The Game Of Dicing In Mahabarat The Book Of Mahabharata

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‘The Book Of Assembly Hall’ begins with the building of the hall in the Pandava capital of Indraprastha by the demon Maya who was rescued from the burning forest by Arjuna and Krishna at the end of the first book. It traces the Pandavas rise to power which arouses the jealousy of Duryodhana and ends with the defeat of the newly consecrated king Yudhisthara in the dicing match with Duryodhana’s uncle Shakuni , followed by the exile of the Pandavas for thirteen years. The Game of dicing The game of dicing in the second book of ‘sabhaparva’ of the great Sanskrit epic Mahabharata is a significant episode and a pivotal point to the plot of the narrative.Yudhisthara, the eldest of the Pandu brothers, and a compulsive gambler is challenged to dice game by Duryodhana, eldest of the Kauravas. Duryodhana employs Shakuni , a cheat to throw …show more content…

The importance which the game of dice takes on in the epic makes it a substitute for the rival rajasuya as potlatch: the end result of which is to divest the Pandavas of their wealth and that too in their own volition . Dicing certainly carries non heroic undertones for the kingdom of heroes should be lost in battle and combat and not at the throw of a dice. The cosmological parallels of dicing with ritual and fate exonerated the heroes. The puzzle of Yudhisthara’s gambling obligation at the apex of his royal power finds reasonable solution in Van Buitenen’s structural analysis of ‘the book of assembly hall’ as an epic dramatization of the vedic ritual of royal consecration which is itself central to the content of the book. Van Buitenen uses the details of the ritual in his Introduction to illuminate the meaning of events in the book. The dice match to which Yudhisthara submits , though he knows he will be beaten unfairly is an important part of the consecration of the

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