The Sauptikaparvan of the Mahabharata: The Massacre at Night

The Mahabharata is often called an 'epic' or 'epic poem' by western scholars. What they are usually referring to is a text of approximately 100,000 verses in the sacred classical language of India, Sanskrit.  This is divided into eighteen 'books' of unequal length (each with various subsections), of which the Sauptikaparvan is Book io {parvan means 'section', 'division', or 'book'). According to a traditional Indian scheme of classifying texts, the Mahabharata is itihasa, a term that suggests 'history' while making no distinction between such 'history' and what many educated modern readers would regard as 'myth', or 'legend'. The other great Indian 'epic', the slightly later and more self-consciously structured and poetic Ramayana, is sometimes similarly classified, and similarly 'mythological' in content. While the texts of both these 'epics' have always been, and continue to be, interpreted on a number of different levels, it would be idle to pretend that the historical genuineness.