These royal poems—in their correspondences to the contents of the epics containing them, contents comprising events likely to be well known to epic audiences even before they hear epic recitals conclude—are, like their Archaic Greek analogues, proleptic. Yet the Sanskrit poetic prolepses are explicit where the Greek ones are implicit, and vice versa. While Achilles’ rhapsodic performance merely hints at the ease with which he will achieve kléos in his conquest of Troy, Odysseus’ bardic compositions announce in their incorporated prophecies how hard won will be the kléos to accrue to him upon restoring Ithaca. But the exuberant rhapsody of Kuśa and Lava in the Rāmāyaṇa announces how Rāma will attain dharma triumphantly, whereas the tortured bardery of Nala in the Mahābhārata merely hints at how Yudhiṣṭhira will fulfill dharma with difficulty.

When Kuśa and Lava tell Rāma a triumphal tale about his own life—a tale that takes up nearly the entire Rāmāyaṇa—the twin princes do so in their capacity as a kuśīlava, or roaming rhapsode (Rāmāyaṇa 1.5.1–7.100.25, 1.4.4, 7.85.14). Yet the Rāmāyaṇa’s identification of the kuśīlava with Rāma’s own sons is startling, given the way in which the approximately contemporaneous Arthaśāstra—a statecraft manual dating from the first or second century CE—depicts this poetic practitioner.

Apparently, kuśīlavas do not just constrain the produce of a country, but also exert a bad influence on its king. The Arthaśāstra—instead of conceding that diversion for the king has the positive effect of providing employment for kuśīlavas and such others as craftsmen, artists, jesters, and traders—argues that the king, after seeking such diversion, starts to crave other things. As a result, he harasses his subjects—both by seizing for himself what they produce and the commodities that they give as gifts, and by allowing his favorites, too, to take these things (Arthaśāstra 8.4.21–23).

Given that kuśīlavas, in preventing people from carrying out their occupational obligations (and thus from fulfilling dharma), can do no right in the Arthaśāstra, why does this kind of performer appear in the Rāmāyaṇa—as its hero’s heirs, no less? In my view, there are two reasons why the Rāmāyaṇa represents itself as being related by a kuśīlava.

First, this poetic performer’s moral dubiousness lends itself to the epic’s emphasis on Rāma’s righteousness. The Rāmāyaṇa’s assertion of its hero’s integrity is more difficult to dispute, if even the kuśīlava recounting Rāma’s story cannot help but be special. Indeed, this narrative is recited by Rāma’s own twin sons, who have been named—of course—Kuśa and Lava. As the Rāmāyaṇa divides the kuśīlava’s function between these characters, the epic creates the impression that these poetic performers are prototypical—that they are the ones for whom the kuśīlavas of ancient Indian society have been named, rather than the reverse. As a result, Kuśa and Lava’s story’s stock rises. The social status of the twins also indicates that they are no ordinary kuśīlava. Their position as kṣatriyas (reigning warriors), members of society’s second-highest class, is much higher than that which kuśīlavas customarily occupy—the station of śūdras, or servants belonging to the bottom class of society (Arthaśāstra 1.3.8).

A second reason why Rāma’s sons play the role of rhapsode is that the princes’ capacity as a kuśīlava conveniently keeps them waiting in the wings as their father stays on center stage. The benefits to a kingdom of limiting kuśīlava activity justify some remove between a king who rules as well as Rāma does and the reciters of his tale, who—in spite of their royal ancestry—have been reared apart from their father, in the forest.

But why is this poetic role reserved for princes of such promise? On the strength of their paternity alone, Kuśa and Lava would seem to be capable of doing more than what the Rāmāyaṇa assigns them—to wit, telling their father’s story and taking their respective seats on the thrones of Kosala and Uttarakosala (the southern and northern regions of Rāma’s ancestral land) at a time of Rāma’s choosing (Rāmāyaṇa 7.97.7, 17–19). Kuśa and Lava’s relative obscurity results from the Rāmāyaṇa’s double balancing act. In the first place, the epic strikes a balance between elevating the kuśīlava and keeping him at a safe distance from the kingdom’s administration. In the second place, the epic likens the princes to their father just enough to underscore his achievements without shifting focus to the twins’ own.

Although Rāma’s acts overshadow their telling by Kuśa and Lava—an event depicted only toward the epic’s beginning and end (Rāmāyaṇa 1.4.27, 7.85.1)—the princes’ striking likeness to Rāma and the princes’ forest upbringing accentuate his righteousness. Kuśa and Lava, like their father, “know right from wrong” (dharmajñau) (Rāmāyaṇa 1.4.4, 2.18.19). This moral similarity is stressed by the identical twins’ physical resemblance to Rāma, of whom they are the image (Rāmāyaṇa 1.4.10, 7.85.7). In addition, the twins were born to and brought up by Sītā in the ashram of Vālmīki, who taught these youths how to recite the Rāmāyaṇa, which he had composed (Rāmāyaṇa 7.58.1; 1.4.6, 1; 7.85.19). Consequently, the princes’ very existence as forest-dwellers recalls Rāma’s own forest exile as well as his banishment of his sons’ mother, two events that evince his devotion to dharma above all else. Moreover, his morality—by motivating him to reject her and thus to displace their twins from Ayodhyā to Vālmīki’s abode—permits the princes’ performance of the Rāmāyaṇa for their father, for Kuśa and Lava probably would not have become the sage’s students had they resided in the king’s palace. Thus, dharma accomplishes its own articulation in epic.

Kuśa and Lava, then, reinforce Rāma’s righteousness in four ways. First, the duo, by highlighting his divinity while telling his story, renders irreproachable his refusal to make moral compromises. Second, the princes’ poem performance itself is predicated on their father’s unflinching integrity, which lets the twins learn the epic from its mythological author. Kuśa and Lava also maintain Rāma’s dharma by recounting the Rāmāyaṇa on a particular occasion, and by relating his future as well as his past.

Kuśa and Lava’s recital is occasioned by Rāma’s first horse sacrifice. By completing this rite known as “the king of sacrifices” (kraturāṭ) in verse 11.261 of the Mānavadharmaśāstra (a law book whose composition, roughly between 100 BCE and 100 CE, probably overlapped chronologically with those of the Sanskrit epics and the Arthaśāstra), Rāma ushers his realm into a prosperous period (Rāmāyaṇa 7.89.1–10). Kuśa and Lava, by performing the Rāmāyaṇa in this sacrifice’s interstices (Rāmāyaṇa 7.85.4–5), create a continuum between the righteous conduct that Rāma already has exhibited and the similarly moral activity in which he is in the process of engaging. The twins extend this continuum even further by foretelling the righteous acts of Rāma’s future. Given that these events begin right after the horse sacrifice ends (Rāmāyaṇa 7.App. I.13.36–51), the rhapsodists actually foresee their father’s success as a sovereign and a celestial guide. So, by the end of the epic, he has heard that he will be righteous in the future, as he has been in the past, and that he will reap the attendant rewards. Therefore his fulfillment of dharma is a foregone conclusion: even before his death, his story has entered the poetic tradition.

