The largest epic of the world is the

Key Points

• The Mahabharata is widely regarded as the largest epic in the world.
• It is an ancient Indian epic that consists of over 100,000 shlokas or over 200,000 individual verse lines (each shloka is a couplet), and long prose passages.
• The Mahabharata is attributed to the sage Vyasa and is a narrative of the Kurukshetra War and the fates of the Kaurava and the Pandava princes.
• The epic is not just a story but also contains much philosophical and devotional material, including a discussion of the four "goals of life" (purusharthas).

Additional Information

• The Mahabharata is divided into 18 parvas (books) with over 1.8 million words in total, making it roughly ten times the length of the Iliad and the Odyssey combined.
• It includes the Bhagavad Gita, which is a sacred text of the Hindus and is considered one of the most important spiritual classics.
• The Mahabharata addresses complex themes such as duty (dharma), righteousness, the nature of reality, and the human condition.
• It has been translated and interpreted in numerous languages and has influenced various cultures and literatures around the world.
• The Mahabharata continues to be a subject of study and reverence in Indian culture and beyond.