Online Library TheLib.net » The Mahabharata: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic
cover of the book The Mahabharata: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic

Ebook: The Mahabharata: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic

Author: R. K. Narayan

00
28.01.2024
0
0
The Mahabharata tells a story of such violence and tragedy that many people in India refuse to keep the full text in their homes, fearing that if they do, they will invite a disastrous fate upon their house. Covering everything from creation to destruction, this ancient poem remains an indelible part of Hindu culture and a landmark in ancient literature.

Centuries of listeners and readers have been drawn to The Mahabharata, which began as disparate oral ballads and grew into a sprawling epic. The modern version is famously long, and at more than 1.8 million words—seven times the combined lengths of the Iliad and Odyssey—it can be incredibly daunting.

Contemporary readers have a much more accessible entry point to this important work, thanks to R. K. Narayan’s masterful translation and abridgement of the poem. Now with a new foreword by Wendy Doniger, as well as a concise character and place guide and a family tree, The Mahabharata is ready for a new generation of readers. As Wendy Doniger explains in the foreword, “Narayan tells the stories so well because they’re all his stories.” He grew up hearing them, internalizing their mythology, which gave him an innate ability to choose the right passages and their best translations.

In this elegant translation, Narayan ably distills a tale that is both traditional and constantly changing. He draws from both scholarly analysis and creative interpretation and vividly fuses the spiritual with the secular. Through this balance he has produced a translation that is not only clear, but graceful, one that stands as its own story as much as an adaptation of a larger work.



The great Indian epic The Mahabharata is at least 3,500 years old. In its original in the Sanskrit language it runs to one hundred thousand stanzas in verse-by far the longest of the world's epics. Also, together with The Ramayana it embodies the very essence of Indian cultural and religious heritage, laying down values of individual life and society which have shaped the texture of Indian life. The Mahabharata fairly bursts with an astonishing treasure of riches. At one level it is a great tale with a huge, truly memorable cast of vivid characters men, noble and ignoble, warriors, saints, kings, and women of beauty. Unbearable sacrifice, shining nobility, great courage and virtue, insatiable greed, satanic hatred and sinister intrigue are all part and parcel of the dynastic struggle between two branches of a family which culminates in a bloody eighteen-day war on the plain of Kurukshetra. At another level, the tragic battle of Kurukshetra symbolises man's constant struggle to distinguish between right and wrong, of choosing correct action over misdeed issues tackled in The Bhagavadgita which forms a part of this epic and which is perhaps the single most influential scripture of Indian philosophic thought and spiritual understanding. R.K. Narayan's splendid retelling offers the modern reader a magnificent initiation into The Mahabharata. With the consummate skill of a great writer, he recreates the rhythm and grandeur of this great epic which has endured through the ages with astonishing vitality.
Download the book The Mahabharata: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic for free or read online
Read Download

Continue reading on any device:
QR code
Last viewed books
Related books
Comments (0)
reload, if the code cannot be seen