Recent Russian Publications On Indian Epic

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

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THE ADYAR LIBRARY BULLETIN expressions. As example G. mentions Kālidāsa's Meghadūta, in which words such as bhavanti, etc. can be used only in the second part of the verse. G. adds that many epic formulas do not necessarily have to be used only in the metrical position for which they are destined, for instance mahābala can also be used in the first half of a pāda: mahābalam mahābāhum, mahābalam mahāprājñam, etc. However, although the number of such deviations is considerable, nevertheless, on the whole, it is insignificantly small in comparison with the number of formulas which are found in their own' usual positions.
In the last two pages of this chapter G. raises a very important problem on which the opinions of scholars differ greatly, i.e. the problem of transitional texts. According to G. the text of the Indian epics, in the form in which it has been transmitted in manuscripts, is not a simple transcription of some oral performance. G. remarks that several Homeric scholars believe that between the period in which the oral poetry flourished and the period in which the epic text was written, there was a more or less lengthy period of time in the course of which the poem received a fixed 'transitional' form. During that period the poem was transmitted by rhapsodes who knew it by heart. This theory has been rejected by other scholars. In the case of the Indian epic this theory is even more improbable because it would be impossible to transmit such vast epics in a rigorously fixed form. A second group of scholars believes that transitional texts are texts