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revolt against Yudhistira, if only he should consent to a conciliation. He is impatient to throw off the Kaurava princes, -despite their promise of self-slavery on a failure at dice. Salya readily takes the side of the Kurus. Business and self-seeking overrides the feeling of truthful responsibility.
Otherwise too the age of the Mahabharata is corrupt and •degenerate. For victory's sake ever}? crime is readily committed—from false evidence and forgery to robbery and •murder. Duryodhana's attempt to pois<fb his own kinsmen or Yudhistira's abetment at Drona's murder are sufficient instances.
This state of corruption and degeneracy clearly points to a later sceptic state of society.
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10. Ravana carries offiSita by force and she would not allow her to be touched by Hanuman, when he proposes to take her on his back to Rama's abode. Even after victory she has to pass through an ordeal of fire for admission to the -queenship. Similarly in the Kamyaka forest Jayathratha abducts Draupadi by force and is easily received again without any test of good conduct by her husbands. Apparently Rama's contemporaries had a stricter notion of morality -and wifely duty and stronger was the faith in the interposition of Providence. The relaxation in such religious and ethical .beliefs proves an advance in the age of the Mahabharata.
11. Valmiki does not transmit his poem by written records. He composes it and chooses Kusa and Lava to get it by heart and to put to lyre and singing. On the other hand, Vyasa is trad itionally known to have dictated his work and Ganesa put gon of a brother ; Sugriva, the standard of a friend. Rama