Page:Myths of the Hindus & Buddhists.djvu/24

 threads, it is possible to determine what were some of the influences that have entered into its making.

Now and again in history a great systematizing impulse has striven to cast all or part of recognized belief into the form of an organic whole. Such attempts have been made with more or less success in the compilation of books known as the Purānas, in the epic poem called the Rāmāyana, and most perfectly of all in the Mahābhārata. Each of these takes some ancient norm which has been perhaps for centuries transmitted by memory, and sets it down in writing, modifying it and adding to it in such ways as bring it, in the author's eyes, up to date.

The Mahābhārata

The Mahābhārata is the result of the greatest of the efforts thus made to conserve in a collected form all the ancient beliefs and traditions of the race. The name Mahābhārata itself shows that the movement which culminated in the compilation of this great work had behind it a vivid consciousness of the unity of the Bharata or Indian people. For this reason one finds in this work a great effort made to present a complete embodiment of the ideals to be found in the social organism, religion, ancient history, mythology, and ethics of the Indian people.

Hence if we want to follow Indian mythology from its dim beginnings to its perfect maturity through all its multiform intermediate phases we cannot have a better guide than the Mahābhārata. For in India mythology is not a mere subject of antiquarian research and disquisition; here it still permeates the whole life of the people as a controlling influence. And it is the living mythology which, passing through the stages of representation of successive cosmic process and assuming definite shape 4