The Social and Military Position of the Ruling Caste in Ancient India, as Represented by the Sanskrit Epic c2.s3.4

c2.s3.4

But even the modern Epic, the full completed work—were we to deny to the student the chance of discriminating accurately between the bodies of material necessary to the making up of his two sketches—is not as a whole unimportant in the elucidation of the customs of India in the Middle Ages, reaching back more than two thousand years; though it may be that further study will necessitate our giving a much later date than has been assumed to much of the pseudo-Epic. Further, the impossibility of effecting a complete discrimination of old and new may make it seem to some a vain task to distinguish the factors by their age. It is true that our verdict as to which is early and which is late must in a measure be based upon purely *a priori* assumptions; while it should, where this is possible, certainly be dependent upon an intimate acquaintance with the literature preceding and following the Epic; for many of the threads of our poem are older than its present literary form, and have often been preserved as fragments caught in a substance foreign to them; while what influence, on the other hand, of other sects or other races has made itself felt in the re-weaving of the tale needs careful analysis, being yet far from determined. But a review of what the Epic tells us may, it seems to me, be serviceable in supplying facts that in turn may help the critique of the Epic itself, after these have been compared with results drawn from other sources. I have therefore collected the Epic data as positive aids to research, but as historical material would use them at present only tentatively.