REVIEW OF MAHABHARATA

The Mahabharata is one of India’’s two great ancient epics. And Rajgopalchari has as such narrated it brilliantly. It something for everybody and I am not merely saying that in a moralizing sense. It contains scenes of war, faith, love, duty, obedience, adventure. One of the reasons why it is a great book is that there are a large number of characters in the book having different natures. Even the good natured characters do wrong things at times and vice-versa. It is clearly a delight to read about how the characters have to deal with their personalities at different stages of the book. Secondly the 18 day war almost at the end of the book is supposedly its greatest plus point as one can learn so many lessons from it. To sum it up it is basically about the war between good and evil at a immense scale. It starts with the story of Shantanu the Bharata king who rules Hastinapur. On the banks of Ganga he meets his first wife,the goddess Ganga. They marry and have children. The first seven she drowns in a lake because of a curse incurred by them in a previous life. As Shantanu questions his wife, when she is in the process of drowning her 8th son,on her behaviour of killing her sons she reveals her real identity and taking her 8th son leaves him. After some time Shantanu bereft of a wife rules his kingdom in a ascetic manner and one day when he is roaming near the banks of Ganga, the goddess appears and hands over their 8th son Devavrata to Shantanu. Shantanu immensely happy takes him home and crowns him heir-apparent to the kingdom of Hastinapur.To be continued.

~ by Anirudh on October 22, 2007.