Comparing Kaliprasanna and Kishorimohan + Mahabharata fluff

[Anindya]

I've been comparing my old Bengali Kaliprasanna translation with
Kishorimohan's online english. They're matching up extremely well.

I was going through the Abhimanyu-vadh, Duhshasana-vadh and Karna-vadh
sections -- and the translations match up - even to the extent of who
shot how many arrows !!

Good to know I can rely on my trusty bong version. :-)

One thing I'm noticing:

The MB has a LOT of fluff and things tend to sag a lot because of
overly long lists of names, ovewhelmingly detailed scene descriptions,
endless 'stavas' to please/placate somebody and so on.
These are like the endless songs in Hindi movies,-- I suspect they
were put in as breaks, so that listeners could let their attention
wander, go off somewhere, come back and find they've missed nothing.

But once the real action starts, its quite swift and relentless.

I wish they'd stop giving away the endings of crucial events though !
Even within the war chapters, there are quick pre-emptive summaries of
events like the death of Abhimanyu.
Once again, it sort of makes sense if you think of it as a text meant
for listening in real time. Its a way of saying, "Hey, don't take a
bathroom break now, something interesting's coming."

But its quite annoying for a modern reader.

[Pia & Sanjeev]

One of the things I noticed was the very first parts of the Adi Parva
in that enormously detailed Bhandari website pretty much gave the
whole story of Mahabharata in summary first........

Wonder, does Illiad and Odyssey does the same thing ? In other words,
was it the fashion in ancient epics to basically tell your listeners
what was coming ? Maybe the 'suspense building' of modern novels is a
relatively recent phenomenon ?

[rajeev]

Good to know these versions are matching up. I am not sure which
version(s) Ganguli and Kaliprasanna used. There are several versions,
and the so-called "critical edition" is the one many people seem to
use nowadays. The purport of the critical edition seems to have been
to find the verses (about 75,000 or so) that are common to most
recensions, but I've read the opinion that the oral tradition allowed
for different versions and the critical edition is just a recent,
artificially created recension!

So yeah, at this stage I'm not sure which one we're reading, but it
won't matter unless we get deep enough that there are substantial
differences between recensions...

I think some of the more modern retellings also suffer from the
problem of giving the story away ahead of time. For example, I've
heard that Krishna Dharma's version does this (based on an Amazon.com
review).

I think portents have the effect of giving the impression that the
story being told is already established at the beginning of the
writing and not being made up as the writer goes along. It confers a
sort of legitimacy and aids internal consistency. Besides, although
good for absolutely new readers, I wonder whether the author eschewed
suspense and surprise because he expected these well-established
stories were all already known to the audience! (Of course, I'm
assuming the stories were widely known even before Krsna-Dwaipayana
composed his version.)

Portents were certainly popular with Shakespeare; I remember the
famous lion walking the streets etc. in Julius Caesar...

Anyone know about the Iliad and Odyssey?

[Pia & Sanjeev]

I think portents have the effect of giving the impression that the
story being told is already established at the beginning of the
writing and not being made up as the writer goes along.

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And since there was no printing press and the stories would have to
spread through oral re-telling, perhaps this ensured that at least the
basic plotline stayed the same. So you couldn't have Pandavas say
'hell no' to the 12-year in exile deal at the dice game, or you
couldn't have some later author deciding that maybe Drona should fight
on the Pandava side after all !

And ooops, sorry, of course I looked at the Kishori Mohan version too
at beginning, just got confused and thought that was the Bhandarkar
version !

The bong versions aren't anywhere online, as far as I know. But apart
from the Kaliprasanna translation, there's
Upendra Kishore Roychoudhury has 'Chheleder Mahabharat' and
'Mahabharater Galpo', the first being an excellent pre-teenage
friendly re-telling of the main story, and the second is an excellent
compilation of many of the 'stories within story' that pop up
throughout the epic.