One of the two Hindu epics, the Mahabharata is a tale of war that took place between two branches of a royal family—the five Pandava brothers and their 100 cousins, the Kauravas—at Kurukshetra, near Delhi. Written about a century after the Ramayana, it is divided into 18 books and consists of 220,000 lines, making it the longest poem in the world. According to legend, a sage named Vyasa dictated the Mahabharata to the Elephant God, Ganesha, who then put it to paper.
The Pandavas are the sons of Dhritarashtra, while their cousins are the offspring of Dhritarashtra’s younger brother Pandu. Pandu becomes king because Dhritarashtra is blind, but the cousins fight among themselves over succession to the throne. The Pandavas eventually lose the kingdom during a game and are banished to the forest for 13 years. The great war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas takes place after their return from the forest. The Pandavas win after an 18-day war and ascend the throne with Draupadi, who is married to all of them.
Like the Ramayana, the Mahabharata has a theme of good versus evil and salutes courage and faith. It upholds the honour of women through the example of Draupadi who is saved by the Hindu god Krishna from being publicly disrobed. She finds herself in this ordeal when Yudhisthira, king of the Pandavas, gambles her away during a contest with the Kauravas. Draupadi’s honour is avenged when the Pandavas defeat the Kauravas. It is an invaluable source of Hindu cultural mores, mythology and philosophical thought from this period of Indian history.
The sixth book of the Mahabharata contains the Bhagavad Gita or Song of the Lord, a significant Hindu text that preaches loyalty to God and the benefits of duty, knowledge, work and devotion, which are paths to salvation. The Bhagavad Gita is composed in the form of a dialogue between Prince Arjuna, one of the Pandavas, before he joins his brothers in the war with the Kauravas, and Hindu God Krishna in the guise of a charioteer. Arjuna is consumed by self-doubt on the Kurukshetra battlefield and tormented by the bloodshed. He pours out his anguish to Krishna and discusses the need for war with him. Krishna, who is a neutral party in the family dispute, advises detachment from the external world, which is illusory. The philosophy of Hinduism is presented comprehensively in this dialogue that is perceived as a message from God. The Bhagavad Gita is an invaluable guidebook for followers of Hinduism to cope with life’s travails.
Abhijnana Shakuntala (Recognition of Shakuntala), an all-time classic of world literature, was written by preeminent poet and playwright Kalidasa in the 4th century. It borrows the character of Shakuntala, a forest nymph, from the Mahabharata but develops it in a completely different way from the epic, dealing instead with delicacy and romance, anguish, pathos and happiness, culminating in a happy ending.
The play relates the story of Shakuntala, who lives in a hermitage and captures the heart of King Dushyanta while he is out hunting in the forest. They get married, but the king eventually leaves her to return to his palace. Before departing, he presents her his royal ring promising that he will return soon. Shakuntala spends the ensuing days pining for the king. In one of her dreamy states, she offends a visiting sage who curses that the person Shakuntala was thinking about would forget her. Later, he softens the curse by pronouncing that the king would remember her if he saw the ring. When Shakuntala discovers that she is expecting the king’s child, she sets out for the palace but loses the ring while bathing in a lake. The king, without the evidence of the ring, does not remember her, and she returns forlorn to the forest where she delivers a baby boy. Years later, the king encounters the ring when a fisherman finds it inside a fish and presents it to him. The king instantly remembers Shakuntala and returns to the forest where he is reunited with her.