Well-made worlds

A re-examination of a textual quirk in the Mahābhārata. Eight times in the Mahābhārata1 reference is made to people going to, attaining, or bestowing on others the sukr̥tām̐l lokān, apparently “well-made worlds”. The context leaves no doubt that what is meant is heaven, but the phrase seems oddly chosen. Investigation suggests that it is actually a cuckoo in the nest, and that the poets originally wrote something slightly different. As well as these occurrences of sukr̥tām̐l lokān, the epic refers five times2 to pun ˙ yakr̥tām̐l lokān, “the meritoriously-made worlds”. The word pun ˙ yakr̥ta- is not common in the text: it occurs elsewhere only once, at 13.62.2 – śam ˙ sa me tan mahābāho phalam ˙ pun ˙ yakr̥tam ˙ mahat. There are thirty-two other occurrences of words beginning pun ˙ yakr̥t. . ., but they are all unmistakably forms of the agent noun pun ˙ yakr̥t-, not the past participle pun ˙ yakr̥ta-.What ismore, five of these occurrences3 form part of the phrase pun ˙ yakr̥tām ˙ lokān, “the worlds of the meritorious”, which differs from pun ˙ yakr̥tām̐l lokān only in the sandhi of the two words, and which makes rather easier sense. It looks as if a single phrase has come to be spelt in two slightly different ways, causing it to have two different meanings. If this is indeed the case, which of the two was intended by the poets? It is surely very suggestive that, of the remaining occurrences of the word pun ˙ yakr̥t-, five ar