This acclaimed course, developed in partnership with the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, offers an authentic encounter with the Mahabharata grounded in the Institute's epochal Critical Edition. Rather than popularized retellings, participants engage with the textual reality of the epic as established through rigorous scholarship.

The course unfolds the significant episodes of the Mahabharata through a systematic exposition of all eighteen parvans—from the origins narrated in the Adi Parva to the celestial conclusion of the Svargarohana Parva. Along the way, participants encounter the philosophical depths of the Shanti and Anushasana Parvans, the dramatic tensions of the war books, and the profound ethical questions that make this epic eternally relevant.

Designed for anyone with preliminary knowledge of the Mahabharata, the course illuminates the basics of its philosophy, the psychology of its characters, and the social paradigms of its world.