The Mahābhārataमहाभारत

The Mahābhārata (“the great [story of the] Bhāratas”) is one of the two Sanskrit epics of ancient India, with the The Rāmāyaṇa, and the longest poem ever composed: about 100,000 couplets (ślokas) — some 1.8 million words — in eighteen books. Its core story is a dynastic struggle between two branches of the Kuru family, the five Pāṇḍava brothers and their hundred cousins the Kauravas, for the throne of Hastināpura, ending in an eighteen-day war on the plain of Kurukṣetra in which almost everyone is killed. Around this story, over perhaps eight centuries (roughly 400 BCE–400 CE), accumulated an encyclopaedia of Indian life and thought — myths, genealogies, love stories, philosophical dialogues, treatises on statecraft and law, and the The Bhagavad Gītā. Traditionally attributed to the sage Vyāsa, who is himself a character in it, it calls itself the “fifth Veda”, and its central question is dharma — the right way to live, which it insists is “subtle”, hidden, and tragically divided against itself.

Background

Text and composition

The epic was composed orally by bards (sūtas) and Brahmin reciters, expanding over centuries. Its earliest layers may reflect events in the late Vedic period (c. 1000–800 BCE) among the Kuru and Pañcāla peoples of the upper Ganges plain; the text reached something near its final form by about 400 CE. It survives in hundreds of manuscripts in many scripts; the Critical Edition of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune (1933–1966) reconstructed a text of about 75,000 verses.

It is framed as a story within a story within a story. The bard Ugraśravas tells it to sages gathered in the Naimiṣa forest; he heard it at the snake sacrifice of King Janamejaya, great-grandson of Arjuna, where it was recited by Vaiśaṃpāyana, a disciple of Vyāsa. Within the main story, characters constantly tell other stories — the famous episode of Nala and Damayantī, the tale of Sāvitrī who outwits Death, a version of the Rāma story — so that the epic is a vast forest of narratives.

Vyāsa

Kṛṣṇa Dvaipāyana Vyāsa, the “arranger”, is credited with compiling the Vedas and composing the epic. He is also the biological grandfather of both the Pāṇḍavas and the Kauravas, appearing at crucial moments as a counsellor and seer.

Plot summary

The origins of the Kuru dynasty

King Śaṃtanu of Hastināpura falls in love with the river goddess Gaṅgā, who agrees to marry him on condition that he never question her. She drowns their first seven sons at birth; when he protests at the eighth, she leaves, taking the child — who returns as the brilliant prince Devavrata. Later, Śaṃtanu falls in love with Satyavatī, a fisherman’s daughter, whose father demands that her sons inherit the throne. To make his father’s marriage possible, Devavrata renounces the throne and takes a terrible vow of lifelong celibacy, so that he will have no heirs to dispute it. For this vow (bhīṣma, “terrible”), he is known ever after as Bhīṣma, and is granted the boon of choosing the time of his own death.

Satyavatī’s sons die young without heirs. To continue the line, she calls on her own son by an earlier union, Vyāsa, to father children with the two widowed queens. One shuts her eyes in fear at the ascetic’s ugly appearance, and her son Dhṛtarāṣṭra is born blind; the other turns pale, and her son Pāṇḍu is born pale. A maidservant gives birth to the wise Vidura.

Because Dhṛtarāṣṭra is blind, Pāṇḍu becomes king. But Pāṇḍu, cursed by a sage he shot while the sage was mating in the form of a deer, will die if he makes love. He retires to the forest with his wives, Kuntī and Mādrī. Kuntī possesses a mantra to summon gods to father children. Through it, she bears Yudhiṣṭhira (son of Dharma, god of righteousness), Bhīma (son of Vāyu, the wind) and Arjuna (son of Indra, king of the gods); Mādrī bears the twins Nakula and Sahadeva (sons of the Aśvins). These are the five Pāṇḍavas. Earlier, as an unmarried girl, Kuntī had tested the mantra on the sun god Sūrya, and bore a son, Karṇa, born with golden armour and earrings, whom she abandoned in a basket on the river. He was found and raised by a charioteer, Adhiratha, and his wife Rādhā.

