Comments on the
Using the Juan Mascaró translation (Penguin Books, 1962), with references to the Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Charles A. Moore translation (A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy, Princeton, 1957)
Hare RāmaMohandas Gandhi, his last words, 1948
The Bhagavad Gīta, 
, is a chapter in the Epic, the 
, Mahābhārata. A gīta, 
, alone is a "song or poem," and there is actually more than one gīta just in the Mahābhārata. However, anyone talking about "The Gīta" will almost certainly be taken to refer to the Bhagavad Gīta. Bhagavad is an interesting word. Bhaga, 
, alone means "lord" or "good fortune, grandure, loveliness," etc. This is a cognate of bog, Бог, which is "God" in Russian, but also of phagein, φαγεῖν, "to eat" in Greek. So the Indo-European meanings have drifted around a bit [cf. The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots, Second Edition, revised and edited by Calvert Watkins, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000, p.7]. In turn, bhagavat, 
, is "fortunate, blessed, adorable, venerable, divine, holy," etc. [A Practical Sanskrit Dictionary by Arthur Anthony MacDonell, Oxford, 1929, 1971, p.200]. So the Bhagavad Gīta, , is the "Song of God," or of the "Adorable One," "Blessed One," "Holy One," etc. The "Adorable One," of course, is Krishna, 
, Sanskrit Kṛṣṇa, who is an Incarnation of Viṣṇu, 
.
This page consists of "comments" on the Bhagavad Gīta, rather than a "commentary," because not every verse is disucussed. Also, the point of view here is not devotionalistic but historical and philosophical. The Gīta is a composite document, built over time, like the larger Mahābhārata itself. Different parts of the Gīta reflect different and sometimes conflicting influences and values. The question that Arjuna asks at the beginning of Chapter 3, which asserts that Krishna has contradicted himself in Chapter 2, reflects no contradiction in Chapter 2, which was perfectly consistent, but does signal the conflict between action and renunciation that will emerge in Krishna's answer to Arjuna. This is a key issue in all of Indian religion, where the renunciation of the world is the ultimate value in Jainism and Buddhism, and is deeply engrained in Hinduism. But it is opposed or limited by the doctrine of karmayoga, 
, in the Bhagavad Gīta, where the conflict is evident in the text. Sometimes karmayoga is not even regarded as a means of salvation, and may only be cited as karmamarga, "the way of action." Nevertheless, karmayoga underlies the sanctified practice of Mohandas Gandhi. Devotionalistic commentary on the Gīta may be found through the link to the Online Bhagavad Gīta at the bottom of the page.
2-23. Sanjaya, who has been given clairvoyant powers, by the Sage 
, to see the battle for the King, describes the scene of the battlefield, ultimately (20) coming to Krishna and Arjuna in their chariot. Arjuna asks Krishna to drive the chariot out between the armies and surveys the scene. The role of chariot driver is humble. Krishna is in this place because he is, strictly speaking, a non-combatant; but he is present to give advice. He offered Duryodhana his advice or his armies, and Duryodhana accepted the armies.
, "Govinda," from the Sanskrit word for "cow," 
, go (Vedic gau, Persian 
, gāv, English "cow"). This refers to Krishna's youth, when he played with the gopis (
), the "cowherdesses" or "milkmaids," who included Radha, Krishna's lover, shown on the cover of the Penguin edition of the Gita, even though she isn't in the Gita.
, the offerings of food and water to the ancestors. How can the dead suffer when they simply get reincarnated and endure the fruits of their karma, good or bad? This statement comes from the older level of Vedic belief. As with the Greeks, the dead were originally thought to descend into the Underworld, where they were miserable, especially without offerings from their descendants.
, is Arjuna's teacher. Killing him is shocking to Arjuna for the same kind of reason that Euthyphro prosecuting his father was shocking to Socrates: the teacher (
, guru) has a sacred office. The saying in India is, "The teacher is God," because the teacher stands in the place of God to teach religious duties. (Indian ideas about marriage may be inferred from the principle that a woman's husband is her "sacred teacher": The teacher is God; her husband is a woman's teacher; therefore....)