As recited by Kuśa and Lava, Vālmīki’s Rāmāyaṇa relates and anticipates Rāma’s sustained moral attainment. Yet the princes’ performance is not without precedent. In fact, the twins elaborate—in epic poetry—on the prophecy of which only their instructor, Vālmīki, was the initial human recipient. The mortal ascetic’s ability to make this divine announcement into an epic that, by virtue of being passed down by him to its protagonist’s progeny, already is certain to persist also foreruns and represents the enduring extent of Rāma’s dharma.

Rāma ascends his throne after he has defeated Rāvaṇa and has returned to Ayodhyā (Rāmāyaṇa 6.116.54–58). Rāma’s royal accomplishments are enumerated again—this time by Kuśa and Lava, at the end of the epic’s sixth part:

This passage, which is from Vālmīki’s version of the Rāmāyaṇa, seems to revise Nārada’s prophecy by suggesting that the period of Rāma’s reign does not equal, but actually excels, the kṛtayuga (the Winning Age). The fact that his subjects live to be a thousand years old suggests that these people fare better than people who are alive during the kṛtayuga, who live to the age of four hundred (Mānavadharmaśāstra 1.83).

Kuśa and Lava, in developing Nārada’s theme of Rāma’s dharma, set forth in the Rāmāyaṇa an extended encomium that is a far cry from the anguished autobiographical accounts that Nala, as the sūta Bāhuka, articulates in the Mahābhārata after losing his throne. These elliptical utterances, in which Bāhuka blames himself for failing to do right by his wife and society, encapsulate the Mahābhārata’s qualms about actualizing dharma in an age of increasing immorality.

To access the Ayodhyan sovereign, Nala—at Karkoṭaka’s urging—works as Ṛtuparṇa’s sūta (Mahābhārata 3.63.19, 3.68.6). In this role, Nala acts as both charioteer and bard, and hence resembles the Mahābhārata’s most famous sūta, Saṃjaya, who narrates the epic’s battle books and drives Dhṛtarāṣṭra.

Just as Saṃjaya is no mere bard but a poet par excellence, he reaches unprecedented heights in the sūta’s even older role as one of his king’s companions. Whereas the Arthaśāstra—by marginalizing almost every such bard—distances him from his ruler, the Mahābhārata potentially brings each sūta even closer to his king than were the late Vedic ratnins to theirs, by recommending that every king appoint as one of his ministers a sūta “versed in legends” (paurāṇikaṃ) (Mahābhārata 12.86.8). Acting in this capacity, Saṃjaya speaks to Dhṛtarāṣṭra incredibly freely, unstinting in criticism and comfort. Saṃjaya holds Dhṛtarāṣṭra responsible for the epic’s central internecine conflict and the ensuing carnage (Mahābhārata 2.72.5; 6.58.7; 6.72.1–2; 6.79.8; 7.90.1, 4; 7.110.24; 7.122.37, 86, 88; 7.127.26; 8.1.29; 8.4.57; 8.22.27; 9.15.37; 9.22.41), because the king turned a deaf ear to his advisors’ entreaties to stop Duryodhana from making war with the Pāṇḍavas, his cousins (Mahābhārata 6.61.21–22, 6.85.9–13, 6.99.45, 7.110.25, 8.1.30–31, 8.4.56, 8.22.26). Moreover, Dhṛtarāṣṭra seems to accept Saṃjaya’s critique, for the ruler assumes responsibility for his family’s destruction (Mahābhārata 7.10.47, 7.113.1). Yet Saṃjaya, despite his disappointment in Dhṛtarāṣṭra, offers solace to the king as he laments his soldiers’ slaughter. For example, Saṃjaya calms and comforts Dhṛtarāṣṭra as the monarch bemoans his slain sons, the sūta himself having wept when he saw how sad his employer was when he first learned that his sons were dead (Mahābhārata 11.11.20, 9.1.46).

When Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s line is cut off, Saṃjaya’s poetry becomes superfluous: as soon as the sovereign’s eldest and sole surviving son—Duryodhana—dies in battle, the sūta loses his divine vision (Mahābhārata 10.9.58), because his ability to see into the past, present, and future no longer is required now that the near extinction of his aging patron’s dynasty ensures an absence of demand for the poet’s epic accounts. The lines of epic transmission and dynastic descent that are parallel through most of the Mahābhārata stem from the same source: the epic’s mythological author, Vyāsa, who fathers the fathers of the Kauravas and the Pāṇḍavas and passes down the poem to his disciple Vaiśaṃpāyana, who—at Vyāsa’s request—tells the epic in its main frame story (Mahābhārata 1.100.13, 21; 1.54.21–24). Without the celestial sight conferred by this spry progenitor, Saṃjaya continues and ends his career as a charioteer. Ultimately leaving Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s vehicle to accompany him when—some sixteen years after the intrafamilial fighting has ceased and the fallen’s final rites have been completed—he retires from courtly life and goes into the forest for good, Saṃjaya there serves, on foot, as the king’s guide (Mahābhārata 14.3.9–12; 14.14.1–8; 14.71.1–7; 14.85.23; 15.1.4–7; 15.5.9–23; 15.8.9–18; 15.22.4; 15.45.10–11, 17).

Yet Dhṛtarāṣṭra precedes Saṃjaya in decease: when the king, Gāndhārī (his queen), and Kuntī (his sister-in-law) are trapped in a forest fire, he urges his charioteer to save himself (Mahābhārata 15.45.22–23). This sūta’s survival, which precludes the problem of an outcast being cremated with members of the warrior class, signifies the persistence of poetic memory long after heroes have died. Indeed, Saṃjaya does spend some time surrounded by a group of ascetics on a bank of the Ganges River, and thus prefigures the bard featured in the Mahābhārata’s outermost frame story, namely, Ugraśravas (who recites the epic to a group of ascetics in the Naimiṣa Forest, located on a bank of the Gomatī River, which runs east of and roughly parallel to the Ganges before becoming tributary to it) (Mahābhārata 15.45.32, 12.343.2).

