23
See also: The Epic of Gilgamesh 20 ■ Iliad 26–33 ■ One Thousand and One Nights 44–45 ■ Ramayana 55 ■
The Canterbury Tales 68–71 ■ Midnight’s Children 300–05 ■ A Suitable Boy 314 –17ancient India, and is the language
from which many Indo-European
languages evolved.
Up to the 1st century ce,
Sanskrit literature was dominated
by the Vedas and two great epic
poems: the Mahabharata and the
Ramayana. Although the Ramayana
contains historical narrative,
mythology, and folktales, it appears
to be an original work by a single
poet, and is traditionally attributed
to the sage Valmiki. In contrast,
the Mahabharata, the better known
and much longer of the two, has a
more complex provenance, which
suggests a long period of evolution.A gift of Vishnu
The Mahabharata probably first
took shape in the 9th century bce
and only reached its final form in
around the 4th century bce. The
work is very long and comprises
more than 100,000 verse couplets,
known as shloka, divided into
18 books, or parvas. In addition to
recounting the story of two warring
families, it tells of their history,
and that of India and the Hindu
religion that is integral to it. At the
outset, the narrator of the first book,the Adi Parva (“The Book of the
Beginning”), explains: “Whatever
is here, is found elsewhere. But
what is not here, is nowhere else.”
According to tradition, and as
described in its opening section,
the Mahabharata was written by
a poet and wise man called Vyasa.
Said to have lived in the 3rd
millennium bce, Vyasa was an
avatar (incarnation) of the Hindu
god Vishnu. The narrator of the
greater part of the epic is Vyasa’s
disciple Vaisampayana, but two
other people also narrate sections:
a minstrel-sage, Ugrasrava Sauti,
and a courtier, Sanjaya.
Vaisampayana explains how
Vyasa dictated the entire story to
the elephant-headed god Ganesha
in a single sitting. Subsequently,
many years later, Vaisampayana’s
story takes its final form as the
Mahabharata when it is retold by
Sauti to a meeting of Hindu sages,as described in the Adi Parva.
This complicated nesting of frame
narratives probably reflects the
existence of different historical
versions of the story before it
took the shape we know today.
It is also typical of the way in
which the historical, mythological,
and religious intertwine throughout
the Mahabharata. Although the
central plot concerns the split in the
ruling Bharata family of northern
India, and the ensuing battle at
Kurukshetra and its aftermath, the
story is given a mythical dimension
by the introduction of the character
Krishna, another avatar of Vishnu.
There are also numerous subplots,
and several philosophical and ❯❯HEROES AND LEGENDS
Poets have told it before,
poets are telling it now,
other poets shall tell this
history on earth in the future.
MahabharataThe sage Vyasa dictates the epic
Mahabharata, which means “Great
Story of the Bharata,” referring to a
ruling family of northern India. The
scribe is elephant-headed god Ganesha.US_022-025_Mahabharata.indd 23 08/10/2015 13:02