THE RAMAYANA AND THE MAHABHARATA

[ii]

Reprinted by permission of George Bell and Sons from “Bohn’s Standard Library” for “Sir John Lubbock’s Hundred Books.”

[iii]

Sir John Lubbock’s Hundred Books

THE GREAT INDIAN EPICS THE STORIES OF THE RAMAYANA AND THE MAHABHARATA BY JOHN CAMPBELL OMAN PROFESSOR OF NATURAL SCIENCE IN THE GOVERNMENT COLLEGE LAHORE AUTHOR OF “INDIAN LIFE RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL” ETC. WITH NOTES APPENDICES AND ILLUSTRATIONS NEW EDITION REVISED

London and New York GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS LIMITED

[iv]

CHISWICK PRESS:—CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.

[v]

PREFACE

The Indian Epics are precious relics of the spring-time of Eastern thought, revealing a new and singularly fascinating world, which differs very remarkably from that depicted in the epic poetry of Western lands. But although these epics are extremely interesting, and although they are accessible in English translations, more or less complete, they are such voluminous works that their mere bulk is enough to repel the ordinary English reader, and even the student, in these days of feverish occupation.

I may, no doubt, be justly reminded that every Indian History, written within recent years, contains abstracts of the two epics; but these abstracts, I would observe, are skeletons rather than miniatures of the poems; they are the dry bones, on which the historians try to support a fabric of historical inferences or conjectures, and they are necessarily deficient in the mythological, romantic and social elements so important to a proper comprehension of the “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata.” Besides, when the structures are so colossal, so composite and in many respects so beautiful, there can be no harm in having yet another view of them, taken probably from a new standpoint.

[vi]

In Europe the Homeric poems are very extensively studied in the original Greek; they are productions of very moderate size in comparison with the Indian Epics; many and excellent translations of them, in both prose and verse, are always issuing from the press; and yet condensed epitomes of the “Iliad” and “Odyssey” are welcomed by the reading public, by whom also prose versions of the poetical narratives of even English poets—as Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare and Browning—are favourably received.

Such being the case, I make no apology for the appearance of this little volume, in which I have not only tried to reproduce faithfully, in a strictly limited space, the main incidents and more striking features of those gigantic and wonderful creations of the ancient bards of India—the “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata”—but also to direct attention to the abiding influence of those works upon the habits and conceptions of the modern Hindu.

As they are often very incorrectly cited in support of views for which there is no authority whatever in their multitudinous verses, it has been my especial aim to give as accurate a presentment as possible of the Indian Epics, taken as a whole; so that a fair and just idea—neither too high nor too low—of their varied contents and their intellectual level might be formed by the readers of this volume, be they Europeans or Indians. And from what I have recently learned, I have good ground for believing that both classes of readers will, after perusal of this little book, be in a position to see the erroneous character of many ideas in regard to life in ancient India which are current in their respective circles.

[vii]

Where, for any reason, I have especially desired that an event recorded, or an opinion expressed, in the epics should be reproduced without the possibility of misrepresentation on my part, I have thought it best to quote verbatim the translations of them made by Hindu scholars; although, unfortunately, their versions are by no means elegant, and, indeed, often quite the reverse. But as they, no doubt, reflect the structure and texture of the poems in a way that no more free or polished English rendering could possibly do, I fancy the citations I have made will not be unwelcome to most readers.

My book is divided into two distinct parts dealing separately with the “Ramayana” and the “Mahabharata,” and at the end of each part I have given, in the form of an Appendix, one or two of the more striking legendary episodes lavishly scattered through these famous epics, and which, though not essential for the comprehension of the main story, are too beautiful or important to be omitted. Of these episodes I should say that they are the best-known portions of the “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata,” having been told and retold in all the leading Indian vernaculars, and having, most of them, been brought before the European world in both prose and verse.

[viii]

A General Introduction to the two poems, and a concluding chapter, containing remarks and inferences based on the materials supplied to the reader in Parts I. and II., complete the scheme of this little volume, which, I trust, will be found to be something more than a mere epitome of the great Sanskrit epics; for, in its preparation, I have had the advantage of considerable local knowledge and an intimate acquaintance with the people of Aryavarta.

J. C. O.

[ix]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[1]

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Foremost amongst the many valuable relics of the old-world literature of India stand the two famous epics, the “Ramayana” and the “Mahabharata,” which are loved with an untiring love by the Hindus, for they have kept alive, through many a dreary century, the memory of the ancient heroes of the land, whose names are still borne by the patient husbandman and the proud chief.[1] These great poems have a special claim to the attention even of foreigners, if considered simply as representative illustrations of the genius of a most interesting people, their importance being enhanced by the fact that they are, to this day, accepted as entirely and literally true by some two hundred millions of the inhabitants of India. And they have the further recommendation of being rich in varied attractions, even when regarded merely as the ideal and unsubstantial creations of Oriental imagination.

Both the “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata” are very lengthy works which, taken together, would make up not less than about five and twenty printed volumes[2] of ordinary size. They embrace detailed histories of wars and adventures and many a story that the Western World would now call a mere fairy tale, to be listened to by children with wide-eyed attention. But interwoven with the narrative of events and legendary romances is a great bulk of philosophical, theological, and ethical materials, covering probably the whole field of later Indian speculation. Indeed, the epics are a storehouse of Brahmanical instruction in the arts of politics and government; in cosmogony and religion; in mythology and mysticism; in ritualism and the conduct of daily life. They abound in dialogues wherein the subtle wisdom of the East is well displayed, and brim-over with stories and anecdotes intended to point some moral, to afford consolation in trouble, or to inculcate a useful lesson. To epitomize all this satisfactorily would be quite impossible; but what I have given in this little volume

will, I hope, be sufficient to show the nature and structure of the epics, the characteristics that distinguish them as essentially Indian productions, and the light they throw upon the condition of India and the state of Hindu society at the time the several portions were written, or, at any rate, collected together. The narrative, brief though it be, will reflect the more abiding features of Indian national life, revealing some unfamiliar ideas and strange customs. Even within the narrow limits of the reduced picture here presented, the reader will get something more than a glimpse of those famous Eastern sages, whose half-comprehended story has furnished the Theosophists of our own day with the queer notion of their extraordinary Mahatmas; he will learn somewhat of the wisdom and pretensions of those sages, and will not fail to note that the belief in divine incarnations was firmly rooted in India in very early times. He will incidentally acquire a knowledge of all the fundamental[3] religious ideas of the Hindus and

of the highest developments of their philosophy; he will also become familiar with some primitive customs which have left unmistakable traces in the institutions of modern social life in the East as well as in the West; and will, perhaps, be able to track to their origin some strange conceptions which are floating about the intellectual atmosphere of our time.

Woven out of the old-time sagas of a remarkable people, “the ancient Aryans of India, in many respects the most wonderful race that ever lived on Earth,”[2] the Sanskrit epics must have a permanent interest for educated people in every land; while all Indian studies must have an attraction for those who desire to watch, with intelligent appreciation, the wonderfully interesting transformations in religion and manners, which contact with Western civilization is producing in the ancient and populous land of the Hindus. Not less interesting will such studies be to those who are able to note the curious, though as yet slight, reaction of Hindu thought upon modern European ideas in certain directions; as, for example, in the rise of Theosophy, in the sentimental tendency manifested in some quarters towards asceticism, Buddhism and Pantheism; in the approval by a small class in Europe of the cremation of the dead, and in the growing fascination of such doctrines as those of metempsychosis and Karma.

Although it is difficult for the Englishman of the nineteenth century to understand the intellectual attitude of modern India in respect to the wild legends of its youth, it may help towards a comprehension of this point if one reflects that had not Christianity superseded the original religions of Northern Europe, had the Eddas and Sagas, with their weird tales of[4] wonder and mystery, continued to be authoritative scripture in Britain, the religious faith of England might now have been somewhat on a par with that of India to-day—an extraordinary medley of the wildest legends and deepest philosophy. It is a subject for wonder how the gods of the ancestors of the English people have entirely faded from popular recollection in Britain, how Sagas and Eddas have been completely forgotten, leaving only a substratum of old superstitions about witchcraft, omens, etc. (once religious beliefs), amongst the more backward of the populace. How many Englishmen ever think, how many of them even know, anything about Thor or Odin and the

bloody sacrifices (often human sacrifices)[3] with which those deities were honoured? How many realize that the worship of these gods and the rites referred to had a footing in some parts of Europe as recently as eight hundred years ago?[4]

The almost complete extinction of the ancestral beliefs of the European nations is a striking fact to which the religious history of India presents no parallel. In Europe the great wall of Judaic Christianity—too often cemented with blood—has been reared, in colossal dimensions, between the past and the present, cutting off all communication between the indigenous faiths and modern speculative philosophy of the Western nations; while diverting the affectionate interest of the devout from local to foreign shrines.

No barrier of nearly similar proportions has ever been raised in India. Islam, it is true, has planted its towers in many parts of the country and has, to some restricted extent, blocked the old highways of thought, causing a certain estrangement between the old and new world of ideas; but the severance between[5] the past and the present has nowhere been as complete as in Europe, for many an Indian Muslim, though professing monotheism, still lingers upon the threshold of the old Hindu temples, and still, in times of trouble, will stealthily invoke the aid of the national deities, who are not yet dead and buried like those of the Vikings. Hence it may be asserted of the vast majority of the Indian people that their vision extends reverentially backward, through an uninterrupted vista, to the gods and heroes of their remote ancestors.

