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The Mahabharata: A Play

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Jean-Claude Carriere, one of the best screenwriters of all time, wrote this play for the great theater and film director Peter Brook, who translated it himself. Based on the classic poem from India, the longest ever written (it is about fifteen times longer than the Bible), _The Mahabharata: a Play_ was about nine hours long when Brook's company performed it, and adapts the incredibly vast original narrative to deal mainly with the fight for power between two families in an ancient, mythic time: the Pandava, five children of the gods, go against the Kaurava, the hundred sons of a king whose legitimacy is in question, and the greatest and most savage war is near. Carriere's endeavour seems at times a feat of superhuman proportions, for the play condenses everything without forgetting the essentials, and features an enormous array of characters, ranging from the somber and tragic (the orphaned warrior Karna) to the utterly comic (the lecherous general Kitchaka), and several dialogues and monologues of great beauty. Yudhishtira and Duryodhana, leaders of the rival families, represent all men and women, of this time and every other: not totally good nor evil, they both face many moral and ethical pitfalls and not always can win nor return unscathed from their fights. Even if you don't like theater, reading this play, and thus catching at least a glimpse of one of the greatest literary works of mankind, is a unique experience, at the same time shattering and enlightening. As one of the characters could say, if you read carefully, in the end you will be someone else.

The Mahabharata is the great national epic of India. It's about 15 times as long as the Bible and, like the Bible, was written by many hands over a period of centuries. Essentially, it tells of the conflict between two royal families, ending in a cataclysmic battle. Jean-Claude Carriere and Peter Brook have attempted to condense it into a (relatively brief) 6 1/2-hour-long play. With what success, I'm not sure. Maybe it works better on the stage. While reading it, the characters are vivid, but they don't leave lasting impressions. As one would expect, the Mahabharata doesn't have a "tight" structure (like, say, the Iliad). The authors/translators have preserved some of this epic sprawl, and that may be part of the problem---at least for a Western reader like myself, who is doubtless missing many of its subtler allusions. Still, in my opinion, the book makes for an entertaining introduction (or pre-introduction?) to classical Indian culture, and I always bring in the Carriere/Brook translation, as enrichment material, when I teach the Indian section of the History of Mathematics.

Oh yes. I guarantee that, once you've read it, you will *never* forget who the slyest animal is. (It's not homo sapiens.)

As a playwright and an actor, this edition of the Mahabharata (on which the Series by Peter Brook was based) is much more in depth and gives you MORE. Peter Brook took out a good bit in the later half, and also added some, so together, they make a great study for those with not enough patience to read a 12 volume poem (which is practically unavailable in the US) yet like completion.

The text of the celebrated stage adaptation.