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The Mahabharata Of Vyasa
Volume The Anukramanika in the Adi Parva. Spiritual benefits that accrue from a devoted reading of the Mahabharata.
400 pages, Textbook Binding
First published January 1, 1970
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 14, 2020
Barangkali, ini adalah buku tentang keluarga wangsa Kuru yang paling tidak "memihak" dan "hitam-putih" yang pernah saya baca. Berbeda dengan beberapa buku cerita Mahabharata yang pernah saya baca, dimana sebagian besar ditulis oleh orang Indonesia dan berupa saduran dari cerita Mahabharata, buku ini lebih mirip disebut "ringkasan" dari cerita aslinya.
Ringkasan, bagaimanapun juga, pada akhirnya selalu punya kelemahan: ia kehilangan banyak "kekayaan" dan "ornamen" dalam kesusastraannya. Tapi, menurut saya, itu lebih baik daripada cerita saduran yang lebih mendahulukan "keseruan perang Bharatayudha" dan "pesan moral" yang membuat cerita kisah Pandawa vs. Kurawa menjadi banal. Banalitas, yang selalu menjadi ciri cerita Indonesia, di sini adalah dimana antagonis dan protagonis "sudah ditentukan dari sononya" tanpa penjelasan dan kejelasan.
Dari buku ini, akhirnya saya bisa tahu, misalnya, mengapa Dorna bisa dikatakan "jahat" sekaligus "baik". Ada alasan historis di balik perwatakan setiap tokoh dalam Mahabharata yang dalam buku ini menentukan peranan mereka dalam epos besar kisah keturunan wangsa Kuru ini. Jika kebanyakan cerita keagamaan semacam ini melulu berteriak soal "pembaca harus jadi orang baik", maka Mahabharata tulisan P. Lal ini mengatakannya dengan cara sedikit lain "pembaca harus tahu mengapa orang-orang bisa menjadi jahat", dan itu membuat karya sastra ini memperoleh puncak pencapaiannya, yaitu mengantarkan kita ke taraf maklum.
Ringkasan, bagaimanapun juga, pada akhirnya selalu punya kelemahan: ia kehilangan banyak "kekayaan" dan "ornamen" dalam kesusastraannya. Tapi, menurut saya, itu lebih baik daripada cerita saduran yang lebih mendahulukan "keseruan perang Bharatayudha" dan "pesan moral" yang membuat cerita kisah Pandawa vs. Kurawa menjadi banal. Banalitas, yang selalu menjadi ciri cerita Indonesia, di sini adalah dimana antagonis dan protagonis "sudah ditentukan dari sononya" tanpa penjelasan dan kejelasan.
Dari buku ini, akhirnya saya bisa tahu, misalnya, mengapa Dorna bisa dikatakan "jahat" sekaligus "baik". Ada alasan historis di balik perwatakan setiap tokoh dalam Mahabharata yang dalam buku ini menentukan peranan mereka dalam epos besar kisah keturunan wangsa Kuru ini. Jika kebanyakan cerita keagamaan semacam ini melulu berteriak soal "pembaca harus jadi orang baik", maka Mahabharata tulisan P. Lal ini mengatakannya dengan cara sedikit lain "pembaca harus tahu mengapa orang-orang bisa menjadi jahat", dan itu membuat karya sastra ini memperoleh puncak pencapaiannya, yaitu mengantarkan kita ke taraf maklum.
September 13, 2019
This was the first version of the Mahabharata that I had ever read. It was a given to me as a gift by my uncle when I was 14. It was full of stories I remember my Grandfather telling me as a child. To this day, it's still my favorite version of the story and I find myself returning to it every few years to read it again. The story is an old Indian Epic that is condensed and translated to English without losing it's heart or lessons.
April 21, 2025
Like many other of its kind, this is an epic tale, not of black against white, but morality and virtues questioned, debated, and learned. Wisdom that is taught through stories like this will always be a personal favorite.
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August 21, 2021I really need to come back to this clasic with time and energy to enjoy.
July 15, 2026
Profound structural and semantic patterns. This text demands meticulous annotation and offers a lifetime of analytical contemplation regarding the nature of Atman.
May 14, 2010
kurang detail ceritanya..
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May 31, 2018The title of this book can be translated as "the great tale of the Bhārata dynasty“. It is assumed that the origins of the epic probably fall between the 8th and 9th centuries BCE and that the text probably reached its final form by the early Gupta period (c. 4th century CE). It’s one of the two pillars of the Indian literature; the other one being The Ramayana. The Mahabharata can be described as the longest epic poem ever written; it contains over 100,000 couplets or over 200,000 individual verse lines. A critical edition contained 13.000 pages in 19 volumes was produced between 1919 and 1966 by scholars at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune. A project to translate the full epic into an English translation is still underway and will cover an estimated 32 volumes of which 15 are already available. I would never have considered to read it if it wouldn’t have been summarized to 141 pages of A4 format.
Book I; The tournament (Astra Darsana)
It’s the introduction to the two clans of rivaling clans of paternal cousins; the 5 sons of the deceased King Pandu and the 100 suns of his blind brother Dhrita-rashtra who succeeded him as King. In reality however, the 5 sons of Pandu are fathered by five different Gods. . Yudhishthir was the son of Dharma or Virtue, Bhīma of Vayu or Wind, Arjun of Indra or Rain-god, the twin youngest were the sons of the Aswin twins, and Karna was the son of Surya the Sun, but was believed by himself and by all others to be the son of a simple chariot-driver.
