The Author
Many of the interests expressed in The Mahabharata of Palmira, particularly
in the second volume, originated during a period last century when I studied and briefly taught philosophy.
After leaving academic philosophy, I retrained as a mathematics teacher. I began work on the book in 1987, while working part-time at a school in Somerstown, London. Most of the research for the book was done at what was then the British Library Oriental Reading Room in Store Street, London, and at the British Library’s main reading room, at that time in the British Museum. It took a year of Thursdays to read and make notes on a translation of the epic poem into English prose, by Pratap Chandra Roy.
By the time the first version of the book was completed, in 1997, I had left teaching and was working as a data manager in a health services research group. This led to another period of retraining, in medical statistics, and since the turn of the century I have worked as a medical statistician. I currently work in London with a research group in the field of neurology, and teach on a medical statistics masters. During this time, for nearly twenty years, the book has lain dormant. In 2016 I revisited the first version, split that into two, and made other minor alterations: this resulted in the current two-volume version.
Mainly in the second volume, The Yoke, there are some pips contained in the fruit, which readers are welcome to spit out unchewed: I have tried but probably failed to balance, with my duty to entertain the reader, a personal need to express these stones, to disentangle thoughts formed but not developed in my youth. For this I can only apologise, but I had no desire to grow seedless fruit; and in this respect I dare to hope that I share a kindred taste with the original Vedic storytellers.
Daniel Ricardo Altmann
