The
fact is that the Great Epic is the one human document after the appeal
of religious sincerity in the primitive hymns of the Veda.
fact is that the Great Epic is the one human document after the appeal
of religious sincerity in the primitive hymns of the Veda.
Cambridge History of India - v1
Now
the Brāhmaṇas also know what they call the Devajana-vidyā, knowledge
of the gods' race' ; and since the epic genealogy of gods is in many ways
indicative of respectable antiquity, it is possible that it derives from such
a vidyā or science. The stories told in the Brāhmaṇas, like that of Haric-
chandra in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa, often have epic fulness, and likeness,
being composed in the later epic verse though in ruder metre. In these
also we get a form of narrative told in verse which might presumably have
evolved into epic form. A great deal of the inflated epic is didactic, and
much of this is derived from didactic sources older than the present epic.
Thus dramatic tale, genealogy, and instruction in pedagogic form have all
aided in the making of the epic. Even the theology of the epic has its
prototype in the Brāhmaṇas, where Vishņu is already the 'best' or most
fortunate god (freshtha), and Çiva is already called Mahādeva.
In the hymns of the Rigveda we find stories in verse which appear to
need the complement of explanatory prose, and as the epic also has exam.
ples of this mingling of verse and prose in the telling of a story, it is
possible that we may have the right to presuppose a sort of epic narrative
even in the time of the Rigveda. Yet this presumptive epic of the Rigveda
is so entirely a matter of theory, and not undisputed theory, that it may
be left out of consideration when discussing the historical epic, as the pre-
sumptive drama of the Rigveda may be ignored in discussing the origin of
Hindu historical drama.
The element in ancient literature which seems at first most likely to
have contributed to the rise of epic poetry is that already mentioned under
the name of Nārāçamsi or 'hero-lauds', withal not so much on account of
the subject matter as on account of the circumstances in which the lauds
were sometimes sung. At the yearlong celebration preparatory to the horse-
sacrifice ten days were devoted to a series of lauds of gods and heroes,
1 Compare Indische Studien, vol. I, p. 187.
## p. 228 (#262) ############################################
228
[CH.
PRINCES AND PEOPLES OF THE EPIC POEMS
>
a
whereby the nobility and great deeds of kings were sung by priest and
warrior musicians in Gāthās of an extemporaneous character, while the re-
citation of legends in verse accompanied various events of life? .
Now there are certain scenes in the great epic which lend themselves
especially to such an interpretation. One can well believe, for example,
that the story of Ambā, who was carried off by Bhishma from her home
and given to Çalya (v, 173 f. ), was best rendered as a thrilling lay, its in-
tensity is almost equal to that of the gambling-scene (II, 60 f. ). But there
are many others not suited for anything save recitation, not to speak of
the interminable didactic material loaded upon the epic by the bookful. How
are we to reconcile this mass with a theory of lyric recitation or song ?
A study of the interpolations in the so-called Southern text shows that
thousands of verses of n arrative and didactic material have been added to
the epic text, and that the redaction comprises a shameless incorporation of
material drawn from the Purāņas and from the Harivamça, a sort of Purāņa
which was added to the Mahābhārata, as well as elaborations of the
original text, sometimes by the insertion of a dozen or so verses, sometimes
by the addition to a chapter of half a dozen new chapters narrating feats of
the heroes or insisting on the godliness of a demi-god. Now there is no
reason not to suppose that the same process has made the Mahābhārata
what it is from the beginning. It contains at present a hundred thousand
verses, with some prose admixture, but internal evidence shows that this is
an accumulation, and the text itself admits that it was originally less than
;
nine thousand verses in length. As we have seen above (p. 224) the Gșihya
Sūtra of Āçvalāyana mentions both a Bhārata and a Mahābhārata, no
doubt a shorter and a longer version of the same poem. The theme of the
epic as a story, the conflict between Kurus and Pāņdus, is at most not so
long, about twenty thousand verses, as the whole Rāmāyaṇa, or twenty-four
thousand verses. In short, in the great epic of India we have a combination
of matter, partly, epical, partly pedagogic partly narrative or historical. The
genealogies and the religious-didactic parts are not necessarily later in date,
but they are later additions to the original material. Some of the additions
may be as old as the original or even older, but this does not entitle us to
maintain that the epic was originally didactic, nor is this the best explan-
ation of the heterogeneous mass which we call the epic, and which in its
present form resembles such a combination as, barring dialectal differences,
might be effected by combining a few books of the Iliad with Hesiod,
extracts from Euripides, Theocritus, Aristotle, and a few chapters of the
New Testament. With this exception, most of the didactic material is not
1 Cf. especially Weber's article in the Proceedings of the Berlin Academy for 1891
(Episches im vedischen Ritual) and that of Lüders in Z. D. M. G. , vol. LVIII, p. 7071 .
2 Cf. also the half-forgotten tale of Vidulā, revivified to-day by Professor Jacobi
(Ueber ein verlorenes Heldengedicht der Sindhu-Sauvīra) in the Album Kern (1903), p. 53.
a
## p. 229 (#263) ############################################
XI ]
CHARACTERS OF THE MAHĀBHĀRATA
229
for the everyday man, but distinctly for the military caste. Even the philo-
sophy is not for the philosopher, the priest, but for the king and his nobles.
The predominative religion, too, is that of the kingly castel Indra is their
sovereign Lord ; and the heaven of Indra, with his celestial nymphs, the
1
Apsarasas, is the reward for kingly duty faithfully performed on earth. The
lower castes, Vaiçya and Çūdra, the agriculturist, the trader, the slave, are
scarcely recognised except adventitiously, as it becomes convenient to refer
to them. The epic is thoroughly aristocratic. a work completed by priests
for warriors, to recount the deeds of warriors and show them the need of
priests, who convert to orthodoxy the service of popular gods dear to the
local aristocracy. The epic has thus become what it calls itself, the 'fifth
Veda,' and may be regarded either as a didactic storehouse (it calls itself a
Dharma Çāstra) or as a magnified Itihāsa-Purāņa, which even before the
epic existed was regarded as supplementing the Vedas. Both elements are
united, religious-didactic and legendary, in such parts as treat of the demons,
gods, and seers of old. How ancient may have been collections of such
material prior to our extant epic is uncertain ; but the evidence for earlier
collective works does not appear to be convincing. That a mass of legends
existed and that this mass was used by Brāhmans and Buddhists alike as
they needed them may be granted, just as the mass of fables known to the
ancient world was utilised by the epic writers and by those who composed
the Buddhist Jātakas, though India had no Aesop.
Many of the characters of the Mahābhārata appear to be real, his-
torical figures. Others are mythical, in that they represent a personality
evolved from a divine name or a local hero-god. Thus the name Arjuna is
first a title of Indra, whose son the epic Arjuna is ; but his cousin Krishņa
is a local demi-god hero, and there is no reason to doubt the historical
character of the king of Magadha who was a foe of this pair and a Çivaite,
though what is said about him in the epic may be merely the exaggeration
of legend, as sung by the bards who made expeditions with the army and
sang the exploits they themselves had seen. The stories of historical
characters, like king Janaka, also reeflct history through the mists of legend.
The complete anthropomorphisation of heavenly beings, which some
scholars are reluctant to admit as a possible phenomenon in the best of
cases), is found in the Hindu epic, especially in the inserted tales of the gods;
1 Cf. Rapson, Ancient India, p. 72.
2 The Sūtas or bards were also charioteers. They made a special sub-caste and
lived at court, while the Kuçīlavas learned the songs of the bards and wandered among
the people at large singing them. This name was resolved into Kuça and Lava who are
represented as two singers, sons of Rāma. They learned the poern of Vālmīki and
recited it among tho people, as the later story goes (Rāmāyaṇa, I, 4). The Magadha
king Jarāsandha was the ruler of the East, as the Pādūus were his rivals in the West,
3 Chadwick, The Heroic Age, p. 265.
## p. 230 (#264) ############################################
230
[
RINCES AND PEOPLES OF THE EPIC POEMS
but it does not appear at all certain that any epic hero represents a heavenly
being in either of the Hindu epics. Kțishņa in the Mahābhārata and Rāma
in the Rāmāyaṇa are forms of the sun-god only as being identified with
Vishņu as All-god ; and in the case of the Rāmāyana this is a palpably late
procedure, while it is doubtful whether Krishṇa was ever a form of the sun.
Both Rāma and Krishna appear to have been tribal heroes, mythical per-
haps but not products of divine mythology. But, as no attempt has ever
been made to separate myth from history in India, it is impossible to say
whether Krishņa, the divine hero of the Mahābhārata, ever really existed,
though this is probable. Křishņa served as the charioteer of Arjuna, the
chief Pāņdu and epic hero ; and though he promised not to fight in person
he did all he could to keep up and intensify the enmity between the
Pāņdus and their related foes, the Kurus, not avoiding even tricks opposed
to knightly honour. It is not likely that such shameful acts as those re-
corded of him by his own followers would have been invented of a god,
but rather that the tricks belonged to him as a hero, and that no amount
of excuse, of which there is enough offered, could do away with the crude
facts of tradition, which represented the man-god Krishņa as a clever but
unscrupulous fighter. A later age exonerated him by offering various
excuses, the higher morality of imperative needl, the tit-for-tat rule (one sin
to offset another), etc. . just as it offered various explanatory excuses for the
polyandry of the Pāņdus, who, however, as a northern hill-tribe or family,
probably were really polyandrous and needed no excuse. 2
Although the epic age in India must necessarily be an epoch too
elastic for historical purposes, since it is not all certain that any one epic
statement may not be many years later than another, yet the effect of this
now trite observation is to exaggerate the relation between isolated cases
and the epic mass. It is true that we have additions to the greater epic
which are hundreds of years later than the mass, but it is possible from the
mass to get an impression which will represent conditions on the whole, and
we are tolerably sure that this whole is bounded by the space of from three
to four centuries, since external evidence, inscriptions, the Greek reference
to the Indian Homer", etc. , prove that the great epic in nearly its present
extent existed before the fourth century 1. D. , and negative evidence in India
makes it improbable that any epic existed earlier than the fourth century
B. C. , Since the length of the work requires the assumption of several
1 Thus Kșishna is made to say, 'if I had not done this (unknightly deed) our side
would have been beaten,’and this is accepted as an excuse ; but an excuse was demanded
2 Polyandry is not denounced in the Sutras ; but this is no proof that the Pandus
lived before they were composed. The custom is found among the hill-tribes and also
sporadically on the plains. Strictly speaking, epic polyandry is the marriage of one
woman to a family of brothers,
3 Chrysostom, A. D. 347-407 ; see Ind. Stud. , II, pp. 161 f.
## p. 231 (#265) ############################################
XI]
THE MAHĀBHĀRATA AND THE RĀMĀYANA
231
centuries for its completion as it now exists, the centuries immediately
preceding our era seem to be those to which it is most reasonable on general
grounds to assign the composition of the Mahābhārata as a whole. This
agrees best also with the external data to which reference has been made
in the preceding chapter. During these centuries we find a revival of
Brāhmanism, a cult of Vishņuism by the masses and a return to Brāhmanism
in a modified form indicated by the Civaite faith of the kings of the north-
western part of the country. Now Vishņuism is the cult that permeates
the great epic, though it contains tales showing an older Brāhmānism, and
the Çivaite portions are chiefly late in character. Again it is not un-
reasonable to assume a certain connexion between the two epics. We
cannot think of them as isolated productions of the western and eastern
parts of the country. That they represent in general a western and eastern
cycle of epic material is true, but there are sundry considerations which
make it impossille to believe that they aicee independently. In the first
place, while the metre of the Mahābhārata represents a less polished verse
than that of the Rāmāyaṇa, that metre is so nearly that of the Rāmāyaṇa,
especially in its later portions, that the two are practically the same.
