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Here's a little idea I came up with while thinking about the state of Indic (i.e., Hindu-Buddhist-Jain and their sub-branches) culture and the power of free information and Wikipedia. It's written towards myself and towards other Indic people. I'd like opinions on whether or not it would succeed.
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An idea for the next Great Indic Epic
Reading the Mahabharat, I came to the realisation that it was not the work of a single author. The original Jaya, of around 10,000 verses, may well have been. But there is no way that the rest of it – the whole amounting to something like 1,00,000 verses - could have been written by one man, no matter howsoever skilled or prolific. It was the work of an entire culture, evolving, growing, changing, never static, never stagnating, dynamic, powerful, and most importantly, relevant, never fading into irrelevance (as many are afraid it may be now).
Many also believe (or fear) that Indic culture has lost the capacity to produce another epic of that calibre. I do not for a moment subscribe to that view. I do, however, understand that the institutions which allowed such works to be written have been dead for over a millennium.
One flaw in those times, when such works were written, was that, even though they were meant for mass consumption, by all types and classes of people (explicitly mentioned in the Mahabharat as a reason for its own composition is so that women and non-dwija people could be given access, in a practical form, to the ideas contained in the Vedas), it was only one class of people who could actually edit or add to them. This inevitably and predictably led to a gradual degradation of the quality of the additions as time went on, as insularity crept in.
Today, however, we have a golden chance of restoring those institutions, and writing, collectively, another great epic for our times. The internet and Wiki software provide the infrastructure. The concept of Free Culture provides an intellectual basis for this undertaking (a work which is the property of an entire culture cannot be anything but Free). And finally, the monumental nature of this task itself is, I believe, enough to rouse the Indic people to the spirit of community in its completion.
The best part, of course, is that no individual need provide the entire thing. The contribution of an individual could be limited to a simple paragraph, or an entire chapter, or extend to an entire parva or kanda.
It cannot, however, be simply started like that. There has to be a foundation on which to build. That will have to provided by one man, and of one tradition. If I do it, it will be of the Indic tradition.
As I believe that Indic and monotheist ideas do not mix, and that this is fundamentally an Indic venture, I recommend that the monotheists in India work on their own epic of this nature. Of course, if they find that the idea of such an epic is itself against their monotheism (an epic is a celebration of man, after all), then they are free to not do it. I don't really care if they do it or not, I only care that the Indic one not be messed up by unwanted interference or claims that “We're also Indians, so we have a right to add to it whatever we want! ” Nobody is making any claims about their Indianness, but this being an Indic venture, and not an Indian one, non-Indic people do have a right to add to it, but only as long as it respects and is within the Indic spirit of the whole.
This means that this cannot be a Government of India project – because the government cannot morally stop a citizen from adding to this project what he wants, even if it does not fit within the spirit of the whole, unless it is vandalism. It has to be a private project with a guarantee of freedom, and a self-sufficient foundation set up to protect that freedom, and a content license which legally guarantees that freedom.
How is this to be worked out on the ground? It can be divided into roughly two steps:
1)Select the core: Register an internet domain name which will accept submissions which are supposed to serve as the core of the new epic. The story has to be simply a plot outline, and most importantly, has to be flexible enough to cover the history of India (and the Indic people) for the past thousand years from the point of view of the Indic people and our tradition. It also has to be relevant to India as it is today. Therefore, of necessity, it has to be set in the India of either today or the very near future. It has to be centred around the Indic element of India, and must serve as a means for our people to both get over the demons of the past, and inspire ourselves for our future, along with its primary purpose of being an expression of our present.
2)Let freedom reign: Once the basic outline and writing is in place, let the thing open to the Indic people in a Wiki-style free-for-all. The idea of the Wiki is a powerful one, and it, like the rest of the internet, transcends all barriers of caste, class, race, gender, money, pretty much everything. Editorial control will be as in the Wiki.
Of course, as time goes on, the style of administration and other things will change to suit the nature of the project.
This is not to say that the entire society has to work on a single work. But in the initial stages, while we are weak, it would do well to focus, for the moment, on something by means of which we may exercise our creative muscles, and built up the strength by which, later, the vibrancy of the old tradition could be re-achieved. And anyway, it's usually the first one which gets around 90% of the attention, with the remainder being divided among the latecomers.
There is great literary talent in India, which most often never finds expression, which is stifled by a society which does not appreciate it. The literary scene in the Indic languages is pathetic compared to how vibrant it actually should be. This may, to an extent, help in correcting that. It will also provide a much-needed corrective to the elitist and sometimes even anti-Indic bias in the English-language media of India, which has come to define and dominate intellectual discourse, though it is not very accessible to the majority of Indians.
It will let loose creative energies which have been shackled for a millennium, and which have not found expression even after the granting of political Independence. It will be a major step towards intellectual and cultural independence.
For these conditions to be satisfied, however, this work has to be in a pan-Indic language. Such a language, alas, does not exist today. And people who know Sanskrit are too few and far between to provide the critical mass needed for this. Therefore, as a compromise solution, I suggest that though we retain a common core storyline, we fragment the project into individual language projects. We should also have a token project in Sanskrit, for a time when the language retains its vibrancy.