Meanwhile, Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s wife Gāndhārī, who blindfolded herself for life in solidarity with her blind husband, bears a hundred sons — the Kauravas — the eldest being Duryodhana, at whose birth jackals howled and asses brayed.

Rivalry and the house of lac

When Pāṇḍu dies (making love to Mādrī, who joins him on the funeral pyre), Kuntī brings the five boys to Hastināpura, where they are raised with their cousins. Both sets of princes learn arms from the Brahmin warrior Droṇa. Arjuna becomes the greatest archer of the age. In a famous test, Droṇa asks each student what he sees on the target — a wooden bird in a tree. The others see the tree, the leaves, the bird; Arjuna sees only the bird’s eye.

Another episode reveals Droṇa’s darker side: a tribal boy, Ekalavya, refused as a student because of his low birth, learns archery by practising before a clay image of Droṇa, and becomes better than Arjuna. Droṇa demands as his fee the boy’s right thumb — and Ekalavya cuts it off.

At a tournament where the princes display their skills, Karṇa appears and matches Arjuna’s every feat, then challenges him to single combat. He is mocked as a charioteer’s son, unfit to fight a prince. Duryodhana makes him king of Aṅga on the spot, winning his undying loyalty. Neither Karṇa nor the Pāṇḍavas know that he is their eldest brother.

Duryodhana, jealous of the Pāṇḍavas’ popularity and Yudhiṣṭhira’s claim as heir, plots to kill them, building a palace of lacquer at Vāraṇāvata to burn with them inside. Warned by Vidura, they escape through a tunnel and live in disguise as Brahmins in the forest; the world believes them dead.

Draupadī

King Drupada of Pañcāla holds a contest (svayaṃvara) for his daughter Draupadī, born from a sacrificial fire: suitors must string a massive bow and hit a target through a revolving device, looking only at its reflection. Karṇa rises, but Draupadī declares she will not marry a charioteer’s son. Arjuna, disguised as a Brahmin, succeeds. The brothers return home and call to their mother that they have won a great prize; Kuntī, without looking, tells them to share it equally. Because a mother’s word cannot be false, Draupadī becomes the wife of all five brothers.

The Pāṇḍavas, revealed as alive, are given half the kingdom — a wilderness, Khāṇḍavaprastha, which they transform into the splendid city of Indraprastha (near modern Delhi). Here they are joined by their cousin Kṛṣṇa, prince of the Yādavas of Dvārakā and an incarnation of the god Viṣṇu, who becomes Arjuna’s dearest friend. Yudhiṣṭhira performs the royal consecration sacrifice (rājasūya), proclaiming himself emperor. At his palace, built by the demon architect Maya, Duryodhana mistakes a crystal floor for water and a pool for floor and falls in; Draupadī and Bhīma laugh at him.

The dice game

Humiliated and envious, Duryodhana, with his uncle Śakuni, a master of loaded dice, invites Yudhiṣṭhira to a game of dice at Hastināpura. Yudhiṣṭhira, bound by a code that forbids refusing a challenge, and weak for gambling, plays. He loses his wealth, his kingdom, his brothers one by one, himself — and finally stakes and loses Draupadī.

Duryodhana’s brother Duḥśāsana drags Draupadī, who is menstruating and wearing a single garment, by her hair into the assembly hall. She asks a question that silences the court: did Yudhiṣṭhira lose himself first, or her? If he had already lost himself, had he any right to stake her? The elders — Bhīṣma, Droṇa, Dhṛtarāṣṭra — say dharma is subtle; no one answers. Karṇa calls her a whore, since she has five husbands. Duryodhana bares his thigh to her. Duḥśāsana begins to strip her — but as he pulls, her sari endlessly lengthens; in later versions this is the grace of Kṛṣṇa, to whom she prays. Bhīma vows to break Duryodhana’s thigh and drink Duḥśāsana’s blood. Terrible omens appear. The frightened blind king offers Draupadī boons; she frees her husbands.

But Yudhiṣṭhira is summoned to a second game — and loses again. The penalty: thirteen years of exile, twelve in the forest and the thirteenth incognito; if discovered in the last year, they must repeat the exile.

