FOOTNOTES:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FOOTNOTES:[120]This follows from the fact that the army of the confederates had to cross the Vipaça and Çatadru in order to reach the Tritsus.[121]In the Rigveda king Sudas is at once a son of Divodasa and a scion of the house of the Pijavanas, possibly because Pijavana was the father or some ancestor of Divodasa. In the Samaveda (2, 5, 1, 5) Divodasa is called the noble. In the book of Manu (7, 41; 8, 110) Sudasa is the son of Pijavana. In the genealogy of the kings of the Koçalas, by whom the Tritsus were destroyed, the Vishnu-Purana mentions in the fiftieth generation after Ikshvaku, the founder of the race, a king Sudasa, the son of Sarvakama, grandson of Rituparna. So also the Harivança, and in the Vishnu-Purana (ed. Wilson, p. 381) Vasishtha is the priest of king Sudas as well as of Nimi, the son of Ikshvaku. On the other hand the Vishnu-Purana (p. 454, 455) is aware of a second Sudas, the grandson of Divodasa, in the race of the moon. Viçvamitra is himself called a Bharata; we shall see below that the Mahabharata connects Viçvamitra with the genealogy of the kings of the Bharata. Cp. Roth, "Zur Literatur," S. 142 ff. [On the names of Indian rivers, see Muir,loc. cit.2, 345 ff.][122]Cf. Muir,loc. cit.12, 339, where the hymn is translated.[123]Roth, "Zur Literatur," S. 87, 91 ff. [Rigveda, 3, 33; 7, 83. Muir,loc. cit.322, 323.][124]Manu, 1, 67 ff. [Muir, 1, 43 ff.][125]Weber, "Jyotisham, Abh. d. Berl. Akad." 1862, s. 23 ff. and below.[126]With similar exaggeration "Duty" tells king Parikshit at the close of the Mahabharata that her four feet measured 20 yodhanas in the first age, 16 in the second, 12 in the third, whereas now in the Kaliyuga they only measure four yodhanas. The whole narrative is intended to point out that in the Kaliyuga even Çudras could become kings. The Vishnu-Purana (ed. Wilson, p. 467) calls the first Nanda who ascended the throne of Magadha in 403B.C.the son of a Çudra woman.[127]"Bhagavata-Purana," 9, 14.[128]Lassen, "Ind. Alterth." 12, 600.[129]Arrian, "Ind." 7, 8, 9. Plin. 6, 21, 4. Solin. 52, 5. As to the numbers, Bunsen, "Ægypt." 5, 156; Von Gutschmid, "Beiträge," s. 64. The duration of the first interruption is lost; but it was less than the second, for Arrian says that the second continued as much as 300 years. Perhaps the number of the first and third interruptions taken together are as long as the second. Diodorus (2, 38, 39) allots the 52 years to Dionysus, which Arrian gives to Spatembas.[130]That the Kalpa—i. e.the great world-period—was a current conception in the third centuryB.C.is proved by the inscriptions of Açoka at Girnar. Lassen,loc. cit.22, 238.[131]Not more than nine names can be given to the dynasty of the Nandas, which reigned for 88 years before Chandragupta; seventeen for the dynasty of the Çaiçunagas, even if Kalaçoka's sons are all counted as independent regents; and five for the Pradyotas. For the Barhadrathas the Vayu and Vishnu-Puranas give 21 kings after Sahadeva, the Bhagavata-Purana 20, the Matsya-Purana 32. Hence, taking the highest figures, the united dynasties number 64 reigns. To these are to be added the seven names which connect Brihadratha with Kuru, and the 31 or 21 names given in the longer and shorter lists of the Mahabharata between Kuru and Manu.[132]Von Gutschmid, "Beiträge," s. 76 ff. See below.[133]P. 484, ed. Wilson.[134]Von Gutschmid,loc. cit.s. 85 ff.[135]That the main portions of the Epos in their present form cannot be older, is clear from the views of the worship of Vishnu and Çiva which prevail in the poem. These forms of worship first obtained currency in the fifth and fourth centuriesB.C.(see below). It is also clear from the identification of Vishnu and Krishna, of Rama and Vishnu; the deeply felt Brahmanic anti-Buddhist tendencies, seen in such a marked manner in the Ramayana; the form of philosophic speculation, and the application of astrology, which are characteristic of the Epos in its present state; and finally from the mention of the Yavanas as the allies of the Kurus, and Dattamira,i. e.Demetrius, the king of the Yavanas. This king reigned in Bactria in the first half of the second centuryB.C.(Lassen,loc. cit.1, 557). Another king of the Yavanas who is mentioned is Bhagadatta,i. e.apparently, Apollodotus, the founder of the Græco-Indian kingdom in the second half of the first centuryB.C.(Von Gutschmid, "Beiträge," s. 75). We are led to the same result by the descriptions of Indian buildings, of paved roads and lofty temples, which were first built by the Brahmans in opposition to the stupas of the Buddhists. Lassen places the important pieces of the Mahabharata, in their present form, between Kalaçoka and Chandragupta,i. e.between 425-315B.C.(loc. cit.12, 589 ff.) Benfey places them in the third centuryB.C., A. Weber in the first century. The Mahabharata, which according to the statement found in the poem (1, 81) originally had only 8,800 double-verses, now numbers 100,000: A. Weber, "Acad. Vorlesungen," s. 176. The old form of the Mahabharata is much anterior to the fifth centuryB.C.; certain passages of the present poem are much later: A. Weber, "Indische Skizzen," s. 37, 38. When Dion Chrysostom remarks (2, 253, ed. Reiske) that the Homeric poems were sung by the Indians in their own language—the sorrows of Priam, the lamentation of Hecuba and Andromache, the bravery of Achilles and Hector—Lassen is undoubtedly right in referring this statement to the Mahabharata, and putting Dhritarashtra in the place of Priam, Gandhari and Draupadi in the place of Andromache and Hecuba, Arjuna and Suyodhana or Karna in the place of Achilles and Hector ("Alterth." 22, 409). It is doubtful whether the remark of Chrysostom is taken from Megasthenes. That the Ramayana is later in style than the Mahabharata will become clear below.[136]"Vishnu-Purana," ed. Wilson, p. 380,seqq.[137]Lassen, "Ind. Alterth." 12, Anhang xviii. n. 4.[138]In the Rigveda we find: "If you, Indra and Agni, are among the Druhyus, Anus or Purus, come forth."[139]Lassen,loc. cit.1, xxii. n. 15.[140]"Rigveda," 1, 31, 4; 1, 31, 17; 7, 18, 13.[141]According to the Brahmanic recension of the poem which we now possess, Samvarana is able to obtain the daughter of the god only by the mediation of a sacred priest. The king therefore bethinks him of Vasishtha, who ascends to the god of light and obtains his daughter for the king. Lassen, "Ind. Alterth." 12, Anhang xxvi.[142]Lassen, "Ind. Alterth." 12656, n. and 12850.[143]A. Weber, "Ind. Literaturgesch." s. 1262.[144]Manu, 7, 90, 93. Yajnavalkya, 1, 323-325.[145]Panini in M. Müller, "Hist. of anc. Sanskrit Literature," p. 44,n.2.[146]Manu, 9, 59.[147]M. Müller,loc. cit.[148]"Vishnu-Purana," ed. Wilson, p. 440. Lassen, "Ind. Alterth." 12, 68 ff.[149]In Panini Krishna is called a god, but also a hero. M. Müller, "Hist. of anc. Sanskrit Lit." p. 45n.[150]On the form of the Rama legend in the Daçaratha-Jataka, cf. A. Weber, "Abh. Berl Akad." 1870. The Vishnu-Purana enumerates 33 kings of the Koçalas from Daçaratha to Brihadbala, who falls in the great battle on the side of the Kurus. Including these this Purana makes 60 kings between Manu and Daçaratha. For the same interval the Ramayana has only 34 names, of which some, like Yagati, Nahusha, Bharata, are taken from the genealogical table of the kings of the Bharata, others, like Pritha and Triçanku, belong to the Veda. We have already seen that the series of the Bharata kings give about ten generations between the time when they gained the upper hand on the Yamuna and upper Ganges,i. e.the time of Kuru and Duryodhana. The Koçalas forced eastward by the Bharatas would thus have existed on the Sarayu from 23 generations before Kuru. Wilson, "Vishnu-Purana," p. 386.

