Why do wars happen — out of meanness, chance, or error? And can we ever truly calculate them?

Mahabharat And Chaturanga

Origin of War

Hasti Aswa Ratham Padatun

The Mahabharata is an epic of flawed and conflicted individuals (personalities) spanning generations within one family. It is a counterpoint to Gabriel Garcia’s “One hundred Years of solitude, it is One thousand years of plentitude, like the Roman empire.; the lineage is not straight, There is Shantanu Putra at the helm after repeated infatuation of Shantanu, the abdication of his son Bhishm, a series of weak King’s, deviating again and again from father lineage. It was full of fractured relationships. An implosion had been built in a dynasty clinging to Kingship by any means whatsoever; it was a matrilineal dynasty, a fact not commonly acknowledged.

It is a strategic and psychological document — a case study of how resentment simmers, alliances fracture, and personal insult transform into total war. It presents the anatomy of escalation with a narrative precision that modern military analysts would admire.

In its pages, we see the seeds of war not in ideology but in wounded pride. The division of land, the insult to Draupadi, and the dice game of Chaturanga — all escalate into Dharma-Yuddha, a righteous war that nearly wipes out an entire generation.

The story is also a living diagram of strategic thinking, encompassing alliance-building, weapon asymmetry, proxy conflict, moral justification, and preemption — all wrapped in a dramatic arc.

Here, we retell it not as mythology but as military memory. Mahabharat, Chaturanga and Origins of War

The Mahabharat is the most incredible story ever told – the tale of a dysfunctional family, the greatest fratricide of all time. The story primarily revolves around the Pandavas, the five sons of Pandu, and their cousins, the Kauravas, the sons of Dhritrashtra, numbering one hundred.

There are several critical points in the story around which the story turns. The first one starts with King Shantanu’s infatuation with the daughter of a fisherman, Satyavati. She preconditions that her sons should become king of Hastinapur rather than Devvrat, the firstborn and the heir apparent, Shantanu’s son and first wife, the Goddess Ganga.

To do his duty towards his father, Devvrat gives up his right to rule the kingdom and vows never to get married and produce a progeny. Devvrat is not just the heir apparent but also the most suitable person

who could have become the King; however, his vows pave the way for two tragic kings, Chitrangda the elder and Vichitra Virya the younger, after a brief time as a ruler, the elder brother died in a war, young Vichitra Virya was consecrated as the king under the guardianship of Devvrat, now known as Bhishma. Vichitra Virya was married off to Ambika and Ambalika, beautiful daughters of the king of Kasi. But he, like his brother, died childless. To perpetuate the dynasty, Sage Ved Vyas was requested to bless each of his wives through ni-yoga relationships; three sons were born, one to each of his wives and one to their maid Dhritrashtra, Pandu and Vidura. However, a mistake in the ritual caused a defect in two of the princes; the elder Dhritrashtra was born blind and the younger weak.

Dhritrashtra could not be anointed king; being blind, Pandu, the younger brother, was consecrated king instead. Pandu could not bear children of his own, and to date, Pandu is a common abuse that boys in India hurl at each other, a cuckolded husband. Since Dhritrashtra was left in the cold, seeds of jealousy and humiliation were sown.

Pandu married Kunti, the adopted daughter of Kuntibhoja, King of the Panchala kingdom. Later, he married another princess, Madri. One day, in an argument with a sage on the rights of Kshatriyas to hunt, he was cursed that he would die if he touched any of his wives. He relinquished his interest in ruling the kingdom, so he abdicated his throne to Dhritrashtra and departed to dwell in the forest with Kunti and Madri, where he eventually passed away. Madri then chose to immolate herself alongside her husband.

Out of 6 Pandavas, Kunti bore four sons, one in secret and three after receiving permission from the husband by divine impregnation; Madri took the trick of this divine impregnation from Kunti and bore two sons. The five acknowledged sons are known as the Pandavas.

Gandhari, wife of Dhritrashtra, on the other hand, delivered a disappointing piece of flesh. With the high technology of that time, she incubated the chunks of flesh in 100 pots and thus became the mother of 100 sons, all born simultaneously but taken out sequentially; Duryodhana was first to be taken out, hence considered the eldest.

Oddly, there was not one sister in either family. One hundred six brothers, the war was inevitable, enmities had been sealed, and the stage had been set for the ultimate battle.

Dhritrashtra was King; he gave some land to Pandavas in Hastinapur. Duryodhana, along with his maternal uncle Shakuni, built a palace of lac and attempted to burn the Pandavas with Kunti. However, Pandav’s managed to escape and went underground. They learned of Draupadi’s swamvayar and went to try their luck; a shooting contest had been organised in which Arjun, a marksman par excellence, won and won Draupadi too. The five brothers returned to their hiding place with Draupadi in tow. Mother was working inside the hut, and when they asked her to come outside and see what they had brought, Kunti told them to divide it among themselves, thinking it must be alms because that was what they used to subsist on. To hear a mother’s command is to obey, the boys decided to share Draupadi equally.

