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The Tales In Mahabharata
1,37
remarriage.250 If, therefore, Niyoga must be resorted to, Vyāsa as a mäts-sapinda and as a brāhmin sage is doubly qualified to perform the duty.
An attempt to closely follow the rules laid down in Manusmộti is obvious here. At other places even ideal and verbal closeness to Manusmrti is so insistent throughout the epic that their mutual relation merits a study by itself. The verbal similarity has been indicated above in the case of the Sakuntala-story. We shall also have an occasion below to refer to more of such cases. Here we may only point out that this relation between the epic and the smộti-work seems to have an important bearing upon the period of the second stage of the epic, It is very likely, that the first redaction of the epic was made under a strong influence of the Manusmộti. We may put it as a hypothesis open for a further scrutiny,
It will be interesting to note bere the views of a lawyer-scholar on this point of Niyoga. 'Dhịtarāştra and Pāņdu, without doubt, were the issue of niyoga practised on the wives of the deceased king but without any special preparatory confabulation of the kind outlined in the Epic... Niyoga could not have been an Aryan practice... It nevertheless unfortunately is the case that any practice anywhere observed to have been followed in that country, once it was able to find lodgement in some form or other of written literature, had a tendency in times which were very different from ours to take rank as ācāra with a possibility of becoming even sadācāra.. I feel bound and constrained to cut out the whole Satyavati-Bhişma colloquy and its uncomely issue as Brāhmaṇic elaboration more ingenious than artistic. A practice which is disapproved is made to take on a sacred ritualistic character and the fast trace of doubt and misgiving is caused to be removed by the Veda-Vyasa counterfeit. Its very perfection as a counterfeit condemns it. The person selected does, for a miracle, turn out to be just the one who is able to satisfy the opposing points of view of both the Dowager and the Regent; for is not Vyāsa at the same time a very "superior" Brāhman and a “brother” too of the deceased ?"251
In answer to Janamejaya's curiosity, the tale of Dharma being born as Vidura on account of the curse of Sage Animāņdavya is once again narrated in detail in Adhy.101. Karna's birth, alongwith his parenthood by Adhiratha, his famous generosity and his consequent loss of the inbora protective armour and earrings at the hands of Indra is briefly narrated in Adhy. 104, Gandbāri's prematurely forced delivery of the hundred sons who were then reared up in hundred vessels filled with ghee is already referred to above on p. 104. We find a small complex of tales woven round the births of the five epic heroes occupying Adhy. 109-115. The tale of sage 250 AdiP. 98.5.
loke'py' Acarito drstaḥ kṣatriyāņām punarbhavaḥ/ 251 Indo-Aryan Literature and Culture (Origin), Nagendranath Ghose, Second Edition,
Choukhamba, Varanasi, 1965. pp. 184-86, $. T. 18
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