Studies in the Epics and Puranas c7.s2.1

c7.s2.1

The *Rām*, like the *Mbh*, has been deeply influencing the religious and moral thought of India as well as the literary production for over two thousand years, and has moulded the lives of countless generations in India. Both exhibit several features of similarity and difference. Being handed down orally from the earliest times both epics have undergone tremendous changes throughout their long career, and cannot lay claim to any definitive text. The same phenomena operated in the text-transmission of both, so that the method followed for the constitution of the critical text of the *Mbh* can be applied with but minor changes for the preparation of the Critical Edition of the *Rām*. Like the *Mbh*, the *Rām* is the property of the whole Indian people and the daily recitation of a śloka, a line, or even a quarter from either is said to confer religious merit on the reciter. Both epics abound in numerous Brahmanical myths and legends which frequently interrupt the thread of the narrative. There is a close resemblance not only in style, expression and descriptions as exemplified by parallel passages, identical similes and descriptions, but also in the mythology and philosophy of the epics. The economic conditions and social usages represented in the two epics are sufficiently alike, showing but few discordant elements.⁵⁰ Neither was recognised as epic before the late period of the Gṛhyasūtras, and neither was developed quite independently of the other. The Uttarakāṇḍa, which constitutes the latest part of the *Rām*, contains many tales of the Gangetic plains, and later didactic portions of the *Mbh* are generally laid in Kosala and Magadha, so that in their later development the epics grew up in the same locality.