மகாபாரதம்: ஒரு படைப்பு தேசத்தின் காவியமான கதை

by G.N. Devy, D.I. Aravindan (Translator)

பேரரசுகள் உருவாகியிருக்கின்றன, வீழ்ந்திருக்கின்றன; பல்வேறு மதப் பிரிவுகள், தத்துவப் பார்வைகள் ஆகியவை எழுச்சி பெற்றுக் கால வெள்ளத்தில் மங்கியிருக்கின்றன. ஆனால் மகாபாரதம் இந்திய மக்களின் மனங்களில் பெற்றுள்ள இடம் அதன் ஒளியும் வலிமையும் குன்றாமல் நீடிக்கிறது.
மகாபாரதம் குறித்த அலசல்களின் எண்ணிக்கையே மலைப்பூட்டுகிறது. தலைமுறை தலைமுறையாக இந்திய மக்களைத் தன் வசீகர வலைக்குள் மகாபாரதம் வைத்திருப்பதற்கு என்ன காரணம்? காலத்தால் அழியாத இந்த மாய சக்திக்குக் காரணம் என்ன? புராணத்தன்மை கொண்ட பாத்திரங்கள்தான் இதன் வசீகரத்திற்குக் காரணமா? இதிலுள்ள தத்துவப் பார்வைகளும் விவாதங்களும் வாசகர்களை ஈர்க்கின்றனவா? எண்ணற்ற சிக்கல்களும் வியப்பூட்டும் திருப்பங்களும் நுட்பமான ஊடுபாவுகளும் கொண்ட கதைதான் மகாபாரதத்தின் வசியத்திற்குக் காரணமா?
இக்கேள்விகளுக்கு விடைகாணும் தேடலை மேற்கொள்ளும் இந்த நூல், இந்தியாவின் தேசியக் காவியங்களில் ஒன்றாக விளங்குவது ஏன் என்னும் கேள்வியையும் ஆராய்கிறது. மராத்தி, கன்னடம், அஸ்ஸாமி, உருது, குஜராத்தி, வங்காளம் ஆகிய மொழிகளில் வெளியாகியிருக்கும் இந்த நூல் தற்போது தமிழுக்கு வருகிறது. காவிய உணர்வும் அறிவார்த்தமான அலசலும் கொண்ட இந்த நூலை அதன் தன்மை மாறாமல் தமிழாக்கியிருக்கிறார் அரவிந்தன்.

Genres: Nonfiction, Mythology, India

179 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 5, 2022

About the author

Ganesh N. Devy, formerly professor of English at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, a renowned literary critic and activist is founder and director of the Tribal Academy at Tejgadh, Gujarat, and director of the Sahitya Akademi’s Project on Literature in Tribal Languages and Oral Traditions. He was educated at Shivaji University, Kolhapur and the University of Leeds, UK. Among his many academic assignments, he has held fellowships at Leeds and Yale Universities and has been a Jawaharlal Nehru Fellow (1994-96).

Currently (2002 - 2007), he is a Professor at the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Commmunication Technology (DA-IICT), Gandhinagar.

Awards

He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award for `After Amnesia', and the SAARC Writers’ Foundation Award for his work with denotified tribals. He has also won the reputed Prince Claus Award (2003) awarded by the Prince Claus Fund for his work for the conservation of the history, languages and views of oppressed communities in the Indian state of Gujarat.

Along with Laxman Gaikwad and Mahashweta Devi, he is one of the founders of The Denotified and Nomadic Tribes Rights Action Group (DNT-RAG).

Publications

* Critical Thought (1987)
* In Another Tongue (1992)
* Of Many Heroes (1997)
* India Between Tradition and Modernity (co-edited, 1997)
* Indian Literary Criticism: Theory & Interpretation (2002).
* Painted Words: An Anthology of Tribal Literature (editor, 2002).
* A Nomad Called Thief (2006)
* Keywords: Truth (contributor, date unknown)
* Vaanprastha (in Marathi, date unknown)
* Adivasi Jane Che (in Gujarati, date unknown).

