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The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c22: Chapter XI. The Princes and Peoples of the Epic Poems

The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c22

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Contents

Chapter XI. The Princes and Peoples of the Epic Poems

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THE Sūtra literature does not lack connexion with the epics, to which we now turn. In the Gṛihya Sūtra of Çāṅkhāyana, for example, occur the names of Sumantu, Jaimini, Vaiçampāyana, and Paila, who are teachers of the great epic Mahābhārata; and the list of revered teachers, and no less revered species of literature, mentioned in the Sūtra of Āçvalāyana includes the Bhārata and Mahābhārata, while the Çāmbhavya Sūtra also mentions the Mahābhārata (it omits Bhārata, perhaps as included in the greater name). Although the words are assumed by modern scholars to be interpolated, the reason given, ‘because otherwise it would make the Sūtra too late¹,’ has never been very cogent, since the end of the Sūtras and beginning of the epics probably belong to about the same time. As an indefinite allusion not to a special epic poem but to the kind of poetry are also to be noticed such early references as that of Āçvalāyana (III, 3, 1) to Gāthās, hero-lauds, tales, and ancient legends.

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¹ Weber, *Ind. Lit.*, p. 63 = Eng. trans., p. 58.

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Epic poetry is divided by the Hindus themselves into two genera, one called ‘tales and legends’ (Itihāsa and Purāṇa) and the other called ‘art-poem’ or simply ‘poem’ (Kāvya, the production of a Kavi or finished poet); but the compilation named Mahābhārata is both Itihāsa-Purāṇa, its original designation, and then Kāvya, though it is not recognised as a Kāvya till the introductory verses exalt it as such. In its origin it was undoubtedly a popular story of the glorified historical character which attaches to tribal lays even to-day. The second epic, the Rāmāyaṇa, has always stood as the type and origin of the refined one-author poem, and whatever may have been the date of its germ as a story, as an art-product it is later than the Mahābhārata.

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Thus the oldest references which may indicate epic poetry point rather to the story of the Bharatas than to the story of Rāma. These references, however, in any event are not nearly old enough to warrant the assumption of immense antiquity made by the native tradition. The language of both epics is not Vedic but a popular form of Sanskrit, which was developed by the bards and became the recognised language of narrative poetry; and their metre is the final reproduction of Vedic metres in modern form. Both language and verse are not widely different from those of the latest Sūtras. We may reasonably conclude, then, that the latest Sūtras and the epics belong to the same period, and that they represent two contemporary styles of literature, the former priestly and the latter secular.

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There can be no doubt that, so far as much of their subject-matter is concerned, the epics and the Purāṇas are the literary descendants of the stories and legends (Itihāsas and Purāṇas) which are mentioned in literature from the time of the Atharva-veda onwards; and the particular legend or historical tale (the two are confused) which is embedded in the Mahābhārata or ‘great epic of the Bharatas’ is also not wholly without scholastic affinities. Just as the Brāhmaṇas held the kernel of the Gṛihya Sūtras, so the great epic through its promulgator, as traditionally recorded, is connected with the school of the White Yajurveda. Parāçara is a name especially common in this Veda, occurring often in its genealogical lists; and the epic acknowledges the Çatapatha as the greatest of Brāhmaṇas, while the heroes of the epic are particularly mentioned in the Brāhmaṇa, and indeed in such a way that Janamejaya, prominent in the epic, is treated as a recent personage by the authors of the latter part of the Brāhmaṇa, though the epic treats him as a descendant of the chief epic hero. The explanation of this is not such a mystery as it seemed to Weber, who was unable to reconcile the facts that the same person was the descendant of the later family and yet appeared as an immediate predecessor or contemporary of the earlier. The explanation is simply that at the time of the eleventh Kāṇḍa of the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa, Janamejaya to the priestly author was an historical character, while to the epic poet he was legendary, and the poet himself was, if not a bard, a domestic chaplain probably incompetent to analyse history, but anxious to give his tale a noble frame.

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Other early allusions to epic characters only show that the epic which we now possess was unknown. Vaiçampāyana and Vyāsa are mentioned as early as the Taittirīya Āraṇyaka, but not as authors or editors of the epic which is now their chief claim to recognition. The word *mahābhārata* is used by Pāṇini, but only as an adjective which might be applied to anything great connected with the Bharatas, a hero or town, as well as a war or a poem. But above all, the Mahābhārata epic is at bottom the story of a feud between Kurus and Pāṇḍus, and the Pāṇḍus are unknown to the early literature, either Brāhmaṇas or Sūtras. The idea that the original epic was a poem commemorating a war between Pañchālas and Kurus, which was ably developed by Lassen (*Ind. Alterthümskunde*, I, pp. 692 f.), and adopted with modifications by Weber (*Ind. Literaturgesch.* pp. 126 and 203 = Eng. trans., pp. 114 and 186), is an ingenious attempt to account for what is assumed to have existed. As a matter of fact a Mahābhārata without Pāṇḍus is like an Iliad without Achilles and Agamemnon; we know of no such poem. The Kurus and Pañchālas are foes in the epic but only as the Pāṇḍus ally themselves with the latter. The Kurus of the epic, however, are doubtless the Kurus celebrated in ancient times; even the family records show that the epic reflects the glory of these old aristocrats. Thus the names Ambā and Ambikā as wives of a Kuru in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa are preserved in the name Ambā (Ambikā) as mother of the king of Kurus in the epic. The first occurrence of the name Pāṇḍu which can be dated seems to be in a *vārtika* or supplementary rule to Pāṇini IV, 1, 44, attributed to Kātyāyana (*c.* 180 B.C.). The Pāṇḍus, whatever may have been their antiquity, first come into view with the later Buddhist literature, which recognises the Pāṇḍavas as a mountain clan, and possibly in the myth mentioned by Greek writers in regard to a Hindu Heracles and his wife Pandaia, though the latter is indeed of little weight. The epic Pāṇḍus are not a people but a family.

