In the footsteps of the Mahabharata. In the footsteps of the Mahabharata Issue lV. "Markandeya's Conversation" Episodes from books III, XIV, XI, XVII, XVIII

Mahabharata books 1-18 (complete collection of the epic with academic translation)

Year: 1950-1992
Translator: V. I. Kalyanov, Ya. V. Vasilkov, S. L. Neveleva, V. G. Erman, B. L. Smirnov
Publisher: Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Academy of Sciences of the TSSR, Nauka, Ladomir
Series: "Literary Monuments", "Monuments of Eastern Literature"
Russian language
Format: DjVu, PDF, DOC
Quality: Scanned pages + recognized text layer
Description: “Mahabharata” (Sanskrit mahabharata - “The Great Legend of the Descendants of Bharata”) is an ancient Indian epic. One of the largest literary works in the world, the Mahabharata is a complex but organic complex of epic narratives, short stories, fables, parables, legends, lyric-didactic dialogues, didactic discussions of theological, political, legal nature, cosmogonic myths, genealogies, hymns, Lamentations, united according to the principle of framing typical of large forms of Indian literature, consists of eighteen books (parvas) and contains more than 75,000 couplets (slokas), which is several times longer than the Iliad and Odyssey taken together. "Mahabharata" is the source of many plots and images that were developed in the literature of the peoples of South and Southeast Asia. In Indian tradition it is considered the “fifth Veda”. One of the few works of world literature that claims about itself that it contains everything in the world.
Researchers (P.A. Grintser, Ya.V. Vasilkov, J. Brockington) believe that the epic was based on legends about real events.

1. Adiparva (First Book)
2. Sabhaparva (Book of Assembly)
3. Aranyakaparva (Forest Book)
4. Virataparva (Book of Virata)
5. Udyogaparva (Book of Effort)
6. Bhishmaparva (Book of Bhishma)
7. Dronaparva (Book of Drona)
8. Karnaparva (Book of Karna)
9. Shalyaparva (Book of Shalya)
10. Sauptikaparva (The Book of Attacking Sleepers)
11. Striparva (Book of Wives)
12. Shantiparva (Book of Peace) /translation in progress/
13. Anushasanaparva (Book of Prescription) /not translated/
14. Ashvamedhikaparva (Book of Horse Sacrifice)
15. Ashramavasikaparva (Book about living in the forest)
16. Mausalaparva (Book about club fighting)
17. Mahaprasthanikaparva (Book of the Great Exodus)
18. Svargarohanikaparva (Book of Ascension to Heaven)

Adiparva tells the story of the origin of the Bharata family and describes the beginning of enmity between the sons of King Dhritarashtra, the Kauravas, and their cousins, the Pandavas.

Sabhaparva tells the story of the unification of the ancient Indian kingdoms under the Pandavas and how they were deprived of their kingdom by their cousins, the Kauravas, as a result of an unfair game of dice.

Duryodhana Shakuni beat Yudhishthira at dice. The narration of the fate of the Pandavas in the Aranyakaparva reveals their high moral qualities in contrast to the Kauravas. Numerous tales that intersperse the main plot of the Aranyakaparva develop ethical and philosophical issues in connection with the confrontation between the Pandavas and the Kauravas, and also give the third part of the Mahabharata majesty and a sense of the duration of the exile of the Pandavas. Among these legends is the lyrical love story of Nala and Damayanti, which has become widely known throughout the world, as well as an abbreviated summary of the Ramayana.

Virataparva narrates the events that happened to the Pandavas during the thirteenth year of exile, which they lived in disguise at the court of the Matsya king named Virata.

Udyogaparva describes the diplomatic efforts of the Pandavas to avoid war with the Kauravas by all means after the end of their thirteen-year exile and the preparations for war by both rival sides. "Udyogaparva" includes one of the most important philosophical texts of the "Mahabharata" - "The Tale of Sanatsujata"

The Bhishmaparva tells about the first ten (out of eighteen) days of the battle of Kurukshetra between the armies of the Pandavas and the Kauravas, which ended with the murder of the supreme commander of the Kauravas, Bhishma. "Bhishmaparva" includes one of the most revered sacred texts of Hinduism - the religious and philosophical poem "Bhagavad Gita".

