The most intriguing thing about these three figures is that even though they were fighting on the side of Kauravas, who are identified with evil, nobody has ever looked upon them as epitomes of evil as we often do with Duryodhana, Dushasana, and their kinsmen Kamsa and Ravana. The great Bhishma, the great Guru Dronacharya, and the great Karna. We look upon various characters only with admiration.

Johnson compares the importance of the Mahabharata in the context of the world civilisation to that of the Bible, the works of William Shakespeare, the works of Homer, Greek Drama, or the Quran. With 1.8 million words in total, the Mahabharata is roughly ten times the length of the Iliad and the Odyssey combined, or about four times the length of the Ramayana. Mahabharata is “the longest poem ever written” having 1,00,000 slokas or over 2,00,000 individual verse lines. The text of the epic reached its final form by the early Gupta period (4 th century CE). Traditionally, the authorship of the Mahabharata is attributed to Vyasa.

While the content remains the same, it is the personality of the stars which has given each version of Mahabharata a sense of being different and not without a sense of satisfaction for the viewers. The Mahabharata of BR Chopra had mass appeal, and was conceived less in making billions than in a sense of spiritual joy, as compared to the Star Plus version which is a great commercial success and appeals to modern sensibilities, with highly paid actors and actresses, whose life style has nothing to with their characters. But now, the joy has multiplied with the visual presentation of the great saga. Originally written by Ved Vyasa, the great epic, also called the Fifth Veda, has held the breath of populations since times immemorial, when people only read it for the sheer joy of reading the Gita.

Mahabharata is the most admired serial on the Indian silver screen, which struck gold for the creators BR Chopra, and now the Star Plus. Jernail attempts to venture into a study of the main characters of Mahabharata as tragic heroes.

Pratigya krishna wallpaper