Secondly, there are many tales, genealogies, fables, etc. , which are identical
in the two epics. Thirdly, the phraseology of the two epics, is so cast in
one mould that hundreds of verse-tags, phrases, similes, etc. , are verbally
the same. These correspond to the iterata found in Homeric verse, and
indicate as do the Grecian parallels that there was a certain common epic
body of phrase and fable. Fourthly, the economic conditions and social
usages as represented in the two epics are sufficiently alike for us to be able
to draw on both together for a picture of the times showing few discordant
elements. In detail, the references in the Rāmāyaṇa betray a later or more
advanced stage in some particulars, such as architectural elaboration, plans
of temples, etc. , which may be due to a higher civilisation ; but in general
the life of priest, noble, people of the lower castes, slaves. etc. , is the same
in both epics, and except for the use of caste. names does not differ from
that exhibited by Buddhistic works of the same period. The chief difference
here is that the Buddhists speak more of householder and gildman as if
they were separate orders. But the Gehapati or householder is also a
common expression for the ordinary men of affairs in Sanskrit works, and
the gilds as shown above in discussing the Sūtras (p. 221) have their im-
portance admitted by the authors of the Sūtras and epics alike. It is
therefore more a question of terminology than a vital distinction when we
find that the social order is reckoned as composed of priest, warrior, house-
holder, gildman, instead of priest, warrior, and “people's man,' Vaiçya, as
)
## p. 232 (#266) ############################################
232
( ch.
PRINCES AND PEOPLES OF THE EPIC POEMS
the Brāhman priests divided the 'regenerate' members of the community. '
The main difference in the presentation of social data given by the
Brāhman and the Buddhist is the one already referred to. The Buddhist
does not accept the spiritual authority of the Brāhman and belittles him as
a caste-member ; but he cannot rid himself of inherited faith and phrase,
and so constantly recognises him as member of a caste or order like that
of the monks. On the other hand, the Buddhist state was a democracy
in spirit ; the teaching of the church (to use the word) was apt to exalt the
humble and lower the aristocracy. The emperor himself was humbled by
himself, and his nobles became subject to the religious law of love and
kindness, while any common person was magnified for piety and could
obtain high office in the council chamber. This was not only theoretically
true ; it affected the whole constitution of the State. The merchants
and farmers and the mass of working people were endowed with a new
influence, which superseded for a short time the influence of priest and
noble. It is sometimes said that this was no supersession ; that Buddhism
arose before the four orders were recognised as state constituents, and that
in the freer use of householder and merchant (such was really the Setthi or
gildman) we have the expression of a freer life not yet bound in four-caste
orders. It is probable that at all times the third 'caste' was an elastic term
for every Āryan not priest or warrior ; but it connoted pure blood and
hence excluded those 'mixed castes' which were sometimes higher, but
more often lower, than the house-slave. A great mass of these people
were the hill-tribes reduced to servitude or to low pursuits, such as leather-
workers, fowlers, etc. , all those useful but dirty and disagreeable people
whom the Brāhman despised and the Buddhist affected to love and honour.
But the consideration shown to the low orders and the dignity attained by
the merchants under a king who had no use for war are no proof that these
traits were antecedent to an acknowledgment of the aristocratic classes.
In fact, in the same district in which Buddhism arose and where the
Buddhist emperors reigned, some at least of the Upanishads and Brāhmaṇas
were composed, and these pre-Buddhist works all acknowledge as a matter
a
of course the high rank of the two upper castes and the vulgarity of the
lower, who exist, especially the farmers, 'to be eaten' by the king. The
Buddhist attitude then is not an archaic attitude or one subsequently
followed by the evolution of a theory of 'four castes,' but is due to a revolu-
1 For the nomenclature of the Buddhists, cf. Fick, Die sociale Gliederung in
nordostlichen Indien zu Buddha's Zeil (1897), pp. 19 f. and 162 f. Cf. also Senart, Les
Castes dans l'Inde, where the contention is upheld that castes (so-called) are really
social orders. Fick's expression Zu Buddha's Zeit is used with the freedom which
characterises almost all Buddhist scholars when writing of Buddhist literature. He
means no more by it than early Buddhist literature, and under that head are included
the Jātakas which, in their present form, are centuries later than Buddha's time.
## p. 233 (#267) ############################################
XI ]
GENESIS OF THE GREAT EPIC
233
tionary insistnce on virtue and use as tests of nobility. It is clear from
both epics that the attitude toward the lower castes was not dissimilar to
that held by every aristocracy toward the useful but undesirable proletariat.
Both epics are from the beginning court-epics, to be recited before nobles
and kings and priests at the great sacrifice which designated a supreme
ruler, as the earlier texts indicate ; but, as the epics themselves intimate, to
be recited first at court and then popularised and recited among the people.
The description of recitation of the Mahābhārata given in the work itself
implies, however, that this was not such a popular recitation as occurs to-
day (for the great epic of India is still recited dramatically to village
throngs), but one conducted in the house of a gentleman of leisure for his
private entertainment.
Before discussing the conditions found in the epics it will be necessary
to mention adversely two hypotheses in regard to the time in which the
great epic was composed. Both are exaggerations, based partly on neglect
of pertinent data, of views already considered. The first of these is the
theory that the Mahābhārata is a product of our middle ages, that is, that
it was a late output of the renascence. The discovery of inscriptions showing
that the epic was essentially the same as it is now centuries before the
middle ages of course disproves this ill-considered theory, but the great
work in which it is elaborated will always remain a mine of useful inform-
ation. On the other hand, the theory that the Mahābhārata is a work of
the fifth or sixth century before Christ and the product of one author who
composed it as a law-book”, is a caricature of a fruitful idea of the late
Professor Bühler. As it violates every known principle of historical critic-
ism it may be passed over without discussion. The epic was composed not
by one person nor even by one generation, but by several ; it is primarily
the story of an historic incident told by the glorifier of kings, the domestic
priest and the bard, who are often one'.
The germ of the Mahābhārata is the description of the overthrow of
the Kurus, a Bharata clan, at the hands of the Pāņdus. A thinly veiled
genealogy represents the Pāņdus as cousins of the Kuus. In reality, they
were a new family or clan, who built up a kingdom and then obtained
1 Adolf Holtzmann, Das Mahabharata und seine Teile (1. 92-95).
2 J. Dahlmann, Das Mahābhārata als Eros und Rechtsbuch (1895); and Genesis
des Mahābhărala (1899).
3 That besides the professional bards the domestic priests were eulogisers of the
king may be remarked from the epic tale of the king's daughter who reproaches the
daughter of the domestic priest: I am the daughter of a king, who is lauded ; thou
art only the daughter of the laudator. ' The first priests who handled the epics were
of this sort, domestic priests, royal chaplains, indifferently well read in theology and
philosophy but conversant with the rites of the Atharvaveda, which as a popular work
of its day is associated with the earlier form of epic (Chhāndogya Upanishad, III, 4. )
## p. 234 (#268) ############################################
234
[ch.
PRINCES AND PEOPLES OF THE EPIC POEMS
supreme power by allying themselves with the Pañchālas and attacking the
Kurus, who are represented as living about sixty miles north of the Pāņdus'
settlement, which was the present Indarpat (Indraprastha), near Delhi.
The 'cousins' called Pāņdus first excited the jealousy of the Kurus
when the latter were obliged to come south and offer tokens of submission
to the Pāņdu king who had crowned himself as emperor and performed the
horse-sacrifice establishing this title. Resorting to trickery, the Kurus in-
vited the Pāņdus to make them a visit. The somewhat uncouth Pandus,
who are described as good examples of nouveaux niches, flaunting in the
eyes of their guests all the evidence of their wealth and making the lowly
but aristocratic Kurus objects of ridicule', despite their sudden rise to
power were not yet adepts in courtly arts, and the chief art for a knightly
gentleman of that day was gambling. As the Pāņdu king says, no gentle-
man (warrior) can refuse to fight or gamble when challenged. The Kurus
were an old house and had the skill of the court at their command, however,
poor they might be in worldly goods. The Kuru prince, who had been
humiliated, concocted a scheme to overthrow the Pāņdus by gambling. The
old king, his father, was a noble at heart as well as by blood and made what
protest he could against this scheme, which he knew implied cheating at
dice. But he was old and blind ; and it was not the custom to pay any
regard to what a man said after he grew old. When any man's hair grew
grey he was expected to abdicate his power in favour of his son and retire
from active life. What regard was paid to him thereafter was a matter of
courtesy. He usually made over his property to his sons and disappeared
literally or to all intent, becoming a wood-dweller. If such was the fate of
the ordinary old man, the fate of kings was worse, as there was more to
gain by their suppression. No regard at all was paid to the old king, who
was king only in name. The Pāņdus were challenged to a friendly
game of dice to be played in the Kurus' city. It may be remarked here
that the old site of the Kurus at the famous Kuru Plain had evidently been
given up, as the Kurus were pushed back to Hastināpur, where they lived
at the time of the epic story. The Pāņus vaingloriously assented to make
this return visit and see their kinsmen in the north. On arriving they were
courteously received, and after spending a night with their hosts proceeded
to the gambling-hall, where in one throw after another the Kuru prince,
playing by proxy and thus securing the aid of the best gambler at court,
won all the wealth, family, and kiugdom of the Pāņdu emperor, who how-
1 The Kuru prince complains thit mirrors were so set in the floor of the Pānduz'
palace that he was made to think them ponds, etc. Every effort was made to humiliate
the Kurus.
