Author Description

The Mahabharat--which means "the great tale of the descendants of the prince Bharata"-- is one of India's greatest religious epics and has had a profound and continuing influence upon the popular psyche of the nation. Consisting of over 100,000 couplets (about eight times the length of the Iliad and Odyssey combined), this vast epic forms the background to much of India's religious and cultural life. While there are many episodes included in the Mahabharat, the central story follows the struggles of two rival families--the Kauravas and the Pandavas--to secure control of Kurukshetra, an area northeast of modern Dehli (a conflict that has its basis in real events that probably took place before the tenth century, B.C.).In his beautiful and evocative retelling of fourteen of these classic tales, Gopal Das Khosla emphasizes the morality of love and war as presented in the epic, focusing especially on these themes as seen in the feud between the two families, a fight which culminates in the great battle of Kurukshetra. Based entirely on the ten-volume Hindi translation, Khosla underscores the narrative flow of these tales allowing unfamiliar readers to not only appreciate this fine work of literature, but to delve into the rich Indian culture that surrounds The Mahabharat.