3412) The Mahabharat: A Brief: (Part one): About the Smriti text compiled by the Sage Vyasa:

3412) "The Mahabharat": A Brief: (Part one): About the Smriti text compiled by the Sage Vyas:

Links:

1) Mahabharat: A set of 18 Stamps issued by India Post depivting scenes from the great Indian Epic Poem issued on 27.11-2017

2) "The Mahabharat": A Brief (Part One): About the Smriti Text compiled by the Sage Vyas:

3) "Akshauhini" (or "Battle Formations") (Part II) during the Mahabharat War

4) 50 Deadly Weapons used in the Mahabhart War (Part III)

5) The Mahabharat War: A Day to Day account as narrated in the Epic (Part IV)

I have visited the Vyasa Cave in Badrinath, where the Sage Vyas is said to have written the texts of his works.

 The Mahābhārat  is one of the two major Smriti texts and Sanskrit epics of ancient India revered in Hinduism, the other being the Rāmāyaṇa.

It narrates the events and aftermath of the Kurukshetra War, a war of succession between two groups of princely cousins, the Kauravs and the Pāṇḍavs.

It also contains philosophical and devotional material, such as a discussion of the four "goals of life" (or “puruṣārtha”) (12.161).

Among the principal works and stories in the Mahābhārata are: 

the “Bhagavad Gita”,

the story of “Damayanti”, 

the story of “Shakuntala”,

the story of “Pururava and Urvashi”,

the story of "Savitri and Satyavan",

the story of "Kacha and Devayani",

the story of "Rishyasringa" and

an abbreviated version of the Rāmāyaṇ, often considered as works in their own right.

Traditionally, the authorship of the Mahābhārat is attributed to the sage Vyāsa, who is also a major figure in the epic.

Vyasa described it as being an “itihas” (“history”). He also describes the Guru–shishya tradition, which traces all great teachers and their students of the Vedic times.

There have been many attempts to unravel its historical growth and compositional layers.

The bulk of the Mahābhārat was compiled between the 3rd century BCE and the 3rd century CE, with the oldest preserved parts not much older than around 400 BCE.

The text reached its final form by the early Gupta period (c. 4th century CE).

The title is translated as "Great Bharat (India)"(or "the story of the great descendents of Bharat", or as "The Great Indian Tale").

The Mahābhārat is the longest epic poem known and has been described as "the longest poem ever written.

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 Mahābhārat is roughly ten times the length of the Iliad and the Odyssey combined, or about four times the length of the Rāmāyaṇa.

Within the Indian tradition it is sometimes called the "fifth Veda".

(Contd. Part II)