#the Facts And Truths Of The Mahabharatha# Poem by SELLAMUTHU KANDASAMY

The Mahabharata is the longest Indian Epic poem known and has been described as 'the longest poem ever written'. It's longest version consists of over 100,000 slokas or over 200,000 individual verse lines (each sloka is a couplet) , and long prose passages. At about 1.8 million words in total, the Mahabharata is roughly ten times lengthier than the Iliad and the Odyssey combined, or about four times the length of The Ramayana. W. J. Johnson has compared the importance of the Mahabharata in the context of world civilization to that of the Bible, the Quran, the works of Homer, Greek drama, or the works of William Shakespeare, Within the Indian tradition it is sometimes called the Fifth Vedha. The epic is traditionally ascribed to the sage Vyasa who is also a major character in the epic. The epic employs Frame tales (the story within a story) structure. Frame tale is popular in many Indian religious and non-religious works. It is first recited at Takshashila by the sage Vaisampayana a disciple of Vyasaa to the King Janamejaya who was the great-grandson of the Pandava prince Arjuna. The story is then recited again by a professional storyteller named Ugrasrava Sauti many years later, to an assemblage of sages performing the 12-year sacrifice for the king Saunaka Kulapati in the Naimisa Forest. Here the experience of the important characters revealed