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A. D. 638. It thus appears that about the 6th century, the -war which forms the theme of the epic was considered to ihave taken place 4000 years before.
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The Mahabharata is not so much a poem as an encyclopaedia of Hindu law, ethics and mythology* Indian tradition .assigns the authorship of this vast poem to Vyasa, to whom also is attributed the arrangement of the Puranas. The principal story occupies little more than a fifth of the whole, iDut this lowest layer is overlaid by successive incrustations so .as to obscure the very recognition of the substratum.
The poem relates the story of the great war between the !Pandavas and the Kauravas, both descendants of the lunar race, concluding in the victory of the former and the installa-\ tipn of King Yudhistira on the throne of Hastinapura. But the Great Epic stops not here, but it responds most truly to the deeper emotions of Hinduism. a It instils a more sublime moral that all who desire rest must aim at union with the Infinite." The concluding chapters lead us to the sublime description of the renunciation of their kingdom by the Pandava princes, prior to their ascent to the celestial world.
Commentaries.—^The best known commentator of the "Mahabharata is Nilakanta, who lived at Kurupara to the West •of Godavari in Maharashtra and according to Burnell belongs to the sixteenth century. Older is Arjuna Misra, whose com-imentary appears in the Calcutta edition of 1875. The earlier -commentator is Sarvagna Narayana, large fragments of whose notes have been preserved and who cannot have written later than the 2nd half of the I4th century, but may be somewhat
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