The Mahabharata is an epic of life. It depicts the truth that life is a journey and its meaning is in the practice of dharma. Virtue triumphs in the end and vice is put down by the universal justice. The things of the world are perishable and human glory is short-lived. The accumulations that one makes do not last long. Every rise has a fall. All union ends in separation. Life ends in death. As logs of wood meet one another and get separated in the vast ocean, so do beings meet one another and get separated here.  

Desire does not cease by fulfilment; on the other hand, it increases when it is fulfilled, like fire over which ghee has been poured. All the wealth of the world is not enough to satisfy the cravings of even one person; knowing this, one should attain tranquillity of mind.  

We had innumerable mothers and fathers, wives and children in several lives. To whom do we really belong? What is the relation that obtains among us? Every day, people are seen dying and being cremated; and yet the remaining ones imagine that their death is not near. What can be a greater wonder in this world?  

A wise person does not grieve over the pains or is exhilarated over the joys of life. He is a fool, who gets sunk in them and forgets his destiny.  

Dharma is supreme in this world. Dharma brings material prosperity (artha), fulfilment of wishes (kama) and final liberation (moksha). It is surprising that people do not pay attention to the need for practice of dharma, when everything can be achieved through it. The essence of dharma is that no one should do to others what one would not like others to do to oneself. Selfishness is death. Unselfishness is immortality. Both death and deathlessness are in one's own person and not in some distant place.  

The individual may have to be abandoned for the good of a group, or family; the group for the good of a larger community; the community for the good of the country or nation; and, even the whole world for the realisation of the Atman.  

Heedlessness (Pramada) is death. There is no other death. The sense of 'mine'-ness is death. The knowledge, 'nothing is mine', is immortality.  

These are some of the stock sayings in the Mahabharata, which are emphasised in different ways throughout the Epic, indicating the general trend of its teaching that life in the world is transitory and the realisation of God is the goal of life. That virtue has always the support of God at every critical juncture in which it finds itself is the principal motif of the Mahabharata Epic.  

The philosophical portions in the Mahabharata apart from the Bhagavadgita and the Anu-Gita are the Sanatsujatiya and moksha-dharma. The ancient system of political administration under the directing principle of dharma finds elaborate elucidation in the Rajadharma section of the Santi Parva in the Mahabharata. This book, with the code of Manu, may be regarded as the standard scripture on ancient Indian polity. The Vidura-Niti is a renowned book on political ethics. The rest of the contents of these sections are mostly expatiations on the Vedanta, Sankhya, Yoga and dharma in general, which we shall be discussing elsewhere in our study.  

 The Appendix to the Mahabharata is called Harivamsa, which deals especially with the early and family life of Krishna, as well as his personal exploits, to some of which we shall refer in our study of this Avatara, and also certain legendary material pertaining to events prior to the advent of Krishna, since the creation of the Universe. Though the Harivamsa provides some additional details concerning Krishna's multifaceted life, all this cannot equal the force and depth with which the glorious Avatara is presented in the Bhagavata Purana, which is the great classic on the subject, next only to the Mahabharata.  

The creation theory of the Puranas has been stated above, in brief, under the section on the Upanishads. While describing creation, they also give a scheme of time-calculation applicable in determining the major or longer events that take place in the Universe. Fifteen days and nights constitute one-half (Paksha) of the lunar month, thus, a month consisting of two halves - the bright and the dark - according to the phases of the Moon. Two months make a season (Ritu), and three seasons make one hemispherical motion (Ayana) of the Sun, there being two such motions - the Northern (Uttara) and the Southern (Dakshina). Two such consecutive motions of the Sun make one human year (Varsha). Three-hundred-and-sixty human years make one celestial year. Twelve thousand celestial years make one cycle of the four Ages (Chaturyuga). The four Ages are Krita, Treta, Dvapara and Kali, in the descending order of truth and righteousness, the span of life and general prosperity during their periods. The Krita-Yuga consists of 4,800 celestial years, the Treta 3,600 celestial years, the Dvapara 2,400 celestial years and the Kali 1,200 celestial years. The Kali-Yuga is said to have commenced in 3101 B.C., the year in which Krishna disappeared from the earth. Seventy-one cycles of these four Yugas make one Manvantara or a period for which a Manu rules the world. There are fourteen Manus, of whom the present one is the seventh. The period of these fourteen Manus (which, with the addition of twilight ages between periods of Manu, comes to one thousand four-age cycles) is a single day (Kalpa) of Brahma, the Creator. So much also is the length of the night of Brahma. Three-hundred-and-sixty such days make one year of Brahma. And Brahma's life is for such one hundred years. He is now said to be in his 51st year. At the end of the life of Brahma, there is dissolution of the cosmos (Prakrita-Pralaya). Brahma, then, with his creation, merges in the Supreme Being. In this condition of dissolution, the individuals (Jivas) remaining unliberated lie in a dormant state and get manifested again in the next creation.  

