In this book the epic Mahabharata, eulogised and worshiped by devotees worldwide, takes centre stage in the artist’s current creative repertoire. His paintings, mostly in large size and bold colours, engage with the phenomenal Sanskrit epic of ancient India. As the title suggests it is a mahan(great) narration about bharatbaraga(descendants of Bharat/India), inscribed millennia ago by rishi Vy? Sadeva, around 400 BCE. Revered as a significant civilizational marker, the Mahabharata is the longest epic poem ever written. In its original, full form, it contains about 1.8 million words in over 100,000 shlokas(couplets) or 200,000 plus individual verse lines and long prose passages. Over the centuries, it has been revised and interpolated in attempts to unravel its historical or compositional layers and continues to be engagingly mysterious. Lined with European and Italian Renaissance influences, together with Indian decorative elements and a spiritual ethos, the elaborately drawn and brightly coloured suite articulates the great heroic epic, which is essentially about dharma (moral law). It traverses the struggle for sovereignty between two groups of cousins: the Kauravas and the Pandavas. The intrigues, struggles, and morals underlined in the spiritual narrative are replayed in mazing dramatic imagery in this body of work by artist Giampaolo Tomassetti, also known as Jnananjana Dasa.

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