Reading Notes: The Mahabharata Part A

For this part of the notes, four of the five brothers in the Pandavas died from drinking in a water before answering the questions of Yama. The chapter represents Hell and is particularly interesting because the Death God, Yama, disguised himself in order to trick the family. There is a theme of hubris in the Pandavas as they seem like they are all too powerful to even heed the divine signs of nature. Only Yudhistera was able to overcome his own thirst and sorrow for the death of his brother to answer the questions of Yama. 

Once again, Narayan's writing style of this chapter is very brief and really more factual than emotional. He skips over all the philosophical hindu meanings of the conversation and just mentions in the footnotes that they are those types of conversations. I assume because he is appealing to a different and wider generation of people that most people would not understand the old hindu religion and so he chooses to skip over them. I think that by skipping over such key details and speaks of the philosophy detracts from how we can understand the text as a whole however and I would have really appreciated learning about what the encounter with Yama means philosophically as it seemed like a very deep part of the text.

Yudhistera standing over the dead bodies source