Recent Russian Publications On Indian Epic

Author(s): J W De Jong
Publisher: J W De Jong

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RUSSIAN PUBLICATIONS ON THE INDIAN EPIC
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above. He draws attention to the fact that the literary historian A. N. Veselovsky (1838-1906) pointed out that it was wrong to transfer problems of purely literary criticism to problems of folk-poetry in the ancient period and that it was necessary to take as a startingpoint the epic which was still being sung and to study thoroughly its structure and the stages of its development.
However, Vasilkov's main source of inspiration for the study of the characteristics of oral poetry in Mis Lord's The Singer of Tales. Lord, and before him, Parry distinguished unperiodic enjambement from periodic or necessary enjambement. The first is characteristic of oral composition. The sentence, at the verse end, gives already a complete thought but it continues in the next verse, freely adding ideas by new word groups. When there is no complete thought expressed at the verse end, enjambement is necessary. This is characteristic of literary style. As examples of unperiodic enjambement in M, Vasil’kov adduces 3.104.10-11 and 3.39.12-13 (crit. ed.). In more detail Vasil’kov studies the importance of thematic analysis and enumerates such important themes as duels,
1 Victor Zhirmunsky quoted the same passage in N. K. Chadwick and V. Zhirmunsky, Oral Epics of Central Asia (Cambridge 1969), p. 319.
2 Parry, 'The Distinctive Character of Enjambement in Homeric Verse', The Making of Homeric Verse, pp. 251-65; A. B. Lord, 'Homer and Huso III: Enjambement in Greek and Southslavic Heroic Song’, Trans. Am. Phil. Ass., 79 (1948), pp. 113-24; Lord, The Singer of Tales, pp. 54 and 131.