THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

IV. 2.Vyasa: Some Characteristics143ignorance of the psychological bases of all great poetry has nowfallen into some discredit; it has been replaced by a more plausibleattempt to discover a nucleus in the poem, an Achilleid, out of whichthe larger Iliad has grown. Very possibly the whole discussion willfinally end in the restoration of a single Homer with a single poem,subjected indeed to some inevitable interpolation and corruption, butmainly the work of one mind, a theory still held by more than oneconsiderable scholar. In the meanwhile, however, haste has beenmade to apply the analogy to the Mahabharata; lynx-eyed theoristshave discovered in the poem — apparently without taking the troubleto study it — an early and rude ballad epic worked up, doctoredand defaced by those wicked Brahmins, who are made responsiblefor all the literary and other enormities which have beendiscovered by the bushelful, and not by Europeans alone — in ourliterature and civilisation. A similar method of “arguing from Homer”is probably at the bottom of Professor Weber's assertion thatthe War Parvas contain the original epic. An observant eye at onceperceives that the War Parvas are more hopelessly tangled than anythat precede them except the first. It is here and here only that thekeenest eye becomes confused and the most confident explorer beginsto lose heart and self-reliance. Now whether the theory is trueor not, — and one sees nothing in its favour, — it has at present novalue at all; for it is a pure theory without any justifying facts. It isnot difficult to build these intellectual card-houses. Anyone may raisethem by the dozen if he can find no better manner of wasting valuabletime. But the Iliad is all battles and it therefore follows in theEuropean mind that the original Mahabharata must have been all battles.Another method is that of ingenious, if forced, argument from straySlokas of the poem to the equally stray and obscure remarks in Buddhistcompilations. The curious theory of some scholars that thePandavas were a later invention and that the original war was betweenthe Kurus and Panchalas only and Professor Weber's singularlypositive inference from a Sloka 1 which does not at first sight bear1AZ$O Xlokshñai, AZ$O Xlokxtain c -Ah' veiÚ xuko veiÒ sHjyo veiÒ va n va --aØÒau ÙlokasahasrÀÍi aØÒau ÙlokaÙatÀni caahaÌ vedmi Ùuko vetti saÜjayo vetti vÀ na vÀThe Mahabharata, Adiparva, I. 81.