The Mahabharata

Mahabharata #7

by Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Bibek Debroy

The seventh volume continues with the account of the war with Karna who is instated as the commander of the Kourava army for two days. After his death, Shalya is the commander for one day. Shalya too dies. Duryodhana meets his death in the hands of Bhima and the great war comes to an end.
Every conceivable human emotion figures in the Mahabharata, the reason why the epic continues to hold sway over our imagination. In this lucid, nuanced and confident translation, Bibek Debroy makes the Mahabharata marvellously accessible to contemporary readers

Genres: Classics, Mythology, Hinduism, Philosophy, Religion, Literature, Fiction

600 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 401

About the author

Krishna Dvaipāyana Vyāsa, also known as Vyāsa or Veda-Vyāsa (वेदव्यास, the one who classified the Vedas into four parts) is a central and revered figure in most Hindu traditions. He is traditonally regarded as the author of the Mahābhārata, although it is also widely held that he only composed the core of the epic, the Bhārata. A significant portion of the epic later was only added in later centuries, which then came to be known as the Mahābhārata. The date of composition of this epic is not known - It was definitvely part of the traditions in Indian subcontinent at the time Gautam Buddha (~500 BCE) which would suggest it having been already around for atleast a few centuries. It was chiefy put down in the written form only somewhere between 300 BCE to 300 CE.

As the name would suggest, Vyāsa is believed to have categorised the primordial single Veda into its four canonical collections. He is also considered to be the scribe of Purānās, ancient Hindu texts eulogizing various deities, primarily the divine Trimurti God in Hinduism through divine stories.

Reviews

[Garima · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Review for both part 6 and 7)

Undoubtedly the greatest story ever told. The war finally ends.
There's so much beauty of poetry laced throughout, the existential philosophy brimming as the war continues and the rawness of humanity intermingled with divinity and devilishness alike.

The remaining war, after the fall of Bhishma, is covered in these two books, and it gets extremely violent and graphic. It covers the fall of Abhimanyu, Jayadratha, Ghatotkacha, Drona, Karna, Shalya, Shakuni and finally Duryodhan.

There are no rules and regulations left to be followed, the war has to be won by hook or by crook. And the book beautifully deals with this moral crippling thus arisen. There is a constant disagreement among the Pandavas clan, the banter between Arjun and Yudhishtir being a special highlight. Even Duryodhan has this sudden realisation of the futility of war, perhaps a brief existential crisis, as he realises the tragedy so ensued.

Also, the war gets graphic, really graphic, and even that is consequently beautified by the language of the text. It is poetry after all, and a land full of dead men, horses and animals, is described in an extremely graphic way yet beautified with metaphors to enhance the prose, which also makes me regret for not being able to read it in its original text, Sanskrit. But Bibek Debroy has done a tremendous job in translating the text, for even in English one can relate the nuances of the same in Sanskrit.

Every character can be analysed and fleshed out, every character hides an innate blend of their inner demons and angels, which provides depth to the story and makes the tragic occurrence of the war even more tragic. As Duryodhan dies, he taunts Krishna on how he used unfair means to defeat his side and how he is going to heaven while the Pandavas along with Krishna has to deal with the consequences of the death of their family and friends; hence expressing the absurdism of the entire war.
Karna is undoubtedly the best anti-hero ever created, there is so much contradictions that surrounds him throughout, different characters have different opinions on him and he, himself, shows the traits of both a hero as well as a villain, which is why he remains the most complex character, following the lead of the mysterious divinity of Krishna.

Having known this story since childhood, still the amazing realisation hence created while reading the actual translated text, resonates throughout and creates a special significance to these already known characters and incidents, and also to the many unknown stories otherwise lost.
Mahabharat has always been an absurd text for me, and there have been endless discussions on the various aspects of the characters and the story, which in the end makes it the greatest story ever told.

[Aravind Balaji · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing 😍😍 One of the best books in the series

[Abhinav Agarwal · Rating 5 out of 5]

One-line review: The war ends, but the carnage will take a night more to stop.