, Nāsato vidyáte bhāvo, nābhāvo vidyáte sataḥ. "The unreal never is; the Real never is not" is the translation of Juan Mascaró. We also find, "There is no becoming of what did not already exist, there is no unbecoming of what does exist," from J.A.B. van Buitenen [The Bhagavadgītā in the Mahābhārata, University of Chicago Press, 1981, pp.74-75], and "Nothing of nonbeing comes to be, nor does being cease to exist," from Barbara Stoler Miller [The Bhagavad Gita, Krishna's Counsel in Time of War, Bantam Books, 1986, p.49].
This sounds like Parmenides: Not-Being cannot be; Being cannot not be. The structure of this statement in Sanskrit perplexed me for many years, until it was pointed out to me that both clauses begin with contractions. Thus, nāsato and nābhāvo are short for na-asato and na-abhāvo. We have both a negative and what in Greek would be called an "alpha privative," which provides a second negative. Juan Mascaró's translation is the closest to the Sanskrit wording, but there is no word for "never" in Sanskrit. Vidyáte functions as a copula, "be found, exist." Asato and abhāvo can both mean "non-existence," but bhāva also has the sense of "becoming, arising," from the root 
, bhū, which is cognate to "be" in English, fieri, "to become," in Latin, and phyein, "to grow," in Greek -- whence φύσις, physis, "nature," φυσικά, physika, "physics." The most literal translation might be, "Non-existence does not come to be; what does not come to be is not." [See The Metaphysics of Nothing.]
, dharma, his duty, as a 
, Kṣatriya to fight the battle. This is the problem with Gandhi's desire to interpret the Gita pacifistically: Kṣatriyas really were in the business of fighting, and both Krishna and Arjuna are Kshatriyas. Krishna's argument is appropriately directed in the context.
) represents theory and Yoga (
) practice. "Sankhya" could mean "counting," "reckoning," "reasoning," or "knowledge." Krishna has thus given Arjuna the requisite knowledge, next he will teach the practical application of the knowledge, the Yoga that is the means to salvation. But another interpretation of the verse depends on recognizing that "Sankhya" and "Yoga" are also the proper names of Schools of philosophy, the earliest schools independent of the Vedas, contemporaneous with the Upanishads themselves (see The "Six Schools" of Indian Philosophy). Verse 39 thus may be telling us that the Gita contains the teachings of the Sankhya and Yoga Schools, as indeed it does in Chapter 2 and elsewhere. One theory is that the Gita was originally a popularized presentation of the Sankhya and Yoga Schools. (Be that as it may, most of the Gita consists of later additions, which are extremely devotionalistic, while Sankhya and Yoga had originally been atheistic.) The Gita thus may be said to be both a product and a source of Indian philosophy -- the product of the Sankhya and Yoga Schools, but then a source as one of the authoritative texts, along with the Upanishads and others, of later Vedānta.
(see The Indian & Buddhist Elements, and the Guṇas), is characteristic of the Sankhya school, though later it is adopted by nearly everyone in the tradition. Salvation means becoming free of the guṇas.
, Karmaṇy evādhikāras te mā phaleṣu kadācana/, 
, mā karmaphalahetur bhūr mā te sango 'stv akarmaṇi, "Set thy heart upon thy work, but never on its reward. Work not for a reward; but never cease to do thy work" [note].
This is the actual principle of the Yoga: to do one's dharma, but desire no reward for doing good. This is the kind of mental detachment that enables one to avoid karma even while continuing to physically act. Cross-culturally, this is an all but universal principle of the worth of moral intentions: from Confucius to Immanuel Kant, the proper motive of moral action is to do what is right simply because it is right. To do what is right out of hope for reward or for good consequences, even though that is the argument of philosophers like Plato and John Stuart Mill, simply reduces morality to a form of calculating prudence. In Catholic theology, doing good out of the hope of heaven and fear of hell will indeed get one into heaven, but nowhere near as close to God as from doing good for its own sake. God evidently has less respect for those who merely seem to be calculating the best return.