The cosmography of the Puranas includes descriptions of the astronomical Universe, the solar system and the fourteen worlds, of which six are said to range above the Earth-plane and seven below it. The Earth-plane itself is said to consist of seven continents and seven oceans, all concentric in their arrangement, every succeeding continent and ocean being double the preceding one in extent. There is a detailed geographical description of our own earth, with its mountains, rivers and holy shrines. There is also a calculation which states that among the five elements - Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Ether - every succeeding element is ten times the preceding one in largeness. Apart from the superphysical existence of these wonder-striking planes, this description of the cosmos suggests its incredible vastness, all which is supposed to be a very insignificant part of the glorious manifestations of God.  

The Puranas also narrate the history of the various dynasties and hierarchies that emanated from the Creator. As a continuation of the lines of Priyavrata and Uttanapada (vide, the doctrine of creation under the Upanishads, above), the world saw the coming in of many heroes, both spiritual and temporal. These offspring of the ancient ones included both the divine and demoniacal natures, which waged a perpetual war between themselves, and much of the Purana content is devoted to descriptions of these conflicts between the Devas and Asuras. Other than these earlier descendants of the progenitors of the race of all beings, particular mention must be made of the lines of the solar and lunar races of kings and sages, whose lives provide a highly interesting biographical reading of both human and superhuman natures. The history of these dynasties is brought down almost to our own times, thus connecting our present-day existence with the diviner sources from which we have come, as, in the words of the Upanishad, children of the Immortal (Amritasya Putra).

The philosophy of the Epics and Puranas is essentially the pre-scholastic Vedanta in which the higher aspects of the Sankhya and Yoga get amplified. We have already noticed the teachings of the Mahabharata as embodied in the Bhagavadgita and Anu-Gita. The metaphysical side of the Mahabharata is a popular exposition of the wisdom of the Upanishads, in which Brahman is identified with Narayana as the Supreme Being, and the Prakriti and Purusha of the Sankhya are accepted as the material and the essence, respectively, of the Universe (Jagat) and the individual (Jiva). In the Vedanta of the Mahabharata, however, Prakriti and Purusha are dependent on God and form His body, so that their existence is inseparable from His being. The Yoga system is accepted entirely in its practical aspects as enunciated by Patanjali, rejecting, of course, its metaphysics of the dualism of Prakriti and Purusha and the transcendental aloofness of Ishvara, which is peculiar to the school. The theory of creation; the nature of God, world and soul; the ethics, psychology and the doctrine of transmigration, as well as of salvation, as expounded in the Mahabharata, are all similar to the presentation of these systems made elsewhere in this study. The Sanatsujatiya is a concise statement of these ideas while the moksha-dharma is very elaborate. The Narayaniya section of the moksha-dharma lays the foundation for the Pancharatra doctrine of Vaishnava theology. The Vishnu-Sahasranama (one thousand names of Vishnu) and Bhishmastavaraja (prayer offered by Bhishma at the time of his death), and many other references to God in this Epic, adore Narayana as the ultimate Reality and identify Him with the Absolute. The place of Siva in the Epic, however, is not inferior to that of Vishnu, and the Siva-Sahasranama (one thousand names of Siva) also appears in it. Throughout the Epic, Siva is held in as much esteem as Vishnu, though Vishnu may be regarded as the central God of the Epic religion. Sectarianism does not seem to have entered the field of philosophical and theological thinking when the Epics were written. It is only in the Puranas that we find the exaltation of a particular deity to the exclusion of and even in opposition to others.  