Short review: This seventh volume sees the war come to an end, with the fulfillment of vows, the killing of family, the drinking of blood, and the breaking of thighs. The Pandavas have won this terrible war, but the final price they would have paid for this victory will be known only in the eighth volume.

The volume ends with Bhima defeating and crushing Duryodhana's thighs (Gada Yuddha Parva). The war is over. The carnage will take one more night to die down. That will form the initial part of the eighth volume, due in November 2013.

The translator, Dr. Bibek Debroy, has soldiered on for more than three years now with this translation - two volumes coming out each year since 2010, and the end now appears in sight. While there are both free and contemporary unabridged translations available, what makes this stand out is the clear, modern-day English that doesn't resort to archaic usages like "thou" and "hast", the fidelity to the Critical Edition, the almost encyclopedic knowledge of Dr Debroy that is put to use to clarify and provide insights into terms and phrases, and at times even correct the Critical Edition, make this my recommendation for those looking for an English translation of the unabridged Mahabharata to dig their teeth into.

Note: This seventh volume, translated by Bibek Debroy, contains the entire Karna Parva and Shalya Parva, the eighth and ninth Parvas respectively in the 18-parva classification of the Mahabharata. As per the 100 Parva classification, this volume contains parvas 73 through 77 - Karna-vadha Parva, Shalya-vadha Parva, Hrada-pravesha Parva, Tirtha Yatra parva, and Gadha yuddha Parva. The 560 pages of this volume (not counting the Introduction and Foreword) cover the 7,185 shlokas of these parvas.

Full review on my blog, at http://blog.abhinavagarwal.net/2013/0...

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Back in December 2018, a small accident left me with a spinal injury, forcing me to stay in bed for more than two weeks. Outside my room, the world was moving through a momentous winter: the passing of former U.S. President George H. W. Bush, headline-making decisions at the G20 Summit in Argentina, and the afterglow of the dramatic Thailand cave rescue that had captured global attention earlier that year. India, too, had its own share of notable events—sharp cold waves sweeping across the north, the country retaining its position as the world’s largest receiver of remittances, and celebrations in the fields of literature and sports, including Amitav Ghosh being honoured with the Jnanpith Award.

Amid this combination of personal stillness and global motion, I found one unexpected gift of time: the opportunity to read through all ten volumes of Bibek Debroy’s complete English translation of the Mahabharata.

When I entered ‘Volume 7’ of Debroy’s Mahabharata translation, I felt as if I had walked into a battlefield already humming with ghosts. The pages carry a strange warmth — like the heat rising from ground scorched the previous day — and I knew immediately that this was the volume where the war stops being a spectacle and becomes a sorrow.

If Volume 6 was the fierce, thunderous opening, Volume 7 is the long ache that follows it: slower, heavier, strangely intimate. This is the ‘‘second phase’’ of Kurukshetra, the slippery slope into despair.

And I could feel that weight pressing against me from the first page.

There’s something uncanny about reading these battle parvas with the stillness of convalescence around me — my injured spine in December 2018 insisting on immobility while the epic insists on momentum.

Every time I turned the page, another hero died; every time I tried to shift my body, a spear of pain reminded me that I wasn’t going anywhere. It was as if the war outside — the political storms, the winter chill, the world spinning on its axis — contrasted so violently with my inner stillness that the Mahabharata began to function as an emotional surrogate.

The characters were fighting for me because I could not move. I was lying still, but the epic surged on.

Volume 7 begins with a kind of exhaustion seeping through its lines. The Pandavas have fought fiercely on the first ten days under Bhishma’s looming presence, and the old general is finally, tragically, lying on his bed of arrows.

His fall in Volume 6 is a turning point, but Volume 7 is where we begin to ‘feel’ the consequences. I remember thinking: this is what Shakespeare would have called the “turn” — the hour after the tide shifts, when heroes begin to realize they, too, can die. If ‘King Lear’ had a war attached to it, it would feel like this.

Every page is thick with loss. The descriptions of the dead are unflinching. Warriors lie headless, limbless, chariots shattered, elephants screaming in pain, horses collapsing with the final loyalty of dying companions.

And Debroy’s calm, unornamented translation only deepens the truth of it. He never sensationalizes the violence. He lets the Sanskrit speak, and the Sanskrit is honest: war is hideous.

