Book of Yudhistir By Buddhadeva Bose

Buddhadeva Bose  8 Characters

Book of Yudhistir

The field of Mahabharata studies in India is an ongoing process with new perspectives and retellings emerging frequently. It is true that in a country that it is almost impossible to be divorced from mythology, given that they pervade our worlds in several ways, often unconsciously. It is fairly well-known that the Mahabharata with its numerous meanderings and digressions makes for a fascinating read.

‘The Book of Yudhisthira’ is a brilliant collection of essays which was initially serialised for a magazine and published as a book in 1974. The essays are a good launch pad and seek to identify meanings incorporated within ancient ‘myths’ in the modern day context. In the essay, ‘What Warrior, Which God’, for example, Buddhadev Bose questions Krishna’s alleged claim that he would not lift arms in the war and also questions the devious divinity for all the trickery and conspiracies that were hatched. A few pages later, he also questions the lust for winning the war, almost contesting the idea of the war being a dharmayuddha.

With adequate and well-researched references to Ramayan and other foreign texts, both ancient and modern, the debate invariably concentrates around the Mahabharata. The result is an evocative yet finely argued treatise that contributes significantly to scholarship in the field of Mahabharata studies. These finely argued essays open up new gateways and invite readers to expand their horizons in order to help them interpret the Mahabharata in contemporary terms. If there is one scholarly interpretation of the Mahabharata one must read, I would strongly recommend this, for it deserves a much wider readership than it currently has. 0861314603