Exile

The twelve forest years are filled with adventures and tales. Arjuna obtains divine weapons from Śiva and Indra. Bhīma meets his half-brother Hanumān. Sages tell stories to console them, including the tale of Nala, who also lost his kingdom at dice, and Sāvitrī, whose devotion persuades Yama, god of death, to return her husband. In the Yakṣa’s questions, a spirit at a lake kills four brothers who drink without answering his riddles; Yudhiṣṭhira answers them all — “What is the greatest wonder? Day after day countless people die, yet the living think themselves immortal” — and wins his brothers’ lives.

In the thirteenth year, the Pāṇḍavas live in disguise at the court of King Virāṭa: Yudhiṣṭhira as a dice-master, Bhīma as a cook, Arjuna as a eunuch dance teacher, the twins as grooms and cowherd, Draupadī as a maid. When the king’s brother-in-law Kīcaka attempts to rape Draupadī, Bhīma kills him. At the end of the year, Arjuna reveals himself and routs a Kaurava cattle raid single-handed.

The failed embassy

The thirteen years over, the Pāṇḍavas demand their kingdom back. Duryodhana refuses. Kṛṣṇa goes as an envoy to seek peace, asking for only five villages. Duryodhana replies he will not give them as much land as would fit on the point of a needle, and tries to seize Kṛṣṇa, who reveals his cosmic form.

Kṛṣṇa offers the two sides a choice: one may have his vast army, the other himself — unarmed, as a counsellor. Duryodhana chooses the army; Arjuna chooses Kṛṣṇa, who will be his charioteer.

Before the war, Kṛṣṇa and then Kuntī reveal to Karṇa that he is the eldest Pāṇḍava; if he joins them, he will be king, and Draupadī his wife. Karṇa refuses: Duryodhana gave him honour when everyone scorned him, and he will not betray his friend. He promises Kuntī only that he will spare four of her sons; he will fight Arjuna, and “either way you will still have five sons”. He has already, out of generosity, given away his divine armour and earrings to Indra, disguised as a Brahmin.

The Bhagavad Gītā

The two vast armies face each other at Kurukṣetra. Arjuna asks Kṛṣṇa to drive the chariot between them, sees his grandfather Bhīṣma, his teacher Droṇa, his cousins and friends, and collapses in despair: “I do not want to kill them, even if they kill me.” Kṛṣṇa’s answer, eighteen chapters long, is the The Bhagavad Gītā: the self is eternal and cannot be killed; a warrior must do his duty (svadharma); action must be done without attachment to its fruits; and all things rest in God, whose terrible universal form Arjuna is shown (The Universal Form). Arjuna takes up his bow. See Arjuna.

The war

The war lasts eighteen days, each side led by a succession of commanders.

• Bhīṣma commands the Kauravas for ten days, invincible. The Pāṇḍavas learn from him — he tells them himself — that he will not fight Śikhaṇḍin, who was born a woman (the reincarnation of Ambā, a princess Bhīṣma had wronged). Arjuna shoots from behind Śikhaṇḍin; Bhīṣma falls, pierced by so many arrows that his body rests on them above the ground. He chooses to wait on his bed of arrows for the auspicious season to die.
• Droṇa commands next. He is unbeatable while armed. Kṛṣṇa devises a trick: Bhīma kills an elephant named Aśvatthāman — the name of Droṇa’s son — and the Pāṇḍavas shout that Aśvatthāman is dead. Droṇa asks Yudhiṣṭhira, who has never told a lie. Yudhiṣṭhira says, “Aśvatthāman is dead” — and adds, softly, “the elephant”, drowned by the noise of conches. At that moment, his chariot, which had always floated a finger’s breadth above the ground, touches the earth. Droṇa lays down his weapons and is beheaded.
• Arjuna’s young son Abhimanyu penetrates the Kaurava’s wheel formation (cakravyūha), which he knew how to enter but not how to leave, and is surrounded and killed by several warriors at once, against the rules of war.
• Bhīma fulfils his vow, killing Duḥśāsana and drinking his blood.
• Karṇa commands. In his final duel with Arjuna, his chariot wheel sinks into the earth (a curse), and he has forgotten the mantra for his divine weapon (another curse). He asks Arjuna to wait, by the rules of war, while he frees the wheel. Kṛṣṇa urges Arjuna: where was Karṇa’s dharma when Draupadī was dragged into the hall, when Abhimanyu was murdered? Arjuna shoots him as he struggles with the wheel.
• On the last day, Duryodhana hides in a lake. In a final mace duel, Bhīma, at Kṛṣṇa’s signal, strikes him below the navel — against the rules — and breaks his thigh, fulfilling his vow. Balarāma, Kṛṣṇa’s brother, is outraged at the foul blow.