## p. 235 (#269) ############################################
XI ]
THE STORY OF THE RAMAYANA
235
ever, ventured to play once more for the stake of banishment. As the
emperor had already played the lives of his brothers and wife and lost,
this last throw was an effort on the part of the Kurus to get them out of
the way without imprisonment of other disgrace which might have occa-
sioned a rising of other allies of the emperor. As it was, the Pāņdu king
gave his word that, if he lost the last throw, he would go into banishment
for twelve years with all his family. After the twelve years were over, he
and his brothers took refuge with the Matsya clan, and from that vantage-
point collected other allies, marched to the Kurus' land, were met at Kuru
Plain, defeated the Kurus, aud regained the old power. It is noteworthy
that in all the twelve years of banishment the bitterest note in the lament-
ations of the Pāndus is not the loss of the kingdom but the insult to their
wife. As related above, they were a polyandrous race, and the king and
his four brothers were husbands of Krishnā. When the king had gamb-
led away his brothers and himself, he offered to gamble their wife and did
so, though the proceeding raised the legal question whether one who had
already made himself a slave could gamble away anything, slaves possess-
ing nothing. The question being over-ruled, however, the wife was
dragged off and insulted by the brother of the Kuru prince. Now when-
ever the Pandus who are fulfilling the pledge to remain in banishment,
begin to bewail and, plan revenge, it is the former plight of Krishna,
Draupadi which evokes most anger. Not the cheating at dice, though that is
not forgotten, but the insult to Krishnā who was dragged into the assembly
of men and made a slave dishonoured, animates the Pāndus in their des-
pair and causes Bhima to vow that he will drink the blood of the Kuru
Prince, a threat which he fulfils on the field thereafter.
There is, under another form, the violation of the rite of hospitality
and virtual abduction of Krishnā, the same nucleus of tragedy here which
makes the simple Rāmāyaṇa appear like an echo of the Iliad. In the
Rāmāyaṇa, the heroine is carried off by a treacherous fiend, whom
Rāma pursues and slays after a long interval. But the Rāmāyaṇa differs
essentially from the Mahābhārata not only in its style but in its spirit.
Its most spirited scenes occur before the epic plot begins. After the
introduction, in the history of Sitā, Rāma, and Rāvana, turgidity replaces
tragedy, and discriptions of scenery and sentimentality take the place of
genuine passion. The didactic overload is indeed lacking, and the Rāmāyanā
gains thereby ; but in this epic the note of savage lust and passion which
is the charm of the Mahābhārata, as it reveals genuine feeling of real men,
is replaced by the childish laments and pious reflections of Rāma, whose
foes are demoniac spirits, while his allies and confidants are apes.
It is a
polished fantasia, the first example of the Kāvya or 'artificial' poetry
1 No legal authority is cited in this scene, however, though the question is
argued by the old men who sit and look on during the gambling.
>
## p. 236 (#270) ############################################
236
[CH.
PRINCES AND PEOPLES OF THE EPIC POEMS
which appeals to the Hindu taste much more than does the rough genuine-
ness of the Great Epc. The Rāmāyana is in truth artificial in both
senses, for one cannot possibly believe the tale ; whereas the Mahābhā-
rata makes its tale real and one believes it as one believes that the Acha-
eans overthrew Troy, however embellished the account may be.
The
fact is that the Great Epic is the one human document after the appeal
of religious sincerity in the primitive hymns of the Veda.
The reason for this lies not alone in the fact that literature after the
early Vedic age is chiefly liturgical and didactic, for this only shifts the
explanation. Sanskrit literature is without power of literary expression from
the hymns of the Rigveda to the Upanisbads, and again from this time to
that which produced the dramatic scenes of the epic, because it was in the
hands of priests whose whole interest lay apart from real life. The same
spirit which produced the best Vedic hymns, the spirit reflecting indepen-
dence and freedom, appears in the royal literature, if we may so call it,
which stamps the age of the Upanishads and of the great epic in its ear-
lier parts. The Upanishads are in part the product of unpriestly,
or at least anti-ritualistic, thought, and the epic also emanates from the
throne and rot from the altar. As the Upanishads embody the cultured
philosophy of king ard noble? , so the epic scenes of love and war reflect
the life of court and camp. They breathe a different spirit, as they come
from a different source than does the literature of the Brāhman, until
indeed the all-grasping hand of the priest seized even the epic tales, and
stilling all that was natural in them, converted them into sermons, to
teach the theology of the priest and impart to the king the teaching best
calculated to further priestly greed.
The sociological data of the epic period show that society had advan-
ced from a period when rude manners were justifiable and tricks were con-
sidered worthy of a warrior to one when a finer morality had begun to
tem per 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 her-
oes. Arjuna shoots his rival, Karna, while the latter is helpless. But an act
like this, which was doubtless considered clever at first, became repugnant to
the later chivalry. Then the demi-god hero Kộishṇa is made to be the source
of the sin of the simple ground that if divine Krishịa commands, it is
1 For another view, see Chapter v, pp. 128-29.
2 Thus whole sections of the Anucāsana (the thirteenth book of the Mahābbā.
rata) are devoted to instilling the moral grandeur of those kings who give land-grants,
cows, gold, and clothes to the priests. At the same time, much that is didactic is
imbedded in the poem without this aim. Only the tendency is apparent to extend
moral teaching to instruction calculated to subserve the ends of cupidity.
!
## p. 237 (#271) ############################################
XI ]
EARLIER AND LATER MORAL IDEALS
237
right. Arjuna is now made to shoot reluctantly, in obedience to the divine
command. But this may not be cited as a precedent against the later code,
because it was a special case in which the act was inspired by God from
occult motives outside the sphere of human judgment. So with many other
sins committed by the heroes. They reflect an old barbarity later excused.
It is not necessary to assume with Holtzmann, von Schroeder, and others
that the epic tale has been 'set upon its head,' that is, that the whole poem
was originally in honour of the Kurus, and was then rewritten to honour
the Pāņdus, and that in this last process the ‘sins of the Pāņdus' reveal the
original attitude of reproach taken by the Kuru poet'. There is a difference
morally between the Kurus and Pāņdus. The Pāņdus offend against the
later military code. Thus the Kurus reproach the Pāņdus because their
chief warrior interfered in a combat between two warriors and killed his
friend's foe, who was being worsted in the fight. The Pāņdu simply laughs
at the reproach. “Why' (says he) ‘of course I killed him. I saw my friend
worsted, and interfered just in time to save him,' intimating, as is clearly
stated, afterwards, that a conflict on a field of battle is not a polite duel
(“That is no way to fight'). But the Kurus are just as wicked as the Pāņdus,
only they are diplomatic. Their sins smack of cultivated wickedness. They
get an expert gambler to ruin their rival. They secretly seek to burn their
enemies alive. They form a conspiracy and send out ten men under oath
to attack Arjuna. They slay Arjuna's son first, in order to weaken Arjuna's
heart. In a word, they are cunning and sly ; the Pāņdus are brutal and
fierce. Two types of civilisation are embalmed in the poem.
The most striking difference between the knights of the epic and the
priestly power, which in the end controlled them, is that the warrior-caste
was the royal caste and hence represented state-power, a political body,
whereas the priests were never more than a caste of individuals. They
represented no church. power. There is thus a fundamental lack of priestly
organisation ; there is nothing parallel to the Church of Rome in its
contests with European state-power. Individual priests, without financial
resources but dependent on the local rāja for support, could do nothing
save persuade the rāja. But superstition aided them; and persuasion
aided by superstition became a compelling power, which however, was
exerted only for two objects, the exaltation of the individual priest or of
the priestly caste and the inculcation of religious and moral precepts, never
for the formation of a wordly power within, but independent of the State.
There was no caste-head. When strife arose between priests, as it con-
stantly arose apropos of a fat office to be enjoyed (the epic furnishes
1 For det ailed criticism of this theory, see the present writer's monograph on the
Position of the Ruling Caste in Ancient India (J. A. 0. S. ,) (1888). The explanation of the
poem as a myth of nature, Kșishṇā representing earth wed to the five seasons, etc. , is
unnecessary thongh ingenious. It was proposed by Ludwig in the Transuctions of the
Royal Bavarian Academy (vi Folge, 12 Band).
a
## p. 238 (#272) ############################################
238
[CH.
PRINCE S AND PEOPLES OE THE EPIC POEMS
are
examples), each individual priest fought for his own hand ; he had no
bishop over him ; and there was no pope to oppose a king. Thus, while
the priestly law-book says that 'the priest is the norm of the world,' the
epic says 'the king is the norm. ' The law says that a priest has the right
of way even over a king ; the epic narrates that a king meets a priest and
calls out to him 'get out of my way,' and despite the law, as cited, smites
the priest with his royal whip. Such scenes show that the king is not yet
the creature of the priest, but that the epic unconsciously reflects a freer
life than that depicted as ideal by the later priests, who teach that the king
is a steward divinely appointed to provide for them.
Somewhat as in Buddhist literature we must therefore reverse the
importance of the two 'upper castes,' and regard the epic state as
consisting in a military power, whose head is the rāja ; then a priestly
power, politically unorganised, but divided into schools ; then the merchant-
power, represented by gilds, whose powerful heads (mah ājana) are of politi.
cal importance ; then the farmers, unorganised but tenacious of certain
;
religious rights and boasting of Āryan blood. The two last classes form
one body only beause they are neither of them noble (royal) or priestly or
un-Aryan. No other tie unites them. The merchants in general belong to
the town, the farmers to the country ; the two the historical
divisions, brought about by economic conditions, of that order, called 'the
people', in distinction from noble and priest. This was the Āryan state,
Below the Āryan constituents were the many who were either remnants of
wild tribes or slaves, descendants of conquered clans of other blood. They
are all mentioned in the epic, as well as foreigners or barbarians. Although
town-life is well known, yet the farmers and cattlemen were perhaps more
generally typical, on account of their numerical superiority, of the order to
which each belonged. So it is said : ‘Work is for the slave ; agriculture for
the people-caste' (Mbh. , XII, 91, 4), or again 'The work of the Vaiçva is to
tend cattle'; less commonly “The duty of the priest is to beg for sustenance;
of the warrior, to defend the people ; of the people-caste, to make money;
of the slave to work (manually)' (ibid. v, 132, 3)). It will be observed
that the cattle-raising ‘people' are ignored in favour of traders in the last
citation, though 'to make money' may imply farmers and cattlemen as
well as traders.