Although Saṃjaya is not constrained by the social strictures binding sūtas in the śāstric texts, his seems to be an exceptional case in the epic. For the most part, the Mahābhārata reinforces its measured recapitulation of the śāstric restrictions by shunning the sūta in the manner of ancient Indian society. Certainly the epic resonates with its contemporaries as it ordains: “On a woman of the priestly class, a warrior fathers a sūta, an outcast by whom sacrifices must not be offered and whose occupation is the performance of praise poetry” (ayājyaṃ kṣatriyo vrātyaṃ sūtaṃ stomakriyāparam) (Mahābhārata 13.48.10ab).

Moreover, the Mahābhārata keeps the sūta on society’s fringes in three more specific ways. First, the text treats as an aberration any intellectual talent that the sūta has. For instance, the epic explains away the ability of the sūta Bandin to best brāhmaṇas in knowledge contests as the consequence of his being the son of the water god Varuṇa (Mahābhārata 3.134.24). Furthermore, once Bandin himself has been outwitted by the brāhmaṇa Aṣṭāvakra, the ocean drowning of the sūta’s earlier opponents—including Aṣṭāvakra’s father, Kahoḍa—is reversed. Just before these former competitors, who have witnessed a sacrifice for Varuṇa, return, Aṣṭāvakra orders Bandin to be drowned, and thus to be sent back to his divine father (Mahābhārata 3.134.23, 25, 30–32).

Second, the epic allows the apparent and actual sūtas who dare to assume power—i.e. Karṇa and Kīcaka—to be put in their place. Although Karṇa, a commander of the Kaurava army, actually is a kṣatriya and the Pāṇḍavas’ elder half-brother, they know him only as a sūta—until after his death at the hands of Arjuna (Mahābhārata 8.1.11; 11.27.6–13; 8.67.24, 31–32). Before then, the Pāṇḍavas call Karṇa a “son of a sūta” (sūtaputra). Because the Pāṇḍavas assume that Kaṛṇa shares the lowliness of his adoptive father, the sūta Adhiratha (Mahābhārata 1.104.14), their appellation becomes a slur, much like today’s “son of a bitch.” Yet the rubric sūtaputra—which, by far, is Karṇa’s most common qualifier in the Mahābhārata—also is a means by which the epic signals his kṣatriya status, for only by virtue of having been adopted by a sūta can Karṇa be claimed as such. Indeed, in the Karṇaparvan, the Mahābhārata book where Karṇa is most prominent, he is said to be a sūta only on those two occasions when he wrongs brāhmaṇas. To his arms instructor, Rāma Jāmadagnya, Karṇa himself admits that he is a sūta who has posed as a brāhmaṇa so as to obtain a divine weapon; and, in response, this aggrieved instructor identifies Karṇa as a sūta while angrily imprecating upon him the failure of his newly found familiarity with the celestial missile at the hour of his mortality (Mahābhārata 8.29.3–4, 5–7). Additionally, a brāhmaṇa calls Karṇa a sūta in the course of cursing him to suffer fearfully the intractable sinking of his chariot wheel in battle, because Karṇa accidentally has killed the calf of the brāhmaṇa’s ceremonial cow amid practicing at archery (Mahābhārata 8.373*; 8.29.33; 8.376*; 8.29.31, 37).

In both of these interactions with brāhmaṇas, the priests’ ire appears to be aggravated by their disgust at Karṇa’s ostensible social dissembling. He actually hazards such fateful encounters by choosing, out of love for his adoptive parents, to retain his sūta status while alive, and thereby to refuse the opportunity to assume his rightful station as a warrior (Mahābhārata 5.139.5–10). Because Karṇa appears to be an outcast, Yudhiṣṭhira’s brother Bhīma does not deign to become angry with him when he taunts Draupadī after she has been staked and lost at a dice game (Mahābhārata 2.63.1–5). Instead, Bhīma avows: “I am not getting mad at the son of a sūta, … for this really is the morality of slaves that has come into play” (nāhaṃ kupye sūtaputrasya … eṣa satyaṃ dāsadharmaḥ praviṣṭaḥ |) (Mahābhārata 2.63.7). Here, Bhīma implies that the elders presiding over the dicing have empty ethical stores, if a mere sūta can scorn a warrior’s wife. This behavior of Karṇa’s outrages Draupadī in particular, who—while venting her anger to Kṛṣṇa—attributes her resentment to her humiliation by one of the “lowly” (kṣudrair) members of her society (Mahābhārata 3.13.113).

Yet, once Karṇa’s kṣatriya status is revealed after his death, he is regarded very differently. For example, Yudhiṣṭhira, before knowing of Karṇa’s true birth, praises him in terms of only his military prowess (Mahābhārata 3.37.18, 8.46.25–26), which hampers the Pāṇḍavas’ ability to defeat their Kaurava cousins. But, after learning that Karṇa was a born warrior, Yudhiṣṭhira becomes more generous in his assessment of his elder half-brother, praising not only Karṇa’s fighting skills but also his intelligence, compassion, generosity, and observance of vows (Mahābhārata 12.1.19).

In addition to Karṇa, the Pāṇḍavas put down an actual sūta. The five brothers and their wife are required to go unrecognized for a year, in order to fulfill the terms of the dice game that Yudhiṣṭhira has lost to Duryodhana, and thus to return to Indraprastha. To this end, the Pāṇḍavas and Draupadī complete an incognito stay at the court of King Virāṭa of Matsya. While the Indraprasthan exiles are living at this court, the sūta Kīcaka (Virāṭa’s brother-in-law and army commander) propositions the disguised Draupadī, even though he knows that she is married (Mahābhārata 4.13.3–21, 4.15.1–6). When she tries to flee his second sexual advance, he chases her into Virāṭa’s assembly hall, grabs her by the hair, throws her on the floor, and kicks her (Mahābhārata 4.15.6–7). Kīcaka’s degradation of Draupadī evokes her humiliation at Karṇa’s hands. This time, Draupadī, in her outcry to Virāṭa, utters the angry refrain “Me, the highly esteemed wife of those men, a sūta’s son has struck with his foot!” (teṣāṃ māṃ māninīṃ bhāryāṃ sūtaputraḥ padāvadhīt ||) five times—once for each of her five husbands—so as to stress her ignominy at having to endure again such disrespect from someone of such low social status (Mahābhārata 4.15.15cd, 16cd, 17cd, 18cd, 19cd).

