Chakravarti Rajagopalachari was a scholar, a statesman, and a linguist. A contemporary of Mohandas Gandhi, he was also free India's first Governor General. Perhaps his most signal accomplishment was his thoughtful rendition of the Mahabharata and Ramayana in English, making the stories and wisdom contained in those classics available to a new generation of English educated Indians.

The Mahabharata is much more than a story of the trials and tribulations suffered by the five Pandavas at the hands of their cousins, the Kauravas. While the central characters are caught in a drama of cosmic proportions over ownership of a kingdom, important and sublime issues of right (dharma) and wrong (adharma) are intertwined with the sometimes conflicting demands of duty and love. The core principles of the Hindu way of life as embodied in the Bhagavad Gita are revealed to the God Prince Arjuna by Krishna, an incarnation of Vishnu. This piece of enduring wisdom precedes a description of the carnage that was the great battle at Kurukshetra, during which bravery and cowardice, honor and dishonor, dexterity and weakness, are all on abundant display.

The translation that you are about to hear is the English rendition of this story that comprises 100,000 slokas or verses, eight times as long as the Iliad and Odyssey combined. It is an erudite condensation of the story of the infinitely wise Yuddhishtra, and his brothers Arjuna, Bhima, Nakula, and Sahadeva, each blessed with a special gift because of their divine birth. It describes how they lived, loved, fought, and died. At its core, Rajaji's wonderful translation captures the joys, the pain and the struggle of the human condition; a story for all times and all peoples.

This audio production of Rajagopalachari's Mahabharata is narrated by Dr. Akshay Rao, for Ethnic Enterprises, Inc., under a licensing arrangement with Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan of Bombay, India. This audio production is protected under U. S. Federal law, and may not be copied, transcribed or reproduced in any fashion and for any purpose without the express written permission of Ethnic Enterprises, Inc. Strict and severe penalties for copyright infringment include $25,000 fine and imprisonment for up to six years.

© Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan (1951)
Ethnic Enterprises Inc. (1996)

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