[120]This follows from the fact that the army of the confederates had to cross the Vipaça and Çatadru in order to reach the Tritsus.

[121]In the Rigveda king Sudas is at once a son of Divodasa and a scion of the house of the Pijavanas, possibly because Pijavana was the father or some ancestor of Divodasa. In the Samaveda (2, 5, 1, 5) Divodasa is called the noble. In the book of Manu (7, 41; 8, 110) Sudasa is the son of Pijavana. In the genealogy of the kings of the Koçalas, by whom the Tritsus were destroyed, the Vishnu-Purana mentions in the fiftieth generation after Ikshvaku, the founder of the race, a king Sudasa, the son of Sarvakama, grandson of Rituparna. So also the Harivança, and in the Vishnu-Purana (ed. Wilson, p. 381) Vasishtha is the priest of king Sudas as well as of Nimi, the son of Ikshvaku. On the other hand the Vishnu-Purana (p. 454, 455) is aware of a second Sudas, the grandson of Divodasa, in the race of the moon. Viçvamitra is himself called a Bharata; we shall see below that the Mahabharata connects Viçvamitra with the genealogy of the kings of the Bharata. Cp. Roth, "Zur Literatur," S. 142 ff. [On the names of Indian rivers, see Muir,loc. cit.2, 345 ff.]