The Dronaparva tells about the battles and duels during five (from the eleventh to the fifteenth) days of the eighteen-day battle of Kurukshetra between the armies of the Pandavas and the Kauravas, which ended with the murder of the commander-in-chief of the Kauravas, Drona.

“Karnaparva” tells about the battles and duels during two (sixteenth and seventeenth) days of the eighteen-day battle on Kurukshetra between the armies of the Pandavas and the Kauravas, which ended with the murder of the commander-in-chief of the Kauravas, Karna, who was the Pandavas’ own (maternal) brother.

"Salyaparva" tells the story of the battles and duels on the last day of the eighteen-day battle on Kurukshetra between the armies of the Pandavas and the Kauravas, which ended with the murder of the commander-in-chief of the Kauravas, Shalya, the complete defeat of the Kaurava army and the death of their leader, Duryodhana.

The Sauptikaparva tells of the dishonorable extermination of the Pandava army by Drona's son Ashwatthaman after the defeat of the Kauravas in the Battle of Kurukshetra.

"Striparva" narrates the events that occurred after Ashwatthaman treacherously destroyed the sleeping army of the Pandavas, thus avenging the death of the Kauravas in the Battle of Kurukshetra. The Striparva describes the grief of the wives of fallen warriors and contains one of the most ancient Indo-European archetypes: a battlefield on which animals and birds devour the bodies of the fallen.

"Mokshadharma" is a collection of philosophical conversations and treatises related to the general theme of "Samkhya and Yoga": for example, on the uselessness of sadness, on the negation of Vedic traditions and sacrifices; about renunciation of property and desires; early theistic Sankhya is expounded; Ascetic-yogic and mythological Shaivite texts, etc. are given.

Ashvamedhika Parva tells the story of the unification of the ancient Indian kingdoms under the Pandavas through the ancient Indian ritual of Ashwamedha after they defeated the Kauravas at the Battle of Kurukshetra. "Ashvamedhikaparva" includes one of the most important philosophical texts of the Mahabharata - Anugita, which is a continuation of the Bhagavad Gita

The oldest parts of the Mahabharata and Ramayana belong, although not in their current form, to a very long time, perhaps the 10th and 11th centuries before the birth of Christ; but these poems received their current form no earlier than the last two or three centuries BC. They contain all the material of the Indian epic. Both of them are based, no doubt, on ancient war songs from the times of migration and conquest, on legends about the last invasions and wars of the Aryan tribes in the holy region of Saraswati and Yamuna and about their first conquests in southern India. But each new generation made new additions, reworked the poetic stories received from their ancestors with additions and changes, in the spirit of their time, their cultural development, their religious concepts. Thus, Indian epics grew to enormous proportions; by the insertions of many episodes and additions made over the centuries, they are turned into huge compilations, devoid of artistic unity. In the ancient parts of their composition, everything has been redone: the language, the form of the story, and its character, so that the previous meaning is completely distorted by processing in the spirit of religious concepts of later times. The initial character of epic stories was warlike, heroic; the hands of the Brahmins erased his features and brought everything under religious ideas, under the priestly point of view. By combining epic legends into epics, interweaving religious and moral teachings into them, trying to make their compilations mirrors of exemplary virtue and morality, the priests deprived the epic of artistic unity and homogeneity, turned it into a formless collection of legends, edifications, conversations, religious and philosophical teachings of different times, into an incoherent pile of old and new ingredients, often lying side by side without any relationship to each other, so that it is very difficult to recognize the original contours of the Indian epic in this alteration

Battle of the Pandavas and Kauravas on the field of Kurukshetra. Illustration in an 18th(?) century Mahabharata manuscript

