Reading Notes: Reading A: 51 Lesser Known Tales from The Mahabharata

For this week’s reading, I chose to read 51 Lesser Known Tales from The Mahabharata by Sharath Komarraju. **A note if anyone wants to read any of the stories in this book, I was able to download the book for free on my Kindle through Kindle Unlimited. I did the free one-month trial and was happy to find that most of the readings that we have in this course you can download for free. ** The stories are very short so for the first part of the reading and I read through thirteen different stories. Because they are so simple, I think that anything I recreate will be fully in my imagination with little storyline before because the stories do not go into depth in details. One of the stories that were unique was Pandu’s Last Wish. In the story, while Pandu is on his deathbed, he tells his five sons to eat his some of his corpses and then they would become gyanis (people that can see into the future). Rightfully so, none of the boys want to eat their dead dad, but the youngest Sahadeva who they explain is the most impressionable. Thus, a four-year-old boy eats his dead father's finger and is then able to see into the future, but he cannot do anything to change the future. I think a story could be written to go more into depth if Sahadeva tells his brothers that he can see into the future and about the coming war. Or if he never tells anyone in his family and must keep this huge secret from his brothers and mother. The second story that I really enjoyed was the tale of The Other Wives of Arjun. In the version of The Mahabharata that I read, I did not remember Arjun have so many wives, but in this short tales, we learn about three other wives, other than Draupadi. According to the new story, Arjun only truly loved his wife Subhadra, who is the sister of Krishna. Their meeting or his kidnapping of her by Arjun at her brother's wishes is not explained in great detail. Maybe she did not care about Arjun mighty skills in archery which only drew him to her more. I think a story could be created to explain Arjun unwavering attraction to Subhadra.

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Image: Painting of Arjun and his wife Subhadra. Source: Wikipedia by Raja Ravi Varma