#Mahabharat star plus cast names professional#

The MahДЃbhДЃrata itself (1.1.61) distinguishes a core portion of 24,000 verses: the BhДЃrata proper, as opposed to additional secondary material, while the AЕ›valДЃyana Gб№›hyasЕ«tra (3.4.4) makes a similar distinction. What then is possible? Our objective can only be to reconstruct the oldest form of the text which it is possible to reach based on the manuscript material available.' That manuscript evidence is somewhat late, given its material composition and the climate of India, but it is very extensive. Vishnu Sukthankar, editor of the first great critical edition of the MahДЃbhДЃrata, commented: 'It is useless to think of reconstructing a fluid text in an original shape, based on an archetype and a stemma codicum. It is estimated that the Sanskrit text probably reached something of a 'final form' by the early Gupta period (about the 4th century CE).

It is generally agreed that 'Unlike the Vedas, which have to be preserved letter-perfect, the epic was a popular work whose reciters would inevitably conform to changes in language and style,' so the earliest 'surviving' components of this dynamic text are believed to be no older than the earliest 'external' references we have to the epic, which may include an allusion in Panini's 4th century BCE grammar Aб№Јб№ДЃdhyДЃyД« 4:2:56. MahДЃbhДЃrata started as an orally-transmitted tale of the charioteer bards. The background to the MahДЃbhДЃrata suggests the origin of the epic occurs 'after the very early Vedic period' and before 'the first Indian 'empire' was to rise in the third century B.C.' That this is 'a date not too far removed from the 8th or 9th century B.C.' is likely. Some elements of the present MahДЃbhДЃrata can be traced back to Vedic times. Research on the MahДЃbhДЃrata has put an enormous effort into recognizing and dating layers within the text.

#Mahabharat star plus cast names professional#

The story is then recited again by a professional storyteller named UgraЕ›rava Sauti, many years later, to an assemblage of sages performing the 12-year sacrifice for the king Saunaka Kulapati in the NaimiЕ›a Forest. It is first recited at Takshashila by the sage VaiЕ›ampДЃyana, a disciple of VyДЃsa, to the King Janamejaya who was the great-grandson of the PДЃб№‡бёЌava prince Arjuna. The epic employs the story within a story structure, otherwise known as frametales, popular in many Indian religious and non-religious works. The first section of the MahДЃbhДЃrata states that it was Ganesha who wrote down the text to Vyasa's dictation, but this is regarded by scholars as a later interpolation to the epic and the 'Critical Edition' doesn't include Ganesha at all. He also describes the GuruвЂ“shishya tradition, which traces all great teachers and their students of the Vedic times. VyДЃsa described it as being itihДЃsa ( transl. The epic is traditionally ascribed to the sage VyДЃsa, who is also a major character in the epic. Modern depiction of Vyasa narrating the MahДЃbhДЃrata to Ganesha at the Murudeshwara temple, Karnataka. Within the Indian tradition it is sometimes called the fifth Veda.

Johnson has compared the importance of the MahДЃbhДЃrata in the context of world civilization to that of the Bible, the Quran, the works of Homer, Greek drama, or the works of William Shakespeare. At about 1.8В million words in total, the MahДЃbhДЃrata is roughly ten times the length of the Iliad and the Odyssey combined, or about four times the length of the RДЃmДЃyaб№‡a. Its longest version consists of over 100,000 Е›loka or over 200,000 individual verse lines (each shloka is a couplet), and long prose passages. The MahДЃbhДЃrata is the longest epic poem known and has been described as 'the longest poem ever written'. The text probably reached its final form by the early Gupta period (c. The original events related by the epic probably fall between the 9th and 8th centuries BCE. The bulk of the MahДЃbhДЃrata was probably compiled between the 3rd century BCE and the 3rd century CE, with the oldest preserved parts not much older than around 400В BCE. There have been many attempts to unravel its historical growth and compositional layers. Traditionally, the authorship of the MahДЃbhДЃrata is attributed to VyДЃsa. Krishna and Arjuna at Kurukshetra, 18thвЂ“19th-century painting