Why before Buddha?--Because they are still Kshattriya works; written before the Brahman ascendency, though after the time when the Kshattriyas were led by their Adept-Kings;--and because Buddha started a spiritual revolt (Kshattriya) against a Brahman ascendency well established then,--a revolt that by Asoka's time had quite overthrown the Brahman power. Why, then, should we not ascribe the epics to this Buddhist Kshattriya period? To Asoka's reign itself, for example?--Well, it has been done; but probably not wisely. Panini in his _Grammar_ cites the Mahabharata as an authority for usage; and even the westernest of criticism is disinclined, on the evidence, to put Panini later than 400 B.C. Goldstucker puts him in the seventh century B.C. _En passant,_ we may quote this from the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ as to Panini's _Grammar:_ "For a comprehensive grasp of linguistic facts, and a penetrating insight into the structure of the vernacular language, this work stands probably unrivalled in the literature of any language."--Panini, then, cites the _Mahabharata;_ Panini lived certainly before Asoka's time; the greatness of his work argues that he came in a culminating period of scholarship and literary activity, if not of literary creation; the reign of Asoka we may surmise was another such period;--and from all this I think we may argue without much fear that the the nucleus and original form of it, was written long before the reign of Asoka. Besides, if it had been written during the Buddhist ascendency, one fancies we should find more Buddhism in it than we do. There is some;--there are ideas that would be called Buddhist; but that really only prove the truth of the Buddha's claim that he taught nothing new. But a Poem written in Asoka's reign, one fancies, would not have been structurally and innately, as the _Mahabharata_ is, martial.