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Mahabharata #8
The Mahabharata: Volume 8
It is the aftermath of the war in Volume 8. Ashvatthama kills all the remaining Pandavas—with the exception of the five Pandava brothers—and Panchalas. The funeral ceremonies for the
dead warriors are performed. Bhishma’s teachings in the Shanti Parva, after Yudhishthira is crowned, is about duties to be followed under different circumstances.
dead warriors are performed. Bhishma’s teachings in the Shanti Parva, after Yudhishthira is crowned, is about duties to be followed under different circumstances.
600 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 401
15 people are currently reading
448 people want to read
About the author
Bibek Debroy
158 books398 followersBibek Debroy was an Indian economist, who served as the chairman of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India. He was also the Chairman of the Finance Ministry's 'Expert Committee for Infrastructure Classification and Financing Framework for Amrit Kaal'. Debroy has made significant contributions to game theory, economic theory, income and social inequalities, poverty, law reforms, railway reforms and Indology among others. From its inception in January 2015 until June 2019, Mr. Debroy was a member of the NITI Aayog, the think tank of the Indian Government. He was awarded the Padma Shri (the fourth-highest civilian honour in India) in 2015.
Bibek Debroy's recent co-authored magnum opus, Inked in India, stands distinguished as the premier comprehensive documentation, capturing the entirety of recognized fountain pen, nib, and ink manufacturers in India.
In 2016, he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the US-India Business Summit. In 2022, he was conferred with the Lifetime Achievement Award by The Australia India Chamber of Commerce (AICC). In February 2024, Debroy was conferred Insolvency Law Academy Emeritus Fellowship, in recognition of his distinguished leadership, public service, work and contributions in the field of insolvency.
Bibek Debroy died on 1 November 2024, at the age of 69. He had been admitted to All India Institutes of Medical Sciences in New Delhi one month prior.
Bibek Debroy's recent co-authored magnum opus, Inked in India, stands distinguished as the premier comprehensive documentation, capturing the entirety of recognized fountain pen, nib, and ink manufacturers in India.
In 2016, he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the US-India Business Summit. In 2022, he was conferred with the Lifetime Achievement Award by The Australia India Chamber of Commerce (AICC). In February 2024, Debroy was conferred Insolvency Law Academy Emeritus Fellowship, in recognition of his distinguished leadership, public service, work and contributions in the field of insolvency.
Bibek Debroy died on 1 November 2024, at the age of 69. He had been admitted to All India Institutes of Medical Sciences in New Delhi one month prior.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
August 1, 2022
A lot of philosophy in this volume - some of it is difficult to understand but very good. Bhishma’s teachings continue in the next so onwards to the next volume!
December 8, 2025
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.
By the time I arrived at Volume 8 of Bibek Debroy’s translation, I felt as if the epic had already carved a long corridor inside me. Seven volumes had passed, and yet the Mahabharata kept shifting shape, refusing to settle, refusing to be boxed into the simple binaries modern storytelling often craves. So many count;ess times I had read versions of this epic before. But it would bear new meaning with every reading.
I felt more like a traveller than a reader, wandering through moral ruins, ash-filled memories, and suddenly blooming orchards of tenderness—only to watch them burn again.
Volume 8 is where the aftermath of war begins to thicken into something colder, denser, almost metallic. The clang of weapons fades, but the echoes remain sharp enough to cut.
As I moved through these pages, I kept hearing the Gita like an undercurrent, as if Krishna’s voice lingered in the air long after he had finished speaking:
सर्वधर्मान्परित्यज्य मामेकं शरणं व्रज।
अहं त्वा सर्वपापेभ्यो मोक्षयिष्यामि मा शुचः॥
Abandon all duties and surrender completely to the Divine, who will deliver you from all sins.
The idea of action without attachment feels strangely tender when you watch the consequences devour an entire generation. The war has ended, yes, but the story refuses to let anyone rest.
Even the victors stand like survivors of some cosmic avalanche, blinking through dust, trying to remember what sunlight looked like.
Volume 8 centres heavily around the ‘Stri Parva’ and ‘Shanti Parva’ — and the cruelty of that juxtaposition struck me deeply.
First comes the lamentation of the women, a chorus of devastation so fierce that Homer feels almost muted in comparison.