Reviews

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book: Mahabharata: The Epic And The Nation
Author: Ganesh N. Devy
Publisher: ‎ Aleph Book Company (5 February 2022); Aleph Book Company
Language: English
Hardcover: ‎ 152 pages
Item Weight: ‎ 210 g
Dimensions: ‎ 12.7 x 0.97 x 20.32 cm
Country of Origin: ‎ India
Price: 363/-

“Sri Aurobindo recommends that Valmiki knew how to embroider scenes, sentiments, and characters in his poem whereas Vyasa wrote his lines in a matter-of-fact manner, only to convey the essential and never to decorate, not even when he narrated the tragic death of a great hero or the great insult of Draupadi at the hands of the Kauravas. ‘Nishkam’ (meaning ‘without expectation of returns’) is the term that Sri Aurobindo uses to describe the style and poetic genius of Vyasa…”

“History is a narrative of causality. A conjuncture of conditions leads to outcomes through lively and inert agency. These results in turn become the grounds for another series of events.”

This diminutive book of 152 pages hinges on the verity that the Mahābhārata proposes to be, among other things, a pit of anthropological information on India in its time — a promise it has indeed held.

I cite Danino, where he says,

“As the late anthropologist K.S. Singh showed, the Epic names Indian peoples covering the entire subcontinent, although with a greater concentration in the Northwest and West. It does so not randomly but by design, the same design that makes it list dynasties, kings and the regions where they rule. The Epic, therefore, is keen to place in front of its readers the faithful image of a highly diverse society, and clearly sets great store by that diversity: ‘He who desires to obtain a knowledge of the customs of different countries, and also the languages of different nations, and of the usages of different orders of men, knows at once all that is high and low…’

The Western literary tradition recognizes the Homeric compositions — the Iliad and the Odyssey as illustrations of epic poetry. These elongated narrative poems of grand technique are centered on warlike heroes questing for perpetual eminence or yearning for a lost homestead.

The epics were orally transmitted works that symbolize the struggle of fragile humanity against the anxieties of mortality.

Although the Sanskrit works Ramayana and the Mahabharata maybe roughly classified as epics along the lines of the Western tradition, their substantial differences from the Western epics necessitate closer assessment.

Mahabharata is a luminous exemplar of this verbal convention down the ages.

Vaisampayana, disciple of Vyasa, recites Mahabharata for the first time to King Janamejaya at his sarpasatra in Takshasila, current Pakistan.

Later at Naimisaranya, on the banks of the Gomti River in close proximity to Lucknow, it is narrated by Ugrasravas, showing how the epic was amassed, rememberd and broadcasted vocally during diverse periods in history.

During an assembly of sages headed by Saunaka, at Naimisaranya, Ugrasrava Sauti, son of Lomaharsana, again relates the complete Mahabharata.

Throughout the Later Vedic Period, the Kurus and the Panchalas were the greatest and most civilized of the Indian people.

The Brahmana texts hypothetically appended to one of the Vedas are imperative in the pre-Mahabharata era.

The Brahmana literature is referred as reflecting the academic life in early India, and emerged in the Kuru Panchala region.

Major Brahmana texts that submit to the Kuru Panchalas are the Aitareya Brahmana which fit in to Rig Veda; Jaiminiya (or Talavakara) Brahmana of the Sama Veda; Shatapatha belonging to the Shukla Yajur Veda; the late Gopatha Brahmana belonging to Atharva Veda; and the Panchavimsa and Taittiriya.

We find the scholarly significance of Kuru Panchala region in Upanishad literature, which is the elite of the Indian intellectual tradition. The Upanishad texts mostly contend with extensive themes such as epistemology, cognition and cosmography.

The Ramayana and Mahabharata were classified in the Hindu literary custom as ‘adikavya’- ‘first poetic work’ and ‘itihasa’ i.e. ‘chronicle’ respectively in the Sanskrit Epics. The chronicular character of Mahabharata implies that it was recited or ‘spoken’ by a sage instead of ‘sung’ as was the case for the Homeric epics.

