Studies in the Epics and Puranas c7.s2.24

c7.s2.24

The turn of the century saw the appearance of Hopkins' magnum opus, *The Great Epic of India*,⁶² which deals, inter alia, with the relation of the Rām and the Mbh, and other problems connected with the Rām. *The Riddle of the Rāmāyaṇa*63 written by Bhāratācārya C. V. Vaidya is a very valuable contribution to the Rām studies. In a learned article on the history of the Rām where the various works which copy the Digvarṇana of the Rām (IV.41 ff) are critically studied, Lévi shows that the North-Western recension, as distinct from the Bengal recension, was in existence already in the sixth century A.D.⁶⁴ Books and articles on the Rām published subsequent to 1917 have been dealt with in the following pages (174-195), and particular reference, in connection with the Rām studies, may be made to D. C. Sen, Oldenberg, Winternitz, Maharastriya, Ruben, Sluszkiewicz, Sukthankar and Bulcke.