 The genre evolved from the earlier epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.Despite the length of "mahākāvya"s (15-30 cantos, a total of about 1500-3000 verses), they are still much shorter than the Ramayana (500 cantos, 24000 verses) and the Mahabharata (about 100000 verses).Tradition identifies five works as model "mahākāvya"