The Mahabharata: Composition, Content and Historicity

1.1 What is the Mahabharata?

The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India. The other is the Ramayana. The title can be read as the great tale of the Bharata dynasty.

1.2 How long is it?

It is the longest epic poem in the world. New World Encyclopedia counts more than 74,000 verses plus long prose passages, about 1.8 million words in all. That is roughly ten times the Iliad and Odyssey together.

World History Encyclopedia gives the traditional round figure of 100,000 verses. The counts differ; the text grew over a long period.

1.3 Who is credited with it?

Tradition credits the sage Vyasa. He is also a character inside the story. The epic includes the Bhagavadgita, and it is one of the most important texts of Indian and world literature.

2.1 Who were the Kauravas and Pandavas?

The core story is a fight for the throne of Hastinapura. That kingdom was ruled by the Kuru clan. The two branches of the family were the Kauravas and the Pandavas.

The Kauravas were the elder branch. The Pandavas were the younger branch. The names come from Kuru, their ancestor, and from Pandu, father of the Pandavas.

2.2 How did the sons come about?

• Dhritarashtra, the eldest, was passed over for the throne because the laws barred a disabled person from being king.
• Pandu was crowned instead.
• The five Pandavas were Pandu’s sons, born to his two wives by the Niyog custom, from gods.
• Dhritarashtra and Gandhari had 100 sons and one daughter.

Sources: World History Encyclopedia and New World Encyclopedia (Mahabharata).

2.3 Where did the rivalry begin?

All 105 princes were taught by Kripa and later Drona. The hostility grew at that school. Karna, of the Suta clan, was one of the boys. Duryodhana crowned him king of a vassal state on the spot.

3.1 How did Draupadi come to the Pandavas?

Arjuna won her at a swayamvar, a ceremony to choose a suitor. He pierced the spinning fish’s eye with all five arrows in a single attempt. It was then decided that Draupadi would be the common wife of all five Pandavas.

3.2 What was Indraprastha?

The kingdom was partitioned. The Pandavas were given a huge tract of barren land to settle in and rule over. They made it the kingdom of Indraprastha, which prospered.

3.3 What did the dice game cost?

Yudhishthir was invited to a dice game. He lost step by step his entire wealth, his kingdom, his brothers, himself, and Draupadi. In a second game the loser had to go on a 12-year exile followed by a year of life incognito. Yudhishthir lost again.

3.4 What happened in the thirteenth year?

The Pandavas lived in the Virat kingdom during their year in hiding. Arjuna taught the palace maidens how to sing and dance. After that year, peace missions failed. Krishna himself went on one. Duryodhan refused even five villages.

4.1 How big was the war?

The battle raged for 18 days. The armies totalled 18 akshauhinis. There were 7 on the Pandava side and 11 on the Kaurava side. The Pandavas won but lost almost everyone they held dear.

4.2 What was revealed about Karna?

After he died, Karna was revealed to be a son of Kunti. He was born before her marriage to Pandu. That made him the eldest Pandava.

4.3 What happened afterwards?

Yudhishthir became king of Hastinapur and Indraprastha. The Pandavas ruled for 36 years. Then they gave up the throne to Abhimanyu’s son, Parikshit. The Pandavas and Draupadi walked on foot towards the Himalayas.

4.4 Who told the story first?

The story was recited for the first time at a sacrifice held by Parikshit’s son. The reciter was Vaishampayana, a disciple of Vyasa. New World Encyclopedia names that king as Janamejaya.

5.1 How is the epic divided?

The Mahabharata is divided into 18 books called parvas. The first is the Adi Parva. The last is the Svargarohana Parva.

Source: New World Encyclopedia (Mahabharata). The Harivamsha follows as an appendix.

5.2 Are there other divisions?

An older division into 100 sub-parvas is mentioned in the text itself. An alternative division into 20 parvas also existed for some time. Most parvas are named after one of their sub-parvas.

5.3 What is the Harivamsha?

The Harivamsha consists of the final two of the 100 sub-parvas. The editors of the 18 parvas treated it as an appendix, called a khila. It tells of the life of Krishna.

6.1 Where does the Gita sit?

The Bhagavad Gita has some 700 verses. They lie in the Bhishma Parva. The talk begins before the climactic battle at Kurukshetra.

6.2 What is the setting?

Arjuna sees his relatives and teachers lined up against him. His resolve wavers. Krishna has chosen to be his charioteer. Krishna then gives him a long philosophical discourse. It has become a separate book of its own.

6.3 What does Krishna teach?

He begins with the idea that the soul is eternal and immortal. He then explains the paths of devotion, action, meditation and knowledge.

He advocates Nishkam Karma Yoga, the yoga of selfless action. Karma Yoga means doing your duty without concern for results. A verse puts it as: you have a right only to work, and no claim to its fruits.

7.1 Did it grow over time?

Yes. It is undisputed that the full length accreted over a long period. Scholars have a long history of trying to unravel its layers.

7.2 What was the core?

The text itself names a core of 24,000 verses, called the Bharata proper. It sets this apart from additional secondary material.

7.3 What is the first testimony of the full text?

The first testimony is a copper-plate inscription of Maharaja Sharvanatha, dated 533-534 CE. It describes the Mahabharata as a collection of 100,000 verses.