Even the gods look away sometimes.

The heart of Volume 7 is ‘‘Drona’’ — the second great commander of the Kaurava army. And I have to confess: I have never encountered a character who embodies Shakespearean tragedy quite like Drona.

He is proud, brilliant, deeply wounded, terrifyingly competent, and morally compromised in every direction. He is Macbeth with a bow, Lear with a quiver of grudges, a teacher who cannot control the monster of vengeance he has bred.

The moment he becomes commander, the tone of the war changes. If Bhishma fought with honour, nostalgia, and restraint, Drona fights like a man who knows his last chance at meaning lies in violence.

I felt it keenly: his battles have the rhythm of a man running from a shadow that lives inside him.

And yet, there are moments where Rabindranath seems to whisper across the battlefield — those quiet lines from his poems reminding me that behind ambition there is always loneliness, behind rage there is always heartbreak.

When I read of Drona’s fury at Drupada, his years of humiliation, his craving for vengeance, I heard echoes of Tagore's lines about the “dark room in the heart where old wounds keep their fire.”

Drona is the most “dark-room” character in this volume, and Debroy handles him with a translator’s steady hand and a storyteller’s restraint.

One thing that struck me repeatedly is how much the Mahabharata understands the fragility of human motivation. The soldiers are not abstractions; each death hurts. Each blow has a backstory.

Each warrior carries decades of emotional residue — unspoken grievances, unhealed wounds, half-buried hopes.

And so the battles read like collisions of personal histories rather than anonymous armies. Even the foot soldiers are described with a tenderness that surprised me.

Arjuna’s arcs in this volume feel especially haunting. He is unstoppable, yes, but also increasingly hollowed out. His sorrow darkens. His fury sharpens.

Each day he kills dozens, sometimes hundreds, and yet there are glimmers of hesitation, moments where he stares at the destruction and wonders whether his bow is a burden or a blessing.

And Krishna watches him, silent now — the Gita is spoken, the lessons given. Now Krishna becomes the witness, the cosmic charioteer watching the storm he has unleashed.

Duryodhana, too, evolves in this volume. Earlier he was merely ambitious; now he is desperate. His speeches crackle with fear disguised as confidence. When he urges Drona to capture Yudhishthira alive, the text gleams with a new kind of tension — the tension Shakespeare builds before a tragic downfall. I felt a chill reading Duryodhana’s dialogues; there is something terrifyingly human about him. Not a villain caricature, but a man clinging to a narrative he built for himself long ago, and too afraid to let go.

Then comes the ‘‘killing of Abhimanyu’’, the volume’s emotional explosion — one of the most powerful, heartbreaking moments in world literature. Even knowing the story, even anticipating the horror, I felt tears prick my eyes as the young warrior stepped into the chakravyuha.

He is sixteen. Sixteen.

And yes, he enters with the confidence of a demigod, but Debroy’s simple translation does something devastating — it preserves the boyhood in him. The tenderness with which Vyasa describes Abhimanyu feels like a father writing about a child he knows he is about to lose.

When the Kauravas surround him — six against one, then seven, then more — the epic becomes unbearable. This isn’t a death; it’s a breaking of dharma. Even reading it, lying on my bed in that winter of forced helplessness, I felt my breath tighten.

Shakespeare has written tragedies, yes, but nothing in ‘Hamlet’ or ‘Othello’ prepares you for the cruelty of grown men killing a child who fights like a sunbeam.

It is Tagore’s sorrow that filled my heart in that chapter. I remembered lines about the young dying with unfinished songs in their throats.

Abhimanyu dies with a universe of songs inside him, songs of lineage, promise, kinship, youth — and all of it is crushed under the boots of warriors who have forgotten themselves.

Arjuna’s grief afterward shakes the sky. The way he vows to kill Jayadratha feels almost cosmic. His rage is elemental, like a storm summoned by a broken heart. For a moment I forgot I was reading; I felt I was inside the battlefield, inhaling dust and sorrow and divine wrath.

Krishna’s quiet presence beside Arjuna during this period is profound. He says very little, but his silence carries the entire weight of the Gita.

