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The Tales in Mahabharata
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vatarana-parvan which, it seems probable now, may have come into the epic later than the Sambhava-parvan. In Sambhava-parvan, the atmosphere and the style become very near to classical; in fact, at number of places, the tale of Sakuntalā (Ādip. 62-69) reminds us of classical poems. The greatness of Duhsanta in Adhyāya 62,208 the description of the ladies watching the hero from the terraces of their mansions, 209 and praising his valour (!) in Adhyāya 63, Duhşanta's hunting expedition (Adhyāya 63) and the beauties of the forest 210 (Adhyāya 64), the hermitages and the activities therein (Adhyāya 64), are all described in a leisurely, rather a little grand, style reminding us of similar descriptions in the classical works. It is, therefore, not unlikely that they might have been penged under the influence of those famous classical descriptions. In that case, they will reflect the age of their composition (!) and admission into the epic. Some utterances in the grandiloquent speech of Sakuntalā (Adhyāya 68-69) having close parallels in Manusmộti211 also point to the same line of approach.
Adhyāya 7 gives a genealogy of the line of Kurus, in which most of the names are mythical. Consequently, the genealogy seems more fictitiously Purāņic than real, as a glance below will show.
208 Comparable in comprehensiveness to some description of royal greatness from Bāna. 209 Cp. Buddhacarita of Asvaghoşa, Canto III. 210 Comparable, again, in comprehensiveness to the descriptions of Bāna. 211. Compare, for example, AdiP, 68.25, 68.27, 68.28, 68,30 etc. with Manusmyti 8.84, 8.91, 8.85,
8.92 and so on.
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