The following is the final part of an essay by Susan Bean, Curator of South Asian and Korean Art at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass., published in conjunction with the exhibition, Epic India: Paintings by M.F. Husain.

Husain returned to the Mahabharata in 1983, painting ten watercolors for a limited edition of 350 lithographic sets produced in Boston under his supervision and with Chester Herwitz's assistance. In  this series Husain seems to aim at a broader public, including newcomers to contemporary art and people unfamiliar with the epic. Husain introduces and inscribes the works to tie them more securely to the epic's narrative and to the modern nation, India. The first image (page 4), a study in gray and white, contains the title in Devanagari and Roman letters with two quotations, one from the ancient and sacred Rig Veda, "Let noble thoughts come to us from every side:' and the other from Rajagopalachari's retelling of the Mahabharata:

...The persons and incidents portrayed in the great literature of a people
influence national character no less potently than the actual heroes and events
enshrined in its history ...the former play an even more important part in the
formation of ideals, which give to character its impulse of growth ....The Mahabharata discloses a rich civilization and highly evolved society which, though of an older world, strangely resembles the India of our time ...

Along with these citations Husain places the image of Bhishma, lying suspended between life and death on a bed of arrows, envisioning a central paradox of the Mahabharata and of existence itself that life and death, which people regard as opposites, are one. The import of this image is reinforced when Husain returns to it for the next-to-last image in the series, Bhishma, portraying the hero in his passage from life to death.

In the lithographs Husain returns to the iconography developed for Sao Paulo establishing for himself a set of visual symbols. In Arjuna's Arrows, Draupadi with Five Incarnations, and Sudarshana Chakra (pages 41, 43 and 45, respectively), motifs for the five Pandava brothers and Krishna are familiar: Arjuna's bow, the merged bodies of the twins Nakula and Sahadeva, Bhima's mace, Yudhishthira's topknot and beard, and Krishna represented as a hand encircled with his divine weapon.

In the prints Husain moves from compositions that turn on the violent rupture of wholes to images approaching contemplative dualities. The series begins with Vyasa and Ganesha (page 36), the teller and his scribe. Reworking the original vision set at a dynamic diagonal, wedding the two figures as halves of whole, this version shows them as if on overlapping pages, side by side, in harmony. In a similar composition, Dhrishtadyumna Versus Bhishma (frontispiece), the two military leaders, Dhrishtadyumna and Bhishma, are backed by rectangular, page-like forms. Though they are shown in combat, they appear as detached entities.

The female protagonists in the series are also tamed and more accessible. Draupadi with Dice, Satyavti-Fisherman's Daughter, and Ganga and Jamuna, (pages 29, 31 and 33, respectively) are given lithe, curvaceous forms, almost like cinema stars. In the Sao Paulo paintings, Husain renders human figures more starkly and expressively in jagged chunks, angular lines, and robust postures to convey the emotional power of the struggle. The lithographs exude a more mellow, meditative quality. Hussian's ongoing involvement with both modes is evident in the dynamic and forceful rendering of Draupadi in the untitled watercolor also produced in the early 1980s (page 26).

Husain closes the lithographic series with Yudhishtra Faces Yama (Lord of Death) (page 25), once again returning to that central paradox of the epic, as of life. This final image is inscribed with a quotation from Rajagopalachari's Mahabharata:

Yama: 'What is the greatest wonder in the world?'

Yudhishtra: 'Every day men see creatures depart to abode and yet, those
who remain seek to live forever. This verily is the greatest wonder.'

In 1990 Husain again returned to the Mahabharata (page 11), this time in a sixteen-foot mural-like composition. Tellingly executed in New York with non-Indian viewers in mind, the painting, like the lithographs, is positioned closer to the narrative, even incorporating poetic inscriptions in English to guide the viewer. Above Ganga and Jamuna at the upper left, Husain has written: "At the early hours of dew Ganga bathes, [in the] white of Surya-Astha [i.e.,dawn]. A wandering prince touches the riverbank and marries her. Five-headed Ashwamedh is born" [i.e., the five Pandava brothers]. Below left, beneath the horses, the inscription reads: "Late hours of dark night Jamuna flows like a black princess. Becomes the queen mother of Kauravas multi-headed monsters."Under the dual image of the scribe Ganesha and the teller of the tale, Vyasa, Husain invites viewers to share his process of visualizing the epic: "You begin in Ganesha. You think of a sage. You paint 'black' and 'red' is born."

At the center of the composition are the chief protagonists Arjuna, leader of the heroic Pandavas, with his bow, and Draupadi, their wife. Above her head, Husain projects their union: "Draupadi wraps around the bow. Her hair untied." Below Arjuna, Husain refers to the prowess by which he won Draupadi's hand: "The great archer in red whose arrow pierces the fisheye to win the hand of Draupadi."The right side of the canvas is filled with images of destruction. Over the prone figure of the dying Bhishma is inscribed: "The grand 'image' of Kurukshetra suspends on a bed of arrows." Below Bhishma, Karna, the invincible son of Surya, the Sun god, brother to the Pandavas but loyal to the Kauravas, is shown at the moment of his destruction, bringing in its wake the inevitable the Kaurava army and the end of the battle: "In Karna the epic is drowned in deep tragedy as his chariot wheel gets clamped...the earthly conflict. Death of a Battle." Finally at right, above the blindfolded figure of Queen Gandhari, Husain equates her with the Earth itself: "The mother earth witnesses the macabre drama blindfolded as if it never enacted."And beneath her, flames allude to the inevitable cycle of creation and destruction: "Deserted stage burnt and brown. Sometimes fire of friction sanctifies the air."

Husain's decades-long fascination with the Mahabharata, vividly conveyed through the works displayed in Epic India, reveals essentials of the artist's project-his endless striving for the monumental, color-drenched, energetic image that re-envisions elements of Indian modernity in forms that transcend time and space.

[This article has been reprinted from "Epic India M.F Hussain's Mahabharata Project" - Essays by Shashi Tharoor and Susan S. Bean with the permission of the author. The book can be purchased at Peabody Essex Museum].

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