The Mahabharata is a complex story with complex characters, and you can spend hours thinking about the characters, what they did, why they did it, and what else could they have done?

Before reading the books, Karna was easily my favorite character, he is noble, he is loyal, he is brave, life has been unfair to him, but he has been devoted to his cause throughout his life. He gave his word to Kunti that he will only kill Arjuna, and in the war he spares the life of the other brothers when he could have killed them.

Arjuna certainly seems the hero of the epic, he is free from fear, never retreats from battle, is immensely powerful, supremely confident of his strength; the reason he remorses before the battle is not because he is afraid but because he is tormented at the prospect of killing all his friends and relatives whom he is certain he can and will kill.

Draupadi is an amazing woman, she is beautiful, loyal, lusts for blood when it is warranted, is supremely wise and asks question that not even Bhishma could answer. During her vastra – haran she asked everyone in court whether Yudhisthara lost himself first or her? And if he lost himself first then what right does he have to put her at stake? Bhishma acknowledges that dharma is subtle and he can’t answer her question.

Bhishma himself is one of the greatest warriors of his time, who even defeated Parshurama, who rid the earth of all Kshatriyas 22 times. He is devoted to his family and took up brahmacharya for the sake of his father. He is loyal to the throne, and at the end tells Yudhishthara everything about Dharma, and Moksha and was an extremely wise person.

Bheema has the strength of 10,000 elephants, gets angered when one should get angry, restrains himself for the sake of his brother, and every time Draupadi needs help in the Mahabharata she goes to Bheema and he delivers without fail.

Duryodhana caused great destruction due to his greed and envy, but he was as strong as any of the Pandavas save perhaps Arjuna.  He governed the kingdom well, and built strong alliances; he calculated correctly that he could win the war, and if it had not been the deceit brought upon by Krishna, he would have won the war.

Gandhari was a great, strong woman who endured the sadness of the death of her 100 sons, had great tej herself and when the Pandavas visit her after the Kauravas are killed, she glances at Yudhisthara’s nails and they get malformed because of her grief and rage. All the Pandavas then hide behind Krishna due to her anger. This is perhaps the only instance in the story where Arjuna himself is scared. She is a wise woman who tries to dissuade Duryodhana from certain destruction, she is a kind woman who forgives the Pandavas, and she is a stern woman who curses Krishna himself, and brings about the destruction of the Yadavas.

Krishna is of course one of the most revered Hindu gods, he was Vishnu reincarnate, without him the Pandavas could not have won, perhaps it is not even fair to think of Krishna in the same vein as the other characters, but he was not without his flaws either.

The worst episode related to Krishna in my opinion is the death of Ghatotkacha. Karna gets the divine spear from Indra in exchange for his kavach and kundal and he is certain to kill Arjuna with this weapon. Krishna knows this and goads Yudhishthara to unleash Ghatotkacha and his asura army on the Kauravas knowing that only the divine spear can stop him. Karna has to use the divine spear and kills Ghatotkacha.

Krishna then promptly proceeds to dance over the dead body of Ghatotkacha in his glee and that makes for a very ugly scene.

My favorite character however is none of these, over the course of the books I have strongly identified, and come to appreciate Yudhishthara.

He is wise, he seeks knowledge, he is the son of Dharma, but he still feels confused, he heads the army of Pandavas which has Arjuna and Krishna, but the sight of Kaurava army instills fear in his heart, and he seeks reassurance from Arjuna that they can still win the battle. He aspires to do the right thing, and does it more often than not.

He is addicted to vice, and of course he lost all his riches in the game of dice where he was bound by Dharma to play the game knowing what it will lead to, but he was completely reckless at the end of the battle when he offers Duryodhana to pick any of the Pandavas to fight with a weapon of his choice, and if he won then he could have everything back. He was promptly censured by Krishna and luckily for him Duryodhana picked Bheema because of his own pride and ego.

