Mahabharata

One of the two great Sanskrit epics,
traditionally ascribed to the mythical
sage Vyasa. The Mahabharata is much
longer than the other great epic, the
Ramayana. At almost 100,000 stanzas,
the Mahabharata is the world’s longest
epic poem. If the Ramayana can be
characterized as the tale of the “good”
family, in which brothers cooperate to
support and preserve their family, the
Mahabharata describes the “bad”
family, in which hard-heartedness and
the lust for power in an extended royal
family ultimately cause its destruction.
The epic is set in the region west of modern Delhi and describes a fratricidal civil
war. A greatly abridged account can be
given as follows:
Shantanu is the king of the Kurus. He
dies an untimely, heirless death. In a
desperate attempt to preserve the royal
line, Shantanu’s wife, Satyavati, calls
upon her elder son, the sage Vyasa, who
fathers children by Shantanu’s two
wives. The elder son, Dhrtarashtra, is
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born blind, and thus the rights to the
throne fall to his younger brother
Pandu. Pandu later abdicates his throne
because of a curse, and goes to live in
the forest with his two wives, Kunti and
Madri, leaving his elder brother to rule
in his place. In time Dhrtarashtra’s wife,
Gandhari, magically gives birth to one
hundred sons, of whom the oldest is
Duryodhana; the hundred sons are
called the Kauravas, and are the epic’s
antagonists. In the forest Kunti has three
sons, Yudhishthira, Bhima, and Arjuna,
while Madri has the twins Nakula and
Sahadeva. These five sons are the
Pandavas, the epic’s protagonists. None
of these children are actually Pandu’s
sons, since he has been cursed to die the
moment he holds his wife in amorous
embrace. Rather, they have been magically conceived using a mantra given to
Kunti by the sage Durvasas, giving the
woman reciting it the power to call
down any of the gods and have a son
equal in power to that god himself.
When Kunti first receives the mantra,
long before her marriage, she impulsively
recites it while gazing upon the sun, and
gives birth to a shining child. Distraught
and desperate, Kunti puts him in a
box and abandons him in the Ganges
River. The child is adopted by the
charioteer Adhiratha, and grows up to
be the heroic Karna.
As the result of his curse, Pandu dies
an early death, and Kunti (his wife) and
his sons (the Pandavas) return to the
court at Hastinapur, where the boys are
raised as princes. From the beginning
there are bad feelings between
Duryodhana (the eldest of the Kauravas)
and his cousins, largely because
Duryodhana desires the throne, which
rightly belongs to Yudhishthira (one of
the Pandavas). After foiling several
attempts to kill them, the Pandava
brothers leave the kingdom to become
mercenaries. On one of their journeys,
Arjuna wins the hand of the princess
Draupadi, who becomes their common
wife (their mother commands that
Arjuna share whatever he wins with his
brothers). After some time Dhrtarashtra
(father of the Kauravas) renounces
the throne and divides his kingdom.
The Pandavas build a new capital
at Indraprastha, identified near
modern Delhi.
For a little while things are quiet, but
Duryodhana is not content to share his
kingdom. He invites Yudhishthira for a
game of dice, matching Yudhishthira
against Shakuni, the most skillful gambler alive. Although Yudhishthira is a
model for truthfulness and virtue, his
fatal flaw is his love of gambling. In the
match Yudhishthira loses his kingdom,
all his possessions, his brothers, himself,
and finally his wife. In one of the epic’s
most powerful scenes, Duryodhana’s
brother, Duhshasana, drags Draupadi
by her hair into the assembly hall, her
clothes stained with her menstrual
blood. Draupadi’s humiliation moves
Dhrtarashtra to set them free, but also
sparks the enmity that helps drive the
rest of the plot. After some bargaining,
the parties agree that the Pandavas will
spend twelve years in exile and a thirteenth incognito. If they can remain
undiscovered during the thirteenth year
they will regain their kingdom. If they
are discovered, however, the cycle of
exile will begin again.
After thirteen years, Yudhishthira
and his brothers approach Duryodhana
for their rightful share, but are haughtily
rebuffed. All efforts at conciliation fail;
Duryodhana claims that he will not give
them enough land in which to stick the
point of a needle. Pushed to the wall, the
Pandavas prepare for battle. On one side
are Yudhishthira and his brothers, aided
by their counselor Krishna. On the
other are Duryodhana and many
respected figures, such as Drona,
Bhishma, and Karna. For eighteen days
the battle rages, until most of the important people are dead. Yudhishthira and
his brothers survive. Yudhishthira is
crowned king and rules righteously for
many years. Late in life he installs his
grandson, King Parikshit, on the throne.
With his siblings he takes a final journey
into the Himalayas. During the journey
his brothers fall dead, one by one;
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Yudhishthira eventually enters the
divine realm.
The complete epic is more complex
than this summary. One of the features
of the epic is that it contains many unrelated tales, for which the main story acts
as a frame. Aside from being a tale of a
dysfunctional family, the Mahabharata
also contains a great deal of cultural wisdom, making the names of characters
symbolic even today. A televised serial of
the text, which ran for more than a year
in 1989–90, was wildly popular throughout India. It is also interesting to note
that many traditional Indian families
will not keep a copy of the text in the
house, since it is believed that to do this
will foster discord in the family.