The Mahabharata and the Bhagavad Gita
The world's longest epic tells of a catastrophic war between cousins, and at its heart Krishna teaches the warrior Arjuna the Bhagavad Gita.
- Mahābhārata — James L. Fitzgerald, in The Hindu World, ed. Sushil Mittal and Gene Thursby, Routledge (2004)
- The Bhagavad Gita: A Biography — Richard H. Davis, Princeton University Press (2015)
- An Introduction to Hinduism — Gavin Flood, Cambridge University Press (1996)
The Mahabharata, roughly 100,000 couplets long, tells of two branches of a royal family, the five Pandava brothers and their hundred Kaurava cousins, who fight over the kingdom of Hastinapura. Its most famous scenes, the dice game in which the eldest Pandava gambles away everything, including the brothers’ shared wife Draupadi, and her humiliation before the court, have been argued over for two thousand years. The quarrel ends in an eighteen-day war at Kurukshetra that destroys almost everyone.
- Mahābhārata — James L. Fitzgerald, in The Hindu World, ed. Sushil Mittal and Gene Thursby, Routledge (2004)
- An Introduction to Hinduism — Gavin Flood, Cambridge University Press (1996)
The Gita
On the eve of battle, the Pandava archer Arjuna sees his teachers and kinsmen in the opposing army and refuses to fight. His charioteer Krishna, revealed as God, answers in 700 verses: the self cannot be killed; one must do one’s duty (dharma) without attachment to its fruits; and the surest path is loving devotion to God. In a terrifying vision Krishna shows Arjuna his cosmic form.
- The Bhagavad Gita: A Biography — Richard H. Davis, Princeton University Press (2015)
- An Introduction to Hinduism — Gavin Flood, Cambridge University Press (1996)
The Gita has been read in many ways: as a call to selfless action by Tilak, as a book of non-violent spiritual struggle by Gandhi, as a guide to devotion by the Hare Krishna movement. It was translated into English in 1785 and became a favourite of American Transcendentalists. J. Robert Oppenheimer recalled a line from it, in his own rendering, after the first atomic test: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
- The Bhagavad Gita: A Biography — Richard H. Davis, Princeton University Press (2015)
The sage Vyasa composed the epic about a real war fought at Kurukshetra, which tradition places at the start of the present age, the Kali Yuga, in 3102 BCE. Krishna is God incarnate.
- An Introduction to Hinduism — Gavin Flood, Cambridge University Press (1996)
- The Bhagavad Gita: A Biography — Richard H. Davis, Princeton University Press (2015)
The epic grew over many centuries from bardic tales of a war among north Indian clans, with philosophical and devotional material, including the Gita, added along the way.
- Mahābhārata — James L. Fitzgerald, in The Hindu World, ed. Sushil Mittal and Gene Thursby, Routledge (2004)
- The Bhagavad Gita: A Biography — Richard H. Davis, Princeton University Press (2015)
Why it matters today
The Gita is the closest thing Hinduism has to a single handbook, read by Gandhi and Tilak, quoted by Oppenheimer and sworn on by Hindu politicians abroad. The Mahabharata says of itself, roughly, that whatever is in it may be found elsewhere, but what is not in it is found nowhere, and many Hindus see it that way: a mirror of every human dilemma.