Thursday, May 23, 2013

The Mahabharata, vol. 1

The Mahabharata is one of the world's longest poems; it grew over time through a long process of accretion. As a result, there are digressions within digressions.

It's also so long that any unabridged translation spans many volumes. The one I chose to start tackling, by Bibek Roy, is about 10% of the whole. At that point, about 600 pages in, the main storyline is just warming up. What I mostly got was an interesting grab-bag of Indian mythology, including the birth of the Garuda, the creation of the nagas, and so on. 

It was also sometimes a bit of a slog. The major players have many names, which makes it tricky. And sometimes the same story is told twice, right near each other. I also feel like the translation is not particularly felicitous, although of course it's hard to tell. But I'd like to hope that the original is more poetic than Roy's translation. 

One of these days, I'm sure I'll get on to volume 2, because a lot of vol 1 was fascinating, despite my difficulties. But I'm also not in a rush. 

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