The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c22.7

v1.c22.7

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.