> I think personally that that's a shame; the Mahabharata in particular is so > readable.
It is, as epics go, especially when you compare it with Kalevala, Beowulf and the like. I've tried several times to wade through each of those. The slightly more contemporaneous Iliad and Odyssey fare better. But when compared with more modern epics, MB has significant issues from some basic perspectives: character story-arcs aren't tied up neatly, there are many loose ends, and of course, the book-within-a-book with the Gita being there. My personal take still is that Dune / LOTR / the Lazarus Long chronicles are more readable if you look at the set as works of epic fiction. I don't see why these shouldn't reach similar or larger 'epic' proportions a few millenia from now.
