The traditional view is that the events in the Ramayana happened earlier than the events in the Mahabharata. Hindu texts divide each age into four yugas—Satya, Treta, Dvapara and Kali, in that order. The Ramayana is believed to have happened in the Treta, and the Mahabharata in the Dvapara. Sri Rama is believed to be the seventh incarnation of Vishnu while Sri Krishna is believed to be the eighth. A story in the Mahabharata states that Hanuman met Bhima and recounted the story of the Ramayana in brief. When Sahadeva went on an expedition to south India during Yudhishthira’s Rajasuya yagya, he met Lanka’s king Vibhishana. From all these accounts, Ramayana appears to be older.
If one looks beyond the traditional view, at the geographical and social information contained within the two epics, one starts to see the possibility that the Mahabharata could be older. The Mahabharata is primarily a story of the rivalry between the Kurus and the Panchalas—both kingdoms set in the northwest of India, compared to the Ramayana kingdoms of Kosala and Videha which are comparatively southeastern. Most widely accepted theories about the spread of Aryan influence in India say that it started in the northwest and gradually spread eastward and southward. Also, all the kingdoms that played a major role in the Mahabharata are from the north of the Vindhya mountains. Probably, south India was not well-known to the Aryans in Mahabharata time. However, Ramayana contains extensive references to places in central and southern India, even extending up to present-day Sri Lanka.
The society described in the Ramayana appears more recent than that in the Mahabharata. The fights in Mahabharata are cruder, with Aryan people often throwing rocks at each other, uprooting trees, fighting with their bare hands, and going to the extent of ripping their enemy’s chest and drinking their blood. The fighting in Ramayana is much more civilised, with greater adherence to the rules of war. The social customs and norms are also different in the two epics. Draupadi could manage to have five husbands and still find a place in the royal family. In general, the women of Mahabharata had considerable freedom. This can be expected of matriarchal societies which were more common in older periods. This indicates that the society in the Mahabharata period was probably transitioning from matriarchal to patriarchal. Polyandry is unthinkable in the Ramayana whose women led a more restricted life, indicating that a patriarchal society had become firmly established by this time.Thus, there are arguments both in favour of and against the Mahabharata being older than the Ramayana and it is difficult to conclude one way or the other in the absence of concrete proof.