Then comes the sprawling philosophical ocean of the Shanti Parva, where Bhishma lies on his bed of arrows, turning his slow death into the longest lecture ever delivered in world literature.
The transition from grief to instruction is abrupt but strangely fitting: first the heart breaks, then someone hands you a treatise on why heartbreak is part of cosmic order.
Reading the ‘Stri Parva’, I felt the presence of Shakespeare everywhere, especially in the women’s monologues. They reminded me of ‘King Lear’, of Cordelia’s silence and Goneril’s rage, of Lady Macbeth rubbing invisible stains off her hands, except here the women aren’t guilty—they’re simply shattered.
Their grief feels like the raw material out of which tragedies are sculpted. Gandhari’s lament over her hundred dead sons channels a bitterness Shakespeare could only gesture toward: here the mother is not merely bereaved but scorched. Her curse on Krishna arises not from spite but from an unbearable imbalance in the moral equation of the universe.
And yet her words carry the dignity of someone who has seen through the veil of cosmic justice and found it woven with threads of irony.
I kept thinking, too, of Rabindranath’s plays—especially ‘Ghare-Baire’ and ‘Achalayatan’—where sorrow is never just emotion but worldview. Rabindranath believed grief could be a form of knowledge, a way of encountering truth when everything else dissolves.
The women in ‘Stri Parva’ embody this intuition. Their sorrow is a mirror held to the world, and when I looked into it, I saw not just them but the moral blindness of everyone who marched towards war insisting on righteousness.
The images in these chapters haunted me. I could almost hear the crunch of bones under chariot wheels, the stifling silence of the battlefield after the vultures had picked it clean, the rustle of widows’ garments as they walked over land still warm with the dying breath of men who had shouted slogans of dharma just days before.
The epic becomes a graveyard here, and Debroy’s translation does not shy away from the brutality. He holds the mirror steady. He does not embellish. He does not comfort. He simply lets the Sanskrit speak, and the Sanskrit does not apologise.
When I shifted into the ‘Shanti Parva’, it felt like entering a different climate altogether. Suddenly, the narrative slowed, widened, deepened. Bhishma, lying on his unforgiving bed of arrows, turns into a philosopher with every breath. He becomes a human lighthouse—illuminating even as he bleeds.
It reminded me of something Rabindranath once said about the “great souls who die teaching us how to live.”
Bhishma embodies that paradox perfectly: a man who held the kingdom together by breaking himself, a man who upheld duty like a religion and yet lived a life marked by renunciations so severe they border on violence against the self.
As I read Bhishma’s long dialogues with Yudhishthira, I couldn’t help hearing faint echoes of Krishna’s Gita.
The Gita is a conversation on the brink of war; the Shanti Parva is a conversation on the rubble left behind. The Gita teaches action; the Shanti Parva teaches consequence.
The Gita is fire; the Shanti Parva is embers.
There were times, reading Krishna’s words in the Gita and then Bhishma’s counsel here, when I felt as if I were listening to two very different professors teaching the same syllabus from two opposite ends of the universe.
Krishna urges Arjuna into battle with the confidence of someone who sees the cosmic grid behind all events. Bhishma urges Yudhishthira toward governance with the weariness of someone who has lived inside that grid too long and knows its cruel elasticity.
The volume is vast, of course—Debroy doesn’t shrink Bhishma’s philosophical ocean. Concepts of kingship, justice, morality, taxation, governance, peace, desire, renunciation, non-violence, and even the duties of different social classes flow like a river that refuses to stop.
And I found myself oddly comforted by the length. It reminded me that wisdom is not instantaneous; it must be absorbed in layers, like seasons passing through the mind.
Bhishma does not lecture to perform knowledge. He lectures because silence is deadly—because Yudhishthira is drowning in guilt and needs a lighthouse.
Shakespeare, again, lurks in the corners of these teachings. I felt it most strongly in Bhishma’s reflections on kingship. His words resonated with ‘Henry IV’ and ‘Macbeth’, those plays where the crown transforms into a burden heavier than any sword.
Macbeth’s torment comes from guilt; Yudhishthira’s comes from righteousness gone wrong. Yet both are crowned in blood.