He laments the great grief he has brought upon to his brothers and Draupadi, but is wise enough to understand the true destruction this war that his brothers are craving for will bring, and tries his utmost to avoid it. He is free of greed, and follows the right path as much as he can.

He does everything for the sake of his family, and subjects, and yet causes great sadness to them at times.

He wins the war, and the great destruction causes such grief to him that he is willing to give up everything and go to the forest after winning.

He has great wisdom, and composure and realizes that Draupadi is not being allowed entry to heaven due to her loving Arjuna a little more than others. He has always known this but never held it against her.

Towards the very end, he is asked to desert a dog if he wants entry to heaven, and he refuses to abandon his loyal friend. This is his final test and he passes it.

Yudhishthara to me is always seeking to do the right thing, not always succeeding, but always trying.

He gives in to his vices, laments, and tries to reform, he succeeds, but he fails too. He aspires to do the right thing when at times he struggles to even know what the right thing is. He is wise in his ways, but he is not infallible, he is strong, but he is also weak, he is devoted to his family and friends, but also causes them great grief.

He is every man and woman.

I’ve finished reading about the Mahabharata war, and it has been described in such gory detail you get goosebumps at times.

There is almost total destruction of both armies with only 8 rathis (warrior capable of attacking 5,000 soldiers simultaneously) surviving on both sides, and I wondered how many people died in that war.

I tried to calculate this with how the two armies were described. The Pandavas had 7 Akshauhinis, while the Kauravas had 11 Akshauhinis.

An Akshauhini is a battle formation that consists of chariots, elephants, cavalry and infantry in the ratio of 1:1:3:5 and there are 21,870 chariots, equal number of elephants, 65,610 cavalry, and 109,350 infantry.

This is typical of Mahabharata where the numbers are always large, and never easy to remember. It is also quite fascinating because the total of the digits of the large numbers comes to 18, and I feel it couldn’t be a coincidence, but the purpose to it is probably lost now.

If you consider the destruction of 18 Akshauhinis, you arrive at a number which is slightly less than 4 million, so that could be taken as body count.

But of course the number of soldiers on a horse, elephant or chariot is unknown so you could double or triple this number.

However, this question is answered in the Mahabharata itself when Dhritarashtra asks Yudhisthara how many of the soldiers are slain, and Yudhisthara replies 1.6 billion (1,660,020,000) soldiers have been slain and 24,165 are missing.

There is no way to reconcile 4 million with over a billion, and of course there is no need to; the incongruence of the tale lends beauty to it.

I’ve not written about any stories from Mahabharata recently because I’m currently at the part of the war, and ironically I find these volumes a little less interesting than the rest of the tale.

I did come across a very interesting incident in the war today, that I thought was worth a post.

This incident takes place when Arjuna and Karna engage in battle, and Karna reaches into his quiver and takes out an arrow which has the serpent Ashwasena in its mouth.

There is a very interesting background to this where Arjuna and Krishna burn the Khandava forest much earlier in the Mahabharata, and kill everyone except six beings there. This is a very gory incident, and they are asked to do this by Agni who wants to consume the forest. In some other texts you find references to the fact that this forest was cleared so the Pandavas could create their capital at Indraprastha.

Out of the six beings spared, one is Vishwakarma who later builds the Pandava’s palace for being spared, and four are Rishi Mandapala’s peacock children.

Rishi Mandapala takes the form of a peacock and has sex with another peacock so he can beget children, and fulfill his worldly duties to gain entry into heaven.

The last one is Ashwasena, who is a serpent. He was saved because his mother swallows him head first, and jumps out of the burning forest. Arjuna shoots an arrow and severs his mother’s head, but since Ashwasena is inside her, he is saved, and seeks revenge on Arjuna.

Karna has been worshipping this serpent, and keeping him to use against Arjuna, and affixes him on his arrow, and aims at Arjuna’s head.

