KRISHNA AND HIS GITA 373
out by Prof. Hopkins [1] in the first stage it was just a Pandu Epic consisting of plays and legends about heroes who took part in the Mahabharata war without the masses of didactic material. Such a Mahabharata, says Prof. Hopkins, may have come into existence between 400-200 B.C. The second stage was the remaking of the epic by the inclusion of didactic matter and the addition of Puranic material. This was between 200 B.C. and 200 A.D. The third stage is marked when (1) the last books were added to the composition as it stood at the end of the second stage with the introduction of the first book and (2) the swollen Anushasana Parva was separated from Shanti Parva and recognized as a separate book. This happened between 200 to 400 A.D. To these three stages Prof. Hopkins adds a fourth or a final stage of occasional amplification which started from 400 A.D. onwards. In coming to this conclusion Prof. Hopkins has anticipated and dealt with all the arguments advanced by Mr. Tilak such as the mention of Mahabharata in Panini [2] and in the Grihyasutras. [3] The only new pieces of evidence produced by Mr. Tilak which has not been considered by Prof. Hopkins are two. One such piece of evidence consists of the statements which are reported to have been recorded by Megasthenes, [4] the Greek Ambassador to the court of Chandra Gupta Maurya, and the other is the astronomical evidence [5], in the Adi Parva which refers to the Uttarayana starting with the Shravana constellation. The facts adduced by Mr. Tilak as coming from Megasthenes may not be denied and may go to prove that at the time of Megasthenes i.e., about
300 B.C. a cult of Krishna worship had come into existence among the Sauraseni community. But how can this prove that the Mahabharata had then come into existence ? It cannot. Nor can it prove that the legends and stories mentioned by Megasthenes were taken by him from the Mahabharata. For there is nothing to militate against the view that these legends and stories were a floating mass of Saga and that it served as a reservoir both to the writer of the Mahabharata as well as to Greek Ambassador.
Mr. Tilak’s astronomical evidence may be quite sound. He is right insaying [6] that “it is stated in the Anugita that Visvamitra started the enumeration of the constellation with Shravana (Ma.Bha. Asva.44.2, and Adi.71.34). That has been interpreted by commentators as showing that the Uttarayana then started with the Shravana constellation, and no other interpretation is proper. At the date of the
1 The Great Epic of India p. 398.
2 The Great Epic of India p. 395.
3 Ibid p. 390.
4 Gita Rahasya II p. 79.
5 Gita Rahasya II p. 789.
6 Ibid p. 789.