8

Some moral tasting notes

on the Udyogaparvan of the
Mahābhārata
James M. Hegarty

Abstract
This chapter explores the nature of moral deliberation in the Udyogaparvan
of the Mahābhārata. It focuses on the moral content of the courtly debates
contained in the Udyogaparvan, which are so central to the narrative
progression of the Mahābhārata. The work of the noted psychologist
Jonathan Haidt is used to explore the moral foci of the Udyogaparvan and
the nature of moral debate in the text. The chapter shows that the debates of
the Udyogaparvan centre on a series of recurrent moral concerns, which are
enumerated and explored in Haidt’s work. It is the argument of this chapter
that the exploration of these recurrent moral concerns helps to explicate the
moral saliency of the Mahābhārata in South Asia (across linguistic, cultural
and religious boundaries) in new ways and further facilitates comparative
analyses of religious texts.

Introduction
Nīlakaṇṭha, the great commentator on the Mahābhārata, repeated
a widespread view held by the learned brahmins of his day that the
Mahābhārata’s teachings on the dharma (or ‘righteous acts’) of kings

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were perpetually authoritative and not just for the kṣatriya or warrior
caste.1 Nīlakaṇṭha, moreover, felt that the relevance of the Mahābhārata
was not limited to its teachings on how to rule; it was, in his view, a text of
universal, and universalising, religious significance. This was because it was
based on Vedic knowledge, even where the original Vedic source was now
lost to humankind.2 While some may consider that rootedness in the Veda
makes this claim a distinctively Hindu one, it is, in fact, from the perspective
of the individual committed to the truth of the Veda, as Nīlakaṇṭha was,
universal.3 This chapter explores a somewhat different line of argument,
but, like Nīlakaṇṭha, it stresses both the moral relevance and the universal
underpinnings of the Mahābhārata. It focuses on the fifth book, the
Udyogaparvan, in which the two branches of the royal family at the heart of
the tale seek to avert—with rather different degrees of commitment—all-out
war between them.
The existing scholarship on the Udyogaparvan, as is perfectly appropriate,
emphasises the place of this parvan in the Mahābhārata as a whole and in
the history of the development of Hindu religious and political thought
more generally. In his introduction to his translation of the Udyogaparvan,
van Buitenen does an excellent job of identifying the parallels between the
great Sanskrit manual of statecraft, the Arthaśāstra, and the Udyogaparvan.
For van Buitenen, the Arthaśāstra’s ideal-typical account of the conduct
of diplomacy informs the form and content of the various diplomatic
engagements of the Udyogaparvan. He is less clear, however, on the
relationship between the several parts of the Udyogaparvan taken as a whole.
For example, the night-time homily given by the sage advisor Vidura to the
confused King Dhṛtarāṣṭra is, for van Buitenen, something of a trite rehash
of materials better expressed elsewhere, while Sanatsujāta’s philosophical
teachings, which constitute a freestanding upaniṣad, are not much more
than a foreshadowing of the Bhagavadgītā. Van Buitenen thus treats the
Udyogaparvan in a way that is sensitive but disjointed. He offers instead, in
his introduction, a long meditation on the theory of myth and the relevance
of historical method as they pertain to the Mahābhārata taken as a whole
(or not, which is rather the point of his discussion). Elsewhere, van Buitenen

1 He was writing in the second half of the seventeenth century in Benares, India, in his Bhāratabhāvadīpa
or Light on the Inner Significance of the (Mahā)Bhārata, as cited and discussed by Minkowski (2010).
2 In the smṛtyadhikaraṇa of the Mīmāṃsāsūtra (1.3.1–2). See Minkowski (2005: 240–41), where he
cites some of Nīlakaṇṭha’s remarks. See also Müller (1860: 94); Pollock (1997).
3 Something McComas Taylor explores adroitly and to great effect in his work on ‘regimes of truth’ in
relation to the Pañcatantra and the Bhāgavata Purāṇa. See Taylor (2007, 2008, 2016).

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offers masterful elucidations of the ways in which the Mahābhārata

evokes other ideas and practices only to subvert them or, at the very least,
comment on them (the patterning of the Dyūtaparvan after the Vedic royal
consecration ritual, the rājasūya, being a case in point) and yet here the
parallels are elucidated but not definitively explored. The Mahābhārata
and Arthaśāstra are, for van Buitenen, in learned agreement, but not in
conversation, at least not in the Udyogaparvan. Angelika Malinar adopts
a more subtle and sensitive approach to the debates of the Udyogaparvan,
but she focuses on characterising the nature of their contribution to a larger
debate about kingship, the Bhagavadgītā and the transition from lineage to
state systems (ground covered in a more historical mode by Romila Thapar
and many others before and since). My approach to the Udyogaparvan in this
chapter is somewhat different and more than a little experimental (for which
I beg the reader’s indulgence and patience). It focuses on the moral content
of the courtly debates contained in the Udyogaparvan, which are central to
the narrative progression of the Mahābhārata. My exploration will pursue
a more universalist line of inquiry, in which I consider the moral foundations
of the back and forth of negotiations in the Udyogaparvan. This more
universalist approach develops the work of the evolutionary psychologist and
theorist of religion and politics Jonathan Haidt. Haidt argues for an approach
to morality as innate to our species. He sums up his approach as follows:
I defined innateness as ‘organised in advance of experience,’ like the
first draft of a book that gets revised as individuals grow up within
diverse cultures. This definition allowed me to propose that the
moral foundations are innate. Particular rules and virtues vary across
cultures, so you’ll get fooled if you look for universality in the finished
books. You won’t find a single paragraph that exists in identical form
in every human culture. But if you look for links between evolutionary
theory and anthropological observations, you can take some educated
guesses about what was in the universal first draft of human nature.
(Haidt 2012: 178)

Haidt characterises five moral ‘foundations’ for humans, as shown in the

columns in Table 8.1.

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Table 8.1 Five moral ‘foundations’ for humans

Care/harm Fairness/ Loyalty/ Authority/ Sanctity/

cheating betrayal subversion degradation
Adaptive Protect and Reap benefits Form Forge Avoid
challenge care for of two-way cohesive beneficial contaminants
children partnerships coalitions relationships
within
hierarchies
Original Suffering, Cheating, Threat or Signs of Waste
triggers distress or cooperation, challenge to dominance products,
neediness deception group and diseased
expressed by submission people
one’s child
Current Baby seals, Marital fidelity, Sports Bosses, Taboo ideas
triggers cute cartoon broken vending teams, respected (communism,
characters machines nations professionals racism)
Characteristic Compassion Anger, Group Respect, Disgust
emotions gratitude, guilt pride, rage fear
at traitors
Relevant Caring, Fairness, Loyalty, Obedience, Temperance,
virtues kindness justice, patriotism, deference chastity,
trustworthiness self-sacrifice piety,
cleanliness

Source: From Haidt (2012: 146).

He explains them as follows:

The Care/harm foundation evolved in response to the adaptive
challenge of caring for vulnerable children. It makes us sensitive to
signs of suffering and need; it makes us despise cruelty and want to
care for those who are suffering.

The Fairness/cheating foundation evolved in response to the adaptive

challenge of reaping the rewards of cooperation without getting
exploited. It makes us sensitive to indications that another person is
likely to be a good (or bad) partner for collaboration and reciprocal
altruism. It makes us want to shun or punish cheaters.

The Loyalty/betrayal foundation evolved in response to the adaptive

challenge of forming and maintaining coalitions. It makes us sensitive
to signs that another person is (or is not) a team player. It makes us
trust and reward such people, and it makes us want to hurt, ostracise,
or even kill those who betray us or our group.

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The Authority/subversion foundation evolved in response to the

adaptive challenge of forging relationships that will benefit us within
social hierarchies. It makes us sensitive to signs of rank or status, and
to signs that other people are (or are not) behaving properly, given
their position.

