LECTURE I

THE MAHĀBHĀRATA AND ITS CRITICS

Durvijñeyam ataḥ sarvair
Bhāratam tu surair api.
— Ānandagīrtha, Mbh. T. N. 2.149

"The Mahābhārata," wrote Hermann Oldenberg, "began its existence as a simple epic narrative. It became, in course of centuries, the most monstrous chaos."

A forceful and imaginative writer, Oldenberg has drawn for us a vivid pen-picture of this chaotic epic or epic chaos, as it appeared to him, which is worth quoting in extenso as a piece of fine rhetoric:

" Neben der Haupterzählung gab es dort wahre Urwälder
kleinerer Erzählungen, dazu zahllose und endlose Belehrungen
über Theologisches, Philosophisches, Naturwissenschaftliches,
Recht, Politik, Lebensweisheit und Lebensklugheit. Ein
Gedicht voll tiefsinnigen Träumens und Ahnens, zarter Poesie,
schulmeisterlicher Plattheit — voll von funkelndem Farbenspiel,
erdrückenden, sich zerdrückenden Massen von Bildern, vom
Pfeilregen endloser Kämpfe, Gewimmel über Gewimmel todes-
verachtender Helden, übertugendlicher Mustermenschen, be-
rückend schöner Frauen, jähzorniger Asketen, abenteuerlicher
Fabelwesen, toller Mirakel — von leerem Wortschwall und
von weiten, freien Blicken in die Ordnungen des Weltlaufes."

This quizzical verdict of the great German Indologist — a veritable prodigy of industry and erudition — appears indeed to be justified. Our poem, though commonly called the Great Epic of India, does not fulfil very completely Matthew ARNOLD's postulate that "the subject of the epic poem must be some one great complex action." There are indeed noticeable, winding in and out of the capacious and multitudinous folds of this prodigious and remarkable tapestry, unmistakable traces of some great and complex action. But on account of the mass of legends and disquisitions in which the main theme lies embedded, it is difficult to make out even the main outlines of the story underlying the action. "Swollen by these inventions," as one sympathetic critic of the Mahābhārata touchingly protests, "the portentous volumes are enough to damp the spirit of the most ardent who, starting off gaily upon their journey, are soon faced by the deserts of Levitical doctrine and the morasses of primitive speculation, interesting only to the antiquarian." Owing to these digressions, which seem to have grown like a malignant parasite on the original heroic story and which do in a sense hamper the free movement of the great drama, the poem appears not only to lose in artistic value but to be even lacking in bare unity.

Even such an ardent and passionate admirer of the Mahābhārata as Romesh Chunder DUTT felt constrained to admit this defect in the poem, and bemoan most eloquently the loss of the original primitive epic. He has told us how he pictured to himself the lamentable process of this progressive deterioration. "The epic," he wrote (1898), "became so popular that it went on growing with the growth of centuries. Every generation of poets had something to add; every distant nation in Northern India was anxious to interpolate some account of its deeds in the old record of the international war; every preacher of a new creed desired to have in the old Epic some sanction for the new truths he inculcated. Passages from legal and moral codes were incorporated in the work which appealed to the nation much more effectively than dry codes; and rules about the different castes and about the different stages of the human life were included for the same purpose. All the floating mass of tales, traditions, legends, and myths.... found a shelter under the expanding wings of this wonderful Epic; and as Krishna worship became the prevailing religion of India after the decay of Buddhism, the old Epic caught the complexion of the times, and Krishna-cult is its dominating religious idea in its present shape. It is thus that the work went on growing for a thousand years after it was first compiled and put together in the form of an Epic; until the crystal rill of the Epic itself was all but lost in an unending morass of religious and didactic episodes, legends, tales and traditions."

He was however by no means utterly pessimistic. For he subsequently adds that "although the old Epic has thus been spoilt by unlimited expansion, yet nevertheless the leading incidents and characters of the real Epic are still discernible, uninjured by the mass of foreign substance in which they are embedded — even like those immortal marble figures which have been recovered from the ruins of an ancient world, and now beautify the museums of modern Europe."

In that last sentence we have the key-note of Dutt's ideology. Dutt, evidently fascinated by the artistic products of Classical Greece, with its well-modelled and astonishingly beautiful specimens of plastic art and the form-perfect creations of the epic Muse, was unconsciously applying Greek standards to an Indian composition — at best a hazardous procedure — not realizing the essential difference between the Indian and the Greek ideals. With the Greeks the dominant passion was the conscious quest of ideal beauty: with the Indians it has invariably been the quest of ideal life.

Dutt's violent distaste for the didactic and episodical portions of the poem, which he regarded as encumbrances, led him to condense our great epic. In the now famous and deservedly popular rendering of the Mahābhārata prepared by him in 1898, he has given a full and unabridged translation into English verse of the main and striking incidents of the epic, these pieces being linked together by short connecting notes, which together present the story to the modern reader "in a form and within limits which might be acceptable." In this way Dutt has tried apologetically to insinuate the fertilizing waters of the tempestuous torrent of our national epic poetry, by means of a neat little modern concrete canal, into the stream of world literature.

OLDENBERG had always contended that the "original" of the Mahābhārata was composed of short poetical pieces joined together by connecting links in prose. It is not unlikely that Romesh Dutt, starting with a similar idea, had imagined that in his English rendering of our poem he had arrived at the form of the epic as it was originally put together, some centuries before the Christian era, before it was "spoilt" by moralizing and sectarian Brahmin interpolators.

If Romesh Dutt, a thoroughbred "native" of India with just a thin veneer of Western culture, had after a life-long study of the epic failed to grasp the real significance of what he elsewhere describes as "the greatest work of imagination that Asia has produced" — he might even have said, with some justification, that the world has produced — there is nothing strange in the circumstance that most of the Western critics have likewise failed to do so. They have uniformly felt and exhibited a characteristic uneasiness — I may even say helplessness — when faced with the — to them, unnatural — phenomenon of an avowedly narrative poem in which the "moral", so to say, is nearly four times as long as the story itself. Their researches have, consequently, revolved almost invariably round the idea of finding criteria for distinguishing between the "early" and the "late" portions of the epic, between the original and the interpolation, criteria for cutting away what they naturally regard as the asphyxiating parasite and exposing the old primitive saga in its pristine purity and glory.

This definitive direction seems to have been given to Western studies in connection with the Mahābhārata almost from the beginning. Franz Bopp, the Father of Indo-germanic Philology, (who was also the first in modern times to edit from manuscripts selected episodes from the Mahābhārata and make them available in a printed form,) had expressed his opinion as early as 1829 — now more than a century ago — that all parts of the epic were not of the same age, — which is in a way no doubt quite true.

