The Great Mahabharata After-Dinner Talk: Making the Bharata Great.

• Author: Fitzgerald, James L.

I want to begin this evening by invoking the memory of one of the great Bharatavids of the AOS, Luis Gonzalez-Reimann, who passed away in 2022. He was a fine scholar and intellectual. I met Luis on a number of occasions and we had many stimulating conversations about the Mahabharata. May he rest in peace.

FOOD TALES

As many of you are no doubt tired of hearing, the Mahabharata (MBh) is famous for containing the claim that anything not found in it exists nowhere else. So it's not surprising that the epic includes much talk of food, meals, banquets, and, sometimes, postprandial conversations. In fact, the first public telling of the Mahabharata was a kind of table-talk during what was normally the preparation, cooking, and eating of a ritualized meal, a sacrifice. Actually, it is better described as postprandial entertainment during the many intervals of a long and complicated sacrifice. When the MBh was recited for the first time, however, the animals cooked in the fire were snakes, and it seems that no one but the Fire God enjoyed any snake-meat at that meal. Snakes were harmed at the first telling of the MBh. Those of you not familiar with the details of the story may be relieved to know that, even though this Snake Sacrifice was intended to exterminate all the snakes in the world, that did not happen. The rite ended unexpectedly and prematurely; but that's a tale slithering off in a different direction. (Sorry! I was told that bad puns are required in after-dinner talks!)

So settle back in your chairs, buckle up, and stay awake as we sample a few tidbits from the MBh's menu. And just in case you're feeling drowsy already, I'll start off with a little cannibalism. There was a vicious ruler called Ilvala, who had as his special power the ability to call the dead back to life. He was a bully, who had a long-standing grudge against Brahmins, and he turned their famous weakness for enjoying free meals against them. He would invite a Brahmin to dinner and serve this unsuspecting guest an exquisite confection of mutton; but this meat was actually the flesh of Ilvala's younger brother, Vatapi, whom llvala had secretly butchered for the occasion. (We in the AOS were always safe from such treachery at our annual banquets, when our dear departed friend Bill Sanford planned and supervised them--may Bill rest in peace.) After Ilvala's guest had enjoyed his meal, the brutal prince would call his brother back to life, and Vatapi would burst from the side of the Brahmin's abdomen with a loud cackle. (We're all familiar with the phrase "side-splitting laughter"--I'm sure the philologists here will agree that this is likely where that phrase originated.)

Now, once upon a time llvala was visited by the sage Agastya, as this august Brahmin was making the rounds of the high and mighty of the land to beg jewelry and other finery from them, at the behest of his wife. (Agastya would be a really useful engineer to have around today to help deal with some of our environmental challenges. Rising sea-levels? He once swallowed down the waters of all the oceans at the behest of the Gods. Too many volcanoes or earthquakes? Once, the Vindhya mountains of central India were rising up higher and higher, as they hoped to force the sun to circle around them, just the way it circles round the Himalaya mountains. Agastya commanded them to stop growing for a time, and they did. He told them that they were obstructing his passage on a journey to southern India, and he said they could grow again someday, after he returned to the north. Agastya has yet to return.) So llvala tried his trick on the mighty Agastya when that sage came round to his palace. He cooked Vatapi up and served him; but afterward, when he called his brother back to life, all that came forth from Agastya was a puff of gas. (With the gentility and understatement for which the MBh is famous, the text doesn't provide any crude details about this effusion, and we are left to admire its drollery, as well as that Brahmin's surpassing power.) Realizing that Agastya had digested his brother, llvala was crestfallen, and he gave the sage the riches he was asking for.

There are a number of other famous stories about eating and food in the MBh, and a good number of them highlight the dependent status of the Brahmin elite. Significantly, there are several stories glorifying impoverished Brahmins, who are heroically starving themselves to death rather than compromise their purity by serving as priests for unclean patrons, or by abandoning their unremunerative priestly offices altogether to live by keeping a shop in the market, or by becoming a soldier, or--worst of all--adopting the theoretically forbidden work of farming. At a critical juncture of the epic narrative, the authors confected an elaborate scene in which Yudhisthira, the leader of the...