دانلود مقاله ترجمه شده بازنگری مهابهاراتا: سارپا ساترای آرون کولاتکار

The present paper is an attempt to examine Arun Kolatkar’s revisit to the epic The Mahabharata in his poem Sarpa Satra (2004). Kolatkar’s poem demythifies two myths: the ‘Khandava Forest’ in which the incineration of Khandava Forest was carried out by Krishna and Arjuna with their divine weapons and also the ‘Snake Sacrifice’ where king Janamejaya decides to avenge the assassination of his father Parikshita by the snake Takshaka by performing the Snake Sacrifice, which would drive all the snakes in the world and kill them in the sacrificial fire called Sarpa Satra. The poet questions the moral authority of the ruler whose irrational action becomes ‘cause for concern indeed for the future of the country in question’. Such a ruler who brings the betterment of the country in danger is fit either for punishment or banishment. The poet further exposes the rampant corruption, mindless violence in the form of commercial riots and a swarm of disruptive activities that go non-stop in all parts of India. The burning of the Khandava Forest by Lord Krishna and Arjuna leads to a severe ecological loss: ‘---nothing was left, not a trace of that great sanctuary---’ (p. 43). For Kolatkar, Aastika turns out to be ‘the last vestige of humanity’ as he can bring about harmony between the rulers and the ruled. Kolatkar sees in the practice of snake sacrifice the threat of the extinction of the entire Naga species which is nothing but the satirical mimicry of the institution of the yajna. In Janmejaya’s ‘swift and terrible’ vengeance and in his resolve to exterminate all Naga people, one can hear the disturbing echoes of the ruthless machinery of the modern State. Takshaka has been shown as a ‘scheming’ terrorist, who has ‘all the cunning of its kind to get past/the complex shield of the defences’. (p. 19) In Janmejaya’s mindless sacrificial fire, Kolatkar witnesses the possibility of the ultimate human annihilation. The poet’s revisit to these myths from The Mahabharata helps him expose the stark and naked realities of follies and foibles, avarice and animus, trickery and stratagem, duplicity and diplomacy, lust and lechery, selfishness and sacrifice, retribution and retreat, temptations and machinations, conspiracies and candidness of the present