Page:A history of Sanskrit literature (1900), Macdonell, Arthur Anthony.djvu/301

 as belong to classes unacquainted with the learned language of the Brahmans.

We next come to the eminent Mīmāṃsā philosopher, who has been proved to have flourished in the first half of the eighth century A.D. In the small portion of his great commentary, entitled Tantra-vārttika, which has been examined, no fewer than ten of the eighteen books of the Mahābhārata are named, quoted, or referred to. It is clear that the epic as known to him not only included the first book (ādiparvan), but that that book in his time closely resembled the form of its text which we possess. It even appears to have contained the first section, called anukramaṇikā or "Survey of contents," and the second, entitled parva-saṃgraha or "Synopsis of sections." Kumārila also knew Books XII. and XIII., which have frequently been pronounced to be of late origin, as well as XIX. It is evident from his treatment of the epic that he regarded it as a work of sacred tradition and of great antiquity, intended from the beginning for the instruction of all the four castes. To him it is not an account of the great war between the Kauravas and Pāṇḍus; the descriptions of battles were only used for the purpose of rousing the martial instincts of the warrior caste.

The great Vedāntist philosopher Çankarāchārya, who wrote his commentary in 804 A.D., often quotes the Mahābhārata as a Smṛiti, and in discussing a verse from Book XII. expressly states that the Mahābhārata was intended for the religious instruction of those classes who by their position are debarred from studying the Vedas and the Vedānta.

From the middle of the eleventh century A.D. we have the oldest known abstract of the Mahābhārata,