The Mahabharata
The great epic of India — a complete encyclopaedia of life, and at its heart, the Bhagavad Gita, spoken by Lord Krishna on the field of battle.
The Mahabharata is the great epic of India and one of the longest poems ever composed — roughly 100,000 verses, nearly ten times the combined length of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Traditionally attributed to the sage Vyasa (Krishna Dvaipayana), it is far more than a story of war between two branches of a royal family. It is, as the epic itself declares, a complete encyclopaedia of life:
What is found here may be found elsewhere; what is not found here is found nowhere.The Mahabharata
Within its vast sweep lie the science of right action (dharma), the path of devotion, the nature of the soul, and — at its very heart — the Bhagavad Gita, spoken by Lord Krishna on the field of battle.
For the seeker of Kriya Yoga, the Mahabharata is not merely ancient history. Read inwardly, it is a map of the perennial war waged within every human being — the struggle between the higher and lower nature, between the soul’s discrimination and the restless pull of the senses.
Origin and Authorship
Tradition holds that the Mahabharata was composed by Vyasa — a title meaning “the arranger” or “the compiler.” Vyasa is not merely the author but a character within the epic itself: the grandfather of both the Pandavas and the Kauravas. The story was dictated by Vyasa to Ganesha, the elephant-headed god of wisdom, who served as his scribe — a symbol that even the most complex spiritual teachings require divine grace to be transmitted.
The Great Story
The epic tells of a bitter rivalry between two branches of the Kuru royal family — the five Pandava brothers, led by the righteous Yudhishthira, and the hundred Kaurava brothers, led by the proud Duryodhana. What begins as a dispute over succession escalates through gambling, exile, and failed diplomacy into the catastrophic eighteen-day war of Kurukshetra, in which virtually every great warrior of the age is slain.
The Fateful Game of Dice
The Pandavas lose their kingdom, their wealth, and their freedom in a rigged game of dice — the result of Yudhishthira’s single tragic flaw, his addiction to gambling. Draupadi, their queen, is humiliated in the court before the very elders who should have protected her. The Pandavas are exiled for thirteen years.
The Bhagavad Gita
As the two armies face each other on the field of Kurukshetra, Arjuna is overcome with grief at the thought of killing his own kinsmen. He lays down his bow. It is here that Krishna delivers the Bhagavad Gita — revealing the immortality of the soul, the path of selfless action, and the vision of the Divine. The Gita is the spiritual summit of the entire Mahabharata.
The Eighteen-Day War
The great battle is a tragedy of attrition in which nearly every great warrior falls. Bhishma falls on a bed of arrows. Drona is felled through a half-truth. Karna — secretly the eldest Pandava — is killed when his chariot wheel sticks in the mud. Finally Duryodhana is struck down. The Pandavas win a kingdom that is little more than a graveyard.
The Final Journey
In the years that follow, Krishna’s Yadava clan destroys itself, and Krishna departs from the earth. The grief-stricken Pandavas crown Parikshit and begin their final pilgrimage to the Himalayas. One by one, Draupadi and four of the brothers fall. Only Yudhishthira reaches the summit with a dog at his heels — a final test of compassion before entering heaven.
The Great Characters
The Mahabharata is peopled by one of the largest casts in world literature — gods, sages, kings and warriors. Each character embodies a particular quality or dilemma of the human condition, making the epic a mirror in which every reader can see themselves.
The Inner Meaning
Read inwardly, the Mahabharata is the story of every human soul. The Pandavas represent the five faculties of the higher nature — righteousness (Yudhishthira), vital energy (Bhima), skill and aspiration (Arjuna), beauty (Nakula), and wisdom (Sahadeva). The Kauravas represent the hundred tendencies of the lower nature — pride, greed, lust, anger, attachment, aversion. The battlefield of Kurukshetra is the field of the body itself, where these two armies meet in perpetual conflict.
Krishna is the inner guru — the divine guide who speaks from the chariot of the body to the warrior-soul (Arjuna) at the moment of crisis. The Bhagavad Gita is the teaching he gives: the soul is immortal, action must be selfless, devotion opens the heart, and the vision of the Divine transforms everything. The war must be fought — not to destroy others but to transform oneself.
The Mahabharata is not a story of others long ago. It is the story of you, right now — the war between your higher and lower nature, played out on the battlefield of your own mind.
The Mahabharata and the Ramayana
The two great epics are deeply connected. The Ramayana is set in the earlier Treta Yuga; the Mahabharata in the Dvapara Yuga. Rama is the seventh avatar of Vishnu; Krishna is the eighth. The entire story of Rama is retold within the Mahabharata as the Ramopakhyana. And Hanuman appears in the Mahabharata as Bhima’s brother and Arjuna’s guardian. Together, the two epics form the twin pillars of India’s spiritual and literary heritage.
At the Heart: The Bhagavad Gita
Within this vast epic lies its greatest treasure — the Bhagavad Gita, the song of God himself. If you read nothing else of the Mahabharata, read the Gita. It contains everything the soul needs to know.
Read the Bhagavad Gita →