AMAZING AND INTERESTING FACTS OF THE MAHABHARATA NOT KNOWN GENE RALLY

AMAZING AND INTERESTING FACTS OF THE 
MAHABHARATA

NOT KNOWN GENE RALLY

1 About the   Epic

The Mahabharata is a great national epic. The narrative that gives the poem its name, is the account of a great battle between related but feuding families, the Pandavas and  the Kauravas of Bharata descent. It commemorates a historic battle fought for the throne of Hastinapur (a very ancient place, on the right bank of river Ganga, about 106 kilometres from modern Delhi), the kingdom ruled by the Kuru clan, sometimes in or about 1500 BCE.

 The Story of the Epic is rather very complex, full of emotions, myths and palace intrigues which unfolds with the Kuru king Shantanu who married princesses Ganga and Satyavati in succession.

 It is largest single literary poetical work extant in Sanskrit, that is still read and recited. Originally, however, the Mahabharata was called ' Jaya ' , meaning 'Victory', and contained only 8,800 verses which with the changing times went on growing at a fantastic rate with the ever increasing additions and interpolations. Presently it contains no less than one hundred thousand verses - divided into eighteen books, or parts, roughly ten times the length of the Greek epics Iliad and Odyssey taken together.

Prima facie, it would appear that the Mahabharata had not been the creation of one author or even of one generation of authors. It must have been the outcome of a long and continuous literary activity spread across many centuries. The Mahabharata has been told, retold, recreated, re-enacted and reinterpreted, generation after generation, by all classes of scholars since it was first compiled by sage Vyasa , a distinguished Vedic scholar of abundant intellect. The chronology and locale of the events, the other geographical features, such as names of the mountains and rivers of that time have been almost fairly accurately and authentically recorded in the Mahabharata text. Several places mentioned  in the Mahabharata correspond two modern day towns and cities. Indraprastha is the modern day Delhi. Hastinapur and Kurukshetra, the main centers of the Kuru Panchalas, still exist as such without any change in their name or status. In essence, the epic Mahabharata , besides recounting a heroic  tale contains writings on a broad spectrum of human learning, including ethics, law, philosophy, history, geography, genealogy, and religion. It also features a number of legends, moral stories, and local tales  - all woven into an elaborate narrative . It is generally said of the Mahabharata , "Anything in Creation can be found in the Mahabharata , but if it's not in the Mahabharata , then it does not exist. "

It was recited in the court of Kuru king Janamejaya at Hastinapur for the first time by a learned disciple of sage Vyasa after the war. The capital of the Kuru empire was Hastinapur (to be continued)