[122]Cf. Muir,loc. cit.12, 339, where the hymn is translated.

[123]Roth, "Zur Literatur," S. 87, 91 ff. [Rigveda, 3, 33; 7, 83. Muir,loc. cit.322, 323.]

[124]Manu, 1, 67 ff. [Muir, 1, 43 ff.]

[125]Weber, "Jyotisham, Abh. d. Berl. Akad." 1862, s. 23 ff. and below.

[126]With similar exaggeration "Duty" tells king Parikshit at the close of the Mahabharata that her four feet measured 20 yodhanas in the first age, 16 in the second, 12 in the third, whereas now in the Kaliyuga they only measure four yodhanas. The whole narrative is intended to point out that in the Kaliyuga even Çudras could become kings. The Vishnu-Purana (ed. Wilson, p. 467) calls the first Nanda who ascended the throne of Magadha in 403B.C.the son of a Çudra woman.

[127]"Bhagavata-Purana," 9, 14.

[128]Lassen, "Ind. Alterth." 12, 600.

[129]Arrian, "Ind." 7, 8, 9. Plin. 6, 21, 4. Solin. 52, 5. As to the numbers, Bunsen, "Ægypt." 5, 156; Von Gutschmid, "Beiträge," s. 64. The duration of the first interruption is lost; but it was less than the second, for Arrian says that the second continued as much as 300 years. Perhaps the number of the first and third interruptions taken together are as long as the second. Diodorus (2, 38, 39) allots the 52 years to Dionysus, which Arrian gives to Spatembas.

[130]That the Kalpa—i. e.the great world-period—was a current conception in the third centuryB.C.is proved by the inscriptions of Açoka at Girnar. Lassen,loc. cit.22, 238.

[131]Not more than nine names can be given to the dynasty of the Nandas, which reigned for 88 years before Chandragupta; seventeen for the dynasty of the Çaiçunagas, even if Kalaçoka's sons are all counted as independent regents; and five for the Pradyotas. For the Barhadrathas the Vayu and Vishnu-Puranas give 21 kings after Sahadeva, the Bhagavata-Purana 20, the Matsya-Purana 32. Hence, taking the highest figures, the united dynasties number 64 reigns. To these are to be added the seven names which connect Brihadratha with Kuru, and the 31 or 21 names given in the longer and shorter lists of the Mahabharata between Kuru and Manu.

[132]Von Gutschmid, "Beiträge," s. 76 ff. See below.

[133]P. 484, ed. Wilson.

[134]Von Gutschmid,loc. cit.s. 85 ff.

[135]That the main portions of the Epos in their present form cannot be older, is clear from the views of the worship of Vishnu and Çiva which prevail in the poem. These forms of worship first obtained currency in the fifth and fourth centuriesB.C.(see below). It is also clear from the identification of Vishnu and Krishna, of Rama and Vishnu; the deeply felt Brahmanic anti-Buddhist tendencies, seen in such a marked manner in the Ramayana; the form of philosophic speculation, and the application of astrology, which are characteristic of the Epos in its present state; and finally from the mention of the Yavanas as the allies of the Kurus, and Dattamira,i. e.Demetrius, the king of the Yavanas. This king reigned in Bactria in the first half of the second centuryB.C.(Lassen,loc. cit.1, 557). Another king of the Yavanas who is mentioned is Bhagadatta,i. e.apparently, Apollodotus, the founder of the Græco-Indian kingdom in the second half of the first centuryB.C.(Von Gutschmid, "Beiträge," s. 75). We are led to the same result by the descriptions of Indian buildings, of paved roads and lofty temples, which were first built by the Brahmans in opposition to the stupas of the Buddhists. Lassen places the important pieces of the Mahabharata, in their present form, between Kalaçoka and Chandragupta,i. e.between 425-315B.C.(loc. cit.12, 589 ff.) Benfey places them in the third centuryB.C., A. Weber in the first century. The Mahabharata, which according to the statement found in the poem (1, 81) originally had only 8,800 double-verses, now numbers 100,000: A. Weber, "Acad. Vorlesungen," s. 176. The old form of the Mahabharata is much anterior to the fifth centuryB.C.; certain passages of the present poem are much later: A. Weber, "Indische Skizzen," s. 37, 38. When Dion Chrysostom remarks (2, 253, ed. Reiske) that the Homeric poems were sung by the Indians in their own language—the sorrows of Priam, the lamentation of Hecuba and Andromache, the bravery of Achilles and Hector—Lassen is undoubtedly right in referring this statement to the Mahabharata, and putting Dhritarashtra in the place of Priam, Gandhari and Draupadi in the place of Andromache and Hecuba, Arjuna and Suyodhana or Karna in the place of Achilles and Hector ("Alterth." 22, 409). It is doubtful whether the remark of Chrysostom is taken from Megasthenes. That the Ramayana is later in style than the Mahabharata will become clear below.

