EXTERIXG ANOTHER'S BODY. 3 



travagant. It is easy to foresee that both folk-lore and sophisticated 

 narrative would simply jump at such tenets and build on their 

 foundation fantastic structures. Nothing is impossible where the 

 canons of time and space and number, and of ever}' sobering em- 

 pirical experience have been undermined by such a travesty on 

 scientific thought. The fiction texts are fully aware of the support 

 they have in Yoga, as when, c. g., Kathas. 45. 79, states distinctly 

 that magic art is founded on Sariikhya and Yoga, and calls it " the 

 supernatural power, and the independence of knowledge, the do- 

 minion over matter that is characterized by lightness and other 

 mystic properties." 



What is perhaps more important, though in a different way, no 

 narrative of events, even historical events, is immune to this com- 

 plete obliteration of the boundary' line between fact and fancy. We 

 can understand better why all professed Hindu historical texts 

 (Caritas or Caritras) deal with alternately on the same plane, and 

 present alternately as equally credible, things that may have happened 

 and things that m.ay not happen. They have been taught to believe 

 all that by a schematic philosophy. 



All narrative texts from the Mahabharata on are full of Yoga 

 technique.'' and there is scarcely a single item of the Yogin's fictitious 

 powers that has not taken service with fiction. To begin with the 

 Yogin, or some undefined ascetic who is, to all intents and purposes, 

 omnipotent, is met at every turn of fiction. Asceticism is practised 

 for the avowed purpose of obtaining magic power.'' The Yoga's 

 most extravagant claim,® namely that it enables its adepts to act as 

 the almighty Creator, is supported in epic narrative by the statement 

 that the Yogin possesses the power of srsti, i. e., the ability to create 

 things like Prajapati.^ Division of personality (kaya-vyiiha) is 

 practised not only by the gods (Surya in Mahabh. 3. 306. 8; or 

 Skanda, ibid., 9. 44. 2^"/) . but even by mortals. In Kathas. 45. 342 fif.. 

 King Suryaprabha, having accumulated at one and the same time 

 an unusually large stock of wives, divides his body by his magic 



c See Hopkins, TAOS. XXH. 333 ff- 



^E. g., Kathas. 107. 81. 



8 Garbe, " Samkhya," p. 187. 



° See Hopkins, 1. c, p. 355. 