This, I realized, is why the Gita came ‘before’ the real tragedies — Krishna had known what was coming. He prepared Arjuna for this. The teacher understood the future the way a parent understands the painful lesson a child will eventually face.

The war intensifies after Abhimanyu’s death. Drona’s brutality escalates. Bhima becomes almost feral in his fury. Satyaki’s valour shines like a comet.

There are episodes in this volume where the violence reaches an almost surreal level — thousands die in minutes, rivers run red, chariots move through corpses so thick they sound like waves hitting wood. I found myself pausing at times, letting the enormity settle.

And yet, strangely, there is beauty here too — beauty in the descriptions of the dusk settling over the battlefield, beauty in the conversations between warriors as they rest at night, beauty in the philosophical reflections sprinkled like quiet flares amid the carnage.

The Mahabharata refuses to be one thing; it is always a tapestry of contradictions, weaving horror and tenderness, rage and wisdom, death and transcendence.

One passage that stayed with me is when Drona meditates before battle — a short, stunning moment where this fierce general sits quietly, eyes closed, chanting to the divine. Shakespeare has characters who pray before dying, but none who meditate before killing.

That is the Mahabharata’s moral complexity: even its most dangerous characters have spiritual depth.

The final arc of Volume 7 — the death of Drona — is perhaps the most Shakespearean tragedy ever written outside Europe. It is also deeply Upanishadic, deeply Tagorean, deeply human.

His death is engineered through a lie: the Pandavas spread the news that Ashwatthama (Drona’s son) is dead. They mean the elephant named Ashwatthama, but deliberately conceal that detail.

When Yudhishthira finally confirms the lie — reluctantly, painfully — the epic trembles. The man known for truth bends dharma for the first time. And something breaks inside Drona.

The description of Drona’s reaction is unforgettable. He drops his weapons. His mind blanks. His memories rush through him. It reads as though the entire lifetime of pride and wounds and ambition collapses into a quiet sorrow.

With Shakespeare it would have been a monologue; with Tagore a poem; with the Gita a philosophical aside. But Vyasa’s brilliance is his restraint: Drona simply sits down, closes his eyes, and withdraws his life-breaths.

What a death. A warrior too powerful to kill is defeated by grief. A teacher felled by fatherhood. A general felled by love.

I remember closing the book for a few moments after reading that. My injured spine throbbed; my eyes burned. It felt like witnessing a mountain crumbling.

Debroy’s translation does not dramatize the moment; it lets the Sanskrit deliver its own power. That’s the miracle of his work — he trusts the epic to speak for itself, and it does.

After Drona’s fall, the volume winds down with a lingering unease. The Pandavas have won a major victory, but at immense moral cost.

The Kauravas are shaken, but not broken. Everyone is grieving. Everyone is guilty. Everyone is angry. Everyone is afraid. It’s the kind of emotional landscape Tagore would describe as “smoke rising from burnt dreams.”

Reading this volume, I realized how deeply the Mahabharata understands the human psyche. It does not judge as quickly as later moral traditions do. It acknowledges dharma as a trembling flame rather than a fixed law.

And in this volume — the volume of child slaughter, teacher death, moral compromise — the flame flickers wildly.

Yet the epic does not turn away. It insists that we look.

By the time I finished Volume 7, I felt wrung out — but also strangely clarified. The war felt less like a heroic saga and more like a mirror reflecting the fragility of the human condition.

I felt a deeper connection to these ancient characters than I expected — perhaps because I, too, was battling pain, wrestling with stillness, watching a world outside my window move on mercilessly without me.

Volume 7 taught me something the Gita always hints at: action is messy. Dharma is slippery. Good people sin; flawed people shine.

And through it all, as Krishna reminds Arjuna, each of us must walk our path with as much awareness as possible, even when clarity is impossible.

As I closed the volume, I felt Rabindranath’s words echo in my mind: ‘“The world’s pain comes from our forgetting that we belong to one another.”‘

Kurukshetra is the ultimate forgetting — and yet, in the heartbreak, there is a chance to remember.

Volume 7 left me humbled. Bruised. Quiet. And deeply, deeply moved.