Karṇa’s and Kīcaka’s mistreatments of Draupadī represent the indifference of bards toward people who are no longer praiseworthy, including rulers who fall from power. By the time Karṇa vilifies Draupadī in Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s assembly hall, a dice throw has already demoted her from queen (devī) to slave (dāsī) (Mahābhārata 2.58.31, 2.60.37). Similarly, when she is subject to Kīcaka’s advances, she is merely a maidservant (sairandhrī) to another queen (Mahābhārata 4.13.13). However, despite Draupadī’s demotion, Kīcaka’s harassment of her is not condoned, as her subsequent complaints spur Bhīma to kill him (Mahābhārata 4.16.8–10, 4.17.1–4.19.28, 4.21.59–60). Nevertheless, Kīcaka has much in common with Karṇa. Like Karṇa, and in spite of being an accomplished fighter (as Karṇa is), Kīcaka dies at a Pāṇḍava’s hands. Like Karṇa, and in spite of being a sūta (as Karṇa appears to be), Kīcaka is prized for his fighting skills by a ruler (as Karṇa is, by Duryodhana) and therefore is named an army commander (Mahābhārata 4.24.2, 4.13.5, 1.126.12–14, 8.1.11). But—because military might can save neither soldier—the message that the Mahābhārata sends apropos of Kīcaka and Karṇa alike is that no sūta can succeed for long, since he is sure to be forced out of the spotlight that ill suits someone of his humble origins.

The epic itself obscures the sūta in a third way: by excluding him from contexts that could have called for his appearance. Although three characters, besides Saṃjaya and Nala, serve as charioteers and as storytellers—namely, King Śalya of Madra (who narrates to Yudhiṣṭhira before driving Karṇa), and the warriors Kṛṣṇa (who narrates to Arjuna while driving him) and Uttara (who narrates to his father, Virāṭa, after driving Arjuna) (Mahābhārata 5.8.29–5.18.24; 7.121.6, 16–29; 4.41.1; 4.64.19–29; 4.66.11–14)—none of these three is termed a sūta. Rather, the generic word sārathi (a “charioteer,” or—more literally—a “man having to do with a man with a chariot”)—which, unlike sūta, does not denote an outcast position—is applied to Śalya, Kṛṣṇa, and Uttara, as well as to Mātali, Indra’s immortal charioteer (Mahābhārata 5.8.29, 7.121.6, 4.41.1, 3.164.36). There are two reasons why the three men are not transformed into sūtas. First, none of these kṣatriyas experiences a reversal of fortune that would necessitate his degradation. Simply in the course of fulfilling their military obligations do these soldiers tell stories and drive chariots. Second, all three of these characters are related—at least by marriage—to Yudhiṣṭhira, the epic’s hero: Śalya is the maternal uncle of Yudhiṣṭhira’s half-brothers Nakula and Sahadeva (who too were reared by Kuntī); Kṛṣṇa is Yudhiṣṭhira’s first cousin; and Uttara is the brother of the soon-to-be daughter-in-law of Yudhiṣṭhira’s brother Arjuna.

Even Nala, whose fortune has fallen and who is unrelated to Yudhiṣṭhira, spends only a short time as a stunted sūta—certainly no more than about three years, the duration of Nala’s separation from his wife, Damayantī, if he was transformed soon after abandoning her (Mahābhārata 3.59.24–25; 3.63.1–12; 3.75.11–12, 25). Moreover, Nala’s metamorphosis, from its onset, is marked as reversible. Karkoṭaka—the snake king by whose bite Nala has become Bāhuka—tells him immediately afterward how to regain his kingdom and normal form. According to Karkoṭaka, Nala will not be affected by the snake venom, which will disable and torture Kali (the demon dwelling in Nala’s body), Nala will be able to reclaim Niṣadha by serving as sūta to Ṛtuparṇa (who will teach him how to win at dice), and Nala will return to normal when he wears the celestial set of clothes that the snake gives him (Mahābhārata 3.63.18, 16, 14–15, 19–23).

In the Mahābhārata, then, a sūta’s lot is a mixed bag, a combination both of proximity to royal power and of distance from social superiors. The complexity of the sūta’s social situation, as well as the reversibility of Nala’s transformation into such a charioteer-bard, raises the question of why the epic takes the trouble to double Nala’s role in this regard. In response, I offer three reasons why he must change into a sūta.

The first is that, by serving as a sūta, Nala is able to obtain the information that he needs to retake his throne. Nala learns from Ṛtuparṇa how to excel at dicing, because the Ayodhyan ruler has the ability to count instantaneously what he sees, and knows how to apply this talent to dicing (Mahābhārata 3.70.7–10, 23). Ṛtuparṇa agrees to share his knowledge with Nala, but only if Nala shows him how to handle horses so well—a skill that he knows Nala has, because Nala has driven him at the speed of flight (Mahābhārata 3.70.26, 3.69.21–22, 3.70.1). Thus, as Ṛtuparṇa’s sūta (and sārathi [Mahābhārata 3.72.9]), Nala is close enough to the king to barter for what only this ruler can provide. And—as Ṛtuparṇa’s confidant—Nala is privy not simply to the secret of the dice, but also to the fact that the Ayodhyan is on his way to the kingdom of Vidarbha so that he can woo Nala’s wife, Damayantī, at the sham ceremony that she has set up supposedly to select another husband for herself (Mahābhārata 3.69.1–2).

While Nala is disguised as Bāhuka, he seems to become the sūta to his own successor. Ṛtuparṇa does not actually usurp his servant’s former kingdom, but figuratively replaces Nala as Niṣadha’s king. Shortly before the displaced Nala—as Bāhuka—approaches Ṛtuparṇa for employment, the Ayodhyan hires Nala’s former sūta (and sārathi), Vārṣṇeya (Mahābhārata 3.57.9, 19, 23). By giving Vārṣṇeya cause to reside in Ayodhyā instead of Niṣadha, Ṛtuparṇa symbolically supersedes this sūta’s erstwhile employer, who—rather than being the ruler of Niṣadha—now is only an outcast in the Ayodhyan monarch’s employ. This symbolic supersession accounts for the king’s having both charioteer-bards at his beck and call. Furthermore, Ṛtuparṇa—the only, and hence most eligible, invited king present at Damayantī’s second svayaṃvara (bridegroom-choice ceremony)—plays the front-runner role assigned first to Nala when Damayantī decided to choose him as her husband before even seeing any of the other kings who wanted to marry her (Mahābhārata 3.71.22, 3.53.11). Even though Bāhuka accompanies Ṛtuparṇa to Vidarbha for the repeat svayaṃvara, Nala—in the physical form familiar to his wife—is nowhere in sight.

