ABSTRACT
The angry Duryodhana is the great tree, Karn ˙ a its trunk,
S´akuni the branches, Duh ˙ s´a¯sana the abundant blossoms and
fruits, and the foolish King Dhr ˙ tara¯s
˙ t ˙ ra the root.
(1.1.65)
In the Sanskrit epic the Maha¯bha¯rata, the blind king Dhr ˙ tara¯s
˙ t ˙ ra is at the
centre of the catastrophe that befalls the Bha¯ratas.1 His journey from passedover primogeniture, to ruler, to destitution and the loss of his one hundred sons in the Bha¯rata war has the pure arc of a tragic life.2 While the source of his downfall is ‘overdetermined’,3 Dhr
˙ tara¯s
˙ t ˙ ra usually blames his bad
Indeed, Dhr ˙ tara¯s
˙ t ˙ ra’s self-identity as a father both informs his disastrous
decisions and actions before the war, and fuels his moving expressions of grief during and after it. What role do Dhr
˙ tara¯s
˙ t ˙ ra’s numerous expressions
of sorrow play in the overall moral and aesthetic tone(s) of the epic? In this chapter, I explore the issue of gender through the category of
fatherhood. More specifically, I examine the relationship between time, grief, and fatherhood in the laments of Dhr
˙ tara¯s
˙ t ˙ ra.5 In addition to investigating
what these laments tell us about Dhr ˙ tara¯s
˙ t ˙ ra as a father, I argue that a care-
ful consideration of their interaction with certain structural features that manipulate time reveals that Dhr
˙ tara¯s
˙ t ˙ ra’s despair, that is, the anguish of
a father who has lost his sons in battle, is one of the dominant leitmotifs of the epic.