BOPP was closely followed by that encyclopaedic writer Christian LASSEN, who was the first European scholar to submit the Mahābhārata to a complete analysis and with whom the modern critical study of the epic may be said to have begun. As a result of his erudite researches, this versatile scholar, endorsing the conclusions of BOPP, expressed his conviction that in the Mahābhārata we have pieces belonging to very different periods and of very different colour and content. He tried therefore to separate the various strata and to date them — a very hazardous venture at any time. His conclusions may be summarized thus. The recitation of the Mahābhārata at the sacrifice of Saunaka must be understood to be the second recension of the poem. This recension is the one referred to in the Gṛhya Sūtra of Āśvalāyana (3.4.4), whom LASSEN places — quite hypothetically of course — about 350 B.C. Now as this Āśvalāyana was the direct disciple of Saunaka (identified by LASSEN without any further proof with the Kulapati Saunaka of the epic story), the second recension of the Mahābhārata must have been made about 460 or 400 B.C. Since that time, LASSEN held, the only additions made to the poem were of a "Krishnite" character. Eliminating these, we may accept the work on the whole as a monument of pre-Buddhist India. To us these stratificatory adventures and chronological speculations of LASSEN appear crude and puerile in the extreme; they were taken very seriously by his contemporaries, and regarded as a stupendous advance in their knowledge of the Great Epic of India. Owing to his very perfunctory study of this prodigious poem, the learned author of the Indische Alterthumskunde had failed to realize that eliminating the "Krishnite" elements from our Mahābhārata was a not less serious operation than removing all the vital elements from the body of a living organism; and that consequently the residue would no more represent the "original" heroic poem than a mangled cadavre, lacking the vital elements, would represent the organism in its origin or infancy.

Another notable attempt at reconstructing the original epic was made between 1883 and 1894 by the Scandinavian scholar Sören Sörensen, to whom we also owe the excellent Index to the Names in the Mahābhārata (London 1904-1925), a solid contribution to Mahābhārata studies, indispensable to every serious student of the Great Epic. His attempts at reconstruction of the epic kernel have unfortunately not proved equally valuable. He starts with the very innocuous assumption that in its oldest form the Mahābhārata must have been a saga. That being granted, the unity of the main story shows that it was the creation of a single mind: which is also a very reasonable assumption. In the original poem, therefore, Sörensen argues, there could be no contradiction, repetition or digression — anything, in fact, which would mar its unity and homogeneity. These were some of the leading ideas underlying his reconstruction of the Ur-Mahābhārata. Rejecting accordingly from the Vulgate text everything that appeared to him like an episode or a didactic digression, he obtained at first an edition of some 27,000 stanzas. But even this extract, he thought, included materials belonging to different epochs. He therefore proceeded to deduct from this trituration immense blocks of the text which appeared to him to betray their character as interpolations by the fact that they contained a mention of persons or things of a modern date. This second attenuation rendered the epic to a concentrated essence of some seven or eight thousand stanzas, which seems to have satisfied the soul of Sörensen. Is there not somewhere a mention of 8800 ślokas of an enigmatic character, which Vyāsa knew and Suka knew and which Sānjaya may or may not have known? The number of stanzas in Sörensen's "Ur-text" is strangely close to the so-called "kūtaślokas" mentioned in an oft-cited stanza which is a patent interpolation found in some very late Devanagari manuscripts and which has consequently been rejected in the Critical Edition of the Mahābhārata. Was Sörensen perhaps unconsciously influenced in his computations by this fictitious figure? It is difficult to say.

In any case, Auguste Barth, a keen student of Indian religious literature and withal an impartial and outspoken critic, after careful consideration of the arguments advanced by SÖRENSEN in support of his thesis, was constrained to pass on it a verdict which may be regarded as final: "le méthode de l'auteur, malgré toutes le précautions possible, est arbitraire et ...... le problème tel qu'il le pose, est en réalité insoluble." Yes, it may safely be added to the list of insoluble problems.

SÖRENSEN's attempt at establishing the Ur-text of the Mahābhārata stands by itself, and the experiment was, as far as I know, never repeated. Instead, European scholars contented themselves with theorizing about the nature and the character of the "nucleus" and perfecting their criteria for distinguishing between the "old" and the "new," the original and the spurious in the epic text. Special attention, wrote (1896) the Vedic scholar LUDWIG, must be given to the way in which the various episodes have been joined together, whether they have been welded into a harmonious whole or whether they have been pieced together clumsily. The critic must be on the look-out for "misconceived links," "striking laboriousness," "absolute superfluity," "repetion of the theme," "unnatural and farfetched motivation," "incongruity between the explanation and the matter to be explained," and so on and so forth. These are all sure indications of unoriginality and interpolation. The critic must further study closely the metre, language and style. A sudden change in any of these is thoroughly suspicious and calls for special inquiry. As a result of such a thorough-going examination, we may hope to distinguish confidently the different strata and analyse the poem correctly into its components. Notwithstanding the high-sounding phrases in which it is couched, it is easy to see that even this critique cannot give absolutely certain and dependable results, it being merely the exploitation of individual opinion, which selects what pleases it and rejects, on insufficient evidence, what is incompatible with a preconceived subjective scheme.

This atomistic method reaches its culmination in the researches of the great American Indologist E. Washburn HOPKINS, who had specialized in the Mahābhārata and who, as a result of an intensive study of the epic extending over many years, made the interesting discovery that there was no text there at all. He could see only a nebulous mass of incongruities, absurdities, contradictions, anachronisms, accretions and interpolations! "In what shape," asks HOPKINS, "has epic poetry (in India) come down to us?" And his own answer is:

"A text that is no text (italics mine), enlarged and altered in every recension, chapter after chapter recognized even by native commentaries as prakṣipta, in a land without historical sense or care for the preservation of popular monuments, where no check was put on any reciter or copyist who might add what beauties or polish what parts he would, where it was a merit to add a glory to the pet god, where every popular poem was handled freely and is so to this day."

Seeing that despite his categorical denial of the existence of a text, he has on his hands a corpus of some 200,000 verses, which is about eight times the size of the Iliad and the Odyssey put together and which the Indian people have persisted during the last two thousand years in calling their national epic, HOPKINS moots the question when this curious text — which is no text — could have been composed. To this question he could give only a cryptic answer, reminding us of the wise pronouncements of the Delphic oracle. The time of the present Mahābhārata, writes HOPKINS, was one "when the sixty-four kalās were known, when continuous iambic pādas were written, when the latest systems of philosophy were recognized, when the trimūrti was acknowledged, when there were one hundred and one Yajur Veda schools, when the sun was called Mihira, when Greek words had become familiar, and the Greeks were known as wise men, when the eighteen islands and eighteen Purāṇas were known, when was known the whole literature down to grammars, commentaries, Dharmaçāstras, granthas, pustakas, written Vedas, and complete MSS. of the Mahābhārata including the Harivañca."

This rigmarole is just his special way of proving the lack of unity in the epic and its late date. The learned labours of HOPKINS ultimately crystallized in the preparation of a complicated table of approximate dates of the work in its different stages, which he probably regarded as his greatest contribution to the study of the epic and the final solution of the Mahābhārata Problem. Here is the scheme of dates rigged up by HOPKINS :

400 B.C. : Bhārata (Kuru) lays, perhaps combined into one, but with no evidence of an epic.

400 to 200 B.C. : A Mahābhārata tale with Pāṇḍu heroes, lays and legends combined by the Puranic diaskeuast; Kṛṣṇa as a demigod; no evidence of didactic form or of Kṛṣṇa's divine supremacy.