), and the Yoga of Chapter 2 becomes karmayoga (). In terms of the Gita, there is no reason why that should happen, and it confuses things from now on. What this change represents, however, is a real tension in the Indian tradition. While the idea of karmayoga is to participate in life, do one's dharma, and achieve salvation at the same time, there is a powerful sense in the Indian tradition that salvation can be achieved only by renouncing the world and becoming a hermit or wandering ascetic. Jñānayoga represents that sentiment. Besides the argument whether it is possible to achieve salvation through karmayoga, the problem then becomes whether it is even necessary to do one's dharma first. Buddhism and Jainism forcefully endorse the idea that renunciation should be pursued as soon as one wishes. The Buddha himself, after all, left his wife after she had just given birth to their first child. This involved a serious violation of his dharma as a Householder (see the theory of the "four stages of life" in the essay about the Caste System), and was embarrassing to Buddhism when it was preached in China -- where Confucians had no use for a man who abandoned his family. 
Hinduism has tried to hold the line, not always successfully, against dispensing with one's dharma, but the sense now, indeed, is that salvation cannot be achieved through action. Thus, if karmayoga is not really a means to salvation, it is not really a yoga; and it actually can be found called merely the karmamarga, the "way" of action, without the promise of salvation. That cannot happen, of course, in the Gita, where the whole point of the argument is karmayoga, the Yoga of Chapter 2, as the means of salvation.
) -- faith in Krishna is a means to salvation. This is never called "bhaktiyoga" in the Gita, and the implication is always that Krishna wants everyone to be devoted to him, even if they are practicing another yoga. The traditional interpretation of the Gita in Vedānta that bhaktiyoga may only be for those personalities dominated by the guṇa tamas (i.e. Vaiśyas, Śudras, Untouchables, and perhaps women too) really diverges from the sense of the Gita itself. Krishna never has anything good to say about tamas, or anything bad to say about bhaktiyoga. Contempt for devotionalism only occurs on the philosophical side of Hinduism.
). What Krishna says certainly sounds strange enough: To go to a "secret place," "in deep solitude," with "a seat that is restful," does not sound like the typical advice on the battlefield. As Arjuna, one might be tempted to shout, "Yes! Let's go there now!" There is also the strange reference to the "vow of holiness" (14). Radhakrishnan and Moore translate it as "the vow of celibacy," which is consistent with practicing meditation as a sannyāsin but is not consistent with Arjuna's status as a Kshatriya householder with two wives. Arjuna has not taken any "vow of celibacy" -- it would be inconsistent with his dharma. This passage helps demonstrate the composite nature of the Gita. It really doesn't belong in the context.
A chilling and historically significant passage. Verse 32 was remembered by Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967), who was in charge of the Manhattan Project (which built the first atomic bombs), when he saw the very first bomb explode at Trinity Site in New Mexico (nearer Socorro than Alamogordo, where the wire service story was filed), on July 16, 1945. Oppenheimer was familiar with a different translation:
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." This seems more to the point, for the Atomic Bomb, than "I am all-powerful Time which destroys all things." The word 
, kāla, can mean "Time, fate; death, god of death," so both translations express part of the meaning.
Hindu critics of the popular movie Oppenheimer [2023] have complained that Verse 32 is quoted during a sex scene between Robert Oppenheimer and his lover, Jean Tatlock (1914-1944). This is said to disparage or insult the Gīta. However, the sex scene is actually over at that point; and, although Tatlock remains nude, she is simply looking at his books, randomly pulling the Gīta of a shelf. Since it is, apparently, an edition in Sanskrit, she asks Oppenheimer to read a random verse -- which anyone, curious if he really reads Sanskrit, might do -- which turns out to be 11:32, foreshadowing his recollection after the Trinity test. Thus, there is no insult to the Gīta in the scene.
However, the proper convention would have been for Oppenheimer to have quoted the verse first in Sanskrit, and then give a translation. My professor at the University of Hawai'i, K.N. (Kashi Nath) Upadhyaya (b.1930), always did that; and I have often seen it done subsequently.
Since Oppenheimer's own recollection of 11:32 is from an interview years later, with no indication that he spoke about this to anyone at the time, the movie handles this in an interesting way, by making 11:32 actually a callback to the earlier scene with Jean Tatlock.
. That became the proper name of a Chinese school of Buddhism, which spread to Korea (pronounced Sõn [Seon] in Korean), Japan (Zen), and Vietnam (Thìên).
