Read THE MAHABHARATA: A Modern Rendering, Vol 2 Online
Authors: Ramesh Menon
Swapna dream.
Swarga heaven.
Swayamvara the ceremony at which a princess chooses her own husband.
Taala rhythm, beat.
Tamas the third and grossest guna in Nature.
Tandava Siva’s dance of dissolution.
Tapasya penance, long meditation or austerity.
Tapasvin one performs tapasya.
Tapovana grove of worship.
Tarpana offering of water for the dead.
Tilaka auspicious mark made on forehead.
Timmingala mythical whale-eater, possibly giant squid.
Tirtha holy place of pilgrimage.
Tirtha yatra pilgrimage.
Treta yuga the second great age.
Trikalagyani one who knows the 3 times.
Trimurti trinity: Brahma, Vishnu and Siva.
Tripathaga of three paths.
Tripura three sky cities, built by Mayaa, which Siva brought down with a missile of fire.
Trisula trident.
Ucchaisravas horse of the Sun.
Upanishad holy book, dealing with the Brahman, the formless God.
Usanas Venus. Sukra. A male God, guru to the Asuras, as Brihaspati, Jupiter is to the Devas. Greatest of poets.
Uttara Phalguni a nakshatram.
Uttarayana the northern migration of the sun.
Vaastu land, property, house etc. also, the sacred science of these and building. Ancient Indian feng shui.
Vaastu shanti rite for peace in a new dwelling.
Vaikunta Vishnu’s celestial city.
Vairagya detachment, relinquishment.
Vaisya third Hindu caste; the traders.
Vaitarani river of death, which separates this world from the next.
Vajra Indra’s thunderbolt.
Valkala fabric made of tree-bark, worn by hermits.
Vamana dwarf: Vishnu’s fifth Avatara.
Vana jungle, forest.
Vana devata forest god.
Vanara ancient, magical race of monkeys. Lit. dwellers in the vana.
Vanavasa living in the forest as a renunciate.
Vandana worship.
Varaha boar: Vishnu’s third incarnation.
Varanasi city sacred to Siva.
Varsha continent. Also, rain.
Varuna God of seas.
Vasantha spring.
Vasuki king of the nagas.
Vayavyastra wind weapon.
Veda ancient book of sacred hymns.
Vedanta lit. the end of the Vedas. Includes the Upanishads. Discourses on the Brahman.
Vedi/vedika altar.
Vetala/i hunter, huntress
Vidya an art.
Vidyadhara magical being.
Vimana sky ship.
Vina Indian stringed instrument, like a lute.
Vina nadam the soound of a vina.
Viswakarman divine artisan.
Viswarupa Cosmic Form.
Vivasat ancestor: the Sun.
vrata vow.
Vrishni a Yadava tribe, to which Krishna belongs.
Vyuha battle formation.
Yaama a measure/hour of the night.
Yadava Krishna’s clan.
Yaga, yagna sacrifice.
Yagnapashu sacrificial beast.
Yagnashala enclosure for a sacrifice.
Yajaka one who undertakes a yagna.
Yajus, Yajur Veda a Veda.
Yaksha a forest spirit.
Yama God of Death.
Yamala a tree.
Yamaduta death’s messenger, servitor.
yantra occult symbol. A device.
yatra journey, often with religious significance.
Yoga ‘union’; union with the Self, with God.
Yogi, yogin one who is united with his higher Self, with God.
Yogini female yogi.
Yojana 8/9 miles approximately.
Yoni vagina. Vaginal smybol at the base of a lings.
Yuddha war.
yuga an age.
yuganta/yugantara conjunction of two ages; a time of change.
yuga sandhi the cusp between two yugas.
yuvaraja crown prince, heir apparent.
Ramesh Menon was born in 1951 in New Delhi. He has lived and worked in Delhi, Hong Kong, Bangalore, and Jakarta, and now lives in Kodaikanal. He is also the author of
The Ramayana, A Modern Retelling of the Great Indian Epic
(Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003).
