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118
Secondary Tales of the two Great Epics
the villain also. For example, the narration of the education of the heroes is common for the villain also. The tales of the Kuru ancestors are the same for the heroes and the villain. The episodes of their escape from the lac-house or their winning Drau. padi for bride inevitably become the tales of Duryodhana's villainy or of his undoing and the resultant feeling of inferiority. Therefore, the fact that the villain of the RM belongs to a different race creates a scope for bringing in tales in connection with the villain also, while there is no such scope in the MBh since the villain also in it belongs to the same race and even family as the heroes do. The different race, genealogy and sect of the villain, thus, make room for more extraneous matter in the epic. The nature of the theme of principal story, thus, seems to affect the scope and nature of the secondary tales also. This, in its turn, will potentially affect the further interpretation of the principal tales by superimposition of the secondary material. As we have already seen in the previous chapter, the sectarian interpretation is possible in the case of RM, not in the case of MBh.
3.
The Birth-stories
The stories narrating the super-normal births of sages and the epic-heroes form another important group of tales. We have seen above in the consideration of the Rsyaśộnga-episode that the birth-stories of the sages reveal a pattern which is characteristically folk-imaginative. As we confirmed there 163 even the Greek myths reveal a pattern indicating that the seed of gods or great sages is nearly always fertile. Dr. Minoru Hara 164 recently tries to show that “These elements -- Indra's fear of ascetics' tapas, his tricks of seducing the ascetics through apsaras-es, the desertion of their offspring, and the motif of the etymologische legende - enable us to discern a line of artifice in Sanskrit literary composition."165 He says : “.... the question of the fate of the orphaned embryos leads to the formation of, and has a further connection with, the so called etymologische Legende."166 The logic of the line of artifice indicated by him is explained thus : "......on earth below a human being who is endowed with extraordinary qualities is supposed to have an extraordinary origin. Extraordinary beings originate out of the seed of ascetics who possess tapas in abundance, and are conceived by heavenly women. In order to explain the birth of such extraordinary children here a literary artifice is invented which links ascetics and apsaras-es, and this unusual combination is made possible only through the abovementioned cycle, that is, Indra's fear caused by ascetics; Indra's order to the apsaras-es to seduce the ascetics to sensuality; and the ascetics breaking their vow of celibacy."167 We quote Dr. Hara rather extensively because he treads very much
163 See fn.66 of Ch.II. 164 'Indra and Tapas', Brahmavidyā (The Adyar Library Bulletin), Adyar, Vol. XXXIX 1975.
pp. 129-160. 165 ibid. p.152. 166 ibid. p.150. 167 ibid. pp. 157-8.
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