The Sanctity/degradation foundation evolved initially in response to

the adaptive challenge of the omnivore’s dilemma, and then to the
broader challenge of living in a world of pathogens and parasites.
It includes the behavioral immune system, which can make us wary
of a diverse array of symbolic objects and threats. It makes it possible
for people to invest objects with irrational and extreme values—both
positive and negative—which are important for binding groups
together. (Haidt 2012: 178–79)

I will explore the significance of Haidt’s theory, using his fivefold foundation
of morality, to the debates of the Udyogaparvan.4 On the basis of this,
I will suggest that an approach that is theoretically informed by Haidt’s
evolutionary psychology can shed new light on the universal significance of
the Mahābhārata as a nuanced response to the complex dynamics of family,
politics, warfare and much else. I will, in this way, join Nīlakaṇṭha in making
universal claims for the significance of the Mahābhārata, albeit on rather
different foundations. I do this in a spirit of experiment and in the desire
to model and stimulate new modes of engagement with ancient texts (most
especially those that open new avenues for the comparison of materials from
diverse contexts and stimulate new readings of both well-known and less
well-explored materials). Inevitably, this chapter therefore sits somewhat
adjacent to continuing debates about the Mahābhārata that are more literary
or historical in their focus.
My title requires some explanation. In The Righteous Mind: Why Good
People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (2012), Haidt compares his
moral ‘foundations’ to ‘taste receptors’ and makes recurrent use of the
metaphor of a ‘moral palate’. This is, of course, a metaphor well-known
to Sanskrit intellectual tradition in the context of dramaturgy and formal

4 To this list of five, Haidt adds a provisional sixth foundation: liberty/oppression. Haidt (2012: 215)
characterises this as: ‘We added the Liberty/oppression foundation, which makes people notice and resent
any sign of attempted domination. It triggers an urge to band together to resist or overthrow bullies and
tyrants. This foundation supports the egalitarianism and antiauthoritarianism of the left, as well as the
don’t-tread-on-me and give-me-liberty anti-government anger of libertarians and some conservatives.’ I do
not make use of this additional foundation in the present analysis. It is described as provisional and seems,
much more than others, to reflect contemporary, and particularly American, political polarities.

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aesthetics, where the dominant mode of a work was explored in terms of its
rasa or flavour. What follows, then, is a set of very exploratory ‘moral tasting
notes’ for one of the most debate-intensive books of the Mahābhārata, the
Udyogaparvan.

The debates of the Udyogaparvan

In this chapter, I follow the core courtly debates of the Udyogaparvan across
its four main ‘embassies’, by which I refer to occasions in which an individual
or group is sent from one court to another for the purpose of negotiation and/
or remonstration. I will not explore the substories told to justify positions in
the text, though I will touch on one of the more important of them, which is
that of Indra and the slaying of Vṛtra and the consequent reign of the human
Nahuṣa as king of the gods. I will also leave to one side the major separate and
distinct dialogues of the text—namely, those between King Dhṛtarāṣṭra and
his advisor, Vidura, and between King Dhṛtarāṣṭra and the sage Sanatsujāta,
both of which occur during the blind king’s long dark night of the soul (I have
explored these dialogues elsewhere; see Hegarty 2019). My primary focus is
on the patterns of exchange in the Udyogaparvan and the characterisation
of their moral foundations or ‘flavours’. I will point, however, to the ways in
which aspects of the Indra/Vṛtra/Nahuṣa story, the theophany of Kṛṣṇa and
the myopic focus on royal power in Duryodhana’s speeches and embassies
are morally and metaphysically relevant to the debates of the embassies of the
Udyogaparvan.
By way of context, for those not overly familiar with the Udyogaparvan, it is
structured around the back and forth between the two sets of cousins who
are in conflict in the Mahābhārata, the Pāṇḍavas and the Kauravas. The five
Pāṇḍava brothers, led by the eldest, Yudhiṣṭhira, have just completed 13 years
in exile, which stipulated that the final year should be spent incognito. This
period was spent in disguise in the court of King Virāṭa of the Matsyas, in
Upaplavya, where we initially find the Pāṇḍavas considering their position.
The other, far more numerous, set of cousins, the Kauravas, is to be found
in Indraprastha, where they, too, led by King Dhṛtarāṣṭra and his boorish
son Duryodhana, are debating their next steps. In both courts, different
assessments of the recent past are heard and, in both courts, there is
disagreement about what constitutes the right and the politic thing to do.
The issues raised are not resolved, as one court sends embassies to the other.
Against this backdrop of two very polarised groups of cousins, Kṛṣṇa, as both

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god and chieftain, plays a critical role. The word udyoga literally means an
‘effort’ or a ‘preparation’ and the text is true to its moniker, in terms of both
its diplomatically intensive content and its role in preparing the characters
and readers of the text for the war that is to come.

The council of Upaplavya (Mbh, 5.1–6)

Dominant flavours: Fairness and cheating

Kṛṣṇa opens the proceedings. His initial statement regarding the situation of
the Pāṇḍava brothers is anchored in the specifics of the wrongdoings of their
cousins and opponents, the Kauravas. He wastes no time in enumerating the
nature of the latter’s misdeeds. He focuses on the following accusations: the
Kauravas tricked Yudhiṣṭhira, the senior Pāṇḍava brother; they plundered
the kingdom of the Pāṇḍavas; and finally, they sought to harm the Pāṇḍavas
as children. The mithyācāra—the deceitful means, as the Sanskrit has it—of
the Kauravas are thus made clear. Kṛṣṇa’s emphasis on the moral rectitude
of the Pāṇḍavas is equally clear. He suggests that Yudhiṣṭhira is always
preoccupied with that which is right (dharma) and that which is useful
(artha). The brothers, according to Kṛṣṇa, only wish to regain that which
they won for themselves. Kṛṣṇa closes with a suggestion that an envoy be sent
to the court of King Dhṛtarāṣṭra to establish the intentions of Duryodhana.
I will pause for an initial application of Haidt’s typology of moral concerns.
Kṛṣṇa’s objections to the conduct of the Kauravas centre on the following:
• Harm: the Kauravas sought to harm the Pāṇḍavas as children.
• Cheating: the Kauravas cheated the Pāṇḍavas at dice.
• Betrayal: the Kauravas abused the parameters of the coalition of cousins.
• Subversion: the Kauravas took the kingdom and imposed the conditions
of exile based on the improper use of power and rank (chiefly, though
left unstated by Kṛṣṇa at this point, as a consequence of the weakness
of Dhṛtarāṣṭra and his reliance on explanations of events in terms of the
power of fate [daiva] and time [kāla]).
The rectitude of the Pāṇḍavas is, essentially, the inverse of this. They have,
in Kṛṣṇa’s view, never reacted to the abuse heaped on them. They are thus
caring, fair, loyal and properly respectful of authority and its responsible and
appropriate use.

