A History of Indian Literature v1.c8.s2.163

v1.c8.s2.163

and started a theory, in order to explain their fragmentary and enigmatic character. The oldest form of epic poetry in India, he said, was a mixture of prose and verse, the speeches of the persons only being in verses, while the events connected with the speeches were narrated in prose. Originally only the verses used to be committed to memory and handed down, while the prose story was left to be narrated by every reciter in his own words. Now in the dialogue hymns of the Ṛgveda only the verse portions, containing conversations, have been preserved, while the prose portions of the narrative are lost to us. Only some of these narratives can partly be restored with the help of the Brāhmaṇas or the epic literature, or even of commentaries. Where these aids fail, nothing remains for us but to try to guess the story from the conversations. This theory seemed to be supported by the fact that not only in Indian, but also in other literatures, the mixture of prose and verse is an early form of epic poetry. It is found, for instance, in Old Irish and in Scandinavian poetry.¹ In India we find it in some narrative portions of the Brāhmaṇas and Upaniṣads, in some of the old parts of the Mahābhārata, in Buddhist literature, in the literature of fables and tales, in the drama, and again in the campū. It is true that, in all these cases the prose has been handed down together with the verses, but as the Ṛgveda is professedly the Veda of the *verses*, it was not possible to include any prose in the Saṃhitā of the Ṛgveda. And if an Ākhyāna, consisting of prose and verse, was to find a place in the Ṛgveda-Saṃhitā, the prose portion would have to be omitted. This is the theory of Oldenberg, which for a long time was almost generally accepted by scholars.