Mahabharata Book Six Volume 2

This second half of Bhishma describes the events from the beginning of the fifth day till the end of the tenth of the great battle between the Káuravas and the Pándavas. Despite grandfather Bhishma’s appeal to conclude peace with the Pándavas, Duryódhana continues the bloody battle. The key strategist is general Bhishma, commander of the Káurava forces. Even though he is compelled to fight on the side of the Káuravas, Bhishma’s sympathies are with the Pándavas. After the ninth day of war, when Bhishma has wreaked havoc with their troops, the Pándavas realise that they will be unable to win as long as invincible Bhishma is alive. Bhishma willingly reveals to them how he can be destroyed. Strictly observing the warrior code, he will never fight with Shikhándin, because he was originally born a woman. Bhishma advises the Pándava brothers that Árjuna should strike him from behind Shikhándin’s back, and they follow the grandfather’s advice.

V.1. "'Bhishma, ' the sixth book of the eighteen-book epic "Maha·bhárata," narrates the first ten days of the great war between the Káuravas and the Pándavas. This first volume covers four days from the beginning of the great battle and includes the famous "Bhagavad Gita" ("Song of the Lord"), presented here within its original epic context. In this "bible" of Indian civilisation the charioteer Krishna empowers his disciple Árjuna to resolve his personal dilemma: whether to follow his righteous duty as a warrior and slay his opponent relatives in the just battle, or to abstain from fighting and renounce the warrior code to which he is born. The "Gita" culmintates in Krishna's theophany, when he reveals himself in the horrendous form of Death as the all-devouring fire of Time, a manifestation famously echoed by Oppenheimer when he witnessed the first atom bomb exploding.

“Bhishma,” the sixth book of the eighteen-book epic The Maha•bhárata, narrates the first ten days of the great war between the Káuravas and the Pándavas. This first volume covers four days from the beginning of the great battle and includes the famous “Bhágavad•gita (“The Song of the Lord”), presented here within its original epic context. In this “bible” of Indian civilization the charioteer Krishna empowers his disciple Árjuna to resolve his personal dilemma: whether to follow his righteous duty as a warrior and slay his opponent relatives in the just battle, or to abstain from fighting and renounce the warrior code to which he is born. “Bhishma,” the sixth book of the eighteen-book epic The Maha•bhárata, narrates the first ten days of the great war between the Káuravas and the Pándavas. This first volume covers four days from the beginning of the great battle and includes the famous “Bhágavad•gita (“The Song of the Lord”), presented here within its original epic context. In this “bible” of Indian civilization the charioteer Krishna empowers his disciple Árjuna to resolve his personal dilemma: whether to follow his righteous duty as a warrior and slay his opponent relatives in the just battle, or to abstain from fighting and renounce the warrior code to which he is born.

This second half of Bhishma describes the events from the beginning of the fifth day till the end of the tenth of the great battle between the Káuravas and the Pándavas. Despite grandfather Bhishma's appeal to conclude peace with the Pándavas, Duryódhana continues the bloody battle. The key strategist is general Bhishma, commander of the Káurava forces. Even though he is compelled to fight on the side of the Káuravas, Bhishma's sympathies are with the Pándavas. After the ninth day of war, when Bhishma has wreaked havoc with their troops, the Pándavas realise that they will be unable to win as long as invincible Bhishma is alive. Bhishma willingly reveals to them how he can be destroyed. Strictly observing the warrior code, he will never fight with Shikhándin, because he was originally born a woman. Bhishma advises the Pándava brothers that Árjuna should strike him from behind Shikhándin's back, and they follow the grandfather's advice.

