The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1416 page)

in its present form grew up over a long period of time,
c.
400 BCE–400 CE. The action of the
Mah
bh
rata
proceeds at several levels at once. First is the typically Indo-European heroic tale of the battle of good against evil. From this point of view, the Kuruk
etra war is visualized as a gigantic sacrifice conducted by semi-divine epic heroes. Mixed with this semi-mythical material is consideration of the human-centred issue of the decline of
dharma
at the onset of the
Kaliyuga
, the present degenerate age of history. One high point of human uncertainty in the epic is the episode of the
Bhagavad-g
t
, in which the P
ava hero
Arjuna
casts down his weapons before the war begins, dismayed at the prospect of having to fight against his relatives and elders on the other side. In the
Bhagavad-g
t
and throughout the
Mah
bh
rata
, it is a ‘Hindu’ element, revolving particularly around the character of the god
Vi
u