Source: The Republic of Bihar by Arvind N Das (1992)

There have been a few posts off late that seek to influence discourse on the subject of land reforms in the state of Bihar in a manner that is skewed towards particular communities, the reality was that in practice, the actual implementation of abolition in the region was indeed rather patchy and laid the ground for caste based and Naxalite conflicts that intensified through the course of the 1980s and 90s, leading to effectively two lost decades in the state. Honest acknowledgment of the highly extractive political economy in the region having its origins in the Permanent Settlement in Colonial times is important to help the state get out of the morass that has long afflicted it.

The geographic definition of the various mercantile communities termed Marwari is somewhat expansive and goes beyond the domains of the Rathore rulers of Jodhpur which are conventionally considered to be Marwar. As pointed out by the historian Divya Cherian in her book Merchants of Virtue :

>Anne Hardgrove argues that the “Marwar” evoked by the caste label “Marwari” in places like Calcutta was straightforwardly an imagined one, bearing only an abstract relationship with the Marwar of the Rathor polity. In many senses, this seems true. In geographical terms, as Hardgrove correctly observes, many of the most prominent “Marwaris” of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century India came from places just outside the borders of the Rathor kingdom. Shekhawati, just northeast of but overlapping with Rathor territory, in particular produced a large number of merchants who went on to make massive fortunes in Calcutta, Bombay, and central India, such as the Birlas, the Goenkas, the Singhanias, the Bajajs, the Poddars, and the Dalmias. Shekhawati also gave rise to many men engaged in trade and moneylending who were smaller players in regional and local markets across most of South Asia. The Bikaner and Jaipur regions, contiguous with Rathor territory, also were home to many families who went on to achieve great business success, such as the Mittals and the Pittys, the latter of whom made their fortune as bankers to the Nizams of Hyderabad.

>First, Rathor territories were not fixed and kept shifting over time, and the idea of Marwar geographically never was entirely contiguous with Rathor state boundaries. This makes it difficult to draw a hard line separating localities just outside Rathor borders from those within as being in or out of Marwar. Second, Rathor territories also were a source in the early modern and modern periods of business families pursuing trade, brokerage, speculation, banking, and moneylending outside of Marwar. Some, such as the Jagat Seth family originally from Nagaur, the Dadhas of Phalodhi, and the Bangurs of Didwana, built highly successful businesses in places such as Patna, Murshidabad, Madras, and Calcutta. Of these, the Jagat Seth family of bankers, discussed also in chapter 1, are notable for their role as powerful financiers in eighteenth-century Bengal. The Mughal state relied on them since the early eighteenth century for its fiscal operations and they became in the mid-eighteenth century primary brokers for the English East India Company. Third, as Hardgrove herself points out, there is evidence of the appellation “Marwari” being used to denote diasporic trading groups even prior to the nineteenth century.

>Back in Rajasthan, porous territorial boundaries meant that bonds of marriage and businesses partnership linked mahajans from Rathor Marwar with their caste fellows from neighboring territories. “Marwari,” when applied to the diasporic mercantile community from Rajasthan, did have roots and connections with Rathor Marwar even as the area it denoted exceeded this kingdom. The political and social standing that the mercantile, Vaishnav-Jain castes achieved in the Rathor polity in the decades that I have studied bestowed on the idea of Marwari origin a particular status and honor that were legible to the wider mercantile diaspora from north and western India. Putative Marwari origin—bringing together diasporic traders of mahajan castes from the wider Rajasthan region—aided cohesion and mutual support within this demographic. The geographic associations of “Marwari” came to be shorthand for caste and ethical codes and helped merchants band together in distant lands, even as their wives and children remained back home in Rajasthan. The label may have provided these diasporic men with the resolve and infrastructure needed to maintain the diet and other lifestyle requirements of their caste.

The book is available for free in the link above.

The purpose of this post is NOT political, while it poltics is definitely a key part of poltical art, it also highlights the cultural and aesthetic preferences of the different regions. This video wonderfully highlights the same.

>dharme cārthe ca kāme ca mokṣe ca bharatarṣabha yad ihāsti tad anyatra yan nehāsti na kutracit “Bull among Bharatas, whatever is here, on Law, on Profit, on Pleasure, and on Salvation, that is found elsewhere. But what is not here is nowhere else.” Mbh 1.56.33

This was the traditional boast of Mahābhārata — an Indian epic composed between 400 BCE-400 CE consisting of 100,000 verses thus making it the world's largest epic ever produced. Mahābhārata is an Indian epic that presents itself as a large encyclopedia. In this post, I will cover the language, compositional history, historicity of the story, social context under it was produced and the authorial intention of Mahābhārata.

Historicity

This is not a clear answer since the text is not a historical account but of a completely different genre called 'itihasa' which can be more or less translated to chronicle. The tradition of itihāsa‑purāṇa (also called as 'fifth Veda' in CU 7.1.2) is a form of historical memory and cultural self-understanding, not critical history. It tells a story of the past in such a way that makes it useful to the present. This tradition has it's root in Vedic period (c. 1500-500 BCE) where sūtas and māgadhas (also called ratnins 'jewel-bearers') were responsible for keeping geneologies and history of a dynasty in form of itihāsa-purana. The same sūtas were responsible for transmitting Mbh as Brockington notes -

>"The Mahābhārata opens with the words of the sūta, the bard, to the brāhmans assembled in the Naimiṣa forest for Śaunaka's sattra, declaring that he has come from the great sacrifice of Janamejaya […] where Vaiśaṃpāyana recounted the tales that he had heard from Kṛṣṇa Dvaipāyana Vyāsa and that constitute the Mahābhārata (Mbh. 1.1.1‑10)." — The Sanskrit Epics by John Brockington, p. 2

The Vedic corpus does not narrate the Mahābhārata, but it knows many of its central figures and traditions. These names and stories were already part of the cultural landscape of the Later Vedic period—preserved, presumably, by the bards and ritualists attached to the Kuru court—well before the epic took its final written form.