Shalya, who is Karna’s charioteer, but has struck a deal with the Pandavas to demoralize Karna seems to give Karna good advice this one time when he says this arrow won’t reach Arjuna’s neck, and you should affix another arrow on this arrow, and fire it that way.

Karna rejects this advice because this is a deceitful way of fighting, and releases the arrow on Arjuna.

Arjuna has been given a diadem or royal crown by his father Indra. This diadem was created by Brahma himself, and consists of a big diamond on the forehead among other precious gems, and is famous throughout the world as being indestructible, and bringing happiness and victory to whoever wears it. In fact, one of Arjuna’s name is Kiriti which means one who wears the celestial diadem.

When Karna releases the arrow, Krishna who is Arjuna’s charioteer recognizes Ashwasena and how it is headed toward’s Arjuna’s head.

To save Arjuna, Krishna presses down the chariot with the strength of his feet, and the chariot wheels sink in the ground, and the horses kneel down.

The arrow misses Arjuna’s head but strike the diadem, and Ashwasena rips the royal crown created by Brahma off Arjuna’s head, and destroys it with the virulence of his poison.

Ashwasena then asks Arjuna if he remembers him, but Arjuna does not, and Krishna reminds him that Arjuna had killed his mother, and this serpent is set on revenge and therefore needs to be killed. Arjuna easily kills him with six more arrows, and destroys the serpent.

The critical edition ends this story here but some regional editions have shlokas that say that the serpent returned to Karna and asked him to release him from an arrow a second time because the first time Karna did not look at Ashwasena before releasing him, and that’s why he missed. Karna refuses this because it is against dharma to use the same weapon a second time.

All in all, a very interesting little episode.

 

The Bhagavada Gita, translated to Song Celestial is perhaps the most important Hindu religious text, and it is narrated to Arjuna by Krishna just before the Mahabharata war begins. This dialogue is witnessed by Sanjaya through his divine sight, and it is through him that we witness the Gita.

This chapter in the Mahabharata is called the Bhagavada Gita Parva, and contains 994 shlokas (not all of them part of the Bhagavada Gita itself). For the Mahabharata, this is not a chapter of great size, because the next chapter — Bhishma Vadha Parva has 3,947 shlokas.

However, the Gita has 634 footnotes because a single word like for instance smriti can have a lot of meaning behind it which has been explained as footnotes. Dr. Debroy has also used the footnotes to point out certain difficulties in translating specific words, and confusing passages as well as passages that seem to have been added later because they don’t go along with the main theme.

In general, I’ve been doing a synopsis of stories that I found interesting, but this is not a synopsis because that is perhaps an errand that requires many hours of study, and an understanding that I don’t possess.

Instead, I’m just presenting a few passages that I found interesting because I didn’t want to skip the Gita altogether since it is such an important part of the Mahabharata.

The Kaurava army is much larger than the Pandava army because the Kauravas have 11 Akshauhinis while the Pandavas only have 7 Akshauhinis, and Yudhishthara seeks reassurance from Arjuna that they can still win the war despite the smaller army.

Arjuna reassures him and is confident that they can win the war, and tells his charioteer Lord Krishna to place his chariot between the two armies so he can take a better look at the Kaurava army.

But when Arjuna’s chariot is placed in between the two armies, he is overcome with grief at the thought that he will have to kill all his ancestors, teachers, cousins, and friends in this war, and he drops his weapons telling Krishna that this will be a great sin, and a kingdom won in this fashion is not worth winning at all.

On the Soul

This is really the beginning of Bhagavada Gita as Lord Krishna now begins talking to Arjuna.

The first thing he says to him is the indestructibility of the soul. He tells Arjuna that the soul can neither be created, nor be destroyed, it has always existed, and will always continue to exist. Knowing this you should understand that you can neither slay, nor can you be slain. The person who is not affected by this, and looks at happiness and unhappiness equally attains the right to immortality.

