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IV-THE BHAGAVATA RELIGION AND THE GITA 781
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religion. I shall now briefly explain what inferences can be drawn about the date of this original Gita Although the time of Śri Krsna and of the Bharati war may be the same, that is to say, about 1400 years before the Christian era, yet, it cannot be said that the original Gita and the original Bharata, which are the two principal treatises dealing with the Bhagavata religion, were also written at the same time. Whatever religious sect may come into existence, literature on it does not come into existence immediately; and the same argument applies to the Bharata and to the Gita. There is a story recited at the commencement of the present Mahabharata, that after the Bharati war was over, Janamejaya, the greatgrandson of the Pandavas made a sacrifice of serpents; that, Vaisampayana racited to him for the first time the whole. of the Bharata including the Gitä; and that, when it had been recited by Sauti to Saunaka, the Bharata was thereafter promulgated. It is quite clear that some period of time period must have elapsed between the date when the Bharata came to be preached by Sauti and other preachers, and the date when it acquired its present tangible literary form; but there is now no means by which to definitely decide what that period of time. was. Still, if one draws the conclusion that the archaic original epic-formed Bharata came to be written within 500 years after the Bharati war, that will not be too daring a surmise; because, Buddhistic treatises were written in even a shorter period of time after the death of Buddha. In writing an archaic epic, it is not enough to merely describe in it the feats of the principal hero; but it is necessary to say whether or not what was done by the hero was right Nay, that this is possibly one of the most important parts of an archaic epic, appears from other such epics, in literatures other than the Sanskrit literature. From the modern point of view, this justification of the deeds of the heroes must be made on the pure basis of Ethics. But, in ancient times, there was no difference between Religion and Ethics; and, therefore, there was no way in which to make this justification. other than from the point of view of Religion; and then, as need not be said, it was necessary to justify their deeds on the basis of that very Bhagavata religion, which had been promulgated .by the heroes in the Bharata, or which was acceptable to them,