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Kṛṣṇa’s point of view is most certainly not that of his senior brother,
Balarāma. Balarāma makes clear that, in his view, Yudhiṣṭhira lost his head
and the game of dice was entirely fair and above board. For Balarāma,
Yudhiṣṭhira did not act as someone in his position should. Balarāma sees no
issue in Śakuni’s victory over Yudhiṣṭhira at dice, where the former acted as
Duryodhana’s nominated representative. Balarāma makes these points to
urge the council to take up a conciliatory stance in their negotiations with
Duryodhana and the Kauravas. Balarāma’s counterposition can be read as
follows in terms of Haidt’s moral foundation theory: Yudhiṣṭhira is guilty
of an act of subversion; as Pāṇḍava king, he lost his head to the dice, which is
not appropriate behaviour given his position in the social hierarchy. Balarāma
considers Śakuni to have acted fairly on this basis.
Kṛṣṇa’s charioteer and Pāṇḍava ally Sātyaki counters this view very forcefully.
He suggests that Yudhiṣṭhira was too trusting. He does not believe
Yudhiṣṭhira should prostrate himself for the return of his patrimony, nor
does he accept the claim that the Pāṇḍavas were discovered during their exile
(an accusation that is circulating and which we will hear repeated below).
His concerns centre therefore on fairness, cheating and the proper respect for
authority. His final points emphasise the moral acceptability of the killing of
one’s enemies and the risks of begging from them.
The next speaker, Drupada, King of Pañcāla, reinforces this view by suggesting
that Duryodhana acts consistently in bad faith and that King Dhṛtarāṣṭra is
blinded by love for his son. Here, again, fairness, cheating and the proper exercise
of authority are the key issues. This being said, the debate ends with Drupada
dispatching his old house brahmin to argue their cause and sow dissent in
the ranks of the Kaurava court (protected by his status as an envoy and by the
spectre of brahminicide—in a culture in which the killing of a brahmin is the
worst sin imaginable—something reinforced in the Udyogaparvan itself with
its famous story of Indra’s double brahminicide, which I explore below).
I count 25 distinct moral claims made across the various speeches of the
council of Upaplavya (see Appendix 8.1 for my detailed enumeration and
coding). For my moral tasting notes, I am not, at present, interested in who
says what, but rather what, morally, is given the most ‘airtime’—or perhaps,
given my central metaphor and title, what is chewed over more thoroughly—
by those present at a given debate or set of debates. We can represent the
‘moral tasting notes’ of the council of Upaplavya as Table 8.2.5

5 The embassy that immediately proceeds this council adds nothing to these totals, so I offer the tasting
notes here rather than with my examination of the embassy below.
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Table 8.2 Moral tasting notes of the council of Upaplavya

Moral ‘flavour’ Level of usage

Care/harm 3
Fairness/cheating 20
Loyalty/betrayal 5
Authority/subversion 11
Sanctity/degradation 0

The passage we have been considering is thus strongly flavoured with concerns
about fairness and cheating (it is indeed fiery with indignation); the subversion
of authority follows next on our moral palate (sour as it is), with diminishing
notes of loyalty and betrayal (ever salty) and issues of care and harm (earthy and
umami, as these are, at least in my imagination). We find—unsurprisingly, given
it is a partisan gathering—a simple exchange of mostly mutually reinforcing
positions in this initial debate. Only Balarāma demurs. We also observe Haidt’s
typology holding up quite well as I put it through its initial paces. Nothing has
challenged or exceeded his categories thus far. We will see the unfolding debates
pivot several times, however, and interrupted by other forms of discourse or
events that are significant and, I will argue, usefully explicated in relation to
Haidt’s ‘foundations’ of morality. It is worth noting that the present debate
offered nothing in relation to the moral centre of sanctity/degradation, which
is something that the next exchange in the text addresses fulsomely, though it
is not one of the four embassies of the Udyogaparvan that are central to my
analysis. It is to this exchange I will now turn.

Kṛṣṇa’s options, Śalya and the story of

Indra, Vṛtra and Nahuṣa (Mbh, 5.7–18)

Dominant flavours: Sanctity and degradation

Kṛṣṇa heads to his home in Dvārakā after the council of Upaplavya; the
kṣatriya tradition in the Mahābhārata is that a request for support in arms
will be met on a first-come, first-served basis. Consequently, Kṛṣṇa finds
himself visited by Arjuna for the Pāṇḍavas and Duryodhana for the Kauravas.
He is napping when they arrive; Duryodhana arrives first, but Arjuna is seen
first. It is thus debatable who is truly ‘first’ at this critical juncture. This
complexity leads the wily Kṛṣṇa to promise his aid to both parties either as
a noncombatant advisor or through the loan of his armies. Arjuna is given
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first choice. He selects Kṛṣṇa’s aid as noncombatant advisor. Duryodhana

is pleased to accept Kṛṣṇa’s armies. Kṛṣṇa’s brother, Balarāma, declares that
he will not aid either party. Arjuna asks Kṛṣṇa to be his charioteer. This
passage of only 37 verses is a momentous one. It gives us the critical pairing
of Arjuna and Kṛṣṇa on one chariot, which will provide the setting for the
Bhagavadgītā. It also neatly dramatises the personal, increasingly devotional,
loyalty of the Pāṇḍavas to Kṛṣṇa and the paramount goal of military power for
Duryodhana, whose focus on a more mundane form of kṣatriya supremacy
is, as we will see, unrelenting.
The passage includes another important and parallel event regarding the
leadership of the Kaurava armies by King Śalya. Śalya, a Pāṇḍava supporter,
is tricked into offering a boon to Duryodhana; Duryodhana uses this boon
to compel Śalya to act as the leader of his forces. Śalya will also serve as the
charioteer of Karṇa in his battle with Arjuna. On hearing this, Yudhiṣṭhira
asks Śalya to undermine the confidence of Karṇa while acting as his
charioteer; Yudhiṣṭhira acknowledges that this act is akartavya (a gerundive
meaning ‘it should not be done’) but nevertheless makes the request. Here,
we find a distorted reflection of the relationship between Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna.
Śalya will agree, at Yudhiṣṭhira’s behest, to act as charioteer and provocateur
to Karṇa. Śalya will undermine his passenger; disunity will be the hallmark
of their relationship, as harmony is that of Arjuna and Kṛṣṇa.6 Indeed,
Karṇa’s chariot, in a powerful metaphor of the limitations of his moral and
metaphysical horizons, will sink into the mire of the battlefield just before
his death.7 Yudhiṣṭhira’s request, alongside other misdeeds by the Pāṇḍavas
during the war that is to come, will form the basis of further intratextual and
extratextual controversies (beyond the scope of this chapter, but in proportion
to the accusations of moral impropriety levelled against the Kauravas before
the Mahābhārata’s main war).
It is at this point that Śalya tells the story of the victory of Indra over Vṛtra
and Nahuṣa. Śalya explains that he intends to tell this tale to demonstrate
that even the lord of the gods himself had his trials and tribulations. The
tale is wonderfully rich, widely distributed in multiple tellings across South
Asian literature and has been subject to numerous scholarly analyses, which
I will not enumerate. It moves through the complex ramifications of a
feud between the brahmin Tvaṣṭar Prajāpati and Indra. Indra kills the son

6 Kṛṣṇa will provide, through an extended act of philosophical persuasion and another well-timed
theophany, higher knowledge in the Bhagavadgītā of the Bhīṣmaparvan, the book that follows the
Udyogaparvan.
7 Notwithstanding other more complex symbolisms to be associated with this event.
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of Tvaṣṭar, Triśiras, and incurs the sin of brahminicide. Tvaṣṭar, enraged,

creates Vṛṭra to destroy Indra. With Viṣṇu’s aid, Vṛṭra is killed by means of
exploiting the ‘small print’ of his invulnerability (he cannot be killed by solid
or liquid, by night or by day and so, inevitably, is slain by Viṣṇu-impregnated
thunder-foam, which is, of course, neither solid nor liquid, at dusk, which
is neither day nor night; this is the obvious ploy in retrospect!). Indra, now
responsible for a double brahminicide, is overcome at the murderous ploy in
which he has participated and retreats from the world in miniaturised form,
choosing to hide in a lotus stalk. The gods anoint Nahuṣa, a human, to be
their king in his absence. Nahuṣa proves to be more than a little despotic
and lascivious.8 He relentlessly pursues Indra’s wife, Śacī, who resists his
questionable charms. Meanwhile, Viṣṇu explains how Indra can expiate the
sin of double brahminicide by means of ritual action (the very aśvamedha
that Yudhiṣṭhira will perform after the terrible battle at Kurukṣetra). He does
so and is cleansed of his sin. Śacī finds Indra, through the intercession of the
goddess Upaśrutir (‘Whisper’ or perhaps ‘Oracular Voice’). Indra suggests
that Śacī make herself available to Nahuṣa on the condition that he appears
on a wagon drawn by brahmin seers. While remonstrating with the seers,
Nahuṣa’s foot touches the head of Agastya. Because of this violation, he is
cursed to spend 10,000 years in the form of a snake and is toppled from his
position as king of the gods. Indra is thus returned to his high estate, cleansed
of sin and reunited with Śacī.
This wonderfully rich story plays only a minor role in this chapter and I will
detain us with only a few key observations drawing on the moral typology of
Haidt (I will not seek to tabulate its content, as it is far less amenable to this
treatment than a more straightforward moral debate). The story of Indra,
Vṛtra and Nahuṣa is redolent with sanctity and degradation through the issue
of both brahminicide (by Indra of Triśiras) and the physical humiliation of
the brahmin Agastya (by Nahuṣa). It is filled with taboo, transgression and
the ritual expiation of impurity. It is replete with beings invested with sacral
power, in complex social hierarchies, who are themselves shot through with
considerations of relative purity. With its graphic violence and emphasis
on sexual possession and physical, but also symbolic, humiliation (most
prominently, the foot on the brahmin’s head, but also through beheadings
and much else besides), it is a tale of moral disgust—a tale of sin and expiation.
For Haidt, sanctity and degradation are those rules of moral behaviour that
were, in our deep past, related to the avoidance of pathogens and parasites.

