THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

IV. 3. The Problem of the Mahabharata193Duryodhana in this quarrel — Madra, the Deccan, Avanti, SindhuSauvira, Gandhara in one long line from Southern Mysore toNorthern Kandahar; the Aryan colonies in the yet half-civilisedregions of the Lower valley of the Ganges espoused the samecause. The Eastern nations, heirs of the Ikshwaku imperial idea,went equally solid for Yudhishthira. The Central peoples, repositoriesof the great Kuru Panchala tradition as well as the Yadavas,who were really a Central nation though they had trekkedto the West, were divided. Now this distribution is exactly whatwe should have expected. The nations which are most averse toenter into an imperial system and cherish most their separateexistence are those which are outside the centre of civilisation,hardy, warlike, only partially refined; and their aversion is stillmore emphatic when they have never or only for a short timebeen part of an empire. This is the real secret of the invincibleresistance which England has opposed to all Continental schemesof empire from Philip II to Napoleon; it is the secret of her fearof Russia; it is the reason of the singular fact that only now aftermany centuries of great national existence has she becomeimbued with the imperial idea on her own account. The savageattachment to their independence of small nations like the Dutch,the Swiss, the Boers is traceable to the same cause; the fierceresistance opposed by the greater part of Spain to Napoleon wasthat of a nation, which once imperial and central, has fallenout of the main flood of civilisation and is therefore becomeprovincial and attached to its own isolation. That the nationsof the East and South and the Aryan colonies in Bengal shouldoppose the imperialist policy of Krishna and throw in their lotwith Duryodhana is therefore no more than we should expect.On the other hand, nations at the very heart of civilisation, whohave formed at one time or another dominant parts of an empirefall easily into imperial schemes, but personal rivalry, thedesire of each to be the centre of empire, divides them andbrings them into conflict, not any difference of political temperament.For nations have very tenacious memories and arealways attempting to renew the great ages of their past. In theEastern peoples the imperialistic idea was very strong and havingfailed to assert a new empire of their own under Jarasandha,