A
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some of the verses closely resembling the original, is related and Vyasa postulates that the story of Rama was too popular to need any detail.
Such direct references cannot fail to convince us of the-priority of the Ramayana., But the negativists try to explain it away by the plea that these ate later interpolations. This argument, if it can be called so, is a very useful weapon for many modern scholars when their theory can make no other stand. " When the pistol misses fire they knock you down with the-butt-end of it." What does the orthodox Hindu gain by purposely interpolating unimportant references and arguing the-feigned priority of the one epic to the other ? If the original of the Mahabharata did not contain any references to the Rama-yana, they had no business in such interpolation and they are not a whit better in their religious or spiritual beliefs... The Mahabharata loses not, nor does the Ramayana gain, a particle of their belief or regard by questions of chronological" priority or posteriority. For it is in the inherent nature of the • Hindu mind to disregard all questions of history. If the-Ramayana had really been composed later, how is this fact accounted for—-that the Mahabharata war, the most important incident as it is in the world's history, fails to have the least reference to it in Valmiki's work ? Valmiki's ignorance of the* Great War cannot stand as an argument. Nor can the sanctity of Kurukshetrabe less conspicuous than that of Sringiberapurar, so as to lose mention of it in a religious work as the Ramayana. Therefore it must be conclusively granted that the argument of interpolation fails, as it has neither purpose nor probabilit5^. It is however a hobby for many European critics in their study of Oriental works, whose archaic constructions are rarely-palatable to their modern tastes,e was an incarnation, of Vlshnu-^bmt Vishnu himself had not risen to prominence;