The Mahabharata

There is an old saying in India that you should not keep a Mahābhārata in the house, because it will start quarrels. It is half a joke and half a tribute: no other book looks so unflinchingly at what families, power and war do to people. The Mahābhārata, “the great story of the Bhāratas,” is an itihāsa of about 100,000 verses — the epic in which the Bhagavad Gītā is spoken, and in which dharma is tested to breaking point.

A story inside a story inside a story

The epic is attributed to Vyāsa — Kṛṣṇa Dvaipāyana, “the dark one of the island” — who is also a character in it. He is the grandfather of both warring families: when the royal line of Hastināpura is about to die out, his mother asks him to father sons on the widowed queens, and so Dhṛtarāṣṭra, Pāṇḍu and Vidura are born. The author of the poem appears again and again within it, advising, consoling, unable to prevent the catastrophe he records.

The story reaches us through nested frames. Vyāsa teaches it to his pupil Vaiśampāyana, who recites it at the great snake sacrifice of King Janamejaya, the great-grandson of Arjuna. Among the audience is the bard Ugraśravas, who later retells it to the sages gathered in the Naimiṣa forest — and that is the telling we hear. Every scene is therefore heard by a descendant learning how his family came to be.

Popular tradition The famous story that Gaṇeśa wrote down the epic as Vyāsa dictated it, on condition that the sage never pause, is found in many manuscripts but was judged a later addition by the editors of the critical edition.

The eighteen books

The epic is divided into eighteen parvans, “books” or “joints,” followed by an appendix, the Harivaṃśa, on Krishna’s life. Tap a spine; the taller the book, the longer it is.

The story in brief

1. The vowBhīṣma gives up the thronePrince Devavrata renounces kingship and marriage so his father can marry again, and becomes Bhīṣma, “the one of the terrible vow.” The line passes to his half-brothers — and then to Vyāsa’s sons.
2. Two familiesCousins and rivalsThe blind Dhṛtarāṣṭra has a hundred sons, led by Duryodhana; his brother Pāṇḍu’s five sons are born to Kuntī and Mādrī by the gods. They grow up together, taught by Droṇa, and grow apart.
3. The diceEverything lostDuryodhana’s uncle Śakuni wins Yudhiṣṭhira’s kingdom, brothers, himself and Draupadī in a rigged game. The Pāṇḍavas are exiled for thirteen years.
4. The warEighteen days at KurukṣetraPeace fails. Krishna, unarmed, drives Arjuna’s chariot. Almost everyone on both sides is killed — often by stratagems that break the rules of war.
5. The ashesA hollow victoryYudhiṣṭhira rules a widowed kingdom, listens to Bhīṣma’s teaching, and finally walks away with his brothers and wife to the mountains.

The people

No one in the Mahābhārata is simply good or simply bad. Tap a name:

• The fiveपाण्डवThe PāṇḍavasYudhiṣṭhira the truthful, Bhīma the strong, Arjuna the archer, and the twins Nakula and Sahadeva — sons of Dharma, Vāyu, Indra and the Aśvins.
• Queenद्रौपदीDraupadīBorn from a sacrificial fire, wife of all five brothers. Proud, articulate and wronged, she is the epic’s fiercest voice for justice.
• Motherकुन्तीKuntīMother of the three elder Pāṇḍavas — and, secretly, before her marriage, of Karṇa, whom she abandoned at birth.
• Warriorकर्णKarṇaSon of the Sun, raised by a charioteer and scorned for his low status. Generous to a fault and loyal to Duryodhana, he fights his own brothers.
• Elderभीष्मBhīṣmaThe grand-uncle bound by his vow to serve the throne — and so to fight for the side he knows is wrong.
• Teacherद्रोणDroṇaThe Brahmin master of arms who trained both sides — and who demanded the thumb of the tribal archer Ekalavya as his fee.
• Princeदुर्योधनDuryodhanaThe eldest Kaurava: jealous and implacable, yet brave and loyal to his friends. He dies unrepentant, and the gods shower him with flowers.
• CounsellorविदुरViduraHalf-brother of the kings, born of a maidservant: the wisest voice at court, always right and rarely heeded.
• Friendकृष्णKrishnaCousin, ally and charioteer — and, for the tradition, God. He tries for peace, then wins the war by means that trouble even his friends.

