The Mahabharata, Volume 7: Book 11: The Book of the Women Book 12: The Book of Peace, Part 1 (Mahabharata) | 
| Creator: James L. Fitzgerald
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
Category: Book
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Sales Rank: 583969
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 848
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.2
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.5 x 2
ISBN: 0226252507
Dewey Decimal Number: 895
EAN: 9780226252506
ASIN: 0226252507
Publication Date: February 15, 2003
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Product Description
What is found in this epic may be elsewhere;
What is not in this epic is nowhere else.
—from The Mahabharata
The second longest poem in world literature, The Mahabharata is an epic tale, replete with legends, romances, theology, and metaphysical doctrine written in Sanskrit. One of the foundational elements in Hindu culture, this great work consists of nearly 75,000 stanzas in eighteen books, and this volume marks the much anticipated resumption of its first complete modern English translation. With the first three volumes, the late J. A. B. van Buitenen had taken his translation up to the threshold of the great war that is central to the epic. Now James Fitzgerald resumes this work with translations of the books that chronicle the wars aftermath: The Book of Women and part one of The Book of Peace. These books constitute volume 7 of the projected ten-volume edition. Volumes 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, and 10 of the series will be published over the next several years.
In his introductions to these books, Fitzgerald examines the rhetoric of The Mahabharatas representations of the wars aftermath. Indeed, the theme of The Book of Women is the grief of the women left by warriors slain in battle. The book details the keening of palace ladies as they see their dead husbands and sons, and it culminates in a mass cremation where the womens tears turn into soothing libations that help wash the deaths away. Fitzgerald shows that the portrayal of the womens grief is much more than a sympathetic portrait of the sufferings of war. The scenes of mourning in The Book of Women lead into a crisis of conscience that is central to The Book of Peace and, Fitzgerald argues, the entire Mahabharata. In this book, the man who has won power in the great war is torn between his own sense of guilt and remorse and the obligation to rule which ultimately he is persuaded to embrace.
The Mahabharata is a powerful work that has inspired awe and wonder for centuries. With a penetrating glimpse into the trauma of war, this volume offers two of its most timely and unforgettable chapters.
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| Customer Reviews:
Heroic Continuation of The Mahabharata March 17, 2007
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
The translator of this book and author of it's copious notes, introductions and vast amounts of other ancillary material, has done a great service to this series.
I put off buying this one after reading the first three volumes. I didn't understand why they continued the series out-of-sequence. I later learned the complex reasons why things came about this way, but will not go into it here. However, after I did finally give in and buy this volume, I was glad I did.
On the one-hand, Fitzgerald overdoes it with the supplementary material. (Being a bit of an OCD case myself, I had to read it all anyway.) And the volume is a bit over-intellectualized. (As if the first translator Van Buitenen wasn't intellectualized enough?)
In spite of the aforementioned difficulties, Fitzgerald really saves the series by doing a fantastically thorough job, if not overly-qualified, of putting the book in context, showing how it fits in to the as-yet-untranslated volumes. He sets the whole thing up so that one feels one really is continuing along without missing a beat, so to speak.
Also, he is the one doing volume 8, (he's overseeing staffs who will translate the others in due time). But Volume 8 will finish off the Book of the Peace, which is the most monstrously long of all the books of the MBH. In this way, he's ensuring the project really gets done eventually. And volume 8 is supposed to be not-to-long in the offering. By the time one reads both 7 and the upcoming 8, the other books should one-by-one, find their way to the press.
So Fitzgerald has really done the heavy lifting of taking over from where the late Van Buitenen left off. And he has done the heavy lifting by doing the hardest work himself. His effort should restore the faith of any former follower of this massive project who was confused when the thing stopped at the third volume.
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