Critical Edition of the Mahabharata

History glossary

Topic: Society in Early India: Kinship, Varna-Jati, Women · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 3 "Kinship, Caste and Class - Early Societies"

Meaning

The Critical Edition of the Mahabharata was a huge project to produce one carefully checked version of the epic. It began in 1919 under the Sanskritist V.S. Sukthankar, at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune. Scholars collected Sanskrit manuscripts of the epic from all over the subcontinent, written in many different scripts. They compared them and published only the verses that appeared in most versions. The work took 47 years and filled more than 13,000 pages.

Example

The project found a common core story shared by versions from Kashmir in the north to Kerala in the south. It also found huge regional variation: more than half the pages record these differences. Historians read this variation as evidence of a dialogue between the dominant Brahmanical tradition and strong local customs.

Don't confuse with

  • Regional retellings of the Mahabharata: these are new versions made for local audiences, in languages, sculpture, painting and performance. The Critical Edition is a scholarly comparison of the old Sanskrit manuscripts, not a new retelling.

Related concepts

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