Madhuvidya

Author(s): S D Laddu, T N Dharmadhikari, Madhvi Kolhatkar, Pratibha Pingle
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 696

350
Annals BORI, LXIX ( 1988 )
the author of the Harivamsa, and the author of the Parvasangraha-parvan, in that order.
In the first five chapters the author gives an account of the contents of the Ur-Mahābhārata ( or should it be Ur-Bhārata ?) and the additions made to this original text in four successive stages.
This is followed by five very important and informative chapters on • The Kauravas and the Pāņdavas', . Vāsudeva-Krşaa and Rudra-Siva', • History of the Bhārata War', Dating the Epics', and the Date of the Bhārata War'. These chapters have an independent importance of their own and merit a separate review at some later stage.
The present reviewer cannot say anything about the operations carried out by the author in his statistical analysis of the epic. He will take for granted the correctness of the five different homogeneous styles identified by the author. But he looks askance at the conclusions arrived at by the author on the basis of these identifications.
It has been believed since long (cf. e. g. C. V. Vaidya- The Mahabhārata : A Criticism, pp. 1-8, 1904 ), that the Mahābhārata itself mentions three different titles of the epic — Jaya, Bhārata, and Mahābbārata, and that these were composed respectively by Vyāsa, Vaišampāyapa and Sauti Ugraśravas. Shri Yardi rightly dismisses (p. VI) the view that Jaya' is mentioned as the name of the pic in the lide jayo námetihaso 'yam ( 1. 56. 19 ) and agrees with Dr. V. S. Sukthankar in looking upon Jaya not as a specific name of the epic but a generic name applicable to different works of this type. (Ādiparvan, p. 989).
It has also been believed, again erroneously and since long, that the Mahābbārata tells us that the Bhārata composed by Vaiśampayana had an extent of 24000 slokas (1. 1. 61 ) and that the extent of one hundred thousand slokas, as given in the colophon of the Ādiparvan ( fatasähasryām samhitāyām), was reached by the epic when it was expanded with the addition of the upākhyānas by Ugraśravas. The epic itself says nothing of the sort. In the first instance it must be noted that the epic nowhere makes a clear-cut distinction between the two titles, Bhārata and Mahābhārata. It calls, e. g., the composition of Vyāsa Bhārata in 1. 1. 17, 56, 58, 199, 201,
1 The extent of this Jaya was supposed to be eight thousand eisht hundred stanzas
( astou slokasahasrāni astau ślokasatäni ca 1. App. I. I f. n. 1, lime 15, p. 884 -
Bombay edo, 1. 1. 81 ). ? So also Shri Yardi, Preface p. i.
Also 1. 1. 27; 1. 56. 13.
Madhu Vidyā/671