The New Lifetime Reading Plan

Like the Ramayana [15], the Mahabharata carne together gradu- ally over the course of the first millennium b.c.e. from oral tales of warfare and intrigue in the early days of the Aryan conquest of нndia. It is written in a variety of verse forms, including a sort of metrical prose, but it is primarily in slokas (for which see the Ramayana). One of several claimants to the title of "workTs longest pхem" (the true champion is probably the Kirghiz national epic, Manas), the Mahabharata began to assume written form around 200 b.c.e. Two centuries or so later it swallowed whole the Bhagavad Gita, which does indeed fit into the narrative of the Mahabharata but which previously had had an independent exis- tence as a written text, and which usually is treated as a separate work, a practice that we follow here (see the next entry [17]).

Like the Iliad [2], the Mahabharata is an epic tale of war. It is narrated by the priest Vaisampayana, a disciple of the play's nominal author, Vyasa. That Vyasa's historical existence is doubtful is unimportant. He is presented in the epic itself as being of the lineage of its heroes, and as having the literary role of acting as a witness to the events of the epic, and thus of a guarantor of the authenticity of Vaisampayanas narrative. The epic is long and immensely complicated; the following summary of the plot is an oversimplification. It concerns two sets of cousins: the seven Pandava brothers, sons of King

Pandu, and the hundred Kaurava brothers, sons of King Dhritarastra. The cousins should have been friends and allies, but they become estranged by an escalating series of insults and rivalries (including a famous episode in which Arjuna, noblest of the Pandavas, wins the hand of Princess Draupati in an archery contest that recalls the Ramayana s story of how Rama wins the hand of Sita). Finally the Kauravas, consumed by an almost demonic greed and rage, conspire to cheat the Pandavas of their birthright, and even of their princess, by engaging them in a crooked game of dice. With the last fatal cast of the dice, Bhima, the strongest and fiercest of the Pandavas, vows to "split open the body and devour the guts" of the leader of the Kauravas; war is the only possible outcome.

The war itself is recounted in a long series of set pieces, inter- rupted by numerous digressions—this is a very long poem. (An Indian proverb says "If you can't find something in the Mahabharata, it can't be found anywhere.") There is great slaughter among the armies of both sides, but, like Homer, Vyasa (or whoever wrote the Mahabharata) is uninterested in the fate of common soldiers. The poem keeps attention focused on the aris- tocratic principal players, and on the attributes they represent: Arjuna, a prince of supreme elegance and lofty moral princi­pies—he resembles the Trojan Hector, except that his side wins; Bhima, as strong as Ajax and as filled with reckless rage as Achilles; Draupati, as implacable as Medea (see Euripides [7]) in seeking revenge for the wrongs done to her; Dhritarastra, griev- ing like Priam for the deaths of his sons; and many other stirring characters. The Mahabharata presents drama on a scale more archetypal than human; like the Ramayana it has proven to be an inexhaustible source of scripts for performance versions of ali kinds (see, for example, Kгlidгsas Sakuntala [23]).

It is possible to read the Mahabharata in an unabridged English translation, but you will be happier with one of several excellent abridgments. The best of these are in prose; the decision of most translators not to try to reproduce the rhythms of the original verse is probably a wise one, though one regrets losing that dimension of

the work. The most remarkable modern Mahabharata is the g-hour performance version written by Jean-Claude Carriиre for Peter Brook^ theatrical company. Both on stage and on the printed page, Carriиre's heroically long play succeeds in making the ancient Indian epic sing anew to our own time.

J.S.M.

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ANONYMOUS

ca. 200 B.C.E. The Bhagavad Gita

The Bhagavad Gita is set in the opening moments of the war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas recounted in the Mahabharata [16], and in fact the Bhagavad Gita is now embed- ded in the Mahabharata, an integral part of the larger work. But it seems clear that the Gita was written separately from, and later than, the rest of the Mahabharata; where the longer poem is an epic of dynastic warfare, the Gita is fundamentally a work of phi- losophy. And yet the philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita is the key to understanding the Mahabharata as a whole.