The Mahabharata Story

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It has been truly observed that no work of imagination is so rich and so true as the Mahabharata in the portraiture of the human character and that it is an encyclopaedia of the life and knowledge of ancient India. There must be certainly many who are anxious to be acquainted with the contents of this great and immortal epic but the size of the book in the original and the English translation of it by the famous Dr. Roy is likely to frighten the reader who may be a busy man and yet anxious to know the story.

Mr. Sitaramayya's book in which he very successfully indeed presents the whole of the main story in one handy volume including portions from the numerous speeches and dialogues that are inspiring and instructive and the main incidents of the eighteen days battle must be quite welcome to the general reader.'

The narrator has neatly condensed an epic that is many times bigger than the combined size of Iliad and Odyssey. His work strikes a fine balance between being too concise and too elaborate, which, we can understand from his preface, was his objective. He has also organised the contents in a deft manner. The Mahabharata has a number of `upakathas' or subsidiary stories that disrupt the continuity of the main story and are prone to producing a slackening of interest while reading it. Those stories also abound in fantastic elements, which is perhaps what led the narrator to remark that "there is a slight chance that they may be even repellent." (p. xx infra). Conscious that a general reader might prefer to read the main story unhindered by them, he has thoughtfully removed them, and rather than omitting he has given them in a separate section after the end of the main story. His own comments and explanatory footnotes at many places in the book, the pronunciation guide and glossary at the end are useful inclusions.

In the midst of his spiritual activities and of activities as a guide in current political matters, Vyasa had done an enormous amount of literary work. The numerous Puranas and Dharmasastras in their present form are later compositions, it is true, but Vyasa's compositions must have formed the basis for those later ones. Another literary work of his, the division and classification of the Veda, though not an original work, was a work of great and lasting value. Though there was all that work to his credit, most persons will agree that `Jaya' was Vyasa's outstanding literary work. It took him three years of incessant labour to compose it. (See Adi Parva, Chapter 62, verses 42 and 52.) But it was worth-while labour; the poem immediately gripped the attention of his contemporaries. Judging by the encomiums that have been poured upon the work, we may see that it became immediately popular. That popularity has not abated during the succeeding millenniums. Even at the present day, there is hardly an illiterate Hindu peasant who does not know the main facts of the Bharata story, let alone the classes who have had some education; if there are exceptions at all among Hindus, they must be looked for among modern college students. But in spite of the story being so widely known, very very few persons actually read the book in the original; it is by means of the very useful institution of public readings, mostly, that men and women in this country generally come to know the story.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages