Bhishmanirvana Book Cover

The Cover

I designed the book cover for Bhishma Nirvan, the much-awaited book by Nilesh Oak. This edition is the Marathi version of his existing book of the same name.

The Subject

Bhishma is the great-uncle of both warring houses in the Mahabharata, and the
figure whose vow shapes the whole succession crisis the epic turns on. Born
Devavrata to King Shantanu and the river goddess Ganga, he renounced the throne
and took a vow of lifelong celibacy so that his father could marry Satyavati —
an oath so severe it earned him the name Bhishma, the terrible, and from his
father the boon of icchamrityu, death only at a moment of his own choosing.

That boon sets up the scene the book is named for. Bound by duty to the throne
of Hastinapura rather than to either set of nephews, Bhishma commanded the
Kaurava army against the Pandavas. On the tenth day of the war he was brought
down by Arjuna's arrows and fell onto a bed of them — the sharashayya — where
the boon left him suspended, unable to die until he permitted it. He chose to
wait for Uttarayana, the sun's northward turn, and lay on that bed through the
remainder of the war. It is from there that he delivers the long discourses on
duty, governance and liberation that make up the Shanti and Anushasana Parvas,
and recites the Vishnu Sahasranama to Yudhishthira.

The dating question follows directly from the story. Because Bhishma's death is
tied to a specific astronomical event, and because the text records the sky
around it in unusual detail, the moment of his nirvana is one of the few anchors
in the epic that can be tested against the actual motion of the heavens. That is
what makes it a battleground for anyone attempting to date the Mahabharata, and
it is the passage Nilesh Oak's work turns on.

The Design

The book revolves around Oak's dating of the Mahabharata — and more specifically around the portion covering Bhishma's nirvana and the mystery surrounding the dating of that event. The cover was designed to carry that subject.