Good and evil, loyalty and treachery, faith and doubt, honour and ignominy—the Mahabharata has served as a primer for codes of conduct to generations of Hindus. Over time, the epic has also fascinated those who love a tale well told. In its telling, however, the story has lost much of its richness and nuance, and the characters have become one-dimensional cut-outs—either starkly good or irredeemably evil. In this reinterpretation, Meena Arora Nayak analyses how the values espoused in the Mahabharata came to be distorted into meagre archetypes, creating customary laws that injure society even today.
“Narayan makes this treasury of Indian folklore and mythology readily accessible to the general reader . . . he captures the spirit of the narrative.”—Library Journal The Mahabharata tells a story of such violence and tragedy that many people in India refuse to keep the full text in their homes, fearing that doing so would invite a disastrous fate upon their house. Covering everything from creation to destruction, this ancient poem remains an indelible part of Hindu culture and a landmark in ancient literature. Centuries of listeners and readers have been drawn to The Mahabharata, which began as disparate oral ballads and grew into a sprawling epic. The modern version is famously long, and at more than 1.8 million words—seven times the combined lengths of the Iliad and Odyssey—it can be incredibly daunting. But contemporary readers have a much more accessible entry point to this important work, thanks to R. K. Narayan’s masterful, elegant translation and abridgement of the poem. Now with a new foreword by Wendy Doniger, as well as a concise character and place guide and a family tree, The Mahabharata is ready for a new generation of readers. Narayan ably distills a tale that is both traditional and constantly changing. He draws from both scholarly analysis and creative interpretation and vividly fuses the spiritual with the secular. Through this balance he has produced a translation that is not only clear, but graceful, one that stands as its own story as much as an adaptation of a larger work.
Then, the exquisitely handsome body of Karna of generous acts, who should have been worthy of perpetual happiness, let go of that refulgent head with the kind of extreme reluctance evinced by a wealthy person in leaving his own prosperous home, or by a saintly one in forsaking virtuous company. [The Mahabharata, Karna-Parva; 91.53-54] In these lines of evocative pathos, the Mahabharata pays its ultimate tribute to Karna, who has hardly a rival in world literature to match his credentials as a uniquely nuanced heroes' hero – towering above Hector in righteous valour, above Arjuna in generosity, and above all else in conscientious attachment to the principles of noblesse oblige. This is the intriguing story of a hero who, despite being born to royalty was, like the Biblical Moses, cast away by his mother. Brought up lovingly by a lowly charioteer and his wife, his whole life was one great struggle against cruel destiny, and against all the odds placed in his way by the inequities of his time. In the process, he blazed a new trail of glory, emerging as the adorable exemplar of purushakaara (manly effort), with tremendous achievements both as a man and also as a warrior. Yet society never gave him his due, despite being as upright as Yudhishthira, as strong as Bhima, as skilful as Arjuna, as handsome as Nakula and as intelligent as Sahadeva. Rebuffed and insulted by society at every step, he developed some flaws engendered by a defiant spirit and nurtured by association with the evil designs of Duryodhana, his benefactor prince. But those very contrarieties seem to enhance and enliven the dramatic appeal of his character as one of the brightest stars of the Mahabharata's star cast. Written in an engagingly flowing style and with an imaginative transcreation of the epic storyline, Karna: the Unsung Hero of the Mahabharata should strike a responsive chord in the minds, specifically of today's Mahabharata aficionados and generally of all lovers of exalted human drama.
The Nay Science offers a new perspective on the problem of scientific method in the human sciences. Taking German Indological scholarship on the Mahabharata and the Bhagavadgita as their example, Adluri and Bagchee develop a critique of the modern valorization of method over truth in the humanities. The authors show how, from its origins in eighteenth-century Neo-Protestantism onwards, the critical method was used as a way of making theological claims against rival philosophical and/or religious traditions. Via discussions of German Romanticism, the pantheism controversy, scientific positivism, and empiricism, they show how theological concerns dominated German scholarship on the Indian texts. Indology functions as a test case for wider concerns: the rise of historicism, the displacement of philosophical concerns from thinking, and the belief in the ability of a technical method to produce truth. Based on the historical evidence of the first part of the book, Adluri and Bagchee make a case in the second part for going beyond both the critical pretensions of modern academic scholarship and the objections of its post-structuralist or post-Orientalist critics. By contrasting German Indology with Plato's concern for virtue and Gandhi's focus on praxis, the authors argue for a conception of the humanities as a dialogue between the ancients and moderns and between eastern and western cultures.
Intended to be a treatise on life itself, this epic poem embraces religion and ethics, polity and government, philosophy and the pursuit of salvation. This collection of more than 4,000 verses is supplemented by a glossary, genealogical tables, and an index correlating the verses with the original Sanskrit text.
Why should we be good? How should we be good? And how might we more deeply understand the moral and ethical failings--splashed across today's headlines--that have not only destroyed individual lives but caused widespread calamity as well, bringing communities, nations, and indeed the global economy to the brink of collapse? In The Difficulty of Being Good, Gurcharan Das seeks answers to these questions in an unlikely source: the 2,000 year-old Sanskrit epic, Mahabharata. A sprawling, witty, ironic, and delightful poem, the Mahabharata is obsessed with the elusive notion of dharma--in essence, doing the right thing. When a hero does something wrong in a Greek epic, he wastes little time on self-reflection; when a hero falters in the Mahabharata, the action stops and everyone weighs in with a different and often contradictory take on dharma. Each major character in the epic embodies a significant moral failing or virtue, and their struggles mirror with uncanny precision our own familiar emotions of anxiety, courage, despair, remorse, envy, compassion, vengefulness, and duty. Das explores the Mahabharata from many perspectives and compares the successes and failures of the poem's characters to those of contemporary individuals, many of them highly visible players in the world of economics, business, and politics. In every case, he finds striking parallels that carry lessons for everyone faced with ethical and moral dilemmas in today's complex world. Written with the flair and seemingly effortless erudition that have made Gurcharan Das a bestselling author around the world--and enlivened by Das's forthright discussion of his own personal search for a more meaningful life--The Difficulty of Being Good shines the light of an ancient poem on the most challenging moral ambiguities of modern life.