Category	Character / Episode	Vedic / Early Source (reference)	Notes
Kings	Śaṃtanu	Ṛgveda 10.98	Brother Devāpi performed a rain‑charm for his realm; story of Devāpi’s abdication elaborated in the Bṛhaddevata.
	Devāpi	Ṛgveda 10.98	Elder brother of Śaṃtanu; abdicated to become an ascetic, causing twelve rainless years.
	Dhṛtarāṣṭra Vaicitravīrya	Kāṭhaka Saṃhitā 10.6	Kuru king who clashed with the Vrātyas under Vaka Dālbhya; no blindness or Pāṇḍavas mentioned.
	Ugrasena, Bhīmasena, Śrutasena	Satapatha Brahmana XII.5.4.3.	Three brothers of Janamejaya who also appear in Mbh.
	Parikṣit	Atharvaveda 20.127; Ṛgveda Khila (RV Khil.5)	Prosperous Kuru king celebrated in Vedic hymns.
	Janamejaya	Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa; Āśvalāyana Gṛhya Sūtra III.4	Performer of the snake sacrifice (sarpa sattra); well‑known Vedic ritual king.
	Sudās	Ṛgveda 3.33, 7.18, 7.83	Bharata king, victor in the Battle of Ten Kings (dāśarājña); his aśvamedha celebrated by Viśvāmitra.
Semi‑divine figures	Kṛṣṇa Devakīputra	Chāndogya Upaniṣad 3.17.6	Student of Ghora Āṅgirasa; taught charity, austerity, and non‑violence.
Sages and priests	Vaiśampāyana	Āśvalāyana Gṛhya Sūtra III.4	Called mahabharatacarya (“teacher of the Mahābhārata”); associated with the Yajurveda.
	Vyāsa Pārāśarya	Taittirīya Āraṇyaka 1.9.2; Sāmavidhāna Brāhmaṇa; Gopatha Brāhmaṇa	linked to Jaimini and the Atharvaveda.
	Viśvāmitra	Ṛgveda Book III; Aitareya Brāhmaṇa 7.13–18; Taittirīya Saṃhitā	Composed 46 hymns; purohita of Sudās; saves and adopts Śunaḥśepa; ally of Jamadagni.
	Vasiṣṭha	Ṛgveda Book VII; Aitareya Brāhmaṇa; Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa	Priest of Sudās at the Dāśarājña; considered the greatest of priests in later Vedic texts.
	Jamadagni	Ṛgveda 3.62, 8.101, 9.62, 9.65, 9.67, 9.107, 10.110; Taittirīya Saṃhitā; Bṛhaddevata; Nirukta	Viśvāmitra’s ally and Vasiṣṭha’s antagonist; listed among the seven principal ṛṣis.
Episodes / objects	Śunaḥśepa	Ṛgveda 1.24–30, 9.3; Aitareya Brāhmaṇa 7.13–18	Bound sacrificial victim whose hymns survive; later adopted by Viśvāmitra.
	Akrūra's jewel (Syamantaka)	Nirukta 2.2	Yāska uses "Akrūra holds the jewel" as a linguistic example, assuming audience familiarity with the story.

The snake sacrifice of Janamejaya, the abdication of Devāpi, the rivalry of Viśvāmitra and Vasiṣṭha, the legend of Śunaḥśepa—all were remembered in Vedic and early post‑Vedic tradition well before the Mahābhārata assembled them into a single vast narrative. The Vṛṣṇis (a clan from whom Krishna belonged) were an important clan in later Vedic period and by the time of Pāṇini, the clan was deified in form of Vāsudeva cult.

>"As per the Vedic Index (Macdonell & Keith 1958: 289–90), the Vṛṣṇis are already known in the later Vedic period; their descendants (i.e., Vārṣṇa, Vārṣṇeya, Vārṣṇya) are mentioned in the Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa (III.11.9.3; III.10.9.15), Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa (I.1.1.10; III.1.1.4), Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (IV.1.8) and Jaiminīya Upaniṣad Brāhmaṇa (I.6.1; I.5.4)." — Vṛṣṇis in Ancient Art and Literature: An Addendum by Vinay Kumar Gupta, p. 3

So it's highly likely that composers took multiple existing lores rooted in late Vedic period as a baseline for composing the main narrative of Mahābhārata. I think Sinha summarised this position best -

>Did we mean, then, that the Mahabharata is a historical document and all its characters and episodes are authentically historical? Not re- ally. Therefore, we had started by differentiating between itihasa and history. However, we definitely view the Mahabharata as a historical tradition. Moreover, there are reasons to believe that this tradition was well grounded in the historical reality of the Later Vedic Kurus between Samtanu and Parikșit, their genealogical crisis, their succession struggle, their alliance and antagonism with the Pañcalas, and the decisive war. Yet, the Mahabharata was not the 'history' of the Bharata War the way, for instance, Thucydides composed the 'history' of the Peloponnesian War, not because the ancient Indians lacked a sense of history but because the inclination of itihasa as a tradition was quite different from a systematic chronological account of facts. — From Dāśarājña to Kurukṣetra by Kanad Sinha p. 464