The Mahabharata is important to history. Both in the songs of Homer and in her songs, based on ancient legend, in all likelihood, historical events and persons are hidden under the poetic cover. In the absence of reliable historical information, we get the idea of ​​​​the heroic age of the Indians only from works of epic poetry. The original features of the songs of the Mahabharata, isolated from the mass of later distortions and additions by Holtzman in his “Kuruinge,” belong to a very early time; Therefore, we can believe that the stories and descriptions of these heroic songs, purified from the poetic additions of idealization, represent a true depiction of the morals of the time when they arose, or at least when they were written down and collected. In general, the epic is based on legends about historical persons and facts; and if it is impossible to extract the complete historical truth from it, then its poetic reflection in it throws some light on the images of people, their deeds and their fate, clothed in a fantastic veil.

The Rig Veda already contains references to the great struggle, from the legends about which the Indian epic subsequently developed; but the connection between the mentions of the Rigveda and the stories of the epic has not yet been clarified. – Ten Aryan tribes of Pyatirechye, the most important among which are Bharatas and Matsya, Anu and Drugyu, are crossing, “prompted Indra", through the rivers Vipasha and Shatadra, in order to go to war against the Tritsu tribe, living under the rule of King Sudasa and the priestly family of the Vasishthas in the country between Sarasvati and Yamuna. Priest Vishwamitra , accompanying these tribes, asks the river for a happy crossing and before the battle prays to Indra to overthrow the enemies, like an ax overthrows a tree. But Sudas also turns to Indra with prayer and sacrifice, and finds himself heard. Tritsu repulse the attack, invade the enemy's country, take away rich booty: many cows and horses and all sorts of property. Sudas and Vasishthas “in a white robe sing joyfully: Indra did a great thing, struck down like a lion through the weak, and with a needle broke their spears; you gave Tritsu the property of Anu and broke the Bharatas like Vologon sticks.” But subsequently, Tritsu is still forced to flee. They found shelter with the Koshalov tribe, who lived further to the east, on the Sarayu River, and disappeared, mixing with the Koshalas; and the Bharatas settled in their land on Saraswati and Yamuna.

Mahabharata. 1st episode of the series

Six generations after this, the royal family of the Bharatas ceased, after which this tribe was called the Bharatas. The people chose Kura as their king, for his justice. The fourth successor of Kuru was Shantanu, and from the grandsons of Shantanu, Dhritarashtra and Pandu, came the heroic lineages Kuru(Kauras) and Pandu(Pandavas), whose struggle in the “great battle” constitutes the main content of the Mahabharata. Duryodhana, the head of the Kuru clan, first gave part of the kingdom to the sons of Pandu, the most important of whom were Yudhishtira and hero Arjuna; he did this because he feared the enmity of the powerful Panchal tribe, who were on friendly terms with the sons of Pandu; poetry personifies this union with the marriage of a “black” Draupadi, daughter of the Panchal king, with Arjuna and his brothers. Duryodhana lives in Hastinapura, "the city of elephants". Yudhishtira and his brothers founded the city of Indraprastha in the sacred area on the Yamuna. But playing dice with Duryodhana, Yudhishtira loses to him his kingdom and all his treasures, all his property in its entirety, and the sons of Pandu retire to the forest, promising to remain there for thirteen years. But cunning Krishna, the strong son of a shepherd from the Yadava tribe, who later became the subject of veneration as the embodiment of a deity, convinces the sons of Pandu to break their oath, and they, in alliance with the Matsyas, Panchalas and Kashis, begin a great war to regain their lost possessions.

The Kauravas are the most remarkable people: the divine elder-hero Bhishma(Bhishma) and hero-priests Kripa And Drona, who taught the Kauravas and Pandavas the art of war, “the last Brahmins who combined the occupation of a warrior with the rank of a priest.” The Kauravas also have allies: the Shurasens, Madras, Koshalas, Videhas and Angis - tribes that then probably lived on the left bank of the holy Ganges and on its eastern tributaries. The king of the Angs, Karna, a hero like Achilles in the Iliad and Siegfried in the Song of the Nibelungs, is the noblest hero of the Indian epic. He is the son of the sun, and was born in the impenetrable shell of his father and with his golden earrings in his ears. Even tribes from Pyatirechye and the Indus, Kaikeyi and Saindava came to help the Kauravas. At first, the advantage was on the side of the Kauravas; but the treacherous cunning of Krishna brings victory to the Pandavas and they reign in Hastinapura.