8 It is hard not to point to recent American political events here.

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They are the moral impulses least amenable to the back and forth of debate.
Instead, they engender the strongest and most visceral responses and are the
locus of moral disgust. We find this moral centre being recurrently triggered
in this tale. The story is also shot through with the agency of Viṣṇu. He is in
the foam that kills Vṛtra and his advice provides the means by which Indra
is rehabilitated from the sin of (double) brahminicide (a sin with no ritual
expiation in dharmaśāstra). This allows Indra to advise his wife, Śacī, as to
the means of defeating the despotic Nahuṣa, who stands, of course, as the
proxy of Duryodhana in the main narrative of the Udyogaparvan, as Indra
is Yudhiṣṭhira’s. It is no accident that a story that places such emphasis on
sanctity also emphasises its divine lynchpin, Viṣṇu. This is not insignificant
to the action of the main plot of the Mahābhārata.
We are now in the position to observe how, in the content of the narration of
the tale of Indra, Vṛtra and Nahuṣa, sanctity and degradation predominate.
This is in marked contrast to the context of narration, in which we
have seen, and will see, a strong emphasis on fairness and cheating with
considerable emphasis also on the proper conduct of authority and the
detailed examination of the recent past. This morally orthogonal discourse
finds a complement and capstone in the theophany of Kṛṣṇa towards the
end of the Udyogaparvan, which anchors both sanctity and human action
in the revelation of its reality and substrate. Above and beyond the cut and
thrust of moral and philosophical debate, the self-disclosure of God is the
only meaningful power play. There is another contrastive moral discourse,
but it lacks this heavyweight metaphysical anchorage. It is the ‘might is
right’ philosophy of Duryodhana, which forms the core of his final mocking
embassy to the Pāṇḍavas, when he sends the gambler’s son Ulūka to beard his
cousins mercilessly (in the fourth and final embassy that we will explore). For
the present, it is sufficient to note that we will observe three types of moral
discourse in the Udyogaparvan. One is anchored in the close reading of events
to discern their morality (we have seen this already and might call it a discourse
of social justice). Another is anchored in the sacred and the recognition of the
underlying nature of reality, which, crucially, finds Viṣṇu/Kṛṣṇa at its apex
as the divine being who encompasses and directs that reality (inclusive of fate
and time). The third rejects the idea of the rules of engagement in toto, be
they anchored in moralities, legalities or divine realities, and plumps instead
for power in the here and now as the only determining factor. For this type
of king, the pertinent question is not ‘should I?’ It is only ever the question,
‘Can I?’ We will see this play out across all the embassies of the Udyogaparvan,
to which I will now turn.

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The first embassy: King Drupada’s brahmin

in the Kaurava court (Mbh, 5.20–21)

Dominant flavours: Fairness and cheating

On arriving at the Karuava court, Drupada’s unnamed brahmin leads with
a reiteration of the moral concerns as they were laid out in the council at
Upaplavya. It is a speech that even the pro-Pāṇḍava councillor of King
Dhṛtarāṣṭra, Bhīṣma, calls atitīkṣṇa (‘sharp’). Karṇa, interrupting his
elder, moves the debate from one of varied moral issues, as reflected in the
exchanges at Upaplavya, to a single moral and legal issue—that of samaya
(or ‘covenant’). For Karṇa, the dice game was fair, if asymmetric, and the
consequent ‘covenanted’ period of exile was not duly honoured. There is
but one moral issue here for Karṇa and it relates to fairness and cheating:
the Kauravas have been fair; the Pāṇḍavas have not. Issues of sanctity and
degradation, of godhead and brahmin supremacy count not at all.
Bhīṣma offers no further moral discourse. He does not attempt a rebuttal
of the points made by Karna; instead, he recalls the court’s attention to the
prowess of the Pāṇḍavas in battle. The decision is subsequently taken to
send the sūta (‘charioteer’) Saṃjaya to the court of King Yudhiṣṭhira. It is
worth noting that even in this short sequence, the evident discord between
Bhīṣma and Karṇa is exacerbated by the brahmin’s blunt talk. In this way,
our brahmin ambassador is true to the instructions given to him by his king,
Drupada: he sows seeds of dissent even as he relays his message.
There is little need to tabulate the moral tasting notes of this embassy. We
find, after a blunt speech by Drupada’s brahmin, only one morally focused
retort from a single, albeit important, interlocutor: Karṇa. Only Karṇa offers
a rejoinder that is morally engaged. Indeed, he speaks directly to the dominant
concern with fairness and cheating in the Pāṇḍavas’ narrative of events. This
absence of debate is itself significant. It reflects, from those sympathetic
to the Pāṇḍavas, the absence of a convincing moral counterargument and,
from those antipathetic to them, their reliance on arguments that are not
morally focused. Dhṛtarāṣṭra, the blind Kaurava king—as is usual in the
Mahābhārata—turns to metaphysics and the power of fate to determine
events, while his son Duryodhana relies on a doctrine of brute force.

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The second embassy: Saṃjaya among the

Pāṇḍavas (Mbh, 5.22–31)

Dominant flavours: Sanctity and degradation

Saṃjaya’s embassy is longer and more complex than that of Drupada’s
brahmin. It also introduces some themes and threads that begin to push
us beyond the moral preoccupations of the debates of the Udyogaparvan.
It brings together the discourse of sanctity—reflected in the tale of Indra,
Vṛtra and Nahuṣa—with an assertion of the metaphysical supremacy of
Kṛṣṇa, which will be further developed in Kṛṣṇa’s embassy to the Kaurava
court. A signal demonstration of this can be found in Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s initial
instruction to his faithful servant as he sends him to Yudhiṣṭhira’s assembly,
when he states:
no ced gacchet saṃgaraṃ mandabuddhis | tābhyāṃ suto me
viparītacetāḥ
no cet kurūn saṃjaya nirdahetām | indrāviṣṇū daityasenāṃ yathaiva
mato hi me śakrasamo dhanaṃjayaḥ | sanātano vṛṣṇivīraś ca viṣṇuḥ

[Though false, and weak-of-mind, pray that my son seeks not

battle with those two men; pray they burn not the Kurus,
As Indra and Viṣṇu consumed their enemies.
For to my troubled mind, Arjuna is Indra’s match,
And that Vṛṣṇi hero is Viṣṇu everlasting.] (Mbh, 5.22.31)

