ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that certain passages in the Mahabharata attributes direct moral standing to animals and plants as well. It considers a famous passage that might seem to constitute a straightforward refutation of any such interpretation. The burning of the Khandava Forest at the end of the Adiparvan of the Mahabharata is the most anti-environmental passage of the-entire text. The anti-environmental reading of the burning of the Khandava Forest should be resisted. Instead, it should be understood as one of a number of passages in the Mahabharata that allude to the myth of pralaya, the periodic dissolution of the universe at the end of an epoch. Not only are details from the burning of the Khandava Forest left unexplained by the preliminary philosophical reading, but the most plausible philosophical interpretation seems to be a radical moral nihilism with regard to all non-human entities, a view that is inconsistent with contemporaneous and later Hindu texts and traditions.