In this disguise, Nala can remain remote from Vidarbha’s royal-family members, who—in order to reach him—either have to send servants to speak with him where he is, or have to summon him to the palace (Mahābhārata 3.71.34, 3.74.6). At this distance from his wife and in-laws, a divide that symbolizes the social breach between the subservient sūta and his royal superiors, Nala is at less risk of being recognized before he wants to be. Indeed, he maintains his masquerade until he is convinced of Damayantī’s fidelity. At this point, Nala doffs his disguise by donning the heavenly garments supplied by the snake king (Mahābhārata 3.75.16–17).

Nala’s lowly sūta status, despite helping the Niṣadhan to return to his queen and kingdom, does not stem solely from strategic advantage. Nala also needs this disguise, precisely because it contrasts with his peerless prowess as a ruler (Mahābhārata 3.50.2), yet symbolizes the types of kingly instruction that have enabled him to make the most of his personal talents in such areas as horse managing and chariot driving. When Nala is masked as Bāhuka, someone who lacks stature and power but who is seeking a king’s knowledge, Nala evokes his own childhood experience of learning how to rule.

This twofold royal training not only is represented by Bāhuka’s sūta identity, but also accounts for Nala’s knowledge of his horse lore before he becomes Bāhuka. Such equine expertise would have helped an ancient Indian ruler—whether he had been on tour or the warpath. Indeed, such a king was already connected so closely to his horse and his chariot, both of which enabled him physically to protect his domain, that he swore by these vehicles—as well as by his weapons—whenever he made an oath (Mānavadharmaśāstra 8.113). So, Nala, at the beginning of his story, is said to be “skilled with horses” (aśvakovidaḥ), and the telltale sound that his chariot makes while he drives nearly gives him away a couple of times during his concealment (Mahābhārata 3.50.1, 3.69.23–32, 3.71.4–8). Yet he still has a lot to learn, and his physical transformation allows him to progress to the point where he can rule his own realm successfully again. When Nala (as Bāhuka) acquires Ṛtuparṇa’s dicing expertise, Kali is cast out of Nala’s disguised body; and, later (after resuming his normal form), the Niṣadhan can win back his kingdom from Puṣkara (Mahābhārata 3.70.27, 3.77.18–19). Then King Nala, Queen Damayantī, and their twins, Princess Indrasenā and Prince Indrasena, live happily ever after (Mahābhārata 3.57.20, 21; 3.78.3).

However, in order to arrive at this deceptively happy literary resolution—the third motivation behind Nala’s transformation into a sūta—Nala himself has to behave like a bard. Disguised as the dwarf Bāhuka, Nala voices in curtailed verse his dislocation and isolation on three occasions, in response to the inquiries of other people. His first story unfolds in Ayodhyā as he mourns Damayantī’s absence:

There are two ways in which to interpret this tale that Nala tells while he is in Ayodhyā. This city is the central site of the power struggle portrayed in the Rāmāyaṇa, and the story of its hero, Rāma, is retold in a shorter form in the Mahābhārata, when Yudhiṣṭhira asks whether any man has been more unfortunate than he (Mahābhārata 3.258–275, 3.257.10). This eliciting question echoes the one that Yudhiṣṭhira has used to induce the narration of Nala’s story, but allows for the sharing of a tale of even greater pathos—for Yudhiṣṭhira here asks to hear not of any king in straits direr than his own, but of any man so afflicted. This very man, Rāma, suffers two great losses. First, although he is older than his three half-brothers, and thus is his father’s heir, Rāma is displaced from Ayodhyā’s throne before he has even a chance to ascend it, because his stepmother Kaikeyī schemes successfully to have her son, Bharata, supersede him (Mahābhārata 3.261.24–27). She has Rāma exiled to the forest, where he sustains his second loss, when Rāvaṇa kidnaps Sītā (Mahābhārata 3.262.40).

Nala, for his own part, is possessed by the asura Kali. As a result, the Niṣadhan is driven both to gamble away his throne to Puṣkara and to discard Damayantī (Mahābhārata 3.59.24–25), who has followed her husband to the forest. But, once Nala is bitten by Karkoṭaka and becomes Bāhuka, Kali can no longer delude him. Consequently, Nala can tell his story, with a clear head, if not conscience. This tale is twofold: in addition to bemoaning his wife, he bewails his kingdom. Although he is a bard as he relates the narrative, while doing so, he is called a “king” (rājan) four times (Mahābhārata 3.64.9a, 11a, 12a, 19a). When thus recast in his earlier role, his very person underscores the supplementary significance of his story of lament. He takes himself to task explicitly for failing his wife and implicitly for failing his people, narratively comparing his kingdom to his wife, because he is supposed to be the foremost protector of both. But he has been deprived of both, by the intervening Kali, who engineered the dicing downfall that left the king realmless, and condemned him to the forest exile during which he forsook his queen (Mahābhārata 3.55.12–13). Under Kali’s influence, Nala failed to fulfill his dual royal obligations. He left his faultless queen, Damayantī, to fend for herself in a disorienting, predator-ridden forest (Mahābhārata 3.60.5, 12–14, 18, 17; 3.64.12, 16, 17, 18). When forsaken similarly, yet even earlier, by her righteous prime provider, Nala’s kingdom, Niṣadha, herself seems to experience hunger and thirst—as represented tropaically by the only half-grown grain on the desiccated land about to be irrigated to which Damayantī is compared just before she receives Nala’s seed, after his three-year absence (Mahābhārata 3.58.6; 3.61.46–48, 88; 3.54.38; 3.75.26–27; 3.64.10, 17). These states of deprivation, considered together with Niṣadha’s vulnerability to usurpers such as Puṣkara, compose a negative for the positive print of a kingdom kept safe—Yudhiṣṭhira’s realm of Indraprastha early in the epic (Mahābhārata 3.58.1; 3.64.18; 2.30.1–3).

Nala’s twin losses inform his subsequent bardic efforts as well. In response to two nearly identical inquiries, he—as the sūta Bāhuka—relates two almost identical stories. On the first occasion, a brāhmaṇa named Parṇāda—whom Damayantī’s father, King Bhīma (not to be confused with Yudhiṣṭhira’s brother), has dispatched from Vidarbha to find Nala—repeats to Bāhuka, in Ayodhyā, this behest of Damayantī’s (Mahābhārata 3.67.6–8, 3.68.1–6):

On the second occasion, in Vidarbha, Damayantī sends a woman named Keśinī to make a similar request of Bāhuka, with almost the same words that Damayantī asked Parṇāda to utter (Mahābhārata 3.72.1–4):

Yet Keśinī changes Parṇāda’s message in three places, replacing the phrase bhṛśaṃ bālā (too much, the young woman) in Mahābhārata 3.67.10 with divārātraṃ (day and night) in Mahābhārata 3.72.19, and substituting for śokena (with sorrow) and dadasva (give) in Mahābhārata 3.67.11 their respective synonyms, duḥkhena and prayaccha, in Mahābhārata 3.72.20.

