The Mahabharata and the Yugas: India's Great Epic Poem and the Hindu System of World Ages

Luis Gonzalez-Reimann's monograph is the standard scholarly study of how the four age, yuga, scheme actually developed, and its documented, checkable argument is that the fully developed Puranic yuga theory was later read back into the Mahabharata rather than being original to the epic's earliest layers. That textual-historical method, tracing the scheme's development across datable stages, is the book's real evidentiary basis. This record has not independently traced further scholarly disagreement with Gonzalez-Reimann's specific claims since 2002. Use it for the documented historical formation of the yuga scheme and its relationship to the Mahabharata; a claim about the Puranic yuga theory's own fullest statement needs a primary Purana such as the Vishnu Purana addressed directly.