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Updated: May 6, 2025
True, Ruskin saw nothing but cruelty and corruption in Indian life or art; but let us hear an Indian maxim in regard to those who, in cruel places, are ready sufferers: "There," says the Mahabharata, "where women are treated with respect, the very gods are said to be filled with joy. Women deserve to be honoured. Serve ye them. Bend your will before them.
He that gives an actual cow becomes endued with righteous behaviour in this world. He that gives the value of a cow becomes freed from every kind of fear. All the three, as also they that regularly go through their ablutions and other acts at early dawn, and he that is well-conversant with the Mahabharata, it is well-known, attain to the regions of Vishnu and Soma.
So I think that the Mahabharata grew up in the centuries, many or few, that followed the Great War, or, say, during the second millennium B.C.; that in that millennium, during some great 'day' of literary creation, it was redacted into a single poem; and that, the epic habit having thus been started, a single poet, Valmiki, in some succeeding 'day, was prompted to make another epic, on the other great traditional saga-cycle, the story of Rama.
The Mahâbhârata is mainly concerned with Kṛishṇa the warrior: the few allusions in it to the freaks of the pastoral Kṛishṇa occur in passages suspected of being late interpolations and, even if they are genuine, show that little attention was paid to his youth. But in later works, the relative importance is reversed and the figure of the amorous herdsman almost banishes the warrior.
Brahmanism may be represented as a system of law and custom in the Laws of Manu; as a philosophy in the Upanishads; and as a mythology in the Ramayana and Mahabharata. The word "Mahabharata" means "The Great Bharata," the name of a well-known people in ancient India. The epic so called is a very long one, containing at least 220,000 lengthy lines.
He that causeth even a single foot of this poem to be heard by Brahmanas during the performance of a Sraddha, maketh that Sraddha inexhaustible, the Pitris becoming ever gratified with the articles once presented to them. The sins that are committed daily by our senses or the mind, those that are committed knowingly or unknowingly by any man, are all destroyed by hearing the Mahabharata.
That foremost of kings, Duryodhana, profusely covered with blood, began to pass there that night so frightful to all creatures. Wending away quickly from the field of battle, O king, those heroes, with hearts agitated by grief, began to reflect anxiously and earnestly." The End of Shalya-parva. The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Sauptika-parva
Krishna as God has been introduced rather than explained and we are left with the feeling that much more than has been recorded remains to be said. This feeling may well have dogged the writers who put the Mahabharata into its present shape for, a little later, possibly during the sixth century A.D., an appendix was added.
This later sectarian literature falls into several divisions. A. Certain episodes of the Mahâbhârata. The most celebrated of these is the Bhagavad-gîtâ, which is probably anterior to the Christian era. Though it is incorporated in the Epic it is frequently spoken of as an independent work.
It is this dialogue which constitutes the Holy Song, known as the Bhagavad-Gita, or Krishna Song, the Krishna of this philosophic poem being, of course, the eighth avatara; or incarnation, of Vishnu. The remaining books of the Mahabharata recount the subsequent incidents of the war, which, in all, lasted for eighteen days.
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