The epic is told by Vyasa, who is one of the major dynastic characters within the epic. The first section of the Mahabharata states that it was Lord Ganesh (the elephant-headed god of the Hindus) who, at the behest of Vyasa, wrote the epic down on manuscript. Lord Ganesh is said to have agreed, but only on condition that Vyasa never pause in his recitation. Vyasa then put a counter-condition that Ganesh understand whatever he recited, before writing it down. In this way Vyasa could get some respite from continuously speaking by saying a vers ...

See also:

Mahabharata, Mahabharata - Primary purport, Mahabharata - Background and history, Mahabharata - The Mahabharata the epic story, Mahabharata - Stories, Mahabharata - Structure, Mahabharata - Modern Mahabharata, Mahabharata - Another Viewpoint, Mahabharata - The Significance of Mahabharata, Mahabharata - Symbolism of Mahabharata

Read more here: » Mahabharata: Encyclopedia II - Mahabharata - Background and history

See also:

Mahabharata, Mahabharata - Primary purport, Mahabharata - Background and history, Mahabharata - The Mahabharata, the epic story, Mahabharata - Stories, Mahabharata - Structure, Mahabharata - Modern Mahabharata, Mahabharata - Another Viewpoint, Mahabharata - The Significance of Mahabharata, Mahabharata - Symbolism of Mahabharata

Read more here: » Mahabharata: Encyclopedia II - Mahabharata - The Mahabharata, the epic story

Background - The story has its beginning at the time of King Shantanu, three generations before Krishna and Arjuna. King Shantanu’s first wife was named Ganga, who conceived 8 sons. The first seven sons were immersed in the sacred waters of the Ganges by their mother Ganga, immediately after birth. King Shantanu pleaded for his eighth son and Ganga conceded and allowed him to live, but she in turn immersed herself into the Ganges. This son was named Bhishma. After some time, Shantanu took a second queen named Satyavati, and t ...

See also:

Mahabharata, Mahabharata - Primary purport, Mahabharata - Background and history, Mahabharata - The Mahabharata the epic story, Mahabharata - Stories, Mahabharata - Structure, Mahabharata - Modern Mahabharata, Mahabharata - Another Viewpoint, Mahabharata - The Significance of Mahabharata, Mahabharata - Symbolism of Mahabharata

Read more here: » Mahabharata: Encyclopedia II - Mahabharata - The Significance of Mahabharata

Shruti Vedas Rig Veda Sama Veda Yajur Veda Atharva Veda Brahmanas Aranyakas Upanishads Smriti Itihāsas Mahābhārata Bhagavad Gītā Ramayana Puranas (List) Tantras Sutras (List) Stotras Ashtavakra Gita

The Mahabharata is the history of the Pandavas and the Pandavas. It gives a description of the great war, the Battle of Kurukshetra, which broke out between the Kauravas and the Pandavas who were cousins and descendants of the lunar race. The Mahabharata is an encyclopaedia of Hindu Dharma. It is rightly called the fifth Veda. There is really no theme in religion, philosophy, mysticism and polity which this great epic does not touch and expound.

Excerpt from All About Hinduism by Sri Swami Sivananda

Read more here: » Mahabharata: The Mahabharata in the Hindu Scriptures

At the beginning of the 21st century, the United States' strongest allies in west Asia are Turkey (a member of NATO), Israel and Egypt. All of these nations receive financial aid from the U.S. In 2001, the U.S. also had military bases in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman. Background history of the September 11 2001 attacks - Historical background. Background history of the September 11 2001 attacks - Pre-Seventies. 1953-1979: Following nationalization of British oil intere ...

Including:

• Background history of the September 11 2001 attacks - Historical background
• Background history of the September 11 2001 attacks - Pre-Seventies
• Background history of the September 11 2001 attacks - Seventies
• Background history of the September 11 2001 attacks - Eighties
• Background history of the September 11 2001 attacks - Nineties
• Background history of the September 11 2001 attacks - Recent 2000-01
• Background history of the September 11 2001 attacks - Intelligence available pre 9/11
• Background history of the September 11 2001 attacks - Dated
• Background history of the September 11 2001 attacks - Exact dates unknown

Read more here: » Background history of the September 11 2001 attacks: Encyclopedia - Background history of the September 11 2001 attacks

edit In cosmology, the cosmic microwave background radiation (most often abbreviated CMB but occasionally CMBR, CBR or MBR) is a form of electromagnetic radiation discovered in 1965. It has a thermal black-body spectrum which peaks in the microwave range. Most cosmologists consider the cosmic microwave background radiation to be the best evidence for the hot big bang model of the universe. Cosmic microwave background radiation - Features. The cosmic microwav ...

Including:

• Cosmic microwave background radiation - Features
• Cosmic microwave background radiation - History
• Cosmic microwave background radiation - Relationship to the Big Bang
• Cosmic microwave background radiation - Temperature
• Cosmic microwave background radiation - Primary anisotropy
• Cosmic microwave background radiation - Polarization
• Cosmic microwave background radiation - Secondary anisotropy
• Cosmic microwave background radiation - Microwave background observations
• Cosmic microwave background radiation - Analyses
• Cosmic microwave background radiation - Low multipoles

Read more here: » Cosmic microwave background radiation: Encyclopedia - Cosmic microwave background radiation

Mahabharata: an epic poem of ancient India detailing the history of the evolution of mankind through the lineage of the Bharata family. Written by Veda Vyasa, the poem of 100,000 verses is the longest epic poem in the world. It also contains the philosophical treatise, the Bhagavad Gita.

