Study Of Mahabharata

Author(s): J W De Jong
Publisher: J W De Jong

Page 11

THE STUDY OF THE MAHĀBHĀRATA expanded it with brahmanic stories and with interminable expositions on the dharma. Van Buitenen concludes: "Thus The Bhārata of 24,000 couplets grew to The Mahābhārata of 100,000. The original story was in the first phase of complication expanded from within, in the second phase mythologized, in the third phase brahminized. One might even discern a fourth phase, after the epic was first written down, when this collection of manuscripts became, as it were, a library to which new books could be added." The original poem which, according to van Buitenen was a conscious composition by one poet or a small group of poets must have been composed somewhere in the eighth or ninth century B. C. However, the oldest portions preserved are hardly older than 400 B.C. The didactic portions of what has been called the pseudo-epic were added to very late, perhaps as late as the fourth century A.D.
The analytic theory is probably the major contribution made in the nineteenth century to Mahābhārata studies. Even today this theory is far from being dead and buried. Therefore it seems justified to explain this theory in some detail. A variant of the analytic theory is the so-called inversion-theory which was first proclaimed by Adolf Holtzmann (1810-1870) in 1846 (Indische Sagen, II, Karlsruhe, 1846, p. 7). According to Holtzmann, the original poem was written for the glory of the Kurus. Later the poem was reworked in favour of Krşņa and the Pāņdayas, and Duryodhana and Karna were depicted in an unfavourable light. Holtzmann's theory was accepted by Lassen and Leopold von Schroeder,23 and further developed by his nephew Adolf Holtzmann (1838-1914).24 According to the latter the original poem was written by a Buddhist in the third century B.C. This poem was several times reworked and revised, the first time in favour of the Pāņdavas. In this recension the brahmans proclaimed the divinity of Krşņa. A second revision was marked by a reconciliation with Sivaism. The poem was transformed into a dharmaśāstra for those who were not allowed to study the Vedas or who, as for instance warriors, could not understand it. This transformation was executed during the tenth and eleventh centuries. The definitive fixation of the text took place a few centuries later. Holtzmann's theory contained many weak points and was totally rejected by Auguste Barth and Georg Bühler.25 Since then only very few scholars have been in favour of the inversion-theory in one form or another.26 However, even if the theory proposed by the younger Holtzmann is completely unacceptable, Held is right in pointing out that anomalies in the depiction of the Kurus and Pāņdavas still await a satisfactory solution. (cf. Held, op. cit., p. 11). In a recent article, John D. Smith remarked: "Much the most remarkable feature of the hero/villain antithesis in the two epics is, however, the frequent apparent reversal-in 'ethical