The storytellers
Who narrated the Mahabharata?
Most answers say Vyasa and stop there. The epic itself names three storytellers, each one retelling what the last one told, and a fourth man who tells only the war. In order, they are Vyasa; Vaishampayana, also spelled Vaisampayana; and Ugrashrava, also called Souti or Sauti. The fourth is Sanjaya. The sage who hosts the final telling is Shounaka, often written Shaunaka.
The one who made it
Vyasa composed it.
Krishna Dvaipayana, better known as Vyasa, composed the Mahabharata. The name Vyasa comes from his work on the Vedas: he divided them. The text says the composing took him three years. Then he taught it to his disciples: Sumantu, Jaimini, Paila, his own son Shuka, and Vaishampayana.
Vyasa is also inside his own story. He is the father of Dhritarashtra, Pandu and Vidura, and he walks into the epic again and again to advise his family.
What about Ganesha?
In the Critical Edition, Ganesha does not write it down.
Many of us grew up with this story: Vyasa speaks, and Ganesha writes it down. It is a much-loved tradition. But the story is not in the Critical Edition. Bibek Debroy, whose translation this site follows, says the "attractive anecdote has been excised" from its text. The scholars who rebuilt the text from the old manuscripts left it out.
The first telling
Vaishampayana told it to King Janamejaya.
Janamejaya was Arjuna's great-grandson. The serpent Takshaka had killed his father Parikshit, and Janamejaya held a great snake sacrifice to burn the serpents in revenge. Vyasa came to that sacrifice. The king and the Brahmanas asked to hear the story, and Vyasa had his disciple Vaishampayana, seated beside him, tell it.
Vaishampayana told it in the breaks between the rites. Whenever he stopped, the listeners asked him to go on.
The telling we read
Ugrashrava told it again, in the Naimisha forest.
Sitting in the crowd at the snake sacrifice was Ugrashrava, a suta: the sutas were charioteers and bards. His father Lomaharshana was a disciple of Vyasa. Because he is a suta's son, the text mostly calls Ugrashrava Souti.
After the sacrifice he went on a pilgrimage and visited Samantapanchaka, the plain where the war was fought. Then he came to the Naimisha forest, where sages had gathered for a twelve-year sacrifice led by Shounaka. They asked him where he had been. He told them, and the whole Mahabharata follows.
This is where the book begins, with Ugrashrava arriving in the forest. So every time the text says "Vaishampayana said", it is really Ugrashrava repeating what he heard.
Side by side
| Who tells it | To whom | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Vyasa | His disciples, Vaishampayana among them | — |
| Vaishampayana | King Janamejaya and the Brahmanas | Janamejaya's snake sacrifice |
| Ugrashrava (Souti) | Shounaka and the sages | A twelve-year sacrifice in the Naimisha forest |
| Sanjaya | Dhritarashtra, and only about the war | Inside Vaishampayana's telling |
The war
Sanjaya narrated only the war.
Sanjaya was Dhritarashtra's adviser, a suta, and the son of Gavalgana. Just before the battle, Vyasa offered the blind king sight so that he could watch it. Dhritarashtra said no: "I do not wish to see my relatives being killed." He wanted to hear about it instead.
So Vyasa gave the gift to Sanjaya, and told the king: "Nothing in this entire battle will remain unseen to him." Weapons would not pierce him, and he would not grow tired. The sight lasted until Duryodhana died. "The divine sight that the rishi had given me," Sanjaya tells the king, "was instantly destroyed."
This is why the Bhagavad Gita reaches us through Sanjaya. Krishna speaks to Arjuna. Sanjaya reports it to Dhritarashtra. Vaishampayana recites that to Janamejaya. And Ugrashrava repeats all of it to the sages. Four voices, one inside the other.
How long
The story they told is shorter than its reputation.
The text calls itself a work of 100,000 shlokas, or verses. It says Vyasa's first version, the Bharata without its side stories, had 24,000. The Critical Edition, with later additions taken out, has 73,784. With the Harivamsha, its supplement, it comes to 79,857.
From the quiz
Seven questions on this, from the thousand.
How long did Krishna Dvaipayana take to compose the Mahabharata?
Show the answer
Three years.
According to tradition, Brahma asked Vyasa to consider Ganesha as his assistant for writing the epic. What condition did Ganesha set before Vyasa?
Show the answer
He would only write if Vyasa recited the entire story without a pause.
Who recited the Mahabharata at Janamejaya's snake sacrifice?
Show the answer
Vaishampayana.
Why did Arjuna's great-grandson Janamejaya perform a snake-sacrifice?
Show the answer
To avenge the killing of his father Parikshit by Takshaka the Naga.
Who saved the Nagas from the snake-sacrifice ordered by Arjuna's great grandson Janamejaya?
Show the answer
Astika.
Who narrated the Mahabharata to the sages gathered at the twelve-year sacrifice organized by Kulapati Shounaka?
Show the answer
Ugrashrava.
Before the start of the Kurukshetra war, what boon did Rishi Vyasa give Sanjaya so that he could describe the fighting to Dhritarashtra?
Show the answer
Divine vision to know and see everything happening in the war.
Another 993 where those came from, and the quiz remembers which ones you still owe it.
Where this comes from
This site follows the Critical Edition, the text rebuilt at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, in Bibek Debroy's translation. Where the Critical Edition and popular retelling disagree, the Critical Edition wins.
The frame story is in the Adi Parva, the first book. Ugrashrava arrives in its opening section, the Anukramanika Parva, a table of contents for the whole epic. Debroy notes that this section was a later addition. The snake sacrifice is in the Astika Parva. Vyasa's gift to Sanjaya is in the Bhishma Parva, chapter 862(2) in Debroy's numbering. Sanjaya loses the sight in the Souptika Parva, chapter 1292(9).
Keep reading
Just before the war, Bhishma grades every warrior on both sides, man by man. Read about ratha, maharatha and atiratha, and why most lists online put them in the wrong order. Or try twenty-five genuinely hard questions, with the answers.