How Possible is the Scale of the Final Battle in the Mahabharata?

How Possible is the Scale of the Final Battle in the Mahabharata?

Written by Dr. Seshadri Kumar, 29 May, 2014

Copyright © Dr. Seshadri Kumar.  All Rights Reserved.

For other articles by Dr. Seshadri Kumar, please visit http://www.leftbrainwave.com

Disclaimer: All the opinions expressed in this article are the opinions of Dr. Seshadri Kumar alone and should not be construed to mean the opinions of any other person or organization, unless explicitly stated otherwise in the article.

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This was a question that was asked in quora, and I am reproducing my answer here (with some formatting) for the benefit of readers who may not be using quora.

Here is the answer in its original context in quora.

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I think it is possible. 

Let us see why.

Scale of the Armies in the Mahabharata

The Mahabharata consisted of two army fronts, one with 7 Akshauhinis facing another of 11 Akshauhinis.  The term Akshauhini would correspond to the modern concept of an "Army."  One Akshauhini is supposed to consist of

21,870   chariots

21,870   elephants

65,610   cavalry

109,350 infantry

So, 7 armies =

153,090   chariots

153,090   elephants

459,270   cavalry

765,450   infantry

and 11 armies =

240,570    chariots

240,570    elephants

721,710      cavalry

1,202,850 infantry

for a total of

393,660     chariots

393,660     elephants

1,180,980  cavalry

1,968,300  infantry

Scale of Modern Battles: World War II, Stalingrad and Kursk

Sounds like a lot?  Actually, it isn't too much.  It clearly is a large-scale war, but is by no means impossible.  Let's get some comparative figures.  The largest land war in terms of size of forces in recorded history has to be the Eastern front in the second world war.  If you look at the initial attacking force of the Germans itself, we are talking about a force of 3.2 million soldiers - and that is just the German side, and that too only the initial force.  In the initial 3 months of the war against the Russians, the Germans captured close to 2 million Soviet soldiers.  So such large formations are not unheard of.  

Let's look further and look at just one of the Germans' major armies (they had about a dozen such armies), the ill-fated Sixth Army that surrendered at Stalingrad in 1943.  The German Sixth Army was the core of the German force that attacked Southern Russia in the summer of 1942.  Along with the Fourth Panzer (Mechanized) Army, the Romanian, Hungarian, and Italian armies, it had a strength of (at the time of the Soviet Counteroffensive):

1.04 million infantry

10,250 artillery pieces (guns, mortars, etc.)

500 tanks

732 aircraft

These were opposed by a Soviet force comprising of

2.5 million infantry

13,451 artillery pieces

894 - 4000 tanks

1,115 aircraft

(Battle of Stalingrad)

Similarly, the Battle of Kursk fielded a German force of:

0.9 million men v/s 1.9 million Soviets

2928 German tanks v/s 5128 Soviet tanks

9966 German guns and mortars v/s 25013 Soviet guns and mortars

2110 German aircraft v/s 2792 Soviet aircraft

(see Battle of Kursk)

Clearly, fielding millions of men in battle in a small geographical domain is not unheard of.  Stalingrad eventually reduced to a very small region of fighting, probably comparable to Kurukshetra.  Kurukshetra, with less than 2 million infantry, is clearly smaller (in scale of battle) than Stalingrad, with over 3.5 million.

Battle Elephants and Cavalry: The Armoured Vehicles of Antiquity

Secondly, people get intimidated by the large numbers of horses, chariots, and elephants mentioned.  Remember, the Pandavas and Kauravas did not have B2 bombers, F16 aircraft, or M1A1 Abrams tanks.  The elephants and horses and chariots WERE their military-industrial complex.  Consequently, they must have bred them in the tens of thousands to act as war animals.  One cannot go by how many elephants existed in the wild in 1800 in India and so on.  These were war elephants, specially bred and trained for that purpose.  Imagine hundreds of acres of land devoted to raising war elephants and horses. 

Usage of Battle Elephants in the Recorded History of India

Furthermore, Indian kingdoms were known even in later times to breed elephants by the thousands for war.  Porus (or Puru) is said to have used 700 elephants in the battle of the Hydaspes against Alexander in 326 BC. (see Battle of the Hydaspes).  If a single king could put forth that many elephants, surely hundreds of kingdoms banding together to fight could put together 393,000 elephants? 