(See also: Mahabharata, Hinduism, Yoga, Body Mind and Soul)

Mahabharata

The epic history of “greater India” composed by Dvaipayana Vyasa. One chapter is the Bhagavad-gita.

(See also: Mahabharata, Bhakti, Bhakti Yoga, Bhakti Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Mahabharata (Sanskrit) One of the two great epic poems of ancient India, the largest poetic work known to literature, consisting of 220,000 lines.

The masses of tradition and tales in this epic make it the national treasury from which bards, poets, dramatists, and artists, as from an inexhaustible source, draw their themes. It contains the history of the family of the Bharatas in addition to a great many beautiful truly mystical and occult teachings, and a few really splendid minor episodes like the Bhagavad-Gita and Anugita.

Tradition makes Vyasa -- a generic name of high literary authority, used by at least several archaic writers -- the author of this grand poem.

The main theme of the epic is the great struggle between the Kauravas and the Pandavas, descendants through Bharata from Puru, the great ancestor of one branch of the Lunar race. The object of the struggle was the kingdom whose capital was Hastinapura (elephant city), the ruins of which are said to be traceable 57 miles northeast of Delhi, on an old bed of the Ganges.

(See also: Mahabharata, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Mahabharata:

Mahabharata: a Hindu epic.

(See also: Mahabharata, Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Mahabharata:

A famous Hindu Epic.

(See also: Mahabharata, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

mahabharata:

the epic of krishna, pandavas & kauravas

(See also: mahabharata, Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Mahabharata: epic story of Krishna

(See also: Mahabharata, Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Mahabharata: The world's longest epic poem (110,00 verses) about the Mahabharata (Great Indian) War that took place about three thousand years ago. The Mahabharata also includes the Bhagavad Gita, the most popular sacred text of Hinduism.

(See also: Mahabharata, Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Mahabharata: (Sanskrit) "Great Epic of India."

The world's longest epic poem. It revolves around the conflict between two royal families, the Pandavas and Kauravas, and their great battle of Kurukshetra near modern Delhi in approximately 1424 bce. Woven through the plot are countless discourses on philosophy, religion, astronomy, cosmology, polity, economics and many stories illustrative of simple truths and ethical principles. The Bhagavad Gita is one section of the work. The Mahabharata is revered as scripture by Vaishnavites and Smartas.

See: Bhagavad Gita, Itihasa.

(See also: Mahabharata, Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

Mahabharata:

Mahabharata: Epic of the battle of the aristocrats in the Vedic culture during the pastimes of Krishna, out of which the Gita has been taken.

(See also: Mahabharata, Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Mahabharata:

An epic poem that recounts the struggle between the Kauravas and Pandavas over the disputed kingdom of Bharata, the ancient name for India. Within this vast narrative is contained a wealth of Indian secular and religious lore. The Bhagavad Gita occurs in the latter portion of the Mahabharata.

(See also: Mahabharata, Yoga, Yoga Dictionary, Siddha Yoga, Siddha Yoga Dictionary)

MAHABHARATA: A Hindu epic.

(See also: MAHABHARATA, Yoga, Yoga Dictionary)

Mahabharata

"[The Mahabharata] is...probably the longest single poem in the world's literature. Traditionally the author of the poem was the sage Vyasa, who is said to have taught it to his pupil Vaisampayana. The latter, according to tradition, recited it in public for the first time at a great sacrifice held by King Janamejaya, the great grandson of Arjuna, one of the heroes of the story. ...the poem tells of the great civil war in the kingdom of the Kurus, in the region about the modern Delhi, then known as Kuruksetra."

-- A.L. Basham, The Wonder That Was India, p. 407

"The Mahabharata is the creation and expression not of a single individual mind, but of a whole people. ...The whole poem has been built like a vast national temple unrolling slowly its immense and complex idea from chanber to chamber, crowded with significant groups and sculptures and inscriptions, the grouped figures carved in divine or semi-divine proportions, a humanity aggrandised and half-uplifted to super-humanity and yet always true to the human motive and idea and feeling, the strain of the real constantly raised by the tones of the ideal, the life of this world amply portrayed but subjected to the conscious influence and presence of the powers of the worlds behind it, and the whole unified by the long embodied procession of a consistent idea worked out in the wide steps of the poetic story."

"The leading motive is the Indian idea of the Dharma. Here the Vedic notion of the struggle between the godheads of truth and light and unity and the powers of darkness and division and falsehood is brought out from the spiritual and religious and internal into the outer intellectual, ethical and vital plane. It takes there in the figure of the story a double form of a personal and a political struggle, the personal a conflict between typical and representative personalities embodying the greater ethical ideals of the Indian Dharma and others who are embodiments of Asuric egoism and self-will and misuse of the Dharma, the political a battle in which the personal struggle culminates, an international clash ending in the establishment of a new rule of righteiousness and justice, a kingdom or rather an empire of the Dharma uniting warring races and substituting for the ambitious arrogance of kings and aristocratic clans the supremacy, the calm and peace of a just and humane empire. It is the old struggle of Deva and Asura, God and Titan, but represented in the terms of human life."

-- Sri Aurobindo, The Foundations of Indian Culture, SABCL Vol.14 pp. 287-88

(See also: Mahabharata, Hinduism, Vedic Scriptures, Yoga, Body Mind and Soul)