The dvandva (or ‘list’; compound, indrāviṣṇū, which combines Indra and
Viṣṇu into a single word) emphasises the close relationship of these deities
even as, in the verse’s culmination, the relationship of these gods to Arjuna
and Kṛṣṇa is asserted. The closeness of the relationship of Arjuna and Kṛṣṇa
is underscored in the previous verse with another dvandva in the celebrated
line kṛṣṇāv ekarathe sametau, which can be translated as ‘the two Kṛṣṇas
are united on a single chariot’—an image that was brilliantly explored by
Hiltebeitel (1984) almost four decades ago. It is worth noting the difference
in the way in which King Dhṛtarāṣṭra expresses the relationships between
Arjuna and Indra and between Kṛṣṇa and Viṣṇu. Arjuna’s relationship to
Indra is expressed in terms of equivalence, while that of Kṛṣṇa and Viṣṇu is
expressed in terms of identity. Additionally, the adjective sanātana (‘eternal’
or ‘everlasting’) does some theological heavy lifting here. It underscores the
preeminent status of Viṣṇu by placing him beyond time—the very force that
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Dhṛtarāṣṭra tends to fall back on when excusing his inability to check the
excesses of his son Duryodhana. In this way, Dhṛṭarāṣṭra is acknowledging
the divine status of Kṛṣṇa, albeit without any great impact on his decision-
making processes. He is true to the optative mood he uses in the above: he
wishes one thing, but always seems to do another.
Saṃjaya’s embassy properly begins on his arrival at the court-in-exile of King
Yudhiṣṭhira. There is an immediate asymmetry in the extent of the inquiries
about the health of the king and the court between Saṃjaya and Yudhiṣṭhira.
Saṃjaya asks only of Yudhiṣṭhira’s close kin; Yudhiṣṭhira asks after the whole
Kaurava court and broader community. This prefigures a shift in focus in the
unfolding moral debate to issues of care and harm, loyalty and betrayal and,
finally, sanctity and degradation. Yudhiṣṭhira’s series of caring inquiries gives
way (from 23.20), however, to a none-too-subtle emphasis on the military
prowess of his brothers (the sort of undermining sabre-rattling that is critical
to ambassadorial activity both in the Udyogaparvan and in the normative
instructions of the Arthaśāstra).
Saṃjaya relates the message of Dhṛtarāṣṭra, whose emphasis is on the moral
issues surrounding the pursuit of war in the abstract. These emphasise the
harm that will be done and the need for care of one’s kin. He also suggests
that to live on after the killing of kin is na sadhu (‘not right’). This moves us
from the care/harm moral centre to that of loyalty/betrayal and studiously
avoids the difficult terrain of fairness and cheating. Saṃjaya, in articulating
these positions, tends to offer bons mots rather than examples, as befits the
shift from the moral analysis of the past to moral exhortation based on
anticipated transgression in the future. Saṃjaya’s embassy, like that of any
good politician avoiding controversy, seeks to refocus the debate. Of the
25 moral points made in the council of Upaplavya, only three are abstract
moral injunctions, whereas in the embassy of Saṃjaya, we find only 10 of the
26 moral claims are concrete (see Appendix 8.1).
Yudhiṣṭhira’s response is to discourse initially on the evils of desire and
on Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s hypocrisy. He points to the failure of the king and his
son Duryodhana to listen to the words of their advisor, Vidura, on at least
four occasions. His response suggests that it is the desire of Duryodhana
for personal power and wealth—and Dḥrtarāṣṭra’s failure to heed sound
advice—that is making war inevitable. The proper exercise of authority
requires that the person in a position of power is in control of their desires
and does not cheat. The willingness to engage in the latter is evidence of a
failure to properly wield the former. Yudhiṣṭhira returns, in closing, to his
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emphasis on the might of his brothers. The emphasis on desire gives Saṃjaya
an opportunity to reframe the debate philosophically, which he is not slow
to do.
Saṃjaya’s response, in adhyāya 27, is thus interesting and constitutes
a marked shift in the content of the moral debate so far. Saṃjaya does more
than relay a message;9 his is a far subtler approach. In the light of Yudhiṣṭhira’s
comments, he departs from the specifics of King Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s message and
shifts to a discourse of sanctity and degradation. However, it is one quite
different from the very concrete, brahmin-centred and socially hierarchical
emphasis of the Indra/Vṛtra/Nahuṣa narrative. Saṃjaya emphasises the
following: the sanctity of life; the need to not perpetrate evil deeds; the need
to live without desire or material possessions; and the inevitability of karmic
consequence. He uses metaphors of disease and illness to characterise the
existential predicament and emphasises the Vedas and ritual purity to address
this. It is a more than slightly ascetic discourse even if ritually orthodox.10
It emphasises sanctity and degradation in the abstract. Only Karṇa (and
Balarāma), it seems, has sought to engage with the Pāṇḍavas on their own
moral territory. Saṃjaya’s embassy is one that, while perhaps aimed at
Yudhiṣṭhira’s weakness for the contemplative life, takes us to a different place
morally. This is made clear in its moral tasting notes of the debate taken as a
whole (Table 8.3).

Table 8.3 Moral tasting notes of the second embassy

Moral ‘flavour’ Level of usage

Care/harm 6
Fairness/cheating 4
Loyalty/betrayal 7
Authority/subversion 11
Sanctity/degradation 13

The moral flavour profile of this embassy is in marked contrast with the
previous one. Here, fairness and cheating are little more than background
notes, while sanctity and degradation come to the fore, albeit closely followed
by authority and subversion. Behind these, but ahead of fairness and cheating,

9 Van Buitenen explores the reasons for this in formal Arthaśāstraic terms; see his introduction to his
translation of the Udyogaparvan (1978: 134–38).
10 It appears that Saṃjaya is attempting to jump the strands of the ‘dharmic double helix’, from the this-
worldly to the renunciative. This brilliant metaphor for dharmic concerns is that of Raj Balkaran (2020).

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are notes of care and harm, as well as loyalty and betrayal. In Haidt’s terms,
the relationship of this sort of discourse to sanctity and degradation is clear;
after a series of more concrete accusations from Yudhiṣṭhira, Saṃjaya invokes
a variety of symbolic threats to what Haidt calls the ‘behavioural immune
system’ and urges Yudhiṣṭhira to flee from the very real, very personal moral
threat of his circumstances. This is not a debate of rights and wrongs à la
Upaplavya, but it is a deeply engaged, agent-centred means of subsuming
all moral debate into the overarching threat to one’s sanctity as a Vedically
guided, ritually active, transmigratory being. This is not to say other moral
flavours are not present, but the emphasis is on moving away from the
emphasis on fairness and cheating to a more abstract and ‘ethical’ mode.
If the first Pāṇḍava council and embassy see them develop a specific set
of moral grievances based on experience, the embassy from Dhṛtarāṣṭra to
their court does nothing to address these. Instead, the verbatim message of
Dhṛtarāṣṭra and the further imploring and manoeuvring of Saṃjaya seek to
move the debate from what has happened to the moral uncertainty of the
future and of existence more generally, for the royal household, the world at
large and, now, for Yudhiṣṭhira personally, as someone in immediate danger
of moral pollution and its attendant metaphysical consequences. As the
Indra/Vṛtra/Nahuṣa narrative showed, the deep past hinges on the sanctity
of the social hierarchy with the brahmin at its apex; the present is a locus of
moral uncertainty; the future must be brought into alignment with the deep
and not the proximate past.
Saṃjaya’s position, notwithstanding his status as Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s ambassadorial
mouthpiece, is rather different to that of his king’s. He enjoins action to avoid
the metaphysical, personal consequences of sin. This is the force of Saṃjaya’s
statement ‘jarāmṛtyū naiva hi tvaṃ prajahyāḥ’ (Mbh, 5.27.26), which can
be translated as ‘for you shall never throw off old age and death’ and which
has a force not unlike Socrates’s emphasis on the ‘care of the soul’ in Plato’s
Apology (as explored in Christiansen 2000). One must live in anticipation
of an afterlife. This is a long way from the moral laziness of Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s
attitude that fate conquers all or Duryodhana’s emphasis on royal power in
the here and now. The future is now yoked to spiritual self-interest in a way
that weakens the likelihood of the resolution of the moral debates about the
recent past precisely because one should not be invested in the outcome of
these trivial events. This is a brilliant manoeuvre on Saṃjaya’s part, which
plays into Kṛṣṇa’s hand, as we shall see.