The night massacre

That night, Droṇa’s son Aśvatthāman, with two other survivors, enters the sleeping Pāṇḍava camp and slaughters everyone: Draupadī’s brother, and her five sons by the Pāṇḍavas. The Pāṇḍavas themselves, away with Kṛṣṇa, survive. Aśvatthāman unleashes an ultimate weapon at the unborn child in the womb of Abhimanyu’s widow; Kṛṣṇa revives the stillborn child, Parīkṣit, the only heir, and curses Aśvatthāman to wander the earth for three thousand years, bleeding and diseased.

The lament and the teaching

The women walk across the battlefield, littered with corpses eaten by jackals and vultures. Gāndhārī, who has lost all hundred sons, curses Kṛṣṇa: since he could have prevented the war and did not, his own clan will destroy itself, and he will die alone in the forest. Kṛṣṇa accepts.

Kuntī reveals at last that Karṇa was their brother. Yudhiṣṭhira, overcome, curses all women never to be able to keep a secret.

Yudhiṣṭhira, now king, is crushed by grief and guilt, and wants to renounce the world. His brothers, Draupadī and the sages argue with him. Finally they go to Bhīṣma on his bed of arrows, who instructs him at enormous length — in the Śānti and Anuśāsana Parvas, about a quarter of the entire epic — on the duties of kings, the dharma of emergencies, the paths to liberation, Sāṃkhya and Yoga. Then, as the sun turns north, Bhīṣma dies.

The end

Yudhiṣṭhira performs a horse sacrifice. After fifteen years, the old blind king Dhṛtarāṣṭra, Gāndhārī and Kuntī retire to the forest, where they die in a forest fire. Thirty-six years after the war, Gāndhārī’s curse is fulfilled: Kṛṣṇa’s Yādava clan, drunk, destroys itself with iron clubs; Kṛṣṇa, sitting in the forest in meditation, is shot in the foot by a hunter who mistakes him for a deer, and dies. Arjuna’s powers fade; he can no longer string his bow.

The Pāṇḍavas set the young Parīkṣit on the throne and set out on their last journey, walking north towards the Himālaya and Mount Meru, followed by a dog. One by one they fall: Draupadī first (for loving Arjuna more than the others), then Sahadeva (pride in wisdom), Nakula (pride in beauty), Arjuna (pride in valour), and Bhīma (gluttony and pride in strength). Yudhiṣṭhira walks on, followed only by the dog. Indra arrives in his chariot to carry him bodily to heaven, but tells him to leave the dog behind. Yudhiṣṭhira refuses to abandon a creature that has been faithful to him. The dog reveals himself as Dharma, Yudhiṣṭhira’s father, who has been testing him.

In heaven, Yudhiṣṭhira finds Duryodhana seated in glory — and his brothers and Draupadī nowhere. He is led to them through a stinking, gloomy hell; hearing their cries, he chooses to stay with them rather than return to heaven. The illusion vanishes: it was a final test. All are united in heaven.

