Studies in the Epics and Puranas c8.79

c8.79

Next we come to the Great Epic, which betrays distinct influence of the Upaniṣads both in its thought and in its expression, and monism is a prominent feature of its teaching. The Mahābhārata being an encyclopaedia, the product of different periods and authors, naturally enough, there are to be found contradictions in it; both cosmic and acosmic conceptions are to be met with, and often, an account which begins with the one easily drifts into the other. The cosmic egg theory is found only in the popular accounts in the first verses of the epic; but at places this theory is refuted.³⁸ The Mahābhārata makes both Puruṣa and Prakṛti, aspects of the one Brahman. It accepts the Sāṅkhya enumeration of the elements; but it adds Īśvara as the twenty-sixth.³⁹ There is an attempt by the authors of the epic at producing some order and reconciliation in the variety of views as to cosmogony propounded in Vedic and Sāṅkhya sources by introducing some changes, by combining different notions, by inventing intermediate creators, successive creations and destructions, etc. Thus the epic Sāṅkhya reveals some important changes from the original Sāṅkhya philosophy; Dahlmann and Deussen, however, state that epic Sāṅkhya represents a preliminary state of speculation from which systematic Sāṅkhya was developed.⁴⁰