The Social and Military Position of the Ruling Caste in Ancient India, as Represented by the Sanskrit Epic c2.s2.24.1

c2.s2.24.1

So it seems to me that the ethical sense of a subsequent age might have worked upon the legends it received. Not the inversion of the story and of the characters was, perhaps, the aim of the later poets. They only, as I think, blurred the picture where it was too suggestive of evil in should-be types of holiness. But if we accept the inversion-theory, we shall believe that the Pāndus and their partisans, the priests of Vishnu, took a poem that was written to defame the Pāndus and Vishnu, and wrote it over again as to represent these as perfect. Such is the opinion of scholars justly eminent in criticism of the Epic and in Sanskrit scholarship. As to what basis this theory rests upon enough has been said. We owe all our constructive criticism as well as destructive in this line to Holtzmann; and it is necessary to say that, in suggesting other possibilities than those advocated by him, one only re-builds the material that he has furnished. But supposing it were possible that our present Epic is the legitimate continuation of an original theme, and not a total inversion of it, let us look at the conditions under which it might have arisen. It would not be necessary to reject the supposition of a Pāndu-Panchāla alliance against the Kurus; but there would be no reason for supposing the war essentially Panchāla's, with the Pāndus added as adventitious adherents of that older royal family.