The Pandavas Dependency on Krishna

Pariah


*Only those familiar with the Mahabharata epic should respond*Krishna was essential to the Pandavas victory over the Kauravas at Kurukshetra. Or was he? Do you think the Pandavas may have won without the support of Madhusudhana?It also speaks volumes about the "misguided" (depending on how you view the battle - imagine if the Kauravas had won and they had written the Mahabharata...) yet valorous attempt by the Kauravas. Despite fighting the Lord and the Pandavas they held their own, and yet the Pandavas barely scratched by (or did they?). What do you think?Did the Pandavas thoroughly trounce the Kauravas such that Krishna's assistance was only fringe activity, or was Krishna the only reason the Pandavas made it out of Kurukshetra alive?

michaelm

If I may return to the original theme...I am a westerner and do not consider myself Hindu, but i have read the Gita several times and discussed it with some great teachers.The wonderful thing is there are so many teachings at so many levels within the Gita. On this particular point of the thread the weakness of the Pandavas is not a military weakness whereby they needed Krishna to make them strong, not lack of courage. Their weakness was of misguided sense of duty, of pride in their piety. They were cheated and robbed many times and yet believed it would be wrong to fight back. They even allowed Arjuna's wife to be humiliated publicly but put their reputation higher. They lost their Kingdom through fraud, and they knew it and tried to settle the problem by negotiation and compromise. It was only when they had offered to accept a tiny piece of ground as settlement and had that rejected that they finally came to war...and even then Arjuna's sense of what was right weakened.Krishna did not need to offer any support, military or otherwise. All Krishna needed to do was to remind Arjuna of his duty to others.I asked my Guru about why Krishna told him to fight when surely the more spiritual thing would be to walk away. Why were they bothering about a kingdom? He said it was their duty. They had failed to understand their duty to others, to Arjuna's wife and to their subjects. By insisting that they keep their word even when clearly being cheated they put their word and reputation above everyone else and so their subjects suffered under terrible dictatiorship and cruelty.Krisha had to shake Arjuna up and get him to see that his duty was to overcome the evil, even if it meant breaking the rules of chivalry. Which is better, to save peopel from terrible evil, torture and suffering, or be remembered as a fine chap who played the game by the rules even when the other side, the Kauravas, cheated and thus beat him?The kauravas were not stronger, just more devious, ruthless, immoral and prepared to do whatever it took to win. Krishna had to wake Arjuna up so he could see what his real duty was.

The Kurukshetra war might not even have been noted in the Mahabharata if Krishna was not involved. It would have just been a fratricidal war at most noted in the foot-notes. But Krishna transformed everything into Dharmic proportions. Now everything, every single act of each character can be seen in the proper perspective of upholding Dharma. So whether the Pandavas would have won without Krishna is not relevant. God would have foreseen that yet another senseless war was unfolding, with mankind being none the wiser for it. Therefore He decided to incarnate in the form of Krishna to give mankind never-to-be-forgotten-lessons in the affairs of man. Further, Mahabharatha expounds that there is nothing like a totally good man or bad man or good situation or bad situation. Everything is so full of facets that what is called for is harmony (not homogeneity) and this is indeed the meaning of Dharma.

Pariah

Isn't the Mahabharata amazing?

Quote:
Originally Posted by penguino
Aren't all our scriptuers so deep? They have so much deep meaning which takes a long time to see everything, So many thinks are symoblic...

It is noteworthy that much of Hindu scriptures are written in the form of poetry whereas both the Bible and the Quran are written in the prose format, though they may contain some poetry within. Particularly of the Quran, it is forbidden to consider it poetry. Which accounts for the fact that both Bible and Quran are considered more as 'instruction manuals'. The Vedas, Ramayana, Mahabharata etc. are more celebratory in nature - celebration of righteousness. They lay down the principles, not the rules.

Aupmanyav

I commend Mr. Venugopal's scholarship, the teaching of MichaelM's guru, and MichaelM's understanding.