Composition

Before moving further into the discussion I would like to establish that we will be using Critical Edition of Mahābhārata produced by V.S. Sukthankar and his team as a baseline for discussing the compositional history of the text. The Critical Edition (consisting of 75,000) is a hypothetically reconstructed common ancestor of all surviving manuscript variations before it diverged into Northern and Southern Recension. This version is by no means the original Mahābhārata but only the last common ancestor of all surving manuscripts as we know because Hindu texts apart from Vedas are smṛti which means they are fluid and are malleable to adaptions over the years. The attempt to find an Ur-text is a meaningless exercise and so is treating Sukthankar's Critical Edition as one.

>“Text‑critical work is often based on the assumptions that texts are written and that an original text, now perhaps lost, must have been composed at one particular point in time. This paper argues that in the critical study of orally composed and transmitted ancient texts, such as those of Hinduism, an attempted reconstruction of a hypothetical Urtext is meaningless. The goal of textual criticism as applied to ancient Hindu texts is therefore not the reconstruction of an Urtext, but rather a reconstruction of the entire history of the text over time, including all of its attestations and variants.” — Textual Criticism and Ancient Hindu Texts by Signe Cohen p. 1

Authorship

This is one of most contentious debate — whether Mahābhārata is written by a single genius author (or a committee of brahmins) in a shorter period of time or a result of gradual growth over the centuries. Nineteenth‑ and early twentieth‑century scholars generally favoured a growth model, but their analyses were often shaped by aesthetic biases about what counted as “original” and what was a later “interpolation.” In reaction to this, the influential Mahābhārata scholar Alf Hiltebeitel proposed a revisionist hypothesis: the epic (Critical Edition) as we know it is not the product of a centuries‑long redaction of fluid oral narratives, but a written composition produced by a committee of Brahmins in a relatively short period, perhaps between 150 BCE and the turn of the Common Era, under the patronage of the Śuṅga empire. Hiltebeitel did not deny that older stories and oral materials about the Bharatas existed; what he rejected was the idea that the extant Mahābhārata had been slowly pieced together out of a living oral epic by generations of redactors. For him, the epic was a fundamentally literate, authorially designed text, not a transcript of bardic performance. There are major issues with this proposal; for instance, the Gṛhya Sūtras already mention the existence of a pre-literate version of Mahabharata by the 4th century BCE.

>By the Gṛhya Sūtra period … a Mahābhārata has come into existence, the Gṛhya Sūtra passages linking it with the primary, inner circle of redactors, Sumantu, Jaimini, Vaiśampāyana, and Paila … Perhaps this marks the first ‘possession’ of the epic by the Brahmans.” — On the Southern Recension of the Mahābhārata, Brahman Migrations, and Brāhmī Paleography by T.P. Mahadevan, p. 11

Another issue is the Spitzer Manuscript, dated to 130 CE, does not mention a few parvans in its index, which suggests the text was still actively evolving:

>“Neither of the two lists then includes the Anuśāsanaparvan, since they both pass straight from the Śāntiparvan to the Āśvamedhikaparvan … The absence of the Anuśāsanaparvan in both lists is fully in accord with what I consider to be its late inclusion within the Mahābhārata on grounds of both language and subject matter.” — The Spitzer Manuscript and the Mahābhārata by John Brockington p. 82–83

Oliver Hellwig in his recent paper has made it possible to stratify and date the portions of the text via computational linguistics. His model, trained on a large corpus of dated Sanskrit texts and using only objective linguistic features, independently confirms the layered growth of the Mahābhārata:

>“The regression model places the Bhagavadgītā (BhG, 6.23–40) in the first centuries CE, most frequently into a period between 100 and 300 CE, which comes close to numerous proposals brought forward in Indological literature. … The evidence presented by the regressor and ranker produces a consistent overall picture of how the Bhīṣmaparvan expanded over time. Judging from the combined temporal evidence, major parts of the battle description in 6.41ff. constitute the oldest part of the Bhīṣmaparvan, composed, most probably, in the last centuries BCE. … [T]he cosmographical episode in 6.5–13 is assigned a date of 500 CE or later. … Temporal ranking splits the BhG into four larger parts. While 6.26–31 and 6.35–40 are marked as late, an indeterminate result is produced for the central adhyāyas 6.32–34 … The combined evidence of the ranker and the regressor … suggests that 6.26–30 and 6.35–40 may have been composed after the 2nd c. CE, while the central parts were composed at an earlier date. … The dates that the regression model proposes for its individual parts coincide well with the text‑historical ideas advanced by von Simson (1968/69) and others. … On the whole, the dates assigned by the algorithm are not too far apart from the more general ideas presented in Hopkins (1901, 397–398).” — Dating Sanskrit texts using linguistic features and neural networks by Oliver Hellwig, pp. 30, 31, 32, 34–3

While it's entirely true that a major redaction of the materials (existing in form of oral ballads and folklores or a pre-literate oral version) was done by Brahmins in the last centuries BCE as Hiltebeitel proposed, Hiltebeitel is wrong that the entire textualisation of the literate epic happened on a short span of time.

