Episode 100 - Summing up

Episode 100 - I've put together my review of the epic, in its totality.  I discuss the strange way in which the epic goes into fine detail on some parts of the story, and breezes over others.  Some of the most critical moments in the story, like when Dhrtarastra was skipped and then later made king, or during the dice game, or in dealing with the birth & death of Krishna, the story is ambiguous and full of holes.  The only explanation that I can come up with is that the author himself may not have known exactly what took place in those scenes, so he tells us what he knows-- which isn't much.

I talk about the three layers of religious philosophy in the epic-- Vedic Sacrifice, Karma Yoga, and Bhakti.  I propose that Karma Yoga was an innovation introduced by the Mahabharata, and I believe Bhakti was inspired by the epic, and subsequently the epic was modified to include that religion.  That would explain Krishna's promotion from country cousin to Top God...

Next, I discussed some of the characters in the story-- reviewing their actions and whether they were fairly rated "good guys" or "bad guys" by the epic, and by modern listeners in general.

Finally, I compare the epic with other literature, and compare the religious philosophy of the epic with other works and other religions.  I hope no one gets overly offended!  Please write in my blog and let me have it if I did.  I apologize in advance!

Episode 94 - The Kali Yuga

Episode 94 - The Dark Age is now unquestionably upon us.  The elder Kurus, living austere lives in the forest, found themselves consumed by a forest fire of their own creation.  Let this be a lesson to all you Hindu campers out there to douse your sacred campfires!!

18 years later, things go from bad to worse when news arrives of the death of Krishna and all his relatives.  This story alone is deserving of an extended treatment, but we only get a sketchy account of how things went down.

With the death of the Vrshnis, Krishna's work on earth is done.  He accepts his fate and embraces death when it comes to him.

The Kali Yuga is here to stay, so I'll warn you now, don't expect things to get better!

Episode 87 - Rama's Famous Genocide

Episode 87 - Yuddistira is finally convinced that he should remain king, and he gets down to business.  He marches straight to the palace and has himself anointed and consecrated.  He appoints his council and gets his kingdom in order.  As soon as he has a chance to catch his breath, Krishna suggests that they hurry over to uncle Bhisma, who isn't long for this world.

Along the way, Krishna tells the story of Battleaxe Rama, who wiped out the race of Kshatriyas 21 times in succession.

The podcast may be taking something of a hiatus after this episode.  We are now entering the section of the Mahabharata that is dedicated to Bhisma's teaching on Dharma.  This constitutes nearly one-third of the entire text, and from what I've seen so far, is extremely legalistic and detailed.  This means I will need to pour over a lot of text to extract enough information to make a full episode.  That may take a while.

On the positive side, once we are through this section of Bhisma's teachings, we are almost at the end of the story!

Thanks for sticking with me on this long journey.  I'll be sure to keep you posted as things develop.  Just keep watching this blog!

Episode 51 - Krishna comes to Town

Episode 51 - Sanjay's mission clearly did not accomplish much, so this time Krishna offers to go to Hastinapur as the Pandavas' chief negotiator.  When the Kauravas hear he is coming, Dhrtarastra plans on bribing him, while Duryodhana hopes to imprison him.

Krishna senses all the bad vibes and decides to only stay & eat with Vidur.  He also visits with the Pandavas' poor widowed mother Kunti, whom he tries to console.  Surprisingly, Kunti blames her father for all her suffering.  Kunti's father, Sura, was also Krishna's grandfather, and for some reason he gave her up for adoption to the chieftain Kuntibhoja.  It was there, while living under Kuntibhoja's roof, that she was assigned to serve the creepy saddhu Durvasas.  The result was that poor Kunti was saddled with an illegitimate baby-- young Karna.

Krishna assures his aunt that the Pandavas will soon make their comeback and all will be well.  Then he pays a visit to Duryodhana.  Duryodhana attempts to bribe him, but Krishna refuses to even eat with them.  The following day, Krishna is summoned before the court of Hastinapur, where he makes his case for a settlement with the Pandavas.

