Public Administration in Ancient India c4.15

c4.15

Weber placed the date of composition of the Rāmāyaṇa in the third or fourth century after Christ; but nobody accepts this view now. According to Prof. Jacobi, the Rāmāyaṇa was composed in Kosala on the basis of ballads recited by rhapsodists throughout that district. Prof. Rhys Davids is of opinion that the date of the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa as Epics must be later than that of the ballad literature preserved in the Nikāyas. We are inclined to think that these Epics, originally composed in the form of ākhyana poetry about the tenth or ninth century B.C. were several times enlarged and revised, until they assumed something like their present shape in the third or second century B.C. Barth rightly remarks, "the Hindu Epic is ancient, as ancient in the origin as the earliest traditions of the nation." Indian Antiquary, 1895, p. 71.