Once again.....I am back.........This time it will be nothing abstract........its Mahabharata....
You won't be seeing a collection of small stories from Mahabharata. We are going to take the original abridged translation of the text and peruse on that. My mother recited with great patience most of the stories from Mahabharata (actually much more than Mahabharata). Hey amma! Thank you!! So I feel like, I know Mahabharata in great detail than many others of my age. We might have a fair idea of the story. But do we know, ‘What happened to Pandavas and others after the kuru war?’ or at least ‘The Mahabharata doesn’t end on Pandava’s victory?’ It’s the biggest epic. All I wish to say is that, there is much more to this epic than what we know.
(To give citations to text is much fussed upon here in America...Maybe we in India are not that egotistic and pardon the writer for that!! But anyway it’s good to cite the person who did the work. That is the least we can do to show our mark of respect. I believe, even when Vedic mantras are invoked the name of the mantras author (the rishi’s name) is uttered.)
The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa BOOK 1 ADI PARVA Translated into English Prose from the Original Sanskrit Text by Kisari Mohan Ganguli [1883-1896]NOTICE OF ATTRIBUTION Scanned at sacred-texts.com, 2003. Proofed at Distributed Proofing, Juliet Sutherland, Project Manager. Additional proofing and formatting at sacred-texts.com, by J. B. Hare. This text is in the public domain. These files may be used for any non-commercial purpose, provided this notice of attribution is left intact.
Well this is an old English translation, so the language will be a little confusing. But, this is the only available full translation of the text online. So, we will try to get the story as best as we can and use our logic to guide us towards its full meaning and interpretations. Well, doing this has its advantages.
We can find texts in Hinduism or rightly called the Sanathana-dharma, very intangible. Does it mean people who wrote this text dint want us to understand its meaning? Then logically there is no purpose for writing it down. The people who wrote these texts were really intelligent, we can infer this from the logical explanations presented in these works (I mean when they are presented) and the grammatical excellence of these texts (the same texts could give different interpretations from different perspectives and all these interpretations will concur with the authors true objective). So these men purposefully want us to delve in these topics to understand its content. I won’t bother explaining why they wish to do so. It will be too digressing from our objective.
So we will delve on one small section of Mahabharata on every blog (I wish to keep this every day, but let us see what happens). I will add a small section with my interpretations. I wish people to comment on what they think about that section. It will.....kind of.... make it interactive and help us understand the text better.
I am doing this so that I can constantly enquire into this subject. When I write I process that information and when others comment I can ponder on that subject from a different perspective. May be I am very selfish. I believe there is no human who is not selfish or to put it more precisely, there should not be any human who is not selfish (Of course not in the literal sense, but in the philosophical sense!!!). If you think that you will learn something from this great epic, its mutually beneficial. Stories of Mahabharata are more interesting than Ramayana, as later is a reflection of a yuga (period of time, for more about this...Google it pls!!!) that is too ideal for us to understand and relate to. Mahabharata is great for kids as it not only helps their cognition but also imbibes them with great cultural values. This can be very useful for all of those prospective parents who might read this blog. ;)
Considering us being blessed by the Parameshwara to study the greatest epic Mahabharata (Just a sankalapam (assumption)!!! And a reminder of what we are going to do)......Let us begin!!!!
- Anand Hariharan
Maha-P001
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