What is the Mahabharata?
The Mahabharata is one of the two great epics of ancient India, alongside the Ramayana. Written in Sanskrit, it consists of about 100,000 verses, making it one of the longest stories in the world, and is thought to have taken its present form over a long period from around the 4th century BC to around the 4th century AD. It is attributed to the legendary sage Vyasa.
What is the story?
At its center is a struggle for the throne between cousins born into the royal house of the Bharatas: the five Pandava princes and the hundred Kaurava princes. The struggle grows into the great war of Kurukshetra, in which many heroes die. The scene in which the god Krishna teaches the hesitant prince Arjuna how to live, on the eve of battle, is called the Bhagavad Gita and is still widely read as a Hindu scripture. It is also well known that Oppenheimer, who led the development of the atomic bomb, recalled a line from the Gita at the first nuclear test.
The link with the ancient nuclear war theory
The story features the powerful weapon “Brahmastra,” granted by the gods, and descriptions of its flash and destruction, said to resemble a nuclear explosion, are sometimes cited as evidence for the ancient nuclear war theory, along with the Narayanastra. However, they are thought to be grand expressions of the power of mythological weapons.
