Mahabharata Themes

The full Mahabharata contains almost two million words, but it’s possible to summarize much of the book with just one word: dharma. Dharma is a Sanskrit word that embodies several concepts, including “duty,” “justice,” or even “fate.” All of the figures in the Mahabharata have their own individual dharma, and each of them struggles to live out their destiny and avoid doing things that are “adharma” (against dharma). Yudhishthira, for instance, is a…

The Mahabharata is not just an epic narrative poem but also a holy text in Hinduism, and so it makes sense that religious enlightenment plays a large role in it. During the most famous segment of the poem—the Bhagavadgita—the great warrior Arjuna struggles with many moral questions and asks his friend Krishna (a mortal incarnation of the god Vishnu) for advice. While many of Arjuna’s questions deal specifically with the upcoming battle (in…

Due to both its focus on war and the long time period it covers, the Mahabharata is full of death, and it also deals with the grief survivors feel in the wake of death. Perhaps no character in the story has more cause for grief than Dhritarashtra, who loses 100 sons as well as many other trusted relatives, warriors, and advisors. At the end of each day of battle, the blind king Dhritarashtra laments…

The Mahabharata is a long story that contains many smaller stories. Technically, almost the entire poem is a monologue that Ugraśravas narrates to Śaunaka, but Ugraśravas essentially disappears for most of the poem. Instead, the poem centers on a conversation between Vaiśampayana and Janamejaya at the snake ceremony, a nested story within Ugraśravas’s monologue. The most famous sections of the text involve an even more deeply nested story, with Vaiśampayana describing a series of…