Eastern Spirituality

Glossary Contents: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Submit to FacebookSubmit to Google PlusSubmit to Twitter

The narrator who tells blind Dhritarashtra the progress of the war from day to day. He told the king that a victim of adverse fate would first become perverted and loses his sense of right and wrong. Time would destroy his reason and drive him to his own destruction.

Sanjaya (meaning "victory") is a character from the ancient Indian historic battle Mahābhārata.

In Mahabharata—a story of war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas—the blind king Dhritarashtra is the father of the principals of the Kaurava side. Sanjaya is Dhritarashtra's advisor and also his charioteer. Sanjaya—who has the gift of seeing events at a distance (divya-drishti), granted by the sage Vyasa—narrates to Dhritarshtra the action in the climactic battle of Kurukshetra, which includes the Bhagavad Gita.

Sanjaya had the unpleasant duty of breaking the news of the death of Dhritarashtra's hundred sons at the hands of Bhima at different points of time in the battle, and offers the sorrowing king solace in his darkest hours. He is known to be brutally frank in his recital of the day's battle events and his own opinions, which usually would predict the utter destruction of the Kauravas at the hands of Arjuna and Krishna.

In the Bhagavad Gita, passages often start with the Sanskrit words "Sanjaya uvāca:" ("Sanjaya said:"). The entire Bhagavad Gita is Sanjay's recital to Dhritarashtra of the conversation between Arjuna and Krishna.

Glossary Contents: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z