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It is not till the second century B.C. that we find unmistakable allusion to what we may probably call our epic poem, in the account of the Mahābhāshya, which alludes to a poetic treatment of the epic story and speaks of epic characters. The second century B.C. is also the period to which those portions belong in which the foreign invaders of the Punjab—Yavanas, Çakas, and Pahlavas—are mentioned (*v. sup.* p. 224). These foreigners are represented as fighting on the side of the Kurus. As for the Pañchālas being opponents of the Āryan Kurus, the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa represents them as allies, and in early literature they are frequently mentioned as forming one people, the Kuru-Pañchālas. A single reference in a formula may, indeed, imply disdain of the Pañchālas on the part of the Kurus¹, but it is not certain that any racial antagonism existed between the two. We may say with Weber¹ that ‘the epic commemorates a fight between Āryans in Hindustān after the time when the original inhabitants had been overthrown and Brāhmanised,’ only on the assumption that Kurus, Pañchālas, and Pāṇḍus were Āryans; but this is doubtful, and the force of the remark is in any case somewhat impaired by the fact that contests between Āryans are no indication of late date, since such contests are commemorated even in the Rigveda.

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¹ Weber, *Ind. Lit.*, p. 126 = Eng. trans., p. 114. *V. sup.* Chapter V, p. 119.

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¹ *Op. cit.*, p. 204 = Eng. trans., p. 187.

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It is possible that the Pañchālas represent five Nāga clans (with *ala* ‘a water-snake’ cf. Eng. *eel*) connected with the Kurus or Krivis (meaning ‘serpent’ or ‘Nāga’), and that none of the families is of pure Āryan blood, for the Nāgas in the epic are closely related to the Pāṇḍus; but all such considerations at present rest on speculation rather than fact.

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Whether we are to suppose that, anterior to our extant epic, there was a body of literature which had epic characteristics, must depend also largely on speculation regarding the few well-known facts in the case. These are briefly as follows. At certain ceremonies, not chiefly heroic, Gāthās, ‘strophes,’ in honour of great men are sung with the lute as accompaniment. These verses apply to men of the past or present, that is, they are laudatory verses of a memorial character². Further, the Gṛihya Sūtras recognise Nārāçaṁsīs, a sort of κλέα ἀνδρῶν, ‘hero-lauds,’ as a literary genre. These may have served as nuclei for the stories of heroes preserved in epic form. In the epic itself genealogy forms an important sub-division, and such a genealogy includes the origin of gods as well as of men. Now the Brāhmaṇas also know what they call the Devajana-vidyā, ‘knowledge of the gods’ race’; and since the epic genealogy of gods is in many ways indicative of respectable antiquity, it is possible that it derives from such a *vidyā* or science. The stories told in the Brāhmaṇas, like that of Hariçchandra in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa, often have epic fulness and likeness, being composed in the later epic verse though in ruder metre. In these also we get a form of narrative told in verse which might presumably have evolved into epic form. A great deal of the inflated epic is didactic, and much of this is derived from didactic sources older than the present epic. Thus dramatic tale, genealogy, and instruction in pedagogic form have all aided in the making of the epic. Even the theology of the epic has its prototype in the Brāhmaṇas, where Vishṇu is already the 'best' or most fortunate god (*çreṣṭha*), and Çiva is already called Mahādeva.

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² Compare *Indische Studien*, vol. I, p. 187.

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In the hymns of the Rigveda we find stories in verse which appear to need the complement of explanatory prose, and as the epic also has examples of this mingling of verse and prose in the telling of a story, it is possible that we may have the right to presuppose a sort of epic narrative even in the time of the Rigveda. Yet this presumptive epic of the Rigveda is so entirely a matter of theory, and not undisputed theory, that it may be left out of consideration when discussing the historical epic, as the presumptive drama of the Rigveda may be ignored in discussing the origin of Hindu historical drama.

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The element in ancient literature which seems at first most likely to have contributed to the rise of epic poetry is that already mentioned under the name of Nārāçaṃsī or 'hero-lauds,' withal not so much on account of the subject-matter as on account of the circumstances in which the lauds were sometimes sung. At the yearlong celebration preparatory to the horse-sacrifice ten days were devoted to a series of lauds of gods and heroes, whereby the nobility and great deeds of kings were sung by priest and warrior musicians in Gāthās of an extemporaneous character, while the recitation of legends in verse accompanied various events of life¹.

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¹ Cf. especially Weber's article in the Proceedings of the Berlin Academy for 1891 (*Episches im vedischen Ritual*) and that of Lüders in *Z.D.M.G.*, vol. LVIII, p. 707 f.

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Now there are certain scenes in the great epic which lend themselves especially to such an interpretation. One can well believe, for example, that the story of Ambā, who was carried off by Bhīshma from her home and given to Çalya (v, 173 f.), was best rendered as a thrilling lay; its intensity is almost equal to that of the gambling-scene² (II, 60 f.). But there are many others not suited for anything save recitation, not to speak of the interminable didactic material loaded upon the epic by the bookful. How are we to reconcile this mass with a theory of lyric recitation or song?

