[3] Narayan's version of the Mahabharata focuses on the central conflict of the epic, the Kurukshetra War, while abridging many of the tangential stories-within-stories found in the original text.

It begins with the ancestry of the central characters of the story, starting off with the life of King Santanu, the vow of Bhishma, the birth of the Pandavas and the Kauravas, and the tragic death of Pandu.

In regards to his shortening of the Indian epic, R.K. Narayan states: "I have omitted none of the episodes relevant to the destinies of the chief characters.

Though Narayan is knowledgeable of the scholarly research into the textual history of the Mahabharata (the evolution from a charioteer ballad into Jaya, and then Bharata, and finally the Mahabharata over the course of hundreds of years), Narayan chose to accept the traditional accounts of the narrative's origins, stating in his version's introduction: "The conclusions of cold, factual research seem like 'catching the rainbow with one's finger's', to quote a line from the epic itself.

"[4] American Indologist and author Wendy Doniger notes that although Narayan translated the epic from the Sanskrit version of the text, he still maintained the Tamil-style spelling of many of the character names (Kunthi instead of Kunti, Satyavathi instead of Satyavati, etc.).