Characters

• Yudhiṣṭhira — eldest Pāṇḍava, son of Dharma; just, truthful, indecisive, a compulsive gambler; the epic’s study of a good man in a world where goodness fails.
• Bhīma — immense strength, appetite, rage and loyalty; Draupadī’s avenger.
• Arjuna — the greatest archer; Kṛṣṇa’s friend; the recipient of the Gītā. See Arjuna.
• Nakula and Sahadeva — the twins.
• Draupadī — fire-born, proud, wronged, wife of the five; her question in the dice hall is the moral centre of the epic.
• Kṛṣṇa — god incarnate, charioteer, strategist; inscrutable, playful, ruthless.
• Duryodhana — the eldest Kaurava; envious, proud, brave, loyal to friends; he dies believing he has lived a warrior’s life and goes to heaven.
• Karṇa — the abandoned son; generous, proud, humiliated, tragically loyal; for many readers, the epic’s true hero.
• Bhīṣma — the grandfather; his vow sacrifices his life to a principle and ruins three generations.
• Droṇa — teacher of both sides; brilliant and petty.
• Gāndhārī — who blindfolded herself; her curse on Kṛṣṇa ends the Yādavas.
• Kuntī — mother of the Pāṇḍavas, keeper of the secret of Karṇa.
• Dhṛtarāṣṭra — the blind king, who loves his son too much to restrain him; his blindness is moral as well as physical.
• Vidura — the wise half-brother, the voice of counsel ignored.
• Śakuni — the uncle with the loaded dice.
• Aśvatthāman — Droṇa’s son, the night murderer, cursed to wander forever.

Themes

Dharma

The epic’s central concept, dharma, means law, duty, righteousness, the order of things — and the Mahābhārata’s achievement is to show it as subtle (sūkṣma) and conflicting. Bhīṣma’s vow, kept absolutely, enables disaster; Yudhiṣṭhira’s adherence to the gambler’s code destroys his family; the Pāṇḍavas win only by violating the rules of war, at Kṛṣṇa’s urging. “The truth of dharma is hidden in a cave,” says Yudhiṣṭhira. See Morality.

Fate and effort

Characters repeatedly debate whether events are determined by fate (daiva), time (kāla) or human effort. Kṛṣṇa tells Arjuna that the warriors are “already slain” by him as Time; yet Arjuna must act. See Fate & Necessity.

The futility of war

The epic tells a war of extermination and then mourns it. The victors inherit a ruin; Yudhiṣṭhira’s coronation is joyless. Its final teachings point toward renunciation and non-violence (ahiṃsā paramo dharmaḥ — “non-violence is the highest dharma”).

Women’s voices

Draupadī, Gāndhārī, Kuntī and the women of the Strī Parva give the epic some of its strongest moral critiques.

Philosophy in the epic

Besides the Gītā, the Mahābhārata contains the Mokṣadharma (“dharma of liberation”) in the Śānti Parva, an anthology of early Sāṃkhya, Yoga and Vedānta; the Anugītā, a sequel to the Gītā; the Sanatsujātīya, on death and immortality; and the Viṣṇu Sahasranāma (the thousand names of Viṣṇu), widely recited today. It is a primary source for the history of Indian philosophy.

Reception and influence

The epic has been retold in every Indian language — Pampa’s Kannada (10th century), the Tamil Villiputtūrār Bhāratam, Kāśīrām Dās’s Bengali — and across Southeast Asia, from Javanese shadow-puppet theatre (wayang) to the reliefs of Angkor Wat. Kālidāsa’s Śakuntalā develops one of its stories (see Kālidāsa). Modern retellings include Shivaji Sawant’s Mrityunjaya (from Karṇa’s point of view), Irawati Karve’s Yuganta, S. L. Bhyrappa’s Parva, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Palace of Illusions (Draupadī’s voice), Shashi Tharoor’s satirical The Great Indian Novel, and Peter Brook’s play. Gandhi read the Gītā as a teaching of non-violence; others read it as a call to righteous war.

Key terms

Dharma

Duty, law, righteousness — the order that the epic shows to be subtle and divided.

Kṣatriya

The warrior class, whose dharma is to fight.

Svayaṃvara

A bride's choice of husband at a contest.

Dharmayuddha

"War of dharma" — a righteous war fought by rules.

Avatāra

The descent of a god — Kṛṣṇa as Viṣṇu.

Using the Mahābhārata in conversation

• On moral dilemmas: “The truth of dharma is hidden in a cave.”
• On mortality: the Yakṣa’s question — the greatest wonder is that people think themselves immortal.
• On half-truths: Yudhiṣṭhira’s “Aśvatthāman is dead… (the elephant)”.
• On loyalty: Karṇa choosing his friend over his brothers.