The pioneer of modern mahAbhArata studies, Sukthankar noted that the Mbh had probably been redacted by the bhR^igu clan. Here are the # occurrences of the bhR^igu/bhArgava & mArkaNDeya across the 18 parvan-s. bhR^igu & his descendants through paulomI are frequently mentioned from
from the R^igveda onward in the saMhitA-s. However, the 2nd line from bhR^igu's wife khyAti doesn't receive any notable mentions. However, in the mahAbhArata we find the emergence of a key member of this lineage mAkarNDeya. While missing the vedic saMhitA-s, tradition remembers
mArkaNDeya as an encyclopedic polymath: he composed the earliest of the paurANika narratives which form part of parvan 3; he's remembered as the composer of the first H work on painting; in H medicine he's remember as embryological theorist though his ideas were rendered false by
other authors. This mArkaNDeya is also remembered as a teacher of vaiShNava lore& the 1 made immortal by rudra himself. His occurrence with respect to the other bhR^igu-s in the Mbh are not correlated. This suggests that there might have been two distinct bhR^iguization episodes
One by the classic paulomid bhArgava-s and the other by the mArkaNDeya-s. A member of the mArkaNDeya lineage appears in the early dravidian tradition as a pArpAn (draMiLa for v1) author, suggesting that they were among the early Arya immigrants to south India.
Loading suggestions...