Mahabharata inspired works available in English

E. Washburn Hopkins
The Great Epic of India : Character and Origin of the Mahabharata
(1901), Motilal Banarsidass, New Delhi (1993).

Wilhelm von Humboldt
On the Episode of the Mahabharata Known by the Name Bhagavad Gita
G.W.F. Hegel, Herbert Herring, (Eds), Motilal Banarsidass, New Delhi (1995).

Ram Chandra Jain
Jaya: The original nucleus of Mahabharata
Agama Kala Prakashan, Delhi (1979).

S. Jayal
The Status of women in the Epics
New Delhi (1966).

Swami Jyotirmayananda
Way to Liberation : Moksha Dharma of Mahabharata
(1976)

Swami Jyotirmayananda
Mysticism of the Mahabharata

Iravathy Karve
Yugantha: The end of an epoch
Sangam Press, Poona and Orient Longman, New Delhi (1974).

R.C. Katz
Arjuna in the Mahabharata
(Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1989)
A comprehensive survey of the role of Arjuna in the epic at three levels: hero, human weakness, devotee.

Norbert Klaes
Conscience and Consciousness: Ethical Problems of the Mahabharata
Dharmaram College, Bangalore, India (1975).

P. Kodandaramayya
The message of Mahabharata
(Bharataiya Vidya Bhavan)

P. Lal
The Man of Dharma and the Rasa of Silence
(long poem, Writers Workshop, Calcutta)

P. Lal (ed)
Vyasa's Mahabharata: Creative Insights 2 vols
(Writers Workshop, Calcutta, 1992, 1985)
Nearly 1200 pages of engrossing poetry, fiction, critiques, criticism and book reviews on the epic.
Reviews and Comments on some articles

James W. Laine
Vision of God: Narratives of Thephany in the Mahabharata
Motilal Banarsidass, New Delhi.

Paule Lerer
Astrological Key to Mahabharata
translated by David White,Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi.

Swami Madhavananda and R. C. Majumdar
Great Women of India
(1953) Calcutta.

R. C. Majumdar
History and Culture of Indian People. Vol. II
(1951), Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.

Subash Mazumdar
Mahabharata is Believable: It Could Have Been Thus
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Mumbai

Kuttikrishna Marar
A Journey Through Mahabharata
(translated from Malayalam by P.V. Menon, Published by Kerala Sahitya Akademi, Trichur, Kerala, India (1989).

B.K. Matilal (ed)
Moral Dilemmas in Mahabharata
(Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1989)
A highly philosophical examination of moral issues faced by characters in the epic and how, if at all, these are resolved.

Jyotsna Maurya
Amulets and Pendants in Ancient Mahabharata
Motilal Banarssidas, Delhi, (2001).

Kevin McGrath
The Sanskrit Hero
Brill, 2004.

This is a study of the hero Karna as he appears in epic Mahabharata. In this view, Karna is the paradigmatic hero of the poem. The study also uses the text to generate a model of what constitutes heroism in the epic. Epic is defined at ksatriya poetry of a preliterate culture. The nature of the Sanskrit hero, as he appears in literature, is the focus of the study: Karna supplying the particular from which a general model is derived.

J.K. Meyer
Sexual Life in Ancient India
(1930), London. (Translated from the German)

B. N. Misra
A Mahabharata dictionary

K.C. Mishra
Tribes in the Mahabharata : A Socio Cultural Study
(1987).

Promatha Nath Mullick
The Mahabharata as a History and a Drama
(1939), Thacker Spink and Co,. Calcutta. Reprinted by Motilal Banarsidass, New Delhi.

Promatha Nath Mullick
The Mahabharata As It Was, Is and Ever Shall Be: A Critical Study
(1934), Reprinted by Motilal Banarsidass, New Delhi.

K.M. Munshi
Krishnavatara 7 volumes,
unfinished, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Mumbai.

S.P. Narang (ed)
Modern Evaluation of the Mahabharata
(Prof. R.K. Sharma felicitation volume), Nag Publishers, Delhi, 1995.
43 scholarly essays, many valuable, by Indian and foreign scholars.