Bhishma’s teachings become a counterpoint to Shakespeare’s tragedies: where Shakespeare dramatizes the fall,
Bhishma attempts to teach recovery:
1) What happens after the crown is stained?
2) How does a king continue ruling without collapsing under the weight of remorse?
Shakespeare explores collapse; Bhishma offers a manual for endurance.
Rabindranath, too, felt present. Especially the Rabindranath who wrote the essays in ‘Sadhana’, where he speaks of harmony, self-restraint, and the spiritual discipline of leadership.
When Bhishma emphasizes the king as a moral centre—someone who governs not to dominate but to balance—Rabindranath’s words glowed in my mind.
Kingship is not possession; it is responsibility. A nation is not a territory; it is a trust. Rabindranath wrote those ideas in the context of modern nationalism, but the Mahabharata inscribes them centuries earlier.
Debroy’s translation remains a marvel. The sheer clarity with which he carries the Sanskrit across is something I have admired through every volume, but it becomes particularly essential here.
Philosophical texts often turn muddy in translation—too many abstractions, too much ornamentation, too much interpretative meddling.
But Debroy keeps the language crisp, almost transparent. He lets the structure of the Sanskrit speak for itself. He provides footnotes where necessary, but he doesn’t step into the spotlight.
His humility as a translator is what makes the philosophical core of the Shanti Parva so accessible.
By the time I reached the end of Volume 8, I felt that strange wariness the Mahabharata always triggers: the sense that I’ve witnessed too much, learned too much, aged too much.
And yet I felt enriched, too. This volume made me think about cycles—how grief turns into philosophy, how destruction becomes instruction, how the loudest battles often birth the quietest reflections.
I understood, perhaps for the first time, why the Mahabharata insists on being an epic not just of war but of wisdom.
The epic is not asking me to admire its heroes; it is asking me to interrogate them.
The epic is not asking me to pick sides; it is asking me to understand consequences.
Reading all this in Debroy’s clean, unhurried English felt like listening to a wise elder who does not force persuasion. He simply narrates, and trusts that the story is powerful enough to carve its own place inside me. And it does. Every single time.
When I closed Volume 8, I realised I wasn’t stepping away from the epic—I was sinking deeper into it.
This is the volume where the Mahabharata stops being a story and becomes a school.
And every lesson is paid for in blood, tears, and the slow, painful birth of wisdom.
Read and reread. Keep reading. Every reading gives you a new meaning.
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.
By the time I arrived at Volume 8 of Bibek Debroy’s translation, I felt as if the epic had already carved a long corridor inside me. Seven volumes had passed, and yet the Mahabharata kept shifting shape, refusing to settle, refusing to be boxed into the simple binaries modern storytelling often craves. So many count;ess times I had read versions of this epic before. But it would bear new meaning with every reading.
I felt more like a traveller than a reader, wandering through moral ruins, ash-filled memories, and suddenly blooming orchards of tenderness—only to watch them burn again.
Volume 8 is where the aftermath of war begins to thicken into something colder, denser, almost metallic. The clang of weapons fades, but the echoes remain sharp enough to cut.
As I moved through these pages, I kept hearing the Gita like an undercurrent, as if Krishna’s voice lingered in the air long after he had finished speaking:
सर्वधर्मान्परित्यज्य मामेकं शरणं व्रज।
अहं त्वा सर्वपापेभ्यो मोक्षयिष्यामि मा शुचः॥
Abandon all duties and surrender completely to the Divine, who will deliver you from all sins.
The idea of action without attachment feels strangely tender when you watch the consequences devour an entire generation. The war has ended, yes, but the story refuses to let anyone rest.
Even the victors stand like survivors of some cosmic avalanche, blinking through dust, trying to remember what sunlight looked like.
Volume 8 centres heavily around the ‘Stri Parva’ and ‘Shanti Parva’ — and the cruelty of that juxtaposition struck me deeply.
First comes the lamentation of the women, a chorus of devastation so fierce that Homer feels almost muted in comparison.
Then comes the sprawling philosophical ocean of the Shanti Parva, where Bhishma lies on his bed of arrows, turning his slow death into the longest lecture ever delivered in world literature.
