Читать книгу The History of Antiquity, Vol. 4 (of 6) - Duncker Max - Страница 3

The life of the Aryas in the Panjab was manly and warlike. From the songs of the Rigveda we saw how familiar they were with the bow and the chariot, how frequent were the feuds between the princes, and the prayers offered to the gods for victory. Such a life could, no doubt, increase the pleasure in martial achievements, and lead to further enterprises, even if the plains and pastures of the Panjab had not been too narrow for the inhabitants. We remember the prayer in which the war-god was invoked to grant the Arian tribes room against the black-skins (p. 8). As a fact the Aryas extended their settlements to the East beyond the Sarasvati; and as on the lower Indus the broad deserts checked any progress towards the region of the Yamuna and the Ganges, the advance from the Sarasvati to the Yamuna must have taken place in the North along the spurs of the Himalayas.

From the hymns of the Rigveda we can ascertain that the Arian tribes pressed on each other, and that the tribes settled in the East were pushed forward in that direction by tribes in the West. Ten tribes of the Panjab, who appear to have occupied the region of the Iravati,120– the Bharatas, Matsyas, Anus, and Druhyus, are specially mentioned among them – united for a campaign against king Sudas, the son of Divodasa, the descendant of Pijavana, who ruled over the Tritsus on the Sarasvati. On the side of the united tribes was the priest Viçvamitra of the race of the Kuçikas; on the side of the Tritsus the family of Vasishtha.121 The Bharatas, Matsyas, Anus, and Druhyus, must have crossed the Vipaça and the Çatadru in order to attack the Tritsus. The Rigveda mentions a prayer addressed by Viçvamitra to these two streams. "Forth from the slopes of the mountains; full of desire, like horses loosed in the course, like bright-coloured cows to their calves, Vipaça and Çatadru hasten with their waves. Impelled by Indra, seeking an outlet to the sea, ye roll onward like warriors in chariots of war: in united course with swelling waves ye roll into each other, ye clear ones. Listen joyfully to my pleasant speech, for a moment. O abounding in waters, halt on your steps to the sea. With strong earnestness, crying for help, I entreat you, I, the son of Kuçika. Listen to the minstrel, ye sisters; he has come from far with horse and chariot. Incline yourselves, that ye may be crossed; your waves, ye streams, must not reach the axles. When the Bharatas have crossed you, the mounted host, goaded by Indra, then run on in your renewed course." After the two rivers were crossed a battle took place. Viçvamitra uttered the prayer for the Bharatas: "Indra, approach us with manifold choice help; great hero, be friendly. May he who hates us fall at our feet; may he whom we hate, be deserted by the breath of life. As the tree falls beneath the axe, as a man breaks asunder a husk, as a boiling kettle throws off the foam, so deal thou, O Indra, with them. These sons of Bharata, O Indra, know the battle. They spur their horses; they carry the strong bow like an eternal enemy, looking round in the battle."122

In spite of the prayer of Viçvamitra the Bharatas and their confederates were defeated; Sudas was even able to invade their land, to capture and plunder several places. The song of victory of the Tritsus, which a minstrel of Sudas may have composed after their success, runs thus: "Two hundred cows, two chariots with women, allotted as booty to Sudas, I step round with praises, as the priests step round the place of sacrifice. To Sudas Indra gave the flourishing race of his enemies, the vain boasters among men. Even with poor men Indra has done marvellous deeds; by the weak he has struck down the lion-like. With a needle Indra has broken spears; all kinds of good things he has given to Sudas. Ten kings, holding themselves invincible in battle, could not strive against Sudas, Indra, and Varuna; the song of them who brought food-offerings was effectual. Where men meet with raised banner in the battle-field, where evil of every kind happens, where all creatures are afraid, there have ye, Indra and Varuna, spoken (words of) courage above us, as we looked upwards. The Tritsus in whose ranks Indra entered went onward like downward streaming water: their enemies, like hucksters when dealing, leave all their goods to Sudas. As Sudas laid low twenty-one enemies in glorious strife, as the sacrificer strews holy grass on the place of sacrifice, so did Indra the hero pour out the winds. Sixty hundred of the mounted Anus and Druhyus perished; sixty and six heroes fell before the righteous Sudas. These are the heroic deeds, all of which Indra has done. Without delay, Indra destroyed all the fortresses of the enemy, and divided the goods of the Anus in battle to the Tritsus. The four horses of Sudas, the coursers worthy of praise, richly adorned, stamping the ground, will bring race against race to glory. Ye strong Maruts, be gracious to him as to his father Divodasa, preserve to him the house of Pijavana, and let the power of the righteous king continue uninjured." In another song of the Rigveda the glory of this victory of king Sudas is especially ascribed to Vasishtha and his sons "in white robes with the knot on the right side" (p. 29). They were seen surrounded in the battle of the ten kings, then Indra heard Vasishtha's song of praise, and the Bharatas were broken like the staffs of the ox-driver. The Vasishthas had brought the mighty Indra from far by their soma-offering, by the power of their prayer; then had Indra given glory to the Tritsus, and their tribes had extended.123

The extension of the Aryas in the rich plains of the Yamuna and the Ganges must in the first place have followed the course of the former river towards the south, and then reached over the land between the two rivers, until the immigrants arrived further and further to the east on the banks of the Ganges. We have no historical information about the facts of these migrations and conquests, of the occupation of the valleys of the Yamuna, the upper and middle Ganges; we can only ascertain that the valley of the Yamuna, and the doab of the two rivers were first occupied and most thickly colonised. It is not till we come lower down the course of the Ganges, that we find a large number of the old population in a position of subjection to the Arian settlers. Lastly, as we learn from the Indian Epos, the Aryas had not merely to contend against the old population at the time of their settlement; nor did they merely press upon one another, while those who came last sought to push forward the early immigrants, as we concluded to be the case from the hymns quoted from the Rigveda; they also engaged in conflicts among themselves for the possession of the best land between the Yamuna and the Ganges. In these struggles the tribes of the immigrants became amalgamated into large communities or nations, and the successful leaders found themselves at the head of important states. The conquest and colonisation of such large regions, the limitation and arrangement of the new states founded in them, could only be accomplished in a long space of time. According to the Epos and the Puranas, i. e. the very late and untrustworthy collections of Indian legends and traditions, it was after a great war among the Aryas in the doab of the Yamuna and Ganges, in which the family of Pandu obtained the crown of the Bharatas on the upper Ganges, that the commotion ceased, and the newly founded states enjoyed a state of peace. In the Rigveda, the Bharatas are to the west of the Vipaça, in the Epos we find them dwelling on the upper Ganges; on the Yamuna are settled the nations of the Matsyas, and the Yadavas; between the upper Yamuna and the Ganges are the Panchalas, i. e. the five tribes; eastward of the Bharatas on the Sarayu, down to the Ganges, are the Koçalas. Still further to the east and north of the Ganges are the Videhas; on the Ganges itself are the Kaçis and the Angas, and to the south of the Ganges the Magadhas.