On Dharma

Next Krishna tells Arjuna about following one’s natural dharma, and tells him that since Arjuna is a kshatriya, his natural dharma is to fight, and he should rejoice at the prospect of this war. If he dies in the war then he will attain heaven, and if he wins then he will enjoy the earth.

This is the part where perhaps the most famous parts of the Bhagavada Gita are mentioned. Relevant  shloka, translation, and passage:

Karmanye Vadhikaraste, Ma phaleshou kada chana,
Ma Karma Phala Hetur Bhurmatey Sangostva Akarmani

कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन।
मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि॥

You have the right to action alone. You never have the right to the fruit. Do not be motivated to act because of the fruit. But don’t be motivated to not acting either. O Dhananjaya! Perform action by resorting to yoga. Give up attachment. Look upon success and failure equally. This equal attitude is known as yoga. O Dhananjaya! Action is far inferior to the yoga of wisdom. Seek refuge in this wisdom. Pitiable are those who crave the fruit. He who has this wisdom, discards good action, and evil action in this life itself.

The passage below builds upon what is said before:

If a person can so control his senses, in him is wisdom established. If a man thinks about sensual objects, this gives birth to attachment about those. From attachment is created desire, and desire gives birth to anger. Anger gives birth to delusion and delusion leads to confusion of memory. From confusion of memory comes loss of intellect, and loss of intellect results in destruction. But he who has controlled his mind is freed from attachment.

On Jnana Yoga (Path of knowledge) and Karma Yoga (Path of Action) 

Arjuna now asks Krishna that you have earlier told me that Jnana Yoga which is the path of knowledge is superior to Karma Yoga which is the path of action so why then are you telling me to perform this terrible karma?

Krishna tells him that I have earlier said that there are two paths, but without performing action, man is not freed from the bondage of action in this world.  And resorting to sannyasa doesn’t result in liberation. No one can exist even for a short while without performing action because this is dictated by nature. Therefore performing action is superior to not performing action, and without this even the body can’t exist. Therefore, perform action without detachment.

Krishna’s Divine Form

There is much dialogue between Arjuna and Krishna, and Arjuna requests to see Krishna’s divine form. Krishna reveals his divine form, and this is terrible to look at and Arjuna starts shivering and trembling. Arjuna sees all the Kauravas, and all the chief warriors among the Pandava side entering Krishna’s fearsome mouth with terrible teeth, some of them even have their heads smashed, and are entering his mouth like moths are attracted to flames. Arjuna asks him who Krishna is, and Krishna replies I am the terrible destroyer, referring to himself as kala, which means time. Krishna tells Arjuna that he has already destroyed all these warriors and even without Arjuna they will cease to exist; Arjuna is merely the instrument, therefore take up the weapons, and fulfill your supreme destiny.

There is obviously a lot more in the Bhagavada Gita, and a lot of it is very difficult to understand and not really within my scope of interest at the moment. These are just some passages that I thought I would touch upon while going through the entire text.

Bibek Debroy’s fifth volume of the Mahabharata starts with the Amba Upakhyana Parva which is so named because Upakhyana means short tale, and this is the short tale of Amba who is reborn as Shikhandi to cause Bhishma’s death.

Every Indian probably knows the highlights of this story, but there are a lot of nuances to the entire tale, and I absolutely loved it.

The timing of this story is perfect because Bhishma narrates it to Duryodhana just before the beginning of the war, and it emphasizes that Bhishma is the greatest warrior in the field, and perhaps the greatest kshatriya in all history.

Duryodhana asks Bhishma why he won’t raise weapons against Shikhandi, and Bhishma begins narrating the story.

He tells him that in earlier times the king of Kashi held a Swayamvara forhis three daughters – Amba, Ambika and Ambalika, and Bhishma went there to get a bride for his half brother Vichitravirya whom he had instated as king. A swayamara is a ceremony where the bride chooses her husband. Swayam means self, and vara means husband.

