probably, as the Hindus claim, the work of one man, V[=a]lm[=i]ki, who took the ancient legends of Eastern India and moulded them into a stupid sectarian poem.  On the other hand, the Bh[=a]rata is of no one hand, either in origin or in final redaction; nor is it of one sect; nor has it apparently been thoroughly affected, as has the R[=a]m[=a]yana, by Buddhistic influences.  Moreover, in the huge conglomeration of stirring adventure, legend, myth, history, and superstition which goes to make up the great epic there is contained a far truer picture of the vulgar custom, belief, and religion of the time than the too polished composition of V[=a]lm[=i]ki is able to afford, despite the fact that the latter also has many popular elements welded into it.  There are, in fact, only two national works in India, only two works which, withal, not in their entirety, but in their nucleus, after one has stripped each of its priestly toggery, reflect dimly the heart of the people, not the cleverness of one man, or the pedantry of schools.  For a few Vedic hymns and a few Bh[=a]rata scenes make all the literature, with perhaps the exception of some fables, that is not markedly dogmatic, pedantic, or ’artificial.’[4] So true is this that even in the case of the R[=a]m[=a]yana one never feels that he is getting from it the genuine belief of the people, but only that form of popular belief which V[=a]lm[=i]ki has chosen to let stand in his version of the old tale.  The great epic is heroic, V[=a]lm[=i]ki’s poem is romantic; the former is real, the latter is artificial; and the religious gleaning from each corresponds to this distinction.[5]

Ths Bh[=a]rata, like other Hindu works, is of uncertain date, but it was completed as a ‘Great Bh[=a]rata’ by the end of the sixth century A.D., and the characters of the story are mentioned, as well known, by P[=a]nini, whose work probably belongs to the fourth century B.C.  Furthermore, Dio Chrysostomos, probably citing from Megasthenes, refers to it; and the latter authority describes the worship of the chief gods of the epic; while the work is named in one of the domestic S[=u]tras, and a verse is cited from it in the legal Sutra of B[=a]udh[=a]yana.[6] On the other hand, in its latest growth it is on a par with the earlier Pur[=a]nas, but it is not quite so advanced in sectarianism as even the oldest of these writings.  It may, then, be reckoned as tolerably certain that the beginnings of the epic date from the fourth or fifth century before the Christian era, and that it was quite a respectable work by the time that era began; after which it continued to grow for five centuries more.[7] Its religious importance can scarcely be overestimated.  In 600 A.D., far away from its native home, in Cambodia, it was encircled with a temple, and an endowment was made by the king providing for the daily recitation of the poem.  Its legal verses are authoritative; its religion is to-day that of India as a whole.  The latest large additions to it were, as we think, the Book of Laws, the Book of Peace, and the genealogy of Vishnu, which together form a sort of pseudo-epic.  But portions of other books, notably the first, fourth, and seventh, are probably almost as recent as are the more palpable interpolations.