Far from being a sign of corruption, this gradual, sedimentary growth is the hallmark of the epic's grandeur: like a Gothic cathedral that rises over an older Romanesque crypt, the Mahābhārata’s later theological and didactic expansions rest upon its most ancient bardic foundations not as a flaw, but as a majestic, living, and deliberately designed sacred space (an old metaphor in European textual criticism used in understanding the history of biblical canon).

The World of Mahābhārata And The Authorial Intention

>Western scholarly reception of the Mahabharata is squarely built upon the premise, aired most magisterially by Moriz Winternitz and Hermann Oldenberg, that the Mahabharata is a "literary unthing" (literarisches Unding),' a "monstrous chaos" (ungeheuerliches Chaos). Although our time is now one in which "literary monstrosity" might imply a kind of artistry (one thinks first of Henry James writing on the art of the novel as "such large loose and baggy monsters") the phrase is simply not adequate to the critical task. - Rethinking Mahabharata by Alf Hietlbietal p. 1-2 "

This is the only thing I can agree on with Alf Hiltebeitel. There were some prejudice and biases of some early scholars who considered Mahābhārata to be a result of agendaless process with random interpolations added from here and there. But once you stop treating the epic as a literary accident, another question immediately presents itself: for whom was this massive encyclopedia actually intended, and why?

The answer starts with the yugānta, the junction between ages. The Mahābhārata itself says the war happened right at the transition from Dvāpara to Kali. That battlefield was already known for yugānta slaughter. Ugraśravas tells the seers that Samantapañcaka is where Rāma Jāmadagnya repeatedly killed the kṣatriyas at the earlier Tretā‑Dvāpara junction (MBh 1.2.3‑8). Brodbeck notes that in some retellings, Rāma Jāmadagnya's massacres were followed by a new kṛtayuga, making him a forerunner who resets the age through violence.

>"The Rāma Jāmadagnya avatāra appears in a tretāyuga (12.326.77), and his purge of the kṣatriyas … occurs at a tretā‑dvāparayuga transition (1.2.3) … This is contradicted or supplemented by the presentation at 1.58, where Rāma Jāmadagnya's massacres are followed by a kṛtayuga (Fitzgerald 2002: 105 calls it a golden age), and so Rāma Jāmadagnya would be in Kalkin's place, as it were, but in the past." — Simon Brodbeck, Divine Descent and the Four World‑Ages in the Mahābhārata, p. 65

But after Kurukṣetra, no golden age arrives. The world slides into the kaliyuga. And the descriptions of the kaliyuga in the epic are not ancient prophecy. They are a mirror of the audience's own time. Mārkaṇḍeya talks of foreign rulers, heretics, and social order flipped upside down (MBh 3.186‑189). Vyāsa, in the Harivaṃśa, says that at the yugānta, "śūdras who follow the Buddha of the Śākyas will practise their religion dressed in ochre robes" (Hv 116.15), and that "people will not follow dharma when the yuga dies" (Hv 116.19). Brodbeck writes,

>"The Mahābhārata's descriptions of the future yugānta include commentary on events that were comparatively recent at the time of the text's distribution. This is what McGinn calls 'history disguised as prophecy'." — Simon Brodbeck, Divine Descent, p. 162

And then he gets specific about what those events were. Quoting Eltschinger, he says that the Mārkaṇḍeya section and the Yugapurāṇa "consider foreign, mleccha rule as the hallmark of the kali‑yuga and/or of its final period (yugānta)."

>"[T]he Mārkaṇḍeya section of the Mahābhārata as well as the Yugapurāṇa, both likely to have been composed or at least updated during the first two and a half centuries CE, consider foreign, mleccha rule as the hallmark of the kali‑yuga and/or of its final period (yugānta)." — Simon Brodbeck, Divine Descent, p. 159

The mleccha, the foreigners outside the Brahmanical ritual order, are not a minor detail. This is the period when Indo‑Greeks, Śakas, and Kuṣāṇas were ruling in the northwest, exactly when the Mahābhārata was reaching its final form. For a Brahmanical establishment that had already watched the Mauryas, especially Aśoka, elevate Buddhist and Jain ascetics over Vedic ritualists, the arrival of foreign dynasties added another layer of insecurity. The old order felt surrounded.

>“The epics (and particularly the MBh) make numerous concealed and knowing references to the heterodoxies and subsume the heterodox movements, including Buddhism, vaguely under the rubric of nāstikya, heresy. If Buddhism has pride of place here as the chief thorn in the poets’ side, as seems more and more likely, it is denied it by the non‑specificity of the nāstikya category. A history, traced back to the origins of the universe, is thus created that excludes the heterodoxies. [...] One can also posit knowledge of other peoples’ histories, and that such other peoples could be known not only by contact, proximity, or invasion (as in the case of epic references to Greeks and Śakas), but by their histories, as in the case of the epics’ mention of Cīnas, Hūṇas, Antioch, and Rome” — Alf Hiltebeitel, Reading the Fifth Veda, p. 11

>The references to foreign rule fit the dating of the text, with Indo-Greeks, Indo-Scythians (Śakas), Indo-Parthians (Pahlavas), Kuṣāṇas, and Indo-Sassanians ruling in the north-west of the subcontinent between the second century bce and the fourth century ce (Thapar 2000: 953–955; Thapar 2002: 213–225; González-Reimann 2013: 106–107). For mlecchas (barbarians) see 3.186.29– 30; 3.188.29, 37, 45, 52, 70; Eltschinger 2012: 37; Bronkhorst 2015: 30; Eltschinger 2020: 47–48. In the Yugapurāṇa, the Śaka mlecchas are said to have severely attenuated male populations (though it is presented in the future tense; Yugapurāṇa 64–65, 82–86). Granoff comments on ‘the very ancient identification of the mleccha or outsider with the demons, an identification that occurs as early as the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa’ (Granoff 1984: 292; Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa 3.2.1.24). — Simon Brodbeck, Divine Descent, p. 159

Then the epic gets even more specific. Vyāsa tells Janamejaya that a Brahmin army‑commander, descended from Kaśyapa, will revive the horse sacrifice.

