Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/616

 608 SHORT NOTICES October popular in modern India, and European scholars also have engaged in the effort to abate their pretensions. The attempt to credit the Katriyas with the origination of the philosophy of the Upani?ads may now be said to be discredited, but there is prima facie greater plausibility in the con- tention that it was among the ruling class that traditions of dynasties were preserved. The matter is obviously not one to be settled by a priori arguments and Mr. Pargiter's contentions meet with difficulties which are doubtless unsurmountable. The reasons why the history of the Vedic period must be based on the Samhitas, the Brahmanas, and the older Upanisads and not on the epics or Puranas are simple. The Vedic texts in question date from, say, 1200 to 500 B.C.; the text of the most important works was preserved with jealous care in the priestly schools in a manner which rendered interpolation or change difficult and improbable ; the events recorded were often contemporaneous or comparatively recent in date, and are referred to incidentally. In the case of the Puranas we have not a single text which in its present form we can date before A. D. 600 ; the text of these works has been from the first unprotected from change and the information is deliberately given as historical. Even the epics, though they yield less material for Mr. Pargiter's purpose, are of late redaction, and of interpolated and uncertain text. When, therefore, we are asked to accept Mr. Pargiter's eclectic reconstruction of tradition from these authorities, it is obvious that an impossible strain is being placed on our credulity. In the epics and Puranas we can see nothing but attempts, often very divergent, to patch together confused and often entirely unhistorical traditions. Mr. Pargiter, however, meets this obvious conclusion with the following dictum : ' In ancient times men knew perfectly well the difference between truth and falsehood, as abundant proverbs and sayings show. It was natural, therefore, that they should discriminate what was true and preserve it ; and historical tradition must be considered in this light.' But it is sufficient answer to this remarkable view to point out that the accounts which we find in the Puranas of post- Vedic history, where some measure of verification is possible, are discredit- ably inaccurate, and the genealogies of princes in later inscriptions are frequently utterly false, while accounts of contemporary events are distorted almost beyond recognition. There is no ground to hold that early tradition was superior in quality. Nor is it easy to see any reason for persisting in the view that the Puranas preserve for us a tradition current among the Ksatriyas as opposed to the Brahmins. The sharp contrast drawn between Brahmin and K?atriya is vitiated by oblivion of the fact of the existence of the Brahmin as Purohita or domestic priest, who had every motive for celebrating the feats of the king who protected him and through whom he exercised influence on politics. Even Mr. Pargiter admits that the Puranas and the epics, as we have them, are essentially Brahminical, and in point of fact we have not the slightest reason to suppose that they were ever anything else. It is not surprising that the theories erected on foundations so unsound are hopelessly defective ; it may safely be said that the historian of the Vedic age will be compelled to discard as idle all the suggestions of Mr. Pargiter in this regard, especially as the whole book is full of the most naive and unscientific euhemerism. A. B. K.