THE CONCEPT OF KINGSHIP IN THE MAHABHARATA

THE CONCEPT OF KINGSHIP IN THE MAHABHARATA  

                   There is no certainty as to when the war of the Mahabharata was fought.  However, a researcher Velandai Gopala Aiyer is said to have claimed in an article titled “The Date of the Mahabharata War” published in The Indian Review, Vol. II, January –December 19o1, that the Mahabharata war was fought out in or about 1190 B.C.

                   The great Indian seer Sri Aurobindo who himself was the author of an epic poem “Savitri” agreed with Mr. Aiyer.

                   However C. Rajagopalachari writes The Mahabharata was composed many thousand centuries ago.  He goes on to add that all the floating literature that was thought to be worth preserving, historical, geographical, legendary, political, theological and philosophical, of nearly thirty centuries found a place in it.

                   For our purpose it is enough to know that the war of the Mahabharata which lasted 18 days was fought long before the invasion of India by Alexander the Great.

                   The concept of Kingship is found in the Shanti Parva of the Mahabharata.  It says nothing except truthfulness brings success to kings.  They should adopt straightforwardness in all actions.  Fate will not achieve their purpose.  Human endeavour is greater than fate. The best king is he in whose country, the people move about without fear, like sons in their father’s house. The king should always make arrangements for the security and maintenance of the poor, the helpless, the old and the widowed women.  Let there be no beggars and no thieves in the whole kingdom. First of all the King should conquer himself and then his enemies.

                   A king should build up his victory by means other than war; victory through war is the worst.  But if war becomes inevitable, the king must fight it out with all his might and main. 

                   Truthfulness is the eternal Dharma of a king.  It consists of thirteen forms.  They are: Truth-speaking, equanimity, self-control,  absence of jealousy, forbearance, sense of shame, endurance, freedom from spite,  renunciation, meditation, nobility, freedom from the effects of happiness and misery, constant mercifulness and non-injury.

                   It is doubtful whether the kings post-Mahabharata possessed all the qualities of kingship spelled out in The Mahabharata.  One can see in the pages of history books that many of them acted on the maxim: Everything is fair in love and war. Both Alexander and Porus had to follow the spirit of this maxim because new situations emerged and most of the kings became fashionably expansionists.