The slave possessed nothing ; his tax was paid in manual labour, for
he had no money or other possessions, there is no suum in the case of a
slave' (ibid. xi, 60, 37). The slave comes “from the foot of Go' (as the
warrior is born of God's arm) and hence is born to servitude. ' The
Çūdras are especially the slaves of the merchants and farmers ; for though
they are told to be 'faithful to priest and warrior' they are said in particular
to 'serve the people-caste' (ibid, I, 100, 11). They are also marked as the
## p. 239 (#273) ############################################
XI ]
TOWNS AND VILLAGES
239
but a
>
a
'blacks' in distinction from the priests who are white? The military
character of the epic precludes much attention to the slaves, who as a fight-
ing host are naturally not of importance, though they may be referred to
under the designation 'the black mass, for the great hosts led into the field
comprise many of the slaves as camp followers and helpers. What is very
important is that the lowest Āryan caste, the body of farmers, is on the
verge of mingling with the slave-caste. No priest may become a slave
however distressed for sustenance he may
become ;
slave
may
become a herdsman or trader if he cannot support himself by service (this
is the epic and legal rule), and in fact the farmer population was largely
composed of slaves. In the ethical parts of the epic, where caste-distinc-
tions are theoretically abolished in favour of the rule that 'there is no distinc-
tion of caste' (religiously), the slave is even allowed to study and may get a
reward for practising religious exercises (Mbh. , XII, 328, 49 ; XIII, 132, 14),
and a learned slave gives moral iostruction ; but this does not seem to
correspond to real conditions where the slave is reckoned next to the beast
(ibid. xli. 118, 24). The old spirit of the Brāhman period, which declares
that 'priest, warrior, and people constitute the whole world' is still practi-
cally in force.
The people are settled in small villages around a fort, which remains
as a grāma or 'crowd' (village) or expands into a town, nagara. Small settle-
ments are called ghoshas or pallis, some of them, ‘marches' (prāntas, 'on
the border'). The distinction between these and the places called kharvaļas
and pattanas is not clear, though the grāma seems to be smaller than the
kharva:a, which in turn is smaller than the nagara. Perhaps village, town,
city would represent the series. The villages were largely autonomous
though under the 'overlord' of the king, who administered justice and laid
taxes. In all smaller affairs of life, 'authority rests with the village,'
according to law (Pār. , Grihya Sūtra 1, 8, 13) and the epic seems to uphold
even family custom as legally sufficient.
Thus as
one man says that
he demands a price for his daughter, because that is his family-
custom, so another defends his occupation of killing animals on the same
ground. It has always been the custom of Indian rulers to leave affairs as
much as possible in the hands of the local authorities ; and the headman of
the village or the group of five elders were practically independent, provid-
ed the village paid its revenue as assessed by the adhipati or overlord.
1 It is doubtful whether the finer distinction here made (Mbh. , XII, 188, 5),
namely that the warrior (-caste) is red and the people-caste yellow, indicates a real
racial distinction ; especially since there is no other indication that these Āryans are
racially sub. divided ; whereas the distinction between white and black is an early mark
of the difference parting the Āryan and un-Aryan and goes with the nasal distinction
noticed in the Vodas between “gocd-nose' and 'no-nose' people The epic poets still
speak of their Āryan heroes 'fuir-noses'. See also Chapter IV, p. 76.
## p. 240 (#274) ############################################
240
[ch.
PRINCES AND PEOPLES OF THE EPIC POEMS
a
The king rules not because of might alone but by virtue of his moral-
ity. A wicked king may be deposed ; a king who injures his people
instead of protecting them should be killed 'like a mad dog'. Taxes
there must be, because the people must be defended, and this costs ;
but they must be light, and vary according to need. The tax in kind is
common. The merchant pays in kind and the ranchmon pays in kind, but
the town people are fined in copper money for offences, though bodily
punishment takes the place of fines in all cases where there is intent to de-
ceive. Thus the shipping. duties paid by 'merchants coming from afar' are
probably in kind (Mbh. , II, 5, 114). Frequent allusions to mercbants ‘using
false weights' (cf. 1, 64, 21 f. ) show that a careful supervision of the market-
place was necessary. The merchants gilds were of such authority that the
king was not allowed to establish any laws repugnant to the rules of these
trade-unions. The heads of gilds are mentioned next after the priests as
objects of a king's anxious concern. 1
The large part of the population employed as a ranchmen in tending
cattle has scarcely been alluded to as yet. They were perhaps the original
‘people', before agriculture was much practised and when merchants were
few. At the time of the epic they seem to have become partly cattle-raisers
and partly farmers, while the occupation of ranchman proper had fallen in-
to the hands of barbarians who could not understand Āryan speech. Yet
the one example of which the epic takes note shows that these were merely
the cowboys who guarded royal cattle (Mbh , iv, 10, 1). The king is here
represented as having a royal picnic on the occasion of a 'cattle-branding'
when the court goes into the country and the ‘ears of the cattle are marked'
for the year. It is on this occasion that the Kurus lift the cattle of the
Matsyas. Though account of such border-raiding in the old Vedic style
are rare and this passage in particular can by no means claim special anti-
quity, yet it doubtless reflects a not uncommon state of affairs? . Very little
in regard to these lowly members of the state, the cowboys and herdsmen,
is to be gleaned from the epic ; but one passage states what the low labourer
of the 'people-caste' is to earn per annum : 'he should receive the milk of
one cow for the care of six cows ; and if he tend a hundred head he should,
at the end of the year, receive a pair. If he acts for the master as overseer
of flocks or in agricultural labour, he should have one-seventh of the
1 On the gilds, see Móh. , III, 249,16 ; XII,51, 20; Rim. , VI, LI! ,13 ; cf. Hopkins
India Old and Neu', p. 169. Their power may be guessed from the fact that the
didactic epic recommends the king to circumvent them by bribery and dissension since
*the safeguard of corporations (gilds) is union'.
2 Compare the incidental cause of Arjuna's breaking his promise not to visit the
king his broti er while the latter was engaged with their common wife. A robber had
come and driven off a priest's cow, and the good knight went into the palace to get his
arms to attack the robber, doubtless an armed band.
a
## p. 241 (#275) ############################################
XI ]
USAGES OF MILITARY CASTE
241
>
The cap-
proceeds or increase, but, in the case of small cattle, a small part ('one-
sixteenth'; Mbh. , XII, 60, 24 f. ). The six distresses' of a farmer do not
include excessive taxation, but raiding by a foreign king is included
among them?
The royal soldiery includes not only the nobles of military standing
supported by the king but the poor members of the same Āryan order who
with the un-Aryan ‘servants' (not slaves) formed the rank and file of the
foot-soldiers. In battle they are mentioned merely as hosts of nameless
archers, slingers, rock-throwers, etc. , and outside of battle-scenes they are
scarcely mentioned at all. It is stated that a rathin’s ‘car-man's,' wage is
‘one thousand,' that is, one thousand (coppers) a month, and that the king
pensions the widows of fallen soldiers”. The chief moral laws for members of
the military caste were hospitality, the sacredness of the refugee, the law
‘not to forget' a kindness or a hurt, and the rule already referred to, that
when challenged to fight or gamble it was inglorious to refuse.
tured warrior becomes the slave of his captor for a year ; if the captor
allows him to go free, the captor becomes the captured one's Guru or his
'father. ' The sign of submission is to eat grass (v. sup. p. 221). When
the Yavanas were conquered (in Brihannār. Pur. , viii, 35) they ‘ate grass
and leaped into water. ' The epic gives this grass-eating sign as a military
rule. As compared with a number of the 'people-caste,' whose life is
valued at a hundred head of cattle, the warrior's life is valued at a thou-
sand (paid in case of murder). As for the prominent sins of the royal
military caste, they are mentioned as hunting, drinking, gambling, and
sensuality withal in a sort of versus memoralis which has come down as an
apophthegm of law and epic (Mbh. , XII, 59, 60, etc. ). Dancing-girls and
prostitutes were a part of the royal retinue, and hunting was the chief re-
creation of kings, deer and tigers, killed by a king with his sword, being
the favourite game. Lions were hunted with dogs, as attested by Aelian and
mentioned in the epic (Mbh. , 11, 40,7). The Buddhist prohibition of meat-eat-
ing remains as a rule of propriety, but the tales show that eating meat was
as common as drinking intoxicants and that this was the regular court prac-
tice, while the story of the crowds surrounding a meat-shop (Mbh. 111, 207,
10 f. ), where the complacent owner boasts that he sells but does not him-
self kill, shows that vegetarianism was by no means universal.
1 The six distresses (īti) are not defined in either epic ; but since they are men-
tioned (Mbh. , III, 279. 35) and the Purāṇas define them, it is probable that they al.
ready include those classified later as too much rain, drought, grasshopers, mice, birds,
and neighbouring kings (invasion).
2 The warrior may have three wives, probably one sufficed in most instances. For
the pension, compare Mh. , II, 5, 54, and for the wage, ib. 61, 20. The wage exactly
equals the legal 'fine for manslaughter. ' The epic copies the law in permitting desti-
tute priests to become soldiers, as they may become farmers, but it is considered a dis-
grace for the king to allow priests to depend on such nccupations for a livelihood.
9
## p. 242 (#276) ############################################
242
[CA.
PRINCES AND PEOPLES OF THE EPIC POEMS
a
Passing to a wider point of view we must pause to record the fact that
certain allusions in the epic to fire-weapons have been adduced to prove
that the Hindus used gunpowder in the great war. How baseless is this
supposition has already been demonstrated by the present writer, and he
can only repeat that all mention of fire-weapons in the Hindu epic refers
to arms magically blazing such as arrows or wheels. No gun or cannon is
mentioned and gunpowder is unknown.
The epic king is no autocrat ; he is upbraided and reproved by his
brothers and ministers. If born to the throne and yet defective he is not
permitted to become king (“the gods do not approve of a defective king,'
Mbh. , v, 149, 25); but if elected he is the leader at home and in the field.
He is consecrated by baptism with water poured over him from a sacred
horn, and is crowned 'lord of the earth' (Mbh. , XII, 40 and Rām. , 11, 69).
Although the didactic part of the epic emphasises the importance of coun-
cillors and ministers, without whose sanction the king should undertake
no important business, yet actually each king is represented as doing what
seems good to him without advice, as the various warriors of the
family make raids and rape young women from foreign districts without
consultation, Indeed, the priest supposed to be special adviser is scarcely
mentioned in that capacity, only as an agent in spiritual matters. Resolv-
ing on war the kings and allies decide the matters as they will, in the pre-
sence of priests, indeed, but the priests are ignored (Mbh. v, 1 and i, 102).
The sabhā or assembly is here simply a military body for consultation.
Both priests and people are silent in the face of force. The king's city
was defended by battlemented towers and seven moats. It was laid out
in squares and the well-watered streets were lighted with lamps (Mbh. , III,
284, 3 ; xv, 5, 16. etc. ,). Only four squares are mentioned in the Rāmāyaṇa
(11, 48, 19), but the Mahābhārata recommends six. The king's palace
included or was near to the court of justice, the official gambling-ball,
the music-room, the place for contests with wild beasts and for exhibits
of wrestlers. Outside of the inner city were booths for traders etc. , and
the less pretentious dwellings, with pleasure parks (Mbh. , iv, 22 etc. ).
