The Mahabharata: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic
R. K. Narayan
Language: English
Pages: 216
ISBN: 022605165X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Centuries of listeners and readers have been drawn to The Mahabharata, which began as disparate oral ballads and grew into a sprawling epic. The modern version is famously long, and at more than 1.8 million words—seven times the combined lengths of the Iliad and Odyssey—it can be incredibly daunting.
Contemporary readers have a much more accessible entry point to this important work, thanks to R. K. Narayan’s masterful translation and abridgement of the poem. Now with a new foreword by Wendy Doniger, as well as a concise character and place guide and a family tree, The Mahabharata is ready for a new generation of readers. As Wendy Doniger explains in the foreword, “Narayan tells the stories so well because they’re all his stories.” He grew up hearing them, internalizing their mythology, which gave him an innate ability to choose the right passages and their best translations.
In this elegant translation, Narayan ably distills a tale that is both traditional and constantly changing. He draws from both scholarly analysis and creative interpretation and vividly fuses the spiritual with the secular. Through this balance he has produced a translation that is not only clear, but graceful, one that stands as its own story as much as an adaptation of a larger work.
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Own limb. How can I live? Will he forgive me? Is he alive?’ We revived him and then he ordered, ‘Go and seek Vidura wherever he may be, and if he is alive, beg him to return. Tell him how I feel like branding my tongue with hot iron for my utterance. Sanjaya, my life depends upon you, go this instant and find him.’” Vidura had no choice but to return to Hastinapura. On seeing him, Dhritarashtra, who had lain prostrate, sat up and wept with joy. But this situation did not suit his sons. Sakuni,.
Knowing by intuition what was afoot, arrived and advised them to drop their adventure. Turning to Dhritarashtra he said, “Listen to me; I will tell you what will help you. Don’t allow this hostility to continue. Your brother’s children are only five, yours are a hundred…. You have no cause for envy. Command your sons to go out and make their peace with the Pandavas. Otherwise, as I read the future, at the end of thirteen years the Pandavas will wipe you out of human memory. Heed my warning.”.
Class and employ words as a weapon, and also perhaps you have been instructed to speak thus. Everyone knows that lawfully the Pandavas must get back everything, and Arjuna is invincible once he is provoked….” At this point Karna interrupted angrily, “Oh, Brahmin, don’t forget that Sakuni played on behalf of Duryodhana as agreed by Yudhistira, won the game, and Yudhistira went into exile as stipulated. If the Pandavas had won, Duryodhana would have experienced the same fate. But he would have.
Heart. After Dussasana, the responsibility rests fully on you.” Karna had his chariot driven towards Arjuna and sent his choicest weapons across. A dazzling fiery arrow, called the Serpent, came spitting fire, searching out Arjuna’s head. In the nick of time, Krishna pressed down the chariot and sunk it five fingers deep into the ground. The arrow missed Arjuna’s head, but knocked off his crown. Red with anger, Arjuna fixed an arrow to finish off his opponent. At this moment, Karna’s fated hour.
Death. Pandu’s end came on rather suddenly. One day, going into the woods in the company of Madri, he was overcome by the spirit of the hour and the mood of the spring, with tender leaves on the trees, and colourful blossoms, and the cries of birds, and the stirrings of animal life all around. Unable to resist the attraction of Madri at his side, he seized her passionately, in spite of her reminder of the curse, and died during intercourse. Entrusting her twins to the care of Kunthi, Madri.