Madhuvidya

Author(s): S D Laddu, T N Dharmadhikari, Madhvi Kolhatkar, Pratibha Pingle
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 728

Diverse Treatment / 89
to discuss here C.V. Vaidya's view, which Jani approvingly cites (p.73), that Pandavas belonged to a family other than that of the Kauravas. Matilal puts very mildly his reservations on this suggestion when he says, "The evidence to support it seems to be insufficient" (p.xi).
While writing on "Marriage and Family in the Mahabharata: Some Aspects", S.G. Kantawala deals with the subject of niyoga. The custom has been looked upon differently at different times, but one would find it hard to agree with Kantawala when he says that Satyavati's suggestion to Bhisma to procreate sons on Vicitravirya's widows presented a dharma-dilemma for him (p.90). Kantawala seems to think that Bhisma's expression dharmed apetem (1.97.23) was made with reference to niyoga. That is not the case. About the practice of niyoga, Bhiṣma agrees with Satyavati that it was paro dharmah (1.97.13; earlier Satyavati: dharmam kartum iharhasi. 10). It is with regard to Satyavati's insistence that Bhisma should break his vow to remain a celibate, if not as dharma, then as apaddharma, that he considers the suggestion to be something that is 'far away from dharma'.
It is difficult to find anything of a moral dilemma in E.R. Sreekrishna Sarma's paper on Arjunvisadayoga. In his paper Sarma does not discuss the dejection felt by Arjuna at the commencement of the war, as one would be inclined to believe from the title of the paper, but the one he felt at the sight of Duhsala in the Sindhu country when he was out on a victorious expedition for Yudhisthira's Asvamedha. Duḥsala came up to Arjuna and begged him to protect her child whom she held in her arms. Sarma describes at length, much of which is the result of his imagination, the remorse Arjuna must have felt at her sight. Arjuna, of course, must have remembered that it was he who was responsible for killing Jayadratha, Duḥsala's husband, in the war. He therefore blamed Duryodhana whose greed for the kingdom had forced war on the Pandavas which they had to fight according to the dharma of a ksatriya (14.77.39-40). For the rest of what Sarma says there is no evidence in the epic.
No. 140
Madhu Vidya/703