The epic of the Mahabharata at first seems like a secular epic that focuses on the heroic lives of the kshatriyas, but due to time the epic has transformed some.
Heroic ideals are strongly based in the arts of war and brute strength, where as Brahmanic values show a way of rebirth that focuses on worshop. Yet the story begins with the kshatriyatic families of the Pandavas and the Kauravas who display their warrior prowess. The Mahabharata makes a transformation from a mainly secular heroic epic to a more spiritual epic that emphasizes Brahmanic values.
When the epic of the Mahabharata begins two families set how you think the rest of the epic is going to be. Both Sets of men; the Pandavas and the Kauravas were training in the art of war, learning weaponry, and how to fight at first from Bishma then later Drona, all of the brothers and cousins hoping to overcome ignorance through education. This whole time that the brothers are preparing for war, then think that it will help them with their moksha little did they know that there is a lot more to Brahmanic values then fighting. Brahmanic values are so different from the kshatriatic lifestyle that it has very much changed the way the epic turned out.
Brahmanic values which are a completely opposite view from Buddhism, but are the belief that there is an evil inside all of us and the only way to rid oneself of this evil is through the rebirth cycle or Moksha. Once you can get out of this rebirth it is like you can go to heaven and be a god or a Brahman as they call it. This is what Krishna was advising Arjuna about in the Bhagavad Gita, so that he could join the rest of the Brahman. Krishna explains to Arjuna that when he no longer desires things for his own and when he performs actions without caring about the fruit of his nature that he will reach this state of Nirvana as a Brahman, "Standing therein at the time of death, to Nirvana, that is Brahman, too it goes-(Gita Text, 461).
