Secondary Tales of the Two Great Epics

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

Page 20

Introductory
tales and traditions”.21 Thus, the MBh in its early stages of evolution belonged to the folk-literary tradition, out of which some literary genius shaped an epic and tried to give it a final form, but the folk-literary tradition kept influencing the epic to such an extent that slowly the work lost its epic form, and became a large collection of popular tales. In other words, in all the stages before and after the one in which it was given an epic form, the MBh has belonged to the folk-tradition. In its present shape, "the Mahābhārata is not one poetic production at all, but rather a whole literature".22
While MBh has almost irretrievably lost its epic form in this process, RM is fortunate in retaining its original epic form almost intact in spite of accepting the extraneous popular material, which for the most part is placed outside the kernel of the epic. It, therefore, clearly reveals the genius of Vālmīki side by side with the popular influence.
We can as well point out the difference in the result. Since MBh went on assimilating incidents, thoughts, ideals of the different peoples of India through centuries, it came to reflect the whole of the progressive Indian culture in all its diversity and intensity. RM, on the other hand, remained a story of noble characters inspiring the Indian people to emulate their high ideals. MBh took on a dynamic form, while RM always remained the same idealistic poem. Both achieved equal popularity but in their own different ways.
The Epics as Folk-Literature
At this point, it will be rewarding to examine how far do the epics as they are today reveal the characteristics of folk-literature. We shall quote below the characteristics of •Folk-tale''3 as described by Stith Thompson who is "one of the greatest authorities on the subject”24 and try to see how far they are reflected in our epics.
We have already seen above, on the authority of Stith Thompson himself, that the most important quality of a folk-tale is its traditionality and that the term 'Itihāsa', which is used for such tales as well as the epics, itself suggests authoritative, historical, ancient oral tradition. Thompson adds : "they have established themselves as a part of a traditional store of tales of some group of people, whether literate or illiterate."95 We have seen, in the words of Dr. Dandekar, what place these epic-tales have occupied in the cultural life of India.
21 Quoted in On the Meaning of the Mahābhārata; V. S. Sukthankar, pp. 2-3. 22 History of Indian Literature, Vol. I, M. Winternitz, Tr. Mrs. S. Ketkar, Calcutta, p. 316. 23 Under the entry "Folk-tale' in Dictionary of World Literary Terms, Edited by Joseph T.
Shipley, 1970. p. 124 ff. 24 Cassell's Encyclopaedia of Literature, part I. p. 224. 25 Dictionary of World Literary Terms, Edited by Joseph T. Shipley, 1970, p. 124,