In the most ancient parts of the Mahabharata, the cause of the Kauravas is presented as a just cause: the sons of Pandu are oathbreakers and rebels, gaining victory only through deception and treason. But under the influence of the new dynasty and new religious concepts, the folk epic was reworked in the spirit of the times and in the interests of the dynasty; a meaning was put into it that was the opposite of the previous one. The alteration was intended to cleanse from all guilt, to present as a model of virtue and noble rules the sons of Pandu and especially Krishna, the inventor of deceits, an adviser to all evil deceptions. Duryodhana, the "bad warrior", formerly called Suyodhana, the "good warrior", is turned into a usurper, made a false player, and, together with all his supporters, is covered with shame and reproach. In the oldest version, all the sons of Pandu were apparently killed, but in order for his family to continue, Krishna resurrects Arjuna's grandson, Parikshita, whom Uttara, the daughter of the Matsya king, the wife of one of Arjuna's sons, gave birth to after the death of her husband. From Parakshita descended a dynasty that reigned until 400 BC, first in Hastinapur, then in Kaushambi, and whose branches branched widely both in the north and in the south, as the names of cities and legends testify.

In the name of Kurukshetra (Kurukshetra, “Field of Kuru,” the holy region between Yamuna and Saraswati), the memory of the heroic Kuru family is preserved. That there really was a Kuru dynasty can hardly be doubted. But Krishna, who was later revered as a god, must, according to Lassen, be considered “the creation of a legend.” His name means "Black", perhaps because it is a symbolic expression that denotes the Panchalas and Yadavas, tribes belonging to the first Aryans who migrated to the Ganges, and under the influence of climate they became darker than the tribes that came from the north after them.

Many people have heard of the Mahabharata, the ancient epic that includes the Bhagavad Gita. Some even read this literary monument as an interesting ancient myth telling about a huge and terrible battle at Kurukshetra, between the Kauravas and the Pandavas. I confess that when I read this voluminous work for the first time, I also did not notice the full depth of the important and accurate knowledge that is indicated in it. I will try to tell very briefly what the Mahabharata is actually about.

I will give brief excerpts from the 6th chapter of “Bhishmaparva” of the Mahabharata, which describe the world around us and the state of affairs before the start of the battle:

Sudarshana Island is round, wheel-shaped, one half is the Fig Tree, the other is the Great Hare. There are great mountains there: Himavan, Nishudha, Nila, Shweta, Shringavan, and between them Mount Meru rises. The Sun, the Wind and the Milk River, flowing from west to east, goes around it from left to right. It is believed that it rises 100 thousand yojanas in height.

Bharata, one of the seven countries lying on the continent of Jambudvipa. The length of this continent is a full 18,600 yojanas. There are 7 mountains there: Malaya (Mercury), Jaladhara (Venus), Raivataka (Mars), Shyama (Jupiter), Durgashaila (Saturn), Kesari (Neptune) - the distance between them in yogins is twice as large as the previous one.

A, the Moon, with a diameter of 11 thousand, at a distance of 365900 yojanas. The sun, with a diameter of 10 thousand yojins, a distance of 305,800 yojins.

This is how Sanjay described the world to King Dhritarashtra. It doesn't seem like anything special. But let's try to figure it out and turn to dictionaries and reference books. From the Sanskrit-Russian dictionary:

GO- 1) Cow, bull 2) Star RA- 1) Light, shine 2) Sun, luminary DVIPA-1) Island 2) double

JASHWA-1) Large 2) Star WIND - Wanderer, hike, traveler KRISHNA - Earthly, dark, black

YOJANA - 139 km = 320,000 hosts (cubits) BHARAT - Hall of KAURAV - Crouching, creeping Now modern data:

The diameter of the Moon is 10.9 thousand km. The diameter of the North Star is approximately 10 times larger than the Sun.

