Study Of Mahabharata

Author(s): J W De Jong
Publisher: J W De Jong

Page 15

THE STUDY OF THE MAHABHARATA
differentiation in status and in function to be discerned between the two phratries. One phratry is frequently more closely connected with the religious life, the other with the social life, the activities of the one more directly concern the sacral plane, the activities of the other the profane plane of the tribal existence. This social and functional discrimination is to be seen in the great tribal festive gatherings. The same differentiation is still further sustained. The more social side of the tribal life runs in the direction of the potlatch, while the more religious side is concentrated about the rites of initiation" (p. 310).
15
According to Held, the two parties in the epic, the Kauravas and the Pāṇḍavas, are opposed to each other as phratries, but are not phratries in the real sense of the word, that is to say, two exogamous moieties (cf. pp. 307-310). Held writes: "The tribal dualism is also met with in the structure of the society in another `shape, functionally taking the place of the older phratry-dualism. In every community where the society system obtains they are to be divided into two great societies, sometimes into two groups of societies. Such, in our opinion, is the relationship existing between the two parties of the Epic" (p. 308). The relation between the two phratries is at the same time one of complementarity and of rivalry. Held shows that this dual organization exists also in heaven in the contrast between deva-s and asura-s, because the social organization which prevails in heaven is conceived of as being the same as that upon earth. Deva-s and asura-s are rivals, but they cooperate with each other in the ritual of the churning of the drink of immortality (amṛtamanthana), Held considers this ritual to reflect a human society in which the circulatory connubial system prevailed. In the Indian mind, he writes, the actions of churning and fire-making by means of fire-sticks are connected with the idea of cosmic motion which is also found in the uninterrupted sequence of life and death, of activity (pravṛtti) and cessation (nivṛtti).
Held stresses that the gods must be studied by preference, side by side in a phratry-relation. Between Vişņu and Siva exists a religious identity: "Vişņu is Śiva, but that does not imply, reasoning upon a religious basis, that Vişņu is one and coincident with Siva; he is neither more nor less than Śiva; the fact is, he is a different being" (p. 168). Held compares this relation to that which exists between deva-s and asura-s: "The Devas are the same as the Asuras, but they are not identical with them" (p. 169). Held points out that in the classificatory system the two rival phratries are usually identified with all kinds of things constituting each other's natural complements, e. g. with male and female, light and dark, heaven and earth, etc. (p. 170). According to him, "In India, where, as we think we have made plausible, a patrilineal grouping is intersected by a latent mat