ekaślokī bhāratam

The whole of the Mahabharata compressed into a single verse, which is what ekashloki means. It moves through the epic in a chain of compounds and never pauses: first the birth of the Pandavas and the sons of Dhritarashtra, then the burning of the house of lac; the dice game and the seizing of Draupadi; the wandering in the forest and the year spent in the kingdom of Matsya; the cattle-raid taken as sport, the victory in battle, the swelling of attempts at peace; and afterwards the deaths of Bhishma, Duryodhana and the rest — this, it concludes, is the Mahabharata. Learnt as a memory-verse for the sequence of the epic.