>audbhido bhavitā kaścit senānīh kāśyapo dvijah aśvamedhaṃ kaliyuge punaḥ pratyāharisyati "A certain army commander, a brahmin descended from Kaśyapa, will burst onto the scene and revive the horse sacrifice once again." — Harivaṃśa 115.40, trans. Simon Brodbeck, p. 160

Brodbeck identifies him directly.

>"This is Puṣyamitra, the first monarch in the historical Śuṅga dynasty, who removed the last Mauryan king and ruled in the first half of the second century BCE." — Simon Brodbeck, Divine Descent, p. 160

Puṣyamitra was a real king, ruling roughly 185 to 149 BCE. He overthrew the Mauryas, and his reign is traditionally remembered as a Brahmanical revival. For the epic's audience, this "prophecy" had already been fulfilled. The text was planting its feet in recent history.

Vyāsa then says that after this horse‑sacrifice revival, the yugāntadvāra, the gate to the age's final darkness, will open (Hv 115.42). The only dharma that will work in that darkness is something simpler than the old śrauta rituals. Brodbeck translates the passage.

>"From then on [i.e. after the future yugāntadvāra], people’s lives will no longer include their former activities. People will abandon their practices, even the people who have a profession. Dharma will totter in those days: it will be rooted in charity and lax about the four āśramas, but though subtle it will be maximally consequential. In those days people will attain salvation through meagre efforts, Janamejaya; so the people who practise dharma at the end of the yuga are lucky." — Harivaṃśa 115.43‑45, trans. Simon Brodbeck, pp. 142‑143

Janamejaya hears this and says he is "eager for the end of the yuga" (Hv 116.1‑3). The takeaway is clear: the old rituals are too heavy for the kaliyuga. What works now is a dharma rooted in dāna, giving, charity. And the natural centre of a giving‑centred dharma is the gṛhastha, the householder, whose whole life is about feeding and supporting others.

The linguistic evidence backs this up. Stephanie Jamison has shown that the word gṛhastha is not native to Brahmanical Sanskrit. It first appears in Aśoka's edicts, where Prakrit forms like gahattha are paired with pravrajita, the "gone‑forth" ascetic versus the "stay‑at‑home" layperson.

>"The implications of this word history are quite striking, at least to me. It indicates that the gṛhastha-, so thoroughly embedded verbally in the orthodox Brahmanical dharma texts and so explicitly the foundation of the social system depicted therein, is actually a coinage of and a borrowing from śramaṇic discourse, which discourse, at this period, was conducted in various forms of Middle Indo-Aryan. The gṛha-stha, literally the “stay-at-home,” is thus defined against a contrastive role, that of an ascetic of no fixed abode and no domestic entanglements, a role well recognized in heterodox circles, but not available in Brahmanical orthodoxy save as a later, post-retirement life stage. This contrastive pairing implies that the householder of the Hindu dharma texts was not simply a married man and pater familias in what we might, anachronistically, consider an essentially secular role, but a man with a religious life equivalent to that of a wandering ascetic—but a religious life pursued and fulfilled within the context of a sedentary family existence. So, not only is this most dharmic of dharmic words an importation from śramaṇa circles and most likely from Middle Indic, but it also seems to reflect a division of religious roles that is more at home in those heterodox circles than in the Vedic milieu from which the Brahmanical dharma system supposedly developed. The older term gṛhapati, which we might have expected to name the foundational “householder” of the dharmic social structure, was replaced or set aside, perhaps in part because of the asymmetrical usage with attendant drawbacks, as outlined above, but also because the role of the householder in the social structure seems to have radically changed. That gṛhapati was replaced by a term adapted from a very different conception of religious life suggests that the lexical replacement was not simply the result of a desire for linguistic novelty, but signals a sharp conceptual break from the Vedic religious landscape. And once again, as in the replacement of dámpati by gṛhápati discussed above, the new term comes from a more vernacular, less formal level of language." — Stephanie W. Jamison, "The Term Gṛhastha and the (Pre)history of the Householder," in Patrick Olivelle, ed., Gṛhastha: The Householder in Ancient Indian Religious Culture p. 18

Patrick Olivelle, looking at the same Aśokan evidence, confirms that the two categories sat side by side as equal members of a religious community.

>"Thus, a person could belong to a pāṣaṇḍa either as a pravrajita or as a gṛhastha, which is the how the two categories of persons are viewed within the āśrama system." — Patrick Olivelle, "Gṛhastha in Aśoka's Classification of Religious People," in the same volume, p. 71

The Mahābhārata took this borrowed word and flipped it. In Buddhist usage, the householder was the layperson who supported the monks from outside the spiritual path. In the epic, he becomes the foundation of all religious life. Adam Bowles notes that the householder vocabulary is heavily concentrated in the Śāntiparvan and Anuśāsanaparvan, exactly the sections being finalised during the post‑Mauryan centuries.

