Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 12.djvu/784

* MAGYAR MUSIC. 696 MAHABHAKATA. Some of our great masters have been strongly in- fluenced by the Magyar music, as Haydn, Schu- bert, Joachim, Bralims, and particularly Liszt, whose 15 Hungarian rhapsodies are masterly ar- rangements of genuine Hungarian melodies. The great pianist has also written a book, Des Bohe- vtiois ct de Icur musujue en Bongrie (Paris, 1859), translated into German by P. Cornelius, Die Zigeuner vnd Hire Miisil; in Vngarn (Buda- pest, 18G1). Consult also the Appendi.v to Lud- wig Nohl's Allgemeine Musikgcschichte (Leip- zig, 1884). MAGYARS. See Hungakt. MAHABHARATA, mi-ha'b'ha'rA-ta (Skt. mahu, great -+- hhurata, war or story of the Bharatas). The great epic of India, nearly eight times as long as the Vind and Odyssey com- bined. Native Hindu tradition interprets its title as referring either to the great war waged by the Bharatas or to the poem itself which re- counts the war. The latter is probably a later view, based on the complete epic as it has come down to us in eighteen books, containing alto- gether about 100,000 stanzas. Of these, some 5000 are in four-verse form of eleven syllables each (4X11). and the remainder, with the exception of about two hundred stanzas of more elaborate construction, in stanzas of thirty syl- lables. There are also short passages in prose. An improbable tradition represents this poem as having been originally much longer. More in accord with historic possibility is another tra- dition pointing to the fact that the Bharata poem was at first only a quarter of its present length, the poem itself being distinguished from the nu- merous episodes now included in it. A supple- mentary book on the genealogy of Vishnu, the Barivaniia (q.v.), is a still later addition. Like many other Hindu works, the Mahal)harata is supposed to have been composed by Vyasa; but in reality it bears the marks of having been com- piled by numerous revisers working over the material of the old rhapsodists and uniting this with the lucubrations of sectarian religious phi- losophers. The kernel of this work is an epic narrative telling how the ancient family of the Kurus (Kauravas) was overthro«Ti, in consequence of their own wickedness, by the opposed Panchalas and Pandus (Pandavas). The last-named are the real heroes of the epic, which lauds them as faithful worshipers of the true god Krishna, the human incarnation of Vishnu (q.v.). After the cenealogv' of the families has been narrated in the first book, the epie action begins with an account of a gambling-match, at which the Kurus unfairly cheated the Pandus (reported to be their cousins), robbed them of their neighboring kingdom, and exiled them for twelve years. The story of the exile in the woods gives opportunity for many tales, told to while away the tedium of the banishment, after which the opposing forces, having collected their allies, meet on the sacred Plain of the Kurus and the great war (or eigh- teen days' battle) takes place, resulting in the overthrow of the Kurus. Though the epic prop- erly ends here, it is prolonged, by means of philosophical and ethical discussions embracing the most minute points of social and moral ob- servance, for 20.000 stanzas, which have nothing to do with the story itself and are in fact merelv a popular exposition and summary of legal and philosophic lore. These huge additions make of the epic an encyclopiedia of all knowledge with a strung bias toward religious prosclytism. As compared with the Piamayana (q.v.) (the scl- ond great epic of India), the Mahabharata is mentioned earlier in Hindu literature and the scene is laid in the older seat of Brahmanic learning, at Kurukshetra and Hastinapura (q.v.), near the modern Delhi. It is prob- ably in origin the older of the two cpic- though dating in its present form from i later period than the time when the Ramayana was composed. Some sort of a Bharata war-story was probably handed down from remote antiquity in constantly changing poetic form; but the usurpation of the heroes' place by the newer house of the Pandus shows that our present version cannot be of very great antiquity, and it is likely that some of the epi- sodes are really older than the main poem in its modern shape. The present poem appears to have been composed about B.C. 200. with exten- sive additions from time to time, till about a.d. 100, when it was probably almost in the condition now preserved to us. as was certainly the ease three or four hundred years later. Many of the later Puranas (q.v.) are based on the storj- of this epic and are virtually sectarian tracts in honor of Vishnu or Siva, the two gods whose unity is proclaimed by the epic. Later classical literature also draws largely from the same source. Holtzmann's opinion that the epic dates from the iliddle Ages is now given up by all scholars. Of late Dahlmann has contended that the epic was composed all at one time, perhap-- even by one person, about B.C. 500. In this ex- treme form Dahlmann's views have proved unac- ceptable ; though he has shown that it is not pos- sible to reject offhand this or that portion as a later addition, and has thus put the finishing touch to the demolition of Holtzmann's theory of the construction of the poem. The composite character of the poem as shown by metre and con- tents has been strongly brought out by Hopkins, who argues against the extremist opinions of Dahlmann as regards both the date of the poem and its unity of composition. It is an open qui -,- tion whether in its earliest beginnings the Bharn ta poem did not record events of far greater his- torical importance than those now chronicled in it. Grierson holds that it originally described a conflict for the controlling power in all Northern India as waged by the earliest Aryan immigrants against those who came into the country at a later date. While it would be dilTicult to find support for this hypothesis in the poem itself, it is at least a reasonable theory. On the other hand, quite unsupported by any sound interpre- tation of history is the use made of supposed epic data by Hewitt in his recent Akkadian stud- ies. Apart from the question of the date of the poem and of the war as now described in it. lies the question of the date of the original Bharata war, which may reasonably be referred to about the twelfth century B.C. According to Aiyer. B.C. 1104 is the date of the Kuru-Pandu battle, but this view, though ingeniously supported, ignores the fact that the Pandus were unknown at that early age. The text of the IMahabharata in its Northern recension has been published in Calcutta in four quarto volumes (1834-39). to which is added a table of contents. A better edition is that of Bombay in six volumes, with