A History of Sanskrit Literature c13.11

c13.11

Sanskrit epic poetry falls into two main classes. That which comprises old stories goes by the name of *Itihāsa*, "legend," *Ākhyāna*, "narrative," or *Purāṇa*, "ancient tale," while the other is called *Kāvya* or artificial epic. The *Mahābhārata* is the chief and oldest representative of the former group, the *Rāmāyaṇa* of the latter. Both these great epics are composed in the same form of the *çloka* metre as that employed in classical Sanskrit poetry. The *Mahābhārata*, however, also contains, as remnants of an older phase, archaic verses in the *upajāti* and *vaṁçastha* (developments of the Vedic *trishṭubh* and *jagatī*) metres, besides preserving some old prose stories in what is otherwise an entirely metrical work. It further differs from the sister epic in introducing speeches with words, such as "Bṛihadaçva spake," which do not form part of the verse, and which may be survivals of prose narrative connecting old epic songs. The *Rāmāyaṇa*, again, is, in the main, the work of a single poet, homogeneous in plan and execution, composed in the east of India. The *Mahābhārata*, arising in the western half of the country, is a congeries of parts, the only unity about which is the connectedness of the epic cycle with which they deal; its epic kernel, more-over, which forms only about one-fifth of the whole work, has become so overgrown with didactic matter, that in its final shape it is not an epic at all, but an encyclopædia of moral teaching.