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Yudhiṣṭhira seeks neatly to sidestep Saṃjaya’s increasingly personalised

and ascetic emphasis by shifting the debate to that of the adjusted legal
obligations of exigent circumstances (in Sanskrit, āpaddharma; lit., ‘the
obligations of misfortune’; Mbh, 5.28.3). He stops short, however, of this
form of justification (essentially the moving of the moral and legal goalposts)
and instead defers the matter to the judgement of Kṛṣṇa in its entirety.
Kṛṣṇa’s response seeks to meet Saṃjaya on his own ground. Rather than move
the goalposts, he adjusts the rules of the game once more. The movement
from morality to ethics by Saṃjaya is built on by Kṛṣṇa, but with a more
forceful metaphysical turn, which encompasses participation in the social
order and puts moral and social engagement firmly back on the table. His
is a discourse not on the inevitable consequences and spiritual pollutions
attendant on acting in the world, but a hymn of praise to acting in accordance
with one’s prescribed role (foreshadowing the Bhagavadgītā). Ironically,
if debatably, this brings us closer to Dhṛtarāṣtra’s kṣatriya fundamentalism.
His elaborate description of the inevitability and necessity of karma extends
over 20 verses and encompasses the gods and the various varṇas of society.
His conclusion is that Duryodhana is in the wrong because he is not duly
conscious of the relational, reciprocal, profoundly patterned nature of
morality and the society that emerges from it and its divine substrate. This is
not a moral debate; it is an invocation of a moral framework as a metaphysical
reality anchored in the self-disclosure of God. To consider yourself above the
law, or to consider yourself the law, is to be, in the memorable Sanskrit term,
a manyuvaśānugāmin (‘a slave to wilful wrath’). Kṛṣṇa brings the sanctity
of the social structure that has the brahmin at its apex into alignment with
the sanctity of the transmigratory being. He places ‘himself’ at the apex of
Saṃjaya’s moral framework and, in so doing, harmonises the exigencies of fate
(Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s obsession) with ‘care for the soul’ (Yudhiṣṭhira’s concern, and
also that of Vidura, the son and incarnations of Dharma, respectively). Only
Duryodhana’s position is left beyond the pale, incapable of harmonisation
with either devotion or asceticism even if, in practice, a fanatic adherence to
warrior dharma would look a lot like orthopraxy (until it went off the rails,
as it has at this point in the Mahābhārata, and as it did for Nahuṣa).

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The third embassy and its preparatory

discussions: Kṛṣṇa in word and deed
(Mbh, 5.47–93 and 5.122–35)

Dominant flavours: Authority and subversion,

fairness and cheating
The third embassy, in both its preparation and its undertaking by Kṛṣṇa,
returns us to the more concrete enumeration of the wrongs experienced by
the Pāṇḍavas at the hands of the Kauravas. Only 10 of the 59 moral points that
are enumerated (see Appendix 8.1) are in the abstract in this long sequence
of arguments, punctuated by several important subtales (beyond the scope
of this chapter). I tabulate the moral concerns evinced in this portion of the
Udyogaparvan in Table 8.4.

Table 8.4 Moral tasting notes of the third embassy

Moral ‘flavour’ Level of usage

Care/harm 19
Fairness/cheating 31
Loyalty/betrayal 21
Authority/subversion 32
Sanctity/degradation 6

It is immediately clear that we are returning to a moral profile similar to that

of the council of Upaplavya and its subsequent embassy, with the exception
that here there are notes of sanctity and degradation. I recognised these by
the way in which purity and pollution seem to haunt the edges of the debates
about Draupadī’s molestation in the sabhā of Hastinapurā at the time of the
dice match because she was in her menses. This is a fact that is mentioned only
once in the Udyogaparvan—precisely in the present cluster of texts, at Mbh
5.88.85. The reference is an oblique one: Draupadī is said to be ekavastra
(‘in one garment’).
What runs through the, by now, almost rote enumeration of injustice,
however, is the recurrent emphasis on the godhead of Kṛṣṇa. This is a
return to and amplification of the morally and metaphysically orthogonal
discourse that I have already identified and explored. Arjuna acknowledges
Kṛṣṇa’s identity as Viṣṇu in a long enumeration of Kṛṣṇa’s great deeds (Mbh,
5.47 ff.). This is delivered in thunderous triṣṭubhs with, initially at least,
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a central conditional refrain, tadā yuddhaṃ dhārtarāṣṭro ‘nvatapsyat (‘then

that descendant of Dhṛtarāṣṭra will come to regret this war’). Directly after
this speech, which is reported verbatim to the Kaurava court by Saṃjaya,
Bhīṣma explicitly discloses the godhood of both Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna, as Nara
and Nārāyaṇa, who are born again and again when it is time to do battle
(tatra tatraiva jāyete yuddhakāle punaḥ punaḥ). Saṃjaya likewise emphasises
the unity, perfection and divine qualities of Arjuna and Kṛṣṇa shortly
thereafter, calling them indraviṣṇusamau (‘the equal of Indra and Viṣṇu’)
at Mbh 5.58.11. However, much of this seems to emphasise the power of the
Pāṇḍavas rather than to make a complex moral point.
The points made do stimulate, however, a theological retort from the warlike
Duryodhana. He states that the gods do not concern themselves in human
affairs. He then engages in self-praise that is close to a statement of his own
godhead, as, for example, when he states—portentously or pretentiously,
depending on your perspective: devāsurāṇāṃ bhāvānām aham ekaḥ
pravartitā (‘I alone set in motion the existence of gods and demons!’; Mbh,
5.60.14). This sort of statement has been interpreted as a refraction in the
Mahābhārata of the historical rise of absolutism in post-Mauryan South
Asia (see Malinar 2007: 36). In this context, however, it is hard not to read
this assertion by Duryodhana as ironical or even bathetic in the light of what
happens shortly thereafter—namely, the revelation of Kṛṣṇa’s divine form in
the Kaurava court. Before this, however, we have a series of passages, from
5.66 onwards, in which moral debate gives way to the frank assertion of
Kṛṣṇa’s divinity, culminating in the celebrated Sanskrit dictum yataḥ kṛṣṇas
tato jayaḥ (‘Where there is Kṛṣṇa, there is victory’). There follow, from
Saṃjaya, words of deep devotion, which include etymological meditations
on the names of God in a classically bhakti mode. Shortly after, Kṛṣṇa begins
his embassy in the Kaurava court. Here, we find a back and forth between
the more philosophical and abstract treatment of the nature of fate, time
and human action with the more fine-grained debate on the specific wrongs
done to the Pāṇḍavas. The debates go nowhere. Finally, at the close of Kṛṣṇa’s
embassy (at Mbh, 5.129.4–16), he reveals his vidyutrūpa (his ‘brilliant
form’). It is one that encompasses all being, and the assembled kings tremble
before it. We have seen several both concrete and abstract arguments in the
moral back and forth of the Udyogaparvan, but nothing like this. Where the
moral aporia of the text gave rise to debates and to meta-moralities of various
types (be they unrepentantly martial, ascetic or existentially engaged, but
liberational), Kṛṣṇa’s theophany connected definitively his views to his status
as being itself. However, of itself, it can do little to resolve the moral minutiae
of the Udyogaparvan and the debate about them persists within and beyond
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the Mahābhārata (indeed, to these are added new accusations pertaining to

the conduct of the war by both sides).11 Moral arguments stick. Essays on
theology and philosophy tend not to, it seems.

