This is the 23rd of the 100 Upa Parvas (Sections), situated in Sabha Parva, the second of the 18 Maha Parvas (Books) of the original Mahabharata composed in Sanskrit by Vyasa. As the name suggests, this Upa Parva mainly describes the conquering of four quarters by the four Pandava princes - North by Arjuna, East by Bhima, South by Sahadeva and West by Nakula.
While the elimination of Jarasandha and the release of the captive kings have in effect insured Yudhishthira's title to suzerainty, the entire known world still has to be formally subjugated and made tributary, before the Rajasuya. One obviously is not Samraj unless all of earth acknowledges one as such.
The traditional term used for world conquest in Sanskrit is digvijaya, the "conquest of the quarters", where dis (which is pronounced dig in this collocation) in its plural sense of "all of space," here in the sense of all accessible space. the same world conquest is met with in the Vedic ritual of the rajasuya, where it is is called digvyavasthapana, the "separate establishment of all the quarters", which takes place when the king-to-be sets foot in each of the "five" quarters i.e., the regular four and the one above. accordingly, the manuals prescribe that the king take a step in each of the five directions, so that he can be king on a cosmic scale. The five quarters sum up the entire universe: each one is associated with components of the Veda, the pantheon, the year - old symbol of the cycle of all natural life - and the people.
The Upa Parva has a total of 386 Shlokas organized in 7 Chapters. Click to See…
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