There is further historical evidence that elephants and horses were used in large numbers by Indian kings in battle.  One of the reasons Alexander did not go further into India after his conquests in (modern-day) Afghanistan and Pakistan was the prospect of facing the Nanda empire in battle, who had in their army at least 3000 war elephants (see Nanda Empire).  Historians also record that when Malik Kafur defeated Prataparudra, the Kakatiya ruler of Warangal, he went back to Delhi with vast treasure loaded on about 700 elephants.  When Nader Shah of Iran invaded the Mughal empire in 1739, he took home untold treasure on the backs of thousands of elephants (see Nadir Shah's invasion of India) - enough, apparently, for Shah to declare a tax amnesty for three years in Persia.

So, in conclusion, 394,000 elephants sounds like a lot, but for a society that viewed these animals as one of the key components of mobile warfare (similar to tanks), this isn't unreasonable.  Keep in mind that by the end of the war in 1945, the Soviets were producing close to 5000 tanks per month, or 60,000 tanks in a year. If, with the right will, you can produce that many units of an engineered machine, surely it is possible to breed horses and elephants in large numbers - especially at a time when the population density was not that high in India.

Vast armies like this require huge amounts of space to camp.  Vyasa makes mention of this during the episode in which Salya, wanting to join the Pandavas, is tricked by Duryodhana into joining him instead.  The story makes reference to how Salya brought his army of 1 Akshauhini to join the Pandavas. On the way he set up camp, and the size of the entire camp was 1 and a half yojanas in length (1 yojana = about 8 miles, see Yojana) (see also the fulltranslation of the Mahabharata by Kisari Mohan Ganguly, Udyoga Parva, for details on Salya's force.)

I think we can conclude that while the actual battles in the war were fought at the battlefield of Kurukshetra, the armies must have been camped over several miles in each direction.

Conclusion

The final battle at Kurukshetra is possible in the scale mentioned, given that troop formations of this size have been seen to operate even at the time of the Second World War. While the large numbers of elephants and horses used boggles the imagination, it should be remembered that until modern days, elephants and horses were the bulwark of armoured warfare in India, dating even to the days of the early Islamic invaders. The description given in the Mahabharata therefore seems plausible.

Why Wendy Doniger’s Book Offends Hindus

Why Wendy Doniger’s Book Offends Hindus

Written by Dr. Seshadri Kumar 

16 February, 2014

Copyright © Dr. Seshadri Kumar.  All Rights Reserved.

For other articles by Dr. Seshadri Kumar, please visit http://www.leftbrainwave.com

Disclaimer: All the opinions expressed in this article are the opinions of Dr. Seshadri Kumar alone and should not be construed to mean the opinions of any other person or organization, unless explicitly stated otherwise in the article.

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I have already written a blog article on this controversy.   The focus of my earlier article was that the reactions by left-leaning liberals in India and overseas to Penguin's withdrawal of their book were overblown and ridiculous.  The fact is that India's laws are intolerant and allow any religious group to put pressure on any book to be withdrawn because it "offends" them.  Penguin's withdrawal is not symptomatic of India becoming any more intolerant than any other country.  

When you write a book on religion that is unconventional, some group will be offended - the real question is whether your country's laws contain adequate protection for free speech to protect you from such groups.  India's laws do not.  That a small group of Hindus was able to pressurize Penguin to pulp Doniger's book is not proof that India is intolerant; it is proof that free speech in India is conditional.  The remedy to that is to abolish section 295A of the IPC.

The Ignorance of Hindus About Hinduism

But there is a second point to address here, and that is the question of why, actually, Doniger's book even offends Hindus.  As a person who has had a lifelong interest in Hindu epics, I have a fair idea of the reasons.  The first reason is that most Hindus know little about their epics.  Most Indians have never read the Ramayana or the Mahabharata in full; for most of them, the knowledge of these epics comes purely from Ramanand Sagar's and BR Chopra's teleserials.  The fact is that the actual books are HUGE.  I can testify to this personally - several years back I bought the full English translation of the Mahabharata in four huge volumes by Kisari Mohan Ganguli, and I have not yet found time to finish all four volumes.

Second, if one does read these epics in full, one finds all kinds of interesting information - information that is often shocking and not told to children by their parents and grandparents when growing up.  There are fairly stark sexual episodes that are mentioned in a matter-of-fact way in the Mahabharata that would make most conservative Indians turn a deep shade of red, despite their brown skin.  These are not stories you can tell your kids.  But it is a fact that our epics contain these R-rated or X-rated portions.

The Sanitizing of Hinduism

In modern days, there has been a clear attempt by rightwing Hindu groups to avoid any mention of these R-rated portions of the epics - to present Hindu epics as clean, wholesome, and without contradictions.  Modern TV presentations of the Ramayana and Mahabharata take generous liberties with the epics, to the extent that they even falsify what is in the epic.

