The Mahabharata of Madeleine Biardeau

Published in 2002 by Le Seuil, this masterpiece in two volumes amounts to more than two thousand pages — two solid bricks of scholarship. The remarkable work she accomplished offers an excellent starting point for telling the Mahabharata in my own way. So let me say just a few words right away: the Mahabharata is, above all, a poem. By definition, a poem reaches to the very essence of things; it goes straight to the heart of life. And what a life it depicts! The fantastic and the divine are so closely intertwined with the temporal that the story itself becomes almost unbelievable —what some would dismiss as mere myths and legends.

In my view, to truly understand the author of a poem —and his work— the translator must share not only his literary sensibility, but also his emotion. As Vyāsa, the writer and originator of this monumental work, warns us, if that emotion is not experienced inwardly, spontaneously, the harm done in interpretation is inevitable. Moreover, when the translator or the scholar harbors within himself certain prejudices derived from monotheistic religions —as has often been the case— the distortion of the work becomes all the greater.

As for the notion of a neutral, impartial work of poetic translation, sealed under the authority of the “objective scholar,” my reservations are no less strong. Yet let us not anticipate failure: in reading Biardeau’s work, one finds a wealth of knowledge and insight that undoubtedly brings us closer to the epic of the Mahabharata. As with publicity —good or bad— the mere fact that it is spoken of is always a positive thing.

At a certain point in her early research, Madeleine Biardeau discovered Claude Lévi-Strauss’s structural approach developed in his studies of the Amerindians. She decided to apply this method to the Brahmanic world in order to arrive at a global understanding of the text —“so mistreated and fragmented by modern scholarship,” as she put it.

This reveals the difficulty Western interpreters face in translating such a vast poem by any means other than rational analysis and cautious trial —which, in itself, is already a remarkable achievement, particularly in the case of the late Biardeau’s work, since no other undertaking of this magnitude exists. The only exception would be the ongoing project —still incomplete as I write these lines— of the two Sanskritists Guy Vincent and Gilles Schauffelberger, who have combined their strength and expertise to translate the entire text (a choice that makes reading it more demanding and, at times, less comfortable). They already have several volumes to their credit.

The following sentence from Biardeau is particularly revealing; it sheds light on the working method of Indologists. “Of course,” she writes, “a certain capacity for refusal is needed at the outset.” By this she means that few readers, in her view, would be inclined toward a literal, word-for-word translation.

For my part, I believe she was right to offer her own two-thousand-page version; it was high time for French readers to gain access to this monumental work.

Yet those very “refusals,” unfortunately, leave an essential dimension of the Mahabharata in the shadows — inaccessible, or at best confused, for scholars and readers who strive for authenticity. All the great Hindu commentators of the Mahābhārata, such as Madhva or Rāmānuja (around 1200), have warned us: the meaning of the Vedic writings cannot be grasped without faith in the spiritual tradition, nor without the reader’s emotional participation in the great saga of the Mahabharata.

Biardeau is well aware of the many obstacles that stand in the way of translation. She describes the difficulty in these terms: “Every scholarly work, moreover, generally involves one or more hypotheses, and it is simply a matter of honesty for the author to acknowledge this.” But in her case—and the stumbling block is a major one—she sees the epic as a Brahmanical riposte to Buddhism! Yet the Mahabharata makes no reference whatsoever to Buddhism. Biardeau circumvents this peculiarity by declaring that the omission was deliberate, that Vyasa and the Brahmanas had simply conspired to conceal it…

From such a rather peculiar standpoint, it becomes easy to assign the epic to a period close to the Christian era—which conveniently satisfies many scholars. But the problem remains unsolved: before being written down, the Mahabharata had been transmitted orally for countless centuries. Her interpretation of the facts is therefore difficult to grasp —especially since here and there, in older Vedic texts and in the Puranas, one finds evidence directly contradicting her speculations. For instance, when she writes, “It will be understood that the epic did not spring ex nihilo from the author’s creative power. Not only did he have a corpus of much older texts…” (my emphasis).

And in all those texts, there is no mention of Buddhism. Naturally—since the advent of the Buddha is far more recent. Any ordinary person could reach that conclusion, but not she. This makes reading her Mahabharata a frustrating experience, as we remain trapped in a rationalist and condescending outlook toward a work of such genius. Even Montesquieu’s Persian would not have gone so far as to claim that the gods truly walked upon the earth, incarnating as mortals! No—however daring an Indologist might be compared to his peers, his conclusion is already decided: these are but fables meant for simple-minded folk, the kind who live along the Danube.

In this attitude, common among Vedantists, one can discern in the background the influence of Darwinian theory, which has come to be accepted as an unquestionable truth. This theory asserts that the world began in Africa and that the first humans originated there. In the wake of this idea, colonialism perpetuated a sister notion: that Hindus were inferior beings, natives incapable of possessing knowledge equal or superior to that of Europeans.

Above all —and it must be remembered that the first Indologists were Catholics, writing primarily for a Catholic audience, with all the dogmatism that entailed— it was inconceivable that any relevant scriptures could have existed before the Bible. And if such texts did exist, their authors had undoubtedly plagiarized the West —more precisely, the Iranians, the Jews, or the Greeks.

For a long time, the thesis that the Aryans invaded the Indian subcontinent and transmitted their science to primitive tribes living in the jungles prevailed among intellectuals. Yet recent studies have shown that all such conjectures simply do not hold up.

In fact, it is increasingly recognized that civilizations all around the world drew immense treasures of knowledge from the Hindu tradition. In almost every art, Hindus stood out as the most sophisticated, the most brilliant.

There is yet another major element —and a crucial one— that Madame Biardeau fails to take into account, even though it is repeatedly emphasized in the work itself: the necessity of receiving initiation from a spiritual master versed in the understanding of the Mahabharata in order to grasp its deeper meaning.

That this essential instruction may not be practical for non-Hindus is understandable; yet logic compels us not to fall into extremes by cutting corners and thereby distorting the transmission.

For instance, when speaking of the “descending form” — what Indians call an avatar of Vishnu, in this case Krishna — Madame Biardeau warns us that this is an invention of the author Vyasa: “Not only does he introduce a figure of the god, intermediary between his supreme yogic being and the ordinary world, but he invents yet another twist to the narrative…”

Yet Vyasa never spoke of creation or invention. On the contrary, he insists that readers take seriously the historical manifestations he describes. He tells the story for posterity, so that it may not vanish along with the memory that fades. Vyasa uvāca — or, as one might say in Latin, Vyasa dixit.

His repeated exhortations on this point are so clear that one struggles to understand Madame Biardeau’s approach.

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