Some storks and eagles eat carrion; herons and ospreys do not: kankas and kuraras (and badas) in the Mahabharata.

• Author: Fitzerald, James L.
• Position: Animal terminology in ancient epic Indian poem

Birds occupy some interesting places in the imagination of many Sanskrit poets, perhaps because brahminic culture accorded sabda such a privileged place in its experience of the world.(1) The conversations and recitations of gatherings of brahmins are happily compared to the honking of geese.(2) And when the Pandavas, one after the other, try to persuade Yudhisthira to give up his intention to renounce the Bharata kingship in the wake of the great war, Draupadi describes them to Yudhisthira as "parched like Catakas ... cuckooing monotonously" while Yudhisthira ignores their thirst.(3) Women in distress are constantly being compared to shrieking ospreys.(4) Madeleine Biardeau and All Hiltebeitel have paid particular attention to Yudhisthira's taking the name Kanka, "Heron," during the Pandavas' thirteenth year of virtual exile from the Bharata kingdom, when they lived incognito in "the kingdom of the fish," that is, Virata's Matsya kingdom? A kanka amidst matsyas hunts by remaining perfectly still for long periods of time, thereby deceiving the fish, luring them into complacency before grabbing and devouring them. This identification of Yudhisthira, according to Biardeau and Hiltebeitel, represents the brutal side of Dharmaputra (the son of the God Dharma), the side of Yudhisthira Dharmaraja (the "King of Dharma") which is identical to Yama Dharmaraja as he presides over the genocidal slaughter of the world's ksatriyas. I propose below that kanka refers primarily to the giant stork Leptopilos dubius, a grotesquely ugly bird that presides over the carrion-littered battlefield, a bird that provides an even more compelling emblem of "the King of Dharma" in the Mahabharata.

Since the Mahabharata is usually carefully observant of the birds it portrays, it is surprising to find that, if current understandings of the words kanka and kurara be correct, it describes herons and ospreys gorging themselves upon carrion on the battlefield. Such descriptions are surprising because herons and ospreys do not eat carrion. A good example of such a description occurs in the Stri Parvan when Gandhari, using special visionary power, describes from afar the scene of the battlefield after the war:

Though she was far away, that lady (Gandhari) of deep understanding saw, as if she were right there, the awesome, horrifying field where those heroes among men had battled. It was bestrewn with bones and hair, flooded with streams of blood, and littered on every side with many thousands of bodies - blood-befouled, headless bodies of elephants, horses, and warriors - and bunches of heads without any bodies. It was covered with the lifeless bodies of elephants, horses, and heroes and was a gay party for the man-eating Raksasas. It swarmed with jackals, badas, ravens, kankas, crows, kuraras, and vultures and it resounded with the ghastly howling of the jackals.

There is no question about the appropriateness of the jackals (srgala), ravens (kakola), crows (kaka), vultures (grdhra), and the raksasas here, but the three untranslated words in this list all pose problems. What are these kankas and kuraras? According to manuals of bird behavior, neither herons nor ospreys normally eat carrion and, for the most part, the foods most kinds of birds search for and eat are rigidly fixed. So the words kanka and kurara must signify something other than "heron" and "osprey," at least in contexts such as these. And what is this bada, which is, in fact, a frequent visitor at the MBh's grisly banquet?

There is sufficient evidence that the terms kanka and kurara do refer to herons and ospreys some of the time, so the question becomes, what additional birds can these two words refer to? What birds are substantially similar to herons and ospreys and do eat carrion? Obviously, if the other species are similar enough to be included in the same observational or "common sense genera," one should not have to look too far to find good candidates. Some checking in Salim Ali's Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan(6) leads me to propose (1) that we add India's two known "Adjutant Storks" to the reference of the word kanka; (2) that we enlarge the scope of the word kurara to include Ali's "Ringtailed Fishing Eagle"; and (3) that the bada is Ali's "Jungle Crow" (Corvus macrorhynchus culminatus).

KANKA

In the European lexicographical tradition, "heron" is the only relevant gloss of kanka.(7) But in most of the instances where the word occurs in the MBh signifying a kind of bird with identifiable behavior it refers to a bird which cannot be a heron. (There are many instances where kanka merely specifies the bird that provided the feathers used for fletching arrows shot in battle, while indicating nothing about the bird itself.) As in the instance here, so frequently throughout the MBh the kanka is a carrion-eating bird, one which sometimes circles...