Irawati Karve studies the humanity of the Mahabharata`s great figures, with all their virtues and their equally numerous faults. Sought out by an inquirer like her, whose view of life is secular, scientific, anthropological in the widest sense, yet appreciative of literary values, social problems of the past and present alike, and human needs and responses in her own time and in antiquity as she identifies them... Seen through her eyes the Mahabharata is more than a work which Hindus look upon as divinely inspired, and venerate. It becomes a record of complex humanity and a mirror to all the faces which we ourselves wear.
The epic tale of victory and defeat... The story of the Ramayana had been told innumerable times. The enthralling story of Rama, the incarnation of God, who slew Ravana, the evil demon of darkness, is known to every Indian. And in the pages of history, as always, it is the version told by the victors, that lives on. The voice of the vanquished remains lost in silence. But what if Ravana and his people had a different story to tell? The story of the Ravanayana had never been told. Asura is the epic tale of the vanquished Asura people, a story that has been cherished by the oppressed outcastes of India for 3000 years. Until now, no Asura has dared to tell the tale. But perhaps the time has come for the dead and the defeated to speak. "For thousands of years, I have been vilified and my death is celebrated year after year in every corner of India. Why? Was it because I challenged the Gods for the sake of my daughter? Was it because I freed a race from the yoke of caste-based Deva rule? You have heard the victor's tale, the Ramayana. Now hear the Ravanayana, for I am Ravana, the Asura, and my story is the tale of the vanquished." "I am a non-entity-invisible, powerless and negligible. No epics will ever be written about me. I have suffered both Ravana and Rama - the hero and the villain or the villain and the hero. When the stories of great men are told, my voice maybe too feeble to be heard. Yet, spare me a moment and hear my story, for I am Bhadra, the Asura, and my life is the tale of the loser." The ancient Asura empire lay shattered into many warring petty kingdoms reeling under the heel of the Devas. In desperation, the Asuras look up to a young saviour-Ravana. Believing that a better world awaits them under Ravana, common men like Bhadra decide to follow the young leader. With a will of iron and a fiery ambition to succeed, Ravana leads his people from victory to victory and carves out a vast empire from the Devas. But even when Ravana succeeds spectacularly, the poor Asuras find that nothing much has changed for them. It is when that Ravana, by one action, changes the history of the world.
Gandhari, the blindfolded queen-mother of the Kauravas, sees through it all... Gandhari has one day left to live. As she stares death in the face, her memories travel back to the beginning of her story, to life's unfairness at every point: A fiercely intelligent princess who wilfully blindfolded herself for the sake of her peevish, visually-impaired husband; who underwent a horrible pregnancy to mother one hundred sons, each as unworthy as the other; whose stern tapasya never earned her a place in people's hearts, nor commanded the respect that Draupadi and Kunti attained; who even today is perceived either as an ingratiatingly self-sacrificing wife or a bad mother who was unable to control her sons and was, therefore, partly responsible for the great war of the Mahabharata... In this insightful and sensitive portrayal, Aditi Banerjee rescues Gandhari from being reduced to a mere symbol of her blindfold. She builds her up, as Ved Vyasa did, as an unconventional heroine of great strength and iron will – who, when crossed, embarked upon a complex relationship with Lord Krishna, and became the queen who cursed a God...
THE MAHABHARATA ENDURES AS THE GREAT EPIC OF INDIA. But while Jaya is the story of the Pandavas, told from the perspective of the victors of Kurukshetra; Ajaya is the narrative of the ÔunconquerableÕ Kauravas, who were decimated to the last man. At the heart of IndiaÕs most powerful empire, a revolution is brewing. Bhishma, the noble patriarch of Hastinapura, is struggling to maintain the unity of his empire. On the throne sits Dhritarashtra, the blind King, and his foreign-born Queen Ð Gandhari. In the shadow of the throne stands Kunti, the Dowager-Queen, burning with ambition to see her firstborn become the ruler, acknowledged by all. And in the wings: Parashurama, the enigmatic Guru of the powerful Southern Confederate, bides his time to take over and impose his will from mountains to ocean. Ekalavya, a young Nishada, yearns to break free of caste restrictions and become a warrior. Karna, son of a humble charioteer, travels to the South to study under the foremost Guru of the day and become the greatest archer in the land. Balarama, the charismatic leader of the Yadavas, dreams of building the perfect city by the sea and seeing his people prosperous and proud once more. Takshaka, guerilla leader of the Nagas, foments a revolution by the downtrodden as he lies in wait in the jungles of India, where survival is the only dharma. Jara, the beggar, and his blind dog Dharma, walk the dusty streets of India, witness to people and events far greater than they, as the Pandavas and the Kauravas confront their searing destinies. Amidst the chaos, Prince Suyodhana, heir of Hastinapura, stands tall, determined to claim his birthright and act according to his conscience. He is the maker of his own destiny Ð or so he believes. While in the corridors of the Hastinapura palace, a foreign Prince plots to destroy India. And the dice fallsÉ