Are we in a position to fix even approximately the period at which the settlement of the Aryas in the valley of the Ganges took place, and the struggles connected with this movement came to an end? The law-book of the Indians tells us that the world has gone through four ages; the age of perfection, Kritayuga; the age of the three fires of sacrifice, i. e. of the complete observance of all sacred duties, Tritayuga; the age of doubt, Dvaparayuga, in which the knowledge of divine things became obscured; and lastly the age of sin, the present age of the world, Kaliyuga. Between the end of one period and the beginning of the next there came in each case a period of dimness and twilight. If this period is reckoned in, the first age lasted 4800 divine years, or 1,728,000 human years; the life of men in this age reached 400 years. The second age lasted 3600 divine years, or 1,296,000 human years, and life reached 300 years. The third age lasted 2400 divine years, or 864,000 human years, and men only lived to the age of 200 years. The present age will last 1200 divine years, or 432,000 human years, and men will never live beyond the age of 100 years.124 This scheme is obviously an invention intended to represent the decline of the better world and the increase of evil, in proportion to the distance from the divine origin. In the matter of numbers the Indians are always inclined to reckon with large figures, and nothing is gained by setting forth the calculations in greater detail. From the Rigveda it is clear that the year of the Indians contained 360 days in twelve months of 30 days. In order to bring this year into accordance with the natural time, a month of thirty days was inserted in each fifth year as a thirteenth month although the actual excess in five years only amounted to 26¼ days. Twelve of these cycles of five years were then united into a period of 60 years, i. e. 12 x 5, and both the smaller and the larger periods were called Yuga.125 On this analogy the world-periods were formed. By multiplying the age of sin by ten we get the whole duration of the world; the perfect age is four times as long as the age of sin.126 A year with the gods is as long as a day with men; hence a divine year contains 360 years of men, and the world-period, i. e. the great world-year, is completed in 12 cycles each of 1000 divine years, i. e. 360,000 human years. In the first age, the age of perfection, Yama and Manu walked and lived on earth with their half-divine companions (p. 30); in the age of the three fires of sacrifice, i. e. of the strict fulfilment of sacred duties, lived Pururavas, who kindled the triple sacrificial fire,127 and the great sacrificers or minstrels, the seven or ten Rishis (p. 29 n. 2); the period of darkness and doubt was the age of the great heroes. With the priests who invented this system of ages the period of the great heroes was naturally placed lower than that of the great sacrificers and saints. The historical value attaching to this scheme lies in the fact that the Epos places the great war of the Pandus and Kurus in the period of transition between the age of doubt and the age of evil, in the twilight of the Kaliyuga, and the Puranas in consequence make the beginning of the reign of the first Pandu over the Bharatas after the great war, the accession of Parikshit, coincide with the commencement of the Kaliyuga.128 Now according to the date of the Puranas the Kaliyuga begins in the year 3102 B.C. On this calculation the great movement towards the east and in the east came to an end about this time.

That the Indians once contented themselves with smaller numbers in fixing the ages than those which we find in the book of the law and the Puranas, we may conclude from the statements of the Greek Megasthenes, who drew up his account at the court of Chandragupta (Sandrakottos) of Magadha at the end of the fourth century B.C. This author tells us that in ancient times the Indians were nomads, clothed in the skins of animals, and eating raw flesh, till Dionysus came to them and taught them the tillage of the field, the care of vines, and the worship of the gods. On leaving India he made Spatembas king, who reigned 52 years; after him his son Budyas reigned for 20 years, who was in turn succeeded by his son Kradeuas, and so the sceptre descended from father to son; but if a king died without children the Indians selected the best man to be king. From Dionysus to Sandrakottos the Indians calculated 153 kings, and 6402 years. In this period the line had been broken three times; the second interruption lasted 300 years, the third 120 years.129 What particular rite among the Indians caused the Greeks to represent Dionysus as visiting India and to make him the founder of Indian civilisation, will become clear further on. Putting this aside, the account of Megasthenes of the triple break in the series of kings shows that the system of the four ages was in vogue among the Indians even at that time. If Megasthenes speaks of a single line of Indian kings ruling over the whole of India from the very beginning, the reason is obviously that he transfers to the past the condition in which India was at the time when he abode on the Ganges. Chandragupta did what had never been done before; he united under his dominion all the regions of India from the Panjab to the mouth of the Ganges, from the Himalayas to the Vindhyas. But the close of this series of kings at which Sandrakottos is himself placed shows us plainly that the royal line of Megasthenes is no other than the royal line of Magadha. The Puranas of the Indians also carry back the line of Magadha to the ancient heroes, and through them to the progenitors of the nation. Spatembas, with whom the series of Indian kings commences in Megasthenes, may be the Manu Svayambhuva whom the cosmogonic systems of the priests had meanwhile placed before Manu Vaivasvata, the son of Vivasvat. Budyas the successor of Spatembas may have been the Budha of the Indians who is with them the father of Pururavas, the kindler of the triple fire of sacrifice: and Pururavas himself may be concealed under the Kradeuas of the manuscripts, which is possibly Prareuas, the Grecised form of the Indian name. However this may be, the statements of Megasthenes present us with far smaller and more intelligible numbers for the periods of Indian history than those obtained from Manu's book of the law and the Puranas.130

The year in which Chandragupta conquered Palibothra, and so ascended the throne of Magadha, can be fixed with accuracy from the accounts of western writers. It was the year 315 B.C. As 6042 years are supposed to elapse between Spatembas and the accession of Sandrakottos, Spatembas must have begun to reign over the Indians in the year 6717 B.C. But this date it is impossible to maintain. In the first place it is impossible that 153 reigns should have filled up a space of 6400 years. This would allow each king a reign of 42 years, or of about 38 years if we deduct 600 years for the three interruptions in the series. Moreover, the Indian lists of kings, at any rate as we now find them in the Epos and in the Puranas, present a smaller total of kings than 153, whether they come down to Chandragupta himself, or to his age. From Chandragupta to Brihadratha, the supposed founder of the race, the lists of the kings of Magadha give 53 kings according to the lesser total and 64 according to the larger. If to these lists we add the rulers who unite the kings of Magadha to the family of Kuru, and those who carry back the family of Kuru to Manu, we are still able to add no more than 28 or 38 kings according as we take the shorter or longer lists. Hence in these lists, instead of 153 kings, we get at most only 100, as reigning before Chandragupta. The list given in the Vishnu Purana for the kings of the Koçalas is somewhat longer; it enumerates 116 kings from Manu to Prasenajit, whose reign fills the interval between 600 and 550 B.C. If we add 10 or 14 reigns for the period between Prasenajit and the accession of Chandragupta, the longest of the lists preserved by the Indians would still only present 130 reigns before the time of Chandragupta.131

It is not clear from the account of Megasthenes, or at any rate from the excerpts which have come down to us, what was the extent of the period which elapsed between the last interruption in the list of kings and Sandrakottos. Hence we are not in a position to ascertain the duration of the fourth age, or Kaliyuga, as it was fixed among the Indians in his time; we must therefore have recourse to other proofs in order to discover whether the year given in the Puranas, 3102 B.C., may be taken for the commencement of a new period, i. e. the post-epic, or historic, in the valley of the Ganges. The fixed point from which we must start is the year of the accession of Sandrakottos, a date rendered certain by the accounts of the Greeks. In the period before this date, the lists of the Brahmans taken together with the lists of Buddhists carry back the series of the kings of Magadha, which was the most important kingdom on the Ganges long before Sandrakottos, with tolerable certainty as far as the year 803 B.C., i. e. to the beginning of the sway of the dynasty of the Pradyotas over Magadha.132

