Mahabharat and Bhagavad Gita

The Bhagavad Gita is embedded in the great epic of India, the Mahabharat.The story of the Mahābhārata revolves around a conflict for the throne of an ancestral kingdom Bharat, with its capital in the "City of the Elephant," Hāstinapura on the Gaṅgā river in north central India.  The contenders for the throne are two sets of paternal first cousins:the five sons of the deceased king Pāṇḍu, the five Pāṇḍavas and the one hundred sons of blind King Dhṛtarāṣṭra, the 100 hundred Dhārtarāṣṭras who became bitter rivals.

The Pandavas - Sons of Pandu

The five sons of Pāṇḍu were actually fathered by five Gods and these heroes were assisted throughout the story by various Gods, seers, and brahmins, including the seer Kṛṣṇa Dvaipāyana Vyāsa, who later became the author of the epic poem telling the whole of this story, who was also their actual grandfather (he had engendered Pāṇḍu and the blind Dhṛtarāṣṭra upon their nominal father's widows in order to preserve the lineage).

The names of the Pandavas are: Yudhisthir, Arjuna, Bhima,and the twins Sahadeva and Nakula.  They share a wife Draupadi.

The Kauravas-Sons of Dhristarastra

The one hundred Kauravas, sons of a blind king Dhārtarāṣṭra are said more than once in the text to be human incarnations of the demons who are the perpetual enemies of the Gods.  The head of these is named Duryodhan.

Krishna the Avatar

The most dramatic figure of the entire Mahābhārata is Kṛṣṇa, son of Vasudeva of the tribe of AndhakaVṛṣṇis, located in the city of Dvārakā in the far west, near the ocean. His name is, thus KṛṣṇaVāsudeva. He is the human avatar of the supreme God Vāsudeva-Nārāyaṇa-Viṣṇu descended to earth in human form to rescue Law, Good Deeds, Right, Virtue and Justice -  all different facets of "dharma," the “firm-holding” between the ethical quality of an action and the quality of its future fruits for the doer and the effects on society.

KṛṣṇaVāsudeva was also a cousin to both Bhārata families of the Pandavas and Dristarastras. He was a friend and advisor to the Pāṇḍavas, became the brother-in-law of Arjuna, and served as Arjuna's mentor and charioteer in the great war. It is Krisna who delivers the message of the Bhagavad Gita to Arjuna for the sake of all humanity.