Maha
Maha
Maha
The Mahābhārata is the longest epic poem known and has been described as "the
longest poem ever written".[8][9] Its longest version consists of over 100,000
śloka or over 200,000 individual verse lines (each shloka is a couplet), and long
prose passages. At about 1.8 million words in total, the Mahābhārata is roughly ten
times the length of the Iliad and the Odyssey combined, or about four times the
length of the Rāmāyaṇa.[10][11] W. J. Johnson has compared the importance of the
Mahābhārata in the context of world civilization to that of the Bible, the Quran,
the works of Homer, Greek drama, or the works of William Shakespeare.[12] Within
the Indian tradition it is sometimes called the fifth Veda.[13]
Contents
1 Textual history and structure
1.1 Accretion and redaction
1.2 Historical references
1.3 The 18 parvas or books
2 Historical context
3 Characters
4 Synopsis
4.1 The older generations
4.2 The Pandava and Kaurava princes
4.3 Lakshagraha (the house of lac)
4.4 Marriage to Draupadi
4.5 Indraprastha
4.6 The dice game
4.7 Exile and return
4.8 The battle at Kurukshetra
4.9 The end of the Pandavas
4.10 The reunion
5 Themes
5.1 Just war
6 Translations, versions and derivative works
6.1 Translations
6.2 Critical Edition
6.3 Regional versions
6.4 Derivative literature
6.5 In film and television
6.6 In folk culture
6.7 Jain version
7 Kuru family tree
8 Cultural influence
9 See also
10 Notes
11 References
12 Sources
13 External links
Textual history and structure
The first section of the Mahābhārata states that it was Ganesha who wrote down the
text to Vyasa's dictation, but this is regarded by scholars as a later
interpolation to the epic and the "Critical Edition" doesn't include Ganesha at
all.[14]
The epic employs the story within a story structure, otherwise known as frametales,
popular in many Indian religious and non-religious works. It is first recited at
Takshashila by the sage Vaiśampāyana,[15][16] a disciple of Vyāsa, to the King
Janamejaya who was the great-grandson of the Pāṇḍava prince Arjuna. The story is
then recited again by a professional storyteller named Ugraśrava Sauti, many years
later, to an assemblage of sages performing the 12-year sacrifice for the king
Saunaka Kulapati in the Naimiśa Forest.
The Mahābhārata itself (1.1.61) distinguishes a core portion of 24,000 verses: the
Bhārata proper, as opposed to additional secondary material, while the Aśvalāyana
Gṛhyasūtra (3.4.4) makes a similar distinction. At least three redactions of the
text are commonly recognized: Jaya (Victory) with 8,800 verses attributed to Vyāsa,
Bhārata with 24,000 verses as recited by Vaiśampāyana, and finally the Mahābhārata
as recited by Ugraśrava Sauti with over 100,000 verses.[23][24] However, some
scholars, such as John Brockington, argue that Jaya and Bharata refer to the same
text, and ascribe the theory of Jaya with 8,800 verses to a misreading of a verse
in Ādiparvan (1.1.81).[25] The redaction of this large body of text was carried out
after formal principles, emphasizing the numbers 18[26] and