Epic: Maha·bhárata The Maha·bhárata tells the tale of the epic battle between the Pándavas and the Káuravas for the thrown. It begins with the famous game of dice between the Pándavas and the Káuravas, which sets the scene for the war that will lie at the center of the Maha·bhárata epic. But even after the war is ostensibly over when the heroic but flawed king of the Káuravas is dishonor­ably defeated in battle by his arch enemy, the extended family is still wracked in conflict leaving survivors, victors and vanquished struggling to comprehend their loss. Perhaps the most enigmatic philosophical text from ancient India, the final book in the set, “The Book of Liberation” is presented as the teachings of Bhishma as he lies dying on the bat­tlefield in the aftermath of war. Included in this set: Maha·bhárata Book II: The Great Hall Translated by Paul Wilmot. 588 pages / 978-0-8147-9406-7 Maha·bhárata Book III: The Forest Volume 4 Translated by William Johnson. 374 pages / 978-0-8147-4278-5 Maha·bhárata Book IV: Viráta Translated by Kathleen Garbutt. 516 pages / 978-0-8147-3183-3 Maha·bhárata Book V: Preparations for War Volume 1 Translated by Kathleen Garbutt. Foreword by Gurcharan Das. 720 pages / 978-0-8147-3191-8 Maha·bhárata Book V: Preparations for War Volume 2 Translated by Kathleen Garbutt. 760 pages / 978-0-8147-3202-1 Maha·bhárata Book VI: Bhishma Translated by Alex Cherniak. Foreword by Ranajit Guha. Volume 1 (Including the “Bhagavad Gita” in Context) 615 pages / 978-0-8147-1696-0 Maha·bhárata Book VI: Bhishma Volume 2 Translated by Alex Cherniak. 550 pages / 978-0-8147-1705-9 Maha·bhárata Book VII: Drona Volume 1 Translated by Vaughan Pilikian. 473 pages / 978-0-8147-6723-8 Maha·bhárata Book VII: Drona Volume 2 Translated by Vaughan Pilikian. 470 pages / 978-0-8147-6776-4 Maha·bhárata Book VIII: Karna Volume 1 Translated by Adam Bowles 604 pages / 978-0-8147-9981-9 Maha·bhárata Book VIII: Karna Volume 2 Translated by Adam Bowles. 684 pages / 978-0-8147-9995-6 Maha·bhárata Book IX: Shalya Volume 1 Translated by Justin Meiland. 371 pages / 978-0-8147-5706-2 Maha·bhárata Book IX: Shalya Volume 2 Translated by Justin Meiland. 470 pages / 978-0-8147-5737-6 Maha·bhárata Books X & XI: “Dead of the Night” and “The Women” Translated by Kate Crosby. 350 pages / 978-0-8147-1727-1 Maha·bhárata Book XII: Peace (Part 2: The Book of Liberation) Volume 3 Translated by Alex Wynne. 540 pages / 978-0-8147-9453-1

In India's great epic Maha·bhárata, the eighth book, “Karna,”; recounts the events that occurred during the mighty hero Karna's two days as general of the Káurava army. This second volume resumes on the war's seventeenth and penultimate day. This will be a momentous day for the Bhárata clans and especially for a number of their most distinguished heroes, with some of the epic's most telegraphed events reaching their climax. Not only will the epic's most anticipated duel between its greatest champions Árjuna and Karna be played out to its cruel and tragic end, but one of the more gruesome episodes in the epic will also take place with Duhshásana meeting the fate that has long awaited him since his brazen mistreatment of Dráupadi in the assembly hall. Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation For more on this title and other titles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http://www.claysanskritlibrary.org

Appealing to just war thinkers, international relations scholars, policymakers, and the public, this book claims that the historical Christian, Islamic, and Hindu just war traditions reflect political concerns with domestic and international order. This underlying realism serves to counterbalance the overly optimistic approach of contemporary liberal just war approaches.

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 final volume ends the instructions of the Anushasana Parva. The horse sacrifice is held, and Dhritarashtra, Gandhari, Kunti, Vidura and Sanjaya leave for the forest. Krishna and Balarama die as the Yadavas fight among themselves. The Pandavas leave on the great journey with the famous companion—Dharma disguised as a dog. Refusing to abandon the dog, Yudhishthira goes to heaven in his physical body and sees all the Kurus and the Pandavas are already there. * 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.