The Vaḍukar, The Kshatriya And The Brāmhaṇa
Following Sukthankar’s master chart of the recensional history of the epic, Mahadevan postulates the following flow chart for the Northern Recension of Mahābhārata :
Vyāsa’s Jaya Bhārata (most probably oral)
⇒ Mahābhārata (probably oral, ca. 500-300 BCE)
⇒ Northern Recension (most probably put into writing in Brāhmī script, ca. 300-100 BCE)
⇒ ν text (in the Kuru realm, the area of the origin of the epic; also γ text in the Magadha realm)
⇒ Śāradā text (ca. 150 BCE).
Sukthankar’s ν text and γ text trace the two of the three major movements of the ārya departing from the lower valley of the gradually shrinking Sarasvatī – northwards to the upper reaches of the river into Kashmir and eastwards into the Yamunā-Ganga doab, respectively. There is however no text marking the third movement – southwards, along the coast and over the sea to the lower western coast of the peninsula; Mahadevan, however labours to extract this from Sukhthankar’s master chart in his own way.