For Love: A Comparison of Revelation of Love and the Mahabharata Anonymous

In the year 1373 A.D., thirty-year-old Lady Julian lay on her deathbed in Norwich, England, after suffering for weeks from an unknown illness (Julian VII). Around the year 3100 B.C., the war of Mahabharata broke out in India, leaving villages in devastation and the people of India in despair (Gita IX). These two events, separated by thousands of years, seemingly have little in common. However both events led to deep, theological texts that have been read for centuries: Lady Julian's Revelation of Love and the Hindi Mahabharata. These texts seem to be as different as the events that produced them. Lady Julian shaped her work as a devout Christian in the Middle Ages; her ideas would seemingly never be comparable to the holiest text of a Middle Eastern religion. However, Julian's views on the transcendence of God's love and the drive beyond human suffering continually parallel the ideas and values expressed in the Mahabharata's most famous book, The Bhagavad Gita.

Both Revelation of Love and The Bhagavad Gita deal with human suffering and the necessity of God in moments of despair. Julian focuses on God while she is in great pain: "... I felt my body was dead... [but] I thought to myself that I was well, for...