The Stri Parva (Sanskrit: स्त्री पर्व), or the "Book of the Women," is the eleventh of eighteen books of the Indian epic Mahabharata. It traditionally has 4 parts and 27 chapters, as does the critical edition.[1][2][3][4]
Sometimes spelled Stree Parva, it describes the grief of women because of the war.[2] The parva recites the grief of men too, such as of Dhritrashtra and the Pandava brothers.[5] The chapters include a treatise by Vidura and Vyasa on passage rites with words of comfort for those who have lost loved ones, as well as the saṃsāra fable of the man and a well.[6][7]
This Parva (book) has 2 sub-parvas (parts or little books) and 27 adhyayas (sections, chapters).[1][8] The following are the sub-parvas:[9][10]
An alternate grouping of the sub-parvas:[10]
Stri Parva was composed in Sanskrit. Some Sanskrit manuscripts discovered in different parts of India title the parts differently. Several translations in English are available. Two translations from 19th century, now in public domain, are those by Kisari Mohan Ganguli[1] and Manmatha Nath Dutt.[2] The translations vary with each translator's interpretations.
Clay Sanskrit Library has published a 15 volume set of the Mahabharata which includes a translation of Stri Parva by Kate Crosby. This translation is modern and uses an old manuscript of the Epic. The translation does not remove verses and chapters now widely believed to be spurious and smuggled into the Epic in 1st or 2nd millennium AD.[17]
Debroy, in 2011, notes[9] that updated critical edition of Stri Parva, after removing verses and chapters generally accepted so far as spurious and inserted into the original, has 4 parts, 27 adhyayas (chapters) and 713 shlokas (verses).
The entire parva has been "transcreated" and translated in verse by the poet Dr. Purushottama Lal published by Writers Workshop.
Jalapradanika parva, Chapter 2:
When all else is asleep, Time is awake, Time is irresistible.
Youth, beauty, life, possessions, health, and the companionship of friends, all are unstable.
It behoveth thee not to grieve for what is universal.
Do not indulge in your grief.
Grief itself, by being indulged in, never becomes light.
By dwelling on it, one cannot lessen it.
On the other hand, grief grows with indulgence.
One should treat mental grief by wisdom, just as physical grief should be treated by medicine.
Wisdom hath this power.
80th of 100 Upa Parvas. 194 Shlokas organized into 8 Chapters.
81st of 100 Upa Parvas. 468 Shlokas organized into 17 Chapters.
82nd of 100 Upa Parvas. One Chapter with 44 Shlokas.
83rd of 100 Upa Parvas. One Chapter with 24 Shlokas.