The transition from grief to instruction is abrupt but strangely fitting: first the heart breaks, then someone hands you a treatise on why heartbreak is part of cosmic order.
Reading the ‘Stri Parva’, I felt the presence of Shakespeare everywhere, especially in the women’s monologues. They reminded me of ‘King Lear’, of Cordelia’s silence and Goneril’s rage, of Lady Macbeth rubbing invisible stains off her hands, except here the women aren’t guilty—they’re simply shattered.
Their grief feels like the raw material out of which tragedies are sculpted. Gandhari’s lament over her hundred dead sons channels a bitterness Shakespeare could only gesture toward: here the mother is not merely bereaved but scorched. Her curse on Krishna arises not from spite but from an unbearable imbalance in the moral equation of the universe.
And yet her words carry the dignity of someone who has seen through the veil of cosmic justice and found it woven with threads of irony.
I kept thinking, too, of Rabindranath’s plays—especially ‘Ghare-Baire’ and ‘Achalayatan’—where sorrow is never just emotion but worldview. Rabindranath believed grief could be a form of knowledge, a way of encountering truth when everything else dissolves.
The women in ‘Stri Parva’ embody this intuition. Their sorrow is a mirror held to the world, and when I looked into it, I saw not just them but the moral blindness of everyone who marched towards war insisting on righteousness.
The images in these chapters haunted me. I could almost hear the crunch of bones under chariot wheels, the stifling silence of the battlefield after the vultures had picked it clean, the rustle of widows’ garments as they walked over land still warm with the dying breath of men who had shouted slogans of dharma just days before.
The epic becomes a graveyard here, and Debroy’s translation does not shy away from the brutality. He holds the mirror steady. He does not embellish. He does not comfort. He simply lets the Sanskrit speak, and the Sanskrit does not apologise.
When I shifted into the ‘Shanti Parva’, it felt like entering a different climate altogether. Suddenly, the narrative slowed, widened, deepened. Bhishma, lying on his unforgiving bed of arrows, turns into a philosopher with every breath. He becomes a human lighthouse—illuminating even as he bleeds.
It reminded me of something Rabindranath once said about the “great souls who die teaching us how to live.”
Bhishma embodies that paradox perfectly: a man who held the kingdom together by breaking himself, a man who upheld duty like a religion and yet lived a life marked by renunciations so severe they border on violence against the self.
As I read Bhishma’s long dialogues with Yudhishthira, I couldn’t help hearing faint echoes of Krishna’s Gita.
The Gita is a conversation on the brink of war; the Shanti Parva is a conversation on the rubble left behind. The Gita teaches action; the Shanti Parva teaches consequence.
The Gita is fire; the Shanti Parva is embers.
There were times, reading Krishna’s words in the Gita and then Bhishma’s counsel here, when I felt as if I were listening to two very different professors teaching the same syllabus from two opposite ends of the universe.
Krishna urges Arjuna into battle with the confidence of someone who sees the cosmic grid behind all events. Bhishma urges Yudhishthira toward governance with the weariness of someone who has lived inside that grid too long and knows its cruel elasticity.
The volume is vast, of course—Debroy doesn’t shrink Bhishma’s philosophical ocean. Concepts of kingship, justice, morality, taxation, governance, peace, desire, renunciation, non-violence, and even the duties of different social classes flow like a river that refuses to stop.
And I found myself oddly comforted by the length. It reminded me that wisdom is not instantaneous; it must be absorbed in layers, like seasons passing through the mind.
Bhishma does not lecture to perform knowledge. He lectures because silence is deadly—because Yudhishthira is drowning in guilt and needs a lighthouse.
Shakespeare, again, lurks in the corners of these teachings. I felt it most strongly in Bhishma’s reflections on kingship. His words resonated with ‘Henry IV’ and ‘Macbeth’, those plays where the crown transforms into a burden heavier than any sword.
Macbeth’s torment comes from guilt; Yudhishthira’s comes from righteousness gone wrong. Yet both are crowned in blood.
Bhishma’s teachings become a counterpoint to Shakespeare’s tragedies: where Shakespeare dramatizes the fall,
Bhishma attempts to teach recovery:
1) What happens after the crown is stained?
2) How does a king continue ruling without collapsing under the weight of remorse?
