Mahabharata discussion : Share your thoughts, favorite characters, scenes, anecdotes.

[Lannister]

1 hour ago, gattaca said:

Ya atheists think they are god and kill millions. Stalin, Mao, Kim jong uns.

Why mention these people? Why not highlight the numerous nobel prize winners who are atheists? Can you tell me who authored Manusmriti? Hitler was a believer, and religious people historically practiced slavery all over the world. You guys have no grounds to lecture on morality.

[Muloghonto]

Favourite character : Karna, Ekalavya, Nakul & Sahadev

Least favourite character : Bhisma, the real villain in the story IMO. 

 

[Muloghonto]

1 minute ago, Lannister said:

Why mention these people? Why not highlight the numerous nobel prize winners who are atheists? Can you tell me who authored Manusmriti? Hitler was a believer, and religious people historically practiced slavery all over the world. You guys have no grounds to lecture on morality.

We do because non-abrahamic religions have committed less persecutions in the same time period as atheists have since the atheists have been able to exert political influence. 

The body count of Stalin, Mao,Pol Pot etc. is far higher than any dharmic religion in the same timeframe. 

Checkmate, inbred one.

 

Also tell us, what % of scientists in history have been religious and what % of scientific discoveries have been made by religious people vs atheists in history.

Mausmriti is a far nicer book than Das Kapital for eg. Manusmriti does not target entire class of people for extermination like Das Kapital does.

 

[Lannister]

2 hours ago, zen said:

Got a book recommendation for you. You seem like a moderate Hindu. Looks like you’ve already got one foot out of the circus tent. You can do it. 

 

[Muloghonto]

3 minutes ago, Lannister said:

Got a book recommendation for you. You seem like a moderate Hindu. Looks like you’ve already got one foot out of the circus tent. You can do it. 

 

Richard Dawkins is a christian now. Also, this book is replete with logical fallacy. Atheism is only possible in this book by consuming agnosticism as the logical fallacy, as stated by Dawkins in this book.

 

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/257276/famous-atheist-richard-dawkins-says-he-considers-himself-a-cultural-christian

 

[zen]

1 minute ago, Lannister said:

Got a book recommendation for you. You seem like a moderate Hindu. Looks like you’ve already got one foot out of the circus tent. You can do it. 

 

 

Thanks but I am not into this God v No God discussion esp. from the PoV of Abrahamic (name appears to be inspired by Brahma) religions. There are guys related to these religions who come up with points like below:

 

I don’t go by what others say but go by my own knowledge and experiences.

[Number]

7 hours ago, zen said:

Ancient history! It acquired various colors having passed on from gen to gen verbally. 
 

I don’t like the term “characters” if you see it as ancient history.  Characters generally appear in fiction. Figures and individuals appear in non-fiction. 
 

Mahabharata could also be seen as creative non-fiction by many but it is probably a good practice to clarify from which PoV it is being discussed (I am usually not into discussions where it is being discussed purely as a fiction). 
 

My personal belief is that it is history with some exaggeration of course, however as it lacks irrefutable proofs of existence, I initiated discussion on this in the realm of fiction. 

You can call them historical figures, no problem.

[Number]

11 hours ago, ravishingravi said:

 

BR Chopra is a great starting point in my view. Albeit it is just a starting point. There have been many retellings of Mahabharata and with great deal more nuance on each characters arc. Mahabharata is roughly 100,000 shlokas and 3 times bigger than Iliad. There are many individual stories that are not fully incorporated in Mahabharata. Bhandarakar institute has done amazing job in restoration and research on our itihas. 

 

Apart from geographic relevance which both Ramayan and Mahabharat detail, it's the timelines which make it more intriguing. 

 

For me, Mahabharata has to be studied at the level of storyline and seperately understood at the level of character. For instance bibek debroy's interpretation and translation gives a very arc for karna. 

 

Ami Ganatra who has done great work recently on this subject, provides a closer to source narrative that doesn't have hokey Ness of tv series. BR Chopra was ofcourse important because he was the first to give sound and visual to our most important story. But it was somewhat simplistic. 

 

 

In my view BR Chopra ji and his team did a splendid job. Let's be fair, the visuals and audio effects can't match a Rajamauli film of today because it was made for Indian TV in 80s.

Casting, dialogue writing and delivery was top notch. 

Nitish Bhardwaj played Krishna in such great depth, the pronunciation of Sanskrit words, the expressions and everything was so damn perfect.

My worst fears are if it is written by today's Netflix's writers half of the sentences will be in Urdu. I hope whoever takes it up now, keeps the dialogues along the line of BR Chopra's one.

Edited October 19, 2024 by Number

[Muloghonto]

Just now, Number said:

In my view BR Chopra ji and his team did a splendid job. Let's be fair, the visuals and audio effects can't match a Rajamauli film of today because it was made for Indian TV in 80s.

Casting, dialogue writing and delivery was top notch. 

Nitish Bhardwaj played Krishna in such great depth, the pronunciation of Sanskrit words, the expressions and everything was so damn perfect.

BR Chopra gets -1/10 for special effects and 11/10 for casting. Everyone was excellently cast. Karna, Yudhisthir, Krishna, Dhritarashtra,Bhisma, Bheem, Duryodhana, etc. 

His 'may samay hoon' narration was genius too.

 

[Lord]

39 minutes ago, Muloghonto said:

Favourite character : Karna, Ekalavya, Nakul & Sahadev

Least favourite character : Bhisma, the real villain in the story IMO. 

 

 

How?

[Lord]

2 minutes ago, Number said:

In my view BR Chopra ji and his team did a splendid job. Let's be fair, the visuals and audio effects can't match a Rajamauli film of today because it was made for Indian TV in 80s.