Bhishma tells Duryodhana that knowing that the maidens were being offered as “viryashulka”, he raised them to his chariot, and told all other kings that he was taking the three sisters by force, and challenged anyone to stop him. Viryashulka is a ceremony where the maiden is offered to the suitor who shows the most valor (virya), shulka meaning price.

This is an inconsistency in the text because just a few lines ago Bhishma says that there was a Swayamvara which is not the same as a Viryashulka. Regardless, all the kings come together to attack Bhishma, but they aren’t able to defeat him even when all of them have joined forces.

When Bhishma reaches his home, Amba tells him that she had chosen the king of Shalva to be her husband and he had also agreed to it, and they were in love. In the Swayamvara, she was going to finally choose him formally, and get married to him. Knowing this she asked Bhishma to let her leave, and go to the king.

Bhishma consulted his advisors and decided that he will let Amba go to the king of Shalva because she is in love with him, and ensured that she reaches there safely. The king of Shalva however told Amba that she seemed to be happy when Bhishma took her to the chariot, and he can’t accept her as wife now because she has already been won by another man, and he can’t take one as wife who has been with another man. Amba pleaded with him that she is innocent, and was never happy to be with Bhishma, and that he should accept her as his wife, but to no avail.

Unhappily she sought refuge in a hermitage, and blamed her father for holding the swayamvara, the Shalva king for refusing her, herself for not jumping off the chariot but chiefly Bhishma for abducting her, and bringing this misery upon her.

At this time her maternal grandfather Hotravahana reached the hermitage, and she recounted her misfortune to him. He told her that he is a good friend with Parashuram who is one of the greatest sages that lived, and is also a sworn enemy of kshatriyas having destroyed them 21 times from the earth.

Parashurama is the sixth avatar of Vishnu, and is known to have several celestial weapons, and decades of military training with Shiva. The next day Akritavrana who is one of Parashurama’s followers also reach the hermitage, and listens to Amba’s plight. Akritavrana asks Amba there are two wrongs that have happened to her, and she should decide which wrong she wants to right. He asks her whether she wants to have Bhishma punished or for King Shalva to accept her. She says that Bhisma abducted her without knowing her love for King Shalva, so keeping that in mind he decide on the best course of action.

Akritavrana says that in his opinion Bhishma is in the wrong because now that Bhishma has abducted her King Shalva won’t accept her. Amba agrees with this, and says that in her heart she has always thought Bhishma to be the root cause of her misery.

Finally, Parashurama arrives, and decides to intervene on Amba’s behalf. Amba however asks him to kill Bhishma which he says he cannot do because he cannot voluntarily take up arms in this situation. Instead, he takes Amba to Bhishma and asks him to take her back, and marry her to his brother.

Bhishma adamantly refuses this, and says that she has gone to Shalva with his permission, and knowing that she desires Shalva, he can’t marry her to his brother and that is against dharma and is like establishing a snake in the house.

Parashuram is enraged by this, and challenges Bhishma to a duel. Bhishma tries to pacify Parashuram because he was his teacher, but Parashuram is enraged, and there is no way out.

The next day they engage in battle in Kurukshetra, and a terrible battle ensues between them for 23 days in which both warriors are equal.

During the penultimate night Bhishma is worried, and is thinking about how this battle would end because the two warriors are in a deadlock. Then eight of his ancestors come to him in a dream and tell him to use the Prasvapan weapon. This weapon was created by Vishwakarma and its knowledge given to Bhishma in an earlier body. Prasvapan means to put one to sleep, and this weapon will not kill Parashurama but put him to sleep, and thus no sin will be attached to Bhishma. They also tell him that he can then use the Sambodhana weapon to wake him up after he has defeated Parashurama.

