Jaya : Mahabharat by Devdutt Pattanaik

Another book of myths and history based on the Hindu scripture Mahabharat.

This book is an interesting illustrative retelling of the stories Mahabharat. It strats from the beginning of the yagna by Janmejay and how he was told the story of his ancestors who made the similar mistakes and end up badly.

Devdutt has given a good account of the whole Mahabharat with some additional commentary which I assume is his own view.

The narrative is as lucid as it can be in a translation and the illustrations are very good. The writer has tried to include as many aspects or variations available around the world which is quite interesting. But in the end it lost being a simple précis translation of the epic while covering a large number of stories.

A person who has watched the tele-series Mahabharata can connect to all the narrated stories and it was given in the appendices as well as one of the sources. But it doesn’t belittle the efforts put by the author in finishing the book.

One common thought which reverberates through whole narrative is that whatever we do or say comes back to us and as long as we’re attached with it we’ll keep going through the whole cycle of life and death. Only the complete surrender to God can set us free from it.

If you’ve not heard the stories of Mahabharat and don’t have enough time to read the original text this is quite a good book to start with. But I’ll request all not to harbor any opinion by reading this book only otherwise you will end up with uncooked knowledge which will do more harm. Keep all your options open before coming to any conclusion because it is these prejudices which are the root causes of the all problems.