Itihāsa / Mahābhārata chronicle / Ādi · 1 of 50

1. How the poem is heard

Ādi (आदि)

A king is holding a snake sacrifice. Janamejaya, descendant of the Pāṇḍavas, has been told that his father Parīkṣit died of a snake's bite, and the rite is his answer. Into that ground comes a storyteller, and the story he carries is not a small one. It is the whole of the Bhārata war, and everything that made the war necessary, and everything the war ruined.

The poem gives itself a frame so that a reader knows this is already a memory. Vyāsa composed it. His disciple Vaiśampāyana recites it at Janamejaya's sacrifice. A sūta, Ugraśravas, later tells it again to the sages in the Naimiṣa forest. Three hearings, one poem. The shelf does not sit the verses. It walks the story those hearings contain.

What follows is a family that cannot find a clean heir, a teacher who arms his pupils too well, a game that should have stopped, a forest, a year of hiding, eighteen days, and a king who does not want the kingdom he has won. The philosophical hours inside it, the Gītā on the field and Bhīṣma's teaching from the arrows, have their own shelves. Here the hour is the story that makes those teachings necessary.

नेपालीमा

अर्जुनका पनाति राजा जनमेजयले सर्पयज्ञ गरिरहेका छन्, किनभने उनका पिता परीक्षित सर्पको टोकाइले मरेका थिए। त्यही ठाउँमा एक कथावाचक आउँछ, र उसले बोकेको कथा सानो छैन: भारतको सारा युद्ध, त्यो युद्ध अनिवार्य बनाउने सबै कुरा, र युद्धले बर्बाद गरेका सबै कुरा। कविताले आफूलाई एउटा चौखट दिएको छ, ताकि पाठकले यो पहिल्यै स्मृति बनिसकेको कुरा हो भन्ने जानोस्। व्यासले रचे। उनका शिष्य वैशम्पायनले जनमेजयको यज्ञमा सुनाए। पछि सौतिले नैमिषारण्यका ऋषिहरूलाई फेरि सुनाए। तीन सुनाइ, एउटै कविता। यो खण्डले श्लोक राख्दैन। ती सुनाइभित्र रहेको कथाको यात्रा यहाँ गरिन्छ।

Where it sits

The map of the eighteen parvas is the Mahābhārata hub. This chronicle is the walk.