Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c5.15

v1.c5.15

Thus in very many points we can look for no inner consistency in either of the two great national Epics of India. In every human being, indeed, we can find a host of contradictions side by side; how much the more will they be found where so many minds have helped in the building up of one work. Both Epics bear the clearest Indian stamp; through both, too, runs one view only of the world: the Quietist view. But while this seems fairly natural to the Rāmāyaṇa, to the real stem of the Mahābhārata it is utterly strange, and has been only gradually grafted on to the mighty growth of the wild plant. The Rāmāyaṇa, indeed, is seen from the very beginning to be essentially soft, dreamy, fantastic, and deeply religious—to be a work of the Brahmans. On the other hand, the poetry of the Mahābhārata is often quickened in its older parts by a mighty flame of fire, a manly, undaunted, passionate soul: it was a warrior that sung this heroic song, whoever it may be to whom the “original Mahābhārata” may be referred. Later hands then fixed all kinds of labels on the pieces that had been preserved in greater perfection, utterly re-modelled much, inserted long pieces, and sought, well or ill, to give the whole the tendentious coating of Brahmanism. Out of a rugged epic, in which the proud warrior, boasting his strength and power, was the main, perhaps the only concern, it became the aim to glorify the priest as never before or since in the world’s literature, and at an early stage the paragon Arjuna and the wretched canting Yudhishṭhira were set in the place of Karṇa, the sun’s son, and of the mighty Duryodhana, without the result, however, of robbing the old and true heroes of all their splendour, not to speak of raising the utterly worthless favourites of the priests to the same heights.¹ Everywhere the structure of