And who were those remote ancestors, those Aryan invaders of India in the gray dawn of human history? We have had two answers to that question. A few years ago the philologists assured us, very positively, that the Aryans were a vigorous primitive race whose home was in central Asia and who had sent successive waves of emigration and conquest westwards, right across the continent of Europe, to be arrested in their onward march only by the wide waters of the Atlantic. We were also assured, by these learned investigators into the mysteries of words and languages, that one horde of Asiatic Aryans, instead of following the usual westward course adopted by their brethren, had turned their thoughts towards the sunnier climes of the South, and, scaling the northwestern barrier of India, had conquered the aborigines and settled in the great Indo-Gangetic plain at the foot of the Himalayas. These conclusions find a place in all our text-books of Indian or European history. The schoolboy, who has read his Hunter’s brief history[5] of India, knows well that “the forefathers of the

Greek and the Roman, of the English and the Hindu, dwelt together in Central Asia, spoke the same tongue, worshipped the same gods,” and[6] that “the history of ancient Europe is the story of the Aryan settlements around the shores of the Mediterranean.” However, these conclusions have recently undergone revision and radical modification. Within the last decade a theory, which originated in England with Dr. Latham and which met with contemptuous disregard when first propounded, has been revived by certain German savants and scientists.[6] Supported by the latest results of craniological and anthropological investigation, Latham’s theory, in a modified form, has, under the erudite advocacy of Dr. Schrader and Karl Penka, gained all but universal acceptance. The theory now in favour, which is founded more on inferences from racial than linguistic peculiarities, differs from the one referred to above in a very important respect. The home of the Aryans, instead of being found in Central Asia, is traced to Europe, so

that the Aryan invaders of India, many centuries before Christ, were men of European descent who pushed their way eastward and gradually extended their dominion first over Iran and subsequently over Northern India, having scaled the snowclad Himalayas, literally in search of “fresh fields and pastures new.” When they reached India, after a long sojourn in Eastern countries, they were a mixed European and Asiatic race, with probably a large share of Turanian blood,[7] speaking a language of Aryan origin.[8] A strong, warlike, aggressive race, these Aryans won[7] for themselves a dominant position in ancient India, and have left to this day the unmistakable traces of their language in many of the vernaculars of the land.

The decision of the question of the origin of the Aryans and the locality of their primitive home is not one of purely antiquarian interest, it is one of national importance, as anyone will be prepared to admit who knows, and can recall to mind, the effect upon the educated Hindus of the announcement that their own ancestors had been the irresistible subjugators of Europe. Whether the Norman conquerors of England were of Celtic or, as the late Professor Freeman insisted, of Teutonic stock, is not unimportant to the Englishman for the true comprehension of his national history and not without some influence even in practical politics; but of far greater moment will it be for the Hindu whether he learn to regard the Aryans of old as an Asiatic or a European race, cradled on the “Roof of the World” or in the flats of the Don.

Although all Hindus look upon the Aryan heroes of the Indian epics as the ancestors of their race, and fondly pride themselves in their mighty deeds, the claim, in the case of the vast majority, is, of course, untenable; since the great bulk of the Indian population has no real title to Aryan descent. Yet Rama and Arjuna are truly Indian creations, enshrined in the sacred literature of the land. And the pride and faith of the Hindus in these demigods has, perhaps, sustained their spirits and elevated their characters, through the vicissitudes of many a century since the heroic age of India.

What genuine facts, or real events, may underlie the poetical narratives of the authors of the “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata” will never be known. The details naïvely introduced are often such as to leave[8] an irresistible impression that there is a substratum of substantial truth serving as a foundation for the fantastic and airy structure reared by the poets, and we now and then recognize, for instance in their despairing fatefulness, a distant echo of ideas which have travelled with the Aryan race to the Northern Seas. But the too fertile imagination of the Indian poets, their supreme contempt for details and utter disregard of topographical accuracy, leave little hope of our ever getting any satisfactory history out of the Sanskrit epics, or even of our establishing an identity in regard to localities and details of construction such as has been traced, in our own day, by Schliemann, between the buried citadel of Hissarlik on the Hellespont and vanished Ilion. For those who do not share these opinions there

is a wide and deep field for industrious research; but I confess that I am somewhat indifferent regarding the extremely doubtful history or the very fanciful allegory that may be laboriously extracted from the Indian epics by ingenious historians and mythologists. Indeed I would protest against these grand epics being treated as history, for then they must be judged by the canons of historical composition and would be shorn of their highest merits. They are poems not history, they are the romantic legends and living aspirations of a people, not the sober annals of their social and political life.

Like the other great poems created by the genius of the past, the Indian epics have a value quite independent of either the history or the allegory which they enshrine. They appeal to our predilection for the marvellous and our love of the beautiful, while affording us striking pictures of the manners of a bygone age, which, for many reasons, we would not willingly lose.

Being religious books, the “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata” are, more or less, known to the Hindus;[9] but it is a noteworthy fact that even educated Indians are but little acquainted with the details of these poems, although both epics have been translated into the leading vernaculars of the country and also into English. I have known educated young men, with more faith in their ancient books than knowledge of their contents, warmly deny the possibility of certain narratives having a place in these books, because, to their somewhat Europeanized ideas, they seemed too far-fetched to be probable. The more striking incidents are, however, familiar to every Hindu, for Brahmans wander all over the country, reciting the sacred poems to the people. They gather an audience of both sexes and all ages and read to them from the venerable Sanskrit, rendering the verses of the dead language of the Aryan invaders of India into the living speech of their hearers. Sometimes the Brahmans read and expound vernacular translations of these poems of Valmiki and Vyasa. Often-times these recitations