The History of Indian Literature c8.383

c8.383

great struggle between the Kurus and the Páṇḍus. Adopting the latter view, which appears to be the better warranted, from the fact that the part of the Mahá-Bhárata which contains it is written in prose, and exhibits a peculiarly ancient garb, the supposed great internecine conflict between the Kurus and the Pañchálas, and the dominion of the Páṇḍavas, must have been long past at the time of the Bráhmaṇa. How is this contradiction to be explained? That something great and marvellous had happened in the family of the Páriksḥitas, and that their end still excited astonishment at the time of the Bráhmaṇa, has already been stated. But what it was we know not. After what has been said above, it can hardly have been the overthrow of the Kurus by the Pañchálas; but at any rate, it must have been deeds of guilt; and indeed I am inclined to regard this as yet unknown 'something' as the basis of the legend of the Mahá-Bhárata.¹⁴⁴ To me it appears absolutely necessary to assume, with Lassen, that the Páṇḍavas did not originally belong to the legend, but were only associated with it at a later time,¹⁴⁵ for not only is there no trace of them anywhere in the Bráhmaṇas or Sútras, but the name of their chief hero, Arjuna (Phalguna), is still employed here, in the Śatapatha-Bráhmaṇa (and in the Saṃhitá), as a name of Indra; indeed he is probably to be looked upon as originally identical with Indra, and therefore destitute of any real existence. Lassen further (*I. AK.*, i. 647, ff.) concludes, from what Megasthenes (in Arrian) reports of the Indian Heracles, his sons and his daughter Πανδαία, and also from other accounts in Curtius, Pliny, and Ptolemy,∗ that at the time when Megasthenes wrote, the mythical association of Kṛishṇa (?) with the Páṇḍavas already existed. But this conclusion, although perhaps in itself probable, is at least not certain;[^asterisk] and even if it were, it would not prove that the Páṇḍavas were at that time already associated with the legend of the Kurus. And if we have really to assign the arrangement of the Mádhyaṃdina recension (see p. 106) to about the time of Megasthenes, it may reasonably be inferred, from the lack of all mention of the Páṇḍavas in it, that their association with the Kurus had not then been established; although, strictly speaking, this conclusion has weight not so much for the period when the arrangement of the work actually took place, as for the time to which the pieces arranged belong.