"Slender lady, I came out with you to gather fruit. I got a pain in my head and fell asleep in your lap. Then I saw a terrible darkness and a mighty person. If you know, then tell me - was it my dream? Or was what I saw real?"
So speaks Satyavat, newly rescued from the god of death by Savitri, his faithful wife, at the heart of one of the best loved stories in Indian literature. This, and other well known narratives, including a version of Rama's story, bring the Forest Book of the great Sanskrit epic, the Maha*bharata, to its compelling conclusion. Woven into the main narrative of the Pandavas' exile, these disparate episodes indicate the range and poetic power of the Maha*bharata as a whole-a power that has the potential to speak to common human concerns across cultures and centuries.
"The Forest" is Book Three of the Maha*bharata, "The Great Book of India." This final quarter of the account of the Pandavas' twelve-year exile in the forest contains four stirring stories that are among the best known in Indian literature. From a hero overcoming great odds, to a virtuous wife who rescues her family, and Indra tricking Karna, and Yudhi*shthira's victory in the verbal contest with the tree spirit, these stories speak to common human concerns across cultures and centuries.
Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation
For more on this title and other titles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http://www.claysanskritlibrary.org

The Mahabharata, a classic in world literature, is presented here in a bilingual (with English) facing page edition.
Reviews
"The Clay Sanskrit Library represents one of the most admirable publishing projects now afoot. . . . Anyone who loves the look and feel and heft of books will delight in these elegant little volumes." * New Criterion *
"The books line up on my shelf like bright Bodhisattvas ready to take tough questions or keep quiet company. They stake out a vast territory, with works from two millennia in multiple genres: aphorism, lyric, epic, theater, and romance." -- Willis G. Regier * The Chronicle Review *
"Published in the geek-chic format." * BookForum *
"Very few collections of Sanskrit deep enough for research are housed anywhere in North America. Now, twenty-five hundred years after the death of Shakyamuni Buddha, the ambitious Clay Sanskrit Library may remedy this state of affairs." * Tricycle *
"No effort has been spared to make these little volumes as attractive as possible to readers: the paper is of high quality, the typesetting immaculate. The founders of the series are John and Jennifer Clay, and Sanskritists can only thank them for an initiative intended to make the classics of an ancient Indian language accessible to a modern international audience." * The Times Higher Education Supplement *



Book Information
ISBN 9780814742785
Author William Johnson
Format Hardback
Page Count 374
Imprint New York University Press
Publisher New York University Press
Weight(grams) 272g