About this atlas
The Mahabharata Atlas is a map and timeline of the epic. Move through the story event by event and watch kingdoms take sides, characters travel, and the war gather. It is meant for general readers and students who want to see the geography and the politics of the story rather than only read about them.
For the full bibliography, the translations used, and the references behind each place on the map, see the Sources page.
What the text is
Facts here follow the Critical Edition prepared at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI, Pune, 1933–1966), in the English translation by Bibek Debroy (Penguin, 10 volumes). Chapter references use the Critical Edition’s numbering, written as parva.adhyaya: 2.43 is the forty-third chapter of the Sabha Parva.
Many of the best-known scenes of the epic come from later manuscripts, regional versions, or modern films and television. When one of them is relevant, it is shown and labelledTraditional orAdaptation, never presented as what the text says. Statements labelledCritical Edition are things the Critical Edition text actually contains.
What the map is not
No place in the Mahabharata has a surveyed location. The kingdoms drawn here are rough blobs centred on where scholars and tradition put them; their edges are deliberately wobbly to signal that they are sketches, not borders. Every marker carries a confidence label:
- Traditional site a modern place that tradition and often archaeology associate with the ancient name (Hastinapur, Kurukshetra, Dwarka). The association is plausible, not proven.
- Approximate the text gives a region or a direction but no site (the Kamyaka forest, Kamboja, Indrakila). The marker only shows the general area.
- Disputed scholars disagree substantially.
The coastline and rivers come from Natural Earth (public domain) and show the present day. The Sarasvati, central to the story, is drawn by Natural Earth as the seasonal Ghaggar, and ancient river courses differed from today’s. No absolute dates are given: the timeline is narrative order only.
Scope of this version
The atlas now runs from Shantanu and Ganga through the dice game, the exile and the forming of alliances to the first day at Kurukshetra, in 20 events across the Adi, Sabha, Aranyaka, Virata, Udyoga and Bhishma Parvas. The remaining seventeen days of the war and the aftermath through the Mahaprasthanika Parva will be added in the same format.
How it is built
Everything on screen comes from four data files: 40 places, 21 kingdoms, 51 characters and 20 events. Each event records a summary, its Critical Edition chapters, source notes, the characters and places involved, journeys, and a delta: which kingdoms changed sides, who moved where. The state shown at any point of the timeline is the sum of all deltas up to that point, so adding an event never requires editing the ones before it.
Built with Next.js, TypeScript, React and MapLibre GL JS. The map renders entirely from bundled GeoJSON with no tile server.
Character art
Each character carries an emblem drawn for this atlas: Arjuna’s bow, Bhima’s mace, Karna’s sun and earrings, Bhishma’s bed of arrows. The cards are built to take a portrait as well; see the Characters page.