200 B.C. to 200 A.D. : Remaking of the epic with Kṛṣṇa as all-god, intrusion of masses of didactic matter, addition of Puranic material old and new; multiplication of exploits.

200 to 400 A.D. : The last books added with the introduction to the first book, the swollen Anuśāsana separated from Śānti and recognized as a separate book; and finally,

400 A.D. + : Occasional amplifications.

Without wishing to detract from the merits of the work done by HOPKINS in other fields, which may have its own value, I will say candidly that for all intents and purposes this pretentious table is as good as useless, — as it was indeed bound to be. ("All dates," says WHITNEY, "given in Indian literary history are pins set up to be bowled down again." This was never more true than in the case of the dates given by HOPKINS, which are in fact, one and all, quite hypothetical and perfectly arbitrary.) Indeed there is not one figure or one statement in the above table which can be verified or which can lay claims to objective validity.

Let me state here more fully, for the sake of clarity, the view-point of the modern analytical criticism of the Mahābhārata. (Modern criticism begins with the assumption that the epic is definitely not the work of any one poet, like most works of antiquity. No one can write unaided a poem of 100,000 stanzas. We cannot possibly conceive any one man being equal to the task attributed to the supposed author of the epic, Kṛṣṇa Dvaipāyana Vyāsa. The poem is, therefore, unquestionably a compilation, embodying the work of many writers of varying abilities—some of them even real poets—who have added to the original corpus from time to time as it pleased them. The result is naturally a confused assemblage of heterogenous matter originating from different hands and belonging to different strata. [A careful analysis of the poem from this view-point reveals the fact that in its present form at least, the work has a radical defect in so far as it consists fundamentally of two mutually incompatible elements, namely, a certain "epic nucleus" and an extensive and undigested mass of didactic-episodical matter, elements which are but loosely hinged together and which form moreover an unbalanced combination. The first element, the epic nucleus, is naturally the older component and is presumably based on an historical reality, which is preserved in a highly distorted and tendentious form but which retains nevertheless certain genuine archaic features in fossilized condition such as polyandry and levirate, which latter are of immense interest and importance for the study of Indian ethnology and prehistoric antiquity. The nucleus mentioned above was now unfortunately used—or rather misused—by wily priests, tedious moralists and dogmatizing lawyers as a convenient peg on which to hang their didactic discourses and sacerdotal legends, which have naturally no organic connection with the epic nucleus. This nucleus of the epic, a Kṣatriya tale of love and war, does possess a sort of unity, which is lacking entirely in the other element, the priestly episodes and the moralizing discourses, which latter by themselves, loosened from their moorings, would neatly and automatically fall apart. The epic story is in part at least a fairly well-constructed narrative, worthy of our attention, and produces the impression of having been yet more virile—a real "human document"—before it was distorted in the process of assimilation with the moralistic pabulum and legal claptrap of a grasping and degenerate priesthood. The Mahābhārata is in short a veritable chaos, containing some good and much useless matter. It is a great pity that a fine heroic poem, which may even be found to contain precious germs of ancient Indian history, should have been thus ruined by its careless custodians. But it is not quite beyond redemption. A skilful surgical operation — technically called "Higher Criticism" — could still disentangle the submerged "epic core" from the adventitious matter — known to textual critics as "Interpolation" — in which it lies embedded. The Mahābhārata Problem thus reduces itself to the discovery of criteria which will enable us to analyse the poem and to dissect out the "epic nucleus" from the spurious additions with which it is deeply incrusted. This is the "Analytical Theory" of the origin and the character of the Mahābhārata, which was espoused by the majority of the Western critics of the Great Epic of India, chief among them being LASSEN, WEBBER, LUDWIG, SÖRENSEN, HOPKINS and WINTERNITZ.

This theory is obviously the outcome of superficial study. The epic at first sight does produce upon a casual observer the impression of being a bizarre and meaningless accumulation of heterogeneous elements. This first impression, however,—as has been pointed out by HELD—soon makes room for a second, that of astonishment, as one realizes that this massive monument of Indian antiquity may undoubtedly lay claim to being more or less flawless from the constructional view-point and withal perfectly balanced. This fact appears to have been clearly realized also by LUDWIG, himself an ardent advocate of the atomistic theory, who was honest enough to admit the organic unity of this stupendous poem. Notwithstanding his preconceptions, which led him to support the analytic theory, he confessed openly his inability to explain how, in spite of the extreme complicacies of mechanism, it operated in a manner so precise that no crass contradictions were discernible in this prodigious work, there being at most only vague traces here and there of what might be regarded as such.

But that is not the end of the story. There is another little odd twist in the poem, we are told : a subtle sort of topsy-turvydom underlying the story and vitiating it from beginning to end. The poem has obviously a didactic purpose. It sets out clearly to inculcate a moral. Its method is to contrast the life and fate of the righteous Pāṇḍavas and the urighteous Kauravas, and to induce people to lead a good and virtuous life by demonstrating that, in spite of appearances to the contrary, truth and virtue do triumph in the end (yato dharmas tato jayah). This is undoubtedly a very laudable objective. And yet even this simple and clear aim is scarcely achieved by the poem. The characters do not consistently act the parts which they are advertised to do. The "heroes" of the poem are indeed constantly talking about Dharma, but their actions belie their hollow professions and do not conform even to the most elementary standards of common morality. They are not real heroes, with pure white shining souls. They give one the impression rather of being "villains," who have been liberally whitewashed by interested poets.

Observe how these "righteous" Pāṇḍavas, the supposed souls of Dharma, are able to win the war only by Adharma, by a series of frauds or at least by some very shabby and unchivalrous acts, which no right-thinking person would hesitate to condemn. For instance, our "hero" Yudhiṣṭhira, the so-called Dharmarāja, when prompted by his less scrupulous advisers, yields, in spite of his much advertised righteousness, to the temptation of telling, at a very critical stage of the battle, a barefaced lie, knowing full well that his mendacious statement would be believed by his opponent and would inevitably bring about the untimely death of his own revered preceptor, to whom he pretends to be deeply attached and who — according to theory — has indisputable claims on his unswerving homage and allegiance.

Take another instance. The blustering and boastful Bhīma deals Duryodhana, while engaged in a mortal combat with him, an admittedly foul blow, breaking his thighs and incapacitating him, quite against the rules of the game, which his chivalrous opponent rigidly observes. This is a very cowardly and barbarous act, which reflects no credit on our hero or his advisers, but on the contrary shows them up in their true colours, condemning them in our eyes as treacherous hooligans.

