A popular rendering is given in several chapters which follow of the epic narrative embedded in the Mahábhárata, which is about eight times as long as the Iliad and Odyssey combined. This monumental work is divided into eighteen books; a supplementary nineteenth book alone exceeds in length the two famous Greek epics.
As we have stated, the Mahábhárata had its origin as an epic prior to B.C. 500. It was added to from time to time until it assumed its present great bulk. The kernel of the narrative, however, which appears to have dealt with the early wars between the Kurus and Panchalas, must be placed beyond B.C. 1000.
Our narrative begins with the romantic stories which gathered round the names of the legendary ancestors of the Kauravas and the Pandavas. The sympathies of the Brahmanic compilers are with the latter, who are symbolized as “a vast tree formed of religion and virtue”, while their opponents are “a great tree formed of passion”.
FOOTNOTES:
[178] Condensed from Vana Parva section of Mahábhárata, sec. clxxxvii, Roy's trans.
[179] Va'suki.
[180] Brahma, as Prajapati, assumes, in one of the myths, the form of a tortoise to “create offspring”.
[181] Celtic Myth and Legend, p. 49.
[182] Or Kailāsa.
[183] Combined with Vishnu he is Hari-hara.