The Social and Military Position of the Ruling Caste in Ancient India, as Represented by the Sanskrit Epic c2.s2.14

c2.s2.14

The only basis that we have for inverting the theme of the present poem is in what Schroeder, who warmly supports the inversion-theory, calls ‡ ‘the justification of the hateful rôle evidently played by the Pāndus in the old form of the Epic, and the reproaches heaped upon the Kurus, the royal heroes of the old poem.’ Theories once started increase, as it were of their own accord, in force of statement. With each new advocate a surer color is given, whence the hypothesis gathers new strength, while the facts remain as at first. The quotation above given contains the last embodiment of a theory (now nearly forty years old) necessitating an entire inversion of the Epic story. What reason have we for believing in this ‘justification of the hateful rôle evidently played by the Pāndus?’ Do the Pāndus (relatively) play such a rôle? Does the ‘justification’ of the acts of the Pāndus require us to believe that they were first depicted as the ancestral foes of the original writer or writers? On the assumption that these points cannot be denied hangs the whole inversion-theory. From the religious point of view we have no unanimity of criticism; Schroeder considers Krishna as unitary, deified by the Pāndus, insulted by the Kurus; Holtzmann, with less probability, assumes two distinct Krishnas. The change in the human characters is the mainstay of the modern interpretation.