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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both archaic and relatively new elements. The epic poetry of most peoples is transmitted in a language which is more or less artificial. G. points out that, for instance, the Anglo-Saxon poems and the Homeric poems mix forms from different dialects. G. concludes by remarking that, although the realia which are reflected in the epics belong to different historical epochs, nevertheless the epics remain an integral whole. It was not the task of the epic singers to relate history and it was easy for them to amalgamate for instance heroic stories and mythological topics with ethical doctrines and lyrical descriptions which belong to an entirely different epoch and a different worldview. The Indian epics absorbed different levels of experience of the Indian people and they did not simply leave the tradition of many centuries unchanged in its diversity but, each time, they synthesized the traditional elements in the spirit of the ethical and ideological demands of that moment.
Vasilkov's two articles and Grintser's book show clearly the importance of the study of the Indian epics as oral epics. With a few exceptions scholars in the past have been quite willing to acknowledge the fact that the Indian epics were transmitted orally during a long period. Even the expression epic formula' is already to be found in Hopkins's The Great Epic of India and an appendix to his book lists parallel phrases in the two epics. Many of them are epic formulas in the technical meaning given to the word 'formula' by Parry and other scholars. Also Hopkins remarked