Casting, dialogue writing and delivery was top notch. 

Nitish Bhardwaj played Krishna in such great depth, the pronunciation of Sanskrit words, the expressions and everything was so damn perfect.

 

yes his version is much better than Star one who tried to copy his 'main samay hoon' concept 

[Muloghonto]

Just now, Lord said:

 

How?

To me, moral of bhisma is, if you put personal karma/dharma above all, the nation suffers. Sometimes, its good to sacrifice personal merit, for the greater good. 

Bishma is the ONLY ONE who could've prevented this catastrophe that cost millions of lives, by simply going 'you know what ? i changed my mind. All of you are fools and not the primary claimant to the throne, i am. I made a **** promise, i break promise and take bad karma myself, now you children all play nice else i will banish all of you'. 

And clearly, he COULD have done that, given that the man literally was undefeatable in battlefield and had icchya-mrityu.

So i see the entire tragedy that is Mahabharata to be singular fault of Bhisma, who chose personal punya and personal merit over the greater good of the people.

 

[Muloghonto]

11 minutes ago, Number said:

In my view BR Chopra ji and his team did a splendid job. Let's be fair, the visuals and audio effects can't match a Rajamauli film of today because it was made for Indian TV in 80s.

Casting, dialogue writing and delivery was top notch. 

Nitish Bhardwaj played Krishna in such great depth, the pronunciation of Sanskrit words, the expressions and everything was so damn perfect.

My worst fears are if it is written by today's Netflix's writers half of the sentences will be in Urdu. I hope whoever takes it up now, keeps the dialogues along the line of BR Chopra's one.

Uhm, if netflix writers wrote this, then you can bet 100% that Krishna would be bisexual, there would be gangbang/orgy reference towards Pandavas+draupadi and Gandhari would just be potrayed as someone with BDSM blinding/choke fetish.

 

[Lannister]

1 hour ago, Lord said:

 

Have you watched BR Chopra version?

That show was popular back in the day. But I was just a kid then and there's no way I’m sitting through that medieval period picture quality now.

[Number]

5 minutes ago, Muloghonto said:

Uhm, if netflix writers wrote this, then you can bet 100% that Krishna would be bisexual, there would be gangbang/orgy reference towards Pandavas+draupadi and Gandhari would just be potrayed as someone with BDSM blinding/choke fetish.

 

 

[coffee_rules]

7 minutes ago, Muloghonto said:

To me, moral of bhisma is, if you put personal karma/dharma above all, the nation suffers. Sometimes, its good to sacrifice personal merit, for the greater good. 

Bishma is the ONLY ONE who could've prevented this catastrophe that cost millions of lives, by simply going 'you know what ? i changed my mind. All of you are fools and not the primary claimant to the throne, i am. I made a **** promise, i break promise and take bad karma myself, now you children all play nice else i will banish all of you'. 

And clearly, he COULD have done that, given that the man literally was undefeatable in battlefield and had icchya-mrityu.

So i see the entire tragedy that is Mahabharata to be singular fault of Bhisma, who chose personal punya and personal merit over the greater good of the people.

 

That’s the beauty of that character. He thinks his dharma is to follow the pratignya the vow he made to his father. There are such ideal characters in real life too. They put self-interest above all. That’s what we need to learn from our ithihasa . The real villain is Dasharaja whose conditions to give his daughter Satyavati to Shantanu caused the Mahabharata war

[Muloghonto]

5 minutes ago, coffee_rules said:

That’s the beauty of that character. He thinks his dharma is to follow the pratignya the vow he made to his father. There are such ideal characters in real life too. They put self-interest above all. That’s what we need to learn from our ithihasa . The real villain is Dasharaja whose conditions to give his daughter Satyavati to Shantanu caused the Mahabharata war

I dont blame Dasharaja as much as Bhisma, because Dasharaja didnt have the power to undo any of this. Bhisma did. It always shocks me that for a tale that is so focussed on 'good means doing greater good' doesn't ever have Krishna call out Bhisma for choosing personal honour at the cost of total destruction of his country. 

Like he lectured Arjuna- why the hell didnt he go lecture Bhisma and say 'take 2 more lifetime of rebirth for the paap of breaking your vow but if you break your vow, millions get to live and your own grand-nephews wont end up dead on the battlefield'. 

 

[Number]

15 minutes ago, Lord said:

 

yes his version is much better than Star one who tried to copy his 'main samay hoon' concept 

Even title song and overall music of BR Chopra's one is better.

[randomGuy]

1 hour ago, Number said:

In my view BR Chopra ji and his team did a splendid job. Let's be fair, the visuals and audio effects can't match a Rajamauli film of today because it was made for Indian TV in 80s.

Casting, dialogue writing and delivery was top notch. 

Nitish Bhardwaj played Krishna in such great depth, the pronunciation of Sanskrit words, the expressions and everything was so damn perfect.

My worst fears are if it is written by today's Netflix's writers half of the sentences will be in Urdu. I hope whoever takes it up now, keeps the dialogues along the line of BR Chopra's one.

Actors were great.... duryodhan, bhishm, shakuni, karna, draupadi everyone played their part really well and made a lasting impact. The intro song by Mahendra kapoor was top notch.

 

My fav character has to be 1. duryodhan 2. Bhishm 3. Karna in this order.

 

 

Edited October 19, 2024 by randomGuy

[Prabhdeep Singh]

Worthy Character: Bhisma

 

•Defeated his guru Parshuram (Avatar of Lord Vishnu) in a long battle

•Selfless, let go of kingship, marriage and children for love of father

•Strongest Warrior other than Lord Krishna possibly