Mahabharata (Volume - 5)

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The Mahabharata is one of the greatest stories ever told. Though the basic plot is widely known, there is much more to the epic than the dispute between Kouravas and Pandavas that led to the battle in Kurukshetra. It has innumerable sub-plots that accommodate fascinating meanderings and digressions, and it has rarely been translated in full, given its formidable length of 80,000 shlokas or couplets. This magnificent 10-volume unabridged translation of the epic is based on the Critical Edition compiled at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. The fifth volume will complete Udyoga Parva with the story of Amba who was reborn as Shikandi. It includes Bhishma Parva which covers the first ten days of the war and has Krishnas advice to Arjuna in the form of the Bhagavad Gita. This volume thus gets into the war proper. After Bhishmas downfall, Drona is instated asthe commander and Abhimanyu is killed. Every conceivable human emotion figures in the Mahabharata, the reason why the epic continues to hold sway over our imagination. In this lucid, nuanced and confident translation, Bibek Debroy makes the Mahabharata marvellously accessible to contemporary readers.

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Bibek Debroy is an economist and is Research Professor (Centre of Policy Research) and a columnist with Economic Times. He has published in Indology and translated (into English) the Vedas, the Puranas, the Upanishads and the Gita (Penguin India, 2005). His book Sarama and her Children: The Dog in Indian Myth (Penguin India, 2008) splices his interest in Hinduism with his love for dogs. He is currently translating the remaining volumes of the unabridged Mahabharata.