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continued.... When the Pandavas returned from exile, they shared the kingdom with the Kauravas, but it was an uneasy peace. The eldest Pandava brother, Yudhishtira, played dice with the eldest Kaurava called Duryodhana. Duryodhana was helped by his uncle Shakuni and always used loaded dice. As a result, Yudhishtira lost everything, including his wife Draupadi, and the Pandavas were once more forced into exile. Their ordeal lasted until the great battle of Kurukshetra, which was probably fought between 850 and 650 B.C. near India's modern capital, Delhi. All the Kaurava princes died in this battle, and Yudhishtira became king. He continued to reign until he felt that he had completed his life's work. Then he renounced the throne and set out for heaven with the other Pandavas and their wife, Draupadi. With them also went a dog which represented Dharma, the god of duty and moral law. After more adventures, the Pandavas were finally united in heaven. This story, which forms the main theme of the Mahabharata, makes up only about a quarter of the poem. The Mahabharata contains many other popular stories, including the tales of Nala and Damayanti, Savitri and Satyawan, Rama, and Shakuntala. The battle of Kurukshetra offers an opportunity to discuss military strategy. But the underlying theme of the Mahabharata concerns moral duty and right conduct. The long and complex dispute that divides the royal family of Bharata affords an opportunity to explain the duties and conduct expected of a king. It also shows the ideals of behaviour for subjects, soldiers, religious hermits, and people suffering misfortune. The ancient scholar Ved Vyasa is traditionally regarded as the author of the Mahabharata, but he is more likely to have been its compiler. The epic seems to be a collection of writings by several authors who lived at various times. The oldest parts are probably about 2,500 years old, while others can be traced to as late as A.D. 500. The importance of Krishna as the main god of this epic developed in Hindu thought between 200 B.C. and A.D. 200. As a result, the Mahabharata can be used to trace the spread and development of Vaishnavite (related to Vishnu) thought in Hinduism. The god Vishnu became a very personal deity for his worshippers through his appearance as Krishna, the adviser and friend of Prince Arjuna in the Mahabharata. About 1,300 greatly varying manuscripts of the Mahabharata survive today. All of them show the poem in its later form because the earliest of them goes back only to the 1400's. The most famous addition to the Mahabharata is the Bhagavad-Gita. It occurs in the sixth book and is now the most widely recognized of Hinduism's sacred texts. The Bhagavad-Gita tells how Arjuna, the third of the Pandava princes, has misgivings about whether he should be fighting his cousins, the Kauravas. Krishna, speaking with the authority of the god Vishnu, persuades him that his action is just, and then Arjuna's military skill becomes a deciding factor in the ensuing Pandava victory. The teachings of the Bhagavad-Gita are fundamental to modern Hinduism. The end of the Section |
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