Sun Tzu in India (Part 2)

The two Indian texts which contain significant overlapping material with Sun Tzu's 'Art of War' are the Arthasastra of Kautilya and the shanti parva part of the Mahabharata.

In the shanti parva, Lord Krishna instructs Yudhishtira to approach the dying Bhisma Pitamah--lying flat on the bed of arrows--and request Bhisma to teach him about kingship. Yudhishitra follows the instruction of Lord Krishna, and Bhisma then proceeds to give a long lecture on the subject of kingship. Among the various topics is discussed is some rather detailed analysis of military strategy. The emphasis, from what i read and remember, is on morale, energy, alertness, action, strategy. I do not remember Bhisma talking about deception--something very important to Sun Tzu-- but it is possible that he does do so. There was a book i had come across many years ago which had extracts from Bhisma's shanti parva lecture with specific reference to military strategy; i do not have it on me unfortunately and also do not remember the title and the author name. But it does exist.

The problem with Bhisma's lecture in the shanti parva is that besides the talk on military strategy it involves all kinds of discussions including subjects like rituals/religious duties, etc. As the Mahabharata was passed down the ages after its initial composition, it kept getting inflated. It is possible that in the original Mahabharata, Bhisma's talk on rituals, religious duties, etc. is not present and that his talk along these lines is subsequent padding. Another thing to note is that Bhisma mouths or is made to speak around one third of all the verses in the Manu Smriti.

(The Mahabharata, it must be remembered, was initially a straightforward story about a fight between the Pandavas and the Kauravas. Only later, in its current form, after many inflations did it attain the current position where we find long and unnecessary digressions into all kinds of religious topics. There was even a time when there were two rescencions of the Mahabharata available--a longer version and a shorter version, with the short version presumably being the original version. We know of this because there have been writers down the ages in India who have made references to the two versions which were then presumably extant in their lifetimes. The short version is said to have been somewhere around one fourth of the length of the longer version. )

The point is that for a student of military strategy, Bhisma's digressions into religion, rituals, religious duties, etc. creates a problem. The student has to continually adopt a critical attitude and sift out the rational component of Bhisma's talk from the irrational part. In the irrational part is included Bhisma's recommendation--echoing the Manu Smriti-- that the acceptance of food from a physician is something polluting for a brahmin. So for someone learning military strategy from Bhisma, the procedure to be followed ought to be similar to how one eats a crab. In eating a crab, the meat is eaten, while the shell is discarded. Another analogy would be to learn from Bhisma on the basis of how the body metabolises consumed food--turning its nutritive component into energy and ejecting the superfluous (not required) part as excreta.

(to be continued)