This is a unique recording of 39 stories from India’s great epic, the Mahabharata, narrated by Sanjaya Spettigue. Sanjaya has been regaling his fellow members of the Sri Chinmoy Centre with these stories for many decades now. He has a deep encyclopedic knowledge of the great Indian epic, which brings these timeless spiritual stories alive.
Stories from the Mahabharata by Sanjaya
Last modified September 20, 2022
Preface to Mahabharata Stories. Sri Chinmoy Radio
“One still finds the greatest of epics, the Mahabharata, being described as an Indian myth or as being at the core of Indian mythology. Fortunately, the seers and yogis tell us of the reality of the Mahabharata and that it is not just a story of beauty and nobility of the ancient Bharatas but rather an epic within which will be found the whole of the ancient culture of India. It gives us a vital view of religion and society and through it, we can experience the soul, religious and social and political ideals of the time.”
“Some refer to the epic as the fifth Veda, the creation of the mind of a nation and representative of the ideas and ideals of Indian life. My first magnetic pull, albeit a weak one, towards religion was through the traditional church and its sects. This was not sustained. But the Buddha statues left behind by armies in the villages and clearings in North Malaya shortly after the second world war, were an awakening, as were my visits to the Buddhist Temple complex in Penang. Here at last the Buddhist ways were answering many of my previously unanswered questions. The concepts of reincarnation and the Buddha’s foundations of wisdom and compassion I found most powerful.”
“My discovery of the Mahabharata was simple enough. one day, to keep my three small children occupied and properly eating their breakfast I read to them a comic book of the great epic. I found it riveting, the text, the pictures and I read it from start to finish. At the end, I looked up and the children had gone.”
“There can be no argument that over time the original poem of some 24,000 couplets by the genius poet Vyassa, has been added to by less skilled poets until we have today’s versions which have some 200,000 lines of poetry. Sri Aurobindo succinctly tells us that it is the varying poetic styles that reveal these added passages together with certain inconsistencies in the story.
The Great War leads us from the Golden Age to the Kali or destructive age. The axe-wielding Parasurama had rid the world of the evil and injustices of the warrior caste. He had depleted their male population by eighty per cent with the result of economic recession. But now, yet again, evil plagued and dominated the world through the Kshatryiars and again the old enmity broke out between the gods and demons. Incarnations of both entered the world and the great confrontation between them, was the terrible eighteen-day war. Vyasa, somewhat bluntly and in a somewhat masculine way shows us Krishna the man, with hints of Krishna the God, the Divine. It is He who is to be the architect of the gods’ victory, their victory of good over evil and the new order which will establish a new rule of righteousness and justice by way of a new Empire of Dharma, uniting warring nations so that finally the ambitious arrogance of the kings is substituted by the calm and peace of a just and humane Empire.”
Sanjaya
July 7, 2022
Sanjaya has studied meditation under the guidance of Sri Chinmoy for many years. Often times, in our group meditations, especially when Sri Chinmoy’s students would gather from all over the world for a special celebration, Sri Chinmoy would ask Sanjaya to regale us with some stories from the Mahabharata.
For many of us, who have not been exposed to Eastern cultures in our upbringing, these tales from the hoary past are delightful and full of lessons that we can apply in our daily lives.
We hope that you will be inspired by these wonderful stories from the long ago.
Artist: Sanjaya Spettigue
Name: Sanjaya- Stories from the Mahabharata
Composer: Sage Vyasa and others
Release Year: 1999
Duration: 7 hours, 39 minutes
Acknowledgements: Sri Chinmoy
Tracks uploaded and published: Kamalakanta Nieves and Tejvan Pettinger
Format: Advanced Audio Coding