Can we ascend beyond this point? According to the Puranas, the race of the Barhadrathas had ruled over Magadha before the Pradyotas, from Somapi to Ripunjaya, the last of the family, and their sway had continued 1000 years. Of this family the Vayu-Purana enumerates 21 kings, and the Matsya-Purana 32 kings. This domination of a thousand years is obviously a round, cyclic sum: and both in the Vayu-Purana and the Matsya-Purana the total of the reigns given for the several rulers of this dynasty falls below the sum of 1000 years. If we take 25 years, the highest possible average for each reign, 21 reigns or 525 years will only bring us to the year 1328 B.C. (803 + 525). At this date, then, the Barhadrathas may have begun to reign over Magadha. If, on the other hand, we keep 32 as the number of these kings, and an average of only 15 years is allotted to the several reigns – an average usually correct in long lists of reigns in the East – we arrive at 1283 B.C. as the date of the beginning of the reign of the Barhadrathas (803 + 480). To this date, or near it, we come, if we test the lists of kings supplied by the Puranas for the series of the kings of the Koçalas and the Bharatas in the land of the Ganges. The time at which Prasenajit was king of the Koçalas can be fixed at the first half of the sixth century B.C. (see below). Before him the Vishnu-Purana gives a series of 23 kings down to the close of the great war. Twenty-three reigns, allowing an average of 25 years for each, carry us 575 years beyond the commencement of Prasenajit, i. e. up to 1175 B.C. (600 + 575). In the list of the rulers of Hastinapura, for which throne the great war was waged, Çatanika appears as the twenty-fourth successor of Parikshit, to whom, as we found, this throne fell, after the conclusion of the great war. As Çatanika died about the year 600 B.C. (cf. Book VI. chap, i.), 24 reigns of 25 years before him would bring us to the year 1200 B.C. as the beginning of the year of Parikshit. The statement of the Puranas that he ascended the throne in the year 3102 B.C. and that the Kaliyuga began with that year cannot therefore be maintained. And this date is contradicted not only by the results of an examination of the lists of the kings of Magadha, of the Koçalas and Bharatas, but also by a statement in the Vishnu-Purana. This tells us that, from the beginning of the Kaliyuga to the date when the first Nanda ascended the throne of Magadha, a period of 1015 years elapsed.133 The accession of this king we can place with tolerable certainty in the year 403 B.C.; and thus, even on the evidence of the Vishnu-Purana, the Kaliyuga began in the year 1418 B.C., and Parikshit ascended the throne of the Bharatas in that year. It is not impossible, therefore, that the 32 reigns which the Matsya-Purana gives to the Barhadrathas may have filled up the time from the year 1418 to the year 803 B.C. (615 years).134 Before the first Barhadrathas, Sahadeva, Jarasandha, and Brihadratha are said to have reigned over Magadha. Hence the foundation of the kingdom of Magadha would have to be placed, at the earliest, in the year 1480 B.C., and not earlier; but rather, if we follow the comparison of the parallel reigns as above, a century later. If the great movement towards the east and in the east was brought to an end at the accession of Parikshit and the commencement of the Kaliyuga in the year 1418 B.C., and thus in the course of the fifteenth or fourteenth century the foundation could be laid for the kingdom of Magadha, i. e. for a great civic community far to the east, the migration into the regions of the Yamuna and the upper Ganges must have commenced at the least about the year 1500 B.C. We have already referred to the fact that the colonisation of such extensive districts, the foundation and fortification of large kingdoms in them, which was moreover rendered still more difficult by severe contests among the immigrants, could not have been the work of a few decades of years.

If the immigration of the Aryas into the land of the Ganges took place about 1500 B.C. we should have a point whereby to fix the time at which the hymns of the Veda were composed, for in them, as has been already remarked, the Ganges is rarely mentioned. The great number of the hymns must therefore have received the form in which they were retained and handed down by the families of minstrels before the year 1500 B.C. The period of migration brought with it more serious and earnest tasks than had occupied the Aryas in the Panjab. The struggles against the old population, the wars of the newly-established states with one another, claimed the whole power of the emigrants. Hence the duties of the sacrificial songs or of hymns of thanksgiving were thrown into the background by the imperative necessities of the moment. Men were contented with the invocations of the gods which lived in the memory of the minstrel-families, and had been brought from the ancient home. The minstrels also, who led the emigrant princes and tribes, naturally gave their attention to songs of war and victory – songs of which the fragment preserved from the wars of the Bharatas against the Tritsus is an example (p. 67). When at length the period of emigration, of settlement, and struggle was over, with the advent of more peaceful times, the excitement of the moment gave place to reflection and to the remembrance of the great deeds of the ancestors. The inspired flights, the pressure of immediate feeling which had prompted the songs before the battle and after the victory, were followed by a more peaceful and narrative tone. Hence grew up a series of songs of the marvels and deeds of the heroes who had conquered the land in the Yamuna and Ganges, and had founded states and cities there. As the heroes and events thus celebrated passed into the background, as the intervening periods became wider, the greater was the tendency of this mass of song to gather round a few great names and incidents. The less prominent forms and struggles disappeared, and in the centuries which followed the strain of settlement and establishment an artificial culture of this warlike minstrelsy united the whole recollections of the heroic times into the narrative of the great war, the Mahabharata.

If we could present to ourselves this Epos of the Indians in the form which it may have assumed two or three centuries after the close of the great migrations and struggles, i. e. about the eleventh century B.C., it would still be a valuable source of historical knowledge. We could not indeed have taken the occurrences described in it as historical facts, without criticism, but we should have possessed a tradition of which the outline would have been approximately correct, and a description of manners historically true for the period when the poems arose and were thrown into shape – though untrue for the period depicted in the poem – after deducting what was due to the idealism of the poet. Unfortunately, repeated revisions and alterations have almost effaced the original lines; each new stage of civilisation attained by the Indians has eagerly sought to infuse its ideas and conceptions into the national tradition; older and later elements lie side by side often without any attempt at reconciliation, sometimes in direct opposition. The original warlike character of the poetry is forced into the background by the priestly point of view of a later age. In the poems in their present form there is none of that freshness of feeling and impression which is so vividly expressed in the prayers of the priests of the Bharatas, and the songs of the Tritsus; there is no immediate recollection at work. The effort to comprise all the stories and legends of the nation into a whole, to bring forward in these poems, as in a pattern and mirror of virtue, every lesson of religion and morals, and unite them into one great body of doctrine, has swelled the Indian Epos into a heavy and enormous mass, an encyclopædia, in which it is not possible without great labour to discover the connecting links of the narrative in the endless chaos of interpolations and episodes, the varying accounts of one and the same event. The Epos has thus become a tangle in which we cannot discover the original threads. It received its present form in the last centuries B.C.135

In the poem of the great war once waged by the kings of the Aryas on the Yamuna and the upper Ganges the Tritsus are no longer found on the Sarasvati or the Yamuna. The enemies at this period are the Matsyas and the Bharatas, the former on the Yamuna, the latter further to the east on the upper Ganges. The Tritsus have been forced further to the east, and have become lost among the Koçalas, who are situated on the Sarayu, or have taken that name; at any rate, the name of Sudas appears in the genealogical table of the rulers of the Koçalas, and in the Ramayana, as in other traditions, Vasishtha, who (or whose family) then gained victory by his prayers for Sudas, is the wisest priest among the Koçalas.136 Hence we may conclude that at a later time the Bharatas were more fortunate in their advance to the east. The struggle for their country and throne is the central point in the poem. According to the Mahabharata the rulers of the Bharatas spring from Manu. With Ila, the daughter of Manu, Budha the son of the moon, begot the 'pious' Pururavas, i. e. the far-famed. Pururavas is succeeded by Ayus, Nahusha, and Yayati. From Yayati's elder sons, Anu, Druhyu, Yadu, spring the Anus, the Drahyus, and the Yadavas,137 of whom we already have the two first as confederates of the Bharatas.138 Yayati was followed on the throne by his youngest son Puru. Dushyanta, one of the successors of Puru, married Çakuntala, the daughter of the priest Viçvamitra. To him she bore Bharata, who reduced all nations, and was lord of the whole earth. After Bharata, Bhumanyu, Suhotra, Ajamidha, and Samvarana, occupied the throne of Hastinapura, the chief city of the kingdom on the upper Ganges.139 In Samvarana's reign the kingdom was attacked by droughts, famine, and pestilence; and the king of the Panchalas advanced with a mighty host, and conquered Samvarana in the battle, who fled with his wife Tapati, his children and dependants, to the west, and took up his abode in a forest hut in the neighbourhood of the Indus. There the Bharatas lived for a long time, protected by the impenetrable country. Afterwards Samvarana reconquered the glorious city which he had previously inhabited, and Tapati bore him Kuru, whom the nation chose to be king. Kuru was succeeded on the throne of Hastinapura by Viduratha, Anaçvan, Parikshit, Pratiçravas, Pratipa and Çantanu.