Apparently four gates were the usual number, but nine are mentioned
and even eleven in other literature, and the Rāmāyaṇa gives eight to
Lankā (vi, 93).
the Brāhmaṇas also know what they call the Devajana-vidyā, knowledge
of the gods' race' ; and since the epic genealogy of gods is in many ways
indicative of respectable antiquity, it is possible that it derives from such
a vidyā or science. The stories told in the Brāhmaṇas, like that of Haric-
chandra in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa, often have epic fulness, and likeness,
being composed in the later epic verse though in ruder metre. In these
also we get a form of narrative told in verse which might presumably have
evolved into epic form. A great deal of the inflated epic is didactic, and
much of this is derived from didactic sources older than the present epic.
Thus dramatic tale, genealogy, and instruction in pedagogic form have all
aided in the making of the epic. Even the theology of the epic has its
prototype in the Brāhmaṇas, where Vishņu is already the 'best' or most
fortunate god (freshtha), and Çiva is already called Mahādeva.
In the hymns of the Rigveda we find stories in verse which appear to
need the complement of explanatory prose, and as the epic also has exam.
ples of this mingling of verse and prose in the telling of a story, it is
possible that we may have the right to presuppose a sort of epic narrative
even in the time of the Rigveda. Yet this presumptive epic of the Rigveda
is so entirely a matter of theory, and not undisputed theory, that it may
be left out of consideration when discussing the historical epic, as the pre-
sumptive drama of the Rigveda may be ignored in discussing the origin of
Hindu historical drama.
The element in ancient literature which seems at first most likely to
have contributed to the rise of epic poetry is that already mentioned under
the name of Nārāçamsi or 'hero-lauds', withal not so much on account of
the subject matter as on account of the circumstances in which the lauds
were sometimes sung. At the yearlong celebration preparatory to the horse-
sacrifice ten days were devoted to a series of lauds of gods and heroes,
1 Compare Indische Studien, vol. I, p. 187.
## p. 228 (#262) ############################################
228
[CH.
PRINCES AND PEOPLES OF THE EPIC POEMS
>
a
whereby the nobility and great deeds of kings were sung by priest and
warrior musicians in Gāthās of an extemporaneous character, while the re-
citation of legends in verse accompanied various events of life? .
Now there are certain scenes in the great epic which lend themselves
especially to such an interpretation. One can well believe, for example,
that the story of Ambā, who was carried off by Bhishma from her home
and given to Çalya (v, 173 f. ), was best rendered as a thrilling lay, its in-
tensity is almost equal to that of the gambling-scene (II, 60 f. ). But there
are many others not suited for anything save recitation, not to speak of
the interminable didactic material loaded upon the epic by the bookful. How
are we to reconcile this mass with a theory of lyric recitation or song ?
A study of the interpolations in the so-called Southern text shows that
thousands of verses of n arrative and didactic material have been added to
the epic text, and that the redaction comprises a shameless incorporation of
material drawn from the Purāņas and from the Harivamça, a sort of Purāņa
which was added to the Mahābhārata, as well as elaborations of the
original text, sometimes by the insertion of a dozen or so verses, sometimes
by the addition to a chapter of half a dozen new chapters narrating feats of
the heroes or insisting on the godliness of a demi-god. Now there is no
reason not to suppose that the same process has made the Mahābhārata
what it is from the beginning. It contains at present a hundred thousand
verses, with some prose admixture, but internal evidence shows that this is
an accumulation, and the text itself admits that it was originally less than
;
nine thousand verses in length. As we have seen above (p. 224) the Gșihya
Sūtra of Āçvalāyana mentions both a Bhārata and a Mahābhārata, no
doubt a shorter and a longer version of the same poem. The theme of the
epic as a story, the conflict between Kurus and Pāņdus, is at most not so
long, about twenty thousand verses, as the whole Rāmāyaṇa, or twenty-four
thousand verses. In short, in the great epic of India we have a combination
of matter, partly, epical, partly pedagogic partly narrative or historical. The
genealogies and the religious-didactic parts are not necessarily later in date,
but they are later additions to the original material. Some of the additions
may be as old as the original or even older, but this does not entitle us to
maintain that the epic was originally didactic, nor is this the best explan-
ation of the heterogeneous mass which we call the epic, and which in its
present form resembles such a combination as, barring dialectal differences,
might be effected by combining a few books of the Iliad with Hesiod,
extracts from Euripides, Theocritus, Aristotle, and a few chapters of the
New Testament. With this exception, most of the didactic material is not
1 Cf. especially Weber's article in the Proceedings of the Berlin Academy for 1891
(Episches im vedischen Ritual) and that of Lüders in Z. D. M. G. , vol. LVIII, p. 7071 .
2 Cf. also the half-forgotten tale of Vidulā, revivified to-day by Professor Jacobi
(Ueber ein verlorenes Heldengedicht der Sindhu-Sauvīra) in the Album Kern (1903), p. 53.
a
## p. 229 (#263) ############################################
XI ]
CHARACTERS OF THE MAHĀBHĀRATA
229
for the everyday man, but distinctly for the military caste. Even the philo-
sophy is not for the philosopher, the priest, but for the king and his nobles.
The predominative religion, too, is that of the kingly castel Indra is their
sovereign Lord ; and the heaven of Indra, with his celestial nymphs, the
1
Apsarasas, is the reward for kingly duty faithfully performed on earth. The
lower castes, Vaiçya and Çūdra, the agriculturist, the trader, the slave, are
scarcely recognised except adventitiously, as it becomes convenient to refer
to them. The epic is thoroughly aristocratic. a work completed by priests
for warriors, to recount the deeds of warriors and show them the need of
priests, who convert to orthodoxy the service of popular gods dear to the
local aristocracy. The epic has thus become what it calls itself, the 'fifth
Veda,' and may be regarded either as a didactic storehouse (it calls itself a
Dharma Çāstra) or as a magnified Itihāsa-Purāņa, which even before the
epic existed was regarded as supplementing the Vedas. Both elements are
united, religious-didactic and legendary, in such parts as treat of the demons,
gods, and seers of old. How ancient may have been collections of such
material prior to our extant epic is uncertain ; but the evidence for earlier
collective works does not appear to be convincing. That a mass of legends
existed and that this mass was used by Brāhmans and Buddhists alike as
they needed them may be granted, just as the mass of fables known to the
ancient world was utilised by the epic writers and by those who composed
the Buddhist Jātakas, though India had no Aesop.
Many of the characters of the Mahābhārata appear to be real, his-
torical figures. Others are mythical, in that they represent a personality
evolved from a divine name or a local hero-god. Thus the name Arjuna is
first a title of Indra, whose son the epic Arjuna is ; but his cousin Krishņa
is a local demi-god hero, and there is no reason to doubt the historical
character of the king of Magadha who was a foe of this pair and a Çivaite,
though what is said about him in the epic may be merely the exaggeration
of legend, as sung by the bards who made expeditions with the army and
sang the exploits they themselves had seen. The stories of historical
characters, like king Janaka, also reeflct history through the mists of legend.
The complete anthropomorphisation of heavenly beings, which some
scholars are reluctant to admit as a possible phenomenon in the best of
cases), is found in the Hindu epic, especially in the inserted tales of the gods;
1 Cf. Rapson, Ancient India, p. 72.
2 The Sūtas or bards were also charioteers. They made a special sub-caste and
lived at court, while the Kuçīlavas learned the songs of the bards and wandered among
the people at large singing them. This name was resolved into Kuça and Lava who are
represented as two singers, sons of Rāma. They learned the poern of Vālmīki and
recited it among tho people, as the later story goes (Rāmāyaṇa, I, 4). The Magadha
king Jarāsandha was the ruler of the East, as the Pādūus were his rivals in the West,
3 Chadwick, The Heroic Age, p. 265.
## p. 230 (#264) ############################################
230
[
RINCES AND PEOPLES OF THE EPIC POEMS
but it does not appear at all certain that any epic hero represents a heavenly
being in either of the Hindu epics. Kțishņa in the Mahābhārata and Rāma
in the Rāmāyaṇa are forms of the sun-god only as being identified with
Vishņu as All-god ; and in the case of the Rāmāyana this is a palpably late
procedure, while it is doubtful whether Krishṇa was ever a form of the sun.
Both Rāma and Krishna appear to have been tribal heroes, mythical per-
haps but not products of divine mythology. But, as no attempt has ever
been made to separate myth from history in India, it is impossible to say
whether Krishņa, the divine hero of the Mahābhārata, ever really existed,
though this is probable. Křishņa served as the charioteer of Arjuna, the
chief Pāņdu and epic hero ; and though he promised not to fight in person
he did all he could to keep up and intensify the enmity between the
Pāņdus and their related foes, the Kurus, not avoiding even tricks opposed
to knightly honour. It is not likely that such shameful acts as those re-
corded of him by his own followers would have been invented of a god,
but rather that the tricks belonged to him as a hero, and that no amount
of excuse, of which there is enough offered, could do away with the crude
facts of tradition, which represented the man-god Krishņa as a clever but
unscrupulous fighter. A later age exonerated him by offering various
excuses, the higher morality of imperative needl, the tit-for-tat rule (one sin
to offset another), etc. . just as it offered various explanatory excuses for the
polyandry of the Pāņdus, who, however, as a northern hill-tribe or family,
probably were really polyandrous and needed no excuse. 2
Although the epic age in India must necessarily be an epoch too
elastic for historical purposes, since it is not all certain that any one epic
statement may not be many years later than another, yet the effect of this
now trite observation is to exaggerate the relation between isolated cases
and the epic mass. It is true that we have additions to the greater epic
which are hundreds of years later than the mass, but it is possible from the
mass to get an impression which will represent conditions on the whole, and
we are tolerably sure that this whole is bounded by the space of from three
to four centuries, since external evidence, inscriptions, the Greek reference
to the Indian Homer", etc. , prove that the great epic in nearly its present
extent existed before the fourth century 1. D. , and negative evidence in India
makes it improbable that any epic existed earlier than the fourth century
B. C. , Since the length of the work requires the assumption of several
1 Thus Kșishna is made to say, 'if I had not done this (unknightly deed) our side
would have been beaten,’and this is accepted as an excuse ; but an excuse was demanded
2 Polyandry is not denounced in the Sutras ; but this is no proof that the Pandus
lived before they were composed. The custom is found among the hill-tribes and also
sporadically on the plains. Strictly speaking, epic polyandry is the marriage of one
woman to a family of brothers,
3 Chrysostom, A. D. 347-407 ; see Ind. Stud. , II, pp. 161 f.
## p. 231 (#265) ############################################
XI]
THE MAHĀBHĀRATA AND THE RĀMĀYANA
231
centuries for its completion as it now exists, the centuries immediately
preceding our era seem to be those to which it is most reasonable on general
grounds to assign the composition of the Mahābhārata as a whole. This
agrees best also with the external data to which reference has been made
in the preceding chapter. During these centuries we find a revival of
Brāhmanism, a cult of Vishņuism by the masses and a return to Brāhmanism
in a modified form indicated by the Civaite faith of the kings of the north-
western part of the country. Now Vishņuism is the cult that permeates
the great epic, though it contains tales showing an older Brāhmānism, and
the Çivaite portions are chiefly late in character. Again it is not un-
reasonable to assume a certain connexion between the two epics. We
cannot think of them as isolated productions of the western and eastern
parts of the country. That they represent in general a western and eastern
cycle of epic material is true, but there are sundry considerations which
make it impossille to believe that they aicee independently. In the first
place, while the metre of the Mahābhārata represents a less polished verse
than that of the Rāmāyaṇa, that metre is so nearly that of the Rāmāyaṇa,
especially in its later portions, that the two are practically the same.
