Foreword

The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are the two renowned epics of India. The Mahabharata as its name hints tells the story of the noble descendants of King Bharata. Its reputed author was Vedavyasa.

The Mababharata is known as Panchama Veda, the fifth Veda. It was specially written in order to make the sublime knowledge of the four Vedas available to the common folks. Few books have ever exerted such profound influence on the minds of men as the Mahabharata.

The immortal epic Mahabharata is unique in every way. It gives an account of persons with different qualities. maxims for right conduct and indicates the ways so realize God. With its hundred thousand slokas, it is a "full treatise on the science of society giving portraits, customs. heroic deeds of persons and contains a picture of universal movement light and shades". In his own inimitable manner Vyasa has brought home to us the truth that sin and sinfulness are certain to be destroyed and even good souls, if they associate with these.

Philosophy seldom appeals to the mind. But in Mahabharata even the most abstruse philosophic truths are put across by means of stories and legends. This is the secret of its popularity among all classes of people.

We may find priceless teachings in the great Hindu poem of the Mahabharata. This is a book which must be placed in the hands of the young to awaken in them an awareness of our rich moral heritage and to lift them from the dropping faith in values .

Sanskrit, as a tool of cultural communication, holds a unique place among the languages of the world. Nowadays, there are very few youngsters who are familiar with Sanskrit to read through the book in the original. The only alternative is to read 'translations.

Dr. Nanduri Ramakrishnamacharya has rendered the epic into English. Nothing of importance in the ethical and the spiritual teaching of Mahabharata is left out. At places, it reads not as a summary, but the original. Reading the book is liberal and religious education.

A very noteworthy point about the book is its excellent readability. The book is a tribute to the scholarship and erudition of Dr. Acharya. We hope that this volume will be of considerable value for both spiritual men and laymen.

Preface

The Mahabharata is the largest literary work ever composed in the annals of the world. It comprises eighteen voluminous treatises containing about one lakh verses of four lines each. In sheer size it is six times bulkier than the Iliad and the Odyssey put together.

The Mahabharata is the most important landmark in the cultural evolution of mankind 'and the biggest heritage which ancient India has bequeathed to the succeeding generations.

However, this modest book,-the epitome of the great Indian Epic, the Mahabharata in a nutshell-is conceived as a compendious composition mirroring the monumental work in a small compass.

The Sanskrit Mahabharata-to borrow the native idiom is a gigantic equatorial forest harbouring a dazzling variety of flora and fauna, girdling the globe. This little volume, is neither a translation nor a judicious abridgement of the original. To continue the metaphor. this is a mini-municipal park. However, sincere care has been taken to transplant all the botanical specimens from the mother forest into the miniature nursery.

The Mahabharata is essentially a literary masterpiece narrating the secular as well as the spiritual experiences connected with the Bharata Dynasty extending over several generations. Bhagavadgita, the Song Celestial is a part and parcel of this epic. The Mahabharata together with its innumerable parables and fables. episodes and anecdotes has propounded a theory of philosophical Relativity, harmonizing the secular and the spiritual into a synthesis and symphony wherein the parameters and paradoxes. contradictions and conflicts of life lose their static connotations to acquire a dynamic concord and concomitance.

Thus all the concepts including truth and non-violence. justice and fair play, crime and punishment. good and evil right and wrong etc. are viewed by the Mahabharata and evaluated vis-a-vis their geocentric longitude and latitude. different chronological axes, and diverse human aptitudes. It is maintained that no man can ever bathe in the same river twice; the water is not the same; the man as well is not the same. Change is the inexorable' law of nature as well as the secret of the atoms. The Mahabharata has dealt with the world of relativity synthesizing secular dimensions with spiritual dynamics. Thus no concept or ideal, according to the Mahabharata, has an absolute value or a circumscribed meaning. Sri Krishna, the practical philosopher par excellence, has been the author of this way of life distinct from the doctrinaire approach of didactic dogmatism.

The original Mahabharata in the Sanskrit is replete with many 'Majestic Maxims' 'antithetical. aphorisms' with their crisp cadences and metrical melodies: I have tried, in my own humble way to translate some of them into English and to incorporate them into this book. Thus this venture is not a prosaic paraphrase of the poetry and philosophy embedded in the Mahabharata. I have tried to add explanation as well as expansion, elucidation and elaboration wherever necessary. Here and there, there may be some sentences influenced by the Sanskrit syntax and Indian idiom. The native reader will of course experience no difficulty with them. Even the foreign student, I hope, will be pleased to enjoy the unfamiliar fragrance and flavour for a while. The English language is known for its catholicity and capacity for absorption and assimilation of international influences and is certainly richer benefitted by cross-fertilisation of cultures.

A glossary is appended for the benefit of the reader. I hope, the prospective citizens of the world, in the rising generations of all the countries, will find ample corroboration for their convictions in this book as the Mahabharata is not merely an Indian classic but a truly international epic. World literature is one, though written in different languages. Mankind is one though designated into different races. Mythology is the shell and man is the kernel of the Mahabharata. Unity in diversity is the soul of the whole story. The burden of the song of this sublime saga of humanity, is 'elasticity of the mind for the sake of enlightenment'.

In English there are very few books on the Mahabharata. They have viewed the epic from different angles. This book contains a connected account of the whole story, strictly following the Sanskrit original. I have appended a chapter, The Mahabharata-A Chronological Study, wherein I have incorporated all the theories enunciated so far by eminent scholars, Indian as well as foreign, who have done commendable research to determine the date of the Mahabharata war and the composition of the epic. Likewise I have appended another chapter, Mahabharata=Myth and Reality analysing the latest views of eminent scholars as well as historians and archaeologists. In another chapter, I have traced the historical evolution of the epic and discussed the problem of authorship and redactors exhaustively. In this sense, I think, this is the first comprehensive book, in a concise compass, on the Mahabharata in English.

In the concluding verses of the epic, the Suta in his convocation address of the Satrayaga where the Mahabharata was narrated to the ascetics of Naimisa forest, says,

"Anything elsewhere is an echo of what is here, What is not here is nowhere.”

The earnest reader of the Mahabharata is twice blessed because he can secure the best of both the worlds, the sceptre here and the salvation in the next.

Even a casual reader who comprehends a single sentence or a solitary syllable will find the Mahabharata to be a sublime, spiritual sanctuary to which one can return for refuge, securing comfort and consolation, confidence and candour.

Anybody, who masters the epic, will become a practical philosopher who can rise above life's perplexities and puzzles, doubts and dilemmas and face all challenges with courage and conviction, scaling summits of prosperity and peace, success and self-realisation.

The claim made by Suta many centuries ago is more or less valid even today.

The Mahabharata, I hope as the author mentions, will illumine the mind of man as long as the sun and the moon shine and the stars twinkle, as it portrays the Eternal Drama of human existence, with all its ironies and intricacies, subtleties and susceptibilities, suffocations and satisfactions, mysteries and melodies, the psychological heights and emotional depths.

In conclusion, I thank the T. T. D. Tirupati for sponsoring the publication of this book. In particular, I offer my hearty congratulations to Shri P. V. R. K. Prasad, I.A.S. Former Executive Officer, T. T. D.

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