The History of Indian Literature c8.74

c8.74

Again, secondly, the hymns of the Ṛik contain sufficient evidence of their antiquity in the invaluable information which they furnish regarding the origin and gradual development of two cycles of epic legend, the Persian and the Indian. In both of these the simple allegories of natural phenomena were afterwards arrayed in an historic garb. In the songs of the Ṛik we find a description, embellished with poetical colours, of the celestial contest between light and darkness, which are depicted either quite simply and naturally, or else in symbolical guise as divine beings. In the Persian Veda, the Avesta, on the other hand, "the contest\* descends from heaven to earth, from the province of natural phenomena into the moral sphere. The champion is a son, born to his father, and given as a saviour to earth, as a reward for the pious exercise of the Soma worship. The dragon slain by him is a creation of the Power of Evil, armed with demoniacal might, for the destruction of purity in the world. Lastly, the Persian epic enters upon the ground of history. The battle is fought in the Aryan land; the serpent, Aji Dahaka in Zend, Ahi [Dásaka] in the Veda, is transformed into Zohak the tyrant on the throne of Irán; and the blessings achieved for the oppressed people by the warlike Ferédún—Traitana in the Veda, Thraétaonó in Zend—are freedom and contentment in life on the paternal soil." Persian legend traversed these phases in the course of perhaps 2000 years, passing from the domain of nature into that of the epic, and thence into the field of history. A succession of phases, corresponding to those of Ferédún, may be traced also in the case of Jemshíd (Yama, Yima); a similar series in the case of Kaikavús (Kávya Uśanas, Kava Uś); and probably also in the case of Kai Khosrú (Suśravas, Huśravaṅh). Indian legend in its development is the counterpart of the Persian myth. Even in the time of the Yajurveda the natural significance of the myth had become entirely obliterated. Indra is there but the quarrelsome and jealous god, who subdues the unwieldy giant by low cunning; and in the Indian epic the myth either still retains the same form, or else Indra is represented by a human hero, Arjuna, an incarnation of himself, who makes short work of the giant, and the kings who pass for the incarnations of the latter. The principal figures of the Mahá-Bhárata and Rámáyaṇa fall away like the kings of Firdúsí, and there remain for history only those general events in the story of the people to which the ancient myths about the gods have been applied. The personages fade into the background, and in this representation are only recognisable as poetic creations.