Were the Pandavas Real Beings ? 97
been practised by the Aryans of India or the drinking of
human blood was not repugnant to their ideas. If we
grant that this was the case, of which there is great doubt,
It will be conceded that this must have been so at a very
ancient date indeed. This supposition, therefore, if not
tantamount to the admission that the Pandavas .were real
beings, is at least not better.
One may still be tempted to urge that the absence of the
mention in later Vedic Literature of the "heroes of such a
vast and all-engrossing Epic astheMahabharata is at least
very suspicious if not positively harmfuL To them our
answer is that theMahabharata, as shown in the first book,
was not then what it now is. It was then only one of the
many floating Itihasas or episodes mentioned in the Brah-
mana Literature as a subject of study. It was not that
comprehensive work which Sautihas made it nor had the
incidents of the wa,r been invested with that religious or
mythological halo which is their engrossing charm in the
present Epic. For Krishna worship was still an infant
creed when the Brahmanas were composed and had not
reached those dimensions which we find it had assumed in
the days of Megasthenes. Itis therefore quite compatible
with the possibilities of nature that the historical incidents
of the great war, not yet exaggerated nor associated with
religious ideas, were not referred to by way of illustration
by the Brahmanic Rishis. Lastly, the great war itself is
nowhere referred to in the Brahmanas. If then in spite of
the absence of its mention in the Brahmanas the truth of
the great war has been conceded on all hands, one fails to
see why the absence of the mention of its heroes should be
taken to prove that they alone were not real but mythical.
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