 

For example, Rama in the Ramayana, although an avatar of the God Vishnu, sees himself, and is portrayed in the epic, largely as a human, albeit an exceptional one.  The times that he realizes in the epic, or is made to realize his divinity, are rare.  This is unlike Krishna in the Mahabharata who, in general, is more conscious of his divinity than Rama in the Ramayana, though, again, not all the time.

Given this backdrop, consider this scene that I saw in one TV representation of the Ramayana a couple of years ago.  This was the scene where Rama breaks Janaka’s bow of Shiva and claims Sita as his wife.  The original poem by Valmiki, the entire unabdridged English translation of which is available online (due to Ralph Griffith), simply details, in lovely poetry, the sequence of events as Rama lifts the bow and breaks it, and as others watch this feat in awe.  But the TV serial went much further than this.  It showed Rama walking towards the bow, and as he did, all the assembled kings saw him in the form of Vishnu, with his four arms, holding the conch, the discus, the mace, and the lotus, and realized that this was Vishnu, and bowed to him.  The TV serial makers want to hammer the idea that Rama was divine all along, and have deliberately added things that the epic does not contain.  The “TV Rama” often makes statements that the Rama of the real epic would never make – for example, often stating himself that he is divine – whereas, in fact, those who have read the original know that Rama mostly describes himself as a human being, and has to be reminded by the Gods (as they do so when he subjects Sita to the Agni-pariksha or the trial by fire) that he is divine and should act accordingly.

This may seem like a subtle point, but it is very important nonetheless, because it dehumanizes Rama – and by dehumanizing Rama, robs him of much of his achievement.  The dehumanization makes it hard for us to understand, for example, why he would do such a thing as ask his wife, who had already proved her fidelity through the trial by fire in Lanka, to leave the Ayodhya palace again because a washerman said insulting things about her.  

Indians have a right to know their epics the way they were written, with both the good and bad parts.  It is wrong for someone to print lies about our epics; it is equally wrong for a TV channel to show an epic with lies in it simply because they think and decide it is more “appropriate” for us to watch.

To a large extent, Doniger's attempt is to present a more balanced version of Hinduism - to say that what are present in the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata are much more complex than the "Cliff’s Notes" abridged versions that are presented on Indian TV and in abridged texts.

How Doniger Offends Hindus

Since the controversy, many twitterati have given links where Doniger’s book could be downloaded electronically, and I did download a copy so I could find out what the fuss is all about.  What I discovered was a book that tried to present many different angles on the epics, the Vedas, and the Upanishads – not complete translations of them, but select passages that bring out things that might surprise the average Hindu about his religion.

That brings me to the main topic of my post – why Doniger’s book offends Hindus.  There are two reasons for this.  The first is that, as I said, Indians are ignorant of what is in their epics.  As Doniger recounts in the book, one person threw an egg at her once when she was giving a lecture.  She found out that he was offended that Doniger had stated that Sita accused Lakshmana of having sexual designs on her. 

Offense was taken here in ignorance, because the listener was clearly unaware that Sita did, indeed, accuse Lakshmana in the Ramayana of wanting her for himself when Rama had gone after the golden deer and had not returned and, when pressed by Sita to go look for Rama, Lakshmana refused, saying that nothing would happen to Rama and that his orders were to guard Sita.  In fact, Sita's unfair accusations about Lakshmana are critical to the story, for they are the reason he disobeys his brother's command not to leave Sita alone - he is so horrified that Sita would level such charges against him that he leaves to look for Rama, unable to bear any more such accusations.

Part of the reason this person took offense was that he was unaware of what the great epic actually contained; part of it must also certainly be that he was only exposed to highly sanitized versions of the epics where any mention of sexuality is censored out.  The remedy to avoid this kind of misunderstanding, clearly, is for Indians to educate themselves better about their own epics.

The other reason why Hindus are offended by what Doniger and people like her (other professors of Hinduism) is that often, they bring western interpretations to Hindu epics.  This is treading into extremely dangerous territory, because while presenting parts of epics that people are normally unaware of might shock some people, these are still part of the original epic and all the professor has done is shine light on hitherto poorly-known facts; interpretation, on the other hand, is adding new material that is not contained in the epics; and no two people need agree on any interpretation.

