The actions depicted follow beat for beat from Manmatha Dutt’s translation of the Kolkata version for the first four days of the eighteen-day war in the epic Mahabharata. Meaning one could read the text and follow every action by characters described on screen in order. There is no action here that is not in the text and there is nothing not here that is in the text. The motions are drawn faithfully as described.
Itihasa - The commodification of culture and the exploitation of scripture for commercial - taking excessive liberty with source material - destroys credibility. The intent for this telling of the Mahabharata War is to express as it could have happened. Whereas an account that deviates to make the action more compelling, or fit a dramatization, and adds fantastic elements as part of battle, leaves in the mind of the viewer the certain conclusion that because the action depicted is so unrealistic then the story is a fairy tale of mind.
Credits
Dutt, Manmatha Nath. A Prose English Translation of the Mahabharata. Parimal Publications, 1902.
Debroy, Bibek. The Mahabharata. London, Penguin Books, 2013.
