The blog has a lot of new readers, so most of you probably don't know that I've been reading The Mahabharata and that this newsletter is (at least notionally) a Great Books substack.
When I read it in grad school it unleashed some sort of existential crisis in me and I ended up writing a paper called "Mahabharata and the Meaning of Life." Very embarrassing in retrospect...
It's been known to do that, TBH. Nothing to be embarrassed about.
The aesthetic critics of the Indian tradition noted that the predominant emotional tone of the work (taken as an entirety) is 'world-weariness'/'world-turning-away' which induces a sort of existential equanimity/detachment. It speaks well of you that you were sensitive to that! They'd have described you as a connoisseur or aesthetically sensitive person (literally: 'with-heart')!
If you responded to it, I'd really recommend the tradition of Indian sringara (romantic-erotic) poetry, specially the subhashitas, if you haven't already had a chance to enjoy it. The Sringara-shatakam and Hala's Gathasattasai are pretty good starting points.
I read the two-volume/1500pp Menon translation a few years ago. I absolutely adored everything up to the Gita & the battles that followed, which (for me) got pretty tedious after a while. I hope you will enjoy them more than I did. The coda after the battles was also fantastic.
i've been struggling through the abridged penguin one-volume edition for a while now; i think you've convinced me to bite the bullet and get the full version. the abridgement is eight hundred pages long but it feels breathless, just page after page of "so anyway, a great ascetic was so pure the the gods sent an apsara to tempt him, he spontaneously ejaculated into some reeds and turned into a boy, and here's the boy now with a brahmastra that can destroy the entire world, which he picked up somewhere or other. anyway..."
bw do you have any experience with the rk narayan retellings of the itihasas? i was considering his ramayana; obviously it'll be missing all the fun digressions but i'm told it's a decent way of getting to grips with the story and has some literary merit on its own terms
Oh yeah the Penguin version seemed a bit ill-conceived. Like, if you’re going to abridge the Mahabharata you have to do it constantly—you can’t constantly be like “Oh btw here’s the parts I left out”. The abridged English version most Indians grew up reading is the Rajagopalachari version. That might be worth a try!
Personally I really liked the Narayan version of the Ramayana! That’s the kind of confident abridging I mean—he just tells the story, doesn’t constantly allude to the gaps
I am delighted that you're doing this. I hope to get a chance to read the whole thing someday. I didn't realize the Debroy translation existed - I was assuming we had to stick with the 19th century until (unless?) we got Chicago and Clay.
And I'm glad you're finding it's not full of boring bits! That's encouraging. I do pity the person who is reading the first parts thinking "when do we get to the good stuff in the war?" There is no way that person is going to finish the Śāntiparvan.
When I want to characterize the MBh one of my first go-to statements is its own self-characterization that "What is found in here may be found elsewhere; what is not found in here may be found nowhere else." It has a little bit of everything. Often a lot of everything.
"Now it’s also not some sacrosanct work: it did have composers who weren’t afraid to alter and change it. The text wasn’t sacred and immutable the way the Vedas were. But still, this is a book without a real author, as we understand the term—it’s a book that comes to us as a result of a socio-historical process—one that continues to this day."
So what you're saying is, you're reading through the colophon? ;-)
Ah, sorry - it's a joke about the Daniel Sinykin book everyone was up in arms about last month, the one suggesting that the "individual author" was just a quirk of history, and that we should really look at literature as the result of conglomerates and blah blah blah discourse discourse discourse. All beneath you, I'm sure :P
When I read it in grad school it unleashed some sort of existential crisis in me and I ended up writing a paper called "Mahabharata and the Meaning of Life." Very embarrassing in retrospect...
OMG that sounds great though!
It's been known to do that, TBH. Nothing to be embarrassed about.
The aesthetic critics of the Indian tradition noted that the predominant emotional tone of the work (taken as an entirety) is 'world-weariness'/'world-turning-away' which induces a sort of existential equanimity/detachment. It speaks well of you that you were sensitive to that! They'd have described you as a connoisseur or aesthetically sensitive person (literally: 'with-heart')!
If you responded to it, I'd really recommend the tradition of Indian sringara (romantic-erotic) poetry, specially the subhashitas, if you haven't already had a chance to enjoy it. The Sringara-shatakam and Hala's Gathasattasai are pretty good starting points.
Hi Naomi,
I read the two-volume/1500pp Menon translation a few years ago. I absolutely adored everything up to the Gita & the battles that followed, which (for me) got pretty tedious after a while. I hope you will enjoy them more than I did. The coda after the battles was also fantastic.
i've been struggling through the abridged penguin one-volume edition for a while now; i think you've convinced me to bite the bullet and get the full version. the abridgement is eight hundred pages long but it feels breathless, just page after page of "so anyway, a great ascetic was so pure the the gods sent an apsara to tempt him, he spontaneously ejaculated into some reeds and turned into a boy, and here's the boy now with a brahmastra that can destroy the entire world, which he picked up somewhere or other. anyway..."
bw do you have any experience with the rk narayan retellings of the itihasas? i was considering his ramayana; obviously it'll be missing all the fun digressions but i'm told it's a decent way of getting to grips with the story and has some literary merit on its own terms
Oh yeah the Penguin version seemed a bit ill-conceived. Like, if you’re going to abridge the Mahabharata you have to do it constantly—you can’t constantly be like “Oh btw here’s the parts I left out”. The abridged English version most Indians grew up reading is the Rajagopalachari version. That might be worth a try!
Personally I really liked the Narayan version of the Ramayana! That’s the kind of confident abridging I mean—he just tells the story, doesn’t constantly allude to the gaps
Oh this is a great - I was looking for a good translation, and so thanks for this rec. I purchased this "modern retelling" on the basis of another's rec (https://www.amazon.com/Mahabharata-Modern-Retelling-Carole-Satyamurti/dp/0393352498), but I couldn't get into it. Excited to try this one out!
You should! Exciting!
I am delighted that you're doing this. I hope to get a chance to read the whole thing someday. I didn't realize the Debroy translation existed - I was assuming we had to stick with the 19th century until (unless?) we got Chicago and Clay.
And I'm glad you're finding it's not full of boring bits! That's encouraging. I do pity the person who is reading the first parts thinking "when do we get to the good stuff in the war?" There is no way that person is going to finish the Śāntiparvan.
When I want to characterize the MBh one of my first go-to statements is its own self-characterization that "What is found in here may be found elsewhere; what is not found in here may be found nowhere else." It has a little bit of everything. Often a lot of everything.
I know! The part I’m reading right now is all about the various yugas—stuff I’d never really heard explained in a primary source before!
"Now it’s also not some sacrosanct work: it did have composers who weren’t afraid to alter and change it. The text wasn’t sacred and immutable the way the Vedas were. But still, this is a book without a real author, as we understand the term—it’s a book that comes to us as a result of a socio-historical process—one that continues to this day."
So what you're saying is, you're reading through the colophon? ;-)
I don't know what that means =]
Ah, sorry - it's a joke about the Daniel Sinykin book everyone was up in arms about last month, the one suggesting that the "individual author" was just a quirk of history, and that we should really look at literature as the result of conglomerates and blah blah blah discourse discourse discourse. All beneath you, I'm sure :P