[136]"Vishnu-Purana," ed. Wilson, p. 380,seqq.

[137]Lassen, "Ind. Alterth." 12, Anhang xviii. n. 4.

[138]In the Rigveda we find: "If you, Indra and Agni, are among the Druhyus, Anus or Purus, come forth."

[139]Lassen,loc. cit.1, xxii. n. 15.

[140]"Rigveda," 1, 31, 4; 1, 31, 17; 7, 18, 13.

[141]According to the Brahmanic recension of the poem which we now possess, Samvarana is able to obtain the daughter of the god only by the mediation of a sacred priest. The king therefore bethinks him of Vasishtha, who ascends to the god of light and obtains his daughter for the king. Lassen, "Ind. Alterth." 12, Anhang xxvi.

[142]Lassen, "Ind. Alterth." 12656, n. and 12850.

[143]A. Weber, "Ind. Literaturgesch." s. 1262.

[144]Manu, 7, 90, 93. Yajnavalkya, 1, 323-325.

[145]Panini in M. Müller, "Hist. of anc. Sanskrit Literature," p. 44,n.2.

[146]Manu, 9, 59.

[147]M. Müller,loc. cit.

[148]"Vishnu-Purana," ed. Wilson, p. 440. Lassen, "Ind. Alterth." 12, 68 ff.

[149]In Panini Krishna is called a god, but also a hero. M. Müller, "Hist. of anc. Sanskrit Lit." p. 45n.

[150]On the form of the Rama legend in the Daçaratha-Jataka, cf. A. Weber, "Abh. Berl Akad." 1870. The Vishnu-Purana enumerates 33 kings of the Koçalas from Daçaratha to Brihadbala, who falls in the great battle on the side of the Kurus. Including these this Purana makes 60 kings between Manu and Daçaratha. For the same interval the Ramayana has only 34 names, of which some, like Yagati, Nahusha, Bharata, are taken from the genealogical table of the kings of the Bharata, others, like Pritha and Triçanku, belong to the Veda. We have already seen that the series of the Bharata kings give about ten generations between the time when they gained the upper hand on the Yamuna and upper Ganges,i. e.the time of Kuru and Duryodhana. The Koçalas forced eastward by the Bharatas would thus have existed on the Sarayu from 23 generations before Kuru. Wilson, "Vishnu-Purana," p. 386.

The Aryas had now advanced far beyond the borders of their ancient territory; from the land of the Panjab they had conquered and occupied the valley of the Ganges. The plundering raids and feuds which had occupied the tribes on the Indus had passed away, and in their place came the migration, conquest, settlement, the conflict for the conquered districts, and a warlike life of considerable duration. It was only when attempted in large masses that attack or defence could be successful. By this means the tribes grew up into larger communities; the small unions of tribes became nations, which divided the land of the Ganges among them. The tribal princes were changed into leaders of great armies. The serious and important nature of the tasks imposed upon them by the conquest and the settlement, by the need of security against the ancient inhabitants or the pressure of their own countrymen, placed in the hands of these princes a military dictatorship; so that in the new districts which were won and maintained under their guidance, the princes had a much greater weight, and a far wider power, than the heads of the tribes on the Indus, surrounded by the warriors of their nations, had ever ventured to exercise. Thus arose a number ofmonarchies in the conquered land. Beside the Matsyas on the western bank of the Yamuna, and the Çurasenas, who lay to the south in the cities of Mathura and Krishnapura (in the place of the Yadavas), stood the kingdom of the Bharatas and Panchalas on the upper course of the Yamuna and Ganges. These nations were governed by the dynasty of Pandu, at first from Hastinapura on the upper Ganges, and afterwards, apparently after the accession of the eighth successor of Parikshit, from Kauçambi, which lies on the lower Yamuna, about 30 miles above the confluence of the Yamuna and the Ganges.[151]Further to the east, and to the north of the Ganges, the Koçalas were situated on the Sarayu; the seat of their kingdom was Ayodhya. Still further to the east were the Videhas, whose rulers resided at Mithila (Tirhat). On the Ganges, below the confluence with the Yamuna, were the kings of the Kaçis at Varanasi (Benares), and farther to the east still, the kings of the Angas at Champa, also on the Ganges. To the south of the river the Magadhas had won a large district; their kings resided at Rajagriha (king's house) on the Sumagadhi.[152]Thus in the east there was a complex of tolerably extensive states, under a monarchy which owed its origin to military leadership in the war, and its permanence to the success of the settlement; a state of things forming a complete contrast to the old life of the tribes of the Aryas in the land of the Panjab.

