The Mahabharata does not begin with its war. It begins with the occasion on which it is told. The storyteller Ugrashrava Sauti recites it to “an assemblage of sages conducting a twelve-year sacrifice for King Saunaka Kulapati in the Naimisha Forest.”
He tells how Vaishampayana, a disciple of Vyasa, first recited the epic to King Janamejaya, the great-grandson of Arjuna. The story of the war sits inside these tellings.