The two tales that Parṇāda’s and Keśini’s requests elicit from Bāhuka begin as one account that then bifurcates. It opens with the following lines:

From this point, however, Bāhuka tailors his poems to their contexts. To Parṇāda, Bhīma’s envoy, Bāhuka declares:

But Bāhuka implores Keśinī, Damayantī’s confidante:

Though three lines are common to Bāhuka’s doublet of compositions (Mahābhārata 3.68.10ab, 3.72.27ab; 3.68.10cd, 3.72.27cd; 3.68.11ab, 3.72.28ab), his works differ in tone. The first work attempts to appease Nala’s angry ex-subjects in Niṣadha by thrice sounding the refrain “she ought not to get angry” (na kroddhum arhati), and thereby evoking the Niṣadhans’ impatience with their king’s vice of reckless dicing (Mahābhārata 3.68.9d, 10d, 11d; 3.56.13), a sensitive topic that Bāhuka does not mention explicitly herein. By contrast, his second work seeks to soothe Damayantī (by complimenting her conduct) and to appeal to her sympathy (by citing her husband’s hunger and his lack of control over his gambling vice) (Mahābhārata 3.72.26cd, 28d).

Nala’s works are so morose because they express the despair that Yudhiṣṭhira feels even after he hears about Nala. Like Nala, Yudhiṣṭhira learns Ṛtuparṇa’s reckoning technique (Mahābhārata 3.78.17), but it does not cast Kali out of the Pāṇḍava’s life. Even though Yudhiṣṭhira uses his dicing skill to support his brothers and wife during the year that he spends with them in disguise, and even though he reminds his opponents that the terms of the agreement he and Duryodhana made at their last dicing match have been satisfied, Duryodhana reneges and refuses to relinquish Indraprastha (Mahābhārata 4.12.4–5; 5.5.18; 5.20.1, 9–11; 5.125.22–26). While Yudhiṣṭhira eventually takes over the earth—in the aftermath of the war that ushers in the Kali Age—the king does so at a human cost that is all too easy for a man of his counting expertise to quantify (Mahābhārata 11.26.9–10).

Ultimately, when the losses of the Kali Age become too hard for Yudhiṣṭhira to bear, he leaves his land and ascends into heaven (Mahābhārata 17.1.2–3). He does not heed the scoldings of his sorrowful subjects, who—without swaying him—have to return to their homes, and thus are akin to their counterparts in Nala’s stronghold of Niṣadha, who are ignored by their Kali-possessed king as he lets go of his land (Mahābhārata 17.1.15–17, 23–24; 3.56.15–18). When Vārṣṇeya tells Damayantī that Nala should be informed that all his subjects are waiting to see him on business and are not putting up with his dice vice (Mahābhārata 3.56.12–13), she sugarcoats the sūta’s message for his king. She veils Vārṣṇeya’s plain words with deference, telling her husband that his subjects are demonstrating their devotion to him, rather than that they are not tolerating his behavior (Mahābhārata 3.56.15, 13). After he fails to respond, the queen—preparing for Nala’s dethronement—sends Vārṣṇeya away from Niṣadha, so that the sūta can seek employment elsewhere; and he sorrowfully finds it at Ṛtuparṇa’s court, in Ayodhyā (Mahābhārata 3.57.17–18, 23).

Although Vārṣṇeya does not recite poetry during the Nalopākhyāna, the story seems to symbolize his involvement in such activity, by portraying him as the protector of Nala’s legacy. As Damayantī dismisses Vārṣṇeya, she asks him to harness Nala’s favorite horses to his chariot, to drive her twin children to her family’s home in Vidarbha, and to leave the princess and prince, the horses, and the chariot there (Mahābhārata 3.57.17–18). Thus, Damayantī—acting on the knowledge that Nala “could be ruined” (vinaśed) by losing his kingdom (Mahābhārata 3.57.16)—assures the continuity of his line. But, because Nala’s dynasty has been displaced from its ancestral realm, there is no need to retain a sūta so as to reinforce this lineage’s reputation there. Consequently, Vārṣṇeya decides to leave the Niṣadhan royal family’s employ, even though Damayantī has given him the option to remain in Vidarbha with her relatives (Mahābhārata 3.57.18).

Some of the words that Nala himself puts together to appease his people and queen after abandoning them would be appropriate for Yudhiṣṭhira to use, if he were to try to soothe his own subjects. Recognizing that, in his day, righteousness has been dimmed and diminished by the passage of time (Mahābhārata 17.1.16), Yudhiṣṭhira—by virtue of his paternity—cannot help but be affected by this turn of events. In this degenerate age, this man who is the deity Dharma’s son, and who also is known as King Dharma, is himself someone who, like Nala, has “fallen on hard times” (viṣamasthena) and has been “overwhelmed by vice” (vyasanāplutam) (Mahābhārata 1.114.1–3, 3.68.9, 3.72.28).

Yudhiṣṭhira is burdened as well by a distress parallel to that which Nala expresses in his first poem as he laments the loss of his beloved. Like Nala, Yudhiṣṭhira, who circumambulated the earth on his way heavenward, has “ ‘wandered the world over’ ” (bhraman mahīṃ sarvāṃ) (Mahābhārata 17.1.44, 3.64.15a). In fact, heaven is what Yudhiṣṭhira has “ ‘found’ ” (āsādya), so the other “king” (rājñas) to whose “home” (niveśane) the Pāṇḍava has resorted is Indra, the gods’ ruler (Mahābhārata 18.1.4; 3.64.15, 19; 17.3.30–33). Yudhiṣṭhira, in the absence here of his wife and brothers, feels guilt and “ ‘anguish’ ” (duḥkhaṃ) akin to Nala’s (Mahābhārata 18.2.1–12, 3.64.15). Just as Nala was followed by Damayantī but left her “ ‘abandoned’ ” (tyaktā), Yudhiṣṭhira was trailed by his loved ones on his trek to heaven, but, without looking back, left his near and dear by the wayside when they were felled by their moral flaws (Mahābhārata 3.64.16, 17.2). Now that Yudhiṣṭhira’s loved ones no longer are “ ‘alive’ ” (jīvati), they are “ ‘seized by hunger and thirst’ ” (kṣutpipāsāparītā) while dwelling “ ‘in the huge, horrid forest’ ” (vane mahati dāruṇe) of hell, and thus experience an extreme version of the dire fate that Nala fears has befallen his wife in his absence (Mahābhārata 3.64.16, 17, 18b). In the inferno, some trees have swords for leaves, while other trees have sharp thorns (Mahābhārata 18.2.23, 25). Nothing can grow there for Yudhiṣṭhira’s relatives to eat, because the ground is covered with corpses, and the mud is made of flesh and blood (Mahābhārata 18.2.18, 17). Moreover, hell’s river has hot water that is hard to drink (Mahābhārata 18.2.23). The “ ‘predators always … on the prowl’ ” (śvāpadācarite nityaṃ) in hell actually are scavengers: iron-beaked crows and vultures, and needle-mouthed ghosts (Mahābhārata 3.64.18a, 18.2.20). When Yudhiṣṭhira himself has to go there to find his family members, he feels that they—like the blameless Damayantī of Nala’s memory—are “ ‘undeserving of all of this’ ” (atathocitā) (Mahābhārata 18.2.44, 3.64.17), even though King Dharma was the one who enumerated their failings on his way to heaven.

