Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume VIII.djvu/10



be passed over in silence; and that is the extraordinary abruptness and infelicity with which Brahmanical discourses, such as essays on law, on morals, sermons on divine things, and even instruction in the so-called sciences are recklessly grafted upon the main narrative.... Krishna and Arguna on the morning of the first day of the war, when both armies are drawn out in battle-array, and hostilities are about to begin, enter into a long and philosophical dialogue respecting the various forms of devotion which lead to the emancipation of the soul; and it cannot be denied that, however incongruous and irrelevant such a dialogue must appear on the eve of battle, the discourse of Krishna, whilst acting as the charioteer of Arguna, contains the essence of the most spiritual phases of Brahmanical teaching, and is expressed in language of such depth and sublimity, that it has become deservedly known as the Bhagavad-gîtâ or Divine Song. . . . Indeed no effort has been spared by the Brahmanical compilers to convert the history of the great war into a vehicle for Brahmanical teaching; and so skilfully are many of these interpolations interwoven with the story, that it is frequently impossible to narrate the one, without referring to the other, however irrelevant the matter may be to the main subject in hand.' It appears to me, I own, very difficult to accept that as a satisfactory argument, amounting, as it does, to no more than this—that 'interpolations,' which must needs be referred to in narrating the main story even to make it intelligible, are nevertheless to be regarded 'as evidently the product of a Brahmanical age ,' and presumably also a later age, because, forsooth, they are irrelevant and incongruous according to the 'tastes and ideas '—not of the time, be it remembered, when the 'main story' is supposed to have been written, but—of this enlightened nineteenth century. The support, too, which may be supposed to be derived by this argument from the allegation that there has been an attempt to Brahmanize, so to say, the