Traditional author of the Mahabharata, forefather of the Indian epic
A sage of Indian tradition, held to be the author of the world’s longest epic, the Mahabharata. This colossal work of a hundred thousand couplets tells of two great houses warring for a throne; one passage — a dialogue between a prince and the god Krishna on the battlefield — is the Bhagavad Gita, the most important scripture of Hinduism. Vyasa is said to have dictated it while the elephant-headed god Ganesha wrote it down. He is to India what Homer is to the West: the source of a whole people’s myth, ethics, and faith.
On the eve of the great war, the prince Arjuna, faced with killing his own kin, wavers and will not fight. His charioteer — the great god Krishna in human form — expounds to him the truths of duty, action, and liberation: this dialogue is the Bhagavad Gita. An epic about war turns, at its deepest, into a lesson in how to face life itself.
Vyasa’s authorship of the Mahabharata is largely a traditional attribution; this hundred-thousand-couplet work in fact accreted over long ages through many hands, which this site states.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.