Secondary Tales of the Two Great Epics

Author(s): Rajendra I Nanavati
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 18

Introductory
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Itihāsa, Ākhyāna, Purāņa, Gāthā. Each describes one characteristic and all put together give us almost a definition of that type of literature. 'Itibāsa' indicates its histocical aspect. 'Akhyāna' denotes its narrative character. Purāņa' claims its ancieatness. "Gāthā' points to its characteristic of being sung. All put together, these tales must originally have been in the form of narratives of ancient historical events to be sung. The sūtas and paurāņikas and kuśīlavas were our traditional bards, our custodians of this ancient lore, who used to sing the ballads of the heroic deeds of our ancient - historical or legendary --- heroes in the royal courts as well as in the public. These ballads were originally single ballads but in a natural process of development they eventually grew into epics — 'epics of growth' as such epics are called. This process of evolution has been described thus by W. H. Hudson : This sort of an epic "is not in its entirety the work of a single author, but to some extent the result of a process of evolution and consolidation, and that a large amount of pre-existing material, in the shape of floating legends and earlier folk-poems and sagas, is gathered up in its composition. An epic of this kind may, therefore, be regarded as the final product of a long series of accretions and syntheses; scattered ballads gradually clustering together about a common character into ballad-cycles (like the English Robin Hood cycle), and these at length being reduced to approximate unity by the intervention of conscious art":15 This is very clearly exemplified in the case of the Finnish national epic Kale-vala' which "owes its epic form to the labours of a modern scholar, Dr. Lonnrot, who, like Scott in his ‘Border Raids', collected from the peasantry an immense number of ancient ballads and sagas, and then wove these together with great skill, into a consecutive narrative, without, as he asserted, adding a line of his own. His work, therefore, provides an interesting object-lesson, for it shows the way in which, in early times, an epic may have been made out of masses of scattered legendary material.'16 The Anglo-Saxon epic "Beowulf” or the old Germanic epic "Nibelungenlied" also are examples of this type of epics. In our literature, the tales collected around the character of Viśvāmitra in RM1? come quite near to this form. The famous "Suparņākhyāna” outside the epic, or the tales clustered around Garuda in MBh18 are further instances of such story-cycles which may as well be called epics in an embryonic stage. "To the same general class we may also assign the Iliad and the Odysseyo'l' or our RM and the original form of MBh (whether it be a 'Bhāratākhyāna' or a Jaya-kavya '2'), "though we must do this with some diffidence, since... whatever may have been their genesis and early history, the controlling power of a single supreme genius is clearly evident in the poems as they stand.”19 RM, as it stands today, clearly reveals the controlling power of a single supreme genius -
15 An Introduction to the Study of Literature, p. 138. 16 ibid, p. 139. 17 BK, Chs, 50-64. 18 AdiP. Chs. 16–30. 19 An Introduction to the Study of Literature : Hudson; p. 139. 20 About this Jaya-kávya' we shall have to say more later on.