Page:Monier Monier-Williams - Indian Wisdom.djvu/425

 Many of the legends are Vedic, and of great antiquity ; while others, as we have already pointed out, are comparatively modern—probably interpolated during the first centuries of the Christian era. In fact, the entire work, which consists of about 220,000 lines in eighteen Parvans or sections, nearly every one of which would form a large volume, may be compared to a confused congeries of geological strata. The principal story, which occupies little more than a fifth of the whole, forms the lowest layer; but this has been so completely overlaid by successive incrustations, and the mass so compacted together, that the original substratum is not always clearly traceable. If the successive layers can ever be critically analysed and separated, the more ancient from the later