The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c22.63

v1.c22.63

Two notable attempts to extract historical material from the epic have been made in the last few years. They enlarge the vision of the fighting hosts on the plain of the Kurus both geographically and historically and demand careful examination. The first is the result of a study of the forces named in the epic itself as allies. As already mentioned, the fighting of the Rāmāyaṇa consists in combats between fiends and monkeys, and unless the monkeys are interpreted as southern Hindus speaking an alien tongue, and for this and other reasons regarded as little better than apes by the Āryan leaders, there is no profit in endeavouring to guess at their real significance. In the Mahābhārata, which deals with real people, it is different. The human hosts marshalled as friend or foe by the Pāṇḍus and Kurus may be set against each other geographically. There is a certain amount of fiend-fighting, and Nāgas of unknown habitat are mentioned as contestants. There are also some allies of unknown geographical provenance. But the chief factors in the great hosts can be distributed geographically. For making such a classification it will be convenient to use the Indian term Madhyadeça, the Middle Country, to denote ‘the whole of the Ganges basin from the Punjab as far as the confines of Bihār,’ and to arrange the various peoples who are said to have taken part in the war in relation to this region. The Pāṇḍu forces included the king of Magadha associated with the Kāçis and Kosalas, the king of Pañchāla, the king of the Matsyas with mountaineers, the king of Chedi—all representing peoples in Madhyadeça—with some adherents from the north and south, but especially all the Yadus of the west. The Kurus, on the other hand, had as allies the king of Prāgjyotisha, the Chīnas, and the Kirātas in the north-east; the Kambojas, Yavanas, Çakas, Madras, Kaikeyas, Sindhus and Sauvīras in the north-west; the Bhojas in the west; the king of Dakshiṇāpatha in the south; the Andhras in the south-east; and the kings of Māhishmatī and Avanti in Madhyadeça. Therefore, since the Yadus of Gujarāt came from Mathurā, the statement holds that ‘the division of the contending parties may be broadly said to be South Madhyadeça and Pañchāla against the rest of India¹. That this is an important conclusion must be admitted. But if it follows that the war was one between southern Madhyadeça, united with Pañchāla, and the rest of India, how far may we assert that this represents earlier epic conditions before the nations of the Indian sub-continent were all brought into the frame of the epic? Obviously it would not be safe to make too much of a list based on factors of doubtful age, but it is perhaps safe to assert that the central plan, so to speak, is historical, namely the opposition of the less civilised Pāṇḍus and the old Pañchālas to the orthodox Kurus.