The Mahabharata - Complete and Unabridged (Set of 10 Vols)
Back of the Book - The Mahabharata is one of the greatest stories ever told. Though the basic plot is widely known, there is much more to the epic than the dispute between the Kouravas and Pandavas that led to the battle in Kurukshetra. It has innumerable sub-plots that accommodate fascinating and digressions, and it has rarely been translated in full, given its formidable length of 80,000 shlokas or couplets. This magnificent 10-volume unabridged translation of the epic is based on the Critical Edition compiled at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute.
Introduction - The Hindu tradition has an amazingly large corpus of religious texts, spanning Vedas, Vedanta (brahmanas, aranyakas, Upanishads,), Vedangas, smritis, Puranas, dharmashastras and itihasa. For most of these texts, especially if one excludes classical Sanskrit literature, we don't quite know when they were composed and by whom, not that one is looking for single authors. Some of the minor Puranas (Upa Purana) are of later vintage. For instance, the Bhavishya Purana (which is often listed as a major Purana or Maha Purana) mentions Queen Victoria.
In the listing of the corpus above figures itihasa, translated into English as history. History doesn't entirely capture the nuance of itihasa, which is better translated as 'this is indeed what happened'. Itihasa isn't myth or fiction. It is a chronicle of what happened; it is fact. Or so runs the belief. And itihasa consists of India's two major epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata. The former is believed to have been composed as poetry and the latter as prose. This isn't quite correct.
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SKU: 9780143424789
₹5,650.00Price
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