The names which the poem places at the head of the genealogical tree of the rulers of the Bharatas are taken from the Veda. Yayati, like Pururavas, is commended in the Rigveda as a sacrificer. The name of Yayati's son, Puru, is borrowed from a name which in the Veda designates the Bharatas, who in these poems are variously called Purus and Bharatas.140 The tribes of the Anus, and the Druhyus, whom the Rigveda presented to us as confederates of the Bharatas, are in the Epos united with them by their ancestors. We have become acquainted with Viçvamitra as a priest and minstrel of the Bharatas, when they crossed the Vipaça against the Tritsus. In the Epos a descendant of Puru begets Bharata, i. e. the second eponymous hero of the tribe, with the daughter of Viçvamitra. In order to glorify the position of this priest, and secure his blessing for the royal race of the Puru-Bharatas, he becomes, in the Epos, by his daughter, the progenitor of king Bharata, to whom at the same time is ascribed the dominion over the whole earth. Thus far, it is obvious, the Epos goes to work upon the names of the tribes, and changes them into the names of heroes or kings. Apart from any poetical exaggeration, the wide dominion of the mythical king Bharata is, no doubt, an anticipation of the predominance to which the Bharatas attained at a later time on the upper Ganges. At any rate, according to the Epos, Samvarana, the descendant of Bharata, was compelled to return once more to the Indus, and there take up his abode for a long time. The statement that it is the Panchalas who conquer Samvarana is no doubt an invention based on the attitude of the Panchalas towards the Bharatas in the great war (p. 88). With Kuru, the successor of Samvarana, it is obvious that a new dynasty begins to reign over the Bharatas. This is obviously the first dynasty, whose achievements were widely felt, to which the Epic poetry could attach itself. Owing to his justice, Kuru is chosen by the nation of the Bharatas to be their king; this, of itself, is evidence of a new beginning. But Kuru is also said to be of divine origin, like Pururavas, the progenitor of his supposed ancestors. Pururavas is the child of the son of the moon and the daughter of Manu; Kuru is the child of Samvarana and the sister of Manu, the daughter of the god of light. Manu was the son of Vivasvat (p. 30); Tapati, the mother of Kuru, is the daughter of Vivasvat.141 The name Kurukshetra, i. e. land or kingdom of Kuru, which adheres to the region between the Drishadvati and the Yamuna, is evidence that the Bharatas, under the guidance of the kings descended from Kuru, first conquered this region and settled in it. When they had been there long enough to give to the country as a lasting name a title derived from their kings, they extended their settlements from the Yamuna further to the north-east. Here, on the upper Ganges, Hastinapura became the abode of their kings of the stock of Kuru, whose name now passed over to the people, so that the Bharatas, who, in the Veda, are called Purus and Bharatas, are now called Kurus after their royal family. With the Bharatas, or soon after them, other Arian tribes advance to the Yamuna; here we meet in the Epos the tribes which, according to the Rigveda, once fought with the Bharatas against the Tritsus, the Matsyas, and the Yadavas, the latter lower down on the Yamuna. Hence we may conclude with tolerable certainty that the Bharatas, under the guidance of the Kurus, succeeded in driving further to the east the tribes which had previously emigrated in that direction – the Tritsus (i. e. the Koçalas), Angas, Videhas, and Magadhas (as they were afterwards called), and that it was the family of the Kurus who established the first extensive dominion among the Indians on the upper Ganges. It is the struggles of the tribes, who once in part united with the Bharatas, and followed them into the valley of Yamuna, against the kingdom of the Kurus which are described in the Mahabharata.

Çantanu, the descendant of Kuru, had a son Bhishma, so we are told in this poem. When Çantanu was old he wished to marry a young wife, Satyavati; but her parents refused their consent, because the sons of their daughter could not inherit the throne. Then Bhishma vowed never to marry, and to give up his claim to the throne. Satyavati became the wife of Çantanu, and bore him two sons. The oldest of these Bhishma placed, after Çantanu's death, on the throne, and, when he fell in war, he placed the younger son, Vijitravirya, to whom he married two daughters of the king of the Kaçis, a people situated on the Ganges (in the neighbourhood of Varanasi or Benares). But the king died without children. Anxious that the race of Kuru should not die out, Satyavati bade the wise priest Vyasa, the son of her love, whom she had borne before her marriage with Çantanu, raise up children to the two widows of Vijitravirya. When the first widow saw the holy man approach by the light of the lamp, with knots in his hair, with flashing eyes, and bushy brows, she trembled and closed her eyes. The second widow became pale with fear; and so it befell that the son of the first, Dhritarashtra, was born blind, and the son of the second, Pandu, was a pale man. Bhishma took both under his care. He married Dhritarashtra to Gandhari, the daughter of the king of the Gandharas, on the Indus; for Pandu he chose the daughter of a prince of the Bodshas, Kunti; and with gold and precious stones, Bhishma also purchased for him a second wife, Madri, the sister of the prince of the Madras. As Dhritarashtra was blind, Bhishma made Pandu king of Hastinapura, and he became a mighty warrior; under him the kingdom was as powerful as under Bharata. But he loved hunting even more than war. He went with his wives to the Himalayas in order to hunt, and there he died at an early age. The blind Dhritarashtra now reigned over the Bharatas. His wife Gandhari had first borne him Duryodhana and then ninety-nine sons; but on the same day on which Duryodhana saw the light Kunti had borne Yudhishthira to Pandu, and after him Arjuna and Bhima. Madri bore twins to Pandu, Nakula and Sahadeva. With these five sons Kunti returned to Hastinapura after Pandu's death. Dhritarashtra received them into the palace, and they became strong and brave, and showed their power and skill in arms at a great tournament, which Dhritarashtra caused to be held at Hastinapura. The martial skill exhibited in this tournament by the sons of Pandu, and a victory which they obtained against the Panchalas, who had defeated Duryodhana, induced Dhritarashtra to fix on Yudhishthira as his successor. But Duryodhana would not allow the throne to be taken from him. At his instigation Dhritarashtra removed the sons of Pandu from Hastinapura to Varanavata at the confluence of the Yamuna and the Ganges. Even here Duryodhana's hatred pursued them; he caused their house to be set on fire, so that they with difficulty escaped from the flames. They fled into the wilderness. As they wandered up and down, they heard that Drupada, the king of the Panchalas, against whom they had fought for Dhritarashtra, had made proclamation, that whosoever could bend his great bow and hit the mark, should win his daughter. In vain did all kings and heroes try their strength on this bow, till Arjuna came. He strung the bow, hit the mark, and so won the king's daughter to wife – whom he shared with his four brothers. When the Kurus discovered that the sons of Pandu were alive and had become the sons-in-law of the king of the Panchalas, they were afraid, and in order to avoid a war between the Panchalas and Bharatas, Dhritarashtra divided his kingdom with the sons of Pandu. As Dhritarashtra's royal abode was at Hastinapura, on the Ganges, the sons of Pandu founded the city of Indraprashtha in their portion of the kingdom (it lay to the south-west of Hastinapura on the Yamuna), conquered the surrounding people, and amassed great wealth in their new city, so that Yudhishthira offered the great royal sacrifice. This aroused the envy and anxiety of Duryodhana. He caused the sons of Pandu to be invited to Hastinapura to a game of dice. As Çakuni, the brother of his mother Gandhari, was very skilful in throwing the dice and always won, Duryodhana hoped to be able to gain back his kingdom from Yudishthira. The sons of Pandu came. Yudishthira lost his kingdom and his goods, his slaves, himself, and finally he lost Draupadi. Duryodhana bade the latter, as a slave, sweep the room; and when she refused, Dushana, one of his brothers, dragged her by her long black hair. Then the blind Dhritarashtra came, and said that his sons had done wrong; the Pandus should return into their kingdom and forget what had happened on this day. When they returned home, Duryodhana induced his father to allow a second game of dice against the Pandus, as he and his brothers were not allowed to take up arms against them; the defeated party was to go into banishment for twelve years. This was done, and Çakuni, who again threw the dice for Duryodhana, was once more victorious. For twelve years the Pandus wandered with Draupadi into the desert, and lived by the chase. In the thirteenth they went in disguise to Virata the king of the Matsyas, and became his servants. Yudishthira was his instructor in the game of dice; Arjuna, clothed as a eunuch, taught dancing and music in the women's apartment; Bhima was cook; Nakula and Sahadeva were overseers of the horses and cattle; Draupadi was the queen's maid. When Duryodhana invaded the land of the Matsyas and lifted their cattle, Arjuna recovered the booty, and in reward, when the Pandus had made themselves known, he received the king's daughter as a wife for his son Abhimanyu. On the day after the marriage a consultation was held how the Pandus could recover their sovereignty, as the time of exile was now over. An embassy was sent to Hastinapura to demand the part of the kingdom possessed by the Pandus. Through Duryodhana's efforts the request was refused. The Pandus and Kurus prepared for war.