The fourth embassy: Ulūka beards the

Pāṇḍavas (Mbh, 5.157–60)

Dominant flavours: Authority and subversion

Ulūka repeats verbatim the words of Duryodhana to the Pāṇḍavas in this final,
rather brief embassy. Duryodhana returns to the events of the recent past, but
substantially alters the moral tone. There is no meeting of the Pāṇḍavas on
their own terms. There is no use of moral or legal counterarguments to rebut
their complaints, as Karṇa sought to do with his emphasis on the covenant or
samaya. Instead, Duryodhana interprets the entire sequence of events from
the dice game and the molestation of Draupadī on as an example of might
making right. Duryodhana could and did, and that is that. Authority is all.
The victor determines the moral order. It is possible to interpret some of
his message as morally focused (see Appendix 8.1). The two most abstract
‘moral’ principles Duryodhana offers are the need to subjugate enemies and
the need to regain anything one has lost. The tasting notes of this passage are
consequently not complex (Table 8.5).

Table 8.5 Moral tasting notes of the fourth embassy

Moral ‘flavour’ Level of usage

Care/harm 0
Fairness/cheating 0
Loyalty/betrayal 0
Authority/subversion 5
Sanctity/degradation 0

Duryodhana was not privy to the story of Nahuṣa. He would have been
unlikely to listen in any case. This final embassy, on the very eve of hostilities,
is one that does not detain itself with the subtleties of what has gone before,

11 This is not the last, or most celebrated, occasion on which Kṛṣṇa will reveal his divine form. He does
so in the Bhagavadgītā. However, even God incarnate cannot guarantee an attentive audience. Arjuna will
ask for a reprise of the Bhagavadgītā ‘because he forgot’ in the fourteenth book of the Mahābhārata, the
Aśvamedhikaparvan.
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be this moral minutiae or metaphysics. It is insulting and intended to

undermine the Pāṇḍavas. In this, it is superficially effective, but it has little
to add to the foregoing analyses.

Some moral tasting notes for the

Udyogaparvan in summary
Figure 8.1 summarises my initial findings in relation to the four embassies of
the Udyogaparvan by moral ‘foundation’.

Figure 8.1 Moral tasting notes for the Udyogaparvan

Source: Author’s summary.

Figure 8.2 summarises my initial findings by embassy.

Figure 8.2 Moral tasting notes for the Udyogaparvan, by embassy

Source: Author’s summary.
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We can thus observe the flavour profile of the key debates of the Udyogaparvan
and see clearly their similarities and differences, as discussed in detail above.

Conclusion
It is my hope that I have convinced you of at least the potential utility of
Haidt’s approach to morality as I have applied it to the Mahābhārata. I have
no doubt this chapter is a first pass only. It is an attempt to provide, if not
proof of concept, at least a suggestion of the need for further investigation.
What, then, are the advantages of the approach adopted here? For the
individual interpreting a text, it can lead to counterintuitive results. I coded
as I went and found that I could not predict the outcome in terms of the
moral profile of a given passage or set of passages. I am not insensible to the
presence of confirmation bias in my coding, of course. This is not the first
time I have read the Udyogapravan or the Mahābhārata. Without doubt,
I have developed moral assumptions about the text and directly sought to
apply Haidt’s approach (thus, there is confirmation in two directions). For all
that, I did not find the process to be a forced one. Indeed, I found it liberating
to step away from the more established modes of classical Indological inquiry
and use Haidt’s typology, albeit as a heuristic only. I could then connect my
results to more culturally specific ideas and arguments in the text, which
I found to be illuminating, as I hope you did.
For comparison of the moral emphases and agendas of a variety of religious
or political texts, there are also possibilities. I make one reference in passing to
Plato’s Apology, but it seems there is much to be said for an approach that sets
out to compare moral ‘tasting notes’ drawn from materials from different
times and places. The present approach also helps to explicate the moral
saliency of the Mahābhārata in South Asia (across linguistic, cultural and
religious boundaries). It has long been obvious that moral tales do not observe
religious borders within and beyond South Asia. A cursory examination of
the Buddhist Jātakas and the Hindu Pañcatantra is sufficient to convince
one of this. The moral discourse of the text, as reflected in my moral tasting
notes, shows that the Mahābhārata is most satisfying to the moral palate.
Additionally, if we accept for a moment Haidt’s species-level claims, the
Mahābhārata stimulates every one of our moral ‘centres’. In this way, it is
like a South Indian ‘meal’: nourishing to body and mind because it leaves
nothing out. Yudhiṣṭhira’s dice game, the Pāṇḍavas’ exile and Draupadī’s
molestation, to name only a few examples, echo through the ages precisely

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because of their rich range of moral flavours and their deep connection to
the central concerns of our day-to-day existence and all those who have gone
before us. The Mahābhārata’s attempts to explain these moral aporia in
more and less rarefied terms—theologically and philosophically rich as they
are (in the mouth of a Saṃjaya or a Kṛṣṇa) or existentially myopic (in the
‘live free or die’ or ‘man a god to man’ mode of Duryodhana)—are equally
compelling and never more brilliantly set forth and juxtaposed than in the
Udyogaparvan. These, however, sit at one remove from the direct moral
experience of the text—not moral flavours so much as essays. However, such
an order of examination of the text, which begins with an anthropology of
moral concerns and moves to culturally specific ideologies, is a novel one
in this age of hyperspecialisation. Nīlakaṇṭha was not so wrong, it seems
to me, when he contended that the significance and moral reach of the
Mahābhārata were universal.

References
Balkaran, Raj. (2020). The Goddess and the King in Indian Myth: Ring Composition,
Royal Power and the Dharmic Double Helix. London: Taylor & Francis.

Christiansen, Michel. (2000). ‘Caring about the soul’ in Plato’s ‘Apology’.

Hermathena 169: 23–56.

De, Sushil Kumar. (1940). The Udyogaparvan Being the Fifth Book of the Mahābhārata
the Great Epic of India. Poona, India: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute.

Haidt, Jonathan. (2012). The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by
Politics and Religion. London: Random House.

Hegarty, James. (2019). Models of royal piety in the Mahābhārata: The case of
Vidura, Sanatsujāta and Vidurā. In Brian Black and Ram-Prasad Chakravarthi
(eds), In Dialogue with Classical Indian Traditions: Encounter, Transformation
and Interpretation, pp. 211–27. London: Taylor & Francis. doi.org/​10.4324/​
9781351011136-13.

Hiltebeitel, Alf. (1984). The two Kṛṣṇas on one chariot: Upaniṣadic imagery and
epic mythology. History of Religions 24(1): 1–26. doi.org/10.1086/462971.

Malinar, Angelika. (2007). The Bhagavadgita: Doctrines and Contexts. Cambridge,

UK: Cambridge University Press. doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511488290.

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Minkowski, Christopher. (2005). On the success of Nīlakaṇṭha’s Mahābhārata

commentary. In F. Squarcini (ed.), Boundaries, Dynamics and Construction of
Traditions in South Asia, pp. 225–52. Florence, Italy: Firenze University Press.

Minkowski, Christopher. (2010). Nilakantha’s Mahābhārata. Seminar: Special Issue:

The Enduring Epic: A Symposium on Some Concerns Raised in the Mahābhārata
(608)(April). Available from: www.india-seminar.com/2010/608/608_c_
minkowski.htm.

Müller, Max. (1860). A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature so far as it Illustrates

the Primitive Religion of the Brahmans. London: Williams & Norgate.

Pollock, Sheldon. (1997). Tradition as revelation: Śruti, sṃṛti, and the Sanskrit
discourse of power. In S. Lienhard and I. Piobvana (eds), Lex et Litterae: Essays
on Ancient Indian Law and Literature in Honor of Oscar Botto, pp. 395–417.
Rome: Edizioni dell’Orso.

Taylor, McComas. (2007). The Fall of the Indigo Jackal: The Discourse of Division
and Pūrṇabhadra’s Pañcatantra. Albany: SUNY Press.

Taylor, McComas. (2008). What enables canonical literature to function as ‘true’?

The case of the Hindu purāṇas. International Journal of Hindu Studies 12(3):
309–28. doi.org/10.1007/s11407-008-9065-9.

