In this, the tenth book of the great Indian epic, the Mahabharata , the war has finally ended in victory for the Pandavas. While the victors rejoice, one of the vanquished, Asvatthaman massacres his enemies as they sleep. Pursued afterwards by the five surviving Pandava brothers, Asvatthaman unleashes a weapon of total destruction. But now the great god, Krsna, makes an extraordinary intervention, and a new hope for the social and cosmic order emerges in the form of an unborn child.

Saturated in the imagery of the end of the world and the sacrifice of battle, the Sauptikaparvan is a conflux of the narrative and mythic streams of the entire Mahabharata . Through the first complete English translation for over a century of one of its key books, and the first ever in English verse, the present edition is designed to provide an accessible introduction and entry point to one of the greatest works of Indian and world literature.