And, finally, even the noble and god-like Arjuna, the special friend and protégé of Bhagavān Śrī Kṛṣṇa, is far from being an example of the "verray parfitt gentle Knight." He is guilty of killing in cold blood the venerable Bhīṣma, the grandsire of the Kurus, shooting at him while hiding behind another effeminate warrior with whom the old knight could not fight, and thus screening himself, like a coward, from retaliation by his stalwart opponent. Again while fighting with the truly noble Karna in a single combat, Arjuna shoots and kills his honourable rival when the latter is at a disadvantage and is humbly pleading for time. Vain is the plea of Sri Krsna that Karna, having behaved meanly before, had forfeited the right of equitable treatment and could not now appeal for justice or mercy. Two wrongs do not make a right. Can we regard these Pandava brothers as models of heroism, chivalry, nobility or righteousness?

The Kauravas on the other hand unquestionably behave more honourably and on the whole more magnanimously. They never stoop to employ such base and ignominious tricks on the battlefield against their enemies. They are manly, courageous, chivalrous and noble. These great scions of an old aristocratic family could play more worthily the distinguished rôle of the heroes of the Indian epopee than the treacherous and sanctimonious Pandavas, who show themselves to have been in reality ignoble parvenus and usurpers, glorified by a later generation. The poem itself naively records that at the moment of Duryodhana's death, though the ungenerous and brutal Bhima was mean enough to kick and trample on the anointed head of the fallen monarch, the gods themselves showered flowers on the defeated hero. And this Duryodhana is now the villain of the piece! It is unnecessary to multiply examples.

Here is a paradox. The book gives itself out as a dharma-grantha. With uplifted arms, we are told, Vyasa proclaims that Dharma is supreme in this world. But that is a high ideal which even his characters — his own creations — do not fulfil!

The above are just a few examples of an inherent contradiction subsisting between the story and the "moral" sought to be inculcated in the epic in its present form. The poem does contain explanations condoning the "Sins" of the Pandavas. But that is special pleading, sheer casuistry, which fails to carry conviction to any but the most simple-minded of the readers.

The talented discoverer of this set of facts was Adolf HOLTZMANN. It was to explain this element of contradiction in the story that he thought out his ingenious theory, which Hopkins later styled the "Inversion Theory" and which found many adherents. This criticism, which bases itself on the supposed want of unity in the characters, is an effort to prove not merely a change but a complete inversion (in our present story) of the original theme, which explains its name "Inversion Theory." "Starting with the two-fold nature of Krishna-Vishnu as man and god," as Hopkins says in describing the theory, "and with the glossed-over sins of the Pandus, the critic argues that the first poem was written for the glory of the Kurus, and subsequently tampered with to magnify the Pandus; and that in this latter from we have our present Epic, dating from before the fourth century B.C." The first poem would thus be completely changed, or, as one writer has expressed it "set upon its head."

The indefatigable author of this theory, who had taken immense pains to study the epic from various angles in search of arguments to support and fortify his pet thesis, ultimately arrived at the following recondite reconstruction of the epic, as summarized by Held: "Right back in the most ancient times there was a guild of court-singers who extolled in their professional poetry the mighty deeds of their monarchs. Then came a talented poet who made of the original epic, composed in honour of the renowned race of the Kauravas, a poem in praise of a great Buddhist ruler, perhaps Aśoka. But now the new teaching, coming into conflict with the growing pretensions of the Brahmins, begins to decline, and the priests convert the now popular poem to their own use, but reverse the original purpose of the work as a whole. Now it is no longer the Kauravas who are lauded but their very adversaries, the Pāṇḍavas, to whom a decided predilection for the Brahmanical doctrine is ascribed. The epic is subjected to further revision. Buddhism is eliminated altogether, both Vishnu and Krishna are thrust into the foreground, the Epic is assimilated to the

ancient and sacred chronicles of the Purāṇas and portions of a didactic character are interpolated. And in this revised and irreconguisably altered recension the Epic was non-existent until the twelfth century A.D."

These wild aberrations of HOLTZMANN, which hardly deserve the name of a theory that is commonly applied to it, have now little more than an antiquarian interest. They are, as was pointed out by BARTH, not only at variance with the probable course of the religious and literary history of India, but they also stand in crass contradiction with positive and dated facts. The latter relation was brought out especially by the quite independent investigations of BÜHLER regarding the Mahābhārata, which were more of a factitive character and which clearly showed that there were no indications of any important additions having been made to the epic after the eleventh century. Furthermore, as BÜHLER showed, already in the eighth century the poem must have had a form not very different from the one in which we now possess it, namely, as a Dharmaśāstra or a Smṛti work, that is, a book of sacred lore. The epigraphic evidence, moreover, clearly proved that the epic was known as early as the fifth century A.D. as a work consisting of 100,000 stanzas and composed by the great Ṛṣi Vyāsa. From this clear and unequivocal evidence, BÜHLER drew the important conclusion that the work must unquestionably have been extant in practically the same shape as at present, several centuries prior to 400 A.D. This momentous finding of BÜHLER demolished completely the rickety chronological framework of HOLTZMANN'S fantastic reconstruction and made it clear that the historical background of the thesis was, fundamentally, as unsound as it was absurd.)

HOLTZMANN'S theory found, however, a doughty champion in the Viennese Professor Leopold von SCHROEDER, who by pruning away the more patent absurdities set it once more on its legs, and even popularized it through the persuasive quality of his felicitous style and suave mannerism. SCHROEDER'S exposition of the original theory appealed to those scholars who were impressed by HOLTZMANN'S novel demonstration of an unsuspected element of contradiction in the very plot of the epic, but who were not prepared to give their assent to all the fatuous eccentricities of the author of the original theory. In the new theory Aśoka was banished, and the conflict between Buddhism and Brahmanism was discreetly thrust in the background. The inversion theme, which was the pivot of the whole theory, was naturally retained and strengthened.

Remodelled by the genial Schroeder, the Inversion Theory took the following shape, as described by Hopkins:

"The original poet ... lived at a time when Brahmā was the highest god (700 to 500 or 400 B.C.); and this singer was a child of the Kuru-land. He heard reports of the celebrated Kuru race that once reigned in his land, but had been destroyed by the dishonourable fighting of a strange race of invaders. This tragic overthrow he depicted in such a way as to make his native heroes models of knightly virtue, while he painted the victors (Pāndus, Panchālas, Matsyas), with Krishna, hero of the Yādavas, at their head, as ignoble and shamefully victorious. This is the old Bhārata song mentioned in Açvalayana. After a time Krishna became a god, and his priests, supported by the Pāndus, sought to make Krishna (Vishnu) worthy to be set against Buddha. Their exertions were successful. Vishnu in the fourth century became the great god, and his grateful priests rewarded their helpers, the Pāndus, by taking the Bhārata poem in hand and making a complete change in the story, so as to relieve them of the reproaches of the old poet. Finally they worked it into such shape that it praised the Pāndus and blamed their opponents. About this time they inserted all the episodes that glorify Vishnu as the highest god. The Pāndus then pretended that they had originally belonged to the Kuru stock, and the cousinship portrayed in the poem was invented; whereas they were really an alien, probably a southern race."

