Reading between the lines of an epic

There are many ways to read the Mahabharata. Like an onion, it opens up in layered, concentric circles of stories, all nested within an invisible labyrinthine web.

- ARUNDHUTI DASGUPTA

At its core is a story of a powerful kingdom hurtling towards its end, blown up by arrogance, hubris and greed. But the epic is much more than a bruising clan war.

It is a treatise on good and evil, it also serves as a guidebook for dharma and kingship or it could be read as a manual on destructive father-son relationships and such else. It is, as its composers boast at the very beginning, a text that has everything there is in the world and what it does not have, does not exist anywhere.

This collection of stories chosen and translated by Wendy Doniger slices open one part of the text to reveal some of the ideas that early Indian societies had about women, animals, friendship and other such issues. The stories reflect the concerns that many societies of the time had about adultery, sycophancy, chastity and other moral conditions.