Such a powerful, extensive, and complete alteration of the forms of the civic community, combined with the new conditions of life rendered necessary on the Ganges, must have exercised a deeply-felt influence on the Aryas. The conquest, establishment, and arrangement of extensive dominions had created themonarchy, but at the same time a warlike nobility had sprung up beside the princes in these contests. The land of the Ganges had been won by the sword and divided among the victors. No doubt those who had achieved most in the battles, and stood nearest to the princes, received the best reward in land and slaves, in captives or dependants among the old population. In this way a number of families with larger possessions became distinguished from the mass of the population. In these the delight in arms and war became hereditary; the feeling of the father passed to his son along with his booty, his horses, and his weapons. He could apply himself to the chase, or to the exercise of arms; he was raised above all care for his maintenance, or the necessity of work. He possessed land and slaves to tend his herds or till his fields. From the later position of this order, we might assume that a nobility practised in the use of arms, the Rajnayas,i. e.the princely, the Kshatriyas,i. e.the wealthy or powerful, surrounded the princes in the Ganges in greater numbers and with greater importance than the warriors of pre-eminent position, who in the land of the Indus had aided the tribal princes in battle, in council, and in giving judgment.

The battles for the possession of the new territory were over, and the mutual pressure of the Arian tribes had come to an end. War was no longer a constant occupation, or carried on for existence; it was only at a distance, on the borders of the new states, that battles took place, either to check the incursions of the old inhabitants from the mountains or to extend the territory already possessed. Hence the majority of the settlers preferred to till their lands in peace, and left it to those for whom booty or glory had a charm, to follow their kings in beating back theenemy at the borders, or making an attack on foreign tribes and countries. Those who had to work the soil with their own hands gladly gave up the precedence to this military nobility; the king might fight out his wars with their help, if under such protection the herds could pasture in peace, or the fields be tilled without interruption. It was time enough for the peasants to take arms when the nobles who surrounded the princes were no longer able to keep off the attacks of the enemy. No doubt the Kshatriyas formed a still more favourable estimate of themselves and their position. Busied with their arms, their horses, or the chase, they became proud, and despised the work of the peasant, paying little respect to that laborious occupation in comparison with their own free and adventurous life.

Owing to their close relation to the king, to their weapons, and their possessions, the Kshatriyas took the first place in the new states on the Ganges. This they maintained beyond a doubt for centuries in the kingdom of the Bharatas, among the Matsyas and Çurasenas, the Koçalas, Kaçis, Videhas, Magadhas. In the royal houses and the families of the Kshatriyas the achievements of the forefathers continued to live; they preserved the recollection of the wars of conquest, the struggles for the possession of the lands, which they now held. At their festivals and banquets the minstrels sang to them the songs of the ancient heroes, their ancestors, their mighty deeds, their sufferings and death; they extolled the delight in battle and the martial spirit, the knightly temper and mode of combat, and thus at length arose the poem of the great war. If our assumption, that the conquest of the land on the Ganges may have been completed about the year 1400B.C., is tenable, we might ascribeto the two following centuries the rise of the Kshatriyas, the establishment of their prominent position in the newly-conquered territory, and to the next century the composition of the songs of the great war in their oldest form.