Taylor, McComas. (2016). Seven Days of Nectar: Contemporary Oral Performance of

the Bhāgavata Purāṇa. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. doi.org/10.1093/
acprof:oso/9780190611910.001.0001.

van Buitenen, J.A.B. (trans. & ed.). (1978). Mahābhārata. Volume 3, Book 4: The Book
of Virāṭa. Book 5: The Book of the Effort. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226223711.001.0001.

Appendix 8.1: Moral claims enumerated

and coded according to Haidt’s typology
The following are little more than the equivalent of ‘fieldnotes’, which
I offer to the reader with a due sense of humility and contrition. This chapter
employs Haidt’s typology heuristically. I make no definitive claims that
I have correctly identified the nature of a given moral observation, claim or
injunction in the text. My hope is that I have not misrepresented the moral
emphases of a given passage. This chapter is part of a larger project on ‘public
reason’ in the Mahābhārata. It is thus exploratory and preparatory in the
context of this larger project, for which I will find a more fine-grained and

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detailed means of presenting information such as that given below. Indeed,

the publication of preliminary inquiries is an important means of refining
one’s approach.
Claims given in italics are abstract, while those not in italics are concrete.
Abstract moral claims tend to take the form of exhortations, while concrete
moral claims are anchored in specific events.

Key
CH: Care/harm
FC: Fairness/cheating
LB: Loyalty/betrayal
AS: Authority/subversion
SD: Sanctity/degradation

The council of Upaplavya (Mbh, 5.1–6) and the first

embassy: King Drupada’s brahmin in the Kaurava
court (Mbh, 5.20–21)
Defeated with tricks—FC
Kingdom taken—FC/AS/LB
Stood their truth—FC
Abominable vow—FC/AS/LB
Domain plundered … in a manner deceitful—FC/AS/LB
Submitted to great, unendurable hardship—FC/AS
Did not vanquish … by virtue of their own splendour—FC/AS
The king and his brothers desire to see them well—CH/FC
The sons of … only the wish to regain what [they] won for themselves—FC
They tried to kill … when children—CH
Sought to seize domain—FC/AS
Who all abide by their personal dharma—FC/AS
He lost his head—AS/LB
And was soundly defeated—FC
He did not know the dice; he trusted them—FC
Should he prostrate himself for coming into his patrimony—AS
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 8. SOME MORAL TASTING NOTES ON THE UDYOGAPARVAN OF THE MAHĀBHĀRATA

Who claim that the Kaunteyas were discovered—FC

No adharma in killing enemies—FC/AS
Begging from foemen brings on adharma—AS/FC
Dhṛtarāṣṭra loves his son—CH/LB
[A]pplies to a man who from the first wanted to act wisely—FC
Men who are loyal will accept the first bid—FC
We owe the Kurus and Pāṇḍavas the same loyalty—AS
Refuse out of arrogance and folly—FC
You know fully how the Kaurava acts—FC

The embassy of Saṃjaya (Mbh, 5.22–31)

Victory is defeat—CH/LB
Blessed are those that act for the sake of their kin—CH/LB
To live with your kinfolk dead is not right—CH/LB
Dhṛtarāṣṭra is addled by desire—FC/AS
Dhṛtarāṣṭra is partial, but expects others to be impartial—FC/AS
Dhṛtarāṣṭra wails, but took the advice of his son—AS
Dhṛtarāṣṭra embarked on adharma knowing it well—AS/LB/FC
Duryodhana failed to listen to trustworthy Vidura—AS/LB
Duryodhana is prey to his wrath and a lecher, evil, betrayer—AS/LB
Dhṛtarāṣṭra saw full well—LB
Do not destroy life—CH/SD
Do not reign by war—CH/SD
Perpetrate no sin—CH/SD
Live without desire—SD
Live without objects—SD
Dharma must go before acts—AS/SD
Obtaining the Earth without dharma is pointless—AS/SD
Gifts to brahmins are the highest estate—AS/SD
Yudhiṣṭhira lives in desire; he should practise yoga—AS/SD
Possessions and the search for them lead to adharma—AS/LB/SD
Do not pleasure your heartburning after death—SD
Deeds pursue one—FC/SD
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Yudhiṣṭhira is known to be pure—SD

Deeds follow you—FC/SD
Desire leads to evil [with disease metaphors]—SD
Killing of relatives is a sin—CH/LB
Yudhiṣṭhira should take the road of the gods—SD

The embassy of Kṛṣṇa (including preparatory

councils; Mbh, 5.47–93, 5.122–35)
The Kauravas have been greedy—FC/LB/AS
Draupadi was molested—FC/LB/AS/SD
Arjuna points to trickery—FC
The sons of Pāṇḍu were cheated—FC
He who betrays is not called a guru—FC
They took the rightful gains of the Pandavas—FC
The Kauravas gloated—LB/AS
Duryodhana must be abandoned and lamentation must be replaced with
action—LB/AS
It was assumed Dhṛtarāṣṭra would stand by his covenant—FC/LB/AS
He would not give even five villages—FC
Greed kills good sense—FC/LB
Shamelessness kills dharma—AS
Modesty is best—AS
It is ill to rob people of their wealth—FC/LB/AS
Killing kinsmen is wrong—CH/LB
Kṣatriya dharma is a violent one—CH/AS
Survivors engage in feuds—FC/LB
When they left you in your loincloth, the Kauravas did not care—CH/AS
The Kauravas cheated you—FC
They hurt you with words—CH
They boasted—AS
They are drunk with power –AS
They are engaged in a feud—FC/AS
They are cruel-spoken—CH
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 8. SOME MORAL TASTING NOTES ON THE UDYOGAPARVAN OF THE MAHĀBHĀRATA

They are quick to deceive—FC/AS

Duryodhana will die before sharing his wealth—AS/LB
He turns down his friends—LB
He has given up dharma—AS/SD
He loves the lie—FC
Duryodhana stole what was theirs—FC
Using a cheater—Śakuni—at dice—FC
Draupadi was molested—FC/LB/AS/SD
Duryodhana mistreated you when children—CH
He looted your kingdom—CH
Duryodhana sought to estrange me [Kṛṣṇa] from you—FC/LB
There was trickery—FC
When conciliation and generosity have failed, only the rod remains—AS
Those who should be killed must be killed or there is a sin by omission—FC/
LB/AS
Draupadi cites her molestation—CH/FC/AS/SD
The fact of their unfair banishment—CH/FC
The fact of their poverty—CH/FC
Her separation from her children—CH/AS
That she was given away by her father—CH/LB
That she was cheated by her father-in-law—FC/LB/AS
That she has not seen her sons—CH
There was the theft of their kingdom—FC/LB/AS
There was their unfair defeat at dice—FC/LB/AS
There was their exile—FC/LB/AS
There was the molestation of Draupadī in her menses—CH/FC/AS/SD
There was manifest cruelty—CH
The Kauravas were misguided—AS
They overstepped their bounds—AS
Their minds were carried away by greed—LB
The Pāṇḍavas agreed to the dice game—FC
The dice were crooked—FC
Draupadī was molested—CH/LB/AS/SD

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The language used in the sabhā was abusive—CH/AS

They sought to murder the Pāṇḍavas in the lacquer house plot—CH/LB/AS
The Kauravas have used poison, fetters and attempted murder—CH/LB/AS

The fourth embassy: Ulūka beards the Pāṇḍavas

(Mbh, 5.157–60)
The test of the kṣatriya is upon you—AS
Avenge your grudge—AS
He who fights must subjugate his enemies—AS
He who fights must restore their kinship—AS
Yudhiṣṭhira should be a man—AS

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This text is taken from Visions and Revisions in Sanskrit Narrative: Studies in
the Sanskrit Epics and Purāṇas, edited by Raj Balkaran and McComas Taylor,
published 2023 by ANU Press, The Australian National University,
Canberra, Australia.
doi.org/10.22459/VRSN.2023.08