Textual confirmation reveals that the existing Mahabharata is a concluding product of an extended bardic institution that had merged with religious and didactic musings with a clear Vedic heritage.

The text employs such rhythmical expressions as the metaphor and the antithesis while the more ornate and complicated ‘alamkaras’ of the ‘kavya’ style are missing.

Moreover the epic similes drawn from the Vedic corpus of gods, nature and human society follow a simple and elegant style. Critics opine that the poetic style of Mahabharata is reflective of the three oral poetic genres of the heroic, theological and legal forms and hence its variable tone.

The elliptical style of the Mahabharata is however belied by a sophisticated narrative style.

The text employs at least three narrators; a) Sanjaya the ‘suta’ who narrates the Kurukshetra War to the blind Dhrtarastra, b) the sage Vaisampayana who narrates the history of the Bharata lineage to Janamejaya and finally c) Ugrasrava Sauti who narrates the Mahabharata as we know it to Saunaka.

The ‘story-within-story’ structure of the poem reveals the importance of the roles of the author (Vyasa appears as a character in the text) and the audience in terms of the recitation of the oral text as the latter often interjects with requests, questions etc.

Unlike the Western epics, Mahabharata does not begin in medias res as the narrative moves backwards and forwards in time with digressions, didactic materials, akhyanas’ and the like.

The layered narration and plot seem to be modeled on recursive Vedic rituals of sacrifice. The Book of the Beginning provides concise synopses of the latter events of the epic while also providing an originary history of the Bharata dynasty.

The characters of the Bharata lineage like the ones of Homeric epics are of divine stock and their martial exploits at least partially hinge on valour and avarice. However the narrative of Mahabharata seems primarily concerned not with the arc of self glorification but self actualization through dharma.

The Kurukshetra War provides the heroic tone of the epic yet the pervasive mood is more melancholic than celebratory. The consequences of war result in a devastated family despite the ‘Pandavas’ victor, the deaths and revelations on the battlefield sour their remaining days: even their friend Krsna meets an anticlimactic end with no martial fanfare.

The main object of the epic therefore is to chronicle not heroic prowess but the heroic and spiritual struggle with the vagaries of dharma or proper conduct.

What does this book teach us then?

The following things –

*The Mahabharata is the story of life. The purpose of life is to experience the divine mystery that is life: the majesty and glory expressed in the infinite forms of creation, our position in this cosmic order and the eventual realisation of our own divinity. Life is God’s bounty, a gift that must be lived and enjoyed – with gratitude.

*The Mahabharata is about life and living, the here and now, and covers the five stages of human life: Bal Avastha (living with our parents – experiencing God in our parents), Brahmacharya (living with a guru– experiencing God in our guru), Grihastha Ashram (living with society at large – experiencing God in every human being), Vana Prastha (living with nature – experiencing God in all nature) and Vairagya (living with self – experiencing God in oneself).

*The Mahabharata is the most exhaustive exploration ever of the human condition. It thus covers passion (Kama) and its exhaustion (Moksha) and the in-between, the wealth of happiness (Artha) and balance or order (Dharma) – the means of its achievement.

*The Mahabharata details the principles of dharma upon which to base our lives for lasting peace and happiness. However, these are not laid out in the form of commandments, for life does not follow societal rules and regulations. Consequently there are no quick fixes, and throughout the text you find numerous discussions where beliefs and practices are challenged, assumptions questioned and doubts raised and, of course, clarifications or answers provided.

*What emerges is that the root cause of all human problems is attachment (‘I and mine’). From ‘I and mine’ emerge envy, desire and expectation (‘I want’ – for all things material), which leads to himsa (violence or the imposition of one’s will) for the fulfilment of that want. ‘I’ is the ego and is the cause of our insecurity, fear and sorrow.