Despite these dire scenes, the epic does have a happy ending. Soon after Yudhiṣṭhira arrives in the inferno, it disappears and a cool, gentle, fragrant wind wafts in with the gods—hell breezes over (Mahābhārata 18.3.1–8). It turns out to have been an illusion designed to deceive him because he had allowed Droṇa, his former military instructor, to be deceived before his death (Mahābhārata 18.3.14). Now, this and the other improper acts that led Yudhiṣṭhira and those dear to him to hell have been redressed (Mahābhārata 18.3.16). After he finally gives up his human body, he and his relatives all reenter the deities from whom they have issued (Mahābhārata 18.3.39, 18.4.2–7, 18.5.9–22). Moreover, the account of his life, the Mahābhārata, comes to be classified as an itihāsa, as had the tale told about Nala (Mahābhārata 18.5.31, 3.78.10).

The distinct tacks that these works take toward dharma lead their heroes’ efforts to achieve this ideal to appear to be different, despite the fact that these men must fulfill several of the same obligations. As rulers (kṣatriyas), they must protect their peoples and realms; as householders (gṛhasthas), they must marry and have children; and, as husbands (patis), they must guard their wives. In addition to meeting these requirements, Rāma and Yudhiṣṭhira are expected to uphold comprehensive, or sāmāsika, dharma, which comprises five duties incumbent on all four of ancient Indian society’s classes: nonviolence (ahiṃsā); truth (satya); curbing anger (akrodha); purification (śauca); and suppression of the senses (indriyanigraha) (Mānavadharmaśāstra 7.35, 110; 3.4, 45; 9.3; 10.63).

As kings, Rāma and Yudhiṣṭhira cannot help but confront dharma’s conflicting demands, for the monarchs cannot defend their kingdoms while refraining from violence and its attendant impurities. And, in certain situations, the kings can commit to warfare only at the cost of their honesty. But their compromises are portrayed very differently.

In the Rāmāyaṇa, Rāma fights unfairly when he ambushes and kills Vālin, the monkey king, even though Vālin already is dueling with his brother, Sugrīva. Yet Rāma comes off very well, both before and after his deceitful deed, which he has done primarily to obtain Sugrīva’s support in the search for abducted Sītā. Prior to Rāma’s sneak attack, Vālin’s wife Tāra warns him of Rāma’s inexorability and integrity, likening Rāma not only to “the fire at the end of an age” (yugāntāgnir), but also to “a tree that is a refuge for moral people” (nivāsavṛkṣaḥ sādhūnām) (Rāmāyaṇa 4.15.15, 16a). In addition, once the attack has occurred, only Vālin himself voices outrage in response. Moreover, as soon as Rāma justifies his subterfuge as a means of punishing Vālin for taking Sugrīva’s wife Rumā, Vālin asks Rāma to forgive his outburst (Rāmāyaṇa 4.17.12–45; 4.18.2–39, 42). In fact, Vālin goes so far as to say that Rāma “knows right from wrong” (dharmajña) (Rāmāyaṇa 4.18.44)—a remarkable reversal! Rāma is not even reproached by soon-to-be-widowed Tāra, who simply goes on to recognize that Rāma, in slaying her husband, has performed “a great act” (mahat karma) (Rāmāyaṇa 4.20.18).

Like Rāma, Yudhiṣṭhira deploys deception to kill a powerful enemy. Yet, even though Yudhiṣṭhira does so much less directly in the Mahābhārata than does Rāma in the Rāmāyaṇa, the Indraprasthan incurs much more of a reprisal than does the Ayodhyan. At the urging of Kṛṣṇa, Yudhiṣṭhira deliberately misleads Droṇa into thinking that Droṇa’s son, Aśvatthāman, has died. Yudhiṣṭhira does so, because Droṇa, even at the age of eighty-five, has enough prowess to imperil Yudhiṣṭhira’s army. Yudhiṣṭhira’s half-truth, however, ultimately disheartens Droṇa so much that he sets aside his arms and gives up his life, just before being beheaded by Yudhiṣṭhira’s brother-in-law Dhṛṣṭadyumna (Mahābhārata 7.164.62–69, 105–106; 7.165.98–107, 32–47).

Yet, unlike Rāma, Yudhiṣṭhira is not praised for his improbity. Yudhiṣṭhira himself is ambivalent about duping Droṇa, having decided to do so “with much difficulty” (kṛcchreṇa) (Mahābhārata 7.164.70). Moreover, as soon as Yudhiṣṭhira equivocates, his chariot drops to the earth, from an elevation of four fingerbreadths (Mahābhārata 7.164.107).

Yudhiṣṭhira’s deceit, unlike Rāma’s deceit, has disastrous effects. Aśvatthāman, upon learning how Droṇa died, denounces Yudhiṣṭhira’s “ignoble and extremely wicked act” (anāryaṃ sunṛśaṃsaṃ ca) and pledges not only to destroy Dhṛṣṭadyumna and his family, the Pāñcālas, but also to shed Yudhiṣṭhira’s blood (Mahābhārata 7.166.19e [in one Kaśmīrī (K₄), six Devanāgarī (D_{2. 3. 5–8}), and both Telugu manuscripts], 27–29). Rather than achieve these aims on the battlefield by day, Aśvatthāman bides his time and ambushes his marks in their camp at night (Mahābhārata 10.8.9–139). Although he cannot target the absent Yudhiṣṭhira, Aśvatthāman does slay many of this monarch’s blood relatives when they should be asleep (Mahābhārata 10.11.1–2). And, as Aśvatthāman exits from the camp, he is the one who is compared to “the fire at the end of an age” (yugānte … pāvakaḥ) (Mahābhārata 10.8.137). Yudhiṣṭhira, though unscathed by Aśvatthāman’s fury, eventually has to face hell’s flames and other horrors for a few moments, as punishment for his prevarication (Mahābhārata 18.2.15–18.3.19).

