The Mahabharata (Book 4, Virata Parva)

J. A. B. van Buitenen's translation of Book Four of the Mahabharata, the Virata Parva, published by the University of Chicago Press in 1978 as part of van Buitenen's multi-volume translation project, is a scholarly primary text translation of the epic's account of the Pandavas' year of exile in disguise at King Virata's court. Van Buitenen was a leading Sanskritist and his Mahabharata translation project remains a standard scholarly English rendering, though it was left unfinished at his death. Its strength is philological care and extensive scholarly annotation uncommon in more popular retellings of the epic. Its limit is that it is one translator's rendering of a vast, multiply layered oral and textual tradition with genuine variant recensions, so a claim resting on a precise wording should note that other manuscript traditions and translations may render the same passage differently.