Shakespeare explores collapse; Bhishma offers a manual for endurance.
Rabindranath, too, felt present. Especially the Rabindranath who wrote the essays in ‘Sadhana’, where he speaks of harmony, self-restraint, and the spiritual discipline of leadership.
When Bhishma emphasizes the king as a moral centre—someone who governs not to dominate but to balance—Rabindranath’s words glowed in my mind.
Kingship is not possession; it is responsibility. A nation is not a territory; it is a trust. Rabindranath wrote those ideas in the context of modern nationalism, but the Mahabharata inscribes them centuries earlier.
Debroy’s translation remains a marvel. The sheer clarity with which he carries the Sanskrit across is something I have admired through every volume, but it becomes particularly essential here.
Philosophical texts often turn muddy in translation—too many abstractions, too much ornamentation, too much interpretative meddling.
But Debroy keeps the language crisp, almost transparent. He lets the structure of the Sanskrit speak for itself. He provides footnotes where necessary, but he doesn’t step into the spotlight.
His humility as a translator is what makes the philosophical core of the Shanti Parva so accessible.
By the time I reached the end of Volume 8, I felt that strange wariness the Mahabharata always triggers: the sense that I’ve witnessed too much, learned too much, aged too much.
And yet I felt enriched, too. This volume made me think about cycles—how grief turns into philosophy, how destruction becomes instruction, how the loudest battles often birth the quietest reflections.
I understood, perhaps for the first time, why the Mahabharata insists on being an epic not just of war but of wisdom.
The epic is not asking me to admire its heroes; it is asking me to interrogate them.
The epic is not asking me to pick sides; it is asking me to understand consequences.
Reading all this in Debroy’s clean, unhurried English felt like listening to a wise elder who does not force persuasion. He simply narrates, and trusts that the story is powerful enough to carve its own place inside me. And it does. Every single time.
When I closed Volume 8, I realised I wasn’t stepping away from the epic—I was sinking deeper into it.
This is the volume where the Mahabharata stops being a story and becomes a school.
And every lesson is paid for in blood, tears, and the slow, painful birth of wisdom.
Read and reread. Keep reading. Every reading gives you a new meaning.
January 25, 2017
This volume starts with the more or less inevitable end of the war, the destruction of the Pandava army by a very enraged Ashvattama, who kills major characters and the remaining soldiers in the a devastating night attack. So far, so good, keeping with the anti-war theme. Then we have Yudhishthira going into a funk over all the awful things he's done in the war, particularly on learning that Karna was his elder brother, and his bros trying to talk him out of it, which is also pretty good (and amusing).
But then we get the bright idea to go see Bhishma, who drones on and on. I have been intrigued by the philosophical nature of the Mahabharata. But this is not the epic at its best.
But then we get the bright idea to go see Bhishma, who drones on and on. I have been intrigued by the philosophical nature of the Mahabharata. But this is not the epic at its best.
April 30, 2018
The beginning was pretty amazing and very intense. The philosophy was just good with only certain interesting parts
August 9, 2023
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.
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.
December 20, 2025
Volume 8 is where we say goodbye to the war (just when it was starting to get boring), and it's a refreshing change, as the genre changes to "mirror for princes". There are several parvas ("sections") dedicated to raja dharma ("duty" of kings), apad ("calamities") or moksha (liberation), in which Yudhishthira wishes to be educated on specific topics necessary for a future king. These vary from strategy, espionage, accounting through animal and prostitute parables, to yoga and mythology. All told by a character who we believed to be dead, but who was magically kept alive to recite all the wisdom (and then be allowed to die).
My evaluation is probably skewed by the greater variety of this volume when compared to the previous three. This is mostly thanks to the "random" fun stories such as that of Pingala the Prostitute, who was rejected by her lover but "... Having destroyed hope, Pingala sleeps in happiness...". Or the rhetorical clash of the immensely wise rat named Palita with the cat Lomasha.
Considering all the topic, though, this volume has as much to say on culture, ethics and religion as the more famous Bhagavadgita. So I give it 5/5.
My evaluation is probably skewed by the greater variety of this volume when compared to the previous three. This is mostly thanks to the "random" fun stories such as that of Pingala the Prostitute, who was rejected by her lover but "... Having destroyed hope, Pingala sleeps in happiness...". Or the rhetorical clash of the immensely wise rat named Palita with the cat Lomasha.
