharma" (p. 154) in the ADhP is tempered by the underlying preference for an artha-oriented approach to emergency and political disaster. Yudhisthira's persistent questioning throughout this section of the epic allows a full exposition of the tension between different conceptualizations of dharma to...