1876.] 



at Delhi three thousand years ago. 



ning and thunder, in devasting tempests and destroying floods. Snch, in 

 all probability, was the general character of the festive multitude who 'sat 

 down upon the grass at the great feast, to eat and drink vigorously to the 

 honour and glory of the new Raja."* As a fancy sketch of what a race of 

 primitive savages may be expected to do at a feast this is perfect. From 

 our knowledge of the Juangahs of Western Orissa, of the Santals of the 

 Kharakpur Hills, and of the Kharwars of Bohtas, we can easily perceive the 

 natural exactitude of the picture in every line. But those who have read 

 the Mahabharata in the original, cannot but think that it is not author- 

 ised by a single syllable to be met with in that work ; and as we have to 

 deal with the account of the feast as given in it, and not what the 

 materials were on which it is founded, the sketch seems somewhat 

 out of place. If we are to resolve the tents (awnings) under which 

 the Brahmans were lodged, the mansions provided for the royal guests, 

 the assembly hall, the golden seats, the crystal fountains and mirrors, the pre- 

 sents of rich stuffs, horses, golden trappings, and highly prized incenses, the 

 stewards, croupiers, chamberlains, the court etiquette, heralds, and ambas- 

 sadors, to a motley crowd of " half naked savages feasting under trees, seated 

 on the grass," what is there to prevent our rejecting the whole as a myth ? — 

 the baseless fabric of a poet's vision, unworthy of being reckoned as an historic 

 description ? Mr. Wheeler attributes them to interpolations made by the 

 Brahmanical priestcraft long after the original of the Mahabharata had been 

 compiled. Now, the account of the Bajasuya given in that work appears 

 under five heads, omitting the first on consultation which is of no interest. 

 The heads are : 1st, the assassination of Jarasantha ; 2nd, the conquest of 

 the four quarters ; 3rd, the sacrifice ; 4th, the off ering of the arghya ; and 5th, 

 the destruction of S'isupala. Of these the first and the second are, according 

 to the critic, " evidently a myth of the Brahmanical compilers who sought 

 to promulgate the worship of Krishna." The third, he believes to be, " an 

 extravagant exaggeration" of a feast celebrated by " half -naked savages unde r 

 the shade of trees" ; and the last two, he suspects, are partly borrowed from 

 the Buddhists, and partly from the traditions of the Yadavas, and engrafted 

 on the original story of the Pandavas. Thus, out of the five chapters we 

 have four entirely rejected, and an insignificant residuum of one accepted in 

 a sense which the words of the text do not openly admit. The obvious in- 

 ference under the circumstances should be that the work in its entirety is a 

 forgery, and not that an original has been tampered with and corrupted. 

 In that case, however, the whole fabric of the learned author's " Ancient 

 India", founded on the Mahabharata, must fall to the ground. 



If nineteen-twentieths of an account are to be rejected, and the remain- 

 ing twentieth is to be so transmogrified as to be utterly unlike the original, 

 * History of India, I, p. 167. 

 2 A 



K 



