The Social and Military Position of the Ruling Caste in Ancient India, as Represented by the Sanskrit Epic c2.s2.31

c2.s2.31

To sum up the view that seems to me most free from objections, and least radically destructive of such tradition as does not on its face demand total unacceptance—I am inclined to think that our Epic originally described what it in general now pretends to describe, a war between the Kurus and the Pāndus united with the Pañcālas. This war occurred later than the Brahmanic literary period, but before the general acceptance of Vishnuism. Songs and ballads kept alive and popularized the history of the triumph of the Pāndus over the Kurus, who were naturally described as sinful. When the conquerors had died, and the war was already fading into history, the priests composed a metrical account of the events, incorporating the old current songs and ballads. With the steady rise of Vishnuism, and later of Çivaism, these theologies implanted themselves at the hands of the priests in the poem, crowding out for the most part the song-kept Brahmaism of the older period. With the development of morality, the priests sought to explain away the evil deeds of their heroes; for they could not with one breath exhort to virtue, and with the next extol those that disregarded their rules of virtue. But the evil deeds of their heroes' foes they allowed to remain, since these men were sinners anyway, and served as types of such. Furthermore, they ranked the exploits of their heroes higher by uniting them, now that time enough had elapsed to confuse the past, with the great heroes of antiquity, perhaps helped in their pretense by a fortuitous likeness of names. The gāthās, or songs of war-like deeds of kings, became absorbed into the itihāsa, or legendary tale, now used in its new sense of a story told per se and not as part of a religious rite. With this change, all completeness of the individual scenes vanished. The necessary links of connection became lengthened into new chains of stories. The moralizing tendency, in this weakening of the poem, now began to involve the whole tale. The work became thus on the one hand a great collection of 'various stories' grouped about the main story of 'the goodness of the Pāndus and badness of the Kurus,' and on the other a compendium, if the word be allowed, of all moral teachings; while a new religion acted on tale and moral alike, and rendered it finally the holiest of books, 'a new Veda, more weighty than all the Vedas.'*