], RAJAS [
], TAMAS []" A whole chapter about the guṇas. "Light, fire, and darkness." The guṇas are more interesting on their psychological side: Sattva as the desire for goodness and knowledge (like Plato's Reason), rajas as the desire for action (like Plato's Spirit), and tamas as sloth, dullness, ignorance, etc. (comparable to Plato's Desire, though there is no reason why Desire should not be quite active and even intelligent -- the guṇas are all forms of desire). Note that even Sattva is a form of bondage, while Plato's Reason was the means to every good end.
The Major and Minor Books of the Mahābhārata and Synopsis
History of Philosophy, Indian Philosophy
I did not have a hope of understanding the grammar of this passage, or even of what words into which to divide it, without the help of the Sanskritist Herman Tull.
The first word is 
, karman, used in the locative case, karmaṇi. This means "action" or "work" (the familiar "karma"). The "i" gets written as a "y" at the beginning of the next word. That word is 
, eva, an emphatic particle, "so, just so," etc. Next is 
, adhikāra, "concern, striving, endeavour for" (which takes the locative, as here with karman). Next we get te, which is the genitive or possessive form of 
, tvam, the word for "you." 
, mā, is the negative, "not." Then comes 
, phala, "fruit, result, or reward," used as phaleṣu, the locative plural. The line ends with 
, kadācana, "some time, ever," which with the previous negative will mean "never."
Thus, the first line of the verse, Juan Mascaró's "Set thy heart on thy work," we could render more literally as "your concern is with the act." "Never on its reward," substitutes "reward" for "fruit," which has the potential of sounding silly, and less to the point, in English. The most familiar example of something like this in English is Matthew 7:20, "Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them." Jesus, however, appears to mean "consequences" rather than "reward."
The second line of the verse begins with mā again, and then 
, karmaphalahetur, a compound that would mean the "cause/impulse for the fruit of action," where karman and phala are already familiar and 
, hetu is "cause, motive." The next word, bhūr, is the aorist injunctive of , bhū, "be" (and a cognate of "be" itself). In both karmaphalahetur and bhūr the final "r" is a euphonic transformation (Sanskrit sandhi) of nominative "s" because of the labials ("bh" and "m") in the following words.
Then we get mā and te again, followed by sango, from 
, sanga, "desire, attachment" -- the "o" is another euphonic transformation of nominative "-as" followed by (elided) "a." Next is 
, astu, the third person imperative of as, "be," which is cognate to "is" in English (the Sanskrit "a" was an "e" in Proto-Indo-European, which turns up as "i" in Germanic languages). The "a" at the beginning of astu is elided with the avagraha sign, 
. As the "i" in karmaṇi above becomes a "y" on the following word, the "u" here becomes a "v" on the following "a." Finally, we find 
, akarmaṇi, the privative (with the prefixed a -- the "alpha privative" in Greek, making a negative) of karman in the locative again.
What Juan Mascaró translates as, "Work not for a reward," Dr. Tull suggests can be rendered, "Let there not arise the impulse for the fruit of action." "But never cease to do thy work," in turn, could be, "For you let there not be attachment to non-action." Mascaró's translation is not very literal, but it does not appear to distort the meaning at all.
The Mahābhārata, The Mahābhārata is supposed to have been composed by the Sage The J.A.B. van Buitenen (1928-1979) translation of the Mahābhārata at three volumes, for the University of Chiago Press remains incomplete due to his tragic untimely death (aged 51 years). The Press continued the task of completing the planned volumes by distributing them to different scholars, certainly with the hope to speed things along. However, completion of the project, which will render the unabridged Epic, as promised by the Press, has still been slow, with release dates for subsequent volumes getting postponed. Volume 7, containing Books 11 and 12 (Part 1), translated by James L. Fitzgerald, was published in 2003. I cannot find any other volumes yet, which seems like an extraordinary delay, since that was already fifteen years ago as I write.
A project closer to being complete is the edition of the Mahābhārata for the Clay Sanskrit Library, which is published by the New York University Press and the JJC Foundation. Like the Loeb Classical Library with Greek and Latin, and in similar sized volumes, this gives the Sanskrit text and the translation on facing pages, although the Sanskrit is transcribed and not in Denanagari. The publications of the Library were begun in 2005. So far, the following volumes of the Mahābhārata, from several different translators, are in print: Part II, "The Great Hall"; Part III, "The Forest" (volume four of four); Part IV, "Viráta"; Part V, "Preparations for War" (volume one); Part V, "Preparations for War (volume two); Part VI, "Bhishma" (volume one), Including the “Bhagavad Gita” in Context; Part VI, "Bhishma" (volume two); Part VII, "Drona" (volume one of four); Part VII, "Drona" (volume two of four); Part VIII, "Karna" (volume one); Part VIII, "Karna" (volume two); Part IX, "Śalya" (volume one); Part IX, "Śalya" (volume two); Part X-XI, "Dead of Night & The Women"; Part XII, "Peace" (volume three of five). Thus, there are several missing volumes, but from different parts of the epic, perhaps giving one a better feel for the whole than what is available in the Chicago translation.