The armies met in the plain of Kurukshetra, in the ancient territory of the Kuru-Bharatas, between the Drishadvati and the Yamuna. The Bharatas were led by the aged Bhishma, Çantanu's eldest son, with whom was associated his grand-nephew Duryodhana, the oldest son of Dhritarashtra and the bitter foe of his cousins. With the Bharatas were the Çurasenas, whom we afterwards find on the Yamuna, the Madras, the Koçalas, the Videhas and the Angas – who were situated on the eastern affluents of the Ganges, and the northern bank of the river. The Pandus were supported by the Matsyas, the king of the Panchalas, Drupada, with his young son Çikhandin, and his people, the Kaçis from the Ganges, and Krishna, a hero of the Yadavas, with a part of his people; the remainder fought for the Kurus. In front of the army of the Pandus were seen the five brothers on their chariots of war, from which waved their standards. Before the banner of Yudishthira, who stood upon his chariot, slim of shape, in garments of yellow and gold, with a nose like the flower of Prachandala, the two drums sounded; beside him was the long-armed Bhima, holding in his hand his iron club adorned with gold, with dark glance and knitted brows. The third was the bearer of the great bow, Arjuna, with an ape on his banner, the steadfast hero of men, who reverenced the men of old, the destroyer of the troops of the enemy, who banished the fears of the fearful. Last were seen Nakula who fought with the sword, and Sahadeva. Opposite them Bhishma's banner waved from his chariot on a golden palm-stem; it displayed five silver stars. When the armies approached each other Bhishma cried with a voice of thunder to his warriors: "To-day the gates of heaven are opened for the brave; go ye the way which your fathers and ancestors have gone to heaven, by falling gloriously. Would ye rather end life on a sick-bed in pain? Only in the field may the Kshatriya (warrior) fall." Then he seized the great gold-adorned shell and blew for onset. As the sea surges to and fro in a storm when driven by roaring winds, the armies dashed upon each other; from afar the ravens screamed and the wolves howled, announcing a great slaughter, and heaps of carcasses. The heroes fight against the hostile heroes; rarely do they spring down from their chariots, and scatter the "heads of the foot soldiers like seed." The princes mutually cover each other with clouds of arrows; they shoot down the hostile charioteers, so that the horses rage uncontrolled hither and thither in the battle; if the elephants are driven against the chariots in order to overthrow them, the riders shoot them like "peacocks from trees," or they seize the great swords and hew off their trunks, at the root, close by the tusks, so that "the harnessed elephants" raise a great roar. In their turn they tear the warriors from their chariots; they press on irresistibly through the ranks of the warriors, like streams "leaping from rock to rock;" they check the advance of the enemy "as rocks beat back the waves of the sea." Covered with arrows they drop blood, till, deeply wounded in the head and neck, they fall to the ground, or turn raging on their own army. When the heroes have shot forth their arrows, their bows broken, the missiles driven through their coats of mail, so that the warriors "blossom like rose-trees," they leap down from their chariots, seize their great painted shields of hide, raise aloft their war-clubs and rush like buffalo-bulls upon each other. At one time in attack, at another in defence, they circle round each other, and spy out a moment to give a deadly blow. If the shields are destroyed and the clubs broken, they rush like "maddened tigers" to wrestle and fight hand to hand, till one sinks to earth pouring out blood, like a tree of which the root has been hewn through.

Thus, for nine days, the contest went on between the two armies. The army of the Kurus had the advantage; no one ventured to meet the aged Bhishma. Then Krishna, the driver of Arjuna, advised him to mount the chariot of Çikhandin, the young son of Drupada, the prince of the Panchalas, on the following morning and to put on his armour. The aged Bhishma would not fight against Çikhandin; he held it beneath him to fight against children. When he saw Arjuna approach him with the ensigns of Çikhandin, and in his armour, he cried out, "Attack me as you will, I will not fight with you." Then Arjuna laid the smooth arrows of reed, furnished with feathers from the heron and points of iron, on the string of the bow, and covered Bhishma with arrows as a cloud in summer pours its rain on the mountain. The invincible old man looked up with astonishment, and cried: "Like a row of swarming bees, arrow hisses after arrow through the air. As the lightning of Indra travels to earth, so do these arrows fly. They are not the arrows of Çikhandin. Like thunder-bolts shattering all they pierce through my mail and shield into my limbs. Like poisonous snakes darting their tongues in anger, their arrows bite me and drink my heart's blood. They are not the arrows of Çikhandin; they are Yama's messengers (p. 63); they bring the death I have long desired; they are the arrows of Arjuna." Head foremost, streaming with blood, Bhishma fell from the chariot. Delighted at this victory, Arjuna cried aloud with a clear lion's cry, and the army of the Pandus shouted for joy and blew their shells. Duryodhana's warriors were seized with panic; their tower and defence was gone. Drona, whom the sons of Pandu had once instructed in the use of arms, now led the army of the Kurus; and a second time they gained the advantage. Bhima sought in vain to overcome Drona; then the brother of Draupadi attacked him, and at Krishna's advice, Yudishthira and Bhima called to Drona that his son Açvatthaman had fallen. Deceived by this craft, Drona allowed his arms to drop, and Draupadi's brother smote off his head. After his fall, the Kurus were led by Karna, the prince of the Angas. He passed as the son of a waggoner; his real father, the sun-god Surya, appeared to him in the night, and warned him against Arjuna; he would meet his death. Glory was sweet to the living, when parents, children, and friends surrounded him with pride, and kings celebrated his courage; but what was honour and glory to the withered man who had become ashes? – it was only the flowers and the chaplets placed on his corpse to adorn it. Karna answered: He had no friend, no wife nor child; he feared not death, and would gladly sacrifice his body in the battle; but Arjuna would not conquer him. On the next morning he prudently besought Çalya, the prince of the Madyas, to guide his horses, since Krishna, the best of charioteers, guided the horses of Arjuna. At the instance of Duryodhana, Çalya undertook to do this, but his heart was angered at the degrading thought that he was guiding the horses of a waggoner, and he guided them so that while Karna was fighting against Arjuna, and had wounded him with his arrows, the chariot sank in a marsh. As Karna sprang down in order to draw the chariot out, Arjuna, at Krishna's instigation, shot a deadly arrow into the hero's back. Then one hero of the Kurus fell after the other. On the eighteenth day of the struggle, Duryodhana and Bhima met. As two raging elephants goad each other for the possession of a female elephant, so did these princes meet with their battle-clubs, whirling round sometimes to the right and sometimes to the left, each seeking the unprotected part of his opponent, and brandishing his club in the air. Duryodhana has the advantage. He has retired before a stroke of Bhima's club, which has thus spent itself on the ground; seeing the unprotected state of his opponent, he has dealt him a mighty blow on the breast. Then, on Krishna's advice, Bhima dealt a blow at Duryodhana's thigh, broke the bone, and the two fell to the earth. The army of the Pandus shouted for joy, but Duryodhana spoke with his dying voice: "We have always fought honourably, and, therefore, the honour remains with us. You have won by craft and dishonour, and dishonour attends your victory. In honourable fight you would never have conquered us. In the garments of Çikhandin, Arjuna slew Bhishma when defenceless. To Drona ye cried in subtlety that his son was dead, and slew him as he dropped his arms. Karna, Arjuna slew by a shameful blow from behind; by dishonour Bhima brings me to the ground, for it is said, 'In battle with the club it is dishonourable to strike below the navel.'" Red with rage, Bhima stepped up to the king-lion who lay outstretched, with his club beside him, beat in his skull with his foot, and said: "We have not laid fire to burn our enemies, nor cheated them in the game, nor outraged their wives; by the strength of our arms alone we destroy our enemies." On the evening of the eighteenth day of the battle, all the brothers of Duryodhana, all the princes who fought for the Kurus, and all the warriors of the Kurus were dead. The victors blew their shells, called Yudishthira to the king, and obtained as booty numberless treasures in gold and silver, in precious stones, in cloths, skins, and slave-women. Then all is sunk in deep slumber. But three warriors of the army of the Kurus have escaped into the forest; Açvatthaman, the son of the slain Drona, Kritavarman and Kripa. Sorrow for his father made rest impossible for Açvatthaman; on the branches of the fig-tree under which he lay he saw a troop of crows asleep; an owl softly flew up and slew one crow after the other. Açvatthaman set out with his companions and penetrated into the camp of the Pandus. First he slays the brother of Draupadi who had killed his father; then he throws fire into the camp, and slays the five sons of Draupadi, and all the Matsyas and Panchalas. Then he hastens to the place where Duryodhana lies. "Thou art still living," he says to Duryodhana; "listen, then, to a word which will be pleasing to thine ear: all the Panchalas, all the Matsyas, all the sons of Draupadi are dead." Only the four brothers, the sons of Pandu, Krishna and his charioteer, escaped this nocturnal massacre.

