the Indian Epics

 Probably the longest of all the world's epics, the Mahabharata is a vast anthological miscellany of pre-Aryan and Aryan material. The original prakrit ballad elaborated into a larger work in sanskrit consisting of 8,000 shlokas, which is taken by some scholars to be the original length of the Sanskrit epic. According to a legend, it's author was the sage Vyasa, who composed it in 24,000 verses.

At present the Mahabharata consists of 1,10,000 couplets in 18 parvans or sections, plus the Harivamsha supplement.This means the work has expanded many times its original size, much of it being the result of brahminical accretions. The story itself occupies only about one-fourth of the poem. The rest is episodical comprising cosmology, theogony, state craft, the science of war, ethics, legendary history, mythology, fairytales, and several degressional and philosophical interludes, of which the best known is the Bhagavad-Gita. There is no universally recognised standard text of the Mahabharata.

Both the Vedas and the Buddhist Tripitakas are silent about the actual battle around which the whole epic is woven. It is not mentioned in any of the Sanskrit works till the end of Brahmana period. It is given only in the later Sutras. There is no evidence of the epic till about 200BC and it appears that neither Patanjali nor Panini knew of it in its developed form.

Scholars have traced several chronological layers in the work. The last book, the introduction to the first book and the thirteenth book in its present form, must have been added about AD 200-400.

 Jist as in the case of Mahabharata, the story of the Ramayana is indegenous and has existed in a ballad form in prakrit, in more than one version. It was taken over by the Orthodox by the first or second century AD, and then rewritten in Sanskrit, and was augmented with many Shlokas. The epic was given a brahmanical charecter which was not visible in the original work. The episodical arrangement of the books preserves fragments of its original shape, but the number of books has been increased, and much of the content has been changed under brahmins' influence. Rama's search for Sita is shown as a triumphant crusade of Aryan civilization and the native monarch Ravana is portrayed as a monster. Of the seven books, the last book and parts of the first are interpolated. In these two books, Rama is spoken of as divine, although in the original books (2 to 6) he is said to be a mortal hero. The average date of its composition seems to fall in the first century BC, though it may have acquired its final shape by about AD 250.

 The influence of the pre-Aryan on Aryan culture began to take effect during 800-550 BC. It also saw the transition from the Vedic civilization to the later Hindu civilization. This was probably also the time when the epic traditions, later to culminate in the Mahabharata nad Ramayana, began to take shape. At first both were handed down by oral tradition.

The Ramayana, in Sanskrit, is traditionally ascribed to Valmiki and mahabharata to Vyasa. However, both grew by accretion over the course of few centuries. Ramayana is formally on the borderline between itihasa (such as the Mahabharata) and Kavya (as the first pali kavyas). It is certainly later than the Mahabharata. The main wandering of the exiled Pandavas seen to have been restricted to the immediate neighbourhood of the Doab, while those of Rama and his associates are made to extend deep into central and southern India. Rama's capital of Ayodhya lay astride the Uttarapatha and 500 kilometers east to the Pandavas' Hastinapura. If the Mahabharata hints at the pattern of settlement in the north and west, the Ramayana continues the story eastwards. Ramayana provides precious evidence of the continuing spread of Aryanisation during the first millenium BC.

The Mahabharata is essentially retrospective. It celebrates a vanishing past and may be read as the swansong of an old order, in which the primacy of clan kinship, and the marital ethic associated with it, is being slowly laid to rest. The Ramayana may be seen as an epic legitamizing the monarchial state. By way of contrast, the Ramayana may be considered as decidedly forward looking. When Rama eventually regains his capital, it is not to indulge in remorse or even to reaffirm Vedic values but to usher in a dazzling utopia of order, justice and prosperity under his personal rule.

The Rama-rajya (the rule of Rama), quicly became, and is still the Indian political ideal. Ayodhya itself came to represent the model of a royal capital and as such would feature in many subsequent Aryanised state systems. In this guise, it would travel far, for instance, to Thailand where Ayuthia, the pre-Bangkok capital of the Thai Monarchs, supposedly replicated Rama's city, and even in central Java where the most senior Sultanate is still that od jogjakarta, or Ngajodya-karta, the first part of which is a Javanese rendering of 'Ayodhya'.

The Ayodhya scores higher in the sacral stakes than Hastinapura may also have something to do with the different cosmic perspectives of the two epics. Whereas the Mahabharata survives in the popular imagination as a hoard of cheished but disjointed segments, the Ramayana is still alive. In the 1990s, sanctity of Ayodhya became the issue around which Hindu opinion rallied. The second largest political party in India, the BJP, thrives only on the epic of Ramayana and the popularity of Rama among the Hindis in India. They are taking all necessary measures to periodically remind the people about Rama and the Ayodhya, who might otherwise get over the story.