The Mahābhārata ("Great Bharatas") is virtually the national epic of India. It is the story of a civil war in the Bhārata, Since "India" is Greek, Ἰνδία, and the other common name for the country, "Hindustan," is Persian, After some background, the story begins when the heir of the Bhāratas, After the natural heirs, Satayvatī's sons, for whom all this trouble was generated, die untimely deaths, the dynasty is continued by the later heirs not being conceived by their mother's husband, who has died, but by the Sage Vyāsa himself as a substitute.
Bhīṣma had seized three princesses for his half-brother's wives, Because the Sage is frightening in the unkempt state of a Wandering Ascetic, covered with ashes, Dhṛtarāṣṭra's mother, Ambikā, closes her eyes during their union, and the child is born blind. This is why Vyāsa wanted to clean up before performing this service, but he was told not to. Pāṇḍu's mother, Ambālikā, is warned, but she pales in her fright, and the child is born pale (which is his name) and perhaps sickly. For good measure, Vyāsa also impregates the maid, who gives birth to a half-brother who becomes the wise counselor of the realm.
Dhṛtarāṣṭra becomes the father of 100 sons, called the Kurus or Kauravas. These are born from the earth, since Dhṛtarāṣṭra's wife, Pāṇḍu, although the younger brother, succeeds to the throne because of his brother's blindness, but then he abdicates after falling under a curse that he cannot sleep with his two wives, or he will die. Although married to two women, Pāṇḍu displays a curious reluctance to consumate his marriages. They all take a "vacation" as Forest Dwellers to see if Pāṇḍu can get relaxed or aroused enough to do what he should. Before that can happen, Pāṇḍu rushes off on the hunt at the word of a tiger nearby. Unfortunately, what he shoots is not a tirger, but a Sage and his wife, who have taken the form of deer to make love. The curse is from the Sage, who denies to Pāṇḍu the joy that he denied to them. With his wives, Pāṇḍu thus retires permanently to the Forest, and Dhṛtarāṣṭra becomes king after all.
Kuntī, Doubtlessly frustrated by all this going on, and seeing Mādrī bathing, Pāṇḍu then attempts to copulate with her, and he dies. Mādrī joins him on the funeral pyre (a case of "suttee"), and Kuntī is left to raise the five sons, each a Kuntī, as it happens, had used her spell before she was married. She had a son, named Besides the curious nature of their parentage, another odd feature about the Pāṇḍavas is that they all share the same wife, Draupadī, While they grew up together, the eldest Kuru, Duryodhana, became jealous of his cousins -- with Yudhiṣṭhira, the eldest cousin, actually the heir to the Throne -- and over the years continually plots to kill or dispossess them. Even as a child, he drugs Bhīma and throws him in the river to drown. Unfortunately, Bhīma is related to the Nagas, semi-human serpents, who rescue him and endow him with the strength of ten elephants. Although the story sometimes seems to forget that he has this strength, he does display it occasionally, to spectacular effect.
Eventually Duryodhana tricks Yudhiṣṭhira into a crooked dice game, run by Ghāndārī's venegeful brother (who blames the Bhāratas for his sister's assumed blindness), who cheats him out of the half of the kingdom that Dhṛtarāṣṭra had bestowed on the Pāṇḍavas and even out of their and Draupadī's own freedom. But Kṛṣṇa is more than he seems: He is really an incarnation of God -- as God is conceived in sectarian form as Viṣṇu. When Duḥśāsana gives up trying to strip Draupadī, Bhīma, the most physically powerful brother (who later will crush a man into a small ball for insulting Draupadī) vows that he is going to kill him, tear open his chest, and drink his blood. Draupadī herself vows that she will wash her hair in Duḥśāsana's blood. Gāndhārī is shocked that things have been allowed to go this far, and Dhṛtarāṣṭra restores the freedom of the Pāṇḍavas and Draupadī. However, Duryodhana challenges Yudhiṣṭhira to a last bet, that the Pāṇḍavas must go into exile for twelve years and into hiding for one, or forfeit their kingdom. Yudhiṣṭhira loses, but then the Pāṇḍavas successfully complete the exile. Duryodhana refuses to restore their kingdom. That, and the recollection of the insults and humiliations of the dice game, results in war: the eleven armies of the Kurus against the seven armies of the Pāṇḍavas.
