The Mahabharata is the biggest epic in Indian literature, claiming to contain 100,000 verses, though the actual count is lower (some regional versions contain up to 85,000 verses and the critical edition contains less than 75,000 verses). Along with the equally popular text Ramayana, it belongs to the class of Itihasa (history). It has a frame-tale structure with stories contained within stories and in its present form, its content is mostly religious and didactic. The central theme of the text is about feuding cousins set in North India. The Mahabharata comes with an addendum named Hari Vamsha which is almost exclusively devoted to the life story of Krishna.
Authorship
Tradition holds that the entire Mahabharata is the work of a single hand – Veda Vyasa, also known as Krishna Dwaipayana. According to legend, the text was put down in writing during his time and the God Ganesh was the scribe. However, a critical study of the text indicates it has been authored by multiple individuals over a long period of several centuries. It is also likely that the story was transmitted orally (a common practice during that age) for a substantial period of time before it was first put into writing. The famed “Homeric questions” asked about the Iliad and the Odyssey are equally pertinent to the Mahabharata and to a slightly lesser degree, the Ramayana as well.
Curiously, the Mahabharata makes an unequivocal admission that it has evolved over time. It speaks of an original core version named Jaya of 8800 verses authored by Vyasa. Later this was expanded to the Bharata of 24000 verses delivered by Vaisampayana. Eventually, the Mahabharata took shape in the form of 100,000 verses and was delivered by Ugrasravas. Some scholars such as John Brockington offer an alternate view that the Jaya is the same as the Bharata and thus the 24,000 verse version is the original work by Vyasa. In either case, by its own claim, at least three fourths of its content is not the work of the original author. The original Bharata has been lost for a considerable time and though it exists as part of the Mahabharata, it is inextricably woven into it – making it impossible to regenerate its original form.
Dates
The traditional date for Vyasa is the end of the Dwapara Yuga or the start of Kali yuga. Aryabhatta (4th century CE) dated the end of the Dwapara to 3102 BC and Varaha Mihira (6th Century CE) dates this event to 2449 BCE. The former date provided by Aryabhatta has found general acceptance and has become the traditional date of the Mahabharata. From a critical perspective, dating the Mahabharata is a complex problem. Different authors have used different meters and it is a mix of archaic (pre-Paninian) “late Vedic” Sanskrit and also post-Paninian classic Sanskrit. The Mahabharata mentions the Buddha, Buddhists, Huns and various other historical entities which provides evidence of it being edited well into the Gupta period. Scholars as early as Madhvacharya (13th Century CE) noted the existence of spurious content in the Mahabharata.
The Ramayana is a relatively homogeneous text, quite far from the unstructured version of the Mahabharata as we know it today. Tradition holds that the events of the Ramayana occurred earlier than the events of the Mahabharata and in support of this position, the Ramayana makes no mention of the Mahabharata or its characters, while the Mahabharata includes the story of Rama (Ramopakhyana). Yet, unlike the Mahabharata, the Ramayana contains no parts authored in archaic Sanskrit and therefore the oldest portions of the Mahabharata text are older than the Ramayana and at least some of the newer portions of the Mahabharata are later than the Ramayana. The oldest extant manuscript of the Mahabharata dates to the Kushan period (second Century CE).
The Asvalayana Grihya sutra, which is commonly believed to have been authored at the end of the Vedic age (fifth century BCE), mentions the Bharata and the Mahabharata as distinct entities. It is interesting that it mentions both texts implying the two co-existed for some time. If we accept the dates for the Asvalayana, then some form of the Mahabharata was already available as early as the fifth century BCE – the sections composed in archaic Sanskrit and the Bharata was not yet lost at that time. This is perhaps the earliest evidence to the existence of these texts – the other is a mention of Krishna-Arjuna by Panini which would be from the same time as the former. Other evidence as mentioned above shows the text was edited at least until the fourth century CE. The academic date range for the development of the Mahabharata is 800 BCE to 400 CE.
Structure
The Mahabharata is made of 18 Parvas (sections). It also speaks of an alternate and possibly older classification of 100 Parvas. Some South Indian manuscripts contain 24 Parvas. The 18 Parva classification may be more recent because the number appears to have had a special significance. The Gita contains 18 chapters, the number of major Puranas are 18, etc. Some scholars believe this grouping of texts and verses into counts of 18 may have happened through a formal and religious redaction process.
Critical Edition
BORI – The Bhandarkar Oriental research institute produced a critical edition of the Mahabharata – a task that compared several manuscripts from around the country and took a long time (1919 – 1970) to complete. Two versions of the critical edition exist – one the final text and the other is a bigger collated version with additional notes. The critical edition contains 73,784 verses for the Mahabharata and inclusion of the Hari Vamsha increases the count to 79,857.
The story of Ganesh being the scribe of the text is not found in the critical edition as it was more an oral legend than a part of the written text.
Characters
Janamejaya and Parikshit appear in the Panchavimsa Brahmana of the Sama Veda in association with the snake sacrifice. Krishna the son of Devaki appears in the Chandogya Upanishad – also associated with the Sama Veda, but tradition does not identify this Krishna with the Krishna of the Mahabharata. The Kurus are mentioned a few times in different Vedas. In contrast, the name of Pandu, Pandava and the names of the main characters of the epic are not to be found in any of the Veda. Similarly in the case of the Ramayana, the names of the Rama and Sita appear in the Vedas, but they are not about the characters in the Ramayana.
To be continued –
General 