Initial thoughts about the Mahabharata

You might know the Mahabharata. This ginormous series all about the Pandava princes from Indian Mythology. Most of the time, when I used to think about the Mahabharata, I used to think about scrolls and barely readable closely packed fonts. I had the full series just sitting at the top of my bookshelf and I opened them because I had run out of other books to read.

I have the Amar Chitra Katha version, which has tried to make the story a bit more child friendly by turning it into a comic. But not dumbing it down; my father says the comic version is authentic and of a high quality. Packed in a slipcase, these are probably some of the heaviest books I have ever seen, with a set of three volumes consisting of over 1,300 pages.

I have always been fascinated by mythology. I used to read historical novels on Greek, Roman, Norse and Egyptian mythologies, and have only recently started reading Indian.

In my opinion, this Indian mythology - the Mahabharata - is the most complex of all. There are hundreds of battles and thousands of kings. The commoners are treated much like they are in the other mythologies that I have read. Or, in other words like slaves. The only way that I can describe it is that their lives are considered inferior to the lives of the learned Brahmanas, the Kings and his noble men.

Most people considered Yudhishthira the noblest and the most virtuous Pandava. Yet in my opinion he was extraordinarily dumb - to keep on gambling even when it must have occurred to him that his opponent was cheating him. To gamble his brothers, his wife and his entire kingdom just for the sake of winning a game of dice!

However, I also think that it is unfair to regard him so highly. After all he did tell Drona that Ashwatthama was dead, though he whispered under his breath - “Ashwatthama, the elephant”. Remember - the elephant, who shared his name with the son of Drona, had indeed been killed by the Pandavas a few minutes earlier.

My favourite character is, by far, Krishna, King of Dwarka and an avatar of the god Vishnu, due to his complex yet playful character. Also Arjuna, the third of the Pandava brothers and the last son of Kunti, due to his skill in archery. Arjuna was born to Kunti by the grace of Indra, lord of the Devas (The lesser gods in Indian mythology are known as Devas)

The relentless war, waged between the Pandavas and the Kauravas is one of the most vital parts of the entire Mahabharata, taking up nearly a full volume. The war lasted nearly three weeks. The rules of this war were infinitely better than the rules we have today. Warriors on chariots were only allowed to fight with warriors on chariots, the warriors on elephants with those on elephants, messengers, conch shell blowers were to be spared and the fighting was to stop at sundown.

These rules made war are infinitely different than war as we know it now, which spares no one.

Both armies were nearly destroyed, (around 2 million men in total). In the Kauravas camp, barely three people made it out alive. In the Pandavas army the five brothers and some Kings survived.

In those times, battles were fought on a field far away from the city where the women and children resided, It makes me think - is it better what we have now or was war in those times better? Nowadays, when you drop a bomb, you don’t know who you’re killing, whether it be soldiers or innocents. In those times, you knew that the people who you were fighting were not commoners, were not children but soldiers who believed in what they were fighting for. (Yudhishthira had asked all the soldiers before the start of the battle if they wanted to come over to his side and only one warrior came, a general of the Kauravas army) It sure seems as if the way that battles were fought then are much fairer than the way battles are fought now.

I’m not really sure what interested me so much about the series, but as soon as I had picked up the first volume I could not put it down. I managed to finish the full series in three days. And I started the first volume again; I am absolutely hooked.

Am I the only one waiting for a movie on this?