Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c17.3

c17.3

The value of the Epics as sources of history is somewhat affected by the uncertainty of the dates of the works in their present forms and the difficulty of distinguishing the various strata contributed in different periods to these composite literary structures. According to Hopkins, "upon the original story, the *Bhārata*, have been grafted many 'secondary tales' (*upākhyāna*), and upon these, and apart from these, have been inserted whole poems of romantic, ethical, and theological character, having nothing to do with the course of the Epic itself. We must, however, remember that our Epic has been enlarged in two ways: first, by a natural expansion of matter already extant; secondly, by unnatural addition of new material. The twelfth book may serve as a type of the latter; the eighth, of the former". Hopkins's conclusion is that "even the modern Epic, the full completed work, is not as a whole unimportant in the elucidation of the customs of India in the Middle Ages, reaching back more than 2,000 years".