THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

144 The Harmony of Virtuethe meaning he puts on it, that the original epic contained only8,800 verses, are ingenuities of this type. They are based on theTeutonic art of building a whole mammoth out of a single andoften problematical bone and remind one strongly of Mr. Pickwickand the historic inscription which was so rudely, if in aPickwickian sense, challenged by the refractory Mr. Blotton. Allthese theorisings are idle enough; they are made of too airy astuff to last.Yet to extricate the original epic from the mass of accretionsis not, I believe, so difficult a task as it may at first appear.One is struck in perusing the Mahabharata by the presenceof a mass of poetry which bears the style and impress of asingle, strong and original, even unusual mind, differing in hismanner of expression, tone of thought and stamp of personalitynot only from every other Sanskrit poet we know, but from everyother great poet known to literature. When we look more closelyinto the distribution of this peculiar style of writing, we cometo perceive certain very suggestive and helpful facts. We realisethat this impress is only found in those parts of the poem whichare necessary to the due conduct of the story; seldom to be detectedin the more miraculous, Puranistic or trivial episodes, butusually broken up by passages and sometimes shot through withlines of a discernibly different inspiration. Equally noteworthy isit that nowhere does this part admit any trait, incident or speechwhich deviates from the strict propriety of dramatic characterisationand psychological probability. Finally, in this body, Krishna'sdivinity is recognised but more often hinted at than aggressivelystated. The tendency is to keep it in the backgroundas a fact to which, while himself crediting it, the writer doesnot hope for a universal consent, still less is able to speak of itas a general tenet and matter of dogmatic belief; he prefers toshow Krishna rather in his human character, acting always bywise, discerning and inspired methods, but still not transgressingthe limit of human possibility. All this leads one to the conclusionthat in the body of poetry I have described, we havethe real Bharata, an epic which tells plainly and straightforwardlyof the events which led to the great war and the empire of theBharata princes. Certainly, if Professor Weber's venturesome