Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c18.63

v2.c18.63

² This second dice-game (anudyūta) is of course a very stupid later distortion. In a more primitive form of the Epic, or of the Epic ballad poetry the Pāṇḍavas were, indeed, freed from slavery, perhaps, too, on Draupadī's prayer, but on the condition of going off into banishment, and so they went away into the forest owing to the first game. Thus Draupadī herself relates the matter (v, 82.28), and she must know about it better than the offenders against the poem who came later. Again and again the sharper sight can see the dreadful ravages done on the holy place; often we can with certainty conclude to an older and better form, but only too often there is nothing left but painful anger at the bungling profanation of the old poetry of the Kauravas and of other Epic ballad treasures.