>"However, as is evident, much of the data from the Mahābhārata are concentrated in the two parvans showing perhaps the greatest departure from the Rāmāyaṇa, since these parvans—often referred to as “didactic” by scholars—show a tendency for discourses responding to ethical concerns that entertain questions of right conduct interwoven with anxieties over ultimate ends, and, in doing so, reference the traditions embodied in Dharmaśāstra and Arthaśāstra." — Adam Bowles, "The Gṛhastha in the Mahābhārata," in the same volume, p. 173

And he draws the line from householder to king.

>"Indeed, the king may be understood as a hyper-realized gṛhastha, manifesting in maximal form the householder’s fundamental attributes of protection, the supporting of dependents, generosity, and ritual propriety, all of which are mutually constitutive." — Adam Bowles, The Gṛhastha in the Mahābhārata, p. 188

That is Kṛṣṇa. He rules Dvārakā, marries, has children, fights, negotiates, and manages a household on a royal scale. From inside that life, he delivers the Bhagavadgītā, and the core of that teaching is niṣkāma karma, acting without attachment to the fruits of action. Kṛṣṇa uses himself as the example.

>na me pārthāsti kartavyaṃ triṣu lokeṣu kiñcana nānavāptam avāptavyaṃ varta eva ca karmaṇi "I have nothing to do in the three worlds, nothing unattained to attain, yet I engage in action." — Bhagavadgītā 3.22 by Vāsudeva‑Kṛṣṇa

This is not a teaching for monks in a forest. It is a discipline for someone who has duties, a warrior, a king, a householder. The point is not to stop acting, but to stop clinging to the results. A man can fight a war, rule a kingdom, feed his dependents, and still be a yogi. Angelika Malinar identifies this as the theological move that makes the householder's life itself a path to liberation.

>Another aspect of the re-configuration of the household is that compliance with Vedic ritualism does not rule out personal engagement with other forms of religion or even a selective approach to the spectrum of ordained ritual duties. The interpretation of the place of Vedic rituals, for instance, for householders who have become devotees of a ‘highest’ personal god can take quite different forms, as the epic attests. Thus, promulgations of ‘highest bhakti’ that advise against worshipping other gods stand side by side with a doctrine of bhakti that includes ritual care for Vedic gods. The latter option is particularly important for householders as it allows them to continue Vedic rituals (most importantly the saṃskāras, so-called ‘life-cycle’ rituals ensuring socio-ritual status), while also adopting bhakti, or Sāṃkhya philosophy, or even Buddhism as their personal religious pathway." — Angelika Malinar, **"Religious Plurality and Individual Authority in the Mahābhārata," ** p. 1191‑92

So the householder does not need to leave home. He turns his daily work into an offering. That is the answer to the yugānta: a religious life that can survive in a world of foreign kings, heretical sects, and fading dharma.

And the many contradictory voices in the epic, Draupadī questioning dharma, Yudhiṣṭhira doubting the Vedas, the merchant Tulādhāra preaching non‑violence to a Brahmin, are not chaos. Malinar argues they are a deliberate method for handling the religious competition of the post‑Mauryan centuries.

>"The Mahābhārata is an important document within this historical constellation since it not only attests religious plurality but also the resistance to it." — Angelika Malinar, "Religious Plurality and Individual Authority in the Mahābhārata," p. 1176

>"Instead of recording the current confu- sion about what is ‘best’ (śreyas) by juxtaposing different views, as is done in the epic, philosophers seek to create a referential framework that authorises as well as controls pluralisation and individualisation." — Angelika Malinar, p. 1195

The epic lets every voice speak, the sceptic, the ascetic, the bhakta, the philosopher, and then guides the listener toward one conclusion: the householder, armed with devotion, already contains what the other paths offer, without breaking the social order.

Finally, the timeline was no accident. Brodbeck argues that the Mahābhārata's 1,200‑year kaliyuga was calculated so that the early audiences would feel the end approaching.

>"From this perspective … the Kuruṣetra avatāra would have to be placed at the dvāpara‑kaliyuga transition so that the early audiences, this many years later, could be in or approaching the kaliyugānta." — Simon Brodbeck, Divine Descent, p. 162

The Rāma Jāmadagnya precedent sets the pattern. The Śuṅga prediction anchors the kaliyuga in real history from the audience's recent past. The mention of mleccha rule gives the darkness a specific political face, foreign kings on Indian soil, foreigners disrupting the old order. The simple dharma of dāna gives householders a faith that works in a broken world. The Gītā's teaching of niṣkāma karma makes their daily duties a complete path to salvation. The word gṛhastha, borrowed from the ascetics and flipped on its head, becomes the identity of the person who endures the darkness. And the epic's many voices are not confusion. They are the net that pulls every listener toward a single centre: a married man with a household to run, a god in his heart, and no intention of going anywhere.

As you can clearly see that the didactic portions of Mbh are not random accretions that were added mechanically but rather a deliberate intervention as a reaction the post-Mauryan world in form of yuganta theology where the audience of that time period when the popularity of Vedic rites and rituals were going out of fashion and with the increasing popularity of heterodoxies and presence of foreign kings challenged the Brahminical authority. Their response was to create a "Fifth Veda" by taking the existing popular lores of Kurus (the same place where Vedic orthodoxy was born and formalised) and regional lores and perfectly integrated them in a perfect world to convey a message.

