Swami Vivekananda

Swami Vivekanand narrated the Mahabharata in his lecture in California A short excerpt from his lecture The other epic about which I am going to speak to you this evening, is called the Mahabharata. It contains the story of a race descended from King Bharata, who was the son of Dushyanta and Shakuntala. Maha means great, and Bharata means the descendants of Bharata, from whom India has derived its name, Bharata. Mahabharata means Great India, or the story of the great descendants of Bharata. The dispute was over the region of the north western India. So the region of the quarrel is not very big. This epic is the most popular one in India; and it exercises the same authority in India as Homer's poems did over the Greeks. As ages went on, more and more matter was added to it, until it has become a huge book of about a twenty thousand couplets. The central story of the Mahabharata is on Karna and his brothers whose heroism and glories were spread all over Bharatvarsha that time. They conquered the Aryavartha at different periods of time and subjugated many old nations, kingdoms and republics of the great ancient India! The core of the story is on the control over the empire of India and mainly Hastinapur. The story's hero comes from the Suta tribe and his name is Karna, the possessor of all qualities and also known as Vasusena who gets into the Kuru family and becomes the backbone of the Kurus. Out of the brothers, Karna and Yudhisthira were on the verge to sit on the throne of Hastinapur whereas the rest characters were subordinates and supporters of them. The irony in this situation is that Yudhisthira does not know that Karna is his eldest brother and the rightful heir to the throne though Karna knows it but at the play of destiny, he was bound to side against Yudhisthira and the rest Pandavas. As I told you in the Ramayana, Bharat despite being the 2nd eldest brother sits on the throne, in the Mahabharata also Yudhisthira sits on the throne. However just like every ancient Indian text, the ending of the epic will not be tragic one but will be in the heaven where the 106 brothers unite and Karna being the eldest brother will be crowned as the king of the Aditya Lok. In the Ramayana also, the ending was not tragic, Rama united with his brothers and was crowned as the king of Ayodhya. The positive ending in ancient epics by the authors and writers of times immemorial is to show that the life is 'unending' and should be always taken as a positive aspect to move forward in life and finally attain the highest goal which is the 'salvation'. Unlike Buddha's teachings, these pieces of history teach us heroism, the way to live.