I hope some of you are acquainted with Nietzsche's theory of the singularity of truth?

If not, let me give you just a little bit of definition with an example.

Nietzsche says that the truth is a metaphysical concept that falsifies reality. Which is just a string of fancy words for saying that if majority of people believe that one concept is the reality than it must be the truth.

For example, a millenia ago, people thought that the earth was flat and the sun revolved around the planets. At that time, these were true because everyone believed it. Later through discoveries and proven experiments, these prior notions were disapproved of and new theories came up to be which became the new truth.

[Just think about the multitude of laws we have read in Physics and Chemistry which have been time and again disapproved for new axioms to be discovered. The previous ones had been held as the truth before the new discoveries though - the most accurate versions of the corollaries.]

The entire point of this slightly philosophical rambling was to set precedent to the fact that the Mahabharata does indeed have an accurate version, even if some of you would like to believe that it doesn't.

One version has to be the truth currently in this time for its existence to lay roots in reality. This accurate version or the true version may get disapproved later at a point in time which will pave way for the new truth and falsify the prior's claims.

That is how, it works folks.

Now, from all the available versions, adaptations, retellings and translations, one will have to chose a singular source and give credence to it.

[Mind you, we are talking about the actual story here and the entire journey of this book is to lay perspective on the originally composed character. Fanfiction writers, please do not get incensed. I have no problems with creative liberties taken for the sake of entertainment. This is all, for the people proclaiming general statements -like Karna was the best, he was misunderstood, he deserved better, he was the actual hero, he was the victim - etc etc etc]

As Nietzsche said and I discovered through everyone on the internet and my surroundings, there are two majorly accepted versions - BORI CE and KMG. Now, I had to choose from them and did some further research. Now according to both wikepedia, online talking forums, podcasts and several websites, I have collected the concise versions of the salient features of both the publications.

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1. BORI CE [Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute Critical Edition]

Under the leadership of Dr. V. S. Sukhtankar, a team of scholars painstakingly studied 1259 manuscripts of the Mahabharata from all parts of India for 50 years. [1]

This edition in 19 volumes (more than 15,000 demi-quarto size pages) comprised the critically constituted text of the 18 parvas of the Mahabharata consisting of more than 89,000 verses, an elaborate critical apparatus and a prolegomena on the material and methodology (volume I), written by V.S. Sukthankar. [2]

Their objective was to find the most ancient form of the text. Their sophisticated methodology can be summarized in simple terms as follows: They retained the verses that were found in the maximum number of manuscripts, and rejected the verses that were found in the minimum number of manuscripts. Of course, there are several other tools that are used to analyse the various aspects of the verse, such as linguistic congruity, textual congruity, etc. to further refine the criteria to include/exclude it.[3]

Whatever verses are not found in all manuscripts have obviously been added (i.e. interpolated) into their respective manuscripts in different parts of the country at different times. The original BORI translated text is dry and the poetic beauty of the epic is lost. It is best for research.[4]

2. KMG [Kisari Mohan Ganguly]

Sometime in the early 1870s, Pratapa Chandra Roy, with Babu Durga Charan Banerjee, visited Ganguli at his home, requesting him to take up the work, which he took up after initial reluctance and a second meeting, when extensive plans were drawn, and the copy of a translation by was left behind by Max Muller, made some thirty years ago, which on study Ganguli found to be literal and lacking in flow. Thus he started tweaking the text line by line, though "without at all impairing faithfulness to the original". [5]

But sometimes, I do prefer the slightly interpolated ones like the Bombay Edition (Neelakantha edition) which add little more colour to the story. This edition was used by Kisari Mohan Ganguly for his English translation[6]

***

Now, I guess one can easily draw inference from the above conclusion that the version which had been researched upon for near five decades by a team of Indian scholars funded by an institution dedicated to only this purpose will probably have more credence as a source than a version translated with added flavour (by the author's own admission) by only one person from a lacklustre version written by a British-German national who is the founder of the Western Academatia of Indology and religious studies.

Also considering how everyone is of the opinion that the BORI version is very dry and almost no poetic beauty is prevalent it makes it more probable to be a collection of facts than being varnished by impressionable vocabulary which may change the original meaning of the said facts.

***

There maybe several additions to the same, folklore associated with the epic, playwrights and poets extracting, tweaking and translating the texts to suit their own literary interpolations from the epic and it is all fine and acceptable.

But only when people actually claim that creative liberties have been taken to reach this conclusion.

One cannot give a general statement of either comparison, praise, derision or opinion on Vyasa's original characterisation of any of the characters from them.

Because like I have inferred from my search, at present only one truth is singularly prevalent in reality and only one version may be taken as the most accurate one, as far as forming opinions and passing judgement on characters with regards to our scriptures like the Mahabharata and its characters.

And as mentioned above with the relevant facts and my thought process behind the selection, the BORI CE is as of now - the most accurate one.

***

References

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhandarkar_Oriental_Research_Institute

[2]https://bori.ac.in/department/mahabharata/

[3]https://www.quora.com/Have-you-read-the-BORI-CE-version-of-the-Mahabharata-Are-you-satisfied

[4]https://www.reddit.com/r/hinduism/comments/qk6c4o/bori_vs_gitapress/

[5]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kisari_Mohan_Ganguli

[6]https://mahabharat18.quora.com/Is-there-any-Mahabharata-better-than-Bori