The mythological sage Vyasa is credited with writing one of the two major Sanskrit epics.
The Mahabharata is substantially lengthier than the
Ramayana, the other great epic.
The Mahabharata is the world's longest epic poem, with about
100,000 stanzas.
If the Ramayana is the story of the "good" family,
in which brothers work together to maintain and protect their family, the
Mahabharata is the story of the "bad" family, in which an extended
royal family's hardheartedness and ambition for power leads to its demise.
The epic is located west of modern-day Delhi and tells the
story of a fratricidal civil war.
The following is a substantially condensed version of the
story: Shantanu is the Kurus's ruler.
He dies in an untimely and heirless manner.
Satyavati, Shantanu's wife, calls for her oldest son, the
guru Vyasa, who fathers offspring by Shantanu's two women, in a desperate bid
to maintain the royal dynasty.
Because Dhrtarashtra, the oldest son, is born blind, his
younger brother Pandu inherits the crown.
Because of a curse, Pandu abdicates his kingdom and retires
to the forest with his two wives, Kunti and Madri, allowing his older brother
to govern in his stead.
Dhrtarashtra's wife, Gandhari, mysteriously bears a hundred
sons, the eldest of them is Duryodhana; the hundred sons are known as the
Kauravas and are the epic's enemies.
Yudhishthira, Bhima, and Arjuna are Kunti's three sons in
the jungle, while Madri had twins Nakula and Sahadeva.
The Pandavas, the epic's heroes, are these five sons.
Pandu has been cursed to perish the instant he hugs his wife
in loving embrace, hence none of these children are his sons.
Rather, they were created by the use of a mantra given to
Kunti by the sage Durvasas, which gives the woman who recites it the ability to
summon any of the gods and bear a son equal to that god's might.
Kunti gets the mantra long before her marriage and recites
it spontaneously while staring at the sun, giving birth to a radiant kid.
Kunti, distraught and desperate, places him in a box and
throws him into the Ganges.
The charioteer Adhiratha adopts the kid, who grows up to be
the heroic Karna.
Pandu dies young as a consequence of his curse, and Kunti
(his wife) and his sons (the Pandavas) return to Hastinapur, where the boys are
nurtured as princes.
Duryodhana (the oldest of the Kauravas) and his cousins have
had a tense relationship from the start, owing to Duryodhana's ambition for the
throne, which rightfully belongs to Yudhishthira (one of the Pandavas).
The Pandava brothers leave the realm to become mercenaries
after foiling many assassination attempts.
Arjuna wins the hand of Princess Draupadi on one of their
adventures, and she becomes their common wife (their mother commands that
Arjuna share whatever he wins with his brothers).
After a while, Dhrtarashtra (the Kauravas' father) abdicates
the throne and divides his country.
The Pandavas construct a new capital at Indraprastha, which
is located near modern-day Delhi.
Things remain peaceful for a time, but Duryodhana isn't
satisfied to share his kingdom.
He challenges Yudhishthira to a dice game, pitting him
against Shakuni, the most skilled gambler alive.
Yudhishthira is an example of honesty and decency, but his
fatal fault is his addiction to gambling.
Yudhishthira loses his kingdom, all of his belongings, his
brothers, himself, and eventually his wife in the match.
Duryodhana's brother, Duhshasana, pulls Draupadi into the
assembly hall by her hair, her garments soiled with her menstrual blood, in one
of the epic's most devastating sequences.
Dhrtarashtra is moved to set them free by Draupadi's
humiliation, but it also initiates the hostility that drives the remainder of
the tale.
Following some haggling, the parties agree that the Pandavas
will spend twelve years in exile and the thirteenth in secret.
They will reclaim their kingdom if they can stay undetected
for the thirteenth year.
However, if they are found, the cycle of exile will begin
all over again.
Yudhishthira and his brothers approach Duryodhana for their
fair portion after thirteen years, but are haughtily rejected.
All attempts at reconciliation fail because Duryodhana
states he won't give them enough land to poke a needle in.
The Pandavas, pressed against a wall, prepare for combat.
Yudhishthira and his siblings are on one side, supported by
their advisor Krishna.
Duryodhana and many esteemed characters, like as Drona,
Bhishma, and Karna, are on the opposing side.
The fight rages for eighteen days, until the majority of the
important individuals have died.
Yudhishthira and his brothers make it through.
Yudhishthira is anointed king and reigns for many years in
righteousness.
He appoints his grandson, King Parikshit, to the throne
later in life.
He embarks on a last expedition into the Himalayas with his
siblings.
Yudhishthira ultimately joins the divine world after his
siblings die one by one throughout the voyage.
This synopsis does not cover the whole of the epic.
One of the epic's characteristics is that it incorporates
several unrecorded stories, with the main plot serving as a frame.
Aside from being a story of a dysfunctional family, the
Mahabharata has a wealth of cultural wisdom, with character names that are
still meaningful today.
The text's TV serial, which aired for more than a year in 1989–90,
was a huge hit in India.
It's also worth noting that many traditional Indian families
will not maintain a copy of the book in the home since it's thought that doing
so may cause family strife.
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