The king and his councilors really don't have much to say by way of a rebuttal, so Parashurama breaks the silence by offering to tell a couple of parables.  Next time, we'll hear these parables and then see how the negotiations turn out.

Episode 36 - Bhima and the Snake

Episode 36 - The Pandavas journey south, out of the Himalayas and back to the plains.  Along the way, Bhima goes hunting and finds himself captured by a giant magical snake.  The Snake takes his time and tells Bhima his life story before proceeding to eat the hero.  Meanwhile, Yuddistira sees dark omens and heads off to look for his brother on his own.  For the purposes of the later story, Arjun stays at home and Yuddistira does the rescuing.

When Yuddistira gets to the scene, Bhima tells him what is going on, and that the snake is under a curse.  If Yuddistira can answer the snake's question, then all would be well.  Yuddistira is good at quiz games; the question is basically whether one is a Brahmin by birth or by behavior.

The Snake and Yuddistira hit it off really well, and the two discuss questions of the Soul and Karma for a while.  Finally, the snake releases Bhima and then dies, his soul returning to heaven.  The brothers return to the camp, where the Brahmins scold Bhima-- "He shouldn't have been out hunting anyway!  Hunting is bad!"

The Pandavas then journey onward to the Kanyaka forest-- the place where they began their exile 10 years earlier.  At the Kanyaka forest they meet up once again with Krishna.  This time he brings his first wife Satyabhama, and they intend to stay a while.

Krishna brings news of the Pandavas' five sons.  They are teenagers now, and are all being raised at Dwarka, learning the arts of war with Krishna's eldest son Pradyumna.

Finally, two more guests arrive; Narada and Markandeya.  Markandeya has appeared several times in the past, but he has always been a man of few words.  This time he apparently has a lot he wants to say.  We'll get started on it next time!

Episode 20 - King of the World

Episode 20 - The Pandavas range the Four Directions and conquer the world, bringing home mountains of treasure.  Soon after, the Rajasuya Sacrifice commences.  Krishna is given the top honor among the guests and this causes a tumult of disgruntled kings and nobles.  They point out the problem that has become apparent in the story, which is that Krishna is a nobody in terms of societal ranking.  He's a former cowherder from a caste of shudras who claims his father is a prince (alas, there were no witnesses to his alleged birth by Devaki).  But even if he were not lying about his descent, he was still a noble of the 3rd tier, and from an insignificant backwater kingdom, where they had been forced to move by Jarasandh's armies.

The general of that army, Sishupal of Chedi, was particularly outraged by this elevation of a milkman over the heads of all the kings of India.  Sishupal had other grievances against Krishna, since his fiance Rukmini had been abducted by Krishna, his boss had been killed by Krishna's plan, and his friend and ally Rukmi had been killed by Krishna's brother.

So Sishupal points out what should be obvious to us all-- that Krishna was a low-class cowherd, who boasted about killing a vulture and a cow, a woman, and an ox cart!  Who said that these animals and the woman and the cart were demons?  Furthermore, Krishna killed his own king-- a treasonous act of regicide that should be obhorred by anyone who desires law & order in society.

Finally, Sishupal suggests that maybe Rukmini had already been used & put aside by himself before Krishna took her as his wife.  That does it for Krishna.  His killer frisbee comes flying and Sishupal is Beheaded.  Check out that link, it's to the picture I mentioned in the podcast.  It's pretty cool.

This episode ends with a little vignette of Duryodhana wandering the Pandavas' palace and getting fooled by the illusions of the place.  He falls into a pond and gets laughed at by his cousins.  I've got more to say about how this scene gets changed over time, but we'll get into that in a later episode.