The diameter of the solar system is on average about 2.6 billion km.

Now let's try to compare the facts and draw appropriate conclusions. The Mahabharata talks about the structure of the universe and our solar system. Bharata is planet Earth, and not some Indian country. MAHABHARATA – can be translated as “The Battle of Chertogov”. The island of Sudarshana is a universe, all-seeing, literally. Mount Meru is actually the Polaris star, which is encircled from left to right by the Milky Way. Go-star, Ra-light in this text is read as “star, starlight”, and not a block of stone, rock in the usual sense. The diameter of the Polar Star is 100 thousand, and that of the Sun is 10 thousand yoji. And in some ways the southern part of the star map resembles the outline of a hare. The remaining mountains described by Sajjay are large star constellations. Now the story described in the RigVeda about the liberation of a herd of cows by Indra becomes clearer. We weren't talking about cows, but about star clusters. And he released the Milky Way, not the Ganges River. And in principle, this understanding can only be achieved by knowing what 1 yojin is equal to. Reading this book for the first time, I did not understand how many kilometers it is - one yojin. And I thought that maybe there really are such mountain ranges on our planet. But having learned that the Earth is only 92 yojin in diameter, it immediately became clear that the description was not at all about the mountains and countries of our Earth. The accuracy of the data about the Universe and the sizes of celestial bodies and the distances between them is surprising. The sun has 10,000 yojinas, which is 1.392 million km. The diameter of our system is 18600*139.2=2.59 billion km. And they knew about this more than 5000 years ago!!!

Another surprising conclusion can be drawn by analyzing this text. The Moon and the Sun are a double star!!! The continent of JashvaDvipa, as Sajay calls our solar system, is translated as the Double Star. That is, the Moon is a dark, invisible dwarf 1000 yojin (10%) larger than the Sun. The symmetry and proportions are shocking. The diameters of the Earth and the Sun have a ratio of 1 to 109. The product of the diameters of the Moon (satellite) and the Earth is equal to the diameter of the Sun. The Moon, which is a satellite of the Earth, is exactly 140 times smaller than the Moon, which is an invisible double star. That is, we see a kind of projection of a huge star in the orbit of our planet. I read in one of the Upanishads that the Moon is larger than the Sun and received confirmation of this again.

Let us now turn our attention to the distance between the planets. And indeed, this distance increases approximately 2 times compared to the previous one. Only between Jupiter and Mars this rule does not work. And then the legend that the planet Deya was destroyed becomes very realistic. For 5200 years this planet was in our solar system. And for some reason it seems to me that Mars, Venus and Jupiter were also burned in that interstellar war.

So. The Mahabharata talks about the struggle between the Kauravas and Pandavas for the entire planet Earth. It was a clash of two highly developed civilizations, making interstellar flights and possessing terrible weapons. Kauravas are lizards, reptiles that originally lived on Earth. And the Pandavas (pale, white and pink) are a human race. And the phrase “women are from Venus, men are from Mars” becomes very true. Essentially, people are aliens. There are indications that the battle took place in space, and not on the surface of the planet. And as a result, after the use of nuclear or even more terrible weapons, our Earth was virtually destroyed. Nuclear winter has arrived. The pitiful remnants of humanity survived, having lost all the knowledge and skills of the previous civilization. We have actually turned into such “Robinson Cruises” on an uninhabited planet.

P.S. Krishna Govinda is the Dark Star Wanderer, and not a cow herder (see translation above). And he lived on Saturn. Saturn is the homeland of the Yadavas - “space carriers”.

Mahabharata- The great tale of the descendants of King Bharata, a descendant of the ancient king Kuru, is one of the largest and oldest literary works in the world.

It is a complex but organic complex of epic narratives, short stories, fables, parables, legends, dialogues, discussions of theological, political, legal nature, cosmogonic myths, genealogies, hymns, lamentations and consists of eighteen books (parvas).

