The Mahabharata

The Mahabharata, attributed to the sage Vyasa, is the vast Indian epic of a dynastic war between two branches of a royal family. Far more than a martial narrative, it is a complete treatise on duty, fate and the moral life, encompassing within its enormous scope the whole of classical Indian ethical reflection.

For a study of the mind, its abiding lesson is that inner character, more than circumstance, decides the destiny of a soul. The epic dramatises how each figure's resolve, restraint, blindness or integrity shapes the outcome of events, and how the same situation yields ruin or nobility according to the quality of mind brought to it. Dharma, the right ordering of conduct, is shown to be endlessly subtle, demanding discernment rather than rote obedience.

As one of the two great epics of India, and the frame within which the Bhagavad Gita is set, it transmits a moral psychology of immense range, holding that destiny is finally the working out of inner disposition, and that the cultivation of character is the true theatre of every outward struggle.