K. E. Narayanacarya
The role of Sri Krishna in the Mahabharata

Sister Nivedita
Footfalls of Indian History

Sister Nivedita
The Web of Indian Life

Arjunsinh K. Parmar (ed)
Critical Perspectives on the Mahabharata
Sarup, New Delhi, 2002, 132 p., ISBN 81-7625-273-5.
Contents: 1. Political thoughts in the epics/Kana Chattopadhyay. 2. From Vedic "Sahadharmacanini" to "Pativrata" of the Mahabharata: a feminist perspective of the changing scenerio of women in ancient India/Tapati Mukherjee. 3. The role of elderly characters in Mahabharata: a modern perspective/Nutan Kulshrestha and Chavi Kulshrestha. 4. Duryodhana: a tragic Hero in Urubhanga/B.S. Nimavat. 5. Kurukshetra: Darshak's artistic adaptation of the Theme of the Mahabharata/Dushyant B. Nimavat. 6. Vidur Niti in the Mahabharata/Ami Upadhyay. 7. The greatness of Vidura Neeti in the Mahabharata/R. Sampath. 8. "Theory of Karma revisited"/B.N. Mulimani and Vijaykumar M. 9. The concept of Karma-Yoga in the Bhagavad Gita/Subray M. Bhat. 10. Moral teachings of the Bhagvad Gita/P.M. Dinesh. 11. The mysticism of divine love in the Bhagavad Gita and the divine comedy/Hitesh Parmar. 12. The philosophy of disinterested action in the Bhagavad Gita/Smita D. Mehta. 13. Taoist Wu-Wei, Derrida's Freeplay and Krishna' Nishkam Karma-Yoga in the Mahabharat/Nidhi Tiwari. 14. The Mahabharata and science/Mihir J. Joshi. 15. Social institutions as means of social control during the age of the Mahabharata: a study/Rushikesh N. Upadhyay.
"Critical Perspectives on the Mahabharata edited by Arjunsinh K. Parmar is a unique collection of scholarly essays on the Mahabharata. The book contains scholarly research papers written by Tapati Mukherjee, Mihir J. Joshi and Hitesh Parmar among others. Some of the papers included in this book focus on the various aspects of the Bhagvad Gita. The Mahabharata is getting popularity these days all over the world. The concept of Dharma and Adharma as depicted in this particular epic is unique. The Bhagvad Gita contains a practical solution to every intricate problem partaining to life. The present volume represents a wide spectrum of critical responses to the Indian epic^�the Mahabharata. The book will, be an asset to those who wish to study Indian epics in particular." (jacket)

Buddha Prakash
Political and Social Movements in Ancient Punjab
(1964), New Delhi.

A.D. Pusalkar
Studies in Epics and Puranas of India
(1955), Bombay.

S. Radhakrishnan (ed.)
History of Philosophy Eastern and Western, Vol. 1
(1952), Allen & Unwin, London.

Pratibha Ray
Yajnaseni (Oriya). English translation (from Rupa) by Pradip Bhattacharya); Draupadi, Bengali translation by Smt. Suprobhat Bhattacharya); also in Hindi, Malayalam.

Edward P. Rice
The Mahabharata: Analysis and Index
(1934), Oxford University Press.

