Mahabharata: A World War
By Gaurang Damani
Sanganak Prakashan, 317 pages, Rs 300

Gaurang Damani, a Mumbai-based electronics engineer by training and citizen activist by choice, has been on a mission – to make Hindu scriptures more accessible to a wider readership by simplifying their content. He is however careful not to make it simplistic; indeed, his works on the Ramayana and the Mahabharata can be used a research resource too.

After ‘Essence of Fifth Veda’ and ‘Untold Stories of Ramayana’, Damani has now come up with ‘Mahabharata: A World War’. While the books written on the Mahabharata and its translations can make up a decent-sized library, it is to Damani’s credit that he has found something new to say about the epic.

He started out with the aim of authenticating the events mentioned in the epic by correlating their locations on to the contemporary map. “This book associates from our scriptures over 400 such places with folklore,” he writes in the preface. It turns out, “Mahabharata mentions many places that are spread worldwide, proving it was not a local battle.” In other words, the Great War described in this epic was nothing short of a world war. The book seeks to establish that tribes like Turkic-Greeks and Chinese joined that war and fought against the Pandavas.

Further, by investigating the locations mentioned in the epic, Damani concludes that Lord Krishna flew to Iraq and Arjuna travelled to Israel in their quest to reestablish Dharma. Among many other puzzles, the book attempts to explain why the pale-skinned Romans were denied entry in Yudhishthira’s court. From the narration of the epic, the author establishes that the Pandavas travelled across India as many as four times, and their itinerary is mapped on the present-day India. All these conclusions are supported by numerous maps.

The other aim of the book is to offer lesser-known nuggets of related legends from the Puranas. “These stories add important dimensions to the epic. Further, Bhagavata Purana declares that reading its chronicles of God Krishna will clean and calm your mind,” the author writes.

The Mahabharata is a vast epic and, as a scholar once said, most of us ‘know’ its contents even before reading it. That knowledge often comes in the way of actually reading it – apart from its size. However, there have been many reader-friendly versions of it. Among them, Damani’s book can be easily recommended to anyone who wishes to learn more about the Mahabharata.

Moreover, the true objective of this grand epic is to answer the question: How should we live our lives? And Damani offers life lessons from the Mahabharata in a simple language.

Also read reviews of the author’s previous books:

An inquisitive reader’s guide to Ramayana, Mahabharata and the Puranas
https://www.governancenow.com/news/books-ideas/an-inquisitive-readers-guide-to-ramayana-mahabharata-and-the-puranas

Rama beyond Ramayana: Stories from other sources
https://www.governancenow.com/news/books-ideas/rama-beyond-ramayana-stories-from-other-sources