*And the solution? Moksha (liberation, salvation) lies in the subjugation of the ego ‘I’, through ahimsa, the non-imposition of one’s will and the elimination of ‘I want’. Moksha lies in proactively spreading love to one and all, through acts of dharma, where every act is carried out diligently and is born out of love, truth, righteousness and compassion. In life there are no right and wrong – just karma (repercussions) and dharma (without repercussions). One binds, the other liberates – and we decide. We have the autonomy of choice to create our own providence.

*The Mahabharata, a text of enormous proportions – more than 100,000 verses – is the most complete treatise on day-to-day living, and contains within it the Bhagavad Gita, which, by itself, is unquestionably the most state-of-the-art compendium of the Vedic Hindu way of life. Of course, what the Gita expounds in a dialogue, the rest of the Mahabharata does through metaphors.

*The Mahabharata is the story of the journey through this life of the soul of every individual (any seeker) as it endeavours to rediscover its identity – who am I? Though all through our lives we remain absorbed in establishing an identity (what am I?) for ourselves, eventually, whether we appreciate it or not, we shall embark upon this journey of rediscovery. The Mahabharata describes how the seeker (referred to, for convenience, as ‘he’), a spiritual aspirant (any one of us), covers this journey, the pitfalls and travails encountered during his journey of life and how the aspirant can, should and will overcome them.

*This journey also takes place within us – in our hearts. Consequently, all the characters in the story also exist within our hearts. As it takes place within our hearts, we actually experience the Mahabharata, too. The Mahabharata is the story of our war within, our war with our own tendencies, which (tendencies) prevent us from moving up to a higher level of existence.

*This is the story of the invariable conflict that keeps raging within us, the fight between our divine tendencies, represented by Pandu and his children on the one hand, and our demonic tendencies, represented by Dhritarashtra and his children on the other.

*The Mahabharata does not put forward a theory or premise; it (like all our other scriptures) recounts, in words, the know-how of a realised sage. And the experience of the sage has been that man is but a piece of the un-manifest, unconditional, Brahman, the all-pervasive, ever-existing, attribute-less, sat-chit-ananda (truth-consciousness-bliss).

*Brahman is enveloped in maya (delusion) and thus appears as Prakriti (nature) – the infinite forms that we experience as the universe. And in this illusionary universe (world) man seemingly acquires, endlessly, form after form (birth and rebirth) in surroundings and situations that are dictated by his past karmas (acts).

*However, by placing his senses (and sense organs) under control and severing all his attachments (desires) and thereafter by performing his ordained tasks with faith and devotion, without aspiring for the outcome (of his actions), he can draw upon himself the grace of the Guru. The Guru’s grace destroys maya and sets man free of the bondage imposed by karma and grants him moksha, the realisation of his (true) divine self.

As early as 1871, Alexander Cunningham discusses the ancient geography of the lost Saraswati and Ganga plains in the context of the Mahabharata. S.M. Bharadwaj (1973) presents the distribution of sacred sites in the Mahabharata. In his archaeological geography of the Ganga plains, Dilip Chakrabarti (2007) assesses the probable antiquity of the sacredness of the Uttarakhand Himalayas in painted grey ware/Mahabharata context.

The consecrated land of Kurukshetra is highlighted between Sarasvati and Drishadvati rivers.

The historical significance of the Kuru Panchala region, the centre of Vyasa’s epic located between the Ganga and Yamuna, and the consequence of Sarasvati River in the Mahabharata context is decisive in historical studies.

Kurukshetra is also discussed as the sacred land between Sarasvati and Drishadvati rivers in the plains west of Ganga and Jamuna.

The boundaries of Kurukshetra are given in Taittiriya Aranyaka and are discussed in geo-cultural milieu.

The Tirtha Yatra section of Vana Parva is among the most imperative repositories of geographical information in the Mahabharata. Vana Parva describes Kurukshetra as a blessed spot which lies to the south of the Sarasvati and the north of the Drishadvati.