>Four subjects were considered by the Bhargava redactors of our epic as of special importance and worthy of detailed treatment. They are : (1) the duties of a king, the king being the recognized head of governmental machinery which regulates the socio-political structure; (2) conduct in times of calamity, applicable especially to the first two Varnas of the Indian society, when the ordinary codes of conduct are not applicable; (3) emancipation from liability to rebirth, which is the highest goal of human existence;, and finally (4) liberality. — On the Meaning of Mahabharata by V.S. Sukthankar p. 86

The work was open to all regardless of their social status. This is why Mbh is still popular.

>The work was evidently meant to be a tome of genuine popular interest, one that should be read, studied and meditated on by all classes of the Indian people, not only by the learned Brahmanas, Ksatriyas, but also by VaiSyas and Sudras,— the fifth Veda (Pancamo vedah), the new, Veda of all people, irrespective of caste and creed. — On the Meaning of Mahabharata by V.S. Sukthankar p. 23

Textualisation

Before the textualisation of a literate Mahābhārata happened, it was likely in some oral poem called "Jāya" or "Bhārata" and we might already have pre-literate version of Mahābhārata by 500-300 BCE as Mahadevan notes.

>The Vyāsa phase of the epic, the so called Jaya Bhārata, began perhaps in an oral tradition, by consensus in the Kuru area, and most likely in the kṣatriya circles, as a lay about war for land and territory, perhaps based on the Ten King Battle of the Ṛgveda (Witzel 2006: 21-24). By the Gṛhya Sūtra period—considerably later than the Śrauta Sūtra period, as Oldenberg has shown, thus perhaps 500-300 BCE —a Mahābhārata has come into existence, the Gṛhya Sūtra passages linking it with the primary, inner circle of redactors, Sumantu, Jaimini, Vaiśmpāyana, and Paila (omitting Śuka, however).12 Perhaps this marks the first “possession” of the epic by the Brahmans, that of the inner frame, a process seen much more deepened in the outer frame, unfolding as a discourse in the sadas of a Śrauta ritual of the Sattra type, with Vyāsa himself present in the sadas and claiming for itself subsequently the status of the Fifth Veda. - On the Southern Recension of the Mahābhārata, Brahman Migrations, and Brāhmī Paleography by T.P. Mahadevan, p. 11

But who redacted the oral materials and textualised the epic? V.S. Sukthankar identified them as Bhargava priests who injected lot of Bhargava myths and stories along with the didactic portions into the original epic. Although this remains unverifiable whether Bhargava priests were responsible for the redaction, Mahadevan offers a different perspective.

>The communis opinio of our ideas about this may be reduced to what may be called the Hiltebeitel-Witzel model: the Hiltebeitel (2001; 2005) part of the model addressing issues relating to the literate redaction of the epic by a human agency, an inter- or trans-generational “committee of out of sorts Brahmans,” ca. 150 BCE and the Witzel (2005) half providing a possible venue for this textualization event in the reformist Hindu-Vedic kingdom, like the Śuṅga dynasty, promoting the Vedic traditions, possibly the core métier of the epic deriving from a Vedic event, the Ten King’s Battle referred to at ṚV 7.18.5-10; 33. 3, 5. — Mahadevan, p. 7

>“It is possible that the śrauta device of the outer frame reflects the real‑life setting of Hiltebeitel’s intergenerational Brahman committee, engaged in śrauta rituals and redaction of the epic at the same time in one of the new reformist Brahman kingdoms, like the Śunāga [Śuṅga], its Brahman king Puṣyamitra performing two aśvamedhas and committed to the promotion of Śrautism. Plausible links, as we will see below, can be surmised, between the first group of Brahmans of this study [i.e., the Pūrvaśikhās] and this original redaction.” — Mahadevan p. 11

>“Finally, if the Śārada text is the simplicior text, it would follow that it is traceable to the Kuru‑Pāñcāla area: by general consensus, the epic took shape in the northern Kuru area, around Kurukṣetra, not far from the regions to which the Pūrvaśikhā Veda śākhās have been localized, generally the Ganga‑Yamuna doab. It is possible that they had the text with them, or even that, they were part of the agency of its final redaction.” — Mahadevan p. 19

>“We have some direct evidence supporting the second conjecture, that the original Pūrvaśikhā group may have had links to the redaction of the epic in its extant frame‑narrative form. We know that in the immediate post‑Vedic period, when the form of frame narratives begins to arise as a function of the emerging narrative perfect in the Vedic, it reaches, as Witzel shows (1987c: 395; passim), its most sophisticated development, in the Jaiminīyabrahmaṇa, part of the signature Pūrvaśikhā Sāmaveda tradition, in the retelling of the legend of Cyāvana a ṛṣi of the Bhṛgu lineage. And as we know, the form reaches its culmination in the extant Mahābhārata, framed at the innermost frame by Vyāsa’s discourse to Sumantu, Jaimini, Vaiśampāyana, Śuka and Paila and at the outermost frame by the Śauti Ucchaśravas’s discourse to Śaunaka and the other ṛṣis in the sadas, with Vyāsa himself present possibly in the ritualistic role of the Sadasya priest, an office only evidenced in the Pūrvaśikhā śrauta praxis.” — Mahdevan pp. 19–20

A major redaction as Mahadevan happened somewhere between 300-100 BCE where an existing pre-literate version of the epic was transformed into a literate version of Mahābhārata that is closer to *Śārada text (a hypothetical version closer to Sukthankar's Critical Edition) by Pūrvaśikhā Brahmins under the patronage of Śunga. What's more fascinating is link of Cyāvana legend with Pūrvaśikhā Brahmins which might explain the presence of Bhṛgu myths that goes in parallel with the main story and also probably why Śaunaka of Bhṛgu clan heard the Bharata from sūta Ugrashravas Sauti (some scholars have linked this as sūtas handing the oral materials to Brahmins as the new custodian). Pūrvaśikhā Brahmins take this version of text to South India where it evolves into the Southern Recension.

