The Mahabharata. As It Was Is and Shall be. A Critical Study

I tried to impress upon the members of the Bhandarkar Society the importance of establishing the real original incidents and plot of the great Epic illustrating some of them there so that the original texts and characters might be joined together divested of the subsequent interpolations and additions made under the specious plea of adapting it to the march of the times and the tastes of the pub [...] These sages have handed to us the revealed Vedas the Upanishads the Mahabharata the Ramayana and the Purans the magnitude and vastness of the quantity and the excellence of the quality of which have at once been the admiration envy and enigma of the whole world. [...] The sun the moon the wielder of thunder the master of oceans the maker of storms the creator of fire or the holder of the earth no longer seemed to be the presiding deities of life the soul or energy O. II creation and destruction. [...] The idea of the four stages of life and the four orders of the caste system based on the preponderance in the proportion of the three inherent qualities Sattwa Rajas and Tamas which were represented in the Hindu trinity were the outcome of t to Narayana cult as is clear from the Purusha Sukta of the Rigveda by sage Na.-ayana the patronymic of Nara. [...] The combined efforts of all the Vedic gods failed to subdue the great disciples of Narayana Hirayana Kasipu Bali Vritrasura until and unless the espouser of the cause of Dadhichi was sacrificed and the wife of Blirigu was killed by the sound of the fearful Nrisinghdeva and Bali was translated from Heaven to Patala (Hades the region under the earth) and the great King Naliusa was placed on