1. See the Appendix for some of these names in the Ganguli translation.
1. Another variation is that he offers great force of warlike cowherds called the Narayanas.
2. Before leaving, he meets Kritavarman, lord of the Bhojas, who promises him an aksauhini.
1. See Appendix.
1. In Ganguli’s translation, the 4 parvas of the war amount to approximately 1,200 pages. They are full of all sorts of details, especially of duels and battles between minor clans, kings and characters.
Some sections are definitely repetitive, as well. In Sanskrit, all these perhaps have an incantatory effect. Here, I believe I have described all the important events of the war.
1. See Appendix for the omens Vyasa describes here.
2. Upon death, men have first to pass through the realm of the pitrs, the manes, before acquiring a celestial body, with which they can ascend to heaven. Here, the implication is that those dying in the war would acquire their heavenly spirit bodies immediately.
3. Ganguli notes that, at times, Sanjaya himself fights in the war.
4. They are both dark and are frequently referred to as ‘the two Krishnas’, throughout the parvas of war.
1. Here, at Krishna’s behest, Arjuna worships the Goddess Durga before the battle begins. See Appendix for the hymn.
1. Dusasana is often portayed as fighting at the head of a ferocious legion of mlecchas.
1. Ganguli’s text says that maidens by thousands gently showered sandalwood powder, fried rice grains and soft flowers over Bheeshma. Also, countless women, old men and children flock to see him on his bed of arrows.
1. See Appendix for a description of the horses, the standards and the bows of some of the kshatriyas.
2. The Ganguli text refers to this knowledge of elephants as Anjalikabedha.
1. He is ‘as handsome as a yaksha prince, even a son of Kubera’.
1. Actually, Vyasa discourses at length to Yudhishtira here, on death. The discourse runs into some 25 pages.
1. This applause by the celestials is a frequent occurence throughout the war, whenever they see any exceptional feat of heroism.
1. He kills Ghatotkacha’s son Anjanaparva here, after a prolonged encounter.
2. Ganguli: The Devas, rishis, gandharvas, apsaras, vidyadharas, nagas, yakshas, uragas and kinnaras hold magic lanterns in the sky, too. Here and elsewhere, apsaras fling garlands down on the warriors and sprinkle heaven’s perfumes over them, in joy!
1. Ganguli says this is Jatasura’s son.
2. Ganguli: Alayudha was Baka’s brother.
1. Ganguli: ‘..the sea of troops wakes like an assemblage of lotuses unfurling to the sun.’
2. This weapon is one that appears in many forms, both protective and destructive.
3. Ganguli mentions Viswamitra, Jamadagni, Gautama, Vasistha, Kashyapa, Atri, Garga, the Srikatas, the Prisnis, the descendants of Bhrigu and Angiras, the Valkhilyas, the Marichis and ‘many others’.
4. Drona was fifty-eight, by the Ganguli text. Also, Dhrishtadyumna drags his severed head along the ground, then lifts it and flings it down before the armies.
1. Awatthama asks specifically how Krishna and Arjuna were proof against the agneyastra. See Appendix for Vyasa’s answer in greater detail.
1. Also, a force of fierce shepherds called Gopalas comes with Kritavarman. More recently, they are called Gowalas or Ahirs and they are still hired for local brawls and as politicians’ musclemen, in certain areas of Bengal and Bihar.
1. Actually, Shalya means a dart or goad. Also, in the original text, Karna loses his temper here and is openly abusive to Shalya and the Madras of whom Shalya is king. He says the Madraka men are deceitful and ignoble and hate their friends, while both Madraka men and women are notoriously loose and vile-tongued, drinking, dancing naked and sleeping with anyone: blood-relatives, members of their own sex, even servants and slaves. He asks how any virtue could be expected from someone born into such a race.
