The Mahabharata ─ An English Version Based on Selected Verses

"The Mahabharata" is the longest and, in some ways, the greatest epic poem in any language. Intended to be a treatise on life itself, it embraces religion and ethics, polity and government, philosophy and the pursuit of salvation. The shortest recension of the Sanskrit version consists of some 88,000 verses. The main narrative, however, is the story of the rivalry between the cousins, the Pandavas and the Kauravas, which culminates in the great battle of Kuruksetra.Chakravarthi V. Narasimhan here introduces and presents the portions dealing with this story and its central theme of the universal destruction and evil of war. His prose translation of approximately 4000 verses is supplemented by a glossary, genealogical tables, and an index correlating the verses with the original Sanskrit text.

Chakravarthi V. Narasimhan was educated at Madras University in India and at Oxford University. From 1937 to 1956 he worked in the Indian Civil Service, and for the next twenty-two years he worked at the undersecretary-general level at the United Nations.