Secondly, there are many tales, genealogies, fables, etc. , which are identical
in the two epics. Thirdly, the phraseology of the two epics, is so cast in
one mould that hundreds of verse-tags, phrases, similes, etc. , are verbally
the same. These correspond to the iterata found in Homeric verse, and
indicate as do the Grecian parallels that there was a certain common epic
body of phrase and fable. Fourthly, the economic conditions and social
usages as represented in the two epics are sufficiently alike for us to be able
to draw on both together for a picture of the times showing few discordant
elements. In detail, the references in the Rāmāyaṇa betray a later or more
advanced stage in some particulars, such as architectural elaboration, plans
of temples, etc. , which may be due to a higher civilisation ; but in general
the life of priest, noble, people of the lower castes, slaves. etc. , is the same
in both epics, and except for the use of caste. names does not differ from
that exhibited by Buddhistic works of the same period. The chief difference
here is that the Buddhists speak more of householder and gildman as if
they were separate orders. But the Gehapati or householder is also a
common expression for the ordinary men of affairs in Sanskrit works, and
the gilds as shown above in discussing the Sūtras (p. 221) have their im-
portance admitted by the authors of the Sūtras and epics alike. It is
therefore more a question of terminology than a vital distinction when we
find that the social order is reckoned as composed of priest, warrior, house-
holder, gildman, instead of priest, warrior, and “people's man,' Vaiçya, as
)
## p. 232 (#266) ############################################
232
( ch.
PRINCES AND PEOPLES OF THE EPIC POEMS
the Brāhman priests divided the 'regenerate' members of the community. '
The main difference in the presentation of social data given by the
Brāhman and the Buddhist is the one already referred to. The Buddhist
does not accept the spiritual authority of the Brāhman and belittles him as
a caste-member ; but he cannot rid himself of inherited faith and phrase,
and so constantly recognises him as member of a caste or order like that
of the monks. On the other hand, the Buddhist state was a democracy
in spirit ; the teaching of the church (to use the word) was apt to exalt the
humble and lower the aristocracy. The emperor himself was humbled by
himself, and his nobles became subject to the religious law of love and
kindness, while any common person was magnified for piety and could
obtain high office in the council chamber. This was not only theoretically
true ; it affected the whole constitution of the State. The merchants
and farmers and the mass of working people were endowed with a new
influence, which superseded for a short time the influence of priest and
noble. It is sometimes said that this was no supersession ; that Buddhism
arose before the four orders were recognised as state constituents, and that
in the freer use of householder and merchant (such was really the Setthi or
gildman) we have the expression of a freer life not yet bound in four-caste
orders. It is probable that at all times the third 'caste' was an elastic term
for every Āryan not priest or warrior ; but it connoted pure blood and
hence excluded those 'mixed castes' which were sometimes higher, but
more often lower, than the house-slave. A great mass of these people
were the hill-tribes reduced to servitude or to low pursuits, such as leather-
workers, fowlers, etc. , all those useful but dirty and disagreeable people
whom the Brāhman despised and the Buddhist affected to love and honour.
But the consideration shown to the low orders and the dignity attained by
the merchants under a king who had no use for war are no proof that these
traits were antecedent to an acknowledgment of the aristocratic classes.
In fact, in the same district in which Buddhism arose and where the
Buddhist emperors reigned, some at least of the Upanishads and Brāhmaṇas
were composed, and these pre-Buddhist works all acknowledge as a matter
a
of course the high rank of the two upper castes and the vulgarity of the
lower, who exist, especially the farmers, 'to be eaten' by the king. The
Buddhist attitude then is not an archaic attitude or one subsequently
followed by the evolution of a theory of 'four castes,' but is due to a revolu-
1 For the nomenclature of the Buddhists, cf. Fick, Die sociale Gliederung in
nordostlichen Indien zu Buddha's Zeil (1897), pp. 19 f. and 162 f. Cf. also Senart, Les
Castes dans l'Inde, where the contention is upheld that castes (so-called) are really
social orders. Fick's expression Zu Buddha's Zeit is used with the freedom which
characterises almost all Buddhist scholars when writing of Buddhist literature. He
means no more by it than early Buddhist literature, and under that head are included
the Jātakas which, in their present form, are centuries later than Buddha's time.
## p. 233 (#267) ############################################
XI ]
GENESIS OF THE GREAT EPIC
233
tionary insistnce on virtue and use as tests of nobility. It is clear from
both epics that the attitude toward the lower castes was not dissimilar to
that held by every aristocracy toward the useful but undesirable proletariat.
Both epics are from the beginning court-epics, to be recited before nobles
and kings and priests at the great sacrifice which designated a supreme
ruler, as the earlier texts indicate ; but, as the epics themselves intimate, to
be recited first at court and then popularised and recited among the people.
The description of recitation of the Mahābhārata given in the work itself
implies, however, that this was not such a popular recitation as occurs to-
day (for the great epic of India is still recited dramatically to village
throngs), but one conducted in the house of a gentleman of leisure for his
private entertainment.
Before discussing the conditions found in the epics it will be necessary
to mention adversely two hypotheses in regard to the time in which the
great epic was composed. Both are exaggerations, based partly on neglect
of pertinent data, of views already considered. The first of these is the
theory that the Mahābhārata is a product of our middle ages, that is, that
it was a late output of the renascence. The discovery of inscriptions showing
that the epic was essentially the same as it is now centuries before the
middle ages of course disproves this ill-considered theory, but the great
work in which it is elaborated will always remain a mine of useful inform-
ation. On the other hand, the theory that the Mahābhārata is a work of
the fifth or sixth century before Christ and the product of one author who
composed it as a law-book”, is a caricature of a fruitful idea of the late
Professor Bühler. As it violates every known principle of historical critic-
ism it may be passed over without discussion. The epic was composed not
by one person nor even by one generation, but by several ; it is primarily
the story of an historic incident told by the glorifier of kings, the domestic
priest and the bard, who are often one'.
The germ of the Mahābhārata is the description of the overthrow of
the Kurus, a Bharata clan, at the hands of the Pāņdus. A thinly veiled
genealogy represents the Pāņdus as cousins of the Kuus. In reality, they
were a new family or clan, who built up a kingdom and then obtained
1 Adolf Holtzmann, Das Mahabharata und seine Teile (1. 92-95).
2 J. Dahlmann, Das Mahābhārata als Eros und Rechtsbuch (1895); and Genesis
des Mahābhărala (1899).
3 That besides the professional bards the domestic priests were eulogisers of the
king may be remarked from the epic tale of the king's daughter who reproaches the
daughter of the domestic priest: I am the daughter of a king, who is lauded ; thou
art only the daughter of the laudator. ' The first priests who handled the epics were
of this sort, domestic priests, royal chaplains, indifferently well read in theology and
philosophy but conversant with the rites of the Atharvaveda, which as a popular work
of its day is associated with the earlier form of epic (Chhāndogya Upanishad, III, 4. )
## p. 234 (#268) ############################################
234
[ch.
PRINCES AND PEOPLES OF THE EPIC POEMS
supreme power by allying themselves with the Pañchālas and attacking the
Kurus, who are represented as living about sixty miles north of the Pāņdus'
settlement, which was the present Indarpat (Indraprastha), near Delhi.
The 'cousins' called Pāņdus first excited the jealousy of the Kurus
when the latter were obliged to come south and offer tokens of submission
to the Pāņdu king who had crowned himself as emperor and performed the
horse-sacrifice establishing this title. Resorting to trickery, the Kurus in-
vited the Pāņdus to make them a visit. The somewhat uncouth Pandus,
who are described as good examples of nouveaux niches, flaunting in the
eyes of their guests all the evidence of their wealth and making the lowly
but aristocratic Kurus objects of ridicule', despite their sudden rise to
power were not yet adepts in courtly arts, and the chief art for a knightly
gentleman of that day was gambling. As the Pāņdu king says, no gentle-
man (warrior) can refuse to fight or gamble when challenged. The Kurus
were an old house and had the skill of the court at their command, however,
poor they might be in worldly goods. The Kuru prince, who had been
humiliated, concocted a scheme to overthrow the Pāņdus by gambling. The
old king, his father, was a noble at heart as well as by blood and made what
protest he could against this scheme, which he knew implied cheating at
dice. But he was old and blind ; and it was not the custom to pay any
regard to what a man said after he grew old. When any man's hair grew
grey he was expected to abdicate his power in favour of his son and retire
from active life. What regard was paid to him thereafter was a matter of
courtesy. He usually made over his property to his sons and disappeared
literally or to all intent, becoming a wood-dweller. If such was the fate of
the ordinary old man, the fate of kings was worse, as there was more to
gain by their suppression. No regard at all was paid to the old king, who
was king only in name. The Pāņdus were challenged to a friendly
game of dice to be played in the Kurus' city. It may be remarked here
that the old site of the Kurus at the famous Kuru Plain had evidently been
given up, as the Kurus were pushed back to Hastināpur, where they lived
at the time of the epic story. The Pāņus vaingloriously assented to make
this return visit and see their kinsmen in the north. On arriving they were
courteously received, and after spending a night with their hosts proceeded
to the gambling-hall, where in one throw after another the Kuru prince,
playing by proxy and thus securing the aid of the best gambler at court,
won all the wealth, family, and kiugdom of the Pāņdu emperor, who how-
1 The Kuru prince complains thit mirrors were so set in the floor of the Pānduz'
palace that he was made to think them ponds, etc. Every effort was made to humiliate
the Kurus.