To conclude, Indian historical tradition reckons the chronology from Svāyambhuva Manu to the Mahābhārata era in terms of the elapsed number of Manvantaras and Mahāyugas (Chaturyugas).

It is recorded that six Manvantaras and the Dvāpara Yuga of the 28th Mahāyuga of the seventh Manvantara had elapsed during the Mahābhārata era.

Though the 5-year Yuga calendar continued to be in vogue starting from the early Vedic era to the Mahābhārata era, the period of a Yuga and a Chaturyuga were increased from 5 years to 1200 years and from 20 years to 4800 years in that order at the conclusion of the 28th Krita Yuga. Later, the duration of a Chaturyuga was again increased from 4800 years to 12000 years considering the differential duration of four Yugas in a ratio of 4:3:2:1.

During the pre-Mahābhārata era, ancient Indian astronomers further extended the period of a Yuga from 1200 years to 432000 years (1200 times 360) and the duration of a Chaturyuga from 12000 years to 4320000 years (12000 times 360) with the objective of achieving precise calandrical calculations.

Regrettably, those scholars who later updated the Purāṇas had incorrectly deemed the increased calandrical duration of Chaturyugas as a given fact, and on that base, narrated the chronological history of ancient India, resulting in, since antiquity, the failure of the true chronology from Manu to Mahabharata.

Not a single passage from this book can bring this dialogue to a rational termination than this … the author says, and I quote –

‘Time as myth touches the lives of all characters in the epic. Almost all of them are born by mythical incidents and many of them carry boons and curses through their lives, like in myths. Mythical time recognizes no temporality. In it, a character like Vyasa can be present at the beginning of the story being told as well as at its end several generations later, without any physical changes, and a character like Ganga can rise in human space at will and disappear again at will.

The schooling of the Kuru princes, their political moves, the exile, return from the forest, and the Kurukshetra war are the events that follow, more or less, the temporal scheme of time as it normally is in heroic narratives, full of hyperbole and yet recognizably within the grasp of a human time scale.

Finally, Yudhishthira’s encounter with Yaksha, who turns out to be no other than his own father, Arjuna’s conversation with Krishna at the beginning of the war, Bhishma’s death spread over several months are all depictions of intense psychological fragments of time.

The Mahabharata brings all of these four imaginations of Time together.

The poet of this remarkable epic works out the magic of welding together the differently imagined Times with such vigour and ease that it is almost impossible for one to segregate them. Devy argues that epics are poles apart in their assignment “at the beginning of a new civilization or a new era”, which makes them a statement of the “unconscious metaphysics of their time”. The epic is distinctive also in having mystical agencies that sidetrack them from coherent historical causality.

The unblemished stitching together of these different schemes or imaginations of Time is, what I would like to call, the Mahabharata method of presenting history, which is never a complete objective truth nor a complete fiction, which is quite outside the realm either of fact or fiction, a universe within itself….

Brilliant man!! Kudos!

[Vinayak Hegde · Rating 4 out of 5]

G.N. Devy's Mahabharata is a thoughtful and intellectually rich exploration of the ancient epic, focusing not on a retelling of the story but on its deeper structure, metaphysical themes, and linguistic intricacies. Rather than approaching the text as a linear narrative with clear heroes and villains, Devy unravels the Mahabharata’s complexity —its non-linear structure, ensemble cast of characters, and the profound ambiguity surrounding motives, means, and outcomes. This malleable structure allowed people to add to it and draw philosophical and life lessons from it such as from the Bhagavad Gita which was added later.

What sets this work apart is its interdisciplinary approach. Devy brings together insights from modern science (genetics, archaeology and anthropology), mythology, and literary theory to unpack the philosophical and structural layers of the epic. He draws attention to how the Mahabharata reflects a world not of moral absolutes but of contradictions and unresolved tensions—mirroring the uncertainty and complexity of the human condition. It also encodes with its stories and structure some historical truth though with the oral and the written retelling of the epic, it has become hard to discern truth from fiction. His analysis of the language of the text itself reveals how the epic functions as a dynamic, living tradition rather than a fixed story. In doing so, Devy challenges reductive readings and opens space for understanding the Mahabharata as a sophisticated meditation on ethics, time, and cosmic order.

