Mahabharata
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Mahabharata. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
ma-ha-bha'ra-ta, one of the great national epic poems of ancient India, and one of the great epics of the world's literature. The title Mahabharata signifies "The Great Poem of the Bharatas." The word Bharatas means the descendants of King Bharata. The poem consists of eighteen cantos and contains 200,000 verses. It is about eight times as long as the Iliad and Odyssey combined. It is evidently a compilation. About one-fourth of the whole work is concerned with the main story, which is an account of the feud between two rival branches of the royal line. The rest of the poem consists of episodes and incidents of mythological history, interspersed with much that is didactic and even dogmatic. The Hindus ascribe the poem to Vyasa, a name which signifies "arranger," and is thought to imply the composite nature of the poem. Various parts of the work, it is evident, had been collected under the present title as early as 350 B. C., but it is uncertain to what extent the poem has been changed, or what additions have been made since that date. The moral teaching of the poem, is of a lofty character. Certain parts show high literary merit; and, while much of the subject matter seems grotesque and absurd, it is hardly to be wondered at that the study of the Mahabharata became an important part of the education of Hindu youth, just as a knowledge of the Iliad was deemed essential to the Greek. As yet, only portions of the Mahabharata have been translated into English. Some of the stories related in this epic have been used, however, by English authors. The old story of the pound of flesh used by Shakespeare in the Merchant of Venice can be traced to this source. See Literature ; Epic ; Merchant Of Venice
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
one of the two great epic poems of India, the other being the Ramayana. Its leading theme is the contest, perhaps, in the main, historic, between the Kurus and the Pandus, two dynasties of ancient India, both descended from Bharat, King of Hustinapoor. The discourse between Krishna and Urjoon on the eve of a battle constitutes the BHAGAVATGITA (q. v.). The roots of some portions of modern Hinduism are in the Mahabharata. The worship of Krishna, as one with Vishnu and the universe, has its origin here.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's claim in 1910 that "only portions of the Mahabharata have been translated into English" was already out of date: Kisari Mohan Ganguli's complete prose translation had appeared in Calcutta between 1883 and 1896. The bigger shift came just after these entries were written, when the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Poona began a critical edition in 1919, finished in 1966, which sifted the manuscript traditions and produced a reconstructed text of roughly 73,000 verses rather than the swollen 200,000 lines Aiton cites. Scholars now place the poem's growth across several centuries, from roughly 400 BC to AD 400, rather than treating 350 BC as a fixed point of collection. The epic's reach has also grown far beyond the schoolroom Aiton describes: Peter Brook staged a nine-hour version in 1985, and B. R. Chopra's television serial of 1988-90 drew audiences in the tens of millions across India.
Written for this edition, 2026.