E-Paper
Mahabharata: an epic in 18 parts
A translation of the Mahabharata whose modern racy prose does not lose the original essence.
The Mahabharata
Ramesh Menon
Rupa & Co
2004
Mythology
Pages: (Two volumes)
Price: Rs 1,500
ISBN:
Hardcover
The Mahabharata, one of India’s great epics, needs no introduction. Most of us know the story — narrated by seer Vyasa in Sanskrit, in some 1,00,000 two-line stanzas. As the preface states, the original 18-volumes are seven times as long as The Iliad and The Odyssey combined. It is about 12 times the length of the Bible.
The epic, with a main plot and hundreds of sub-plots, has been passed on orally for years — grandmothers narrating to their grandchildren. In the late-1980s, the entire nation was hooked on the Sunday morning mega-serial TV rendition by B.R. Chopra. I remember attending a friend’s
wedding in Kerala’s Gurvayoor temple where the ceremony was over in a blink, but most guests lingered on to join a large crowd watching the Draupadi vastra haran episode on a black and white television mounted on a stand just outside.
The Mahabharata, more than the Ramayana, fascinates most Indians cutting across linguistic, regional and caste affiliations. The Ramayana is a simple tale of an Aryan Prince establishing an order. The Mahabharata, on the other hand, is just not a story about the great war that was fought between the members of the same clan, being supported by all the kings and tribal chieftains that constituted Bharatavarsha. The epic details the Hindu version of the origin of earth, the cyclical four Yugas and talks about the prevailing customs through stories. Some of the stories could be fables like the churning of the ocean of nectar. But its message is clear. It not only provides the codes of laws — moral, ethical, customary and natural — that encompassed the civilisation that prevailed that time, but also provides an understanding of what constitutes the corpus of Hindu philosophy.
The sacred Gita, around which the epic revolves — is the core of the sacred text. And in between, the epic also has the chapters — the conversation between Yudhistir and Yaksha on life and death and the grand patriarch of the family, Bheesma talking about Raja dharma and Rashtra dharma from his arrow-ridden death-bed to the emperor Yudhisthir. Once you start, its unputdownable — a feeling you’d expect more when you’re poring through a whodunit. Talk about anything — the caste system, the fusion (mixture of races, castes and languages), love stories, illegitimate kids, friendships, words of honour, tribals, Rakshashas (demons), diplomacy, intrigue, treachery, cold-blooded murders — the epic has it all. It is, quite simply, a fascinating story.
There have been translated works in regional languages. I have had the privilege to read all the volumes — in Oriya. In English, however, there has been a dearth of translations which have covered the whole epic in a manner that is easy to read. Ramesh Menon’s two-part translated work of the Mahabharata is superb. Written in racy modern prose, it sustains the reader’s interest and the translation does not lose the original essence.