Considering all the topic, though, this volume has as much to say on culture, ethics and religion as the more famous Bhagavadgita. So I give it 5/5.
March 12, 2024
This is the most interesting book of the Mahabharata as it contains the 12th Parva (Shanti Parva) which includes the Rajadharma subparva. It is a great source to understand how ancient Indians conceptualized and understood war, politics, international affairs, the art of taking down your enemy through non-military means, domestic policies (such as tax), issues of crime and punishment, and so on. There were also fascinating musings on animals, food habits, class issues, the origin of kingship, swords, and so on. There is also an enlightening debate between some of the characters on which of the of the following three is the best: Kama (sensual pleasures), Artha (material acquisitions), or Dharma (righteousness, ethics, duties). The most common ways of encountering the Mahabharata are either through the Bhagavad Gita or through the main storyline (Pandavas-Kauravas + Kurukshetra War), but this part of the Mahabharata also deserves a close read because it really takes you into the structure and norms of ancient Indian political thinking and kingship.
August 3, 2022
This volume is a very elaborate read. It took me almost 3 times the time i generally take to read a volume. Yes, it also is the thickest of all the volumes in series.
Its an amazing collection of learnings imparted by Bhishma to Yudhishthir on topics like - Rajdharma, Dandaniti, 5 senses, yoga, procrastination, intelligence, hope, Dharma for all varnas, and various other profound ones.
I would even suggest to read this volume, again in continuation, to get a better grip on the content mentioned. Though personally to me, it sounds like an uphill task ; right after just finishing the book. I think ill read this volume along with a few previous ones to bring it all together.
Its an amazing collection of learnings imparted by Bhishma to Yudhishthir on topics like - Rajdharma, Dandaniti, 5 senses, yoga, procrastination, intelligence, hope, Dharma for all varnas, and various other profound ones.
I would even suggest to read this volume, again in continuation, to get a better grip on the content mentioned. Though personally to me, it sounds like an uphill task ; right after just finishing the book. I think ill read this volume along with a few previous ones to bring it all together.
Read
July 26, 2020Debroy’s organization is more reader-friendly, with chapter headings. Lal’s chapters are tucked into the back, and note the position of verses in both the Critical and Calcutta edition, making it a challenge to find specific chapters or verses. I took to marking the sub-parva breaks with post -- its just to keep track.
Debroy’s prose is a little more functional and even educational, which admittedly may be a function of all the footnotes. I find Lal’s poetry to be more engaging, and I'm more inclined to break from my alternation and keep going while reading his trans-creation.
Debroy’s prose is a little more functional and even educational, which admittedly may be a function of all the footnotes. I find Lal’s poetry to be more engaging, and I'm more inclined to break from my alternation and keep going while reading his trans-creation.
May 31, 2023
This part contains the most important samvaad between Bhisma and Yudhisthar. I think it is one of the most crucial read ever.
The lessons of the subjects like Naitikta, Pavitrata, Rajya and Moksh are very well explained through stories. The more you think about it more academic it becomes.
I wish I can read this in the original Sanskrit. I hope I do read.
Book #13 series Indic books
The lessons of the subjects like Naitikta, Pavitrata, Rajya and Moksh are very well explained through stories. The more you think about it more academic it becomes.
I wish I can read this in the original Sanskrit. I hope I do read.
Book #13 series Indic books
August 31, 2021
Easy-to-understand language. The famous war has come to an end, but Aswathama goes on a rampage and extends the bloodbath further, murdering all the remaining Pandavas, except the husbands of Draupadi.
This book/translation is a work of art.
This book/translation is a work of art.
May 24, 2021
Progressively elaborate flashbacks to Karna’s death. Dritarashta is convinced the war is already lost. Karna gives Shalya life advice that Shalya doesn’t agree with because he thinks anybody is capable of sin. Who has the edge in the war keeps changing. Gets in a weird amount of detail about dead elephants. Arjuna almost fights Yudhistra for telling him to chill and so Krishna tells more stories but then they all make up and regain lost ground and then chill for the evening.
April 2, 2023
Jg
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews