Political History of Ancient India, from the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty c9.s2.13

c9.s2.13

II. The second class comprises Brāhmaṇical works to which no definite date can be assigned, but large portions of which, in the opinion of scholars, belong to the post-Bimbisārian period. To this class belong the *Rāmāyaṇa*, the *Mahābhārata* and the *Purāṇas*. The present *Rāmāyaṇa* consists of 24,000 *ślokas* or verses.⁴ But even in the first or second century A.D. the epic seems to have contained only 12,000 *ślokas*⁵ as the evidence of the Buddhist *Mahā-vibhāshā*, a commentary on the *Jñānaprasthāna* of Kātyāyanīputra, suggsets. It not only mentions Buddha Tathāgata,⁶ but distinctly refers to the struggles of the Hindus with mixed hordes of Yavanas (Greeks) and Śakas (Scythians), *Śakān* *Yavana-miśritān*.¹ In the *Kishkindhyā Kāṇḍa*,² Sugrīva places the country of the Yavanas and the cities of the Śakas between the country of the Kurus and the Madras, and the Himālayas. This shows that the Græco-Scythians at that time occupied parts of the Pañjāb. The *Laṅkā Kāṇḍa*³ apparently refers to the Purāṇic episode of the uplifting of Mount Mandara, or of Govardhana, *Parigṛihya giriṁ dorbhyāṁ vapur Vishṇor viḍambayan*.⁴