Epics in Imprints-1.pdf - Vivekananda Kendra Prakashan

VIVEKANANDA KENDRA PATRIKA
SISTER NIVEDITA ON THE MAHABHARATA
The Mahabharata is the result of the
greatest of the efforts made to conserve in
a collected form, all the ancient beliefs and
traditions of the Race. The name
Mahabharata itself shows that the
movement which culminated in the
compilation of this great work had behind
it, a vivid consciousness of the unity of
the Bharata or Indian people. For this
reason one finds in this work a great effort
made to present a complete embodiment
of the ideals to be found in the social
organism, religion, ancient history,
mythology and ethics of the Indian people.
Hence, if we want to follow Indian
Mythology from its dim beginnings to its
perfect maturity through all its multiform
intermediate phases, we cannot have a
better guide than the Mahabharata. For in
India, mythology is not mere subject of
antiquarian research and disquisition;
here it still permeates the whole life of the
people as a controlling influence. And it
is the living mythology which, passing
through the stages of representation of
successive cosmic processes and
assuming definite shapes thereafter, has
4
become a powerful factor in the everyday
life of the people. It is this living mythology
that has found place in the Mahabharata.
In the infancy of the human mind, men
used to mix up their own fancies and
feelings with the ways of bird and beast,
the various phenomenon of land and water
and the movements of Sun and Moon and
Stars and Planets and viewed the whole
universe in this humanified form. In later
times, when man had attained the greatest
importance in the eyes of man, the glory
of stellar worlds paled before human
greatness.
We have to deal with both these stages
of mythology the initial as well as the final.
We have to study and get some glimpses
of the primal forms which mythology
assumed after passing through the hazy
indefinitiveness of primitive age. On the
other, we have to study in greater detail,
the stories of the age when mythology had
reached its maturity.
(Extracts from “The Myths and
Legends of the Hindus and Buddhists,”
Advaita Ashrama, Kolkatta Nov.2001)