This ill-conceived theory, though advocated by Lassen, Winternitz and J. J. Meyer, has been discountenanced, for different reasons, by even Barth, Sylvain Lévi, Pischel, Jacobi, Oldenberg, and Hopkins. It has thus been condemned by scholars justly eminent in criticism of the epic and in Sanskrit scholarship. The only reason that has been adduced in support of it, as has already been indicated, is the alleged justification of the hateful rôle said to have been played by the Pāṇḍavas in the old form of the epic and the reproaches heaped upon the Kauravas, the royal heroes of the old poem. The protagonists of this theory want us, in other words, to believe that the Pāṇḍavas and their partisans, the priests of Viṣṇu, took a poem that was written to defame the Pāṇḍavas and Viṣṇu, and written over again so as to represent them as perfect.

In canvassing our support to the inversion theme, HOLTZMANN, like a dextrous juggler, manipulating his material in an adroit manner, manages to show us all the time only one side of the shield, never letting us see the other side at all. It is indeed true that the Pāṇḍavas make themselves guilty of some slight breaches of pugilistic conventions in the course of the long drawn out and bitter war of annihilation fought out on the plains of Kurukṣetra. Bhīṣma, Droṇa, Karṇa and Duryodhana were all killed in the war by subterfuges or tricks which violate the strict code of chivalrous and knightly combats. But the Kauravas are just as unscrupulous, if not indeed more so; only they are discreet and diplomatic in the extreme. Their "sins," as HOPKINS has pointed out, smack of cultivated wickedness. They secretly try to burn their enemies alive. They seek to waylay and kill the ambassador of the Pāṇḍavas. They form a conspiracy and send out ten men under oath (Saṁśaptakas) to attack Arjuna. They slay Arjuna's son first in order to weaken Arjuna's heart. Are these dark deeds worthy of models of royal and knightly honour? The truth is that the Kauravas are crafty and designing; they are shrewd enough not to break the smaller laws of propriety. They plot in secret, hiding their deceitfulness under an ostentatious cloak of justice and benevolence. They sin at heart, and present to the world a smiling and virtuous face. The Pāṇḍavas are on the other hand represented throughout as being truly ingenuous and guileless. They do "sin": they are human for that. But their "sins" are palpably overt and markedly evident. The Kauravas are sanctimonious hypocrites; the wrath and animosity of the grossly outraged Pāṇḍavas stare us in the face.

The contrast is well marked and clearly intended. "The sociological data of the epic period," says HOPKINS in commenting on this aspect of the argument, "show that society had advanced from a period when rude manners were justifiable and tricks were considered worthy of a warrior to one when a finer morality had begun to temper the crude royal and military spirit. This is sufficient explanation of that historical anomaly found in the Great Epic, the endeavour on the part of the priestly redactors to palliate and excuse the sins of their heroes." An earlier age, according to HOPKINS, allowed what a later condemned. He, therefore, concludes that two types of civilization are embalmed in the poem. "Those same priests who framed the fighting code," remarks HOPKINS in another place, "and endeavoured to implant in the brutal warrior kings a moral, not to say a chivalrous sentiment, might have been swayed by two opposing desires in handing down their own national epic. They accordingly appear to have retained all the old excesses and barbarities, and expended their ingenuity in exonerating their royal patrons, the Pāṇḍavas, by casuistical excuses and facile constructions."

HELD has rightly rejected this specious explanation of HOPKINS, pointing out that there is no reason to picture to ourselves those more primitive cultures as a barbarian state of society in which "brutal warrior kings" were rampant. There is as a matter of fact no question here at all of the embalming of different types of civilization, as imagined by HOPKINS. It is very evident that most of the critical situations of this epic drama are the result of free invention by the poets inspired by a definite purpose that has remained hidden from HOPKINS and other critics of his school of thought. HOPKINS was justified in suspecting that the solution of the Mahābhārata Problem offered by HOLTZMANN and SCHROEDER was unsound, if not 'absolutely perverse'; but the reasons he adduced for the rejection of the Inversion Theory are themselves not cogent.

In laying undue emphasis on the different periods of civilization, HOPKINS has entirely missed the point of the narrative. The contrast depicted in the poem, as any person gifted with common sense can see, is not the fortuitous outcome of the fusion of different epochs of civilization, but is clearly intended by the author or authors of the poem to portray different aspects of the human personality, to visualize the different types of the subtle psyche of man. The characterization of the Kauravas especially is obviously designed to clarify by vivid projection the acute contrast between the "Inner Man" and the "Outer Man." And these two old neighbours are not creatures peculiar to any definite epoch or any particular country. They are international characters. Nay, they are universal. They have lived side by side at all times and in all climes. They are as active and potent today as they were in the time of the Mahābhārata and even before that, in pre-historic times. How the didactic interludes of the poem are woven into the fabric of the tale and what their raison d'être is will be explained in the sequel. But it would not be inappropriate to point out even at this stage — though I am anticipating somewhat — that the main interest of the epic is held and centred precisely on the subtle interplay of personality, on the disparity and conflict between the "Inner Man" and the "Outer Man", in other words, on happenings hidden from the outside world in the very soul of man. And it is just this factor which gives this immortal book a lasting value and interest in the eyes of every thoughtful inquirer into the mysteries of life, placing it on a level with the greatest works of fiction and drama of all times.

The atomistic methods of the advanced critics of the Mahābhārata having proved barren of any useful or intelligent result, some attempt was made to understand the poem as a whole. The most notable of these legitimate endeavours was that of Joseph DAHLMANN; and as such it deserves special recognition. A certain underlying unity of aim and plan in this gigantic work was postulated and dogmatically emphasized by this great Jesuit scholar, who of all the foreign critics of the Mahābhārata may be said to approach nearest to any real understanding of the Great Epic of India. He propounded a view of the origin and character of the Mahābhārata which HOPKINS dubbed as the "Synthetic Theory." This theory categorically repudiates as utterly fantastic the modern notion that the Great Epic is but a haphazard compilation of disjointed and incoherent units. It insists on the other hand — as the name of the theory already suggests — that the Mahābhārata is primarily a synthesis, a synthesis of all the various aspects of Law, in the widest sense of the term, covered by the Indian conception of Dharma, cast by a master intellect into the alluring shape of a story, of an epic. In other words, the Mahābhārata is an epic and a law-book (Rechtsbuch) in one. There is thus no question whatsoever of an "epic core" that had become gradually incrusted with didactic accretions, an idea which is nothing more than a phantasy, just an obsession of the modern critic. The poem is, as Indian tradition has always implied, a conscious product of literary art (kāvya) of the highest order, with a pronounced unity of conception, aim, and treatment. It is not in any, sense the work of generations of poets, but the work of a single "diaskeuast", who has welded various existing elements into a single organic whole and produced an epic that more or less satisfied the requirements of a definite structural unity.

