ABSTRACT
The period from about 200 BCE to 200 CE may be regarded as the era of consolidation, when a large part of all that was known was put into the form of digests of all kinds. These included the two epics Ramayana and Mahabharata. The era of consolidation concluded with the beginnings of the spread of Indian influence in Southeast Asia. The Bhagavad Gita, composed between 100 BCE and 100 CE and translated into more than fifty languages, was available to the Western world for a long time only in its English translation, The Song Celestial, by Edwin Arnold. There were eighteen main Puranas and an equal number of Upa-Puranas, or subsidiary Puranas, most of the latter not extant. The main Puranas include the popular Bhagavata Purana and Vishnu Purana. Hinduism includes beliefs compiled in the srutis, mostly the Vedic literature, and the smritis, the epics, the Puranas, and the Dharmasastras—to mention only the most important.
