The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

The Mah?bh?rata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India, the other being the R?m?ya?a. It narrates the struggle between two groups of cousins in the Kurukshetra War and the fates of the Kaurava and the P???ava princes and their succession. Along with the epic R?m?ya?a, it forms the Hindu Itihasa.

It also contains philosophical and devotional material, such as a discussion of the four "goals of life" or puru??rtha (12.161). Among the principal works and stories in the Mah?bh?rata are the Bhagavad Gita, the story of Damayanti, an abbreviated version of the R?m?ya?a, and the story of ??yasringa, often considered as works in their own right.

Traditionally, the authorship of the Mah?bh?rata is attributed to Vy?sa. There have been many attempts to unravel its historical growth and compositional layers. The oldest preserved parts of the text are thought to be not much older than around 400 BCE, though the origins of the epic probably fall between the 8th and 9th centuries BCE. The text probably reached its final form by the early Gupta period (c. 4th century CE). According to the Mah?bh?rata itself, the tale is extended from a shorter version of 24,000 verses called simply Bh?rata.