The History of Indian Literature c9.30

c9.30

evidence of the existence of an epic, with the contents of the Mahá-Bhárata, comes to us from the rhetor Dion Chrysostom, who flourished in the second half of the first century A.D.; and it appears fairly probable that the information in question was then quite new, and was derived from mariners who had penetrated as far as the extreme south of India, as I have pointed out in the *Indische Studien*, ii. 161–165.∗ Since Megasthenes says nothing of this epic, it is not an improbable hypothesis that its origin is to be placed in the interval between his time and that of Chrysostom; for what ignorant† sailors took note of would hardly have escaped his observation; more especially if what he narrates of Herakles and his daughter Pandaia has reference really to Kṛishṇa and his sister, the wife of Arjuna, if, that is to say, the Páṇḍu legend was already actually current in his time. With respect to this latter legend, which forms the subject of the Mahá-Bhárata, we have already remarked, that although there occur, in the Yajus especially, various names and particulars having an intimate connection with it, yet on the other hand these are presented to us in essentially different relations. Thus the Kuru-Pañchálas in particular, whose internecine feud is deemed by Lassen to be the leading and central feature of the Mahá-Bhárata, appear in the Yajus on the most friendly and peaceful footing: Arjuna again, the chief hero of the Páṇḍus, is still, in the Vájasaneyi-Saṃhitá and the Śatapatha-Bráhmaṇa, a name of Indra:‡ and lastly, Janamejaya Páriksbita, who in the Mahá-Bhárata is the great-grandson of Arjuna, appears, in the last part of the Śatapatha-Bráhmaṇa, to be still fresh in the memory of the people, with the rise and downfall of himself and his house. I have also already expressed the conjecture that it is perhaps in the deeds and downfall of this Janamejaya that we have to look for the original plot of the story of the Mahá-Bhárata;[^asterisk] and, on the other hand, that, as in the epics of other nations, and notably in the Persian Epos, so too in the Mahá-Bhárata, the myths relating to the gods became linked with the popular legend. But so completely have the two been interwoven that the unravelling of the respective elements must ever remain an impossibility. One thing, however, is clearly discernible in the Mahá-Bhárata, that it has as its basis a war waged on the soil of Hindustán between Aryan tribes, and therefore belonging probably to a time when their settlement in India, and the subjugation and brahmanisation of the native inhabitants, had already been accomplished. But what it was that gave rise to the conflict—whether disputes as to territory, or it may be religious dissensions—cannot now be determined.—Of the Mahá-Bhárata in its extant form, only about one-fourth (some 20,000 *ślokas* or so) relates to this conflict and the myths that have been associated with it;²⁰¹ while the elements composing the remaining three-fourths do not belong to it at all, and have only the loosest possible connection therewith, as well as with each other. These later additions are of two kinds. Some are of an epic character, and are due to the endeavour to unite here, as in a single focus, all the ancient legends it was possible to muster,—and amongst them, as a matter of fact, are not a few that are tolerably antique even in respect of form. Others are of purely didactic import, and have been inserted with the view of imparting to the military caste, for which the work was mainly intended, all possible instruction as to its duties, and especially as to the reverence due to the priesthood. Even at the portion which is recognisable as the original basis—that relating to the war—many generations must have laboured before the text attained to an approximately settled shape. It is noteworthy that it is precisely in this part that repeated allusion is made to the Yavanas, Śakas, Pahlavas,201a and other peoples; and that