Page:Myths of the Hindus & Buddhists.djvu/25

 thereafter, has become a powerful factor in the everyday life of the people—it is this living mythology that has found place in the Mahābhārata.

It should be understood that it is the mythology which has left its clearest impress in the Mahābhārata that has attained a fully developed form, and exercised a potent influence on Indian society. Other myths have for a time appeared in a vague nebular form and then vanished like smoke, leaving little trace behind; they have not assumed any concrete forms in the memory of the race. Thus it is that we find a popular saying prevalent in Bengal that "Whatever is not in the Mahābhārata is not to be found in the land of Bharata [India]." In the Mahābhārata we find on the one hand the primal forms of mythology, and on the other its fully developed forms also. We find in this creation of the Indian mind a complete revelation of that mind.

In the infancy of the human mind men used to mix up their own fancies and feelings with the ways of bird and beast, the various phenomena of land and water, and the movements of sun and moon and stars and planets, and viewed the whole universe in this humanified form. In later times, when man had attained the greatest importance in the eyes of man, the glory of stellar worlds paled before human greatness.

In this book we have dealt with both these stages of mythology, the initial as well as the final. On the one hand, we have given some glimpses of the primal forms which mythology assumed after passing through the hazy indefiniteness of primitive ages. On the other, we have related more fully the stories of the age when mythology had reached its maturity. 5