Draupadī’s question

The moral centre of the epic may be a question asked by a woman, not a sage. When Yudhiṣṭhira has staked and lost himself at dice, and then staked and lost Draupadī, a messenger is sent to bring her to the hall. She sends back a question: did the king lose himself first, or me? If he had already become a slave, what right had he left to wager his wife?

Dragged in by her hair, she puts the question to the whole assembly. The elders are silent. Bhīṣma answers that dharma is subtle and he cannot decide it. Only the young Kaurava Vikarṇa, and Vidura, speak for her. Duḥśāsana tries to strip her; her garment is miraculously renewed, again and again. (Later tradition credits Krishna’s grace explicitly; the critical text leaves the wonder unexplained.)

Draupadī’s question is never answered — and that is the point. A court full of wise men could not say whether a wife is property. Modern readers, women especially, have heard in her a voice against the silence of authority; the Bengali writer Mahasweta Devi took her name for a famous story of a tribal woman’s defiance.

Texts within the text

The Mahābhārata contains whole works — teachings, hymns and side-stories (upākhyānas) — that are often read on their own:

“What is not here is nowhere”

The epic knows it is enormous, and makes a bold claim about itself:

It is a claim of completeness about the four aims of life (puruṣārthas), not a boast about length: anything true about how to live, the poem says, is somewhere in it. The epic also calls itself the “fifth Veda,” and, unlike the Vedas in classical rules, it was open to everyone — women and śūdras included — to hear.

Pune’s critical edition

Because the Mahābhārata was copied for two thousand years across all of India, its manuscripts differ hugely. Between 1919 and 1966 scholars at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune, led for many years by V. S. Sukthankar, compared over a thousand manuscripts to reconstruct the oldest text they could reach. Passages found in only some regions were moved to footnotes and appendices; the result is noticeably shorter than the familiar printed versions.

Mahābhāratas of the people

Like the Rāmāyaṇa, the Mahābhārata has been retold in every Indian language and beyond — in Villiputtūrār’s Tamil Villipāratam, in the Pāṇḍav Līlā dances of Garhwal, in Javanese and Balinese shadow theatre.

Community practice In Tamil Nadu, Draupadī is worshipped as a goddess, Draupadī Amman, often understood as a form of Kāḷī or of the village mother. Her festivals, studied by the scholar Alf Hiltebeitel, last for days: the epic is recited and performed in all-night terukkūttu (street-theatre) plays, and the festival climaxes in a fire-walk, the tīmiti. Malaysian and Singaporean Tamil communities keep fire-walking festivals too, and in a number of temples the fire-walk is offered to Draupadī. In these worlds, the epic is less a book than a living goddess’s story.

To meet two of the epic’s great dilemmas in action, try Yudhiṣṭhira’s choice before Droṇa on the Dharma page, and the brothers’ argument about the aims of life on The Four Aims of Life.

Check your knowledge:

Questions people often ask

Key terms on this page

Sources & further reading

• V. S. Sukthankar et al. (eds.), The Mahābhārata: For the First Time Critically Edited, 19 vols. (Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1933–1966).
• J. A. B. van Buitenen (trans.), The Mahābhārata, vols. 1–3 (University of Chicago Press, 1973–1978), continued by James L. Fitzgerald.
• John D. Smith (trans.), The Mahābhārata, abridged (Penguin Classics, 2009).
• Alf Hiltebeitel, The Cult of Draupadī, 2 vols. (University of Chicago Press, 1988–1991).
• Carole Satyamurti, Mahabharata: A Modern Retelling (W. W. Norton, 2015).
• Gurcharan Das, The Difficulty of Being Good: On the Subtle Art of Dharma (2009).