T.S. Rukmani (ed)
The Mahabharata: What is not here is nowhere else
Munshiram Manoharlal, Delhi, 2005, 320 pages,
being proceedings of the international conference at Concordia University, Montreal, 18-20 May 2001.
Contents:
1. MM Deshpande: Interpreting the MBH. Looking at Jaya, Bharata, Mahabharata as 3 stages (Ashvalayana Grihyasutra refers to teachers of Bharata and Mahabharata separately), he looks at the differences in the narrative because of the narrator, the patron and the audience. He concludes that krishna’s divinity is randomly introduced without its narrative force being carried through consistently. Most important is his pointer that the text was composed by sudras and/or for sudras who were allotted the anushtubh metre (cf. arvind sharma’s paper "of sudras, sutas, slokas". Mary Carroll Smith argues that the parts in trishtubh metre are the older core, this metre being linked with kshatriyas. If Vidura was the father of Yudhishthira, this hidden sudra motif becomes believable. Note that the Arjuna Subhadra marriage is a cross cousin marriage celebrated highly in the southern versions but just mentioned in the northern—difference audiences dictate different narrative structures. Sauti has to make a bloody war palatable to brahmin audience in a forest, so there is a lot of brahminical stuff in the adi parva. a de-kshatryized Anugita is because of this. When in the gita does Arjuna know Krishna is God? In 4.4 why does he doubt how Krishna could teach this to Vivasvat? If Arjuna is unaware till ch.4 of Krishna as God, why should be focus his mind “ON ME” as urged in 2.61? Why is he not surprised at the supernatural description Krishna gives of himself in 3.22-24? If he knew this, how can he be surprised in chapter 4? After the revelation in ch. 4, the next chapter opens as if there has been no revelation and it is like the start of chapter 3! Even after ch.11, the start of 12 is an anti-climax that seems to continue from 10.10 as if the theophany hadn’t occurred at all. Deshpande urges that we understand why later layers developed, who added them, for what purpose these interpolations. The differing interpretations seeking to provide consistency such as Nilakantha’s advaitic, Madhva’s dvaita-vaishnava, Tilak’s violence justifying and Gandhi’s non-violence promoting need to be studied.
2. Barbara Gombach’s thesis was on the ancillary stories in the epic: 45 in adi, 80 in aranyaka, 158 in shanti, 84 in anushasana, none in masuala, mahaprasthanika, svargarohana. In the article on how MBH came to become a Smriti she analyses the Kunti-Pandu dialogue in which they throw stories at each other over interpreting Manu’s dictates regarding surrogate parentage. The stories show the dilemma Kunti and Pandu face is not unique but has been resolved in the past, thus the birth of Pandavas is woven into a sacred tradition. This pattern is repeated in Yudhishthira’s questions to Bhishma, in Draupadi’s marriage, in arguing whether killing is justified in shanti parva. Gombach argues that the Mimamsa rules for debates seem to have been followed to convince an audience of brahmins. The stories also create tension in the narrative by holding up the action dramatically. Composed as a smriti the epic was an effort by some brahminical religious elites to make sense of their relilgious traditions in a world much changed from the pastoral society where those traditions had developed.
3. Knut Jacobsen’s article on Kapila in the MBH shows there are 2 different figures with this name, one a vedic ascetic feared for his powers (Sagara’s sons burnt up), the other non-violent who protects a cow from sacrifice (Kapila gita in shanti parva). The former is relevant for the pre-battle situation (Aranyaka and Udyoga parvas), the latter for the post-battle. The Gita reference to Kapila is to the warrior ascetic.
4. Peter Scharf presents an account of his web based study Sanskrit reader of Ramopakhayana giving the Devanagari text, Roman transliteration, analysis of sandhi, inflection, glossary, prose paraphrases, syntactic and cultural notes, english translation at http://sanskritlibrary.org
5. Greg Bailey’s paper on Dharma shows that Vyasa is aware the foundations of dharma are not beyond question, by analysing the dicing, the draupadi-yudhisthira debate in the forest, the repentance after battle of Yudh vis a vis his brothers’ arguments.
6. GJ Larson has an unusual analysis of a tale about a brahmin Sharvilaka of Magadha told by the psychologist Girindrasekhar Bose to show that theft and killing are part of life and being human, and applies it to the 3 layer meaning of the gita—adhidaivika, adhibhautika and adhyatimka.
7. Nick Sutton’s article studies the 3 domains of svadharma, sadharanadharma and ascetic dharma, and how tensions arise among them in the post-buddhist context in which the major story of the epic was composed. Thus, Janaka who is the exemplar of karma yoga in the gita is condemned by Sulabha as pretentious in Shanti parva.
8. Julian Woods studies daiva and purushakara in tension in the epic-fate and human initiative. Even free will is destiny finally, the sense of doership being fate in disguise.
9. Aditya Adarkar analyses Karna in term of Tillich’s “anxiety of meaninglessness” contrasted to Socratic heroism. His courage is not dependant on any external factor but rooted in his own understanding of dharma.
10. Christopher Chapple’s study of Karna is as tragic hero, an everyman with whom all can identify. He contrasts Krishna’s dialogues with Karna and with Arjuna, both in chariots, as models for ethical decision making. Karna is a romantic while Arjuna is a pragmatist.