A prime example of such interpretation that has annoyed many Hindus is when Doniger refers to an Oedipus complex when referring to Ganesha’s relationship with his father Shiva.  Now clearly this is a foreign concept, coming from the Greek myth of Oedipus, who desired his mother sexually and killed his father since he viewed him as a competitor for his mother’s affections.  Doniger interpreted the story of Shiva killing Ganesha as a reversal of the Oedipus myth – the father killing the son instead of the son killing the father as they compete for the same woman.  For a staunch Hindu, trying to project the relationship between the highly-revered God Ganesha, his mother, the goddess Parvati, and his father, the most powerful God of Hinduism, Shiva, in incestuous terms, is an unbearable sacrilege.

A Christian Parallel: The Last Temptation of Christ

To understand how serious such an aspersion is, consider the parallel in Christianity.  In 1988, Martin Scorcese brought to film Nikos Kazantzakis’ 1960 masterwork, “The Last Temptation of Christ,” in which Jesus is presented as a human being with the weaknesses that all human beings have, but rises above them.  The story talks about Jesus on the cross being tempted by Satan, exploring the temptation that is offered to him of a happy domestic life with Mary Magdalene in what seems like a dream, and then rejecting it to die on the cross.

The movie caused a commotion in the western world, with many countries banning the film, including Turkey, Chile, Mexico, Argentina, the Philippines, and Singapore.  In one savage expression of intolerance for free speech, the Saint Michel theatre in Paris was attacked by Molotov cocktails, which severely burned 4 people, injured 9 others, and forced the closure of the theatre.  There was also a huge campaign against the film in the United States, which severely affected the commercial success of the film, as many theatres were forced to stop screening the film.

If so much anger can erupt simply for saying, in a relatively permissive western society, that Jesus, a human manifestation of divinity, with all the allowances that a human may be permitted,  may have had a consummated marriage with Mary Magdalene in what was, essentially, a dream, how much more anger can one expect from the (fairly conservative) followers of a religion who have been told that their Gods (not even a human son of God, but the Gods themselves) are in an incestuous relationship?

Throwing Out the Baby with the Bathwater

Wendy Doniger’s fatal mistake, and that of her students and academic followers who imitate her ways, was to show extreme insensitivity in dealing with the sentiments of Hindus about their religion while choosing to “interpret” it.  That this kind of insensitivity came from someone who has spent her lifetime studying this religion and interacting with Indians has made several people suspect that the insensitivity was deliberate and mischievous, which has caused them to intensify their attacks against Doniger.  I do not know enough about this, as I have not read enough of her works, so at this point I will give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she did not know how offensive her interpretations might have been to Hindus at large.

All of this is rather sad for, as I am discovering, the vast majority of her book is rather interesting and reflects a high level of scholarship.  Very few of us have actually delved into the Vedas, the Puranas, the Upanishads, and the two major epics in such detail as Doniger has, and the insights she presents from a lifetime of study are quite interesting and revealing, and helpful in constructing a unified synthesis of Hinduism from these diverse sources. But then, I am the kind of person who is capable of ignoring things that I consider as far-fetched or unnecessary and pick out what I like in a book; others may not be so easygoing.

A Need for Cultural Sensitivity – and Open-Mindedness

So Hindus, in their rage, are throwing out the baby with the bathwater; but in fairness, if Doniger had only shown a little sensitivity, none of this need have happened.  Accounts from people who have read the book corroborate this – that they started reading it, encountered these offensive sections at the very beginning – the reference to the Oedipus complex occurs fairly early on, for instance – and then get so offended that they completely disregard the rest of the book, regardless of its merits.

Some may accuse me of endorsing self-censorship, but that would be an immature response, and an impractical one at that.  As I said in my previous article, the right to free speech in India is not an absolute one, and if one can make a reasonable case that what someone has written hurts the sentiments of followers of a religion, it may be all the ammunition needed to ban the book or put pressure on the publisher, as in this case.  Until such time as section 295A of the IPC is removed, such abundant caution as I suggest here has to be exercised.  Merely informing Hindus of what their epics contain, and helping them understand the details of their ancient and complicated religion, on the other hand, cannot in any court be deemed to be deliberately offensive.  Had Doniger stuck to just that, she would have been hailed unanimously as a person who helped Hindus understand their religion better, instead of being accused as a Hindu-baiter.  It is even possible that instances like the Oedipus complex are very few and far apart in the book; most of what I saw as I flipped through the pages was highly revealing and interesting.

Hindu society, for its part, needs to educate itself better about its own epics and scriptures, and realize there is more to them than the flashy, packaged versions of the epics that they see on prime-time TV.  Reading the work of important academics (whether Indian or otherwise) provides Indians with the necessary perspective to appreciate their own religion in the completeness that is essential to prevent prejudice and closed-mindedness.