The Rama in this passage isn’t Rama Jamadagnya who killed the Kshatriyas 21 times, but he may still be familiar to many reading the
Mahabharata because he is the protagonist of the
Ramayana, the other major Sanskrit epic poem of Hinduism. By including this brief mention of Rama (whose own epic poem is much longer than this brief summary), the
Mahabharata connects to earlier texts and helps provide the foundation for a unified religious tradition.