Reading Diary B: The Story of the Great War: Some Lessons from the Mahabharata by Annie Besant Week 13

I am reading The Story of the Great War: Some Lessons from the Mahabharata by Annie Besant.  One of my favorite stories from the reading was the story of the Pandava war.  One of the most interesting parts about the war for me was the politics right before the war started.  It was interesting how each party vied for support from different leaders.  One of the interesting ones was Krishna.  Krishna knew that Duryodhana was not a good person and that he had wronged the Pandavas but when Duryodhana asked him for help, he still gave him help.  I found that it was odd that he would support both sides.  It surely most have been odd for the soldiers that he sent to Duryodhana to be fighting one of their leaders.  Another of the interesting times that Duryodhana got support was when he tricked Shalya, King of the Madras.  Shalya was allied with pandavas but Shalya was tricked into thinking that Duryodhana was a servant of the son of Kunti and offered him anything he wanted.  It was also interesting that Krishna went to the Kurus to try and prevent the war from occurring even though he knew that it would still occur.  The wickedness of Duryodhana was displayed when Krishna went to visit Kurus and Duryodhana had pavilions set up to sway Krishna to join his side but Krishna had already made an agreement between both parties.  It did not work but the fact that Duryodhana tried to get Krishna to betray the Pandavas was an unsettling fact.

The Pandavas and Draupadi (Source: wikimedia)