Mahābhārata (meaning probably 'the great history of the descendants of Bharata') is the name of one of the two great epic poems of ancient India; the other being the Rāmāyana (q.v.). In its present condition the epos consists of a hundred and ten thousand couplets, each containing thirty-two syllables; but there is ground for believing that it was formerly known in other recensions of a still greater extent. In its actual shape it is divided into eighteen parvans or books, the Harivansa being considered as a supplementary part of it. That this huge composition was not the work of one single individual, but a production of successive ages, is manifest from the multifariousness of its contents, from the differences in style, and even from the contradictions which disturb its harmony. Hindu tradition ascribes it to Vyāsa; but as Vyāsa means 'the distributor or arranger,' and as the same individual is also the reputed compiler of the Vedas, Purānas, and several other works, it is obvious that no historical value can be assigned to this generic name. The contents of the Mahābhārata may be distinguished into the leading story and the episodic matter connected with it. The former is probably founded on real events in the oldest history of India, though in the epic narrative it will be difficult to disentangle the reality from the fiction. The story comprises the contest of the celebrated families called the Kauravas and Pāndavas, ending in the victory of the latter, and in the establishment of their rule over the northern part of India. Kuru, a descendant of Bharata, had two sons, Dhritarāshtra and Pāndu. Dhritarāshtra's sons, the Kauravas, were a hundred in number; Pāndu's, the Pāndavas, only five. Pāndu having resigned his throne, Dhritarāshtra, though blind, assumed the government, and ultimately divided his kingdom between his sons and the sons of Pāndu. The former, however, coveting the territory allotted to the Pāndu princes, endeavoured to get possession of it. A game of dice was the means by which they bound over their cousins to relinquish their kingdom, promising, however, to restore it to them if they passed twelve years in the forests, and a thirteenth year in such disguises as to escape detection. This promise was faithfully kept by the Pāndavas; but when the term of their banishment had expired the Kuru princes refused to redeem their word. A war ensued, ending in the complete destruction of the Kauravas. Duryodhana and his brothers are pictured as the type of all conceivable wickedness, and the Pāndu princes as paragons of virtue and heroism, and the incarnations of sundry deities. Out of the hundred and ten thousand couplets which constitute the great epos barely a fourth part is taken up by this narrative; all the rest is episodic. The matter incidentally linked with the main story may be distributed under three principal heads: one comprising narratives relating to the ancient or mythical history of India, as, for instance, the episodes of Nala and Sakuntalā; a second is more strictly mythological, comprising cosmogony and theogony; a third is didactic or dogmatic—it refers to law, religion, morals, and philosophy, as in the Bhagavad-Gītā, for instance. By means of this episodic matter, which at various periods, and often without regard to consistency, was superadded to the original structure of the work, the Mahābhārata gradually became a collection of all that was needed to be known by an educated Hindu; in fact, it became the encyclopædia of India.
The text of the Mahābhārata was published in Calcutta in four quarto volumes (1834-39), another edition at Bombay in 1863, and another, under native Hindu auspices, at Calcutta in 1882 and succeeding years. The French translation by Fauche (10 vols. 1863-70) is incomplete; a complete English prose translation by Hindus, of which, up to 1890, 50 parts had appeared, was published and distributed, chiefly gratis, at Calcutta, under the auspices of Pratāpachandra Roy. Many episodes, as the Bhagavad-Gītā, have been separately edited and translated. See Lassen's Altertumskunde; H. H. Wilson's works; Monier Williams, Indian Epic Poetry (1863); Wheeler, The Vedic Period of the Mahābhārata (1867).