A History of Indian Literature v1.c8.s2.169

v1.c8.s2.169

The fact is, that poems like the dialogue hymns of the Ṛgveda are of frequent occurrence in Indian literature. We shall find similar semi-epic and semi-dramatic poems, consisting chiefly or entirely of dialogues or conversations, in the Mahābhārata, in the Purāṇas, and especially in Buddhist literature. (All these poems are nothing else but ancient ballads of the same kind as are found also in the literatures of many other peoples.⁴ This ancient ballad poetry is the source both of the epic and of the drama, for these ballads consist of a narrative and of a dramatic element. The epic developed from the narrative, the drama arose from the dramatic elements of the ancient ballad. These ancient Ākhyānas or ballads were not always composed entirely in verse, but sometimes an introductory or a concluding story was told in prose, and occasionally the verses were linked together by short explanations in prose. Thus it may be that in some cases there might have been a connecting prose story (as Oldenberg assumed), which, if we knew it, would make the conversations of the hymns clear. But most of these hymns are simply ballads of the half-epic, half-dramatic type, though not real dramas, as some scholars have thought them to be.