3 Review(s)

Is there any piece of world literature that transcends time and space, encompasses every aspect of human living, nature, and the universe, holds eternal values, survived for over 5000 years, and remains new and a promising 'work-in-progress', is a cornucopia of myths, passion, love, hatred, revenge, and all the conceivable emotions, explores all aspects of spirituality and temporality, creates a code of living, a philosophy of social and ethical living, and explains the law of cause and effect of everything, and can be passed on from generation to generation as an inexhaustible treasure trove of eternal wisdom? The only answer is the Mahabharata. The very book of Life, the Mahabharata is some fifteen times the combined length of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, and seven times The Iliad and The Odyssey put together. At the same time, it is also "100 times more interesting" than them all, as observed by Wendy Doniger. In India, it is called the Fifth Veda. "He who knows it not," said C. Rajagoplachari, "knows not the heights and the depths of the soul"; he misses the real reasons behind the intriguing trajectory of human living. What makes the present version, which is the third of five volumes, distinct is its critical analysis of the characters and events of Mahabharata from the angle of modern behavioral science, and the valuable lessons it churned out from an in-depth study of it.