Before the Gītā: Battlefield, bhūmi, and and the cosmographs of the Mahābhārata

This paper reflects on two upaparvans, the Jambūkhaṇḍavinirmāṇaparvan (6.1–11), the 'book on the measuring out of the continent of the rose-apple tree' and the Bhūmiparvan (6.12–13), the ‘book of the earth', and the ‘cosmographical episode’ bridges these two parvans between chapters 6.6 to 6.13.

The ‘cosmographical episode’ is probably the most well-known and well-studied of these sections, having received considerable interest from scholars such as Kirfel, Hilgenberg, Belvalkar, Sircar, and Eck, primarily in order to understand the significance of the relationships of the cosmographies presented in them to other representations of similar cosmographies. For example, Hilgenberg, inspired by Kirfel, attempted to prove that the Mbh borrowed this episode from the Padmapurāṇa (which contains a more or less identical passage), an argument that Belvalkar successfully, I think, takes to task.

Even so, higher criticism may reveal further aspects of the text history of this section; as Belvalkar notes in the critical edition (p.cxxiv–v), the cosmographical episode is somewhat confusing to read and disorderly in its sequence. There are, indeed, three cosmographs, and they interact with varying degrees of complementarity and contradiction, and they use terms — such as Jambūdvīpa — with multiple reference points. Similarly, this is the first time the term Bhāratavarṣa appears in the Mbh; indeed, this passage accounts for 5 of the 6 instances of Bhāratavarṣa in the Constituted Text of the Critical Edition. In light of such factors, this paper will first propose that the cosmographs are exports from another, non-brahmanic, tradition. The most likely source of the cosmographs, it will be suggested, is the Jain tradition, though the textualisation of the Jain traditional involves temporal complexities. 

Such text-historical matters are not the only reason to be interested in these two upaparvans and the cosmographical episode. This paper will also explore the narrative and literary effects of this pasage. I shall consider the text’s movements through different spatial plains, such as Kurukṣetra, the bhūmi, Sudarśanadvīpa, Bhāratavarṣa, Jambūdvīpa, Mt Meru’s four dvīpas, and the cosmos construed as seven concentric dvīpas — in other words, the various lands, worlds, and cosmoses depicted in the cosmographies.  I am interested in the features of those lands extramural to — but implicitly contrasted with — the bhūmi of the janapadas gathered on Kurukṣetra as the text moves through the cosmographs. I pose the question (perhaps as a heuristic) of why the cosmographs were included at all, since one might propose that the pragmatic context does not require them. What then, since they are there, are their literary effects? 

I shall in particular argue that the cosmographs place in stark relief the discordant and dysfunctional goings-on among the nations gathering to fight the war and the greed of their kings for sovereignty over their land [bhūmi]. The cosmographs provide opportunities to imagine better worlds (if that was not so for their authors, then certainly for their readers). Further, they create opportunities to emphasise the land (bhūmi) over which the war is being fought.