National Symposium at Bengaluru on Sunday

By Prof. G.L. Shekar

Parva, one of the masterpieces of modern Indian literature and the contemporary version of Vyasa Bharata, by India’s foremost writer Dr. S.L. Bhyrappa turned 40 this year !  To mark the occasion, S.L. Bhyrappa Sahitya Pratisthana, Mysuru and Kendra Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, are jointly organising a one-day National Symposium on Parva at Mangala Mantapa of NMKRV College, Jayanagar, Bengaluru on Sunday (Dec. 29) from 9.30 am.

Jnanpith awardee and President of Kendra Sahitya Akademi, Dr. Chandrashekhara Kambara will inaugurate and deliver the inaugural address.

The other speakers include: Shatavadhani Dr. R. Ganesh, Litterateur from Bengaluru; Dr. Makarand R. Paranjape, Poet, English Literary Critic and Director-Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla; Dr. Madhav Koushik, Hindi Writer and Vice- Chairman, Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi; Dr. Aruna Dhere, poetess and Marathi novelist from Pune and President of Marathi Sahitya Sammelan-2019 and Dr. H. R. Vishwasa, Sanskrit scholar and translator of Parva into Sanskrit, the language in which Vyasa wrote the original story. Dr. Ganesh will also conduct a panel discussion with these speakers.

Parva was first published in the year 1979. As Dr. Bhyrappa thought about the historical veracity of the events of the Mahabharata during his early days of writing, by 1971 he was deeply engaged in serious research pertaining to the historicity of the epic. He investigated into the economic, political, religious and social life during the last phase of the Vedic culture. Dr. Bhyrappa did extensive research on the social life, food habits, geography and the cultural problems of this epic.

During the years 1974-75, Dr. Bhyrappa toured many parts of the Himalayan region that were associated with Mahabharata. He visited and studied Dwarka Aravali ranges, Viratnagar, Mathura, Delhi, Kurukshetra, Hastinavati, Barnava, Chakranagar, Rajgir and other places connected with the epic. He studied the original Sanskrit text of Vyasa and analysed its characters and situations. He removed the mythical elements of the original and created a novel of the ancient story from the contemporary realistic angle.

Dr. Bhyrappa has penetrated Vyasa’s myths and discovered the human feelings and experience filling the situations and characters with natural human behaviour. He wrote Parva between October 1975 and December 1976 and it was published in 1979.

Dr. Bhyrappa says that “the greatest epic of the world written by Vyasa is an ocean of story, philosophy and clash of values which rightly deserves the applause. It contains everything found in all other literatures and there is nothing elsewhere which is not in the Mahabharata.”

21 reprints in Kannada

Since 1979, Parva has gone into 21 reprints in Kannada and several reprints in the translations of major languages — Hindi, English, Sanskrit, Bengali, Punjabi, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam. It may be recalled here that Kendra Sahitya Akademi declared Parva as the 20th century Indian classic and translated into English.

Prof. K. Raghavendra Rao, who has translated Parva into English, says that Parva is transformation of an ancient legend into a modern novel. In this process, it has gained national credibility and a human perspective. The Bharata war, symbolic of the birth pangs of a new world-order, depicts a heroic but vain effort to arrest the disintegration and continue the prevailing order. It is viewed from the stand points of the partisan participants and judged with reference to the objective understanding of Krishna. Narration, dialogue, monologue and comment all are employed for its presentation. Shot through with irony, pity and understanding objectivity, the novel Parva ends with the true tragic vision of faith in life and hope for mankind, he says.

Also, this symposium signifies culmination of the first Parva Study Circle deliberations held over one year at Bengaluru at the houses of various literary enthusiasts on Sundays. Parva Study Circle is the brainchild of Shatavadhani Dr. R. Ganesh. It is proposed to start the Study Circle in Mysuru as well soon.

On this occasion, Dr. Bhyrappa will speak on “Celebrated Indian Literary Masterpiece – Parva.”