ABSTRACT
The two great Sanskrit epics of India, the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa, have enchanted and instructed the people of India for thousands of years, deeply influencing the religious and cultural life of India and the rest of South Asia. Both epics were transmitted orally for centuries before being written down. They have their roots in events that took place in the period following the entry of the Indo-Aryan speaking nomadic tribes into northwestern India around 1200 b.c.e. The composition of the epics began as these tribes settled in the river valleys of the Indus and the Ganges during the first millenium b.c.e., when their nomadic sacrificial cults began to develop into the religious traditions known as Hinduism.
