Originally posted by: Cotswolds
Medha,lovely post as always. Very detailed yet interesting and easy to inderstand. I like your funny commentary as well.😆
I always had this question which is asked on many forums.. People think virat war section was added later on.. Otherwise,how can arjuna win battle singlehandedly but still struggle in kuru war ?
What is your take on it ?
To tell you the truth, I read the KMG, Crit.Ed, R.M and go by that simply.
Because the first ever copy was of only 800(?) verse!
After that, the compilation of Bharata and Mahabharat was done. Whatever we have today is collection of what the bards and Vyasa and his disciples put forth I would assume.
I don't have doubt that many things were added later, some might have been imagination, some passed down from Vyasa and his students and other people like the charioteers and bards?
This way if I start questioning as to what was added and what was imagine or was the truth, I would question everything. I would question Draupadi's existence. I would question Kauravas existence. I would question the detailed war of Kurukshetra.
I would question if this person had killed this person or was that person defeated by this one?
Everything, every line becomes questionable.
Obviously, there are claims that Pandavas did not exist at all. Kunti had no Godly sons. Pandavas are mere imagined characters to make the Kuru clan interesting.
Kauravas had no cousins and no draupadi married them.
So it is kind of pointless to worry about if this had happened or is this just imagination. Who knows, perhaps Vyasa was just an amazing novelist and wrote this awesome piece of literature featuring his own sons and their imagined children.
Or perhaps he had a whacky sense of humor, and Kauravas were not imaginary, just Dhritrashtras adopted children and he wrote this amazing novel featuring them as the villains to entertain them.😆 Duri jaan must have had a good laugh.