Kurukshetra War

The Kurukshetra War (Sanskrit: कुरुक्षेत्रयुद्ध), also called the Mahabharata War, is a war described in the Hindu epic poem Mahabharata, arising from a dynastic struggle between two groups of cousins, the Kauravas and the Pandavas, for the throne of Hastinapura. The war is used as the context for the dialogues of the Bhagavad Gita.

The Mahābhārata recounts the lives and deeds of several generations of a ruling dynasty known as the Kuru clan. Central to the epic is a dynastic conflict between two branches of this family—the five Pandava brothers and their cousins, the hundred Kauravas—over the throne of Hastinapura. The climactic battle takes place at Kurukshetra, literally the “field of the Kurus,” also called Dharmakshetra (“field of dharma”). According to the text, the site was chosen because sins committed there would be absolved due to the land’s sanctity.

The war narrative occupies nearly one-fifth of the Mahābhārata, primarily in its sixth to tenth books (parvas). Krishna plays a pivotal role as mediator and as Arjuna’s charioteer. On the eve of battle, when Arjuna hesitates to fight his relatives and teachers, Krishna delivers a discourse on duty and existence, later compiled as the Bhagavad Gītā.

The conflict begins after failed negotiations to divide the kingdom. Both sides gather powerful allies from across the subcontinent: the Pandavas are supported by Drupada and Shikhandi, while the Kauravas are aided by Bhīṣma, Drona, Karna, and Shalya.

The historicity of the war remains the subject of scholarly discussion. The Battle of the Ten Kings, mentioned in the Rigveda, may have formed the core of the Kurukshetra war's story. The war was greatly expanded and modified in the Mahabharata's account, which makes it dubious. Attempts have been made to assign a historical date to the Kurukshetra war, with research suggesting c. 1000 BCE. However, popular tradition claims that the war marks the transition to the Kali Yuga, dating it to c. 3102 BCE.

Although the Kurukshetra War is not mentioned in Vedic literature, its prominence in later literature led British Indologist A. L. Basham to conclude that there was a great battle at Kurukshetra which, "magnified to titanic proportions, formed the basis of the story of the greatest of India's epics, the Mahābhārata". Acknowledging that later "generations looked upon it as marking an end of an epoch", he suggested that rather than being a civil war it might have been "a muddled recollection of the conquest of the Kurus by a tribe of Mongol type from the hills". He saw it as useless to the historian and dates the war to the ninth century BCE based on archaeological evidence and "some evidence in the Brahmana literature itself to show that it cannot have been much earlier".

Puranic literature presents genealogical lists associated with the Mahābhārata narrative. There are two pieces of evidence of the Puranas: there is the direct statement^[where?] that there were 1,015 (or 1,050) years between the birth of Parikshit (Arjun's grandson) and the accession of Mahapadma Nanda, commonly dated to 382 BCE, which would yield an estimate of about 1400 BCE for the Bharata battle, which would imply improbably long reigns on average for the kings listed in the genealogies.

There are also analyses of parallel genealogies in the Puranas between the times of Adhisimakrishna (Parikshit's great-grandson) and Mahapadma Nanda. Pargiter estimated 26 generations by averaging 10 different dynastic lists and assuming 18 years for the average duration of a reign, arrived at an estimate of 850 BCE for Adhisimakrishna and approximately 950 BCE for the Bharata battle.