Ten Things to Know about the Mahabharata: #9
Princess Draupadi has more on her mind than the size of the story she's in. (Painting by Ravi Varma)
9. It’s huge. The “maha” in Mahabharata is Sanskrit for great, in both senses of the word.
Ten times the size of the Iliad and the Odyssey combined, one unabridged translation runs to 12 volumes.
If you’re not a completist, R.K. Narayan, William Buck and several others have retold the main plot and some of the more famous sub-stories. (To me, the Narayan retelling is like following “The Sopranos” by reading TV Guide, but that’s another post.)
I’d encourage readers to try at least one volume of an unabridged translation, if only to see how some versions “correct” the erotic, classist, and otherwise questionable elements of an ancient, sacred text.
The only full English translation, finished in 1896 by Kisari Mohan Ganguli, is available for free online. Written in dated but perfectly readable prose, it conveys the sheer meandering sprawl of the original. Unfortunately, it lacks notes for the reader who doesn’t know Duryodhana from Dhritarashtra or forgets that a blow to the head in Book XXII is karmic payback for an act on page three. In short, it’s best undertaken by the serious reader who knows where the story is going.
More recently, the Clay Sanskrit Library has been publishing scholarly translations that include critical notes and the Sanskrit text on facing pages. It’s a worthy project, and about time, too, seeing as the epic is a good deal older than the English language. How much older? On to #8…
