Abstract
Subjectivity in the Mahābhārata is not a widely discussed topic, even though it is a vital concept that lies in the very structure of the text. From the point of view of narratology, it is crucial to pay attention to narrators of different portions of the text, because most - if not all - of the Mahābhārata's narrators are personalized to various degrees, and personalized narrators are by definition prone to subjectivity, be it a slight preference of one topic or character over another, or a more profound subjective interpretation of certain events, characters and fictional facts.
These are not presented as something created by their authors, rather arranged. Contrary to later literary conventions, events and fictional facts of this storyworld are only very rarely presented in a completely unequivocal and objective manner: most of the narration is presented from someone's point of view and/or moulded for a specific audience, and important events, such as the game of dice, are continuously renarrated and reinterpreted several times in the course of the narration with different accents.
A great example of the subjectivity can be found in the events concerning the life of Ambā, which are mentioned in the Ādiparvan (1.96) and the Ambopākhyāna of the Udyogaparvan (5.170-193). There are events that, when compared to one another, are complementary, and also events that are contradictory.
In this paper, some prominent examples of such subjective perspective in the Ādiparvan (Vaiśaṃpāyana's narration) and the Ambopākhyāna (Bhīṣma's narration) will be compared, namely the narration/omission of the fight between Bhīṣma and Śālva, Ambā's claim that her father approved/had no knowledge about her intended union with Śālva, and the circumstances of Bhīṣma's letting go of Ambā, in order to show that both complementary and contradictory statements are used intentionally and are indicative of the deliberate and skillful usage of subjectivity in the Mahābhārata.