Episode 16 - Don't Mess with Balaram

Episode 16 - This is the final installment of the "Krishna Episodes", where I've covered Krishna's back story up to and beyond the point when the Pandavas met him in Panchala.  There are still some interesting details in the Bhagavata Purana which I want to compare with later events in the Mahabharata, so I'm not completely done with that book, but for the upcoming episodes, we'll get back to the Mahabharata and see what the Pandavas do next.

I have to apologize for narrating this one kind of fast.  I guess I just had a cup of coffee before I got started, because I did some fast talking.  Next time I'll make it a glass of wine, and I promise I'll slow down a bit, as was suggested to me in one of the comments!

Episode 12 - Krishna at Play

Episode 12 - We finally get started with Krishna.  His mother and father were both of the house of Yadu in Mathura-- Krishna's mother Devaki was King Ugrasena's daughter.  Unfortunately, Devaki's brother, Crown Prince Kamsa was a bad guy, and he got an early warning that his sister's eighth child would be the death of him.  After a palace coup, King Kamsa threw Devaki and Vasudeva into prison and killed their first six babies as soon as they were born.

The seventh child, Balaram, was magically transported into the womb of Rohini-- Vasudevas other wife living in Vraja with the Gopas.  Unlike Balaram, Krishna managed to be born in his natural mother's womb, but was secretly exchanged with the Gopa chieftain's daughter within hours of their birth.  As far as anyone could tell, Krishna was born to the Gopi Yashoda, and Devaki had a daughter who was killed by Kamsa as soon as she was discovered.

So, while Krishna and Balaram are technically full brothers, it appeared as if they were unrelated, and Krishna was simply the son of a cowherder chieftain.  This arrangement worked well in keeping him hidden from Kamsa, but it must have been tricky convincing everyone that he really had royal blood and wasn't just some low-caste nobody!  We'll see how he pulls this off in later episodes.

The Bhagavata Purana is so utterly dazzled by Krishna's divinity that these everyday practicalities seem to fade out in the glare, but I'll try to keep a lookout for how the mundane folks around him-- those who did not recognize his divinity-- tried to make sense of his story and his position in society.

I have to admit that so far Balaram is a bit of a cipher to me.  We are told that he is the avatara of Adisesha, who is the Cosmic Snake; Vishnu's pal.  Somehow Adisesha appears as himself when Vasudeva makes his journey with Krishna to Vraja, but Balram was already a child at the time.  Later, we are told that Balaram and Krishna are equally avataras of Vishnu.  Hopefully we'll be able to untangle this riddle as we go along.  So far, I admit that I don't quite get it!

If anyone can explain to me how Balaram relates to Krishna, I'd love to hear it.  I'll try to come up with an analysis of the two characters as we move further along into the story.  They make an amazing contrast, often taking opposite sides on important issues.

Episode 11 - The Loves of King Yayati

Episode 11 - This episode is the first in  a series that will break away from the Mahabharata and use the Bhagavata Purana as the primary source instead.  This is necessary if you want to find out Krishna's life stories.  Up until the Pandavas meet Krishna at Draupadi's Swayamvara, no mention is made of Krishna's birth, childhood, or rise to power.  That information is only available in other books, and the main source is the Bhagavata Purana.

The first time I read a faithful translation of the Mahabharata, I was shocked that Krishna just appears in the story, fully grown, and no information is given about his background.  So in the next two or three episodes, I will try to rectify that, starting with Krishna's common ancestor with the Pandavas, King Yayati.

I meant to push on and cover Krishna's birth and childhood in this single episode, but I was afraid that all the names and details would get overwhelming if I tried to put all this together, so next episode we'll cover Krishna's birth and toddler-hood.

The story is getting much more complicated, and we're meeting many new characters, so I'm doing my best to keep it all as clear as possible in the narrative.  Please send feedback and let me know how I'm doing, and whether there is anything I could do to make the story easier to follow.  Please leave comments on my blog, or email me:  mahabharatapodcast@comcast.net.  I'd love to hear from you!