Mahabharata Vol. 1 (Penguin Translated Texts) Read Online Free Page B

still amazing. This was my first complete reading of the unabridged version of the Mahabharata. This particular copy probably had antiquarian value. The pages would crumble in my hands and I soon replaced my treasured possession with a republished reprint. Not longer after, I acquired the Aryashastra version of the Mahabharata, with both the Sanskrit and the English together. In the early 1980s, I was also exposed to three Marathi writers writing on the Mahabharata. There was Iravati Karve’s
Yuganta
. This was available in both English and in Marathi. I read the English one first, followed by the Marathi. The English version isn’t an exact translation of the Marathi and the Marathi version is far superior. Then there was Durga Bhagwat’s
Vyas Parva
. This was in Marathi and I am not aware of an English translation. Finally, there was Shivaji Sawant’s
Mritunjaya
, a kind of autobiography for Karna. This was available both in English and in Marathi.
    In the early 1980s, quite by chance, I encountered two shlokas, one from Valmiki’s Ramayana, the other from Kalidasa’s
Meghadutam
. These were two poets separated by anything between 500 to 1,000 years, the exact period being an uncertain one. The shloka in
Meghadutam
is right towards the beginning, the second shloka to be precise. It is the first day in the month of Ashada. The yaksha has been cursed and has been separated from his beloved. The mountains are covered with clouds. These clouds are like elephants, bent down as if in play. The shloka in the Valmiki Ramayana occurs in Sundara Kanda. Rama now knows that Sita is in Lanka. But the monsoon stands in the way of the invasion. The clouds are streaked with flags of lightning and garlanded with geese. They are like mountain peaks and are thundering, like elephants fighting. At that time, I did not know that elephants were a standard metaphor for clouds in Sanskrit literature. I found it amazing that two different poets separated by time had thought of elephants. And because the yaksha was pining for his beloved, the elephants were playing. But because Rama was impatient to fight, the elephants were fighting. I resolved that I mustread all this in the original. It was a resolution I have never regretted. I think that anyone who has not read
Meghadutam
in Sanskrit has missed out on a thing of beauty that will continue to be a joy for generations to come.
    In the early 1980s, Professor Ashok Rudra was a professor of economics in Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan. I used to teach in Presidency College, Kolkata, and we sometimes met. Professor Rudra was a left-wing economist and didn’t think much of my economics. I dare say the feeling was reciprocated. By tacit agreement, we never discussed economics. Instead, we discussed Indological subjects. At that point, Professor Rudra used to write essays on such subjects in Bengali. I casually remarked, ‘I want to do a statistical test on the frequency with which the five Pandavas used various weapons in the Kurukshetra war.’ Most sensible men would have dismissed the thought as crazy. But Professor Rudra wasn’t sensible by usual norms of behaviour and he was also a trained statistician. He encouraged me to do the paper, written and published in Bengali, using the Aryashastra edition. Several similar papers followed, written in Bengali. In 1983, I moved to Pune, to the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, a stone’s throw away from BORI.
Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute
(
ABORI
) is one of the most respected journals in Indology. Professor G.B. Palsule was then the editor of
ABORI
and later went on to become Director of BORI. I translated one of the Bengali essays into English and went and met Professor Palsule, hoping to get it published in
ABORI
. To Professor Palsule’s eternal credit, he didn’t throw the dilettante out. Instead, he said he would get the paper refereed. The referee’s substantive criticism was that the paper should have been