Final Part: The Hoax of vasudhaiva kuTumbakam - Vikramaditya, Poetics and Upanishada

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The Hoax Called Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam - 3: Vikramaditya, Poetics and Upanishada

 

 

 

In the previous parts we have seen how ancient sources of nIti have treated the aphorism of vasudhaiva kuTumbakaM. In this concluding part, we shall survey the rest of the sources where this shloka has appeared and understand the contexts of its usage.

 

vasudhaiva kuTumbakam in vikrama-charita

 

Very few monarchs come close to finding a comparable place in the Hindu subconscious, which even after the elapse of a millennium, the memory of legendary bhojadeva paramAra of dhArAvatI commands. Unlike others confined to the pages of history, his legacy lives on in so many ways, in urban proverbs and rural songs, in crude jokes and scholarly legends, or in massively popular folklores inspired by siMhAsana-battIsI aka dvA-triMshata-puttalikA-siMhAsanam or vikrama-charita, which to this date are the favorite of rural storytellers.

 

First composed probably during the rein of bhoja, or more likely shortly afterwards, vikrama-charita is an eleventh century collection of thirty-two tales in a unique framework. In its each tale, bhoja tries to ascend a throne supported by a base of thirty-two statuettes and belonging to the legendary vikramAditya. In each attempt, one of the statuettes would recite to him a story about the greatness of vikramAditya and demand bhoja whether he was up to him in virtue. Hearing the tale bhoja would silently step back from the throne in humility, until the very end of the work when he would be proclaimed entitled to the throne by the very decree of Gods, a symbolic way of the author to claim for bhoja the same pedestal in glory as that of vikramAditya the chief hero of these tales.

It is in this popular work that we find our next stop for the shloka of vasudhaiva kuTumbakam, and at last here it is seen definitely in a positive sense.

 

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