The Lord Kṛṣṇa offers a choice to Duryodhana, either he can have Kṛṣṇa's armies or Kṛṣṇa himself as a non-combatant advisor and charioteer. Duryodhana foolishly takes the armies; but Arjuna is wisely pleased to have Kṛṣṇa. The Bhagavad Gita takes place as the battle between the Kurus and Pāṇḍavas is about to start. Arjuna asks Kṛṣṇa to drive their chariot out between the armies so he can see them all. But, seeing them, Arjuna decides that he does not want to fight and kill his relatives and friends after all. The entire Gita is then Kṛṣṇa explaining why Arjuna must fight and how he can fight and achieve salvation at the same time.
In the battle, the Pāṇḍavas kill all the Kurus and win the whole kingdom. However, it is at great cost. All the sons of the Pāṇḍavas and Draupadī, Draupadī's father and brothers, and Arjuna and Subhadrā's son, are killed. Arjuna unwittingly kills his own brother, Karṇa, who labors under various curses that he has undeservedly acquired. The loyalty of many in the Kuru army, including Bhīṣma and Droṇa, to the Throne also overrides their judgment that it is the wrong cause.
An intriguing feature of the battle is that at key points Kṛṣṇa advises the Pāṇḍavas to gain advantages by violating the rules of the war. Thus, when Karṇa's chariot sinks into the ground (because of a curse), and Karṇa is on foot trying to dislodge it, which should, by agreement, make him immune to attack, Kṛṣṇa tells Arjuna to shoot him. Arjuna balks, but Kṛṣṇa taunts and exhorts him. Arjuna finally shoots and kills the luckless and tragic Karṇa.
Karṇa labored under three curses, one from the Avatar Paraśurāma, who had also taught Bhīṣma and Droṇa. Paraśurāma refused to teach Kṣatriyas; and, of course, Karṇa does not know that he is one. When Paraśurāma discovers that he is, because of his ability to endure pain, Karṇa is cursed that he will forgot his knowledge, such as the ability to call on divine weapons, when he needs it the most. That is what hapepned.
Later, Kṛṣṇa urges Bhīma, who has fared poorly in combat with Duryodhana, to break the Kuru's legs with his club. Again, by agreement, strikes below the belt have been ruled out; but Bhīma obeys, and so Duryodhana is disabled and left to die. Curiously, like Achilles, Duryodhana had been rendered invulnerable to harm, when Ghāndārī uncovered her eyes and looked upon him, with her accumulated power, one and only one time. She had instructed him to stand naked, but Duryodhana had modestly covered his loins, which thus were unaffected. This is where Bhīma strikes him.
The Pāṇadavas already had to deal with Bhīṣma and Droṇa, whom they could not defeat in open combat. Bhīṣma is undone by the vengeance of Ambhā, who is reincarned as a man, and appears in the battle, but whom Bhīṣma recognizes and will not shoot. Behind her(/him), Arjuna immobilizes Bhīṣma by filling him with arrows, so that he lies on the "bed" of arrows until deciding to die, after the battle and after instructing the Pāṇadavas in political wisdom.
Kṛṣṇa's willingness to break faith in order that the better side should win is reminiscent of the counsel of Machiavelli. Similarly, the willingness to go beyond the rules of war in a good cause, together with the other associations of the Bhagavad Gita with it, draw us back to the Trinity Site, where the first atomic bomb was detonated. Indeed, the battle ends when Aśvatthāmā casts a celestial weapon, the Aṣīka weapon, powerful enough to destroy the universe, to kill, in revenge for his father, the grandson of Arjuna, through Subhadrā, in the very womb of his mother Uttarā. This is what happens. But Kṛṣṇa says that it cannot be allowed to be, and he brings the baby back to life.