What non-Indians may want to know about this is that people who speak Indian languages have not had an effective outlet for cultural expression on the Internet in their own language. That is why I expect the response to this will be overwhelming.
Link
An idea for the next Great Indic Epic
Reading the Mahabharat, I came to the realisation that it was not the work of a single author. The original Jaya, of around 10,000 verses, may well have been. But there is no way that the rest of it – the whole amounting to something like 1,00,000 verses - could have been written by one man, no matter howsoever skilled or prolific. It was the work of an entire culture, evolving, growing, changing, never static, never stagnating, dynamic, powerful, and most importantly, relevant, never fading into irrelevance (as many are afraid it may be now).
Many also believe (or fear) that Indic culture has lost the capacity to produce another epic of that calibre. I do not for a moment subscribe to that view. I do, however, understand that the institutions which allowed such works to be written have been dead for over a millennium.
One flaw in those times, when such works were written, was that, even though they were meant for mass consumption, by all types and classes of people (explicitly mentioned in the Mahabharat as a reason for its own composition is so that women and non-dwija people could be given access, in a practical form, to the ideas contained in the Vedas), it was only one class of people who could actually edit or add to them. This inevitably and predictably led to a gradual degradation of the quality of the additions as time went on, as insularity crept in.
Today, however, we have a golden chance of restoring those institutions, and writing, collectively, another great epic for our times. The internet and Wiki software provide the infrastructure. The concept of Free Culture provides an intellectual basis for this undertaking (a work which is the property of an entire culture cannot be anything but Free). And finally, the monumental nature of this task itself is, I believe, enough to rouse the Indic people to the spirit of community in its completion.
The best part, of course, is that no individual need provide the entire thing. The contribution of an individual could be limited to a simple paragraph, or an entire chapter, or extend to an entire parva or kanda.
It cannot, however, be simply started like that. There has to be a foundation on which to build. That will have to provided by one man, and of one tradition. If I do it, it will be of the Indic tradition.
As I believe that Indic and monotheist ideas do not mix, and that this is fundamentally an Indic venture, I recommend that the monotheists in India work on their own epic of this nature. Of course, if they find that the idea of such an epic is itself against their monotheism (an epic is a celebration of man, after all), then they are free to not do it. I don't really care if they do it or not, I only care that the Indic one not be messed up by unwanted interference or claims that “We're also Indians, so we have a right to add to it whatever we want! ” Nobody is making any claims about their Indianness, but this being an Indic venture, and not an Indian one, non-Indic people do have a right to add to it, but only as long as it respects and is within the Indic spirit of the whole.
This means that this cannot be a Government of India project – because the government cannot morally stop a citizen from adding to this project what he wants, even if it does not fit within the spirit of the whole, unless it is vandalism. It has to be a private project with a guarantee of freedom, and a self-sufficient foundation set up to protect that freedom, and a content license which legally guarantees that freedom.
How is this to be worked out on the ground? It can be divided into roughly two steps:
1)Select the core: Register an internet domain name which will accept submissions which are supposed to serve as the core of the new epic. The story has to be simply a plot outline, and most importantly, has to be flexible enough to cover the history of India (and the Indic people) for the past thousand years from the point of view of the Indic people and our tradition. It also has to be relevant to India as it is today. Therefore, of necessity, it has to be set in the India of either today or the very near future. It has to be centred around the Indic element of India, and must serve as a means for our people to both get over the demons of the past, and inspire ourselves for our future, along with its primary purpose of being an expression of our present.
2)Let freedom reign: Once the basic outline and writing is in place, let the thing open to the Indic people in a Wiki-style free-for-all. The idea of the Wiki is a powerful one, and it, like the rest of the internet, transcends all barriers of caste, class, race, gender, money, pretty much everything. Editorial control will be as in the Wiki.
Of course, as time goes on, the style of administration and other things will change to suit the nature of the project.
This is not to say that the entire society has to work on a single work. But in the initial stages, while we are weak, it would do well to focus, for the moment, on something by means of which we may exercise our creative muscles, and built up the strength by which, later, the vibrancy of the old tradition could be re-achieved. And anyway, it's usually the first one which gets around 90% of the attention, with the remainder being divided among the latecomers.
There is great literary talent in India, which most often never finds expression, which is stifled by a society which does not appreciate it. The literary scene in the Indic languages is pathetic compared to how vibrant it actually should be. This may, to an extent, help in correcting that. It will also provide a much-needed corrective to the elitist and sometimes even anti-Indic bias in the English-language media of India, which has come to define and dominate intellectual discourse, though it is not very accessible to the majority of Indians.
It will let loose creative energies which have been shackled for a millennium, and which have not found expression even after the granting of political Independence. It will be a major step towards intellectual and cultural independence.
For these conditions to be satisfied, however, this work has to be in a pan-Indic language. Such a language, alas, does not exist today. And people who know Sanskrit are too few and far between to provide the critical mass needed for this. Therefore, as a compromise solution, I suggest that though we retain a common core storyline, we fragment the project into individual language projects. We should also have a token project in Sanskrit, for a time when the language retains its vibrancy.
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