«epic poetry. The age of the Grihya Sutras testifies to the use -of the Itihasas at sacrifices and many of the Brahmanas themselves have some passages called Itihasas and Akhya-yikas. When compared with the later forms, the Vedic legends put on a primitive air and their style and mode are rude and simple.
Thus we have to look to the Vedas themselves for the -source of Epic poetry. Epic literature, then, with its only representatives, the two leading epics, must have had its earliest composition in the pre-buddhistic era, at a period not later than the 5th century B. C. For,
1. The Ramayana records no case of Sati* Except in the single instance of Madri, Pandu's wife, none of the widows of slain heroes immolate themselves with their husbands. This proves the beginning of the practice of Sati. This rare and no reference to such an important custom in the earliest literary records of poetry leads to the assignment of both these compositions to a period before the third century B.C., when Megas-thenes found it well prevalent as far east as Magadha.
2. The first construction of the poems must have been anterior to the actual establishment of Buddhism. Only one direct mention of Buddha occurs in the Ramayana and the context there proves that it must be an unmistakable interpolation. Nor does the Mahabharata make any such direct reference, though it, must be admitted that there are allusions to the development of rationalistic inquiry and sceptic materialism.
3. The evidence of the Asoka inscriptions proves that by the 3rd century B. C. the provincial prakrit dialects hadolebrooke, " 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