The Mahabharata: An Outlook

Krishna mentoring Arjuna just before the war.

Of all the scriptures present in the Hinduism of today, the Mahabharata acquires significance from my perspective. The Mahabharata deals with a typical family issue and is a heroic poem for a householder rather than a hermit. The Hindu epic not only revolves around the war evoked from the parted ways of a family with one side demanding their share of property and the other denying them of such a right, but also the characters which are far from having an association within this affair. We see that those characters also had kept their regards high by participating in the war so declared. Those were mostly people from the mainstream, as denoted by having the living God of the Mahabharata as only a mere cowherd, perhaps as the central figure. This God does not end up siding with the army that outnumbered and downplayed the other, but with the power that gradually overpowered the other.

The Mahabharata shows how the culture was when it was over 5000 years younger than that of now, when a small game of dice entailed unethical situations, when circumstances enforced people to live incognito, when unmet demands lead to conflicts, when there still was discontentment after having won the war. It was not a bad world after all; the context seems deliberate to me, like a set-up to mark the beginning of the new age, with established dharma. India has had an marvelous civilization in that time. I wonder what led to such degradation that made India contrasting at present. Long back from then, long from Hastinapur, there was the mesmerizing Vraja-Bhoomi near Mathura. To have an essence of its culture, not the Mahabharata, but the Bhagavata, stirs us emotionally by introducing us to famous stories of Sri Krishna, the God of Mahabharata. But the Krishna of the Bhagavata is distinctive from Krishna of the Mahabharata. For instance, the latter is not discussed as a cowherd whereas it is not the case with the former. Both declare him as the deliverer, though. Krishna, though unlike men of high intellect, showed straightforwardness. This simplicity of his is prudent from his any number of actions, such as being a kingmaker but not a king, being a charioteer and so on.

Let us view the vivid Mahabharata. It is a drama related close to life, where fate rules. The epic is composed of many heroic characters with vitality. Duryodhana, the antagonist; Bhishma, the one with the terrible oath; Drona, the honorable; Draupadi, the unfortunate; Gandhari, the despondent over consequences of the war, are some of the conspicuous ones within the epic. Then there is Krishna. He never goes unnoticed, does he? The best part he is acknowledged for, however, is the famous Bhagavad Gita. I have mentioned that the Mahabharata is a book for the householder, as is relevant from the Gita’s purpose to teach world’s acceptance, rather than its renunciation. It is a householder’s job to accept the world as it to realize the Self. One example is given of a lotus flower that remains in touch with the water but does not let the water stick to its petal howsoever. This is to relate with the deeds of a realized being, how he should not shut himself at any instant. Although Arjuna was brought up among ascetics, had a substantial teacher like Drona, he needed consultancy to ignore his insecurities and focus on what was awaiting him. That guidance was given by his dear friend and charioteer Krishna, who accepted to be his counselor. But still, Arjuna persisted to display his endearment for rivals during the war, which was one of the causes that caused him to land in hell, by which the state in turn becomes a tragedy.

For something to become essentially an epic, intricacy is a compulsion. When details show
inadequacy, we have an urge to make it intricate. Now those detailed points become just a
certainty as they are produced from our ideologies and our way of observing the original
characters in an epic. That is how the Mahabharata of today is different from the Mahabharata of a long time ago. This is an impact of the retellings that emerged when Bhakti or devotion was a dominant way to experience the divine. Writing was not a thing to do before, especially for introduction to the concept of God. The knowledge was passed only orally to preceding generations due this period. When writing things down became an etiquette, we can guess if the epic was getting much more fictional at that time and a complex problem to be proved historically. Retellings or translations transmitted orally were also common as they did have a purpose to connect masses of locals with the divine. Those might have been full of faults as they do not exactly cover the original happenings, but that was what the people grasped when these were echoing in temples. Sometimes we get deferential to false speculations.


Vyasa, the compiler of the epic, hired two persons to narrate this story to. One was the scribe, who was the popular Ganesha, and the other was the listener, Vaishampayana, a disciple of his. When the original Sanskrit book was finally completed by Ganesha, it was stolen by the devas who were impressed by the beauty of the book, which is eccentric. The Mahabharata we know is what Vaishampayana thought was prominent in the whole story, or we can call it a fragment of what Vyasa had spoken. That fragment too is a matter of supposition, for the epic had further been transformed as more ideal and less practical for people to believe.


All in all, the Mahabharata is my favorite saga, howsoever be it altered. This is because Krishna is a person in Hindu mythology who deserves noteworthiness. He has always been unique. To live a life of true happiness, following his path is the foremost resolution to take. My inquisitiveness in the complex Krishna is just growing, but I doubt if I will ever be able to cope up writing about all his integrities.

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I am greatly interested in Vedic and Upanishadic philosophies. Being just a teen, I do not feel that I am an adequately capable of creating a commentary on a great phenomenon like the Mahabharata. Still, I produced my simple outlook on it. May be I was passionate about this. Follow me on twitter @sakeez6.