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² Cf. also the half-forgotten tale of Vidulā, revivified to-day by Professor Jacobi (*Ueber ein verlorenes Heldengedicht der Sindhu-Sauvīra*) in the *Album Kern* (1903), p. 53.

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A study of the interpolations in the so-called Southern text shows that thousands of verses of narrative and didactic material have been added to the epic text, and that the redaction comprises a shameless incorporation of material drawn from the Purāṇas and from the Harivaṃça, a sort of Purāṇa which was added to the Mahābhārata, as well as elaborations of the original text, sometimes by the insertion of a dozen or so verses, sometimes by the addition to a chapter of half a dozen new chapters narrating feats of the heroes or insisting on the godliness of a demi-god. Now there is no reason not to suppose that the same process has made the Mahābhārata what it is from the beginning. It contains at present a hundred thousand verses, with some prose admixture, but internal evidence shows that this is an accumulation; and the text itself admits that it was originally less than nine thousand verses in length. As we have seen above (p. 251) the Gṛihya Sūtra of Āçvalāyana mentions both a Bhārata and a Mahābhārata, no doubt a shorter and a longer version of the same poem. The theme of the epic as a story, the conflict between Kurus and Pāṇḍus, is at most not so long, about twenty thousand verses, as the whole Rāmāyaṇa, or twenty-four thousand verses. In short, in the great epic of India we have a combination of matter, partly epical, partly pedagogic, partly narrative or historical. The genealogies and the religious-didactic parts are not necessarily later in date, but they are later additions to the original material. Some of the additions may be as old as the original or even older, but this does not entitle us to maintain that the epic was originally didactic, nor is this the best explanation of the heterogeneous mass which we call the epic, and which in its present form resembles such a combination as, barring dialectal differences, might be effected by combining a few books of the Iliad with Hesiod, extracts from Euripides, Theocritus, Aristotle, and a few chapters of the New Testament. With this exception, most of the didactic material is not for the everyday man, but distinctly for the military caste. Even the philosophy is not for the philosopher, the priest, but for the king and his nobles. The predominative religion, too, is that of the kingly caste¹. Indra is their sovereign Lord: and the heaven of Indra, with his celestial nymphs, the Apsarasas, is the reward for kingly duty faithfully performed on earth. The lower castes, Vaiçya and Çūdra, the agriculturist, the trader, the slave, are scarcely recognised except adventitiously, as it becomes convenient to refer to them. The epic is thoroughly aristocratic, a work completed by priests for warriors, to recount the deeds of warriors and show them the need of priests, who convert to orthodoxy the service of popular gods dear to the local aristocracy. The epic has thus become what it calls itself, the 'fifth Veda,' and may be regarded either as a didactic storehouse (it calls itself a Dharma Çāstra) or as a magnified Itihāsa-Purāṇa, which even before the epic existed was regarded as supplementing the Vedas. Both elements are united, religious-didactic and legendary, in such parts as treat of the demons, gods, and seers of old. How ancient may have been collections of such material prior to our extant epic is uncertain; but the evidence for earlier collective works does not appear to be convincing. That a mass of legends existed and that this mass was used by Brāhmans and Buddhists alike as they needed them may be granted, just as the mass of fables known to the ancient world was utilised by the epic writers and by those who composed the Buddhist Jātakas, though India had no Aesop.

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¹ Cf. Rapson, *Ancient India*, p. 72.

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Many of the characters of the Mahābhārata appear to be real, historical figures. Others are mythical, in that they represent a personality evolved from a divine name or a local hero-god. Thus the name Arjuna is first a title of Indra, whose son the epic Arjuna is; but his cousin Kṛishṇa is a local demi-god hero, and there is no reason to doubt the historical character of the king of Magadha who was a foe of this pair and a Çivaite, though what is said about him in the epic may be merely the exaggeration of legend, as sung by the bards who made expeditions with the army and sang the exploits they themselves had seen¹. The stories of historical characters, like king Janaka, also reflect history through the mists of legend. The complete anthropomorphisation of heavenly beings, which some scholars are reluctant to admit as a possible phenomenon in the best of cases², is found in the Hindu epic, especially in the inserted tales of the gods; but it does not appear at all certain that any epic hero represents a heavenly being in either of the Hindu epics. Kṛishṇa in the Mahābhārata and Rāma in the Rāmāyaṇa are forms of the sun-god only as being identified with Vishṇu as All-god; and in the case of the Rāmāyaṇa this is a palpably late procedure, while it is doubtful whether Kṛishṇa was ever a form of the sun. Both Rāma and Kṛishṇa appear to have been tribal heroes, mythical perhaps but not products of divine mythology. But, as no attempt has ever been made to separate myth from history in India, it is impossible to say whether Kṛishṇa, the divine hero of the Mahābhārata, ever really existed, though this is probable. Kṛishṇa served as the charioteer of Arjuna, the chief Pāṇḍu and epic hero; and though he promised not to fight in person he did all he could to keep up and intensify the enmity between the Pāṇḍus and their related foes, the Kurus, not avoiding even tricks opposed to knightly honour. It is not likely that such shameful acts as those recorded of him by his own followers would have been invented of a god, but rather that the tricks belonged to him as a hero, and that no amount of excuse, of which there is enough offered, could do away with the crude facts of tradition, which represented the man-god Kṛishṇa as a clever but unscrupulous fighter. A later age exonerated him by offering various excuses, the higher morality of imperative need¹, the tit-for-tat rule (one sin to offset another), etc., just as it offered various explanatory excuses for the polyandry of the Pāṇḍus, who, however, as a northern hill-tribe or family, probably were really polyandrous and needed no excuse².

