The Social and Military Position of the Ruling Caste in Ancient India, as Represented by the Sanskrit Epic c2.s2.24.3

c2.s2.24.3

It is this: that the Pāndus fought and conquered the Kurus, not the old Kurus in their height of renown, but the weak descendants of that race, who came long after the Dhritarāshtra of the Brahmanic period. And now what may we imagine to have followed? The priests of the Pāndus—who, as I think, wrote the poem originally on essentially the same lines as portrayed today, barring the inferior moral tone of the first version—in order to exalt the glory of the new house, made out the combat of their national heroes to have been not with the weaker man who really fell, but with the race in its early pride, supported and headed by the glory of the Dhritarāshtra of old, whose name perhaps, without his power, was really borne by this, his inferior descendant. It is not at all necessary to insist poetically on the double name. Hindu historical feeling is quite capable of simply introducing the ancient king into the new era—or, we may perhaps better say, of running the modern contest with all its appurtenances back into a remoter Vedic age. In this same spirit they also pretended that the ancient Janamejaya was the son of the modern hero: that is to say, they put back the hero into an antiquity obscure enough to father him upon Janamejaya. The older, the more venerable; the more venerable, the more glorious the contest. So, too, the eldest of the Pāndus, Yudhishthira, once called Dharma, draws about him the mantle of wisdom associated with that name from the early period;