THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

2THE problem of the Mahabharata, its origin,date and composition, is one that seems likely to elude scholarshipto times indefinite if not for ever. It is true that severalEuropean scholars have solved all these to their own satisfaction,but their industrious and praiseworthy efforts....In the following pages I have approached the eternal problemof the Mahabharata from the point of view mainly of styleand literary personality, partly of substance; but in dealing withthe substance I have deferred questions of philosophy, allusionand verbal evidence to which a certain school attach great importanceand ignored altogether the question of minute metricaldetails on which they base far-reaching conclusions. It is necessarytherefore out of respect for these scholars to devote somespace to an explanation of my standpoint. I contend that owingto the peculiar manner in which the Mahabharata has been composed,these minutiae of detail and word have very little value.The labour of this minute school has proved beyond dispute onething and one thing only, that the Mahabharata was not onlyimmensely enlarged, crusted with interpolations and accretionsand in parts rewritten and modified, but even its oldest parts wereverbally modified in the course of preservation. The extent towhich this happened has, I think, been grossly exaggerated, butthat it did happen, one cannot but be convinced. Now if this isso, it is obvious that arguments from verbal niceties must bevery dangerous. It has been sought to prove from a single word,suraÚga, an underground tunnel, which European scholars believeto be identical with the Greek suringks that the accountin the Adiparva of the Pandavas' escape from the burning houseof Purochana through an underground tunnel must be later thananother account in the Vanaparva which represents Bhima ascarrying his brothers and mother out of the flames; for theformer they say must have been composed after the Indianshad learned the Greek language and culture and the latter, itis assumed, before that interesting period. Now whether suraÚga