'Mahabharata'

It stands at seven times the length of Homer's poetic epics of ancient Greece, it is over 1.8 million words long and even the abridged version is just under 1,000 pages. With 200,000 verses, it is the longest poem in all of existence and is more than twice as long as than the Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid and Divine Comedy put together.

In this, we'll be looking at the history of the text and how it was put together, trying to discover who's telling the story, why and to what avail? We're going to look at evidence for its existence, art upon it and how it came to rule over an entire nation of people. Most importantly, we'll be looking at whether it even took place at all. Our main questions are: Where? When? Why? Who? And to whom?

In his controversial, yet strangely umbrella-termed article, Narayan Joshi states in a very generalist way that:

"Almost all Indian people believe the incidents described in the epics had actually happened in prehistoric time. Hence, they are a part of ancient Indian history."

Now, this is not in the slightest bit true, as many Indians like to question the notion that a war so long ago happened between two much-loved characters of Indian mythology—both of whom were related to each other. It is more difficult to believe in today's world that such a war ever occurred and was able to be documented in this way. But, in order to establish any kind of finding, we will need to have a look into the history of India, the history of the writings of the Mahabharata and finally, the historical accuracies and inaccuracies of the text itself. In order to do this properly, cross examination will need to be present between these various mediums.

It is quite interesting to note that within the epic itself, the narrator(s) reference events as if they have happened, will happen and are bound to happen again. This is the first step to discovering the historical accuracy and inaccuracy of the text. It is done through philosophy, more accurately, ancient Indian philosophy. It doesn't proclaim its truth in statements, but instead makes proverbial references to the way in which the characters in the text cause events in a cause-and-effect manor. Something in Hinduism which is better known as "karma". In Section Five, the narrator states:

"That which occurs here, occurs elsewhere. That which does not occur here occurs nowhere else" (Mahabharata).

How could it possibly be so idiomatic and so heavily based on existential proverbs, for a story so integrally based on national disintegration and all out war? Let's have a look at what answers lie in its making, shall we?

The text is normally attributed to being written or dictated by one or more of its characters. In this case, the text is attributed to Vyasa. This man is said to be both the writer of this text and of the Vedas and Puranas. Known as one of the seven immortals, he is, in the Hindu religion, one of the avatars of the Lord Vishnu and holds particular importance as the Mahabharata and its co-books of Hinduism are some of the only epics in which the narrators and authors are also characters within the text who normally play some integral role.

Let's have a look what his history tells us about the composition and strange historical accuracy of the text itself.

Vyasa was said to live on the banks of the Ganges River and therefore, have been close to the brothers of the Mahabharata, who also resided there. Known as the chronicler of the epic poem, the entire thing is dictated to the Lord Ganesh, who shall scribe it into a poem. This is just one of the many instances throughout the course of religious texts over many religions over thousands of years in which a chronicler dictates the text to a holy scribe as Lord Ganesh states in the text "without a pause". And so, it is told that Vyasa narrated the Mahabharata, the Upanishads and the 18 Puranas whilst Lord Ganesh scribed.

The whole text was also said to be structured into a narration afterwards by a professional storyteller, a man who narrated it to an assembly of rishis in the Forest after a sacrifice. But this is debatable since there are particular places in the text in which the tradition stands of Vyasa inscribing his work and, apart from his own and his scribe's names, no other scribe is mentioned, though there are narrators. It states [and I translate]:

"Grand Brahma comes and tells Vyasa to get the help of Lord Ganesh for his task. Lord Ganesh writes down the stanzas recited by Vyasa from memory and thus, the Mahabharata is written."

However, if we were to look at the time period in which it is said to be known as a text in comparison to where the Upanishads and the Puranas are, we can clearly see that the term "Vyasa" is probably more of an umbrella term rather than a name of an individual person. But, the Vyasa of the Mahabharata was probably the Vyasa - and that's because it was first.

The date of the war that takes place within the epic is still unclear to many, though many have tried to place the date according to when the text may have been orally told throughout India. Many scholars in History and Philosophy agree that the war itself was in the Iron Age of India; this places it within around the 10th Century BCE.

