Kategoria BISAC: Religion >> Hinduism - General

Bhishma, the sixth book of the eighteen-book epic The Maha bharata, narrates the first ten days of the great war between the Kauravas and the Pandavas. This first volume covers four days from the beginning of the great battle and includes the famous Bhagavad gita ( The Song of the Lord ), presented here within its original epic context. In this bible of Indian civilization the charioteer Krishna empowers his disciple Arjuna to resolve his personal dilemma: whether to follow his righteous duty as a warrior and slay his opponent relatives in the just battle, or to abstain from fighting and...

The king decides to abdicate in favor of Rama; but just as the celebrations reach their climax, a court intrigue forces Rama and Sita into fourteen years banishment; they dutifully accept their fate, and go off to the jungle. The other brothers refuse to benefit from his misfortune, which leaves nobody to run the city; eventually one of them is persuaded to act as regent, but only consents to do so on condition that he lives outside the city and acts in Rama s name.

Ayodhya is Book Two of Valmiki s national Indian epic, The Ramayana. The young hero Rama sets out willingly from the...

The skies darken for the exiles, who have taken refuge in forest hermitages. First one demon, then another, attempts to harm or corrupt them. When these efforts fail, an army of demons is sent, and then a bigger one, but each time Rama again defeats them. Finally Ravana, the supreme lord of the demons, decides to cripple Rama by capturing Sita; he traps her, and carries her off under heavy guard to the island fortress of Lanka. Rama is distraught by grief, and searches everywhere without success.

Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation

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In India's great epic Maha.bharata, the eighth book, Karna; recounts the events that occurred during the mighty hero Karna s two days as general of the Kaurava army. This second volume resumes on the war's seventeenth and penultimate day. This will be a momentous day for the Bharata clans and especially for a number of their most distinguished heroes, with some of the epic s most telegraphed events reaching their climax. Not only will the epic's most anticipated duel between its greatest champions Arjuna and Karna be played out to its cruel and tragic end, but one of the more...