The eighteen day war at the climax of the Mahabharata, fought on the field of Kurukshetra between the Pandava and Kaurava cousins for the throne of Hastinapura, framed by the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna's counsel to the Pandava warrior Arjuna on the battlefield, and ending in the near total destruction of both royal houses.
Facts
History
Historical NoteArchaeologists have proposed connecting the war's setting to Late Harappan and Painted Grey Ware period excavations near modern Kurukshetra in Haryana, but no excavated layer has been read as material evidence of a war on the scale the epic describes, and the identification remains a proposal rather than a settled finding among archaeologists. 1 Historical NoteThe Mahabharata's war narrative reached roughly its present form between about 400 BC and 400 AD, built up over centuries from older oral material, with no scholarly consensus on any historical war it might reflect. 1 Text
Source TextThe Mahabharata, especially the Bhishma Parva through Shalya Parva, and the Bhagavad Gita 1 Controversy
Point in DisputeScholars are divided on whether the Kurukshetra War preserves a distorted memory of a real Late Vedic conflict in the upper Gangetic plain or is a wholly literary construction with no single historical event behind it. 1 Sources
Primary SourceThe critical edition of the Mahabharata prepared at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune, is the standard scholarly text. 1 Meaning
Central MotifA dynastic war between cousins ending in mutual destruction, framed by divine counsel on duty 1 Scholarship and Forensics
Scholarly NoteScholars of the epic read the Bhagavad Gita's placement, Krishna's counsel delivered in the pause before battle begins, as a later theological insertion into an older heroic war narrative rather than an original part of it. 1 Connections
Associated With
Belongs to Tradition
Source The MahabharataVyasa (attributed)
Originated In
Related To
Sources
1. The Mahabharata
Kurukshetra War (Wikipedia)
In Group: Indian Epic Heroes, Introduction, sentence 1Quote, In Group: Indian Epic Heroes, Introduction, sentence 1
The Kurukshetra War (Sanskrit: कुरुक्षेत्रयुद्ध), also called the Mahabharata War, is a war described in the Hindu epic poem Mahabharata, arising from a dynastic struggle between two groups of cousins, the Kauravas and the Pandavas, for the throne of Hastinapura.
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