This makes sense in terms of the events since the Kuru Kingdom is the centre of power from the years of 1200 to about 800 BCE. The war is therefore called the Kurukshetra War.

But, there are many inconsistencies with this. From a site of archaeology, some scholars were able to determine the war probably took place in 950BCE, but that is still a probably and not it did.

If we look at archaeo-astronomy, then we get something else entirely. The date that comes from these studies is anywhere from the fourth to second millennium BCE and the most respected date throughout Indian Culture has been February 18, 3102 BCE for the date of the war. Most mark this as the actual date of the disappearance of Krishna from Earth. If this is to be believed then the actual war would have been probably somewhere around 3137 BCE, if we do the math from reading the book, the genealogy spans almost 35 years.

It really depends on who you would like to believe; chances are we will never find out the true date of the Mahabharata. But most historians agree it definitely happened. Probably not the way we would have initially thought, but it happened all the same.

What does this tell us about the way in which the Indian Iron Age is portrayed in text format?

Well, first of all we have to state that the Iron Ages of the East didn't happen at the same time, this is the Indian Iron Age only—not the Iron Age of anywhere else, for we can't know exactly how long it lasted and overlaps are simply coincidence unless contact with another culture is made known by historical evidence. The evidence in the text for it being set within the Iron Age is vast. There are weapons made of iron, there are bows and arrows being used that are typical of the era and many aspects of philosophy and belief lead scholars to believe that the Iron Age is the most likely date for the battle.

The next historical accuracy for the battle being in the Iron Age is one we've already spoken briefly about—The Kuru Kingdom's existence. Here's some background to the Kuru kingdom.

We're now going to have a look and dates and times to do with this Kingdom and look at what historical accuracies can be found closer to the times that scholars believe the war would've taken place.

It is a Vedic Kingdom that once existed in North India where the Punjab regions are now located. The Kuru Kingdom is a part of the Indian Painted Grey Ware Culture, abbreviated to PGW normally. PGW Culture regards grey pottery painted with black geometric patterns. It symbolises a section of the Iron Age and a section of the Vedic Age. It is roughly said to be between 1200 BC and 600 BC and is located in over 1000 sites in India today—the most prolific being in the North.

In order to see how this formed to be, we must take a further step back into the Rig Veda. In the Rig Veda, the Hindu Creation Epic, a battle called The Battle of the Ten Kings is alluded to. This is set near the Punjab region and is between the Puru Aryan Tribe and the Bharata Tribe. Taking place in about the 14th Century BCE—this sooner or later forms the bases and beginnings for the Kuru Kingdom after many battles rage on and various tribes die out or get defeated.

The Kuru Kingdom was active for over 500 years and is said to be most active politically between the years of 1200 BCE to 800 BCE.

It is said to be Parikshit who consolidates the Kuru Kingdom during the Middle Vedic Period of the 12th to ninth centuries BCE and in the Vedic Hymns, his importance is explained along with his successor and son, Janamejaya II. It is within this time period where Iron is mentioned, and in the text of the Mahabharata in the same exact way. It is literally called "black metal" in Sanskrit. This is another way in which we could possibly look back and see where the text falls in terms of its social contexts.

Now we've looked at the context outside of the text, we're now going to look at the context within the text and see what we find in terms of narration and historicity. How the narrative works is very important, it employs a structure very well-known to Indian Epics, both religious and non-religious. The "frame-tale" employed by this story is where we have a main story—the narrative being dictated by Vyasa to Ganesh and inside this we have more stories and narratives with more narrators and/or scribes. Vyasa, though, is the narrator of the overall text.

The first recitation is by a disciple of Vyasa, a sage, and it is recited in the Punjab Region of India. This part of the text is recited directly to a King, the great-grandson of the Pandava Prince, Arjuna. One of the foremost and central characters of the text itself.

This not only shows that the text's events must have taken place at least one to two hundred years before the time at which the text is being recited. What we have is a storytelling tradition embedded into the book and, because this is recited to the great-grandson, we need to think about how long or short that time frame is at both absolute extremes to be able to gage the oral narrative tradition of how the story was told when it was recited for the very first time.