Parva, published in Kannada in 1979, re-imagines the Mahabharata as a story of a real Bronze Age society. Bhyrappa travelled through the regions named in the epic to picture how its people might actually have lived, fought, married and eaten. There are no divine weapons or miracles; the gods are titles, the births are explained through customs such as niyoga, and Krishna is a shrewd political leader.
The narrative is built from long interior monologues. Kunti, Draupadi, Bhima, Arjuna, Karna, Bhishma, Drona and others look back over their lives as armies gather, so the same events are seen repeatedly from conflicting angles. Old age, failing bodies, sexual politics, polyandry, food and drink, and the brutal arithmetic of war are given weight the epic usually skips.
The book runs to well over eight hundred pages and is demanding, but it rewards readers with a sense of the epic as a tragedy of ordinary human limitation. It has been translated into many Indian languages and into English by K. Raghavendra Rao, and it is widely considered Bhyrappa's masterpiece and a defining work of the realist approach to Indian myth.
Book details
| Author | S. L. Bhyrappa |
|---|---|
| First published | 1979 |
| Original language | Kannada |
| Translated by | K. Raghavendra Rao |
| Genre | Mythology |
| Type | Fiction |
| Pages (approx.) | 870 |
| Setting | Northern and central India in the age of the Mahabharata, on the eve of the Kurukshetra war |
Themes
- Demythologised epic
- Ageing and memory
- War
- Dharma questioned
- Gender and polyandry
Who should read it
Serious readers of the Mahabharata who want an unsparing, rationalist version of its world.