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From outside sources we know only that the poem is mentioned in the Sutra of Acvalayana, and seems to be intended in a description of a Hindu epic given by Dio Chrysostomos, in a fragment that may have come from Megasthenes. In the event of the description being original with the first, 100 A. ID. may be set as the date of this information; with the second, 400 B. C.* What other accounts we have are not less doubtful in date. Thus, the poem is known to the Mahabliasya; but the earliest date of this work is 140 B. C.,t while Panini's evidence is negative, mentioning characters but not the poem by name. Of the war, only the Epica gives an account, and the date of the conflict is matter of inference.
Statement can only be regarded as one of comparatively late origin, belonging to the final development get Epic-a time when the writers knew little in regard to the working-over of
their inherited verses.