The moral ambivalence of the Mahābhārata, reminiscent of the fifth characteristic of mytho-poeic thought, and so true to life, contributes to its power. It is triumphant and tragic at once, where good wins out but at a great cost in fortune and conscience, and with some acknowledgement of the virtues of the enemy, especially with those like Bhīṣma, Droṇa, and Karṇa who are good themselves but honor-bound to fight on the wrong side. The moral ambiguity of the story is continued afterwards, where the rewards of Heaven do not seem to always match the desserts of the Kurus and Pāṇḍavas.
The dilemmas of Bhīṣma, Droṇa, and Karṇa have an application in recent American politics. Were Robert E. Lee and Stonwall Jackson good men? Did they know they were fighting in a evil cause? Was Lee, especially, bound by honor to his State, Virginia, right or wrong? Should Lee himself continue to be, as it happens, honored? Bhīṣma, certainly is. The moral issues of the Mahābhārata thus may be universally sobering.
I am familiar with two video versions of the Mahābhārata in Hindi, one from 1988 in 94 episdoes, produced by B.R. and Ravi Chopra, and one from 2013, produced by Swastik [! An ambitious version of the Mahābhārata as a play was first staged, in French, in 1985. It was translated into English by director Peter Brook in 1987 and performed thereafter for two years, on world tours, in both French and English. The play was nine hours long, expanded to eleven hours with breaks. With an international cast, it transformed the story into a world, not just an Indian, epic. It contains some details that the Hindi versions do not have, including a treatment of the story after the battle, which the 1988 Hindi version completely skips. But the play also reduces the Bhagavad Gita to about five minutes, with little evident understanding of what it is all about. A six hour version of the play was produced for a mini-series in 1989, later released on video; and a three or four hour version was then given a theaterical movie release.
History of Philosophy, Indian Philosophy
The Major and Minor Books of the Mahābhārata
and Synopsis (Mǝhabharǝt in Hindi), may be the longest epic is world history. And there is even a saying, "Everything that ever happened is in the Mahābhārata." There is even a version of the companion epic, the 
, within the Mahābhārata. Part of the reason for all this is the idea in the Indian tradition that all events are cyclical, so that anything that has ever happened happens over and over again, like Nietzsche's "eternal recurrence." Thus, "history" does not consist of unique events and does not need to be recorded as such -- as indeed it wasn't, to the frustration of modern historians. The Mahābhārata and the Ramayāna, as the "Fifth Veda," contain the archetype and the paradigm for any other history.
, whose anomalous parentage is also recounted in the epic, and where he is a participant himself. The Indian equivalent of Homer, Vyāsa is thus likewise of legendary status, with elements of the miraculous that attend Indian sages.
(1) The Book of the Beginning
(2) The Book of the Assembly Hall
(3) The Book of the Forest
(4) The Book of Virāṭa
(5) The Book of the Effort
(6) The Book of Bhīṣma
(7) The Book of Droṇa
(8) The Book of Karṇa
Ghaṭotkaca
(9) The Book of Śalya
(10) The Book of the Sleeping Warriors
(11) The Book of the Women
(12) The Book of the Peace
(13) The Book of the Instructions
(14) The Book of the Horse Sacrifice
(15) The Book of the Hermitage
(16) The Book of the Clubs
(17) The Book of the Great Journey
(18) The Book of the Ascent to Heaven
, clan, and it contains the Bhagavad Gita (minor book number 63), which is used in my Introduction to Philosophy class. The Mahābhārata is perhaps the largest epic in world literature, with 100,000 some verses. It is divided into 18 major and 100 minor books, listed at left.
(Hendustān), when India became independent in 1947, "Bhārat" was
chosen to be the official name of the country. We get "Bhārat" rather than "Bhārata" because short final a's are not pronounced in Hindī: thus you may see Arjuna called "Arjun," Bhīma "Bhīm," and the Mahābhārata itself "Mahābhārat."
, whose mother is actually the goddess 
, the Ganges River, renounces both the kingship and marriage. This is so that his father can be remarried to a woman, 
, who requires that the succession to the throne go through her children and that there be no conflict about it, i.e. no alternative heirs. The conflict comes later. Bhīṣma is named after the Oath he swears of celibacy, for which the gods grant him, not exactly immortality, but his choice of when to die.
