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       Vasiṣṭha Maitrāvaruṇi and Viśvāmitra

       King Kalmāṣapāda

       11. Ṛśyaśṛṅga, Yavakrīta and the Brāhmin Saint

       I – Ṛśyaśṛṅga

       II - Yavakrīta

       III – The Nameless Brāhmin Saint

       12. Sanatsujāta

       Kriyā Yoga

       The Sanatsujātīya

       “Distraction is Death”

       On the Veda

       13. Śuka

       Śuka’s Birth

       At the Court of King Janaka

       Nārada’s Talk on Sanatkumāra’s Wisdom

       Śuka’s Path to Complete Liberation

       Appendix I - Sanskrit Original Texts

       1 – Draupadī in the Assembly Hall

       2 – Vikarṇa’s speech

       3 – The Miracle of endless skirts

       4 – Kṛṣṇa’s commentary on the dice game

       5 – Yudhiṣṭhira’s sermon on forgiveness

       6 – Draupadī’s philosophy of divine determinism

       7 - Yudhiṣṭhira on dharma for its own sake

       8 – Draupadī’s rejection of fatalism and accidentalism

       9 – Śuka’s Life

       Appendix II - A Summary of the Mahābhārata

       I – The Main Action

       II – The Structure

       Literature

      Preface

      The present book is based on my dissertation titled Essential Features of Indian Culture and Spirituality, As Presented in the Mahābhārata, submitted to the University of Pune in 1985 under the guidance of Dr. S.D. Laddu. The text has been newly edited for the purpose of this title; several chapters were omitted and numerous passages have been rewritten. I have also given my own translations of all the Sanskrit quotations in the text.

      Wilfried Huchzermeyer

      Whenever this is the case, English translations are marked “SKR” at the end and the respective footnote refers to the Appendix.

      Introduction

      Sri Aurobindo

      V.S. Sukthankar

      P. Lal

      V.S. Sukthankar

      The Mahābhārata is one of the most impressive creations of the Indian mind. If it cannot compare with the Upaniṣads in philosophic depth, with Kālidāsa’s poetry in refinement and splendour, it yet has a quality of its own and is unequalled in its comprehensiveness, the mass of material offered and the variety of subjects discussed – ranging from history, philosophy and law to yoga, spirituality and psychology.

      Indeed, the volume of knowledge expounded in this epic is so immense that most critics have rightly assumed that it can hardly be the product of a single brain howsoever gifted. Some great scholars of the Mahābhārata such as a modern translator of the text, J.A.B. van Buitenen, and India’s great yogi-poet Sri Aurobindo, agree that the Mahābhārata was originally a smaller epic of about 24,000 verses, and that this nucleus was subsequently enhanced by an endless series of later additions made by authors who deemed Vyāsa’s genial creation a fit vehicle for their own less inspired poetic expressions, philosophic ideas, dogmatic teachings and religious beliefs.

      If this nucleus has had the power to attract such a mass of material which exceeds three to four times the volume of its original body, then this fact speaks for itself. Whilst some popular editions of the epic contain up to 100,000 stanzas, the Critical Edition prepared by the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune, confines itself to about 73,900 couplets, presented by the editors as the “constituted text” which does not claim to be the nucleus, but the most authentic text established on the basis of a comparison of all important recensions and manuscripts.

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