>“In sum, then, a version of the epic close to the Sárada text, *Sarada text, leaves North India sometime after its redaction, ca. 250–150 BCE, with the Pūrvasiṅkhā Brahman in a *Southern Brāhmī script … The SR of the epic is forged from this in the following half‑millennium, reaching a final form by 500 CE, the *Pūrvasiṅkhā text.” — T.P. Mahadevan, On the Southern Recension of the Mahābhārata, Brahman Migrations, and Brāhmī Paleography, p. 8

From the last major redaction the continued to evolve upto late Gupta period where it reached it's size of 100,000 verses. The copper-plate inscription of the Maharaja Sharvanatha (533–534 CE) from Khoh (Satna District, Madhya Pradesh) describes the Mahābhārata as a "collection of 100,000 verses" (śata-sahasri saṃhitā).

Conclusion

We will probably never know exactly how this text came together. The paleographic dust and computational models only take us so far. Whether a single committee locked it down in a few decades or generations of migrating scholars built it over centuries remains an open, fascinating mystery. But the intention behind the epic is unmistakable. It is not some literary accident. It was a calculated, brilliant response to a collapsing world, elevating the householder and democratizing salvation to survive the fading of the Vedic order. The ancient redactors built a fortress of dharma. They engineered it to survive the Kali Yuga, ensuring their worldview would endure as a living guide for whoever came next, completely affirming the sheer architectural genius of the work:

>"These churning passages are heightened reflections on at least two of the purposes of narrative within the Mahabharata's overall grand design: that it all rests on Narayana, and that its essence is liberating instruction on both truth and dharma. They would seem to reflect the exuberant overview from within of some of those who were involved in the production of the earliest totality of this work." — Reading the Fifth Veda by Alf Hiltebeitel p. 184

The text is truly what it says to be

>dharme cārthe ca kāme ca mokṣe ca bharatarṣabha yad ihāsti tad anyatra yan nehāsti na kutracit “Bull among Bharatas, whatever is here, on Law, on Profit, on Pleasure, and on Salvation, that is found elsewhere. But what is not here is nowhere else.” Mbh 18.5.38

References -

• Cohen, S. (2024). Textual Criticism and Ancient Hindu Texts.
• Gupta, V.K. (2023). Vṛṣṇis in Ancient Art and Literature: An Addendum.
• Sinha, K. (2022). From Dāśarājña to Kurukṣetra: Making of a Historical Tradition.
• Brodbeck, S. (2022). Divine Descent and the Four World‑Ages in the Mahābhārata.
• Malinar, A. (2020). Religious Plurality and Individual Authority in the Mahābhārata.
• Hellwig, O. (2019). Dating Sanskrit texts using linguistic features and neural networks.
• Olivelle, P. (ed.) (2019). Gṛhastha: The Householder in Ancient Indian Religious Culture.
• Hiltebeitel, A. (2011). Reading the Fifth Veda: Studies on the Mahabharata, Volume 1.
• Oberlies, T. (2012). A Grammar of Epic Sanskrit.
• Mahadevan, T.P. (2008). On the Southern Recension of the Mahābhārata, Brahman Migrations, and Brāhmī Paleography.
• Hiltebeitel, A. (2001). Rethinking the Mahābhārata.
• Brockington, J. (1998). The Sanskrit Epics.
• Sukthankar, V.S. (1957). On the Meaning of the Mahābhārata.

Sultan Ibrahim’s outstanding literary achievement was his Kitab-i-Nauras, an essay on Indian aesthetics set to prescribed musical ragas. The 59 dohras making up the work were meant to be performed in ragas such as Bhupali, Kalyan, Asavari and so on. The first verse of the Kitab is an invocation to Saraswati, and the second verse invokes Prophet Muhammad and the Sufi saint Gesu Daraz. Subsequent verses extol the quest for knowledge as the most important pursuit in life. Several verses explore traditions of love- poetry, finding similes and metaphors to describe the beloved; others speak of the beauty of music or describe ragas as personifications. There are also verses in praise of the Sultan's own wife Chand Sultan, mother Bari Sahib, favourite elephant Atash Khan, and his tambur, which he had named Moti Khan. There are several verses in praise of Shiva and more than once Ibrahim speaks of Ganesha and Saraswati as his spiritual mother and father.

The painting above features Sultan Ibrahim playing the tambur, with the verse praising his instrument Moti Khan featured in the comments with text and translation.

Part of the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, the description of this work from the site goes as follows:

>Throughout the album, images are surrounded by brightly coloured flowering plants all carefully outlined in gold. The images alternate with calligraphy, usually short verses of Persian poetry, often love poems.

>The Persian inscription in the upper left corner above Jesus states, ‘Hail, O helper of the poor.’ This is intended to apply both to Jesus and to Jahangir – to Jahangir in his guise as the traditional justice-dispensing monarch, who holds the world in his hands. In Persian, Jahangir literally means ‘the one who holds/rules the world’ (as portrayed in the painting).