The redaction into 18 books likely took place in the 3rd or 4th century CE. A mention of the Hunas in the Bhishma Parva suggests that the work was still being compiled in 400 CE.

7.4 What are the three versions?

The text says there were three versions, beginning with Manu, Astika and Vasu. The Astika version introduced the name Mahabharata and named Vyasa as author.

7.5 What is the Critical Edition?

Between 1919 and 1966, scholars of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune compared manuscripts from India and abroad. They produced the Critical Edition. It runs to 13,000 pages in 19 volumes. Today it is the text most often used in studies.

8.1 Are there different versions of the Mahabharata?

Yes. There is no single text that everyone follows. The surviving manuscripts differ from one another by region.

Scholars sort these manuscripts into families. A family of manuscripts is called a recension. Think of a recension as a regional edition of the same book.

One source says recensions relate either to a region or to the text as given by a certain commentator. A commentator is a scholar who explains a text line by line.

The manuscripts fall into three recensions. The Southern is the longest and most elaborate. The Northern is roughly what is called the Vulgate. The Kashmiri is even shorter. The Critical Edition is roughly the overlap of these.

8.2 Which printed editions came before the Critical Edition?

Printed editions appeared in the 19th century. Four editions were the main ones before the Critical Edition.

Years are as given in one source. Other sources give slightly different years for some editions.

8.3 What is the Vulgate?

Vulgate means the most commonly accepted version of a text. For the Mahabharata, it is the version on which Nilakantha’s famous 17th-century commentary, the Bhavadipa, is based.

Gita Press, Gorakhpur, uses the Vulgate for its Hindi translation. Its text is largely based on Nilakantha’s edition. It also includes some prominent verses from the Southern recension.

8.4 What is the Critical Edition, and how was it made?

A critical edition tries to rebuild the earliest form of a text that can still be recovered. Editors compare many manuscripts and weigh each reading. In 1897, the Viennese scholar Moriz Winternitz asked Indologists to work toward a definitive text. Indologists are scholars of Indian studies.

The work was done at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) in Pune. It was initially led by V. S. Sukthankar. It was completed in 1966.

Here is how big the task was. For the Adi Parvan (the first book) alone, some 235 manuscripts were consulted. About 60 were finally used.

The rule was simple. A verse found in the greatest number of manuscripts was accepted. Some accepted verses carry wavy lines to show that they are doubtful. Verses that did not make the cut went into footnotes. Longer passages went into appendices at the end of the parvan.

Sukthankar explained that the result is an approximation of the earliest recoverable form of the epic. One published count puts its size at about 73,640 to 73,787 verses, depending on who counts.

8.5 What did the Critical Edition leave out?

Two episodes that many Indian readers take for granted are not in it. One is Ganesha as the scribe. The other is the re-robing of Draupadi by Krishna through a divine miracle.

They were not found in enough manuscripts to make the cut. So the Critical Edition drops them, even though many readers know them well.

8.6 Have regional poets retold the epic?

Yes. Poets in several languages made their own versions. Three are often named.

• Pampa (Kannada): Pampa was a Jain poet of the 10th century. His Vikramarjuna Vijaya is popularly called the Pampa Bharata. It has 14 chapters and 1,609 verses. It is the earliest and most famous Bharata epic in Kannada.
• Villiputhurar (Tamil): His Villibharatam condenses the epic into just 4,204 verses by one publication’s count, or 4,336 by another’s. One review places his Tamil Paratam in the fifteenth century.
• Kashiram Das (Bengali): His is called the most important Bangla Mahabharata, composed around 1602 to 1610. He finished only four books: Adi, Sabha, Vana and Virata. His son, nephew and other relatives finished the other fourteen. The complete text was printed in 1936. It is far from a strict translation of the Sanskrit epic.

9.1 Who is credited with it?

Tradition ascribes the epic to Vyasa. He is also a character inside it. He fathered Dhritarashtra and Pandu, and his mother was Satyavati. His father was the sage Parashar.

9.2 What is the Ganesha story?

The first section says Ganesha wrote the text down at Vyasa’s request. Ganesha agreed on one condition: Vyasa must never pause. Vyasa set a counter-condition. Ganesha must understand each verse before writing it. In one version of the tale, Ganesha snapped off his tusk to use as a pen.

9.3 Did one person write it all?

The sources show a text that grew over a long period. Vyasa is the traditional name behind a long process.

10.1 When was the text composed?

No single date is settled. The sources give a range, and each is a view.

Sources: New World Encyclopedia and World History Encyclopedia. These are views, not one settled date.

10.2 Is the war itself historical?

New World Encyclopedia says the historicity of the events is unclear. Many historians believe it to be a work of fiction. But the setting has a precedent in Vedic India. The Kuru kingdom was the centre of political power in the late second and early first millennia BCE.

10.3 What dates are proposed for the war?

Several dates have been claimed. They differ by thousands of years.

Source: New World Encyclopedia (Mahabharata). The sources give claims, not proof.

11.1 What traps repeat?

• Author: Vyasa by tradition; Ganesha is the scribe of the legend.
• Parvas: 18 books, with the Harivamsha as an appendix.
• Gita: in the Bhishma Parva, some 700 verses.
• War: 18 days, 18 akshauhinis.
• Critical Edition: Bhandarkar Institute, Pune, 1919 to 1966.
• Retellings: Pampa in Kannada, Villiputhurar in Tamil, Kashiram Das in Bengali.