, 
, and 
. He releases Ambā as betrothed to another -- by whom she is nevertheless rejected, leaving her vowing eternal vengeance on Bhīsma. Bhīṣma ends up with two nephews, 
and 
.
who wears a blindfold to share her husband's blindness, gave birth to a large ball of flesh, which was divided into 100 pieces that were planted like seeds. These grew into babies.
, Pāṇḍu's elder wife, has a secret. She possesses a spell that enables her to call down the gods; and Pāṇḍu agrees that she should conceive children by them. The god Dharma (duty) begets 
, Vāyu (the wind) begets 
, and Indra begets 
. Using the same device Pāṇḍu's second wife, 
, Mādrī, calls down the twin gods the Ashvins who beget the twins 
and 
.
, in their uncle's court, to which she returns.
, by Sūrya, the sun god. Fearing disgrace, she set Karṇa floating down the river in a basket (like Moses or the great Mesopotamian king Sargon of Akkad). Karṇa was raised by a royal chariot-driver. After growing up, sensing his own power, Karṇa tries to participate in a royal tournament, but he is snubbed as a commoner by the Pāṇḍavas. He is then accepted as a friend and equal by the eldest of the Kurus, 
, to spite the Pāṇḍavas. This will have tragic results, as Karṇa refuses to be disloyal to Duryodhana, even after learning the truth of his own origin and understanding the wrongness of Duryodhan'a cause.
. Draupadī's father wanted her to marry Arjuna, so he set up a bride contest where suitors were required to string a bow that had been made so powerful that only Arjuna, presumably, could do so and then achieve a difficult shot, again, presumably, that only Arjuna would be able to do. This is reminiscent of a similar situation in the Odyssey, where Penelope, awaiting the long overdue return of Odysseus from Troy, requires that suitors for her hand string Odysseus's bow. They cannot do it; and when Odysseus does return (after twenty years), he strings the bow and then shoots them all. Arjuna, as it happens, strings the bow, makes the shot, and wins Draupadī's hand. But when he returns home and announces to his mother that he has won something, Kuntī, who thinks the boys have been out getting some food, says that he must share it with his brothers. Since Kuntī is a queen, she cannot take back her order, so Draupadī marries all five Pāṇḍavas. Their agreement, however, is that only one husband sleeps with Draupadī at a time and that the other husbands cannot even enter the room when Draupadī is with one.
Then he insults Draupadī by asking his brother, Duḥśāsana, to pull off her clothes. In a famous scene, Draupadī's clothes are miraculously restored as they are pulled off. Although the text does not say so (and Kṛṣṇa is not even present), this miracle is believed by the pious to have been effected by the Lord Kṛṣṇa (, Krishna in Hindī), a king and friend of Arjuna. Arjuna had taken Kṛṣṇa's sister, 
, as a second wife.
, the teacher of the Pāṇḍavas and Kurus, is defeated when Kṛṣṇa persuades Yudhiṣṭhira -- who, like George Washington, cannot tell a lie -- to lie to Droṇa that his son, Aśvatthāmā, has been killed. Droṇa is undone, lets his weapons drop, and is killed by Draupadī's brother, who has his own reasons for vengeance.
!] Productions Pvt. Ltd. The former was too early for much sophistication in special effects, which are generally cheesy and sometimes ludicrous. However, the casting and acting are brilliant, and the story is presented in some detail. The 2013 production, naturally, excels in special effects and is beautifully done, but it leaves out large parts of the story, perhaps to avoid the strange, uncomfortable, or embarrassing features of the original epic. There is a little of that in the 1988 version, which avoids the story of the odd origin of the Kurus and skips over the case of suttee on the part of Madrī. However, the 2013 version gives us almost no information about the birth of any of the major characters, without even the detail of Dhṛtarāṣṭra being born blind, or why that happened. Instead, we get largely irrelevant comments to the audience from Krishna, long before he is even introduced into the story. I do not find that helpful, or even interesting. Thus, the 1988 version remains superior, despite the demands it makes on more sophisticated viewers.
Copyright (c) 1998, 2003, 2004, 2010, 2013, 2018, 2019, 2020 Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved
