Indian Antiquary Vol 24

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 74

THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[MARC#, 1895.
of the Mahabharata.70 They are judicious and shew attentive reading. But, as was to be expected, what is presented is only the general system of Hindu thought, and as the author enters into details and analyses large portions of the poem, it is hard to see where he means to stop. It would have been a more usefal, if a much more delicate, task to look in the poem for traces of some doctrine, if not special to the work, at least more characteristic of it, by disregarding what is common to it and other works. Professor Holtzmann has again dealt with the views expressed before by him on the origin and varied history of the Mahabharata, and has extended and defined them more exactly.71 He has turned his essay into a volume, and his views have not gained in weight thereby. The book abounds in facts and observations which are sound and interesting, for the author has a wide acquaintance with literature and knows the Mahabharata thoroughly. But his theory, which is in itself erroneous7 has become quite inadmissible in its new and more definite shape. It is well-known that in Prof. Holtzmann's eyes, the original poem was composed in the third century before our era at the court of Asoka ; that its spirit was warlike and chivalrous, and Buddhistic to boot; that its heroes were the chiefs of the conquered side, Karna, Duryodhana, and his brothers; that the Brahmans, when they took possession of it, turned it, without complete success, into a glorification of the victorious side, the Pandavas, and a condemnation of Buddhism, cunningly disguised by them in the garb of a religious belief which was closely related to Buddhism, and which was held in equal detestation by them, viz., Saivism ; that later on, in a series of fresh alterations, they tried to remove all traces of that hostility to Saivism, with which in the meanwhile they had become reconciled; lastly that by successive additions, they had turned the poem into an encyclopedia of their eclectic doctrines. All of this theory is little in harmony with the ascertained features of the religious, literary and linguistic history of India. By trying to fix precisely the periods of these various remodellings which, according to him, did not reach completion till the thirteenth or fourteenth century, Prof. Holtzmann has ended by ruining his own theory. It has been pointed out, first by Prof. Jacobia and then by Profs. Bühler and Kirste,74 that at the middle of the fifth century the poem contained 100,000 verses; that even at this period and certainly in the seventh century, it was considered as a work of authoritative teaching, a smriti, and that it had the character and validity of a dharmasastra, which, according to the theory of Prof. Holtzmann, it had acquired only from the tenth to the twelfth century onwards; that, starting from the seventh century, we have a whole series of evidence which does not allow us to assume the extensive alterations demanded by this theory; that, lastly, in the first half of tbe eleventh century Alberůni and Kshemendra knew the poem in nearly the form in which we have it. For the rest, there are in Prof. Holtzmann's book many observations on special points, which make the absence of an index a matter of regret. As to his theory of the formation of the Mahabhárata, it is overthrown utterly.
What Prof. Holtzmann has done for the Mahabharata, Prof. Jacobi has done, but with a quite contrary aim, for the other great Indian epic, the Ramayana; the former has tried to make out the Mahabharata to be later than it really is, the latter has tried to shew that the Ramayana is older than was supposed,76 He rejects the first and last books, curtailments on
70 Les die de l'Inde brahmanique d' après l' Adi Purvan. Brudes de religion hindoue. L'homme d'après l' Adi-Parvan; from the Muséon, 1892.
11 Adolf Holtzmann, Zur Geschichte und Kritik des Mahabharata, Kiel, 1892. T2 CF, Revue Critique, January 1st, 1883.
18 In the Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen, 1st August 1892. 74 George Bühler and J. Kirste, Indian Studies No. II. Contributions to the History of the Mahabharata, in the Sitrungsberichte of the Academy of Vienna, 1892. Compare further an article of M. Sylvain Lévi, in the Revue Critique, 10th April 1893. Prof. Bühler's essay forms, as it were, & second part of a previous work of the same scholar, in which he proves, by the testimony of the inscriptions, that the so-called classical poetry with all its refinements, is very much older in India than recept theories are inclined to admit, Die indischen Inschriften und das Alter der indischen Kunstpoesie, in the Sitzungaberichte of the Academy of Vienna, 1890.
76 Hermann Jacobi, Das Ramayana. Geschichte und Inhalt, nebet Concordank der gedruckten Recensionen, Bonn, 1893. Cf. an article by M. V. Henry in the Redtle Critique, 1st May 1893.