Mahabharata
மகாபாரதம் महाभारतम्
Also Jaya, Bharata, The fifth Veda.
Epic Sanskrit, and then every Indian language Composed and expanded between about the fourth century before and the fourth century of the common era
What it is
The Mahabharata is the story of a succession dispute between cousins that ends in a war in which almost everybody dies, and it is the longest poem in the world. It contains the Bhagavad Gita, the Ramayana in summary, treatises on statecraft and law, and the frame of frames: a story told at a snake sacrifice, about a story told to a blind king, about a war. Its own claim is that whatever is here is elsewhere, and what is not here is nowhere. It is not a book about good defeating evil, and it goes out of its way to prevent that reading.
Its shape
Eighteen parvas, books, of about one hundred thousand verses in the critical edition, roughly four times the Ramayana and perhaps ten times the Iliad and the Odyssey together. The war itself occupies eighteen days and five parvas. The Shanti and Anushasana parvas, long treatises on duty and government delivered by the dying Bhishma, together run longer than many epics. The critical edition prepared at the Bhandarkar Institute in Pune over nearly fifty years collated some thirteen hundred manuscripts and is the scholarly text.
What it argues about
These are not settled texts
The epic systematically refuses to let its winners be clean. Yudhishthira, the son of Dharma, gambles away his brothers and his wife. Arjuna kills Karna while his chariot wheel is stuck, on Krishna’s advice. Bhishma, Drona and Karna each die by a trick. Krishna, who is God in this text, arranges most of the tricks. The last book has Yudhishthira reach heaven to find his enemies there and his brothers in hell, and he is told it was an illusion, and the tradition has argued about what that means for two thousand years. The central question the epic poses and declines to answer is whether dharma can be followed at all in a situation where every available action breaks it, and it is honest that its own answer, given by Krishna in the Gita, is contested inside the poem itself.
Episodes worth knowing
The dice game
Yudhishthira, who cannot refuse a challenge, played dice against Shakuni, who could not lose, and staked his wealth, his kingdom, his brothers, himself and finally Draupadi. She was dragged into the assembly and an attempt was made to strip her, and the elders, Bhishma and Drona among them, said nothing, because the legal question of whether a man who has already lost himself can stake his wife had no clear answer. Draupadi asked that question aloud in the hall and nobody could answer it. The war is usually traced to this hour, and the epic gives the blame to the silence rather than to the dice.
Karna, who was told too late
Karna was Kunti’s first son by Surya, born before her marriage and set on the river, raised by a charioteer, refused by teachers for his birth, mocked at the tournament, and given Anga by Duryodhana, to whom he was loyal for the rest of his life. Before the war Krishna told him who he was and offered him the throne and his brothers; he refused and stayed with the man who had given him a place when he had none. Kunti came and asked him to spare her sons and he promised to spare four of the five. He died with his chariot wheel in the mud and his weapon forgotten. He is the figure the epic is most careful with and the one most readers end up on the side of.
The dog at the gate
At the very end, the brothers and Draupadi walk north to the mountains and fall one by one, each for a particular failing, until only Yudhishthira is left with a dog that has followed him. Indra comes with a chariot for heaven and says the dog cannot come. Yudhishthira refuses to go without it, having been faithful to him. The dog is Dharma, his father, testing him a last time. Then he reaches heaven and finds Duryodhana there and his brothers in torment, and refuses heaven too. The epic ends with its most righteous character twice refusing the reward, which is the closest thing it offers to a conclusion.
Whose telling
There is no single text
- Vyasa, Sanskrit
- The received text, said to have been dictated by Vyasa to Ganesha, who wrote without pausing and broke off his tusk when the pen failed.
- Villiputhurar, Tamil
- The fifteenth century Villi Bharatam, the standard Tamil telling, and the Peruntevanar version earlier.
- Kumaravyasa, Kannada
- The Karnata Bharata Kathamanjari of the fifteenth century, which covers ten parvas and is sung.
- Sarala Das, Odia
- The fifteenth century Odia Mahabharata, which departs from the Sanskrit substantially and adds local material.
- Draupadi cult tellings
- The Tamil folk Mahabharata performed over eighteen nights at Draupadi Amman festivals, in which she is the centre and the war exists to fulfil her oath.
- Bhandarkar critical edition
- Prepared at Pune from about 1919 to 1966 from some thirteen hundred manuscripts, and the text scholars cite; it is shorter than most regional recensions.
Where the regions differ
- Tamil
- Kerala
- Telugu
- Kannada
- North
- Maharashtra
- Bengal
- Punjab
- Assam
- Sri Lanka
- Nepal
- Gujarat
- Odisha
- Mithila
- Kashmir
- Tulu Nadu
- manipur
- rajasthan
- konkani
- sindhi
- jharkhand
- himalayan
- kodava
- North India
- Read and recited widely, with the Gita taken out of it as a text of its own and the Kurukshetra sites kept as pilgrimage.
- Tamil Nadu
- Villi Bharatam is the literary telling, and the Draupadi Amman cult of the northern districts performs the whole epic over eighteen nights ending in a firewalk.
- Karnataka
- Kumaravyasa’s telling is sung in the gamaka tradition and Yakshagana takes most of its repertoire from the epic.
- Kerala
- Kathakali’s great roles are from it, and the Nalacharitam, based on an episode within it, is among the most performed plays.
- Odisha
- Sarala Das’s Odia version is a foundational text of the language and diverges freely from the Sanskrit.
Connected to
Deities
Arts
Festivals
Related works