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Persian and the Punic wars, such as would have welded the isolated tribes and developed political genius.
(ii) The Brahmins, the dominant learned class, had early embraced the doctrine that all action and existence are a positive evil and could therefore have felt little inclination, to chronicle historical events.
CHAPTER III. EPIC POETRY.
Epic poetry, as distinguished from lyrical, has this principal characteristic, that it should confine itself more to external action than to internal feelings. H§nce Epos is a natural expression of national life. When nations begin to grow up in ideas and civilization and consequently to reason and to speculate, their minds are turned inwards. Then the spontaneous Outburst of epic song ceases and other kinds of refined poetry have their origin.
From the earliest times songs in celebration of great heroes were Current in India, handed down by rhapsody and tradition. Ancient Vedic legends name not a few of such heroes and even the later epic personages are found to act in the same Vedic cycles in which the vedic poetry moves. The Vedic traditions were not yet obliterated from the recollections of the people, when the epic poems began to be written, nor did they lose their currency when by the efforts of the Brahmin priests all the remains of epic songs were collected into a large body in the form of the Mahabharata. In the songs of praise to the Vedic deities we have the beginnings ofs and the Romans in themer a simple and compact prose had gradually been developed, but in the latter this form is abandoneden the apparent simplicity" says Colebrooke, " vanishes in the perplexity of structure. The endless pursuit of exceptions and limitations so disjoins the general precepts, that the reader cannot keep in view their intended