This is not a conventional commentary but a philosophical inquiry—a book best suited for readers interested in literary analysis, cultural studies, and the intersection of ancient wisdom with contemporary thought.

[Vinay Keerthi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I left a review here. - https://stonecharioteer.com/posts/202...

[Deepan Maitra · Rating 3 out of 5]

G.N. Devy’s eruditeness doesn’t need an introduction, and his research in Indian languages, regional history and its linguistics is noteworthy, so naturally his commentary on the relevance of Mahabharata, which has been named ‘Mahabharata: the epic and the nation’ is scholarly and well enunciated. Reading the book calls for an understanding of India’s cultural past, mostly in terms of oral history, written scriptures and linguistic seepage. I’ll confess its difficult to summarize the book, or even precisely define the matters which are discussed. I wouldn’t comment on the coherence of the arguments that Devy mentions solely because it would require a substantial level of expertise, but I would straightaway put across my opinion that I often got lost in the trail of ideas that were getting professed in the book. Devy sometimes zoomed in much over the epic’s technical details, and then linking it to history and sociology in the next instance. The gradient of arguments was not seamless in most cases, and I kept feeling that the structure of the book needed to be worked upon. There are only two chapters in the book, each stretching for over fifty pages and it requires an impeccable amount of attention to keep track of what is being discussed at the instant. Naturally, I couldn’t be consistent in grasping the views, neither could I be involved in breezing though the pages rapidly because it was heavy to comprehend. I, however, did find quite a handful of intelligent observations in the book: they were majorly in terms of how Devy chooses to bridge the gap between the contexts of the Mahabharata and the modern-day scenario. The other thing which I liked was that Devy doesn’t try to assert the supremacy of the epic via religious machinery, neither does he try to present the contexts in terms of religious consciences. Rather, he approaches the epic like what it is—a long poem written thousands of years ago, the adulteration of which is a matter of debate, and the relevance of which even now is a topic of fruitful discussion. I had to admire this figurative approach to view the text, although it is to be noted that most historically accurate perspectives do possess this flavour, and so does the commentaries where the Sanskrit language takes a prime role. If a reader wants to adorn their knowledge more on the epic by picking and choosing passages of interest, this book can prove to be a gold mine—but if they are looking for a well-planned and well-bound commentary on the epic, I am certain there are better alleys to look in elsewhere. I wish that this review is perceived purely as a reader’s perspective, and not as an academic counter-opinion.

Thanks Aleph Book Company for the copy.

[Upasna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a short and interesting book. The author puts forth a lot of interesting ideas about the impact of the Mahabharata on the way us Indians imagine our past. The central argument of the book is about how Mahabharata has shaped our "idea of India". A few ideas which I liked:

1) Mahabharata continues to hold appeal and sway over us despite being caste and sex discriminatory. Unlike books like the Manu smriti which are denounced in the modern world, Mahabharata is still beloved to millions.

2) Mahabharata has shaped how we think of our past - how Indians since centuries have turned to Mahabharata to trace our roots.

3) Mahabharata is a way of remembering the past rather than a record of the past. Despite being about the end of an epoch in a specific place and time (transition from pastoral tribes to agrarian communities in North India several centuries ago), most Indians consider it to be their past.

I probably have yet to fully understand some of the author's ideas. A second reading is due soon. Sometimes the book seemed like a loose collection of ideas rather than arguments leading cohesively to a conclusion. Like the Mahabharata itself, there were too many asides about linguistics, genetics, politics, geneology and even Freud. The author talks about how cohesiveness and unity of purpose was used to distinguish between oral epics like Mahabharata and written epics like Paradise Lost. Similarly, I felt this book was full of ideas which lacked a unified theme or conclusion. But the individual ideas were thought provoking and challenging which in a way makes this book similar to the Mahabharata itself.