In the development of other nations the periods of wide expansion, the rise of the military element, and protracted war, usually repress the influence and importance of the priesthood, but among the emigrant Aryas this could not have been the case. We have already seen that among them the contest of sacrifices preceded the contest of arms. The victory fell to the side whose sacrificial bowl Indra had drained. As the correct offering and correct invocation compelled the gods to come down and fight for the nation whose sacrifice they received, the priests were naturally most indispensable in the time of war. The singers of the sacrificial hymns which caused the gods to come down were identical among the Indians with the priests, and were in fact the priests in the stricter sense. With them, minstrel and priest had one name—Brahmana,i. e.one who prays. The hymns of the Vedas showed us how the princes were commanded to set before them at the sacrifice a holy minstrel to offer prayer, and to be liberal to him. The minstrels who accompanied the emigrant tribes to the Yamuna and Ganges had, in those turbulent times, to sing songs of war and victory, as well as to offer prayers at sacrifice, and afterwards to compose the poems on the deeds of the heroes. If the result was that no more new invocations were composed in the period of heroic song, the minstrels nevertheless preserved the old invocations which they had brought with them from the land of the Indus very faithfully. They had imported the ancient worship of their nativedeities into the new land; they had to preserve the old faith and the old rites at a distance from their ancient home, to offer sacrifice in the old fashion, and thus to win and retain the favour of the gods for the emigrants in their new abode. In the families which claimed to spring from Atri and Agastya, from Bhrigu and Gautama, from Kaçyapa and Vasishtha, one generation handed down by tradition to another the prayers which they had preserved as effectual, and which had been composed, or were thought to have been composed, by these celebrated minstrels, the rites which were considered requisite for the efficacy of the sacrifice, for winning the favour and help of heaven. It is obvious that these families did not consist exclusively of the actual descendants of the supposed tribal ancestor. In ancient times the family is the only form, as yet known, of community and instruction. As the prayers pleasing to the gods and the form of sacrifice could only be learnt from a minstrel and priest, those who had this object in view must seek for admittance into a priestly family, and must be adopted as disciples by a priest in the place of sons.[153]Such admittance was naturally most sought after in the case of that race which bore the most famous name, which was supposed to spring from the most celebrated sacrificer of early times, and claimed to possess his songs. Among the "sons of Vasishtha," who, according to the hymn of the Veda (p. 67), sacrificed for the Tritsus, in the race of the Kuçikas to which Viçvamitra belonged, and the other priestly races mentioned in the Veda, we must consider that we have just as much disciples claiming to be descended, or being actually descended, from these supposed ancestors, as relations connected by blood. The importance of these families who preservedthe ancient customs and prayers, and worshipped the ancient gods, must have risen in the new territory in proportion to the length of the period between the emigration from the Indus and the present. In different districts the kings regarded the sacrifice and supplication of different races as the most pleasing to the gods. Among the Koçalas, according to the Ramayana and the Puranas, Vasishtha was the priest of the kings; among the Bharatas, the Kuçikas; among the Videhas and Angas, the Gautamas.[154]The amalgamation of the various tribes into larger nations had the effect of bringing the priestly families into combination and union, and thus they had the opportunity of exchanging the knowledge of their possession of hymns and ritual. This union taught them to regard themselves as a peculiar order. Princes and nations are always inclined to recognise the merit of those who know how to win for them the favour of the gods, good fortune and health by prayer and sacrifice.

The ancient population of the new states on the Ganges was not entirely extirpated, expelled, or enslaved. Life and freedom were allowed to those who submitted and conformed to the law of the conqueror; they might pass their lives as servants on the farms of the Aryas.[155]But though this remnant of the population was spared, the whole body of the immigrants looked down on them with the pride of conquerors—of superiority in arms, blood, and character—and in contrast to them they called themselves Vaiçyas,i. e.tribesmen, comrades—in other words, those who belong to the community or body of rulers.[156]Whether the Vaiçya belonged to the order of the nobles, the minstrels and priests, or peasants, was a matter ofindifference; he regarded the old inhabitants as an inferior species of mankind. In the land of the Ganges down to the lower course of the river this class of inhabitants bears the common name of Çudras, and as this word is unknown to Sanskrit we must assume that it was the original name of the ancient population of the Ganges, just as the tribes of the Vindhyas bear to this day the common name of Gondas. In the new states on the Ganges, therefore, the population was separated into two sharply-divided masses. How could the conquerors mix with the conquered?—how could their pride stoop to any union with the despised servants? And even if they had been willing to unite, would not the language and character of the immigrants be lost and destroyed in this mixture with tribes of rude customs and manners? As the conquered territory became more extensive, and the old inhabitants more numerous—for many were spared by the numerically weaker immigrants and continued to live among them as slaves or free out-door servants, while others hung upon the borders of the conquered regions—the more pressing was the danger that the noble blood and superior character of the immigrants, and the worship of the ancient gods, might be lost in mingling with this mass of servants. This danger co-operated with the natural pride of the conqueror, and his feeling of superiority, to place a strongly-marked separation between the Çudras and the Aryas.

In every nation which has gone beyond the primitive stages of life, wealth and occupation form the basis of a division into more or less fixed forms, more or less close orders. The states on the Ganges were no exception. Here, beside the Kshatriyas, beside the minstrels and priests, or Brahmans, stood the bulk ofthe immigrant Aryas, whose land required the personal labour of the owner, to whom the name Vaiçya, at first common to all, gradually passed as a special name. Below these three orders were the Çudras. The name given by the Indians to their orders,varna,i. e.colour, proves that the difference between the light skin of the immigrants and the dark colour of the native population was of considerable influence, and if a doubt were raised whether or not another population is concealed in the fourth order or Çudras, it would be removed by the close union of the three orders against the fourth, the uncompromising exclusion of the latter in all matters of religion, and the fact that the law of East Iran (the Avesta) as well as that of the Ganges, recognises warriors, priests, and peasants, but no fourth order. The sharp distinction between the Aryas and Çudras may subsequently have had an influence on the orders of the Aryas, so as to mark the divisions more strongly; resting on such a foundation, the division of orders might strike deeper roots on the Ganges than elsewhere.

