Krishna's Lineage: The Harivamsha of Vyasa's Mahabharata.

• Author: Coleman, Tracy

Krishna's Lineage: The Harivamsha of Vyasa's Mahabharata. Translated from the Sanskrit by SIMON BRODBECK. New York: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2019. Pp. xxxx + 420. $99 (cloth), $29.95 (paper).

Janamejaya said:

I want to hear about all the deeds of Hari Krishna, the wise slayer of the foe, in full detail, with nothing left out, and with the deeds in the right order. You must also explain what the lord's nature was, brahmin, and narrate his manifestations.

How did wise Lord Vishnu, master of the gods and destroyer of the foe, come to be Vasudeva's son in Vasudeva's community? The world of the gods is a pure world, filled with immortals and graced by ihose whose deeds were pure, but he left it behind and came here to the world of mortals. Why did the guide of gods and humans, the creator and master of heaven and earth, place his divine self within the human realm?

He's the supreme discus w ielder .... He's the soul of all beings, the source of all success. He made and maintained the great elements. How could he be carried in the womb of an earthly woman?

(Hv 30.1-6. 8, p. 93)

While Janamejaya doesn't ask these questions until chapter 30, and Vaisampayana doesn't describe Krsna's birth on earth until chapter 48, this series of verses summarizes the overall contents of the Harivamsa and identifies significant themes: Krsna is Visnu, the supreme God, but he becomes human in the family of Vasudeva and his lineage is important; he is the cosmic creator, but born of a human mother, and he will father many children with his own wives--women whom he loves and honors; on earth a cowherd boy, he is yet the divine destroyer of evil, and his marvelous boyhood deeds have a purpose.

One can learn all this and more in Simon Brodbeck's new translation of the Harivamsa, a work emerging from the Cardiff Harivamsa Project, which has produced numerous articles as well as searchable electronic versions of the Sanskrit text. The latter can be accessed within the lengthy scholarly apparatus intended to supplement the translation, published as "Translating Vaidya's Harivamsa" in Asian Literature and Translation 6.1 (2019): 1-187 (henceforth referred to as ALT). In the first section of the ALT piece, entitled "Why Translate Vaidya's Reconstituted Harivamsa'?" Brodbeck reflects on the practical decision to use P. L. Vaidya's (1969) version of the text: "... almost all Mahabharata and Harivamsa scholarship in the world is now done in reference to the numbered chapters, verses, and apparatus passages of the critical edition. The facilitation of cumulative collaborative scholarship is a sufficient justification for the critical edition..." (ALT, p. 65). For those seeking variant readings, M. N. Dutt (1897) provides a complete translation of the vulgate. and more recent scholars have translated sections that take various manuscript traditions into account (see ALT, pp. 65-72). Following this discussion of editions, Brodbeck then considers "Emendation Conundrums" in part two of the scholarly apparatus (pp. 73-104), and in part three he discusses "Translating for the General Public" (pp. 105-63). A lengthy bibliography (pp. 165-87) concludes the supplementary work.

While the ALT piece is useful for translators and scholars, it isn't really necessary for an appreciation of the gift that Brodbeck has given the world with this fresh new translation of ancient epic literature. Indeed, as Brodbeck considers his intended audience, he writes (ALT, p. 105):

Aiming at the general public was possible and necessary because the Harivamsa isn't a specialized text; as the last part of the Mahabharata, it is intended for a broad audience. Vyasa instructs his disciples to teach the Mahabharata to all four...