Then the dead were buried on the field of Kurukshetra: the sons of Pandu knelt before Dhritarashtra, and Vyasa reconciled the old king with the sons of his step-brother; but Gandhari cursed Krishna, who by his devices had brought her sons to death. Then the Pandus made their entrance into Hastinapura, and Yudishthira was consecrated king under the guidance of Krishna. He treated the old king as a son treats his father, but the latter could not forget the death of Duryodhana and his other sons: he went with Gandhari into the jungles on the Ganges, and with her he perished, when the jungle was set on fire. At Vyasa's command Yudishthira offered a sacrifice of horses, and then obtained the dominion over the whole earth. Following the course of the sacrificial horse (chap. VIII.) Arjuna conquered for him the Magadhas on the south bank of the Ganges, the Chedis, the Nishadas, the Saindhavas, i. e. the inhabitants of the Indus, and the Gandharas, beyond the Indus.142 Afterwards all the conquered kings presented themselves at this sacrifice of the horse in Hastinapura, and acknowledged Yudishthira as their lord. He sat on the throne of Hastinapura for 36 years, and then heard that the curse which Gandhari had pronounced upon Krishna was fulfilled. At a great festival of the Yadavas the reproach was made against Açvatthaman that he had basely slain the heroes in their sleep, after the great battle. Then there arose a strife among the princes of the Yadavas. They seized their weapons and mutually slaughtered each other. Distressed at the loss of his people Krishna retired into the wilderness, and there he was slain by the arrow of a hunter who took him for an antelope. The death of the hero to whom he owed his victory filled Yudishthira and his brothers with deep sorrow. On Vyasa's advice they determined to withdraw with Draupadi into the forest. All her sons had fallen in the great battle; but the wife of one (Abhimanyu), who was the daughter of the king of the Matsyas, had borne a son, Parikshit, after the death of her husband. When he had been consecrated at Hastinapura, the sons of Pandu went on a pilgrimage to the east, to the Himalayas, and beyond this to the holy mountain, Meru. Draupadi was the first to succumb, then Nakula and Sahadeva; last of all Arjuna and Bhima fell exhausted. Yudishthira climbed on, till Indra met him with his chariot, and carried him with his body to the imperishable world, the heaven of the heroes; there he would again behold his brothers and his wife, when their souls had been freed from the earthly impurity still adhering to them. For Bhima had trusted too much to his bodily power, and had eaten too much. Arjuna had loved battle too well, and had been too harsh against his enemies; Sahadeva was too proud of his wisdom, Nakula of his beauty; and Draupadi had loved Arjuna too dearly. But Parikshit reigned in Hastinapura 60 years. He died from the bite of a snake. Hence his son, Janamejaya, caused all the snakes to be burned in one great fire of sacrifice. On this occasion he asked Vyasa how the strife had arisen in old times between the Kurus and the Pandus, for Vyasa had been a witness: "I would hear from thee, Brahman, the story of the fortunes of the Kurus and Pandus." So the king concludes. Then Vyasa bids Vaiçampayana repeat the great poem which he had taught him. Janamejaya was succeeded by Çatanika, Açvamedhadatta, Asimakrishna, and Nichakra, in his sway over the Bharatas, Nichakra changed the place of residence from Hastinapura to Kauçambi lower down the Ganges. And after Nichakra 24 kings of the race of Pandu reigned over the Bharatas.

No words are needed to point out the absurdity and recent origin of an arrangement which not only ascribes to Vyasa the reconciliation of the last Kurus with the Pandus, but also makes him the father of the progenitors of the two hostile houses of Dhritarashtra and Pandu, and the author of the great poem. The name Vyasa means collector, arranger; and if the arranger of the poem is also the father of the ancestors of the contending tribes, this expression can only mean, that poetry has invented the whole legend. But a more minute examination limits this interpretation to a naïve confession on the part of poetry, that she and not tradition has transferred the origin of the Pandus to the race of the Kurus, and has represented the progenitors of the hostile races as brothers.

We can do no more than make hypotheses about the original contents of the poem on the great war. Against the Kurus, who, at the head of the Bharatas, maintained their supremacy on the upper course of the Yamuna and the Ganges, there rises in rebellion a younger race, the Pandus, who have risen into note among the Panchalas. The sons of Pandu receive in marriage the daughter of the king of the Panchalas, who are situated to the south of the Bharatas on the confluence of the Yamuna and the Ganges; and they are aided by the king of the Matsyas. It is Krishna, a hero of the Yadavas, to whom the Pandus owe their success in council and action. The Epos represents the Pandus as growing up in their childhood in the forest, and afterwards again making their home in the wilderness; they receive half of the kingdom of the Bharatas, and then lose it; and in their half they found Indraprastha to the west of Hastinapura on the Yamuna. From this we may conclude that the supremacy of the Bharatas established by the Kurus was resisted by the Panchalas and Matsyas and a part of the Yadavas – the Yadavas fight in the Epos partly for the Kurus and partly against them – and that a family among these nations, apparently a family of the Panchalas, succeeded in combining this resistance and establishing another kingdom, with Indraprastha as a centre, beside the kingdom of Hastinapura, from which they finally conquered the Bharatas. This struggle of the Panchalas and Matsyas against the Bharatas is the nucleus of the Epos. A tradition may lie at the base of the statement in the poems, that the nations of the East, the Madras, Koçalas, Videhas and Angas (in north-western Bengal), fight beside the Kurus against the Panchalas and Matsyas: at any rate it would be to the interest of the previous settlers on the Ganges to repel the advance of later immigrants. On the other hand, the Kaçis, in the region of the later Benares, may have fought against the Bharatas. However this may be, the race of the Kurus disappeared in a great war, and kings of the race of Pandu ascended the throne of Hastinapura. If, as we have assumed, the Bharatas had previously forced the Tritsus from the Sarasvati to the Yamuna, and from the Yamuna to the upper Ganges, and from the upper Ganges further east to the Sarayu, they were now, in turn, not indeed expelled, but over-mastered, by the tribes which had followed them and settled on the Yamuna. The metropolis of the kingdom which arose out of these struggles was Hastinapura, the chief city of the Bharatas; under the rule of the race of Pandu it comprised the Bharatas and the Panchalas; in the old ritual of consecration we find the formula: "This is your king, ye Kurus, ye Panchalas."143

The original poem no doubt took the part of the Kurus against the Pandus, of the Bharatas against the Panchalas. In some passages of the old poem, which have remained intact, Duryodhana, i. e. Bad-fighter, is called Suyodhana, i. e. Good-fighter. It is not by their bravery but by their cunning that the Pandus were victorious. The words of the dying Duryodhana: "The Pandus have fought with subtlety and shame, and by shame have obtained the victory," are an invention made from this point of view. The vengeance which follows close after the victory of the Pandus, the massacre of their army in the following night, through which the life of the dying Duryodhana is prolonged; the fulfilment of the curse which the mother of Duryodhana pronounces upon Krishna and the Yadavas – at a later time the tribes of the Yadavas disappeared, at any rate in these regions – all enable us to detect the original form and object of the poem. It was the lament over the fall of the famous race of the Kurus, which had founded the oldest kingdom in India, over the death of Bhishma and his hundred sons, and the narration of the vengeance which overtook the crime of Krishna and the Pandus.

