A History of Indian Literature v1.c9.s2.30

v1.c9.s2.30

Fantastic as is all the information imparted to us in the introduction to the Mahābhārata about its supposed author, yet we find a few noteworthy statements in it. Thus we are told that the Ṛṣi Vyāsa narrated his work in a short summary as well as in detailed presentation; further, that different reciters begin the poem at three different places, and that its length was not always the same. Ugraśravas says that he knows the poem as consisting of 8,800 verses, while Vyāsa declares that he composed the Saṃhitā of the Bhārata poem in 24,000 verses, "and without the secondary stories the Bhārata is recited in this length by the experts." Immediately afterwards it is said, rather fantastically, that Vyāsa also composed an epic of 60 hundred thousand verses, *viz.* 30 hundred thousand for the gods, 15 for the fathers, 14 for the Gandharvas and *one* hundred thousand for man.¹ Of course this only hints at the present extent of the Mahābhārata, which has also acquired for it the designation *śatasāhasrī saṃhitā*, "collection of one hundred thousand verses." One sees from these statements that the Indians themselves, in spite of their firm belief in the unity of the work, have at least retained a recollection of the fact that the Mahābhārata only gradually grew, from an originally smaller poem, to its present extent.