It was extremely daring on the part of the author of this theory to formulate and openly advocate a radical view-point like this in conscious and determined opposition to the prevailing theories regarding the character and origin of the Great Epic of India. He was challenging the almost unanimous verdict of self-styled authorities on the subject of the Mahābhārata. Undismayed by the barrage of hostile and even mocking criticism which greeted his first work on the subject, Das Mahābhārata als Epos und Rechtsbuch. (1895), he continued his labours, defending his favourite thesis again, with great eloquence and enthusiasm, in a second volume, Genesis des Mahābhārata (1899), which met with no better reception at the hands of his intolerant and opinionated colleagues, who would not be convinced.

In these earnest and thought-provoking books, DAHLMANN has shown, on the basis of well selected and convincing examples, that the relation between the narrative and the didactic matter in our epic was definitely not of a casual character, but was intentional and purposive, concluding therefrom that it was impossible to separate the two elements without destroy- ing or mutilating the poem; just as one cannot separate the textile fabric of a tapestry from the picture it depicts without defacing and injuring the tapestry. And this demonstration is the most valuable part of the work of DAHLMANN. The didactic matter of the epic, DAHLMANN insisted, was a necessary — nay, an essential — element of the poem, of which the fable itself was in fact largely invented just for the purpose of illustrating certain well defined maxims of law, certain legal, moral and ethical principles underlying the fabric of Indian Society. Thus, for example, there is, according to DAHLMANN, in the crucial instance no historical basis for the polyandric marriage of Draupadi with the Pāṇḍava brothers, which is to be understood only symbolically. The Pāṇḍavas themselves symbolize the undivided or joint family; and Draupadi, their common wife in the story, stands for the ideal embodiment and representation of the unconditional unity of the family. A tribal confederacy may perhaps have formed the historical basis of the unity of the Pāṇḍavas. Draupadi would then symbolize the corporate unity and undivided authority of the confederacy.

According to DAHLMANN, the origin of the epos as a didactic work was founded in the basic character of rhapsody, which was the natural guardian and herald of the sacred lore. The rhapsody, then, as the vehicle (Trägerin) of sacred lore, became naturally the creator of poesy and of a manual of popular instruction (Lehrbuch) at the same time.

We may summarize as follows the main conclusions of DAHLMANN with regard to the questions in which we are at present particularly interested:

1. The epic is a well defined unity.
2. All the different parts of the poem are joined together with some distinct and definite purpose, and answering admirably that purpose.
3. The unity of plan and aim was conceived in the mind of one single individual, who carried out the work in terms of this preconceived unity.
4. Therefore successive expansion, and one or more recasts of the poem are out of the question.
5. The date of the poem as composed or compiled by the diaskeuast is certainly not later than the fifth century B.C.

With DAHLMANN the pendulum had clearly swung to the other extreme. We owe very impartial and searching criticisms of DAHLMANN's views to JACOBI and BARTH, who have exposed certain weaknesses of the theory. Both JACOBI and BARTH admit the unity of aim and plan in the work, though both justly demur to the contention of DAHLMANN that the argument of the epic was invented merely for the purpose of illustrating maxims of law; nor were they of course inclined to accept the date proposed for the composition of the poem by the author of the Synthetic Theory.

We must also admit now that DAHLMANN's views regarding the unity and homogeneity of the text of the epic were much exaggerated. It can now be demonstrated, with mathematical precision, that the text of the Mahābhārata used by DAHLMANN — the Bombay or Calcutta edition of the Vulgate — is much inflated with late accretions and most certainly does not, as a whole, go back to the fifth century B.C. It may even contain some furtive additions which had been made as late as 1000 A.D. or even later. The critical edition of the Mahābhārata, which is being published by the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, shows that large blocks of the text of the Vulgate must on incontrovertible evidence be excised as comparatively late interpolations. The Brahmā-Ganeśa complex and the Kaṇika Nīti in the Ādi and the hymns to Durgā in the Virāṭa and the Bhīṣma parvans occur to our mind readily as examples of such casual interpolations. But the Southern Recension offers us illustrations of regular long poems being bodily incorporated in the epic, like the detailed description of the avatāras of Viṣṇu put in the mouth of Bhīṣma in the Sabhā, and the full enunciation of the Vaiṣṇavadharma in the Āśvamedhikaparvan, two passages comprising together about 2500 stanzas. When we know that these additions have been made in comparatively recent times, even so late as the period to which our written tradition reaches back, can we legitimately assume that our text was free from such intrusions during that prolonged period in the history of our text which extends beyond the periphery of our manuscript tradition? In any case it is very evident that the text known to and used by DAHLMANN could not possibly go back in its entirety to the

fifth century B.C. That is all very true. Nevertheless it is well to bear in mind that however much the textual critic might peel off from the external trappings of the Great Epic, its Gestalt remains absolutely unaltered.

DAHLMANN was profoundly impressed by the fact that the Mahābhārata was recognized throughout Indian antiquity, above all things, as a dharma-saṃhitā, as a smṛti. Witness the fact that the supposed hero of the epic, at least in its present form, is called Dharmarāja. He is the son of Dharma, in other words, Dharma incarnate (ātmā vai putranāmāsi). The Bhārata War was a dharma-yuddha. The field of battle itself was said to be a dharma-kṣetra (dharma-kṣetre Kurukṣetre). Victory, it is emphasized over and over again, is on the side of Dharma (yato dharmas tato jayah). Viṣṇu-Nārāyaṇa incarnates himself as Śrī Kṛṣṇa merely to restore the fallen Dharma: dharmasaṃsthāpanārthāya saṃbhavāmi yuge yuge. To DAHLMANN therefore the Mahābhārata appeared above all as a treatise on jurisprudence (dharmasāstra). And he naturally concluded that it was composed with the avowed and exclusive object of expounding all the different aspects of Hindu Law, in the widest sense of the term not omitting even its historical and archaic features and oddities.

But that is hardly plausible since such an explanation of the work obviously contradicts its character as a traditional book belonging to the people. The work was evidently meant to be a tome of genuine popular interest, one that should be read, studied and meditated on by all classes of the Indian people, not only by the learned Brāhmaṇas, Kṣatriyas, but also by Vaiśyas and Śūdras,—the fifth Veda (Pañcamo vedah), the new Veda of all people, irrespective of caste and creed. Now the man in the street, even in India, is definitely not interested in the intricacies of law, less still in the history and formulation of archaic and obsolete customs, as DAHLMANN was compelled to premise in view of the crucial example—as troublesome as ineradicable—of the polyandrous marriage of the princess of Pāñcāla. In a popular book, therefore,—as our epic claims to be—and has indeed proved to be—all those prolix argumentations on every conceivable topic could only be irrelevant, if we are to regard them merely as an ethnological retrospect or an historical commentary. A priori therefore we cannot accept DAHLMANN'S view as a sufficient explanation of the whole ideology of the Mahābhārata. There must be something more in the character of the Mahābhārata than a mere synthesis of all known aspects of law, even in its widest connotation of the Indian conception of Dharma.