## p. 235 (#269) ############################################
XI ]
THE STORY OF THE RAMAYANA
235
ever, ventured to play once more for the stake of banishment. As the
emperor had already played the lives of his brothers and wife and lost,
this last throw was an effort on the part of the Kurus to get them out of
the way without imprisonment of other disgrace which might have occa-
sioned a rising of other allies of the emperor. As it was, the Pāņdu king
gave his word that, if he lost the last throw, he would go into banishment
for twelve years with all his family. After the twelve years were over, he
and his brothers took refuge with the Matsya clan, and from that vantage-
point collected other allies, marched to the Kurus' land, were met at Kuru
Plain, defeated the Kurus, aud regained the old power. It is noteworthy
that in all the twelve years of banishment the bitterest note in the lament-
ations of the Pāndus is not the loss of the kingdom but the insult to their
wife. As related above, they were a polyandrous race, and the king and
his four brothers were husbands of Krishnā. When the king had gamb-
led away his brothers and himself, he offered to gamble their wife and did
so, though the proceeding raised the legal question whether one who had
already made himself a slave could gamble away anything, slaves possess-
ing nothing. The question being over-ruled, however, the wife was
dragged off and insulted by the brother of the Kuru prince. Now when-
ever the Pandus who are fulfilling the pledge to remain in banishment,
begin to bewail and, plan revenge, it is the former plight of Krishna,
Draupadi which evokes most anger. Not the cheating at dice, though that is
not forgotten, but the insult to Krishnā who was dragged into the assembly
of men and made a slave dishonoured, animates the Pāndus in their des-
pair and causes Bhima to vow that he will drink the blood of the Kuru
Prince, a threat which he fulfils on the field thereafter.
There is, under another form, the violation of the rite of hospitality
and virtual abduction of Krishnā, the same nucleus of tragedy here which
makes the simple Rāmāyaṇa appear like an echo of the Iliad. In the
Rāmāyaṇa, the heroine is carried off by a treacherous fiend, whom
Rāma pursues and slays after a long interval. But the Rāmāyaṇa differs
essentially from the Mahābhārata not only in its style but in its spirit.
Its most spirited scenes occur before the epic plot begins. After the
introduction, in the history of Sitā, Rāma, and Rāvana, turgidity replaces
tragedy, and discriptions of scenery and sentimentality take the place of
genuine passion. The didactic overload is indeed lacking, and the Rāmāyanā
gains thereby ; but in this epic the note of savage lust and passion which
is the charm of the Mahābhārata, as it reveals genuine feeling of real men,
is replaced by the childish laments and pious reflections of Rāma, whose
foes are demoniac spirits, while his allies and confidants are apes.
It is a
polished fantasia, the first example of the Kāvya or 'artificial' poetry
1 No legal authority is cited in this scene, however, though the question is
argued by the old men who sit and look on during the gambling.
>
## p. 236 (#270) ############################################
236
[CH.
PRINCES AND PEOPLES OF THE EPIC POEMS
which appeals to the Hindu taste much more than does the rough genuine-
ness of the Great Epc. The Rāmāyana is in truth artificial in both
senses, for one cannot possibly believe the tale ; whereas the Mahābhā-
rata makes its tale real and one believes it as one believes that the Acha-
eans overthrew Troy, however embellished the account may be.
The
fact is that the Great Epic is the one human document after the appeal
of religious sincerity in the primitive hymns of the Veda.
The reason for this lies not alone in the fact that literature after the
early Vedic age is chiefly liturgical and didactic, for this only shifts the
explanation. Sanskrit literature is without power of literary expression from
the hymns of the Rigveda to the Upanisbads, and again from this time to
that which produced the dramatic scenes of the epic, because it was in the
hands of priests whose whole interest lay apart from real life. The same
spirit which produced the best Vedic hymns, the spirit reflecting indepen-
dence and freedom, appears in the royal literature, if we may so call it,
which stamps the age of the Upanishads and of the great epic in its ear-
lier parts. The Upanishads are in part the product of unpriestly,
or at least anti-ritualistic, thought, and the epic also emanates from the
throne and rot from the altar. As the Upanishads embody the cultured
philosophy of king ard noble? , so the epic scenes of love and war reflect
the life of court and camp. They breathe a different spirit, as they come
from a different source than does the literature of the Brāhman, until
indeed the all-grasping hand of the priest seized even the epic tales, and
stilling all that was natural in them, converted them into sermons, to
teach the theology of the priest and impart to the king the teaching best
calculated to further priestly greed.
The sociological data of the epic period show that society had advan-
ced from a period when rude manners were justifiable and tricks were con-
sidered worthy of a warrior to one when a finer morality had begun to
tem per 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 her-
oes. Arjuna shoots his rival, Karna, while the latter is helpless. But an act
like this, which was doubtless considered clever at first, became repugnant to
the later chivalry. Then the demi-god hero Kộishṇa is made to be the source
of the sin of the simple ground that if divine Krishịa commands, it is
1 For another view, see Chapter v, pp. 128-29.
2 Thus whole sections of the Anucāsana (the thirteenth book of the Mahābbā.
rata) are devoted to instilling the moral grandeur of those kings who give land-grants,
cows, gold, and clothes to the priests. At the same time, much that is didactic is
imbedded in the poem without this aim. Only the tendency is apparent to extend
moral teaching to instruction calculated to subserve the ends of cupidity.
!
## p. 237 (#271) ############################################
XI ]
EARLIER AND LATER MORAL IDEALS
237
right. Arjuna is now made to shoot reluctantly, in obedience to the divine
command. But this may not be cited as a precedent against the later code,
because it was a special case in which the act was inspired by God from
occult motives outside the sphere of human judgment. So with many other
sins committed by the heroes. They reflect an old barbarity later excused.
It is not necessary to assume with Holtzmann, von Schroeder, and others
that the epic tale has been 'set upon its head,' that is, that the whole poem
was originally in honour of the Kurus, and was then rewritten to honour
the Pāņdus, and that in this last process the ‘sins of the Pāņdus' reveal the
original attitude of reproach taken by the Kuru poet'. There is a difference
morally between the Kurus and Pāņdus. The Pāņdus offend against the
later military code. Thus the Kurus reproach the Pāņdus because their
chief warrior interfered in a combat between two warriors and killed his
friend's foe, who was being worsted in the fight. The Pāņdu simply laughs
at the reproach. “Why' (says he) ‘of course I killed him. I saw my friend
worsted, and interfered just in time to save him,' intimating, as is clearly
stated, afterwards, that a conflict on a field of battle is not a polite duel
(“That is no way to fight'). But the Kurus are just as wicked as the Pāņdus,
only they are diplomatic. Their sins smack of cultivated wickedness. They
get an expert gambler to ruin their rival. They secretly seek to burn their
enemies alive. They form a conspiracy and send out ten men under oath
to attack Arjuna. They slay Arjuna's son first, in order to weaken Arjuna's
heart. In a word, they are cunning and sly ; the Pāņdus are brutal and
fierce. Two types of civilisation are embalmed in the poem.
The most striking difference between the knights of the epic and the
priestly power, which in the end controlled them, is that the warrior-caste
was the royal caste and hence represented state-power, a political body,
whereas the priests were never more than a caste of individuals. They
represented no church. power. There is thus a fundamental lack of priestly
organisation ; there is nothing parallel to the Church of Rome in its
contests with European state-power. Individual priests, without financial
resources but dependent on the local rāja for support, could do nothing
save persuade the rāja. But superstition aided them; and persuasion
aided by superstition became a compelling power, which however, was
exerted only for two objects, the exaltation of the individual priest or of
the priestly caste and the inculcation of religious and moral precepts, never
for the formation of a wordly power within, but independent of the State.
There was no caste-head. When strife arose between priests, as it con-
stantly arose apropos of a fat office to be enjoyed (the epic furnishes
1 For det ailed criticism of this theory, see the present writer's monograph on the
Position of the Ruling Caste in Ancient India (J. A. 0. S. ,) (1888). The explanation of the
poem as a myth of nature, Kșishṇā representing earth wed to the five seasons, etc. , is
unnecessary thongh ingenious. It was proposed by Ludwig in the Transuctions of the
Royal Bavarian Academy (vi Folge, 12 Band).
a
## p. 238 (#272) ############################################
238
[CH.
PRINCE S AND PEOPLES OE THE EPIC POEMS
are
examples), each individual priest fought for his own hand ; he had no
bishop over him ; and there was no pope to oppose a king. Thus, while
the priestly law-book says that 'the priest is the norm of the world,' the
epic says 'the king is the norm. ' The law says that a priest has the right
of way even over a king ; the epic narrates that a king meets a priest and
calls out to him 'get out of my way,' and despite the law, as cited, smites
the priest with his royal whip. Such scenes show that the king is not yet
the creature of the priest, but that the epic unconsciously reflects a freer
life than that depicted as ideal by the later priests, who teach that the king
is a steward divinely appointed to provide for them.
Somewhat as in Buddhist literature we must therefore reverse the
importance of the two 'upper castes,' and regard the epic state as
consisting in a military power, whose head is the rāja ; then a priestly
power, politically unorganised, but divided into schools ; then the merchant-
power, represented by gilds, whose powerful heads (mah ājana) are of politi.
cal importance ; then the farmers, unorganised but tenacious of certain
;
religious rights and boasting of Āryan blood. The two last classes form
one body only beause they are neither of them noble (royal) or priestly or
un-Aryan. No other tie unites them. The merchants in general belong to
the town, the farmers to the country ; the two the historical
divisions, brought about by economic conditions, of that order, called 'the
people', in distinction from noble and priest. This was the Āryan state,
Below the Āryan constituents were the many who were either remnants of
wild tribes or slaves, descendants of conquered clans of other blood. They
are all mentioned in the epic, as well as foreigners or barbarians. Although
town-life is well known, yet the farmers and cattlemen were perhaps more
generally typical, on account of their numerical superiority, of the order to
which each belonged. So it is said : ‘Work is for the slave ; agriculture for
the people-caste' (Mbh. , XII, 91, 4), or again 'The work of the Vaiçva is to
tend cattle'; less commonly “The duty of the priest is to beg for sustenance;
of the warrior, to defend the people ; of the people-caste, to make money;
of the slave to work (manually)' (ibid. v, 132, 3)). It will be observed
that the cattle-raising ‘people' are ignored in favour of traders in the last
citation, though 'to make money' may imply farmers and cattlemen as
well as traders.
