EPIC MYTHOLOGY

The mythology of the two epics of India represents in general the belief of the people of Northern India along the lower Ganges within a few centuries of the Christian era. For the Mahabharata the time from 300 B.C. to 100 B.C. appears now to be the most probable date, though excellent authorities extend the limits from 400 B.C. to 400 A.D. The Mahabharata as a whole is later than the Ramayana; but R is metrically more advanced, the work of one author, a skilled metrician, who has improved the rougher epic form of the Mahabharata, as his work represents a lifeless rude than that depicted in the great popular epic, this being the work of many hands and of different times. Both epics have received long additions. The germ of the Mahabharata has been referred to the Vedic period and the Ramayana has been assigned to preBuddhistic times (its germ also recognised as Vedic), but the data, in part negative, oppose the assumption that either epic poem existed before the fourth century B.C. Epic mythology is, however, is fairly consistent. There is no great discrepancy between the character of any one god in the Mahabharata and that of the same god in Ramayana. Nor is the character of gods very different in different parts of the Mahabharata, save for the sectarian tendency to invert the positions of the three highest gods in favour of the sect.