In any case certain traits which reappear in the Epic poetry of the Greeks and the Germans – the contest with the bow for Draupadi, the death of the young hero of half-divine descent by an arrow shot in secret, the fall of an ancient hero with his hundred sons, the destruction even of the victors in the great battle – are evidence that old Indo-Germanic conceptions must have formed the basis of the original poem. Even in the form in which we now have them they remind us of the grand, mighty, rude style of the oldest Epic poetry. In other respects also traits of antiquity are not wanting – the marriage of five brothers with one wife, the hazard of goods, kingdom, wife, and even personal liberty, on a single throw of the dice, which is an outcome of the passionate nature already known to us through the songs of the Vedas. In the songs of the conquests and struggles on the Yamuna and Ganges, sung by the minstrels to the princes and nobles of these new states, these elements became amalgamated with the praises of the deeds achieved by their ancestors at their first foundation. This is proved by the tone of the poem, which penetrates even the description of the great war. It was only before princes who made war and battle their noblest occupation, before assemblies of a warlike nobility, and in the spirit of such circles, that songs could be recited, telling of the contests in all knightly accomplishments – the wooing of the king's daughter by the bow, the choice of a husband by the princess, who gives her hand to the noblest knight. Only there could such lively and detailed descriptions of single contests and battles be given, and the laws of knightly honour and warfare be extolled with such enthusiasm. These must have penetrated deeply into the minds of the hearers, when the decision in the great battle could be brought about by a breach of these laws, and the destruction of the Yadavas accounted for by a quarrel arising out of a question of this kind. Even the law-book which bears the name of Manu places great value on the laws of honourable contest.144 Hence we may with certainty assume that the songs of the princes who conquered the land on the Yamuna and the Ganges, were sung at the courts of their descendants, at the time when the latter, surrounded by an armed nobility, ruled on the Ganges. There, after the tumult of the first period of the settlement had subsided, these songs of the marvels and achievements of ancient heroes, coloured with mythical conceptions, were united into a great poem, the original Epos of the great war, and in this the living heroic song came to an end. In the German Epos, the Nibelungen, we find a foundation of mythical elements, together with historical reminiscences of the wars of Dietrich of Bern, overgrown by the conflicts and destruction of the Burgundians.

At a much later time the Epos of the great war passed from the tradition of the minstrels into the hands of the priests, by whom it was recorded and revised from a priestly point of view. Descendants of the Pandus who had overthrown the ancient famous race of the Kurus, and had gained in their place the kingdom of Hastinapura, are said to have remained on the throne for 30 generations in that city, and afterwards at Kauçambi. From other sources we can establish the fact, that at least in the sixth century B.C. the sovereignty among the Kuru-Panchalas belonged to kings who traced their descent from Pandu; and even in the fourth century we have mention of families of Nakula, and Sahadeva, and among the Eastern Bharatas, of descendants of Yudhishthira and Arjuna.145 Hence the rulers of the tribe of Pandu must have thought it of much importance not to appear as evil-doers and rebels, and to invent some justification of their attack on the Kurus, and the throne of Hastinapura. In this way they would appear both to the Panchalas and the Bharatas as legitimate princes sprung from noble ancestors, and would share wherever possible in the ancient glory of the kings of the Bharatas, who were sprung from the race of Kuru. This end it was attempted to gain by revision and interpolation; and the views of the priests, which were of later origin, have no doubt supported the subsequent justification of the usurpation of the race of the Pandus. The priestly order might think it desirable to win the favour of the Pandu-kings of Kauçambi. Of this they were secure if they united the ancestors of the race with the family of the Kurus, while at the same time they brought the kings of the Bharatas and Panchalas into connection with priestly views of life by representing their ancestors as patterns of piety, virtue, and respect for priests. In the old poem, Bhishma, the descendant of Kuru on the throne of the Bharatas, perished, at an advanced age, with his son Suyodhana, and his ninety-nine brothers, in stout conflict against the Pandus, who were at the head of the Panchalas; but his fall was due to the craft of the latter. On the other hand, the revision maintains that king Çantanu was the last legitimate Kuru; that his son Bhishma renounced the throne, marriage, and children; that Çantanu's younger son died childless; and represents the Dritarashtras and the Pandus as his illegitimate descendants. Thus the Pandus are brought into the race of Kuru, and the claims of the descendants of Dhritarashtra and Pandu are placed on an equality. It was an old custom among the Indians, not wholly removed by the law-book of the priests, even in the later form of the regulation, that if a father remained without a son his brother or some other relation might raise up a son to him by his wife or widow.146 According to the poem, the wife of Çantanu charged her nearest relation, her natural son, to raise up children to the two childless widows of her son born in marriage. Agreeably to the tendency of the revision, this son is a very sacred and wise person; and thus it is proved that it was within the power of the priests to summon into life the most famous royal families. But great as the freedom of the revision is, it does not venture to deny the right of birth of the Kurus. Dhritarashtra is the older, Pandu is the younger, of the two sons. In order to clear the younger brother, Dhritarashtra is afflicted with blindness, because his mother could not endure the sight of the great Brahman. Even the son of Dhritarashtra, Duryodhana, is allowed to have the right of birth; it is only maintained that Yudhishthira, Pandu's elder son, was born on the same day. That this insertion of the Pandus into the race of the Kurus in the Epic poem was completed in the fourth century B.C. we can prove.147 The revision then represents Dhritarashtra as voluntarily surrendering half his kingdom to the sons of Pandu, and this is a great help towards their legitimacy. When the Pandus are resolved on war, Krishna removes Yudhishthira's scruples by asserting "that even in times gone by it has not always been the eldest son who has sat on the throne of Hastinapura." These traits are all tolerably transparent. How weak the position of the Pandus was in the legend, how little could be told of their ancestors and of Pandu himself, is shown in the poem by the fact that the want of ancestors can only be supplemented by inserting the family in the race of the Kurus, and that no definite achievement of Pandu is mentioned. He is allowed to die early, and his sons grow up in the forest. So transparent is the veil thrown over the fact that an unknown family rose to be the leaders of the Panchalas. The insertion of Dhritarashtra is caused by the insertion of Pandu. The Indian poetry of the later period is not troubled by the fact that Bhishma, Çantanu's eldest son, renounces the throne in order to allow a blind nephew to reign in his place; that even as a great-uncle he is the mightiest hero of the Kurus, and can only be slain on the battle-field by treachery.

Thus, rightly or wrongly, the Pandus were brought into the family of the Kurus. But why should the elder branch make way for the younger? To explain this circumstance, the blind king, the honourable Dhritarashtra, i. e. "firmly holding to the kingdom," must first fix on Yudhishthira as his successor, to the exclusion of his own sons, and then, even in his own lifetime, divide the kingdom with Yudhishthira. Hence the Pandus could advance claims, and the more fiercely Duryodhana opposed the surrender of his legitimate right, the more does he lose ground from a moral standard against the Pandus. His persecutions and villainies provide the revision with the means to bring the Pandus repeatedly into banishment, and into the forest, from which in the old poem they had been brought to stand at the head of the Panchalas. It is Duryodhana who causes the house of Pandu to be set on fire, who by false play wins Draupadi from Yudhishthira, and treats her despitefully, and takes from him the half of the kingdom. On the other hand, the sons of the Pandus, so far as the lines of the old poem allow, are changed into persecuted innocents, patterns of piety, virtue, and obedience to the Brahmans. It is naturally the form of Yudhishthira which undergoes the main change from these points of view, since he twice succumbs to the passion for the game. By these interpolations his brother Bhima is fortunately put in a position to answer the reproach of the dying Duryodhana – that the Pandus had conquered by treachery and shame – by asserting that they had not laid fire for their enemies as he had, or cheated them in the game, or outraged their women.

