A History of Indian Literature v1.c9.s8.2

v1.c9.s8.2

What has been said in the preceding chapters must suffice to give an idea of the *eighteen books* (parvans) of the Mahābhārata. The Indians, however, regard also the Harivaṃśa, a work which is in reality a Purāṇa and is also occasionally called "Harivaṃśa-Purāṇa" as part of the Mahābhārata. Yet the book is not even by the Indians termed a nineteenth "Parvan," but a *Khila*, *i.e.* a supplement or appendix to the Mahābhārata. This "appendix," it is true, is a work of 16,374 verses (Ślokas), that is, longer than the Iliad and the Odyssey put together. But its literary value is by no means in direct proportion to its size. It is above all not a "poem," in no sense the work of any *one poet*, but a jumbled or quite loosely connected mass of texts—legends, myths and hymns—serving for the glorification of the god Viṣṇu. The Harivaṃśa is not even the work of *one compiler*. The last third of it is surely only a later appendix to the appendix, and also in the remaining parts of the work many portions were probably inserted at quite different times.