A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, so far as it illustrates the Primitive Religion of the Brahmans c6.141

c6.141

In the form in which we now possess the Mahâbhârata it shows clear traces that the poets who collected and finished it, breathed an intellectual and religious atmosphere, very different from that in which the heroes of the poem moved. The epic character of the story has throughout been changed and almost obliterated by the didactic tendencies of the latest editors, who were clearly Brahmans, brought up in the strict school of the Laws of Manu. But the original traditions of the Pândavas break through now and then, and we can clearly discern that the races among whom the five principal heroes of the Mahâbhârata were born and fostered, were by no means completely under the sway of the Brahmanical law. How is it, for instance, that the five Pândava princes, who are at first represented as receiving so strictly Brahmanic an education, — who, if we are to believe the poet, were versed in all the sacred literature, grammar, metre, astronomy, and law of the Brahmans,—could afterwards have been married to one wife? This is in plain opposition to the Brahmanic law, where it is said, “they are many wives of one man; not many husbands of one wife.”¹ Such a contradiction can only be accounted for by the admission, that, in this case, epic tradition in the mouth of the people was too strong to allow this essential and curious feature in the life of its heroes to be changed. However, the Brahmanic editors of the Mahâbhârata, seeing that they could not alter tradition on this point, have at least endeavoured to excuse and mitigate it. Thus we are told in the poem itself, that at one time the five brothers came home, and informed their mother that they had found something extremely precious. Without listening further, their mother at once told them they ought to divide it as brothers. The command of a parent must always be literally obeyed; and as Draupadî was their newly discovered treasure, they were obliged, according to the views of the Brahmans, to obey, and to have her as their common wife. Indian lawgivers call this a knotty point²; they defend the fact, but refuse to regard it as a precedent.