Project Victory began with a simple but demanding objective: to discover the earlier core of the Mahābhārata — the approximately 8,800 verses associated originally with Vyāsa and to understand the hidden wisdom embedded within its narrative. For our working hypothesis we call this work Jaya!.
“Vyāsa says that 8,800 verses in his work contain meanings that are difficult to understand. He knew their meaning, Śuka knew them, and he was unsure whether Sañjaya fully understood them. These verses were deliberately composed in a deeply layered way, making their true meaning difficult to unravel.”
Near the end of the Mahābhārata, Vyāsa is presented as having distilled his teaching into four verses taught to his son Śuka. The anguish in these concluding verses is palpable:
“With my arms raised I cry aloud, yet no one listens to me. From Dharma arise Artha and Kāma; why then is Dharma not followed? Dharma should never be abandoned for desire, fear, greed, or even for the sake of life itself. Dharma is enduring; pleasure and pain are transient. The jīva is enduring; the conditions surrounding its worldly existence are not.”
Project Victory takes these statements seriously. The working hypothesis is that the figure of 8,800 verses preserves a memory of the intellectual core of Vyāsa’s Mahābhārata More importantly, the description of these verses as deliberately difficult provides an important clue to how the work must be read. Its ideas may be embedded within the narrative, characters, events, symbolism, dialogue, and multiple layers of meaning. Also, these statements make it clear that Vyāsa intends to impart the right understanding of Dharma, Artha, Kāma, and Mokṣa. If so, recovering the core of Mahābhārata requires more than identifying old verses. It requires recovering its intellectual architecture.
With this context, we invite you to explore this exciting Mahābhārata puzzle!
*Incidentally, as a by-product of this effort, we also recover approximately 24,000 verses of the Bhārata.
“The Bhārata Saṃhitā was composed in 24,000 verses. Without the subsidiary narratives, this is what the learned call the Bhārata.”