1. There is more than one reference to vaisya and sudra soldiers, as well as kshatriyas.
2. This confrontation between Arjuna and Yudhishtira is longer in the Ganguli text. Arjuna accuses Yudhishtira of casting aspersions at him, while his brother lay safely in Draupadi’s tent and bed, a full yojana from the battle. He says Bheema might upbraid him, for he was in the thick of the fray, having slain eight hundred elephants. Arjuna calles Yudhishtira cruel for accusing him, when he, Arjuna, fought with all his might and heart; he tells of how he had slain countless samsaptakas.
Arjuna brings up the game of dice. Only after all these recriminations, does Yudhishtira melt and apologize abjectly, citing his terror of Karna as his excuse. Then Krishna upbraids Arjuna sharply, asking if he would really have killed his brother.
3. Krishna also describes Karna as being 8 ratnis tall. A ratni is a measure of length from an elbow to a clenched fist.
1. Both are Devaputras and in the sky, the celestials all take one hero’s side or the other’s. See Appendix.
1. See Appendix for a description of Aswatthama.
2. Krishna calls him Artayani, too.
1. Balarama’s pilgrimage is described in 50 pages. This includes the legends of every tirtha he visits.
1. Ganguli’s translation adds that a dreadful sound came from the bowels of the earth, while conches and drumrolls echoed. Showers of blood and dust fell from the sky. On every side, frightful beings, headless, but with many arms and legs, danced across the earth. Lakes and deep wells vomited blood and brave warriors trembled. Rivers flowed back toward their sources; women looked like men and men like women. All the Devas, gandharvas, siddhas and charanas returned to their abodes, talking about the awesome duel and its end.
1. The Ganguli translation describes several duels in this section, as also women wailing upon finding their husbands being slaughtered.
2. Also, Death appears as an old black-skinned woman, her eyes and mouth bloody, wearing crimson garlands and unguents, wearing a single red rag and chanting a dismal dirge. She ties the diverse spirts of the slain men and beasts with a cord and leads them away into the next world.
3. Finally, Krishna gives it to him, but Aswatthama cannot hold it up. Krishna then asks him why he wanted the Chakra and Aswatthama replies, “I meant to fight you with it, Krishna.”
1. Here Gandhari names several of the dead kings and warriors, for some 10 pages.
2. In a nearby section Dhritarashtra asks Yudhishtira how many warriors had died and how many survived. Yudhishtira replies, ‘One billion, six hundred and sixty million and twenty thousand men have fallen in battle. Twenty-four thousand, one hundred and sixty-five escaped with their lives.’
The Ganguli translation. The figure for the dead is not merely absurdly exaggerated, it contradictsevery calculation based on the given number of aksauhinis that fought the war.
3. Krishna also says, ‘You double your grief by indulging it. A brahmana women bears children to practise austerities; the cow brings forth calves to give milk and bear burdens, the mare foals so her colts and filles may be swift-footed; the sudra women’s children add to the numbers of servitors;
the vaisya woman’s children swell the keepers of cattle. But a kshatriya princess like you brings forth sons to be slaughtered in battle.’
1. The two books have been condensed and combined. Together, they are some 1000 pages long in Ganguli’s translation: the Shanti Parva is 600 pages and the Anusasana Parva 400, approximately.
1. This section of conversations between Yudhishtira and his brothers and Yudhishtira and the Rishis Devasthana, Vyasa and then Krishna himself is some 70 pages long in the full translation. The argument is whether sannyasa is the right course for Yudhishtira to adopt. He believes it is the only course and the others try to dissuade him.
1. Various palaces are given to the brothers: Yudhishtira has Dhritarashtra’s palace, Bheema enters Duryodhana’s, Arjuna gets Dusasana’s, as magnificent, Nakula has Durmarshana’s palace, even grander and Sahadeva begins to live in Durmukha’s palace.
1. The discourse of the patriarch on the dharma of kshatriyas and kings teems, among other things, with creation legends, tales of the devas and the asuras, the rishis, parables and other stories, descriptions of various royal houses and bloodlines, the nature and the art of kingship, legends of great kings of the past, the yugas and ages gone by, the avataras of God and expositions on the nature of time and God. In Ganguli’s translation, the discourse, which runs through both parvas, is about 900 pages long.