The Mahabharata, Volume 7: Book 11: The Book of the Women Book 12: The Book of Peace, Part 1: Book 11 - The Book of the Women/Book 12 - The Book of Peace - Pt. 1 v. 7

851 Pages·2004·3.512 MB·English

by  James L Fitzgerald

The Maha¯bha¯rata
The Book of the
Book 11
Women
The Book of Peace,
Book 12
Part One
The
The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London
Maha¯ bha¯ rata
Translated, 11 The Book of the
Edited, and
Women
Annotated by
James L. Fitzgerald
12 The Book of Peace,
Part One
The Maha¯bha¯rata, Volume 7
James L. Fitzgeraldis Professor of Religious Studies at the University of
Tennessee, Knoxville. He is the general editor of the University of Chicago Press’s
translation of The Maha¯bha¯rata,volumes 4 through 10.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2004 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2004
Printed in the United States of America
13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN: 0-226-25250-7 (cloth)
Library of Congress Control Number: 7209782
The relief sculpture on the title page, dating from the second half of the fifth century a.d.,
depicts Nara and Na¯ra¯yan.a in Vis.n.u temple, Deogarh, U.P., India. Photo by courtesy of
Pramod Chandra.
(cid:2)(cid:2) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
For my father and mother,
James P. and Norma Fitzgerald
ma¯ta¯pitror aharahah. pu¯janam. ka¯ryam añjasa¯
Day by day one should directly honor one’s
mother and father.
Maha¯bha¯rata,12.127.9

Contents
Preface ix
List of Abbreviations xiii
General Introduction: The Translation Resumed xv
THE MAHA¯BHA¯RATA Translated
Book 11. The Book of the Women
Introduction 3
Contents 27
Summaries and Translation 29
Book 12. The Book of Peace, Part One,
Chapters 1–167
Introduction 79
Contents 165
Summaries and Translation 167
Appendixes 603
Notes to the Translations of Books 11 and 12 659
Glossary of Sanskrit Words 781
Concordance of Critical Edition and Bombay
Edition: Book 11 and Book 12, Part One 791
References 793
Index of Proper Names 805

Preface
It is a great pleasure to send this work out to readers at long last. No
one has been more eager than I to see the Chicago translation of the
Maha¯bha¯rataresume publication, and no one will be happier than I that
this book is now out in the light of day. The wish to continue working on
the text, to go through all of it slowly one more time, applying what I have
learned about it most recently is never-ending, but it is time to pass this
over to others and let them improve and extend what I have done here.
My own knowledge and judgment about the Maha¯bha¯ratahave
quickened in the past several years as I began to ready this work for
reading by others. I am particularly grateful to Professor Vasudha
Narayanan, who awakened me from translational slumbers in the fall
of 1995 and persuaded me to present a paper at a conference entitled
“Whose Veda?” sponsored by the Dharam Hinduja Indic Research Center
of Columbia University at the University of Florida in February of 1996.
The large, rambling paper that burst forth for that conference, “The
Making of the King: Brahmin Resentment and Apocalyptic Violence in
the Maha¯bha¯rata,” provides some of the framework for the ideas I present
in the introduction to The Book of Peacein this volume. I have sketched
these ideas more completely in my article “Maha¯bha¯rata,” to be published
in The Hindu World.1Necessarily missing from this book and that sketch is
the comparison made in the 1996 paper that likened many contemporary
Western academics and intellectuals to many ancient brahmins in cultural
function and economic dependence. But while many contemporary
Western academics and intellectuals feel themselves marginalized in
today’s economic “free markets,” someancient brahmins felt bitterly
disenfranchised by new political and economic developments in the last
1. Sushil Mittal and Eugene Thursby, eds., The Hindu World.
ix