Gita For Youth - Background

Background

A huge battle was about to be fought and the old blind king Dhritarastra was anxious to get the news of the battle as his sons and other near relations called Kurus were fighting his own nephews, the great Pandavas  or the sons of Pandu. The battle was fought because the elder son of the old king, Duryadhona, a proud and wicked prince, wanted the entire kingdom for himself, without sharing it with his cousins, the five Pandavas who were just and virtuous. Duryodhana had earlier hatched a conspiracy together with his brother Duhsashana, friend and chief lieutenant Karna and his maternal uncle Shakuni to get the kingdom from the Pandavas, by inviting the eldest Pandava Yudhisthira to a game of dice and defeating him by unfair means. The defeat meant that the Pandavas had to go and live in the forest for twelve years and remain in hiding for one more year. At the end of that thirteen year period the Pandavas came back and duly asked for their share of the kingdom. However Duryadhana was in no mood to give the kingdom back. When Krishna, who was the friend of the Pandavas asked for five villages on their behalf in order to avoid any battle among the brothers, Duryadhana replied haughtily that without battle he would not give even the amount of earth that sticks to the edge of a needle. Therefore both sides prepared for the imminent great battle.

Duryadhana, being the king, had many soldiers and many other kings were fighting for him. Pandavas, however, being virtuous, had several friends and relatives who were ready to die for them and thus the battle was expected to be fierce.

The battleground was decided to be Kurukshetra, a huge and sprawling area which was also known as a dharmakshetra or a place of supreme virtue. This was because in the past many sacrificial rites were performed here and it was told by the sages that whoever would die in battle in this ground, would go to the heaven. The ground was named after the ancient king Kuru who was also the founder of the Kuru dynasty, to which belonged the warring factions, Kauravas and Pandavas.

The blind king wanted to get first hand news of the war and therefore the great sage Krishna Dwaipayan Vyasa, employed Sanjaya, a trusted aide to narrate the happenings of the war. In order that Sanjaya can view the war without going to the battlefield, Vyasa vested him with special power by which he would be able to view all the events in the war as they were happening. It was now to Sanjaya that the king Dhritarastra turned. Sanjaya started his narration from Day 10 of the eighteen days war, the day on which the grandfather Bhisma, grand old man of the Kuru clan, who was the chief lieutenant of Duryadhana, fell, being hit by a volley of arrows from Arjuna, the Pandava hero.