To say that Yudhiṣṭhira has a much harder time than Rāma is to make a literal, as well as a colloquial, statement. Yudhiṣṭhira has more difficulty fulfilling his dharmic obligations, because he lives at a time when the cosmos’ dharma has devolved from its condition in Rāma’s day. According to the Mahābhārata, Rāma and Yudhiṣṭhira live at different points of a cycle comprising four ages whose names, which refer to progressively unluckier throws of dice, reflect dharma’s decline over the ages’ course. While Nārāyaṇa, a form of the deity Viṣṇu, declares that he is born as Rāma between the Trey Age (tretāyuga) and the Deuce Age (dvāparayuga), the Mahābhārata war—and therefore the lives of its participants, including Yudhiṣṭhira—is said to take place during the transition from the Deuce Age to the Losing Age (kaliyuga) (Mahābhārata 12.326.78, 1.2.9).

Yet the Rāmāyaṇa does not locate Rāma’s lifetime so precisely. If the Losing Age overshadows the Mahābhārata, no period casts such a pall over the Rāmāyaṇa. While Yudhiṣṭhira’s expanded kingdom is checked quite quickly by the creep of the kaliyuga, Rāma’s realm flourishes for about ten millennia. Furthermore, the Rāmāyaṇa creates the impression that this thriving is inevitable—by presenting its prediction by Nārada, and its repeated realization in the epic that Kuśa and Lava recite.

The fate of Rāma’s followers—that is, their unimpeded prosperity on earth and in heaven alike—reinforces the Rāmāyaṇa’s main idea, namely, that Rāma is impeccable despite doing apparently dubious deeds. The Mahābhārata, however, is not so single-minded in assessing its hero. Yudhiṣṭhira’s achievements, while bearing some resemblance to Rāma’s, are both questioned and championed in one breath.

Like Rāma, Yudhiṣṭhira defeats his primary enemy, but—even so—Yudhiṣṭhira does not deem this victory worthy of praise. After the death of Duryodhana—who was the reincarnation of a part of Kali (Mahābhārata 10.9.55, 1.61.80), the demon embodying the kaliyuga (who had possessed Nala)—there is no serious opponent to Yudhiṣṭhira’s universal sovereignty. Yet, a major means by which kings expanded their land holdings, the horse sacrifice (aśvamedha), has a different character in Yudhiṣṭhira’s story than in Rāma’s. In the Rāmāyaṇa, the horse sacrifice carries positive connotations: Rāma is renowned for having horse sacrifices performed regularly, and these rites index his riches and authority. In the Mahābhārata, however, the horse sacrifice takes on a negative tenor: the ritual’s overriding emphasis is not power augmentation but purification. By the time Yudhiṣṭhira sponsors such a sacrifice, at the dawn of the kaliyuga, this king already has conquered the earth (Mahābhārata 14.90.17–14.91.41, 14.1.7). But he needs the expiation provided by this rite—which is known, both in the Mahābhārata and in the Mānavadharmaśāstra, for expunging the effects of all evildoing (Mahābhārata 14.70.16; Mānavadharmaśāstra 11.261)—so that he can make up for bringing about the deaths of so many of his mentors and relatives. Yet, despite discharging the aśvamedha, Yudhiṣṭhira rules the world for a total of only thirty-six years (Mahābhārata 16.1.1).

Unlike Rāma, whose realm thrives throughout his lengthy reign, Yudhiṣṭhira actually seems worse off for winning the war against his Kaurava cousins. Before this conflict, Yudhiṣṭhira has success in his sovereignty, Indraprastha:

At the end of the war, Yudhiṣṭhira rules the whole world, but it is in a sorry state of near depopulation. By Yudhiṣṭhira’s own reckoning, 1,660,020,000 men have died in the fighting, while only 24,165 men have survived (Mahābhārata 11.26.9–10). If a man is judged by the kingdom he keeps, then—by the end of the epic—Yudhiṣṭhira’s reputation is diminished rather than enhanced.

Two other Mahābhārata events also highlight the limits of Yudhiṣṭhira’s righteousness. First, even though his father is the deified form of dharma itself, Yudhiṣṭhira is taught how to reign righteously—by his great-uncle Bhīṣma in the war’s wake and by his uncle Dhṛtarāṣṭra still afterward. Second, Yudhiṣṭhira ascends into heaven alone (Mahābhārata 12.56–159, 15.9.7–15.12.23, 17.3.24). While Rāma leads all of his righteous subjects right to their celestial reward, Yudhiṣṭhira cannot keep the few humans who accompany him—i.e. his wife and his four brothers—from falling first to hell, as recompense for their moral failings (Mahābhārata 17.2.3–25, 18.2.40–41, 18.3.15).

Thus, Rāma and Yudhiṣṭhira experience dharma differently. Rāma readily spreads dharma through his realm because he is a human manifestation of Viṣṇu. This deity has descended to earth expressly to restore dharma to the universe, by ridding it of Rāvaṇa, the demon whose austerities have made him invulnerable to all other supernatural beings (Rāmāyaṇa 6.105.25–26, 1.1.13, 7.10.17). Rāma’s righteousness, then, continues from his kingdom to the cosmos. In contrast to Rāma, Yudhiṣṭhira is merely a man descended from divine Dharma and has to struggle simply to lay down the law in his domain as unrighteousness ravages the universe. In Yudhiṣṭhira’s trying time, the destabilizing decline of dharma in the cosmos hinders his efforts to keep his kingdom intact, both physically and morally.

The Sanskrit epics offer in Rāma and Yudhiṣṭhira alternative exemplars of uprightness. In addition to embodying the different perspectives that these poems have on dharma, the monarchs, by heeding royal poets either directly or indirectly, demonstrate the distinct ways in which the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata instill this ideal in their audiences.

The different, yet complementary, approaches that the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata take to dharma will come into even clearer focus as I consider the ways in which these works resemble and contrast with their Greek counterparts. As I complete this comparative study, by applying modern theories of self and social psychology, I will refine the epic category into which all four poems have been placed, and thus I will illuminate their enduring appeal as religious resources.