Read and reread. Keep reading. Every reading gives you a new meaning.

[AYUSH KUMAR · Rating 5 out of 5]

it is one of the most inspiring books in the world, if I can suggest you read one single book for learning lessons that will help you forever then it would be Mahabharata.

mahabharata is the story of the battle between Kaurvas & Pandavas. this battle will thought you many life lessons and by learning these life lessons, you can outperform in life.
The greatest Indian story ever told of a war between two factions of a family, The Mahabharata has continued to sway the imagination of its readers over the past centuries.

While the dispute over land and kingdom between the warring cousins-the Pandavas and the Kauravas-forms the chief narrative, the primary concern of The Mahabharata is about the conflict of dharma. These conflicts are immense and various, singular and commonplace. Throughout the epic, characters face them with no clear indications of what is right and what is wrong; there are no absolute answers. Thus every possible human emotion features in The Mahabharata, the reason the epic continues to hold sway over our imagination.

The complete and unabridged Sanskrit classic, now masterfully and accessibly rendered for contemporary readers by Bibek Debroy.

[Tomasz Stachowiak · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one was a slog. Most of it is, sadly, still the war, in the same style as #5 and #6, and although there are confrontations and death of major characters, it begins to feel like more of the same. To get a taste, see my review of part 5.

Without spoiling too much, I must add that the ending section is rather disappointing, in that it clashes with what has been repeated again and again throughout the book, i.e. who follows dharma and who the "bad guys" are. If the characters had not been so black-and-white from the beginning it would have actually improved the whole story; as it is, the sudden change of perspective felt somewhat out of place to me.

The good news is, the Kurukshetra war is more or less declared finished, and we're about to move on, although there is some tidying up to do, as the translator informs us. I am eager to read the rest, as there are 3 more volumes, so lots of room for more than just a war epic.

[Bhakta Kishor]

BORI Critical Edition and English Translation by Bibek Debroy both are authentic (as it’s originally translated form Sanskrit text of BORI). However, there is so many translation error in Bibek Debroy translation and it seems that Bibek Debroy himself doesn’t have command on Sanskrit, so he has used so many helpful dictionary but sometimes his translation seems weird and not enthusiastic as Mahabharata is. Over all good for non-Sanskrit reader and reference. Though, some have found certain errors in some of his Sanskrit translations.

[Samyuktha Ell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bibek Debroy's work of art proceeds forward with Vol 7 of the Mahabharata's translation. Victory has been earned by the Pandavas in the war, but is there a price they will have to pay for this victory? That's what the eighth volume will tell.

Can't wait to finish off the next volume in the series!

[Mayank Bawari · Rating 5 out of 5]

Day 18 of War - Karna being unassailable - Karna’s Defeat - Shalya is the commander & is killed by Yudhisthira - Duryodhana challenges Bheem to a Gada Duel

[Ravi Kumar Dandapani]

nice

[Nishant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally the war comes to the end. But it is not over yet. I am awaiting the Killing of Pandavas son by Ashvadhama and the samvaad between him and Krishna.

Book #12 series Indic books

[Isaac Henderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book contains everything in it. Apotheotic in all regards.

[Zach · Rating 5 out of 5]

The war continues to be destructive to everyone, and there's less boilerplate than in the last volume. Instead, we get some highly amusing bickering between Karna and Shayla, and rather more surprising near-fighting between Arjuna and Yudhishthira. Also, Bhima drinks the blood of his enemy and Arjuna kills Karna while his chariot is stuck, egged on by Krishna. The three Pandavas that actually matter are not coming out of this war looking especially good, and it seems to be weighing on Yudhishthira especially.

Shalya is appointed the commander next, and is killed more or less fairly, after which Duryodhana hides in a lake. After a weird diversion to reintroduce Balarama, I guess, Bhima kills Duryodhana unfairly, again egged on by Krishna. Duryodhana bitterly recriminates against Krishna and his crimes and it's difficult not to see his point; even the foremost of the gods and Bhagavad Gita author isn't handling the war especially well. But with Duryodhana's death, the war is essentially over. Is the victory worth it?