Avian Artistry: Decoding the Intertextuality Between Mahābhārata and Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa

Abstract

Why do four birds narrate the Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa? Narrative enframement plays a crucial role in contextualizing Sanskrit literature. The narrative frame of the Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa exhibits acute awareness of the framing of the Mahābhārata. The Purāṇa’s Birds are in fact direct descendants of the Śārṅgakas escaping devastation at the cataclysmic burning of the Khāṇḍava Forest. This hair-raising episode serves as the monumental terminal frame of the Ādi Parvan, which, as the epic’s Book of Beginnings, itself serves as inaugural frame for the epic as a whole. The Śārṅgaka account is therefore laden with themes pervading the epic, themes upon which the Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa Birds brilliantly comment. The Birds themselves partake in an even more involved intertextual device: they are deployed to address four questions which inaugurate the Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa, questions about the content of the Mahābhārata. This article examines the clever manner in which the Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa’s opening frame intertextually harkens to the Mahābhārata’s Śārṅgaka episode, engaging the epic’s avian artistry through its own. Building on the work of Alf Hiltebeitel and Simon Brodbeck, this article reexamines the Śārṅgaka episode in light of the story of Śṛṅgin, demonstrating that the Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa avian frame responds to a core riddle proper to the epic’s own masterful enframement, one dramatized in the plight of the Śārṅgakas. The Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa thereby not only demonstrates a sophisticated cultural literacy when it comes to Sanskrit narrative, but it also leverages that literary legacy to execute its own ideological agenda, invoking India’s great epic all the while.