The Mahabharata contains over 75,000 couplets (slokas) in 18 books (para). This is in Russian about 7-8 thousand printed pages of regular format

Over the centuries, the Mahabharata has not lost its significance as the great heritage of our ancestors. In Indian tradition, the Mahabharata is revered as the “fifth Veda.” From this monument one can trace the development of human thought in the early morning of human cultural history.

The story is based on a quarrel between two groups of cousins ​​- the five Pandavas (sons of King Pandu and Queen Kunti) and the hundred Kauravas (sons of King Dhritarashtra and Queen Gandhari). The dramatic events between the warring branches of the Bharata family culminated in an eighteen-day battle in which all the peoples known at that time took part. The terrible battle ended with the victory of the Pandavas and the extermination of the Kauravas, but almost all the warriors died in the battle.

Historians cannot agree on exactly when the events underlying the Mahabharata. Indian tradition dates them back to the deepest antiquity - to the middle of the 2nd or even the end of the 4th millennium BC.

The written presentation of the Mahabharata into one coherent tale supposedly occurred in the 6th-5th centuries. BC.

In the events described, gods and demons participate together with people, and some of the people are capable of performing supernatural feats that are beyond the capabilities of a mere mortal, being transported from earth to heaven, covering vast distances in an instant, and communicating with the gods. These feats are now known as sidhis, which appear at a certain stage of a person’s spiritual development.

The Great Battle of Kurukshetra marks the beginning of Kali Yuga - the fourth and last, worst era of the current cycle of human history.

In the battle, the Pandavas, supported by Krishna, won, but for the sake of victory they repeatedly resorted to insidious tricks.

All the Kauravas and their sons fell on the battlefield (except for their half-brother Yuyutsu, who went over to the side of the Pandavas), but the Pandavas also lost all their sons and relatives.

Bhagavad Gita- the most famous part Mahabharata and an important scripture of Hinduism (especially Vaishnavism), revered by many as one of the Upanishads.

Central epic hero Mahabharata Karna is sometimes recognized. But in the Laya Yoga tradition, Arjuna and his dialogues with Krishna play a big role.

By the middle of the 1st millennium BC. By the time when fundamentally it already existed, although it had not yet been written down, the peoples of India had come a long way of development. Archaeological excavations in the Indus River Valley (mainly in what is now Pakistan) indicate that in the 3rd millennium BC. there existed a flourishing civilization, the level of its development not inferior to the existing civilizations of Egypt or Mesopotamia at that time.

The basis of the religious ideas of the ancient Aryans was the soul. All living things in nature have a soul that exists independently of the body and passes after the death of a given bodily shell into another. Such a transition takes place in accordance with the behavior (karma) of a person during his life. If a person lived virtuously, then his soul had to be reborn in the body of a person of a higher social status. Otherwise, the soul could be reborn not only in the body of a person belonging to the lower classes, but also in the body of an animal, moreover, the most despicable and unclean.

The many gods of the Mahabharata, as a rule, personify various forces and natural phenomena (sun, earth, water, fire, wind, rain, thunderstorm, etc.).

In addition, the gods, like people, have a retinue: priests, servants, judges, commanders of the heavenly army. Some gods are the patrons of agriculture, cattle breeding, hunting, etc.

God was considered the creator of everything that exists on earth. The thunder god Indra was often called the king of the gods. God Shiva, personifying the forces of destruction, and Vishnu, the personification of the forces of maintenance, were also considered the supreme deities.

According to some authoritative scientists, the events described in the Mahabharata took place on the territory of present-day Russia. The original Ganga and nearby rivers, the field of Kurukshetra, etc. were located in the Volga region. The actions described in the Vedas and Mahabharata actually took place in these places. Then the Indo-Slav Aryans were forced to migrate south (to India, Iran, Pakistan), and transferred the old names of cult rivers and lakes, projecting them onto local rivers located in the territory of present-day India.