It will be noticed that DAHLMANN had no explanation to offer of the paradox of Kṛṣṇa. Strangely enough—or perhaps quite characteristically—DAHLMANN entirely overlooked Śrī Kṛṣṇa, Śrī Kṛṣṇa who looms so large in the world of the epic poets as to overshadow the entire poem, who is to be found in the beginning, in the middle, and in the end of the entire epopee. With his eyes fixed on the dichotomy of Dharma and Adharma, the Jesuit Father missed completely the elusive Bhagavān Śrī Kṛṣṇa, the most characteristic creation of Indian genius, who was above Dharma and Adharma, beyond Good and Evil.

But we cannot afford to ignore Śrī Kṛṣṇa if we would understand aright the meaning of the Mahābhārata. DAHLMANN succeeded in understanding only Yudhiṣṭhira, the Dharmarāja. But Yudhiṣṭhira is, metaphorically speaking, merely the big tree of Dharma (dharmamayo mahādrumaḥ), the straight upright trunk with its expanse of foliage and branches, fruits and flowers, the thing one sees growing out of the soil on the surface of the earth. The root of this tree is elsewhere:

mūlam Kṛṣṇo Brahma ca brāhmaṇāś ca / 1. 1. 66.

The root, hidden deep in the soil, is Kṛṣṇa and the inscrutable Brahma and the knowers of Brahma.

Well might OLDENBERG ask: "Wer ist Kṛṣṇa?" Who is Kṛṣṇa, indeed? That paradox of paradoxes! A philosopher on the battlefield! An ally who gives away his powerful army to swell the ranks of his opponents; and himself, though the omnipotent lord of all weapons, takes a vow, before the commencement of the war, not to hold a weapon in his hands! A god who avows impartiality towards all living beings, and yet like a wily and unscrupulous politician secretly plots for the victory of the Pāṇḍavas and the annihilation of the Kauravas! Standing on the field of battle, this self-styled Avatāra preaches the lower morality and the Mere Man (Arjuna) the higher! A grotesque character who claims to be the highest god and behaves uncommonly like a "tricky mortal"!

This bizarre figure can certainly not belong to the original heroic poem, which must have been a straightforward work free from all contradictions of this kind. European savants are agreed that he must needs be an innovation, introduced secondarily into the original "epic nucleus." How could European savants, lacking as they do in their intellectual make-up the millenniums old background of Indian culture, ever hope to penetrate this inscrutable mask of the Unknowable pulling faces at them, befooling them and enjoying their antics? However we shall leave the matter there for the present.

There is just one further point that I would lightly touch upon before I close this all too brief a survey of the modern criticism of our Great Epic, namely, the question of the historicity of the work. Opinion is sharply divided on this point. The work claims itself to be an Itihāsa, a history; but criticism, both ancient and modern, has been loth to take this statement at its face value. Opinion has thus vacillated from the standpoint of categorical acceptance of perfect historicity to complete scepticism.

It was mentioned above that DAHLMANN had denied historical reality to the fable and toyed with the idea of symbolism. The polyandrous marriage especially, according to DAHLMANN, was but a symbol of the perfect unity of the Hindu joint family. The battle as depicted in the epic took place only in the imagination of the poet.

Before him, the Vedist LUDWIG, not finding any support for the story in the Vedic antiquity, had also tried to give a symbolic interpretation on the basis of a nature myth. In the seasonal myth of LUDWIG, the Pāṇḍavas symbolize the seasons; and Draupadi, their common spouse, is the dark earth possessed alternately by the five seasons. In time these "seasons" lose their wealth and hoarded gold (i.e. their lustre, splendour) in the fatal game of dice with the base Duryodhana, until at last their common wife, Kṛṣṇa, is left in possession of only a single garment (the earth becomes "bare," denuded, in winter). All this may be granted, for the sake of argument. But we fail to understand why any one should trouble to write about a seasonal myth in the form of a poem comprising 100,000 stanzas. Nor can LUDWIG explain the mystery: "warum und wodurch veranlaszt ein dichter auf diesen gedanken kam, wird natürlich immer ein rätsel bleiben." We may take it that LUDWIG has not been able to solve the riddle propounded by himself; and we would be wise not to bother ourselves with it further.

Even before LUDWIG, LASSEN had tried his hand at giving a symbolical explanation of the story, which has not appealed to other scholars. The dramatis personae of the epic were not ordinary human beings; they are to be understood rather as historical conditions or circumstances. Pāṇḍu (literally, pale, white) was not a person, but was originally the name of a royal family of the "White race," which had migrated into India from the north and which was later known in Sanskrit as Arjuna (literally, white). Pāṇḍu would thus represent the most ancient period of the history of the family and Arjuna the later. His name would accordingly belong to the order of other similar names: Śūra, Vasudeva, Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇā, which represent not persons but circumstances and events. Passages were cited by LASSEN to show that Arjuna is the real representative of the other brothers. The name of his wife Subhadrā ("the harbinger of good fortune") is a happy expression for the close connection of the Pāṇḍavas with the people of Kṛṣṇa and of the descent of the later Pāṇḍava kings from a queen belonging to the family of the Yādavas.

A very novel interpretation of the epic we owe to Principal THADANI, Professor of English in the Hindu College of Delhi, embodied in an ambitious work comprising five volumes entitled The Mystery of the Mahābhārata: a difficult book which no layman can hope to understand. Professor THADANI is a philosopher and a poet. Accordingly his great work is both poetical and philosophical. It deepens and intensifies the "mystery" of the Mahābhārata rather than solves it. As a matter of fact I do not think that there is any real mystery in the Mahābhārata to solve. One has only to read the epic with a mind free from prepossessions, and the "mystery" dissolves of itself. However let us hear Professor THADANI himself. The whole story of the Mahābhārata is, according to this learned scholar, "but an account of the connection and conflict between the different systems of Hindu Philosophy and Religion." This is especially so in regard to the principal systems. Thus there is a conflict between principal Vedānta (Vaiṣṇavism) and principal Yoga (Śaivism); principal Yoga and principal Sāṃkhya (Buddhism and Jainism); principal Sāṃkhya and Principal Vedānta. This you will see is a perfect cycle of eternal conflicts! I give the next step in the argument in Professor THADANI's own words, lest I should unwittingly misrepresent his views. In all these cases, says the learned Professor, "there is a common ground of agreement between the opposing systems, without which no discussion can ever take place. And it is this that corresponds to a 'battle-field' in the language of war; for all debate may be likened to a combat, where each side, starting from some common point of agreement, marshals its array of arguments. All these points of view of the different systems of thought are examined in the Mahābhārata in story-form. Of these the most interesting as well as the most comprehensive conflict is between principal Vedanta and principal Sankhya, or Vaishnavism on the one hand and Buddhism and Jainism on the other, — and that is the subject-matter of the great 'battle' of Kurukṣhetra."

