When was mahabharata composed

Support Scroll. The longest-known epic poem, the Mahabharata, was not so long once upon a time. It also had humble beginnings — it started out as an orally-transmitted tale of the charioteer bards. But what began as the story of the great Bharata war, ended up being a primer in moral values. These poems were transmitted orally. From the fifth century BCE, the Brahmins caught hold of the orally-transmitted poem and committed it to the written word. This was the time when from the numerous chiefdoms, 16 kingdoms were gaining prominence.

Two of these kingdoms were Kuru and Panchala, around which the story revolves. Perhaps these emerging kingdoms wanted their history to be recorded?

The Brahmins, however, could not write the narrative of the bards as it is. It is not then probable that had the writers intended to write a moral tale they would have built on such a material. Hence, the tale existed as such before it became the nucleus of a sermon.

This explains why the Mahabharata as we know it today has two sections — the dramatic narrative and the sermonising didactic. These didactic sections were inserted into the story at different points of time. Its authors tried to match various parts of the narrative with the Brahmanical values prevalent at the time.

This constant working and reworking of the text gave rise to several inconsistencies in the narrative. However, Arjuna not only married Ulupi, the beautiful water nymph, but also lived with her for three years.

Arjuna, being an ace archer, won the competition and married Draupadi. Yet, Draupadi eventually ended up as the wife of all five Pandavas.

This polyandrous alliance merited three different explanations in later additions to the epic:. These polyandrous unions point to the fact that when the charioteer bards versified the Bharata war, polyandry was the custom as it is even now in parts of the Himalayas. But when the epic was being written, polyandry had lost Brahmanical sanction.

Hence, several explanations were offered to explain it away. Accordingly, a chain of parricides was constructed in order to justify this ghastly act. Bhishma had tried to kill his preceptor, or guru, Rama Jamadagnya, also known as Parshurama. This is an established fact.

Faith-based answer will jump to the conclusion that this is the island-city of Dwarka whose destruction is described in the epic Mahabharata, the earliest available retelling of which is less than 2, years old. Fact-based answer will say, there is not enough evidence linking the two. Now, Hindus believe that time is cyclical. So there is no one Ramayana or Mahabharata. These events recur in every cycle kalpa. Each cycle has four phases yuga , and Ramayana takes place in the second, and Mahabharata in the third.

Between each cycle there is pralaya end of the world when all matter is dissolved and the only memory that survives is the Vedas. The last Ice Age, when much of the earth was covered with snow, ended about 10, years ago. The faith-based school believes the Ice Age marked the last pralaya. Based on astronomical information such as position of constellations and time of eclipses available in scriptures, they have concluded that events in the Ramayana took place 7, years ago and events in the Mahabharata took place 5, years ago.

The sages Valmiki and Vyasa witnessed these events, and composed epics, not merely to share the story, but to reveal how their protagonists, Ram and Krishna, used Vedic wisdom to engage with society. However, this traditional view is not accepted by scientists. According to scientists, after the Ice Age, we find rise of human civilisation around the world, especially in river valleys.

We find settlements in South Asia as confirmed by cave paintings and various Stone Age artefacts. The Harappan city civilisation thrived around the rivers Indus and Saraswati in the North West for a thousand years from 5, years ago to 4, years ago, with trade links to Egypt and Mesopotamia.

Climate changes, and the drying of Saraswati, led to the collapse of this civilisation. The only image recognisable is one that suggests Shiva in meditation. While Harappan cities collapsed, the ideas found in the Harappan civilisation did not die out and probably served as one of the many tributaries to the river we called Indic culture.

And so plants such as pipal, symbols such as swastika and mathematical proportions such as one and one quarter which have been traced in Harappan cities are still very much part of contemporary Indian faith systems. As the Harappan civilisation cities without language waned, the Vedic civilisation language without cities waxed, marked by hymns in a language similar to the language of a nomadic people who migrated out 5, years ago from Eurasia towards Europe in the West and India via Iran in the East.

It was never an invasion as British Orientalists imagined. Photo: Reuters. According to language experts, while proto-Sanskrit may have come from Eurasia, the language we call Sanskrit today emerged in the region where Harappan cities once thrived. Did the two people mingle, exchange ideas? Did the Veda-chanting people inhabit the dying Harappan cities? Evidence is weak. The people speaking Vedic Sanskrit eventually spread further east towards the Ganga where they established a thriving civilisation 3, years ago.

The hymns refer to an eastward migration. Reference to iron is found in later hymns. Archaeologists have found painted greyware pottery in the Gangetic plains that can be dated to this period.

So we are fairly confident that Vedic civilisation thrived in the Gangetic plains 3, years ago. The epics refer to events in the Gangetic plains, so can we say these events happened around 3, years ago?

Events in the Mahabharata refer to the upper Gangetic plains Indraprastha, near modern Delhi and the behaviour of people is rather crude as compared to the very refined behaviour found in the Ramayana and which describes events in the lower Gangetic plains Ayodhya, Mithila and further south.

Can we say events in the Ramayana took place after the Mahabharata, and the refinement indicates passage of time and evolution of culture? However, this goes against what the epics themselves say. In the Mahabharata, the Pandavas are told the story of an ancient king called Ram, which makes Ramayana, at least narratively, an earlier tale. This makes things confusing. Now the Vedic hymns are written in a Sanskrit called Vedic Sanskrit while the oldest Ramayana and Mahabharata texts we have are written in a Sanskrit called Classical Sanskrit.

The latter uses a grammar first documented by Panini who lived 2, years ago.