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¹ The Sūtas or bards were also charioteers. They made a special sub-caste and lived at court, while the Kuçīlavas learned the songs of the bards and wandered among the people at large singing them. This name was resolved into Kuça and Lava who are represented as two singers, sons of Rāma. They learned the poem of Vālmīki and recited it among the people, as the later story goes (*Rāmāyaṇa*, I, 4). The Magadha king Jarāsandha was the ruler of the East, as the Pāṇḍus were his rivals in the West.

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² Chadwick, *The Heroic Age*, p. 265.

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¹ Thus Krishna is made to say, ‘If I had not done this (unknightly deed) our side would have been beaten,’ and this is accepted as an excuse; but an excuse was demanded.

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² Polyandry is not denounced in the Sūtras; but this is no proof that the Pāṇḍus lived before they were composed. The custom is found among the hill-tribes and also sporadically on the plains. Strictly speaking, epic polyandry is the marriage of one woman to a family of brothers.

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Although the epic age in India must necessarily be an epoch too elastic for historical purposes, since it is not at all certain that any one epic statement may not be many years later than another, yet the effect of this now trite observation is to exaggerate the relation between isolated cases and the epic mass. It is true that we have additions to the greater epic which are hundreds of years later than the mass, but it is possible from the mass to get an impression which will represent conditions on the whole, and we are tolerably sure that this whole is bounded by the space of from three to four centuries, since external evidence, inscriptions, the Greek reference to the Indian Homer³, etc., prove that the great epic in nearly its present extent existed before the fourth century A.D., and negative evidence in India makes it improbable that any epic existed earlier than the fourth century B.C. Since the length of the work requires the assumption of several centuries for its completion as it now exists, the centuries immediately preceding our era seem to be those to which it is most reasonable on general grounds to assign the composition of the Mahābhārata as a whole. This agrees best also with the external data to which reference has been made in the preceding chapter. During these centuries we find a revival of Brāhmanism, a cult of Vishṇuism by the masses and a return to Brāhmanism in a modified form indicated by the Çivaite faith of the kings of the north-western part of the country. Now Vishṇuism is the cult that permeates the great epic, though it contains tales showing an older Brāhmanism, and the Çivaite portions are chiefly late in character. Again it is not unreasonable to assume a certain connexion between the two epics. We cannot think of them as isolated productions of the western and eastern parts of the country. That they represent in general a western and eastern cycle of epic material is true, but there are sundry considerations which make it impossible to believe that they arose independently. In the first place, while the metre of the Mahābhārata represents a less polished verse than that of the Rāmāyaṇa, that metre is so nearly that of the Rāmāyaṇa, especially in its later portions, that the two are practically the same. Secondly, there are many tales, genealogies, fables, etc., which are identical in the two epics. Thirdly, the phraseology of the two epics is so cast in one mould that hundreds of verse-tags, phrases, similes, etc., are verbally the same. These correspond to the iterata found in Homeric verse, and indicate as do the Grecian parallels that there was a certain common epic body of phrase and fable. Fourthly, the economic conditions and social usages as represented in the two epics are sufficiently alike for us to be able to draw on both together for a picture of the times showing few discordant elements. In detail, the references in the Rāmāyaṇa betray a later or more advanced stage in some particulars, such as architectural elaboration, plans of temples, etc., which may be due to a higher civilisation; but in general the life of priest, noble, people of the lower castes, slaves, etc., is the same in both epics, and except for the use of caste-names does not differ from that exhibited by Buddhistic works of the same period. The chief difference here is that the Buddhists speak more of householder and gildman as if they were separate orders. But the Gehapati or householder is also a common expression for the ordinary man of affairs in Sanskrit works, and the gilds as shown above in discussing the Sūtras (p. 247) have their importance admitted by the authors of the Sūtras and epics alike. It is therefore more a question of terminology than a vital distinction when we find that the social order is reckoned as composed of priest, warrior, householder, gildman, instead of priest, warrior, and ‘people’s man,’ Vaiçya, as the Brāhman priests divided the ‘regenerate’ members of the community¹.

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³ Chrysostom, A.D. 347–407; see *Ind. Stud.*, II, pp. 161 f.

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¹ For the nomenclature of the Buddhists, cf. Fick, *Die sociale Gliederung in nordöstlichen Indien zu Buddha’s Zeit* (1897), pp. 19 f. and 162 f. Cf. also Senart, *Les Castes dans l’Inde*, where the contention is upheld that castes (so-called) are really *social orders*. Fick’s expression *Zu Buddha’s Zeit* is used with the freedom which characterises almost all Buddhist scholars when writing of Buddhist literature. He means no more by it than early Buddhist literature, and under that head are included the Jātakas which, in their present form, are centuries later than Buddha’s time.

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The main difference in the presentation of social data given by the Brāhman and the Buddhist is the one already referred to. The Buddhist does not accept the spiritual authority of the Brāhman and belittles him as a caste-member; but he cannot rid himself of inherited faith and phrase, and so constantly recognises him as member of a caste or order like that of the monks. On the other hand, the Buddhist state was a democracy in spirit; the teaching of the church (to use the word) was apt to exalt the humble and lower the aristocracy. The emperor himself was humbled by himself, and his nobles became subject to the religious law of love and kindness, while any common person was magnified for piety and could obtain high office in the council chamber. This was not only theoretically true; it affected the whole constitution of the State. The merchants and farmers and the mass of working people were endowed with a new influence, which superseded for a short time the influence of priest and noble. It is sometimes said that this was no supersession; that Buddhism arose before the four orders were recognised as state constituents, and that in the freer use of householder and merchant (such was really the Seṭṭhi or gildman) we have the expression of a freer life not yet bound in four-caste orders. It is probable that at all times the third ‘caste’ was an elastic term for every Āryan not priest or warrior; but it connoted pure blood and hence excluded those ‘mixed castes’ which were sometimes higher, but more often lower, than the house-slave. A great mass of these people were the hill-tribes reduced to servitude or to low pursuits, such as leather-workers, fowlers, etc., all those useful but dirty and disagreeable people whom the Brāhman despised and the Buddhist affected to love and honour. But the consideration shown to the low orders and the dignity attained by the merchants under a king who had no use for war are no proof that these traits were antecedent to an acknowledgment of the aristocratic classes. In fact, in the same district in which Buddhism arose and where the Buddhist emperors reigned, some at least of the Upanishads and Brāhmaṇas were composed, and these pre-Buddhist works all acknowledge as a matter of course the high rank of the two upper castes and the vulgarity of the lower, who exist, especially the farmers, 'to be eaten' by the king. The Buddhist attitude then is not an archaic attitude or one subsequently followed by the evolution of a theory of 'four castes,' but is due to a revolutionary insistence on virtue and use as tests of nobility. It is clear from both epics that the attitude toward the lower castes was not dissimilar to that held by every aristocracy toward the useful but undesirable proletariat. Both epics are from the beginning court-epics, to be recited before nobles and kings and priests at the great sacrifice which designated a supreme ruler, as the earlier texts indicate; but, as the epics themselves intimate, to be recited first at court and then popularised and recited among the people. The description of a recitation of the Mahābhārata given in the work itself implies, however, that this was not such a popular recitation as occurs to-day (for the great epic of India is still recited dramatically to village throngs), but one conducted in the house of a gentleman of leisure for his private entertainment.

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Before discussing the conditions found in the epics it will be necessary to mention adversely two hypotheses in regard to the time in which the great epic was composed. Both are exaggerations, based partly on neglect of pertinent data, of views already considered. The first of these is the theory that the Mahābhārata is a product of our middle ages, that is, that it was a late output of the renascence. The discovery of inscriptions showing that the epic was essentially the same as it is now centuries before the middle ages of course disproves this ill-considered theory, but the great work in which it is elaborated will always remain a mine of useful information¹. On the other hand, the theory that the Mahābhārata is a work of the fifth or sixth century before Christ and the product of one author who composed it as a law-book², is a caricature of a fruitful idea of the late Professor Bühler. As it violates every known principle of historical criticism it may be passed over without discussion. The epic was composed not by one person nor even by one generation, but by several; it is primarily the story of an historic incident told by the glorifier of kings, the domestic priest and the bard, who are often one³.

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¹ Adolf Holtzmann, *Das Mahābhārata und seine Teile* (1892–95).

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² J. Dahlmann, *Das Mahābhārata als Epos und Rechtsbuch* (1895); and *Genesis des Mahābhārata* (1899).

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³ That besides the professional bards the domestic priests were eulogisers of the king may be remarked from the epic tale of the king's daughter who reproaches the daughter of the domestic priest: 'I am the daughter of a king, who is lauded; thou art only the daughter of the laudator.' The first priests who handled the epics were of this sort, domestic priests, royal chaplains, indifferently well read in theology and philosophy but conversant with the rites of the Atharvaveda, which as a popular work of its day is associated with the earlier form of epic (*Chhāndogya Upanishad*, III, 4).

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The germ of the Mahābhārata is the description of the overthrow of the Kurus, a Bharata clan, at the hands of the Pāṇḍus. A thinly veiled genealogy represents the Pāṇḍus as cousins of the Kurus. In reality, they were a new family or clan, who built up a kingdom and then obtained supreme power by allying themselves with the Pañchālas and attacking the Kurus, who are represented as living about sixty miles north of the Pāṇḍus' settlement, which was the present Indarpat (Indraprastha), near Delhi.

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The 'cousins' called Pāṇḍus first excited the jealousy of the Kurus when the latter were obliged to come south and offer tokens of submission to the Pāṇḍu king, who had crowned himself as emperor and performed the horse-sacrifice establishing this title. Resorting to trickery, the Kurus invited the Pāṇḍus to make them a visit. The somewhat uncouth Pāṇḍus, who are described as good examples of *nouveaux riches*, flaunting in the eyes of their guests all the evidence of their wealth and making the lowly but aristocratic Kurus objects of ridicule¹, despite their sudden rise to power were not yet adepts in courtly arts, and the chief art for a knightly gentleman of that day was gambling. As the Pāṇḍu king says, no gentleman (warrior) can refuse to fight or gamble when challenged. The Kurus were an old house and had the skill of the court at their command, however poor they might be in worldly goods. The Kuru prince, who had been humiliated, concocted a scheme to overthrow the Pāṇḍus by gambling. The old king, his father, was a noble at heart as well as by blood and made what protest he could against this scheme, which he knew implied cheating at dice. But he was old and blind; and it was not the custom to pay any regard to what a man said after he grew old. When any man's hair grew grey he was expected to abdicate his power in favour of his son and retire from active life. What regard was paid to him thereafter was a matter of courtesy.

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He usually made over his property to his sons and disappeared literally or to all intent, becoming a wood-dweller. If such was the fate of the ordinary old man, the fate of kings was worse, as there was more to gain by their suppression. No regard at all was paid to the old king, who was king only in name. The Pāṇḍus were challenged to a friendly game of dice to be played in the Kurus’ city. It may be remarked here that the old site of the Kurus at the famous Kuru Plain had evidently been given up, as the Kurus were pushed back to Hastināpur, where they lived at the time of the epic story. The Pāṇḍus vaingloriously assented to make this return visit and see their kinsmen in the north. On arriving they were courteously received, and after spending a night with their hosts proceeded to the gambling-hall, where in one throw after another the Kuru prince, playing by proxy and thus securing the aid of the best gambler at court, won all the wealth, family, and kingdom of the Pāṇḍu emperor, who, however, ventured to play once more for the stake of banishment. As the emperor had already played the lives of his brothers and wife and lost, this last throw was an effort on the part of the Kurus to get them out of the way without imprisonment or other disgrace which might have occasioned a rising of other allies of the emperor. As it was, the Pāṇḍu king gave his word that, if he lost the last throw, he would go into banishment for twelve years with all his family.

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After the twelve years were over, he and his brothers took refuge with the Matsya clan, and from that vantage-point collected other allies, marched to the Kurus’ land, were met at Kuru Plain, defeated the Kurus, and regained the old power. It is noteworthy that in all the twelve years of banishment the bitterest note in the lamentations of the Pāṇḍus is not the loss of the kingdom but the insult to their wife. As related above, they were a polyandrous race, and the king and his four brothers were husbands of Kṛishṇā. When the king had gambled away his brothers and himself, he offered to gamble their wife and did so, though the proceeding raised the legal question¹ whether one who had already made himself a slave could gamble away anything, slaves possessing nothing. The question being over-ruled, however, the wife was dragged off and insulted by the brother of the Kuru prince. Now whenever the Pāṇḍus, who are fulfilling the pledge to remain in banishment, begin to bewail and plan revenge, it is the former plight of Kṛishṇā Draupadī which evokes most anger. Not the cheating at dice, though that is not forgotten, but the insult to Kṛishṇā, who was dragged into the assembly of men and made a slave dishonoured, animates the Pāṇḍus in their despair and causes Bhīma to vow that he will drink the blood of the Kuru prince, a threat which he fulfils on the field thereafter.

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¹ The Kuru prince complains that mirrors were so set in the floor of the Pāṇḍus' palace that he was made to think them ponds, etc. Every effort was made to humiliate the Kurus.

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¹ No legal authority is cited in this scene, however, though the question is argued by the old men who sit and look on during the gambling.

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There is, under another form, the violation of the rite of hospitality and virtual abduction of Kṛishṇā, the same nucleus of tragedy here which makes the simple Rāmāyaṇa appear like an echo of the Iliad. In the Rāmāyaṇa, the heroine is carried off by a treacherous fiend, whom Rāma pursues and slays after a long interval. But the Rāmāyaṇa differs essentially from the Mahābhārata not only in its style but in its spirit. Its most spirited scenes occur before the epic plot begins. After the introduction, in the history of Sītā, Rāma, and Rāvaṇa, turgidity replaces tragedy, and descriptions of scenery and sentimentality take the place of genuine passion. The didactic overload is indeed lacking, and the Rāmāyaṇa gains thereby; but in this epic the note of savage lust and passion which is the charm of the Mahābhārata, as it reveals genuine feeling of real men, is replaced by the childish laments and pious reflections of Rāma, whose foes are demoniac spirits, while his allies and confidants are apes. It is a polished fantasia, the first example of the Kāvya or 'artificial' poetry, which appeals to the Hindu taste much more than does the rough genuineness of the Great Epic. The Rāmāyaṇa is in truth artificial in both senses, for one cannot possibly believe the tale; whereas the Mahābhārata makes its tale real and one believes it as one believes that the Achaeans overthrew Troy, however embellished the account may be. The fact is that the Great Epic is the one human document after the appeal of religious sincerity in the primitive hymns of the Veda.

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The reason for this lies not alone in the fact that literature after the early Vedic age is chiefly liturgical and didactic, for this only shifts the explanation. Sanskrit literature is without power of literary expression from the hymns of the Rigveda to the Upanishads, and again from this time to that which produced the dramatic scenes of the epic, because it was in the hands of priests whose whole interest lay apart from real life. The same spirit which produced the best Vedic hymns, the spirit reflecting independence and freedom, appears in the royal literature, if we may so call it, which stamps the age of the Upanishads and of the great epic in its earlier parts. The Upanishads are in part the product of unpriestly, or at least anti-ritualistic, thought, and the epic also emanates from the throne and not from the altar. As the Upanishads embody the cultured philosophy of king and noble¹, so the epic scenes of love and war reflect the life of court and camp. They breathe a different spirit, as they come from a different source than does the literature of the Brāhman, until indeed the all-grasping hand of the priest seized even the epic tales, and, stifling all that was natural in them, converted them into sermons, to teach the theology of the priest and impart to the king the teaching best calculated to further priestly greed¹.

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¹ For another view, see Chapter v, p. 144.

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¹ Thus whole sections of the Anuçāsana (the thirteenth book of the Mahābhārata) are devoted to instilling the moral grandeur of those kings who give land-grants, cows, gold, and clothes to the priests. At the same time, much that is didactic is imbedded in the poem without this aim. Only the tendency is apparent to extend moral teaching to instruction calculated to subserve the ends of cupidity.

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The sociological data of the epic period show that society had advanced from a period when rude manners were justifiable and tricks were considered worthy of a warrior to one when a finer morality had begun to temper the crude royal and military spirit. This is sufficient explanation of that historical anomaly found in the Great Epic, the endeavour on the part of the priestly redactors to palliate and excuse the sins of their heroes. Arjuna shoots his rival, Karṇa, while the latter is helpless. But an act like this, which was doubtless considered clever at first, became repugnant to the later chivalry. Then the demi-god hero Kṛishṇa is made to be the source of the sin on the simple ground that if divine Kṛishṇa commands, it is right. Arjuna is now made to shoot reluctantly, in obedience to the divine command. But this may not be cited as a precedent against the later code, because it was a special case in which the act was inspired by God from occult motives outside the sphere of human judgment. So with many other sins committed by the heroes. They reflect an old barbarity later excused. It is not necessary to assume with Holtzmann, von Schroeder, and others that the epic tale has been 'set upon its head,' that is, that the whole poem was originally in honour of the Kurus, and was then rewritten to honour the Pāṇḍus, and that in this last process the 'sins of the Pāṇḍus' reveal the original attitude of reproach taken by the Kuru poet². There is a difference morally between the Kurus and Pāṇḍus. The Pāṇḍus offend against the later military code. Thus the Kurus reproach the Pāṇḍus because their chief warrior interfered in a combat between two warriors and killed his friend's foe, who was being worsted in the fight. The Pāṇḍu simply laughs at the reproach. 'Why' (says he) 'of course I killed him. I saw my friend worsted, and interfered just in time to save him,' intimating, as is clearly stated afterwards, that a conflict on a field of battle is not a polite duel ('That is no way to fight'). But the Kurus are just as wicked as the Pāṇḍus, only they are diplomatic. Their sins smack of cultivated wickedness. They get an expert gambler to ruin their rival. They secretly seek to burn their enemies alive. They form a conspiracy and send out ten men under oath to attack Arjuna. They slay Arjuna's son first, in order to weaken Arjuna's heart. In a word, they are cunning and sly; the Pāṇḍus are brutal and fierce. Two types of civilisation are embalmed in the poem.

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² For detailed criticism of this theory, see the present writer's monograph on the *Position of the Ruling Caste in Ancient India* (*J.A.O.S.*, 1888). The explanation of the poem as a myth of nature, Kṛishṇa representing earth wed to the five seasons, etc., is unnecessary though ingenious. It was proposed by Ludwig in the *Transactions of the Royal Bavarian Academy* (vi Folge, 12 Band).

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The most striking difference between the knights of the epic and the priestly power, which in the end controlled them, is that the warrior-caste was the royal caste and hence represented state-power, a political body, whereas the priests were never more than a caste of individuals. They represented no church-power. There is thus a fundamental lack of priestly organisation; there is nothing parallel to the Church of Rome in its contests with European state-power. Individual priests, without financial resources but dependent on the local rāja for support, could do nothing save persuade the rāja. But superstition aided them; and persuasion aided by superstition became a compelling power, which, however, was exerted only for two objects, the exaltation of the individual priest or of the priestly caste and the inculcation of religious and moral precepts, never for the formation of a worldly power within, but independent of, the State. There was no caste-head. When strife arose between priests, as it constantly arose apropos of a fat office to be enjoyed (the epic furnishes examples), each individual priest fought for his own hand; he had no bishop over him; and there was no pope to oppose a king. Thus, while the priestly law-book says that 'the priest is the norm of the world,' the epic says 'the king is the norm.' The law says that a priest has the right of way even over a king; the epic narrates that a king meets a priest and calls out to him 'get out of my way,' and despite the law, as cited, smites the priest with his royal whip. Such scenes show that the king is not yet the creature of the priest, but that the epic unconsciously reflects a freer life than that depicted as ideal by the later priests, who teach that the king is a steward divinely appointed to provide for them.

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Somewhat as in Buddhist literature we must therefore reverse the importance of the two 'upper castes,' and regard the epic state as consisting in a military power, whose head is the rāja; then a priestly power, politically unorganised, but divided into schools; then the merchant-power, represented by gilds, whose powerful heads (*mahājana*) are of political importance; then the farmers, unorganised but tenacious of certain religious rights and boasting of Āryan blood. The two last classes form one body only because they are neither of them noble (royal) or priestly or un-Āryan. No other tie unites them. The merchants in general belong to the town, the farmers to the country; the two are the historical divisions, brought about by economic conditions, of that order called 'the people,' in distinction from noble and priest. This was the Āryan state. Below the Āryan constituents were the many who were either remnants of wild tribes or slaves, descendants of conquered clans of other blood. They are all mentioned in the epic, as well as foreigners or barbarians. Although town-life is well known, yet the farmers and cattlemen were perhaps more generally typical, on account of their numerical superiority, of the order to which each belonged. So it is said: 'Work is for the slave; agriculture for the people-caste' (*Mbh.*, XII, 91, 4), or again 'The work of the Vaiçya is to tend cattle'; less commonly 'The duty of the priest is to beg for sustenance; of the warrior, to defend the people; of the people-caste, to make money; of the slave, to work (manually)' (*ibid.* V, 132, 30). It will be observed that the cattle-raising 'people' are ignored in favour of traders in the last citation, though 'to make money' may imply farmers and cattlemen as well as traders.

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The slave possessed nothing; his tax was paid in manual labour, for he had no money or other possessions, 'there is no *suum* in the case of a slave' (*ibid.* XII, 60, 37). The slave comes 'from the foot of God' (as the warrior is born of God's arm) and hence is 'born to servitude.' The Çūdras are especially the slaves of the merchants and farmers; for though they are told to be 'faithful to priest and warrior' they are said in particular to 'serve the people-caste' (*ibid.* I, 100, 11). They are also marked as the 'blacks' in distinction from the priests who are white¹. The military character of the epic precludes much attention to the slaves, who as a fighting host are naturally not of importance, though they may be referred to under the designation ‘the black mass,’ for the great hosts led into the field comprise many of the slaves as camp followers and helpers. What is very important is that the lowest Āryan caste, the body of farmers, is on the verge of mingling with the slave-caste. No priest may become a slave, however distressed for sustenance he may become; but a slave may become a herdsman or trader if he cannot support himself by service (this is the epic and legal rule), and in fact the farmer population was largely composed of slaves. In the ethical parts of the epic, where caste-distinctions are theoretically abolished in favour of the rule that ‘there is no distinction of caste’ (religiously), the slave is even allowed to study and may get a reward for practising religious exercises (*Mbh*., XII, 328, 49; XIII, 132, 14), and a learned slave gives moral instruction; but this does not seem to correspond to real conditions where the slave is reckoned next to the beast (*ibid*. XIII, 118, 24). The old spirit of the Brāhman period, which declares that ‘priest, warrior, and people constitute the whole world’ is still practically in force.

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¹ It is doubtful whether the finer distinction here made (*Mbh.*, XII, 188, 5), namely that the warrior(-caste) is red and the people-caste yellow, indicates a real racial distinction; especially since there is no other indication that these Āryans are racially sub-divided; whereas the distinction between white and black is an early mark of the difference parting the Āryan and un-Āryan and goes with the nasal distinction noticed in the Vedas between 'good-nose' and 'no-nose' people. The epic poets still speak of their Āryan heroes' 'fair-noses.' See also Chapter IV, p. 85.

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The people are settled in small villages around a fort, which remains as a *grāma* or ‘crowd’ (village) or expands into a town, *nagara*. Small settlements are called *ghoshas* or *pallīs*, some of them ‘marches’ (*prāntas*, ‘on the border’). The distinction between these and the places called *kharvaṭas* and *pattanas* is not clear, though the *grāma* seems to be smaller than the *kharvaṭa*, which in turn is smaller than the *nagara*. Perhaps village, town, city would represent the series. The villages were largely autonomous though under the ‘overlord’ of the king, who administered justice and laid taxes. In all smaller affairs of life, ‘authority rests with the village,’ according to law (Pār., *Gṛihya Sūtra*, I, 8, 13) and the epic seems to uphold even family custom as legally sufficient. Thus as one man says (*v. inf*. p. 291) that he demands a price for his daughter, because that is his ‘family-custom,’ so another defends his occupation of killing animals on the same ground. It has always been the custom of Indian rulers to leave affairs as much as possible in the hands of the local authorities; and the headman of the village or the group of five elders were practically independent, provided the village paid its revenue as assessed by the *adhipati* or overlord.

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The king rules not because of might alone but by virtue of his morality. A wicked king may be deposed; a king who injures his people instead of protecting them should be killed ‘like a mad dog.’ Taxes there must be, because the people must be defended, and this costs; but they must be light, and vary according to need. The tax in kind is common. The merchant pays in kind and the ranchman pays in kind, but the town-people are fined in copper money for offences, though bodily punishment takes the place of fines in all cases where there is intent to deceive. Thus the shipping-duties paid by ‘merchants coming from afar’ are probably in kind (*Mbh.*, II, 5, 114). Frequent allusions to merchants ‘using false weights’ (cf. I, 64, 21 f.) show that a careful supervision of the market-place was necessary. The merchant-gilds were of such authority that the king was not allowed to establish any laws repugnant to the rules of these trade-unions. The heads of gilds are mentioned next after the priests as objects of a king’s anxious concern¹.

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¹ On the gilds, see *Mbh.*, III, 249, 16; XII, 54, 20; *Rām.*, VI, 111, 13; cf. Hopkins, *India Old and New*, p. 169. Their power may be guessed from the fact that the didactic epic recommends the king to circumvent them by bribery and dissension since ‘the safe-guard of corporations (gilds) is union.’

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The large part of the population employed as ranchmen in tending cattle has scarcely been alluded to as yet. They were perhaps the original ‘people,’ before agriculture was much practised and when merchants were few. At the time of the epic they seem to have become partly cattle-raisers and partly farmers, while the occupation of ranchman proper had fallen into the hands of barbarians who could not understand Āryan speech. Yet the one example of which the epic takes note shows that these were merely the cowboys who guarded royal cattle (*Mbh.*, IV, 10, 1). The king is here represented as having a royal picnic on the occasion of a ‘cattle-branding,’ when the court goes into the country and the ‘ears of the cattle are marked’ for the year. It is on this occasion that the Kurus lift the cattle of the Matsyas. Though accounts of such border-raiding in the old Vedic style are rare and this passage in particular can by no means claim special antiquity, yet it doubtless reflects a not uncommon state of affairs². Very little in regard to these lowly members of the State, the cowboys and herdsmen, is to be gleaned from the epic; but one passage states what the low labourer of the ‘people-caste’ is to earn *per annum*: ‘he should receive the milk of one cow for the care of six cows; and if he tend a hundred head he should, at the end of the year, receive a pair. If he acts for the master as overseer of flocks or in agricultural labour, he should have one-seventh of the proceeds or increase, but, in the case of small cattle, a small part (‘one-sixteenth’; *Mbh.*, XII, 60, 24 f.). The six ‘distresses’ of a farmer do not include excessive taxation, but raiding by a foreign king is included among them¹.

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