The Problem of the Mahabharata

THE POLITICAL STORY

                           BUT the empire of Yudishthira enforced by the arms of Matsya and Panchala or even by their armed threats meant to Bhishma and Kripa something very different from a Kuru Empire; it must have seemed to them to imply rather the overthrow and humiliation of the Kurus and a Panchala domination under a Bharata prince. This it concerned their patriotism and their sense of Kshatriya pride and duty to resist so long as there was blood in their veins. The inability to associate justice with their cause was a grief to them, but it could not alter their plain duty. Such, as I take it, is the clear political story of the Mahabharata. I have very scantily indicated some of its larger aspects only; but if my  interpretation  be correct, it is evident that we shall have in the disengaged Mahabharata not only a mighty epic, but a historical document of unique value.
            What I wish, however, to emphasise at present is that the portions of the Mahabharata which bear the high, severe and heroic style and personality I have described, are also the portions which unfold consecutively, powerfully and without any incredible embroidery of legend this story of clashing political and personal passions and ambitions. It is therefore not a mere assumption, but a perfectly reasonable inference that these portions form the original epic. If we assume that the Ramayanistic portions of the epic or the rougher and more uncouth work precede these in antiquity, we assume that the legend was written first and history added to it afterwards; this is a sequence so contrary to all experience and to all accepted canons of criticism that it would need the most indisputable proof before it could command any credence. Where there is a plain history mixed up with legendary matter written by palpably different hands, criticism judges from all precedents that the latter must be later work embodying the additions human fancy always, and most in coun-  

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tries where a scrupulous historic sense has not been developed, weaves round a great event which has powerfully occupied the national imagination. Moreover in judging the relative genuineness of different styles in the same work, we are bound to see the hand of the original writer in the essential parts of the story as we have it. It makes no difference to this question whether there was an original ballad epic or not, or whether it was used in the com- position of the Mahabharata or not. We have a certain poem in a certain form and in resolving it to its original parts we must take it as we have it and not allow our judgment to be disturbed by visions of a poem which we have not. If the alleged ballad epic was included bodily or in part in the Mahabharata, our analysis will find it there without fail. If it was merely used as material just as Shakespeare used Plutarch or Hall and Holinshed, it is no longer germane to the matter. Now the most essential. part of a story is the point from which the catastrophe started; in the Mahabharata this is the mishandling of Draupadi and the exile of the Pandavas; but this again leads us back to the Rajasuya sacrifice and the Imperial Hall of the Pandavas from which the destroying envy of Duryodhana took its rise. In the Sabhaparva therefore we must seek, omissis omittendis, for the hand of the original poet; and the whole of the Sabhaparva with certain unimportant omissions is in that great and severe style which is the stamp of the personality of Vyasa. This once established we argue farther from the identity of style, treatment and personality between the Virataparva and the Sabhaparva, certain passages being omitted, that this book is also the work of Vyasa. From these two large and mainly homogeneous bodies of poetical work we shall be able to form a sufficient picture of the great original poet, the drift of his thought and the methods of his building. This we shall then confirm, correct and supplement by a study of the Udyogaparva which up to the marching of the armies presents, though with more but still separable alloy breaking in, the same clear, continuous and discernible vein of pure gold running through it. Thus armed we may even rely on resolving roughly the tangle of the Adi and Vanaparvas and it is only when the war begins, that we shall

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have to admit doubt, faltering and guesswork; even here however we shall not be without some light even in its thickest darkness. That the poem can be disentangled, I hold. then to be beyond dispute, but it can only be done by a long and voluminous critical analysis, and even this must be supported by a detailed edition of the whole Mahabharata in which each canto and chapter shall be discussed on its own merits. At present therefore I propose to pass over the method after once indicating its general nature and present certain definite results only. I propose solely to draw a picture, in outline merely, of the sublime poetical personality which an analysis of the work reveals as the original poet, the Krishna Dwaipayana who wrote the Bharata of the 24,000 Slokas, and not the other Vyasa, if Vyasa he was, who enlarged it to something approaching its present dimensions. And let me express at once my deep admiration of the poetical powers and vast philosophic mind of this second writer; no mean poet was he who gave us the poem we know, in many respects the greatest and most interesting and formative work in the world's literature. If I seem to speak mainly in dispraise of him, it is because I am concerned here with his defects and not with his qualities, for the subject I wish to treat is Krishna of the Island, his most important characteristics and their artistic contrast with those of our other greater, but less perfect epic poet, Valmiki.

            I have said that no foreigner can for a moment be trusted to apply the literary test to a poem in our language, the extraordinary blunders of the most eminent German critics in dealing with Elizabethan plays have settled that question once for all. Educated Indians on the other hand have their own deficiencies in dealing with Vyasa; for they have been nourished partly on the curious and elaborate art of Kalidasa and his gorgeous pomps of vision and colour, partly on the somewhat gaudy, expensive and meretricious spirit of English poetry. Like Englishmen they are taught to profess a sort of official admiration for Shakespeare and Milton but with them as with the majority of Englishmen the poets they really steep themselves in are Shelley, Tennyson and Byron and to a lesser degree Keats and perhaps Spenser. Now the manner of these poets, lax, voluptuous, artificial, all  outward  

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glitter and colour, but inwardly poor of spirit and wanting in genuine mastery and the true poetical excellence,is a bad school for the appreciation of such severe and perfect work as Vyasa's.  For Vyasa is the most masculine of writers....

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