11. Gautam Chatterjee analyses the 3 promises Bhishma made on de-ontological and then on teleologcal grounds, declaring Bhishma’s condemnation of himself after the battle was too sweeping. Bhishma stuck to the letter not the spirit of his words. His emotional response to his father tarnished his devotion to dharma.
12. E. Harzer speculates if Bhishma could be a “vratya”—he is economically dependant on kauravas, is the eldest and sexless—all being vratya traits.
13. T.S. Rukmani studies Yudh in context of the rajadharma and apaddharma sections, comparing rama who is inferior as a model of dharma. these 2 sections perform a cathartic function purging Y’s mind of misgivings about his conduct.
14. Lisa Crothers uses Bharavi’s Kiratarjuniyam to argue that kings see through the eyes of another where advice is given, as Vidra to Dhritarashtra and Duryodhana. Choice of bad advisers dooms the kingdom.
15. P. Greer shows Udyogaparva is a vital link to what is before and after, showing the epic is a unity. She uses the “indrajala” image of the Gandavyuha sutra to analyse the structure [“The net is a thing of countless multiplicity encompassing an essential oneness…each segment of the Mahabharata’s complex structure, each of its vivid poems and stories, while discreet in itself, reflects the others and is connected to them in an intricate pattern…by looking attentively at a single part of it, and to what is reflected (of the rest) in that part, we will, in some sense, experience the net of the Mahabharata… Indra’s Net is curved like space and time. It is both entire and endless, like the net of the Mahabharata. We regard it in wonder, as have its audiences for long centuries. Its myriad voices speak to us, answer and do not answer, like the stars at night.”]. She takes 3 episodes of the udyoga parva to show this: Vidura’s discourse to Dhritarashtra, followed by Sanatsujatiya to Dhritarashtra, Kunti’s message of Vidula’s exhortation.
16. E. Hudson, “Heaven’s riddles or the hell trick: theodicy and narrative strategies” takes up theodicy in the epic, the rationale for explaining suffering, analysing the dice game, the Uttanka-Krishna dialogue and Duryodhana’s death scene, showing that suffering exists totally in the nature of things. Which is really heaven? If, as Indra says to Y, the virtuous have to first experience hell for a short time and then reach heaven, then the “heaven” Y sees first with Duryodhana esconced on a throne and the “hell” he visits where he hears the voices of his brothers, neither is what it appears to be. Further, Dharma tells him he alone can go to heaven in his body, yet after being in “hell” Dharma urges him to bathe in the river to shed his body and join his family in heaven! The epic thus provides 2 distinct readings and messages which each reader receives according to the care with which he/she has followed the text. The careful reader realizes that he/she has a stake in finding Duryodhana in hell and Pandavas in heaven to make sense of the awful suffering the former caused the latter. But, the text shows heaven and hell are illusions, leaving suffering as a fundamental feature of human existence which cannot be wholly understood or justified or rationalized away. This disclosure is the tragic theodicy of the epic.
17. B. Preciado-Solis has a brief paper on the Mausala parva showing Krishna paralleling Parashurama in destroying kshatriyas as nemesis.
18. B.N. Narahari Achar determines the date of thw war using Planetarium software beginning with Krishna’s journey to Hastinapura and ending with Bhishma’s death. He agrees with Raghavan in fixing the war in 3067 BC, rejecting Kochar’s 955 BC, Siddharth’s 1311 BC and Sengupta’s 2449 BC. He concludes that Krishna left on 26 Sept 3067 BC, reaching Hastinapura on 28 Sept. leaving with Karna on 9 Oct. A solar eclipse occurred with the new moon on 14 Oct, with Saturn at Rohini and Jupiter at Revati exactly as given in the epic. The war began on 22 Nov 3067 BC. Bhishma expired on 17 Jan 3066 BC (Magh Shukla Ashtami), the winter solstice occurring on 13 Jan 3066. The relevant sky maps are reproduced in plates.
19. Swasti Bhattacharya in “Voices from Hinduism’s past: Kunti and Gandhari’s victory over infertility”, draws parallels between modern in-vitro fertilization, sperm banks, genetic selection and the way in which the Pandavas were born, comparing the Hebraic traditions, for showing the ancient principles that can enrich modern bio-ethical discussions.
20. T.C. Reich’s “The Critic of ritual as ritual reviler in the Ashvamedhika Parva” shows many episodes in the parva dealing with the problem of violence in war and in sacrifice through ritual reviling, based on the anugita’s dialogue between adhvaryu and yati, the half-golden mongoose story, the Uttanka-Krishna dialogue. Ritual reviling enables conservative ritualists to show their critics as ritual revilers, deflecting the political damage of external criticism and including more than one point of view about sacrifices without having to abandon their commitment to vedic forms.
21. Saklani and RS Negi’s “The living legend of raja Duryodhana” in the Garhwal Himalayas shows that it is not a fossil culture continuing from the epic age but a re-enactment of epic lore imported from outside in folklore that has waned post-independence. There is no evidence of any tradition supporting the Kauravas and casting the Pandavas as villains. Local cults of Somesu and Mahasu have been transformed into Duryodhana and Rama. Currently the worship of Duryodhana is being rejected, preferring to term the idol as Someshwara Mahadeva—an instance of high Sanskritisation.

