बकासुर नरमास खायचा खर आणि हस्तिनापुरातील आर्य?...Bakasur's Cannibalism and Mahabharata

अरुण कोलटकर, 'द्रोण', २००२/२००४:
"... 
इन फॅक्ट
नरमांस व वानरमांस 

हे लंकेतील सर्व 
जातिवंत खवैय्यांच्या खास आवडीचे 
व मेनूमधून 

जाणीवपूर्वक वगळण्यात आलेले 
दोन पदार्थ सोडले 
तर सगळं होतं तिथं

असं म्हटलं तरी चालेल,
..."

3rd Fisherman: I marvel how the fishes live in the sea.

1st Fisherman: Why, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones.

— William Shakespeare, Pericles, 1619, act 2, scene 1

"...Bak rakshasha

The wanderings of the Pandavas led them to the village of Ekchakra. They took shelter in the house of a Brahmin.

Bak, a wicked monster, lived in the village. Every day one man from the village would carry a large portion of rice and buffalo meat for him and Bak would eat the food and the man.

Then, it was the turn of the man who had given shelter to the Pandavas. His family shed copious tears. Kunti assured them, ‘Don’t worry. Today Bheema will go, he will kill Bak.’

Bheema went to Bak and started eating Bak’s food in front of him. Bak’s blows and kicks did not interrupt Bheema’s eating. After eating to his heart’s content, Bheema turned his attention to Bak. He threw him to the ground and crushed him to death.

Hearing Bak’s screams, the monsters came rushing. Bheema roared, ‘I am warning you! If you ever eat humans again, I will kill all of you.’ The monsters said, ‘Yes sir! We promise never to do such things again.’..."

(from 'Penguin Companion to the Mahabharata', 2007, by Bishnupada Chakravarti) 

बकासुराची गोष्ट अर्थातच पहिल्यांदा माझ्या आईकडून ऐकली. त्याच खूप खाण वगैरे याचे विशेष आश्चर्य वाटत नसे , कारण माझी स्वतःची भूक पण वाढतच होती पण तो माणूस खायचा या गोष्टीकड आईसकट आम्ही सगळे दुर्लक्ष करायचो. 

पण नंतरच्या वर्षात केंव्हा तरी ते आत जाणवल आणि भीती वाटली.

अरुण कोलटकरांची वरची कविता पहा : जातिवंत खवैय्यांचे खास आवडते नरमांस आणि वानरमांस लंका-विजयाच्या पार्टीत नव्हते, आज जसे बऱ्याच मेन्यूनमध्ये गोमांस आणि वराहमांस नसते तसे. 

फिलिप फेर्नांडेज-अर्मेस्टो (Felipe Fernandez-Armesto) लिहतात:

"... Cannibalism existed. The reality of cannibalism as a social practice is not in any genuine doubt. To judge from archaeological evidence, moreover, it has been extremely widespread: human bones snapped for marrow seem to lie under the stones of every civilization. And as the tally of observed cases grew, the assumption that cannibalism was an inherently aberrant activity, abnormal or unnatural, became ever harder to sustain...."

('Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food', 2001) 

तेंव्हा काव्यातील बकासुर माणूस खायचा पण अनार्यांच्या नरमास भक्षणाबद्दल आर्यांनी केलेल्या लिखाणाबाबत नेहमीच  शंका व्यक्त केली पाहिजे. 

"In the late Middle Ages and, with diminishing force, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it was an extremely useful attribute to ascribe to one's enemies; for cannibalism, like buggery and blasphemy, was classed as an offense against natural law. Those who committed it put themselves beyond the law's protection. With impunity, Europeans could attack them, enslave them, forcibly subject them and sequester property from them." (ibid)

आणि स्वतः युरोपियन लोक काय करत होती?

"...But, as Schutt points out, we are discriminating about what we call cannibalism. Historical claims about savages eating one another are sometimes wildly hyperbolic, or lacking in proof, Schutt finds. Accusations are often undergirded by racism and opportunism. When Spain was exploring and exploiting the Caribbean during the 1500s, a 1510 papal decree that Christians were morally justified in punishing cannibals meant that on “islands where no cannibalism had been reported previously, man-eating was suddenly determined to be a popular practice.” Yet Renaissance-era Europeans who would have been disgusted by reports of people-eating rituals in faraway places nonetheless practiced what Schutt called medicinal cannibalism. “Upper-class types and even members of the British Royalty ‘applied, drank or wore’ concoctions prepared from human body parts,” Schutt writes. And blood was consumed to treat epilepsy:

So popular was this practice that public executions routinely found epileptics standing close by, cup in hand, ready to quaff their share of the red stuff...."

(Libby Copeland, review of Bill Schutt, 'Eat Me: A Natural and Unnatural History of Cannibalism', 2017)

मला जस बकासुराच खाण समजायला लागल तसा हा प्रश्न पडायला लागला की तो माणूस कसा खायचा कसा? कच्चा ? भाजून-शिजवून?

                                                            Italian engraving, 1781

कलाकार: देवदत्त पटनाईक, दीपक सुतार, 'Jaya: An Illustrated Retelling of the Mahabharata', 2010