The Mahābhārata’s Infernal Paradise: On the Pre-modern Condition

Abstract

This article looks at the closing books of the Mahābhārata with attention to the contradictions it keeps in place at its conclusion. I bring a partially synchronic attention to the valences of a few big concept terms that figure here: dharma, kāla and yoga, attempting to define a peculiar relational–contextual meaning for them in the epic’s short final books. I want to show that although there are various potentials being expressed, and various other potentials being restrained amidst the narrative flow and the deployment of these terms, the Mahābhārata creates a powerful perspective on suffering. Even if it serves as an overarching sense of aporia and horror, it is not absurdist. There is coherence to its incoherence and a structure to its dark vision, which locates it in some kind of diffuse historical moment as much as it lends it to rich and continuous transhistorical reappropriation.