The 100 sons of Vidura, of whom Duryodhan was the eldest, had more demoniacal progenitors and were jealous of the 5 sons of Pandu. To settle things, their father organized a tournament. Arjun, one of the Pandu princes proved to get the upper hand, till an unknown warrior, named Karna, comes into the arena and challenges Arjun. Nobody knew from whom Karna descended, but he was a secret premarital son of Pritha, Arjun’s mother. First the Pandu brothers protest that their brother would have to compete a man with no lineage, but Duryodhan makes him King of Anga, after which he can challenge Arjun. Against all expectations, Karna wins the tournament.
Meanwhile into the Mahabharata, Yudhishthir, the first Indian Emperor fucked up grandly by gambling away his kingdom and wealth into some trumped gamble game with loaded dices and has to go into exile to the jungle for twelve years, leaving his biggest rival, Duryodhan in charge of things. His wife is not the happiest person around and he’s also not very ported with himself, but decided to use the ordeal to turn himself into a better and smarter person. He gets visits from all kinds of people and gods who tell him lengthy stories about the duties of each cast and the rules that govern society, religion, etc…
Of course the evil Duryodhan doesn’t want to make place again when after 13 years Yudhishthir claims back his throne; he goes like “To whom will he gamble it away next time?” Yudhishthir of course doesn’t accept a no for answer and start to collect support to take his throne back with force. At the end they fight for 18 days and the good one wins and the bad one dies (together with a lot of other good and bad people). At this point the Mahabharata officially ends but there is a little addendum.
After the war, the shamans advised Yudhishthir to perform a horse sacrifice. This goes as follows; they let a horse loose and run wherever it wants. When it doesn’t get stopped, that means that the ruler of that land is accepting Yudhishthir’s supremacy. When it gets stopped, war follows. When the horse gets back home, it gets sacrificed to the gods and the emperor inhale the smokes of the fire to cleanse him from all sins.
Although my wife discarded the book as unreadable (because of the verses) I’ve got fun into it once I got into the rhythm. The author/editor by himself has done a great effort to reduce the epics 90.000 verses to 2.000. The magnitude of the Mahabharata is due to the fact that during the ensuing centuries after its conception, religious rules and teachings were added to it by putting them into the mound of one of the protagonists.
Book I; The tournament (Astra Darsana)
It’s the introduction to the two clans of rivaling clans of paternal cousins; the 5 sons of the deceased King Pandu and the 100 suns of his blind brother Dhrita-rashtra who succeeded him as King. In reality however, the 5 sons of Pandu are fathered by five different Gods. . Yudhishthir was the son of Dharma or Virtue, Bhīma of Vayu or Wind, Arjun of Indra or Rain-god, the twin youngest were the sons of the Aswin twins, and Karna was the son of Surya the Sun, but was believed by himself and by all others to be the son of a simple chariot-driver.
The 100 sons of Vidura, of whom Duryodhan was the eldest, had more demoniacal progenitors and were jealous of the 5 sons of Pandu. To settle things, their father organized a tournament. Arjun, one of the Pandu princes proved to get the upper hand, till an unknown warrior, named Karna, comes into the arena and challenges Arjun. Nobody knew from whom Karna descended, but he was a secret premarital son of Pritha, Arjun’s mother. First the Pandu brothers protest that their brother would have to compete a man with no lineage, but Duryodhan makes him King of Anga, after which he can challenge Arjun. Against all expectations, Karna wins the tournament.
Meanwhile into the Mahabharata, Yudhishthir, the first Indian Emperor fucked up grandly by gambling away his kingdom and wealth into some trumped gamble game with loaded dices and has to go into exile to the jungle for twelve years, leaving his biggest rival, Duryodhan in charge of things. His wife is not the happiest person around and he’s also not very ported with himself, but decided to use the ordeal to turn himself into a better and smarter person. He gets visits from all kinds of people and gods who tell him lengthy stories about the duties of each cast and the rules that govern society, religion, etc…
Of course the evil Duryodhan doesn’t want to make place again when after 13 years Yudhishthir claims back his throne; he goes like “To whom will he gamble it away next time?” Yudhishthir of course doesn’t accept a no for answer and start to collect support to take his throne back with force. At the end they fight for 18 days and the good one wins and the bad one dies (together with a lot of other good and bad people). At this point the Mahabharata officially ends but there is a little addendum.
After the war, the shamans advised Yudhishthir to perform a horse sacrifice. This goes as follows; they let a horse loose and run wherever it wants. When it doesn’t get stopped, that means that the ruler of that land is accepting Yudhishthir’s supremacy. When it gets stopped, war follows. When the horse gets back home, it gets sacrificed to the gods and the emperor inhale the smokes of the fire to cleanse him from all sins.
Although my wife discarded the book as unreadable (because of the verses) I’ve got fun into it once I got into the rhythm. The author/editor by himself has done a great effort to reduce the epics 90.000 verses to 2.000. The magnitude of the Mahabharata is due to the fact that during the ensuing centuries after its conception, religious rules and teachings were added to it by putting them into the mound of one of the protagonists.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews