The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c22.12

v1.c22.12

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.