THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

IV. 3. The Problem of the Mahabharata181When, therefore, they form a theory on their own account, ithas usually some clear justification and sometimes an overwhelmingarray of facts and solid arguments behind it. The German scholarshippossesses infinite capacity of acuteness, labour, marredby an impossible and fantastic imagination, the French of inferencemarred by insufficient command of facts, while in soundnessof judgment Indian sane scholarship has both. It should standfirst, for it must naturally move with a far greater familiarity andgrasp in the sphere of Sanskrit studies than any foreign mindhowever able and industrious. But above all it must clearly haveone advantage, an intimate feeling of the language, a sensitivenessto shades of style and expression and an instinctive feelingof what is or is not possible, which the European cannot hopeto possess unless he sacrifices his sense of racial superiority andlives in some great centre like Benares as a Pundit among Pundits.I admit that even among Indians this advantage must varywith the amount of education and natural fineness of taste; butwhere other things are equal, they must possess it in an immeasurablygreater degree than an European of similar informationand critical power. For to the European Sanskrit words are nomore than dead counters which he can play with and throw ashe likes into places the most unnatural or combinations the mostmonstrous; to the Hindu they are living things the very soul ofwhose temperament he understands and whose possibilities hecan judge to a hair. That with these advantages Indian scholarshave not been able to form themselves into a great and independentschool of learning is due to two causes, the miserablescantiness of the mastery in Sanskrit provided by our universities,crippling to all but born scholars, and their lack of a sturdyindependence which makes us over-ready to defer to Europeanauthority. These, however, are difficulties easily surmountable.In solving the Mahabharata problem this intimate feeling forlanguage is of primary importance; for style and poetical personalitymust be not indeed the only but the ultimate test of thegenuineness of any given passage in the poem. If we rely uponany other internal evidence, we shall find ourselves irresistiblytempted to form a theory and square facts to it. The lateRai Bahadur Bankim Chandra Chatterji, a genius of whom