The Social and Military Position of the Ruling Caste in Ancient India, as Represented by the Sanskrit Epic c2.s5.703

c2.s5.703

The forward knight that has penetrated the veil of priestly wisdom learns with awe the secret of the Trinity, of the One All-God. To the mass, to the vulgar, this is mere words. The gods of old are but shadows. ‘The god for a warrior is his bow and arrow’ (iii. 313. 51 ff.). Owing to this decadence of the old supernatural power, and the not yet thoroughly diffused knowledge of the new faith—for the heroes of the Epic are not so much devout believers as sudden and still inquiring converts—the poem is left in a strangely unreligious condition, so far as the mass of warriors is concerned. The war is intensely human. No convenient gods and goddesses play with their mortal protégés. Each fighter contends supported indeed by a religious hope of reaching Indra’s heaven; but there is no Indra to intervene and save him. In this regard there is a marked difference between the Greek and Hindu Epic. Skanda is an impartial abstraction of martial fury. Vishnu is not a god that affects the army; he is, so to speak, a private god of the Pāndus, more particularly of Arjuna. The outsiders are left to their own valor. Each falls alone; no god watches him; no goddess shrouds him in a mist. Duty and Death and Indra far away—these are their gods. All others are but names. ‘With all the gods’ the boasting knight is not afraid to contend; to him they are unreal; to him even the new god is but a myth of fancy. If he accepts that god and knows him, he has by that acceptance done away with gods; if he rejects him, he has but the shades of gods no longer real. The knight’s acts are his own; his reward is his own making; his sin is self-punished. Fate, or the embrace of Death; Duty, or to follow the paths of custom—these are his only moral obligation. His supernatural is understood too little to be true; or it is debased to incantation and witchcraft. The knight of our present poem stands on the border-land between two faiths. He presents a poetic figure unparalleled in Epic poetry. For that very reason, he gains upon the human side.*