In another place, Professor THADANI makes his meaning still clearer. The Great Epic is not a mere story of the deeds of mythological or historical gods or heroes; but "a wonderful explanation of all systems of Hindu Philosophy and Religion... which, when examined in the light of ancient method of Letter-analysis, reveals the great secret of its real meaning and mystery." Kṛṣṇa, according to this method of interpretation, represents Vedānta-Yoga-Vaiśeṣika. Droṇa as a teacher of Buddhism represents Vaiśeṣika-Nyāya. Draupadī is the sacrifice of the Mind and the senses and their objects, leading to God. This "letter-analysis" is a real magic wand in the hands of Professor THADANI. With the help of this mysterious instrument, the learned Professor gets the most astounding results. People have so long considered the Gambling Match as the most realistic and heart-rending scene of the whole Mahābhārata, and some soft-hearted people must have even shed surreptitiously a few tears when reading the pathetic scene of the denudation of the noble Princess of Pāñcāla by the vicious Duḥśāsana. Professor THADANI brushes away all this shallow and misplaced sentimentality. "The word for gambling in the text," argues Professor THADANI, "is Dyūta (d, y, u, ta) meaning, (d) giving, (y) Buddhi, (u) woven with (u) the senses of knowledge, and (ta) the senses of Action. The Gambling Match is thus a discussion between Buddhi on the one hand (Yudhishthira), and the senses of Knowledge and Action, the basis of Jainism (Śakuni) on the other." A foreign critic has ungenerously remarked about the book that it is confusion worse confounded. I will not criticize this theory. Professor THADANI is right in insisting that for debate or discussion there must be a common ground of agreement between opposing views, without which a discussion is impossible. I have none with the learned Professor, nor have I had the good fortune of coming across anybody who had. Professor THADANI stands unchallenged.

I have mentioned these attempts at symbolical or allegorical interpretation of the Mahābhārata specially with a view to showing that writers starting from the most varied hypotheses and holding the most divergent views regarding the character and origin of the Great Epic of India have refused to see in it a plain and straightforward narrative, an unvarnished statement of facts, in short, a factitive history. They have endeavoured to look behind or beyond the facts narrated and see in the narrative some other purpose. Thus far they are certainly right. That different critics have given different interpretations of the same set of facts is in my opinion no reason for discrediting these efforts and for supposing that no such interpretations is possible. For one thing, the efforts mentioned above have been quite arbitrary, being supported by very flimsy arguments, without a basis either in the work itself or in the Indian tradition. The only thing that can be said about them is that they form undoubtedly a move in the right direction. For indeed many, if not most, great works of art and literature are filled with some sort of symbolism. I shall return to this question in the sequel.

Let us however in the meantime look at the matter from yet another angle. Is it not passing strange that, notwithstanding the repeated and dogged attempts of Western savants to demonstrate that our Mahābhārata is but an unintelligible conglomerate of disjointed pieces, without any meaning as a whole, the epic should always have occupied in Indian antiquity an eminent position and uniformly enjoyed the highest reputation? It was used, we are told, as a book of education for the young Bāṇa's time, like the Iliad in Hellenic Greece. It has inspired the poets and dramatists of India as a quarry for their plots and ideas. It has attracted in the past celebrated Indian philosophers like Ācārya Saṁkara and Kumārila, famous Indian saints like Jnaneshwar and Ramdas, and distinguished Indian rulers like Akbar and Shivaji. This Epic of the Bhāratas had moreover penetrated to the farthest extremities of Greater India. It had conquered not only Burma and Siam, but even the distant islands of Java and Bali. The immortal stories of this epic have been carved on the walls of the temples of these people by their sculptors, painted on their canvasses by their artists, acted in their wayongs by their showmen.

What is more remarkable still is that this epic — along with the Rāmāyaṇa — is still living and throbbing in the lives of the Indian people, — not merely of the intelligentsia, but also of the illiterate and inarticulate masses, the "hewers of wood and the carriers of water." To such as these, as one foreign observer has pertinently observed, "the famous old stories are the music and colour of life. They are the perennial fount from which the oft-repeated draughts never quench and insatiable thirst." The grand legends of the Great War are even now recited and expounded in kings' palaces and in peasants' huts to an enraptured audience.

What is the secret of this book of which India feels after nearly two thousand years that she has not yet had enough? It would be a rather hazardous conjecture to suppose that such a thing might perchance happen also to the works of the critics of the Mahābhārata, for within less than half a century the lucubrations of these wiseacres have approached perilously near the limbo of oblivion, from which they are periodically snatched out by the industrious pedagogue and the curious antiquarian, eager to extend his knowledge of the history of literature. The epic obviously contains something — some elusive ideal — that produces this permanent and not transient quality of interest. Even Oldenberg, who had pronounced the epic to be a chaos, felt — and rightly — that "in the Mahābhārata breathe the united soul of India and the individual souls of her people." It is a high claim, and yet the Mahābhārata may be said to be more, even than that.

Modern scientists are interested in breaking the Atom, which we are told is a solar system in miniature, in order to release the captive energy for the exploitation of Nature. The Rishis of ancient India were interested in breaking the tangled knot of personality, which is the very cosmos in miniature, in order to release the captive energy for the sublimation of Nature. The titanic painters of the colossal Mahābhārata canvass were all imbued with this idea, urged from within by this need, for they were the proud inheritors of that esoteric culture which made it possible to realize that ideal. Unseen but all pervasive in the life of every people is the great company of its ideals. And the Mahābhārata is the Golden Treasury of the Ideals of the Indians at their best. It is this fact which had attracted in the past the great philosophers, the great saints and the great rulers of India to the Mahābhārata. And we have not outlived that mighty book yet. On the contrary, we have yet to learn the lesson taught by that great book, that book of books, which offers to each what he needs and what he can digest.

How shall we then set about studying this great poem?

Higher Criticism would have us search for the lost "epic nucleus," which is apparently something immensely worth possessing. With that end in view it proceeds by the method of athetizing certain lines, passages, chapters, or even whole books. These are spurious, and all the rest is the work of one great poet. This method has been applied to comparatively more recent and also much simpler works, about whose historical context we happen to be better informed and where it would be much more legitimate. Yet even in these cases it has, as is well known, completely broken down. Very little reflection is needed to convince one that a mere process of stripping off what we regard as spurious will not automatically leave us with the pure and unalloyed "original." As we analyse the poem back towards its source, it proves to have not one source but many. What shall we do then? We know nothing about the hypothetical "nucleus." Moreover the nucleus we may discover in our analytical adventures is likely to prove to be not the "original" we are looking for, but merely a projection of our own feelings. On the other hand we have got the poem, about which there is no doubt, and we may be able to puzzle out a good deal about its meaning, its inner meaning, if we tried. Let us then focus our thoughts upon that and try to understand it as best as we can. I believe we shall find in the poem itself something far greater and nobler than the lost paradise of the primitive Kṣatriya tale of love and war, for which the Western savants have been vainly searching and which the Indian people had long outgrown and discarded.