M. V. Rama Sarma
Milton and the Indian epic tradition : a study of Paradise lost, the Ramayana, and the Mahabharata

Shivaji Sawant
Mrityunjay - the Death of Karna
(Marathi). English translation by P. Lal & N. Nopany, (Writers Workshop, Calcutta); Hindi (Bharatiya Jnanpith)
Some Reviews and Comments

Shivaji Sawant
Yugandhar
(Hindi, Bharatiya Jnanpith, New Delhi)

Amreeta Sen
Kurukshetra - a long poem
(long poem;(Writers Workshop, Calcutta)

Sisir Kumar Sen
Quest for the origin of Bharata Samhita and the Mahabharata Story
(Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay, 1995).
Originally published in Bengali in brief 1983.

Arvind Sharma
Essays on the Mahabharata
(E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1991)
An extremely important collection of scholarly studies on various aspects of the epic.

Rama Karana Sarma
Elements of Poetry in the Mahabharata
Motilal Banarsidass, New Delhi (1988).

Shalini Shah
The Making of Womanhood : Gender Relations in the Mahabharata
Manohar, Delhi (1995).

G. P. Singh
Early Indian Historical Tradition and Archeology: Puranic Kingdoms and Dynasties with Genealogies, Relative Chronology and Date of Mahabharata War
Motilal Banarsidass, New Delhi, (1994).

K. S. Singh
The Mahabharata in the Tribal and Folk Traditions of India
Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla, India (1993).

D.C. Sircar (ed)
The Bharata War and Puranic Genealogies
(Calcutta University, 1969). Being proceedings of a seminar held in 1965 in the Department of Ancient Indian History and Culture in the Calcutta University, containing valuable papers on the epic war and archaeology and on puranic dynasties.

Mary Carroll Smith
The Warrior Code of India's Sacred Song
(Harvard Dissertations in Folklore and Oral Tradition)
(1992).

Satyagraha Hoerip Soeprobo
Bisma : warrior priest of the Mahabharata

S. Sorensen
An Index to the Names in Mahabharata
Motilal Banarsidass, New Delhi (1978).

M.V. Subramanian
The Mahabharata Story: Vyasa and Variations
(Higginbothams, Madras, 1967).
A wonderfully concise yet thorough study of every episode of the original epic and the variations found in Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Andhra versions and the plays of Bhasa, Venisamhara, Sisupalavadham, Kiratarjuniyam. He ends with the disappearance of Ashvatthama, following Villi's Tamil and Kumara Vyasa's Kannada retellings.

B.M. Sullivan
Seer of the Fifth Veda
(Motilal Banarsidass, 1999, originally from Leiden 1990 as Krsna Dvaipayana Vyasa^Wa new interpretation).
An excellent study focusing on the composer of the epic and the roles he plays in it.

Bhagwan Singh Suryavanshi
Geography of the Mahabharata
(1986).

V.S. Sukthankar
On the Meaning of the Mahabharata
(Asiatic Society of Bombay, 1957).
A seminal work on the epic by the chief editor of its critical text and an outstanding example of higher criticism that goes behind the appearance to probe the underlying reality.

Nicholas Sutton
Religious Doctrines in the Mahabharata
(Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 2000)
Analyses various doctrinal answers to ontological questions, showing the rich diversity of religious thought in the epic existing in tension, allowing exploration.

Rabindranath Tagore
Bidaya Abhishaap (Kacha and Devayani) and Gandharir Abedan (Gandhari's Plea)
English transcreation by Shyamashree Lal.

M.M. Thakur
Thus Spake Bhishma
(Motilal Banarsidass, 1992)
Narrates the life of Bhishma as if spoken by him.
Review by Pradip Bhattacharya

Shashi Tharoor
The Great Indian Novel
Penguin.
Review by Prdip Bhattacharya who also reviews the Peter Brook film on the epic. Read the review here Review by R.P. Goldman who also reviews the Peter Brook film on the epic. Read the review here

Meera Uberoi
Leadership Secrets from the Mahabharata
Motilal Banarsidass, New Delhi

Manju M Rani Verma
Ethical elements of Mahabharata

Barend A. van Nooten
Mahabharata Attributed to Krsna Dvaipayana Vyasa
(New York: Twayne Publishers, 1971)

M.T. Vasudevan Nair
Second Turn (novel)
(Macmillan, English translation)

Dr. E. Vedvyasa
Ancient Bhagavad Gita
(USCEFI, Hyderabad)

Dhairyabala P. Vora
Evolution of Morals in the Epics (Mahabharata and Ramayana
(1959), Popular Book Depot, Bombay.

J. Talboys Wheeler
The History of India. (Vol. I. The Vedic Period and the Mahabharata
(1867), N. Trubner & Co.

Julian F. Woods
Destiny and Human Initiative in the Mahabharata
State University of New York Press (2001).

M. R. Yardi
Epilogue of Mahabharata
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.