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Book-review [pustakasamalocana] / 212-213

Elements of Poetry in the Mahabharata by Dr. Ram Karan Sharma, University of California Press, Los Angeles, 1964, price: $5.00. Berkely and The Great Epics of India-the Ramayana and the Mahabharata have demanded constant attention of modern scholarship. But the structural analysis of the same is a comparatively new trend. The work under review is a fine specimen of analytical mind at work to decipher the basic components of thought elements that went into the composition of the great Epic, Mahabharata. The author has carefully drawn attention to the fact that in order to appreciate the basic elements what they are it is necessary to remind ourselves of a very interesting phenomenon that heroic poetry is primarily oral and this is so all over the world. The same lay is recited on various occasions giving rise to different versions of the same thing. So the poet creates afresh although the traditional formulae round which he weaves his poetic fancy remain constant. It is thus possible to anticipate standard imageries and symbols and the repetitions of the same turns of expressions when at last the heroic poetry is put down to writing. Nay, they eventually become a part of convention so that even in an epic of growth they persist and thus subject themselves to analytical scrutiny. It is indeed highly interesting to observe how different minds that worked behind the composition of the Mahabharata in different centuries reacted in the same way to the situations that called for their poetic utterence. The poets, for example, have taken resort to a vast field of the standards of comparison in order to bring their topics under consideration to clearer relief. But in so doing their minds have drawn upon the same objects. To illustrate, the sun has been compared with to bring to the fore the brilliance of an

Jan., 1965] BOOK-REVIEW 213 object under description. The poetic effusion is not only based upon the minute observation of nature, but it has invaded abstract thoughts of different categories. The importance of the present work lies in a complete statistical survey of the raw materials in their different facets that were chiselled into the composition of the Mahabharata. The incongruities that characterize sporadic utterances by diffrent poets at different times are still traceable but they are indicative of a tremendous poetic process pledged to the production of a great epic worthy of embodying the cultural heritage of India. One wishes that the author developed his thesis further to see how the poetic materials exercised the minds of the composers with what effects. A literary assessment of a work like this could be based upon such study. It is an expectation to be fulfilled. S. BHATTACHARYA