The epic kernel of the Mahabharata or the "Great Battle of the descendants of Bharata," consisting of about 20,000 çlokas, describes the eighteen days' fight between Duryodhana, leader of the Kurus, and Yudhishthira, chief of the Pandus, who were cousins, both descended from King Bharata, son of Çakuntala. Within this narrative frame has come to be included a vast number of old legends about gods, kings, and sages; accounts of cosmogony and theogony; disquisitions on philosophy, law, religion, and the duties of the military caste. These lengthy and heterogeneous interpolations render it very difficult to follow the thread of the narrative. Entire works are sometimes inserted to illustrate a particular statement. Thus, while the two armies are drawn up prepared for battle, a whole philosophical poem, in eighteen cantos, the Bhagavadgita is recited to the hero Arjuna, who hesitates to advance and fight against his kin. Hence the Mahabharata claims to be not only a heroic poem (kavya), but a compendium teaching, in accordance with the Veda, the fourfold end of human existence (spiritual merit, wealth, pleasure, and salvation), a smriti or work of sacred tradition, which expounds the whole duty of man, and is intended for the religious instruction of all Hindus. Thus, in one (I. lxii. 35) of many similar passages, it makes the statement about itself that "this collection of all sacred texts, in which the greatness of cows and Brahmans is exalted, must be listened to by virtuous-minded men." Its title, Karshna Veda, or "Veda of Krishna" (a form of Vishnu), the occurrence of a famous invocation of Narayana and Nara (names of Vishnu) and Sarasvati (Vishnu's wife) at the beginning of each of its larger sections, and the prevalence of Vishnuite doctrines throughout the work, prove it to have been a smriti of the ancient Vishnuite sect of the Bhagavatas. Thus it is clear that the Mahabharata in its present shape contains an epic nucleus, that it favours the worship of Vishnu, and that it has become a comprehensive didactic work. We further find in Book I. the direct statements that the poem at one time contained 24,000 çlokas before the episodes (upakhyana) were added, that it originally consisted of only 8800 çlokas, and that it has three beginnings. These data render it probable that the epic underwent three stages of development from the time it first assumed definite shape; and this conclusion is corroborated by various internal and external arguments.