The higher and more favoured strata of society will seldom be free from the desire to bequeath to posterity the advantages they possess; and this feeling makes itself felt with greater force in earlier stages of civilisation than in later. As the possessions and occupation of the father descend to the son who grows up in them, the favoured orders are inclined to maintain this natural relation, and elevate it into a legal rule; they believe that the qualification for their special calling depends on birth in it, or better blood, and make it so to depend. In the states on the Ganges these tendencies must have been the more strongly marked, as in this case the Aryas saw beneath them, in the Çudras, a class of men less capable andless cultivated than themselves; to descend to this class and mingle with it, seemed to them as disgraceful as it was dangerous to the maintenance of their empire over these men. Here it was more natural than elsewhere to pursue this analogy further—to regard even the classes of their own tribe, according to their more or less honourable occupation, as separate circles, as races having different characters and higher or lower gifts, and to transform these distinctions of occupation and social position into rigid castes. Thus the Kshatriyas, in the full consciousness of their aristocratic life, proud of their brave deeds and noble feeling, must have rendered difficult or impossible all approach to their occupation and order; they regarded the minstrels and the priests, and the Vaiçyas, as classes of inferior birth. When the minstrels had sung the praises of the ancient heroic age in the poem of the marvels of the heroes, in the Epos in its earliest form, and so arrived at more peaceful times in which everything no longer depended on the sword, a feeling of their importance and dignity must have grown up among the priests. Without them, without the accurate knowledge of the old songs and customs of sacrifice, as given by Manu and Pururavas,—without precise acquaintance with the prayers in which efficacy rested, efficient sacrifices could not be offered. We have already remarked that the amalgamation of the emigrant tribes, and the formation of the new kingdoms, brought the priests, who had hitherto belonged to the separate tribes, into closer connection and combination, and made them into a separate order. At the same time, their importance as preserving the old rites and the old faith tended to increase. The community thus arising between the priestly families led of necessity to an interchange of forms ofprayer and invocations, of songs, and poems, and customs of sacrifice, the exclusive possession of which had hitherto belonged to each of these families or schools. Thus in each of the new states the priestly families attained a larger collection of songs, and a ritual which was the natural product of the liturgies of the various families, the observances regarded by one or other of these as traditional and indispensable. The traditional prayers and songs of praise were regarded as magical spells, of which even the gods could not escape the power. This exchange and combination of spells and rubrics of sacrifice no doubt made the ritual more complicated. The strictly-preserved and now extended possession of these prayers, invocations, and customs, which were known to the priests, separated that order from the Kshatriyas, and the Vaiçyas; they stood in opposition to the other orders, as the exclusive possessors of the knowledge of the customs of sacrifice, and efficient invocations. It was only among the members of this order that the correct observances and invocations were known; how could the Kshatriya or the Vaiçya avoid errors in his offering or invocation, such as would remove their efficacy and change them into their opposite? The constant increase of the prayers and forms accompanying every step in the sacrifice occupied more priests: theHotaroffered the invitation to the god to come down and receive the sacrifice; theUdgataraccompanied the preparation of the offering with the solemn forms and prayers; theAdhvaryuperformed the actual rite.

Thus an equality of knowledge, advantage, and interests united the priests against the Kshatriyas, Vaiçyas, and Çudras. By the consciousness that they were in possession of the means to win the favour ofthe gods for the king, the nobles, and the people, the pious feeling aroused among them was greatly assisted towards gaining the recognition of the other orders. Like the Kshatriyas, they must have scorned to descend to the occupations of the Vaiçyas; they must have felt that only the priest born a priest could perform the priestly service, or offer pleasing sacrifice to the gods. They must have maintained that birth alone in the order could confer the capacity for so important and lofty a calling as theirs. If nobles and priests debarred the Vaiçyas from entrance into their order, their occupations, and modes of life, they must have been no less careful to maintain the advantages of their birth against the Çudras.

If the separation of the orders was the result of a natural progress, if the effort of the favoured classes to close their circles was essentially promoted by the common contrast of the immigrants to the remnant of the old population, the natural conditions in which the Aryas were placed on the Ganges were not without an influence on the maintenance of the separation when once introduced. In the land of the Indus the Aryas had not learned to endure such a climate and such heat as they found on the Ganges. The atmosphere began by degrees to undermine the active and vigorous feeling of the Aryas, to lead them to a life of greater calm and rest, which inclined them to retain the conditions and circumstances once introduced.

