who composed the original story of mahabharata in oral form
Mahabharata Traditionally, the authorship of the Mahābhārata is attributed to Vyāsa. There have been many attempts to unravel its historical growth and compositional layers. The oldest preserved parts of the text are thought to be not much older than around 400 BCE, though the origins of the epic probably fall between the 8th and 9th centuries BCE.[2] The text probably reached its final form by the early Gupta period (c. 4th century CE).[3] The title may be translated as "the great tale of the Bhārata dynasty". According to the Mahābhārata itself, the tale is extended from a shorter version of 24,000 verses called simply Bhārata.[4]