On the final day, Bhishma remembers the dream and raises the weapon to attack Parashuram, but Narada appears in the sky and asks him not to commit this act as it will be a huge affront to a great sage like Parashurama. The eight also appear in front of him, and tell him to follow Narada’s words.
Bhishma withdraws the weapon and seeing this Parashurama gets humbled and accepts his defeat because he knew that he didn’t have any answer to this weapon.

He then tells the maid Amba that though he tried with all his might he couldn’t subdue Bhishma and now Bhishma is her only refuge.

Amba thanks Parashurama but doesn’t give up her effort to get her revenge on Bhishma. Shes goes from one place to the other, and performs austerities to please the gods, and get a boon to kill Bhishma. At one point Ganga herself comes to Amba and tells her to give up this intent to bring the downfall of Bhishma, but Amba doesn’t listen, and continues austerities. Finally Lord Shiva appears before her and grants her the boon that she will be born as a great warrior in the kingdom of Drupada, and she will kill Bhishma.

Now, the story forwards to Drupada, and the king is praying to Lord Shiva for a son because he has no offspring. Lord Shiva appears before him and tells him that a girl will be born to you who will later become a boy. A girl is indeed born to Drupada whom they name Shikhandi. But because he has no sons and because of what Shiva has said he declares that a boy has been born, and no one except his wife, Parshata, and himself know this. Amusingly enough, even Shikhandi doesn’t know that she is a girl. Shikhandi grows and soon reaches a marriageable age. The king is now despondent on what to do and on the advice of his wife he marries his daughter to the daughter of Dasharna who is king Hiranyavarma.

Shikhandi marries and brings back the maiden to his house, and she discovers that Shikhandi is in fact a girl, and is terribly distressed by this. She reports this to her nurses who sends messengers back to Hiranayavarma who is extremely angry at this deceit and sends messengers to Drupada to tell him that he is marching with a large army and will kill Drupada and Shikhandi, and instate a new king.

Drupada is terribly frightened by this because he is timid by nature, and Hiranyavarma is a powerful ruler. He tells his wife that it has been discovered that their son is actually a daughter, and what are they supposed to do now?

Shikhandi hears this conversation, and realizes for the first time she is a girl, and will now cause the death of her parents, and a war on her kingdom. She is saddened and goes to a forest in her grief. In this forest she meets Sthunakarna who is a yaksha. Yakshas are semi divine beings who protect riches hidden in trees, and forests, and Lord Kubera who is Ravana’s cousin is their king.

Sthuna asks Shikhandi her misery’s cause, and has pity on her after listening to her. Out of pity he tells her that he will help her escape this calamity. He tells her that he will give her his penis, in exchange of her vagina, so that she can go back to her city and prove to her wife and father in law that she is in fact a man. After the king has been placated she must promise to come back to Sthunakarna and exchange back the gender.

Shikhandi is delighted at this; becomes a man and goes back to her kingdom, and invites the king Hiranyavarma to come and see for himself that he is a man. The king and his advisers come to ensure this, and when they are convinced that Shikhandi is a man they gift elephants and chariots, and return back to their own kingdom.

In the meantime Lord Kubera visits the forest that Sthuna lives in, and is enraged at the fact that Sthunakarna has not come to welcome his king. Sthunakarna’s servants tell Lord Kuber that he is now a woman and out of shame over what he has done he is not showing his face to Lord Kuber.

Lord Kubera is wrathful on Sthuna and says that you have done what no one else has done before and your punishment is that you will always remain a woman from this point on. The other yakshas try to pacify Kubera and asks him to set a time limit on this curse. Kubera agrees to this and says that since the other yakshas are asking him to have mercy on Sthuna he will set a time limit, and when Shikhandi is killed in battle, Sthuna will become a man again.

Bhishma concludes this story by saying that all this is known to him through his own spies and Narada and since he has taken a vow earlier not to shoot arrows at a woman, one who was earlier a woman, one who has a name of a woman, or one who has the form of a woman he knows that at the appointed time Shikhandi will cause his death.