“Mahabharata” (“The Tale of the Great Battle of the Descendants of Bharata”) is the greatest monument of the ancient Indian heroic epic. The plot of the epic is the story of the feud between two contenders for the throne - the descendants of Kuru and the sons of Pandu - which lasted 18 years, the death of the Kauravas and the refusal of the Pandavas from the throne. However, a small part of the poem is devoted to this topic, and the main place in it is occupied by mythological, philosophical and social themes. The Great Battle of Kurukshetra marks the beginning of Kaliyuga - the fourth and last, worst era of the current cycle of human history. Part of the Mahabharata is the Bhagavad Gita - an important scripture of Hinduism (especially Vaishnavism), revered by many as the Maha Upanishad (Great Upanishad). Indian tradition believes that the Mahabharata is a single work, the creator of which was the sage Vyasa, revered as the compiler of the Vedas and Puran. Researchers believe that the epic was based on legends about real events that took place in Northern India in the late Vedic period: the war between the alliances of the Kuru and Panchal tribes, which ended in the victory of the Panchals. The genealogies of the rulers allow us to date the battle to the 11th century. BC uh... Later astrological calculations by Indian medieval authors give the date 3102 BC. The Mahabharata contains about 100 thousand slokas (couplets), exceeding the volume of the Odyssey and Illiad combined. Work on a complete Russian (prose) translation began by V.I. Kalyanov (1908-2001) in Leningrad in 1939, and it continues to this day. Translations of 16 books have been published, and work is underway on the remaining two. In addition to the full translation, there are also partial translations (rather, transcriptions) in poetic form. This popular presentation of the great Indian epic cycle "Mahabharata" in Russian was prepared by Indological scholars E.N. Tyomkin and V.G. Erman. The breakdown into chapters and their titles belong to the authors of the presentation.