The Mahabharata is a long epic poem of ancient India, covering stories and philosophies about life. It centers on a feud between two lineages of cousins, with gods playing a significant role. The Bhagavad Gita is a famous section in which the god Krishna advises Prince Arjuna during a battle. The story ends with the Pandavas winning the war but with a sense of horror at its consequences. The aftermath sees the brothers die one by one, with Yudishthira passing the ultimate pure test to enter heaven.
The Mahabharata is an epic poem of the Indian subcontinent, which is one of the most important texts of the Hindu faith. It dates back to the 8th century BC, with later portions added up to the 4th century BC. The name itself roughly means, tale of the Bharata dynasty, and is a mythological story of ancient India.
The Mahabharata is more than 1.8 million words long, spread across 74,000 distinct verses, making it one of the longest poems in the world. It covers a great deal of material, ranging from simple stories to entire philosophies about life. The Mahabharata begins with a claim to completeness, stating, “What is found here can be found elsewhere. What is not found here will not be found anywhere else.”
There are a number of sections of the Mahabharata which are relatively complete in and of themselves and are often considered to be individual works constituting a larger whole. The most famous of these is the Bhagavad Gita, a section in which the avatar Krishna advises Prince Arjuna during the battle of Kurukshetra, when Arjuna faces his family members.
The main story arc of the Mahabharata is the story of two lineages of paternal cousins. These are the five sons of King Pandu and the hundred sons of the blind king Dhritarashtra. It centers on their feud and battles for the kingdom of Bharata. King Pandu’s sons, known as Pandavas, were also sons of a god, and gods play heavily in the story of the Mahabharata. They offer assistance and advice in everything, and the dynamic between gods is sometimes as important as the dynamic between mortals. This is similar in many ways to the Greek story of the Trojan War.
The most important of the gods depicted is the supreme god, Vishnu himself. He comes to earth through his avatar Krishna to give advice to the Pandavas, especially Arjuna. Sometimes it becomes clear that Krishna indeed desires this epic war and is using the Pandavas in many ways to achieve his goal.
The story begins with the sons of Dhritarashtra taking advantage of the Pandavas, abusing them in many ways and finally banishing them to the desert for twelve years and another year in hiding, with the knowledge that at the end of these thirteen years their other half of the kingdom would be returned to them. The Pandavas underwent their exile, but ultimately Dhritarashtra’s cohort refused to fulfill their obligation. This led to a monumental war between the two sides, encompassing most of the Mahabharata.
Throughout the Mahabharata story, various gods and counselors espouse different views on righteousness, dharma, and man’s place in the world. This philosophical foundation is best seen in Krishna’s sermon to Arjuna, but it exists everywhere. Eventually the Pandavas win the battle, but only after abandoning the straight path of warfare and killing four father figures. The conclusion of the Mahabharata is not a happy resolution but actually a sense of deep horror at what the war has led to, and although many figures in the story, including Krishna himself, justify the actions, the reader is nonetheless left with a sense that the war was wrong.
The aftermath of the story has the mother Pandava retiring to live an ascetic life, the avatar Krishna living a violent and decadent life until she dies and is reunited with Vishnu, and the Pandavas traveling north to the gate of the celestial world. The brothers die one by one, until only Yudishthira is alive, along with a dog companion. He arrives at the Heavenly Gate and is tested when asked to chase the dog away. He refuses, as the dog was his faithful companion, and it is revealed that the dog is his divine father, Dharma. He is then shown heaven and is shown that it is inhabited only by the Dhritarashtras and the other Pandavas are in hell. He then insists on being sent to hell to join his brothers, and it is revealed that they are indeed in heaven, and that he has passed the ultimate pure test, and is permitted to enter heaven.
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