Draupadi went along with the decision, though her first love remained Arjun. Draupadi had five sons, one from each of the Pandavas, similar to Kunti and Madri who had children with five Devas.

Pandavas, with Kunti and Draupadi, eventually returned to the kingdom and were granted the barren land of Indraprastha to rule. Having made their palace, the Pandavas invited their cousin brothers to partake in the celebration. The place was beautiful and had tiles that would shine like clear water.

Duryodhana got confused, so he lifted his Dhoti so that it didn’t get wet, but when he realised that the tiles were dry, merely shining, he let his dhoti down. And lo, when a shallow pool recessed into the floor came, he walked confidently into the water, wetting himself and getting embarrassed. Draupadi laughed, and she laughed, and said, “Andhe Baap Ka Andha Beta. (Blind son of blind father). Duryodhana seethed. This was a grievous insult and likely a seed for the Great War.

Duryodhana and Shakuni plotted Pandav’s downfall and invited Yudhishthira for a game of Chaturanga; Yudhisthira was an accomplished player of Chaturanga and could not refuse an invitation to play with Shakuni and Duryodhana.

Chaturanga (four colours or elements) is the mother of Arabic Shatranj and modern-day chess. It was played with dice; although the game’s rules are lost to history, its pieces consisted of infantry, elephant, horse, and camel cavalry. Hasti, Aswa, Ratham, Padatun, in Sanskrit.

Shakuni was master of chaturanga and the dice, too, so he loaded the dice, so Yudhishthira went on a losing streak but kept on staking more and more till he had lost all he had, the kingdom, his brothers, himself, and finally Draupadi.

Kaurava humiliated Draupadi in public by tearing off her clothes, an event that Lord Krishna himself thwarted. This disgraceful event caused unease and indignation among elders, so they intervened.

Instead of depriving Pandavas of their freedom, they were sentenced to thirteen years of exile with one year of incognito living. In these fourteen years, they produced more sons and allied with other kings. The tree of war was growing.

Fourteen years later, when they returned, Kaurav’s flatly refused to give them anything. So, the inevitable war.

Arjun’s reluctance to kill his brothers, cause needless bloodshed, and risk having their whole family wiped out, including himself, was honest; he understood the horrors of war. Kaurav’s army had a larger army with more proven warriors on its side, hence having an edge, but Pandav’s had the lord himself and all the luck.

Krishna, on the battlefield, exhorted Arjuna to fight in a righteous battle, in a sermon of the divine celestial song known as Gita.

So, war happens from seemingly innocuous events in the past, leaving a simmering resentment until one day, a conflagration breaks out. And because there is resentment, there is preparation forward followed by its execution.

Additionally, Chaturanga had a lineage prior to the Mahabharata; it was the earliest known war game.

It is of Indian origin and is attested to be by its four elements: Hasti, Aswa, Ratham, and Padatun. An Iranian story about how it reached there is recorded in the 5th century CE?

The inventor of chess asked for a reward of one grain of wheat on the first square, two on the second, four on the third, and so on, doubling with each square. This seemingly modest request results in an astronomical number of grains due to exponential growth (a geometric progression). The total number of grains on the 64th square would be 2^63 or 9,223,372,036,854,775,808, and on the whole of the chess board, one less than double this number.

This story highlights how chess, played on a simple board, can generate an extraordinary number of possibilities.

If 32 pieces on a chess board are arranged randomly without bothering for distinct arrangements, the number is astronomical 64! /32! , A number with 89 digits in it.

War has generated wisdom; many of these could be extrapolated from chess. However, there are many more, some of which are put together in a section on the aphorisms of war. In some cases, there is close correspondence between lessons learnt from chess and those extrapolated from the war itself.

Strategic Reflections from the Mahabharat

Wars are not always declared; they are often provoked. The insult to Draupadi was not a battle cry, but it was the beginning of war.

Numbers don’t guarantee victory. The Kaurava army was larger, but the Pandavas had Krishna — moral clarity and strategic mind.

– Preparation precedes action. The exile wasn’t a retreat; it was rearmament.

Chaturanga was more than a pastime. It was training — symbolic and literal — for the battlefield to come. Allies are chosen less by friendship and more by enmity toward a common enemy.

Victory is not clean. Mahabharat’s end is soaked in blood and silence, not glory.

The Mahabharat teaches us that war is not a failure of diplomacy — it is often the intended destination