LiteratureBook · -300
The Mahabharata
Vyasa
Two sets of cousins fight over a kingdom and destroy nearly everyone, with the Bhagavad Gita sitting inside it as Arjuna's crisis on the battlefield. The moral weather is genuinely ambiguous, which is why it keeps getting retold. The link is to Ganguli's Volume 1; Gutenberg carries the full prose translation across several volumes.
Why you should read this
The longest epic poem in world literature, roughly ten times the length of the two Homeric epics combined, it took shape over several centuries of oral and written transmission before reaching its current form. Best approached through an abridged translation first, since the full text is a genuine undertaking even for practiced readers.
- Field
- Literature
- Form
- Fiction
- Published
- 300 BCE
- Themes
- Indian EpicLiterature