Most of the Puranas abound in lengthy narratives of legends glorifying a particular god or deity, delineating his or her incarnations, descriptions of holy places of pilgrimage (Tirtha), vows or observances (Vrata), acts of charity (Dana), and the like, with some shorter or longer references to the process of creation, the genealogy of the gods, demons and kings, stories of Rishis, as well as occasional statements on the foundations of politics, and the arrangement of the continents of the world as parts of the cosmos. Thus, the Puranas form a general encyclopaedia of popular thought on religion and philosophy. But the Bhagavata and the Vishnu Puranas are a great exception to this rule and they constitute a really splendid literature on a very lofty philosophy and mysticism. The Bhagavata states that, in the beginning, God alone was, and nothing else existed - neither the subtle nor the gross things; neither cause nor effect. What appears after creation, also, is God alone; what remains after the dissolution of creation is also God. That there appears to be a world outside God, though there is no such thing really, is due to Maya or the illusory power of God. Just as the five great elements may be said to have entered and also not to have entered into the created objects, since they are not affected by the divisions and other limitations to which the created things are subject, so also God is in all things as well as not in them. The quintessence of knowledge is this: God as the Atman is what exists in all places and at all times, as the cause of effected things, as different from the very principle of causality, as the witness in the states of wakefulness, dream and deep sleep, and as unconnected with anything outside. God, as pure Consciousness, appears as the objects of the world, with the qualities of sound, touch, form, taste and smell, due to the externalising activity of the senses. As one does not observe a difference among the limbs of one's own body, the wise sage does not see difference among the things in the world.  

According to the Vishnu Purana, there is nothing outside the Paramatman. The whole world is His glory. Due to ignorance people look upon God as this Universe of apparent variety. In fact, the whole world is Consciousness. Through ignorance, one looks upon it as a conglomeration of objects. God, in fact, never becomes an object. The mountains, the oceans, etc., are appearances of Consciousness. The Karmas of Jivas create a multiplicity where it is not. When there is one being present in everyone, questions like, 'Who are you?', and answers like, 'I am so and so', convey no meaning. That someone is a king, that he has a large following, that there is such a thing as kingship and there are other things outside him are all based on imagination alone. The truth is that there is the Atman. The Universe is an undivided existence of the Supreme Self. According to the Brahma Purana, all difference, whether in the world or among individuals, is unreal like the appearance of silver in the mother-of-pearl, or snake seen in the rope or the double moon seen by eyes affected by cataract. Thoughts, feelings, actions and experiences of every kind are a part of this apparent externalisation of Consciousness, which has no reality in the ultimate sense. According to the Vishnu dharma, the Jiva suffers through karma and in samsara as long as it imagines its separation from God. When karma ceases, God is beheld as the sole Reality. God Himself appears as men, animals and birds, etc., and He alone appears as the high and the low, the happy and the suffering. The mind is the creator of difference. Virtue and vice and all systems of conduct are dependent on the functions (Vritti) of the mind. As one thinks, so one becomes in the end. The Linga Purana says that God cannot be designated even as one, for that would introduce a sense of difference. As Consciousness alone is, there cannot be a world or samsara. The Suta-Samhita sings the Upanishadic ideas in various ways and identifies the Absolute with Siva, even as the Vishnu and the Bhagavata Puranas identify it with Vishnu, investing the Divine Personality with the attributes of the Absolute.  

The Srimad-Bhagavata is the most philosophical among the Puranas and its poetry and general literary form are of the highest order of fineness of execution. The eleventh section of this book contains the Uddhava-Gita, embodying the instructions of Krishna to Uddhava, which gives a gist of the philosophies of devotion and worship (Bhakti), meditation (Yoga) and knowledge (Jnana), in a beautiful blend. The aim of life as being devotion and realisation of God is emphasised. The whole of this Purana is a continuous hymnology on a spirited form of ardent love of God, sung in a variety of ways through history, mythology, illustration and philosophy.