Mahabharata Quotes

• If I was asked what is the greatest treasure which India possesses and what is her finest heritage, I would answer unhesitatingly that it is the Samskrit language and literature and all that it contains. This is a magnificent inheritance and so long as this endures and influences the life of our people, so long will the basic genius of India continue. If our race forgot the Buddha, the Upanishads and the great epics (Ramayana and Mahabharata), India would cease to be India .

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  Jawaharlal Nehru

  Epic   Race   Greatest Treasure  

  986

• The Bhagavad Gita is not as nice a book as some Americans think...Throughout the Mahabharata ... Krishna goads human beings into all sorts of murderous and self-destructive behaviors such as war.... The Gita is a dishonest book .

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  Wendy Doniger

  War   Nice   Book  

  Philadelphia Inquirer, November 19, 2000.

  1598

• In Tharoor's hands [the story of modern India] is transformed into Mahabharata magic.... Endlessly inventive, irreverent, wise, ingenious,... it takes on at one level or another the entire panorama of modern India....Energetic and eventful.

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  M. G. Vassanji

  Wise   Hands   Modern India  

  1194

• Great stories like the Mahabharata don't belong to any one culture, they belong to the world.

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  Sharad Devarajan

  Journey   Culture   Stories  

  2635

• The ultimate dreamer is Vishnu floating on the cosmic Milky Ocean, couched upon the coils of the abyssal serpent Ananta, the meaning of whose name is Unending. In the foreground stand the five Pandava brothers, heroes of the epic Mahabharata, with Draupadi, their wife: allegorically, she is the mind and they are the five senses.

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  Joseph Campbell

  Brother   Ocean   Hero  

  Joseph Campbell, M. J. Abadie (1981). “The Mythic Image”, p.7, Princeton University Press

  4601

• The author of the Mahabharata has not established the necessity of physical warfare; on the contrary he has proved its futility.

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  Mahatma Gandhi

  War   Mahabharata   Futility  

  Mahatma Gandhi (2010). “The Bhagavad Gita According to Gandhi”, p.17, North Atlantic Books

  3153

• To me the Mahabharata is a profoundly religious book, largely allegorical, in a way meant to be a historical record.

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  Mahatma Gandhi

  Religious   Book   Historical  

  Mahatma Gandhi (1968). “Collected Works”

  1176

• A scene of Mahabharata where the Surya Devta(Sun God)would come to bless Kunti with a baby The child watching this on TV says "I have been taught that Neil Armstrong had taken several days to reach the moon.Surya Devta took only half a minute to land up in the Kunti's room; that too, he didn't even need a rocket-he had simply walked. Science and Sanskrit had always appeared contradicting subjects to me at school:-)

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  Ravinder Singh

  Baby   Children   Taken  

  3865