The orders attain complete exclusiveness and become castes when not only the change from one to another is forbidden, but when even marriage between the members of different orders is either impossible, or if allowed entails the loss of order, and other disadvantages. We do not exactly know to what extent the mutual exclusiveness of the Kshatriyas, theBrahmans, and the Vaiçyas was carried; we only know that these distinctions existed, and that marriages between the orders took place at the time when the priests succeeded in wresting the first place on the throne and in the state from the Kshatriyas, who had maintained it for centuries.

The priests would never have succeeded in raising themselves above the Kshatriyas and repressing the ancient pre-eminence of the armed nobility so closely connected with the kings, who belonged to their order, and were their born chiefs, had they not succeeded in convincing the people on the Ganges, that the effectual sacrifice was the most important and all-decisive act; that the position in which men stood to the gods was a matter far transcending all other relations. They must have transformed the old religious conceptions by a new doctrine, and by means of this transformation given to themselves a special position, with a peculiar sanction from above. This rise of the priesthood, and their elevation to the first order, is the decisive point in the development of the Arians in India. It was a revolution of Indian life, of the Indian state, of Indian history, of which the effects still continue. It has been observed that the peculiar relations of the tribes on the Ganges, and the nature of the land, tended to fix more strongly there than elsewhere the separation between the orders. But that this division is the sharpest known in history; that the orders became castes, sub-divided in turn into a number of hereditary under-castes; that this unnatural social system has continued in spite of the severest attacks and most violent shocks, and still does continue in unbroken force—this is due to a development of the religious views supplied by the priests, and to the position of the priesthood which was founded on this transformation. The victory over the Kshatriyas was the first step on this path. It was won by means of a new conception of the idea of God, and a scheme of the origin of the world, and the stages of created beings established thereon. On this foundation it was that the priests obtained the highest position.

When the priestly families on the Ganges passed beyond the borders of their several states in their contact with each other, they perceived the extent of the whole treasure of sacrificial song and forms of prayer, which the races had brought over in separate portions from the Indus. The confusing multitude of deities and their attributes, which now forced themselves upon the priests, led to the attempt to discover some unity in the mass. The astonishing abundance of conceptions and the number of the supreme deities in the old prayers were essentially due, as has already been pointed out, to the fact that the Indians desired to render to every god whom they invoked the proper and the highest honour. With this object the number of attributes was increased, and the god in question endowed to a greater or less degree with the power and peculiarities of other deities; and in order to win the favour of the deity to whom the sacrifice was offered, men were inclined to praise him as the highest and mightiest of all gods. This inclination was supported by the circumstance that the quick and lively fancy of the Indians never fixed the outlines of their deities or separated them as individuals, and further, by the blind impulse already noticed, to concentrate the power of the gods in one highest god, and seize the unity of the divine nature. Thus we saw that Indra and Agni, Mitra and Varuna, were in turns extolled as the highest deity. The task now before thepriests was to understand the meaning of these old prayers, to grasp the point of agreement in these various invocations, the unity in these wide attributes, ascribed sometimes to one god and sometimes to another. This gave a strong impulse to the reflective mind of the Brahmans, and no sooner did the Indians begin to meditate than their fancy became powerful. The form of Indra, and the conception lying at the base of his divinity—the struggle against the black spirits of darkness—faded away in the land of the Ganges. In that region tempests do not come on with the same violence as in the Panjab; the hot season is followed by the rainy season and the inundation without any convulsions of the atmosphere. Again, as the life of war fell into the background, the position of Indra as a god of war and victory became less prominent. Least of all could the priests in a time of peace recognise the god of their order in the god of war, and in any case the national, warlike, heroic character of Indra could offer few points of contact with priestly meditation. If in consequence of the new circumstances and relations of life, Indra passed into the background—the old gods of light, the common possession of the Aryas in Iran and India, Mitra, Aryaman, Varuna, beside and above whom Indra had risen, were again allowed to come into prominence. The effort to grasp the unity of the divine power seemed to find a satisfactory basis in the form of Varuna, who from his lofty watch-tower beholds all things, is present everywhere, and sits throned in unapproachable light on the waters of heaven, and in the ethical conceptions embodied in the nature of this deity. The Brahmans struck out another path: they set aside altogether Aditi,i. e.the imperishable, who in the old poems of the Veda is the mother of the gods of light,i. e.of "the immortal" (p. 45,n.2), and in other poems is extolled as the heaven and the firmament, as procreation and birth, as well as other attempts to conceive this unity. The effort to grasp the unity of the divine Being, the attempt to comprehend its nature, took quite another direction—highly significant and important for the character and development of the Indians.

Back to Index Next