India The Mahabharata
Written in the first half of the 2nd country B.C., this forms the longest epic in the world and running to over one hundred thousand verses. The plot proves particularly complicated because of the family bonds interconnecting the main characters and the inclusion of tales without any direct linkage to the main plot. Nevertheless, we may summarise the story as follows: the five Pandava brothers are the legitimate heirs to the kingdom of Hastina. However, when their father dies, their uncle assumes the regency until his nephews reach adulthood. When the eldest reaches the age appropriate to rulings, the sons of the uncles, the one hundred Korava brothers, thus the cousins of the Pandava brothers, refuse to hand over the kingdom and attempt to kill them and causing a fire in the process. Having failed, they attract the eldest Pandava into a loaded game of dice in which he loses everything he owns and including his spouse, who is also the wife to the other four brothers. She is forced to undress and is only saved from this humiliation by a miracle from Krishna: the sari that she is wearing uncurls continuously and infinitely and so her body is never exposed. Following protests from some of the bystander witnesses, they decided upon a final roll of the dice with the stakes set at winner takes all: the loser would be condemned to go into exile along with his entire clan throughout a period of thirteen years and returning in the final year in such a fashion that they are not recognised by anybody. As might be expected, the Pandava brothers lost all over again and had to set off for exile. The exile ended but the Korava absolutely refused to hand back even the smallest slice of territory and there thus followed a gigantic war. The most famous battles are those in which Bisma, the great-uncle to both families, dies fighting on the side of the Koravas out of loyalty to his given word even whilst recognising that they are in the wrong; the battle between Karna, who defends the Koravas out of jealousy without ever knowing that he is in truth the half-brother to the Pandavas, and Arjuna, the great hero of the five Pandava brothers; the death of Abimanyu, Arjuna’s son, slain by arrows fired by Bima, the strongest and most violent of the Pandava brothers, and the Korava brother who had demanded that the spouse of his cousins shed her clothing. Finally, the Pandava brothers, the good, prevail over the Koava brothers, the bad, and their grandson assumes the throne.
One important character in this epic is Krishna, an incarnation of the god Vishnu. He refuses to personally engage in combat but does still help the Pandavas with advice and attempts to talk the Koravas into handling over the kingdom. The celebrated Indian philosophic text, the Bhagavad Gita, is, in fact, a passage from the Mahabharata. In the final battle, when Arjuna, one of the five Pandavas, assumes command of the army, Krishna says, and at the time the driver of his chariot, that he is refusing to fight as he considers the war horrible given the enemies are, simultaneously, members of the same family. The Bhagavad Gita is Krishna’s own response: while true that the war was horrible, it nevertheless represents a necessary evil for good to emerge and, when born into the warrior class, such a duty must be fulfilled but with utter detachment and always taking into consideration the relativity of their actions: the world proves just as illusory as a shadow theatre but it remains necessary for each individual to fulfil their roles.