The revision carries the justification and legitimisation of the Pandus even beyond the destruction of Duryodhana and the Kurus. Owing to his blindness the king Dhritarashtra could not be brought into the battle and slain there. Where the old poem represents the mother of the slain Kurus as cursing Krishna, the revision interpolates a reconciliation between the aged Dhritarashtra and the destroyers of his race, a reconciliation naturally accomplished through the instrumentality of a Brahman. Hence Yudhishthira is allowed to ascend the throne of Hastinapura with the consent of the legitimate king, and reign in his name. Lastly, in order to remove every stain from the Pandus, they are represented as renouncing the world, and dying on a pious pilgrimage to the divine mountain.

A second revision of the poem – which, as will become clear below, cannot, in any case, have been made before the seventh century B.C. – represents the Pandus as becoming the sons of gods, and thus makes still easier the task of their justification. It was not by Pandu that Kunti became the mother of Yudhishthira, Arjuna, and Bhima, but the first and most just of all rulers she bore to the very god of justice. Hence his claim to the throne and his righteous life were established from the first. The second brother, the great warrior Arjuna, owed his birth to Indra; the third, Bhima, to the strong wind-god, Vayu; the twin-sons of Madri are then naturally the children of the twins in heaven, the two Açvins. More serious is the change of Krishna, i. e. the black, into the god Vishnu, assumed in a third revision, which was completed in the course of the fourth century B.C. (Book VI. chap. viii.). Krishna, after whom the city of Krishnapura on the Yamuna is said to have been named,148 belongs to the tribe of the Yadavas, who were settled on the Yamuna, in the district of Mathura. He is the son of the cow-herd Nanda and his wife Yaçoda; he is himself a cow-herd, drives off herds of cows, carries away the clothes of the daughters of the herdsmen while they are bathing, and engages in many other exploits of a similar kind. He rebels against the king of Mathura, and slays him. His crafty and treacherous plans then bring the heroes of the Kurus to destruction; at length, with his whole nation, he succumbs to the curse hurled against him by the mother of Duryodhana. Out of this form of the ancient poem the later revision has made an incarnation of Vishnu, the beneficent, sustaining god. The child of Vasudeva and Devaki, who bears all the marks of Vishnu, is no other than Vishnu, who permits himself to be born from Devaki; he is changed with the child of Yaçoda, which was born in the same night. But these new points of view are not thoroughly carried out; the Mahabharata is not consistent about the origin of Krishna or his divine nature. At one time he is a human warrior, at another the highest of the gods, and the original position both of Krishna and the Pandus is still perceptible.149

The second great Epic of the Indians – the Ramayana – is essentially distinguished from the poems of the great war. Here also a legend, or ancient ballads, may have formed the basis; here, too, it is clear that a later redaction has changed the hero of the poem into an incarnation of a god. But the legend is already changed into the fairy tale, of which the scene is principally the Deccan, the banks of the Godavari, the island of Lanka (Ceylon) where the Aryas first arrived about the year 500 B.C. The cast of the poem as a whole is essentially different from that of the Mahabharata. The old legend may have related the story of a prince who wins his wife by his power to string the great bow of her father, and who, when banished from the banks of the Sarayu, contends in the Himavat, or in the south of the Ganges, against the giants dwelling there. These giants carried off his wife from the forest hut, and he is only able to regain her after severe struggles. Rama, the banished prince, is supposed to be a son of a king of the Koçalas (the Tritsus of the Rigveda), who had taken up their abode on the Sarayu. Daçaratha, the father of Rama, had apparently reigned a long time before the great war; he was descended from Ikshvaku, the son of Manu. According to the Vishnu-Purana, Daçaratha is the sixtieth king of this family, the eleventh after Sudas, who repelled the attack of the Bharatas.150 In their battle the Tritsus were aided by the priest Vasishtha, to whom in the poem of Rama the same place is allotted which in the Mahabharata is first allotted to Viçvamitra and then to Vyasa. Without regard to the ancient poems and their strongly-marked traits of great battles and mighty contests, the priests entirely transformed the legend of Rama from their point of view into the form in which it now lies before us; and this took place at a period of Indian life, when the warlike impulse had long given way to peaceful institutions, and the requirements of the priests had driven out the military code of honour and martial glory – a time when the weaker sides of the Aryan disposition, submission and sacrifice, had won the victory over the hard and masculine qualities of activity and self-assertion. The Ramayana gives expression to the feeling of calm subjection, virtuous renunciation, passionless performance of duties, patient obedience, unbroken reticence. Throughout, prominence is given to the system of priestly asceticism, of the eremite's life in the forest, of voluntary suicide. Here we can scarcely find any echoes of that desire of honour, that jealousy, that lust of battle, and eagerness for revenge, which occur unmistakably in the Mahabharata; nothing remains of the knightly pride which scorns to give a blow forbidden by the rules of the battle. The hero of the Ramayana is a hero of virtue, not of the battle. He commends without ceasing renunciation and the fulfilment of duties; he abandons throne and kingdom; he gives up his right out of obedience to his father, and respect for a promise made by him; his wife leads him against his will into the desert, because she also knows her duties. Respect, devotion, and sacrifice in the relation of children to their parents, of younger brothers to the elder, of the wife to her husband, of subjects to their lords, are described with great poetical beauty and power, but often with the weakest sentimentality. The mission of the hero in his banishment is the defence of the settlements of holy penitents against the giants. But his battles are no merely human struggle; he not only strings the bow of Çiva, he breaks it, so that it sounds like the fall of a mountain or like Indra's thunder. He fights with the bow of Indra and the arrows of Brahman, and at length even with the chariot of Indra against the giants. These battles are no less legendary than are his confederates' against the giants of Lanka, the vulture Jatayu, the apes and bears, which build him a bridge into that island. These are all described with an exaggeration and monstrous unreality into which Indian poetry only strayed after traversing many stages. We do indeed once hear, even in the Ramayana, of heroes "who never turned in the battle, and fell struck in front." Even here, in isolated passages, the old manly independence breaks forth, which, conscious of its strength, beats down injustice instead of enduring it, and makes a path for itself, but only in order to place in a still clearer light a quick compliance, a patient fulfilment of duties, and thus allow to the latter a greater advantage.

At this day Epic poetry lives in India in full force, just as it left the hands of the priests. At the close of the Mahabharata we are told: "What the Brahman is to the rest of mankind, the cow to all quadrupeds, the ocean to the pool, such is the Mahabharata in comparison with all other histories." To the readers and hearers of the Mahabharata and Ramayana the best rewards in this life and the next are promised: wealth, forgiveness of sins, entrance into heaven. At all festivals and fairs, at the marriages of the wealthy, episodes from one of the two poems are recited to the eager crowd of assembled hearers; the audience accompany the acts and sufferings of the heroes with cries of joy or signs of sorrow, with laughter or tears. In the village, the Brahman, sitting beneath a fig-tree, recites the great poems, in the order of the events no doubt, to the community. The interest of the audience never flags. If the piece recited touches on happy incidents – on victory, triumph, happy return home, the marriage or consecration of the heroes, the village is adorned with crowns as at a festival. The Indians live with the forms of their Epos; they know the fortunes of these heroes, and look on them as a pattern or a warning. The priests have fully realised their intention of setting before the nation in these poems a mirror of manners and virtue.