The slave possessed nothing ; his tax was paid in manual labour, for
he had no money or other possessions, there is no suum in the case of a
slave' (ibid. xi, 60, 37). The slave comes “from the foot of Go' (as the
warrior is born of God's arm) and hence is born to servitude. ' The
Çūdras are especially the slaves of the merchants and farmers ; for though
they are told to be 'faithful to priest and warrior' they are said in particular
to 'serve the people-caste' (ibid, I, 100, 11). They are also marked as the
## p. 239 (#273) ############################################
XI ]
TOWNS AND VILLAGES
239
but a
>
a
'blacks' in distinction from the priests who are white? The military
character of the epic precludes much attention to the slaves, who as a fight-
ing host are naturally not of importance, though they may be referred to
under the designation 'the black mass, for the great hosts led into the field
comprise many of the slaves as camp followers and helpers. What is very
important is that the lowest Āryan caste, the body of farmers, is on the
verge of mingling with the slave-caste. No priest may become a slave
however distressed for sustenance he may
become ;
slave
may
become a herdsman or trader if he cannot support himself by service (this
is the epic and legal rule), and in fact the farmer population was largely
composed of slaves. In the ethical parts of the epic, where caste-distinc-
tions are theoretically abolished in favour of the rule that 'there is no distinc-
tion of caste' (religiously), the slave is even allowed to study and may get a
reward for practising religious exercises (Mbh. , XII, 328, 49 ; XIII, 132, 14),
and a learned slave gives moral iostruction ; but this does not seem to
correspond to real conditions where the slave is reckoned next to the beast
(ibid. xli. 118, 24). The old spirit of the Brāhman period, which declares
that 'priest, warrior, and people constitute the whole world' is still practi-
cally in force.
The people are settled in small villages around a fort, which remains
as a grāma or 'crowd' (village) or expands into a town, nagara. Small settle-
ments are called ghoshas or pallis, some of them, ‘marches' (prāntas, 'on
the border'). The distinction between these and the places called kharvaļas
and pattanas is not clear, though the grāma seems to be smaller than the
kharva:a, which in turn is smaller than the nagara. Perhaps village, town,
city would represent the series. The villages were largely autonomous
though under the 'overlord' of the king, who administered justice and laid
taxes. In all smaller affairs of life, 'authority rests with the village,'
according to law (Pār. , Grihya Sūtra 1, 8, 13) and the epic seems to uphold
even family custom as legally sufficient.
Thus as
one man says that
he demands a price for his daughter, because that is his family-
custom, so another defends his occupation of killing animals on the same
ground. It has always been the custom of Indian rulers to leave affairs as
much as possible in the hands of the local authorities ; and the headman of
the village or the group of five elders were practically independent, provid-
ed the village paid its revenue as assessed by the adhipati or overlord.
1 It is doubtful whether the finer distinction here made (Mbh. , XII, 188, 5),
namely that the warrior (-caste) is red and the people-caste yellow, indicates a real
racial distinction ; especially since there is no other indication that these Āryans are
racially sub. divided ; whereas the distinction between white and black is an early mark
of the difference parting the Āryan and un-Aryan and goes with the nasal distinction
noticed in the Vodas between “gocd-nose' and 'no-nose' people The epic poets still
speak of their Āryan heroes 'fuir-noses'. See also Chapter IV, p. 76.
## p. 240 (#274) ############################################
240
[ch.
PRINCES AND PEOPLES OF THE EPIC POEMS
a
The king rules not because of might alone but by virtue of his moral-
ity. A wicked king may be deposed ; a king who injures his people
instead of protecting them should be killed 'like a mad dog'. Taxes
there must be, because the people must be defended, and this costs ;
but they must be light, and vary according to need. The tax in kind is
common. The merchant pays in kind and the ranchmon pays in kind, but
the town people are fined in copper money for offences, though bodily
punishment takes the place of fines in all cases where there is intent to de-
ceive. Thus the shipping. duties paid by 'merchants coming from afar' are
probably in kind (Mbh. , II, 5, 114). Frequent allusions to mercbants ‘using
false weights' (cf. 1, 64, 21 f. ) show that a careful supervision of the market-
place was necessary. The merchants gilds were of such authority that the
king was not allowed to establish any laws repugnant to the rules of these
trade-unions. The heads of gilds are mentioned next after the priests as
objects of a king's anxious concern. 1
The large part of the population employed as a ranchmen in tending
cattle has scarcely been alluded to as yet. They were perhaps the original
‘people', before agriculture was much practised and when merchants were
few. At the time of the epic they seem to have become partly cattle-raisers
and partly farmers, while the occupation of ranchman proper had fallen in-
to the hands of barbarians who could not understand Āryan speech. Yet
the one example of which the epic takes note shows that these were merely
the cowboys who guarded royal cattle (Mbh , iv, 10, 1). The king is here
represented as having a royal picnic on the occasion of a 'cattle-branding'
when the court goes into the country and the ‘ears of the cattle are marked'
for the year. It is on this occasion that the Kurus lift the cattle of the
Matsyas. Though account of such border-raiding in the old Vedic style
are rare and this passage in particular can by no means claim special anti-
quity, yet it doubtless reflects a not uncommon state of affairs? . Very little
in regard to these lowly members of the state, the cowboys and herdsmen,
is to be gleaned from the epic ; but one passage states what the low labourer
of the 'people-caste' is to earn per annum : 'he should receive the milk of
one cow for the care of six cows ; and if he tend a hundred head he should,
at the end of the year, receive a pair. If he acts for the master as overseer
of flocks or in agricultural labour, he should have one-seventh of the
1 On the gilds, see Móh. , III, 249,16 ; XII,51, 20; Rim. , VI, LI! ,13 ; cf. Hopkins
India Old and Neu', p. 169. Their power may be guessed from the fact that the
didactic epic recommends the king to circumvent them by bribery and dissension since
*the safeguard of corporations (gilds) is union'.
2 Compare the incidental cause of Arjuna's breaking his promise not to visit the
king his broti er while the latter was engaged with their common wife. A robber had
come and driven off a priest's cow, and the good knight went into the palace to get his
arms to attack the robber, doubtless an armed band.
a
## p. 241 (#275) ############################################
XI ]
USAGES OF MILITARY CASTE
241
>
The cap-
proceeds or increase, but, in the case of small cattle, a small part ('one-
sixteenth'; Mbh. , XII, 60, 24 f. ). The six distresses' of a farmer do not
include excessive taxation, but raiding by a foreign king is included
among them?
The royal soldiery includes not only the nobles of military standing
supported by the king but the poor members of the same Āryan order who
with the un-Aryan ‘servants' (not slaves) formed the rank and file of the
foot-soldiers. In battle they are mentioned merely as hosts of nameless
archers, slingers, rock-throwers, etc. , and outside of battle-scenes they are
scarcely mentioned at all. It is stated that a rathin’s ‘car-man's,' wage is
‘one thousand,' that is, one thousand (coppers) a month, and that the king
pensions the widows of fallen soldiers”. The chief moral laws for members of
the military caste were hospitality, the sacredness of the refugee, the law
‘not to forget' a kindness or a hurt, and the rule already referred to, that
when challenged to fight or gamble it was inglorious to refuse.
tured warrior becomes the slave of his captor for a year ; if the captor
allows him to go free, the captor becomes the captured one's Guru or his
'father. ' The sign of submission is to eat grass (v. sup. p. 221). When
the Yavanas were conquered (in Brihannār. Pur. , viii, 35) they ‘ate grass
and leaped into water. ' The epic gives this grass-eating sign as a military
rule. As compared with a number of the 'people-caste,' whose life is
valued at a hundred head of cattle, the warrior's life is valued at a thou-
sand (paid in case of murder). As for the prominent sins of the royal
military caste, they are mentioned as hunting, drinking, gambling, and
sensuality withal in a sort of versus memoralis which has come down as an
apophthegm of law and epic (Mbh. , XII, 59, 60, etc. ). Dancing-girls and
prostitutes were a part of the royal retinue, and hunting was the chief re-
creation of kings, deer and tigers, killed by a king with his sword, being
the favourite game. Lions were hunted with dogs, as attested by Aelian and
mentioned in the epic (Mbh. , 11, 40,7). The Buddhist prohibition of meat-eat-
ing remains as a rule of propriety, but the tales show that eating meat was
as common as drinking intoxicants and that this was the regular court prac-
tice, while the story of the crowds surrounding a meat-shop (Mbh. 111, 207,
10 f. ), where the complacent owner boasts that he sells but does not him-
self kill, shows that vegetarianism was by no means universal.
1 The six distresses (īti) are not defined in either epic ; but since they are men-
tioned (Mbh. , III, 279. 35) and the Purāṇas define them, it is probable that they al.
ready include those classified later as too much rain, drought, grasshopers, mice, birds,
and neighbouring kings (invasion).
2 The warrior may have three wives, probably one sufficed in most instances. For
the pension, compare Mh. , II, 5, 54, and for the wage, ib. 61, 20. The wage exactly
equals the legal 'fine for manslaughter. ' The epic copies the law in permitting desti-
tute priests to become soldiers, as they may become farmers, but it is considered a dis-
grace for the king to allow priests to depend on such nccupations for a livelihood.
9
## p. 242 (#276) ############################################
242
[CA.
PRINCES AND PEOPLES OF THE EPIC POEMS
a
Passing to a wider point of view we must pause to record the fact that
certain allusions in the epic to fire-weapons have been adduced to prove
that the Hindus used gunpowder in the great war. How baseless is this
supposition has already been demonstrated by the present writer, and he
can only repeat that all mention of fire-weapons in the Hindu epic refers
to arms magically blazing such as arrows or wheels. No gun or cannon is
mentioned and gunpowder is unknown.
The epic king is no autocrat ; he is upbraided and reproved by his
brothers and ministers. If born to the throne and yet defective he is not
permitted to become king (“the gods do not approve of a defective king,'
Mbh. , v, 149, 25); but if elected he is the leader at home and in the field.
He is consecrated by baptism with water poured over him from a sacred
horn, and is crowned 'lord of the earth' (Mbh. , XII, 40 and Rām. , 11, 69).
Although the didactic part of the epic emphasises the importance of coun-
cillors and ministers, without whose sanction the king should undertake
no important business, yet actually each king is represented as doing what
seems good to him without advice, as the various warriors of the
family make raids and rape young women from foreign districts without
consultation, Indeed, the priest supposed to be special adviser is scarcely
mentioned in that capacity, only as an agent in spiritual matters. Resolv-
ing on war the kings and allies decide the matters as they will, in the pre-
sence of priests, indeed, but the priests are ignored (Mbh. v, 1 and i, 102).
The sabhā or assembly is here simply a military body for consultation.
Both priests and people are silent in the face of force. The king's city
was defended by battlemented towers and seven moats. It was laid out
in squares and the well-watered streets were lighted with lamps (Mbh. , III,
284, 3 ; xv, 5, 16. etc. ,). Only four squares are mentioned in the Rāmāyaṇa
(11, 48, 19), but the Mahābhārata recommends six. The king's palace
included or was near to the court of justice, the official gambling-ball,
the music-room, the place for contests with wild beasts and for exhibits
of wrestlers. Outside of the inner city were booths for traders etc. , and
the less pretentious dwellings, with pleasure parks (Mbh. , iv, 22 etc. ).
Apparently four gates were the usual number, but nine are mentioned
and even eleven in other literature, and the Rāmāyaṇa gives eight to
Lankā (vi, 93).