[Mayuri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Devy's current work is a pedagogical resource rather than a traditional scholarly text. Offering a perspective rooted in non-Brahmin and non-Kshatriya interpretations of the Mahabharat, the book focuses on non-elite and non-normative understandings of Dharma. It advocates for a view of civilization that does not depend on a singular origin story. The text's analytical depth challenges educators (and, readers) to confront the ethical and moral issues inherent in introducing non-Western traditions to academic settings, which are often shaped by neoliberal ideologies that are antagonistic to these traditions.

Devy also presents a compelling alternative to the constraints of both post-colonial and nativist frameworks. While post-colonial studies often marginalize indigenous epistemologies due to their focus on hybridity and imperial centers of knowledge production. nativist perspectives risk oversimplifying indigenous epistemologies by isolating them from their pluralistic histories. Devy counters these limitations through a comprehensive and precise examination of diverse vernacular traditions, contributing to complex philosophical discussions

His articulate writing style lends the book an intellectual depth and serves as a rebuttal to recent efforts to co-opt Mahabharata traditions for nationalistic and neoliberal aims. Devy's dedication to vernacular traditions and to epistemological activism positions him alongside the likes of Ngugi wa Thiong'o. When considered together, the work of these scholars provides sufficient substance to address the pervasive influence on neoliberalism on contemporary knowledge production.

[Enakshi J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the most revered epics in India is the Mahabharata. Even though it was set in the Treta Yuga, people still idolize the characters and never miss a chance to draw a parallel between their choices and their actions. G. N. Devy’s Mahabharata is an attempt to establish the relevance of this epic and bring out why this scripture is so important and impactful.

Divided into just two chapters- The Epic Quest and The Wheel- the text explores the central theme/ purpose that makes Mahabharata one of the National epics of India. Mahabharata is an oral epic because of the uncertainty associated with its author. Hence, an oral epic can be interpreted by different scholars in very different ways.
Read the complete review here: https://www.aliveshadow.com/category-...

[Niket Sheth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brilliant book on the concept of the need of Mahabharata. Why is it still relevant? Who is the actual main character or the protagonist of the story? How has Vyasa the author weaved different aspects of our history and mythology of a nation? Good concepts and thought provoking answers too. This book reads like an academic paper. It would have been better for the author to have better prose and chapter classification into the book. Before reading the book, you need to have a good knowledge of the Mahabharata and their characters in order to keep the explanation relevant and interesting. There's no beginning or a chronology in the examples given or a general flow of the chapters. It's a good book if you need to have a new perspective on the mythology book called Mahabharata.

[Meenal]

22 percent feels like an uncle sitting in your drawing room talking about whatever he feels about Mahabharat

[Ramaprasad KV · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very disappointing and misleading book. Picked this book because of glowing tributes and reviews that I saw on social media. I think that was my big mistake.

Research on Mahabharata is not new. Different opinions and interpretations are also not new. Many researchers have views which do not correspond to the traditional view about the epic as well. In fact all such research, might add to the discussion and our understanding of the epic.

However this book has nothing of that sort to offer but for those who are totally ignorant of the language in which the Mahabharata was written in - Sanskrit. To them this book might appear like a piece of scholarship. But if the reader even casually knows Sanskrit or other Indian languages, the charade will fall off very soon, within the first few pages of this book.

Just a few examples: Suggesting the words Vyasa and Vysya may be related, saying the negative indicator words such as ma- and na- in Samskrta being indications of the time when the works were written, getting basic facts about the epic incorrect (such as Krishna's death occurring after 68 years after the war) and calling Krishna Dwaipayana as "Krishna, of the Dark Island" (and repeating it several times in the book).

I am aghast such a work has been written by a Padmashree awardee. Leaving a 1-star rating. I wish there was a way to give half a star.

[dororthyofkansas · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a disappointing read, offering nothing new in terms of Mahabharata scholarship. The references to the Bhil Mahabharata were interesting, though.