(β) A world of great contrast to the above presents itself in the Hindoo Epopaea. We find already in the most primitive compositions, if we may form an opinion from the little made known to the general public up to the present time from the Veda, most fruitful germs for a mythology fitted to epic exposition; and these, associated with the heroic exploits of men many centuries before Christ—for chronological accuracy is still impossible—are elaborated into genuine Epopaea, works, however, which are still composed in part from the wholly religious point of view, and in part from that of unfettered poetry and art. Pre-eminently do the two most famous of these poems, namely the Ramajana and the Maha-Bharata, place before us the entire world-outlook of the Hindoo race in all its splendour and glory, its confusion, fantastical absurdity and dissolution, and withal, from the reverse point of view, in the exuberant loveliness and the here and there fine traits of heart and emotion, which characterize the profuse vegetation of its spiritual growth. Mythical exploits of men are expanded into the actions of incarnate gods, whose deed hovers vaguely between the divine and human nature, and the determinate outlines of personality and exploit are dissolved in an infinitude of extension. The substantive bases of the whole are of a type such as our Western world-outlook, assuming that it does not choose to surrender the higher claims of freedom and morality, is neither able to find itself truly at home in or to sympathize with. The unity of the particular parts is of an extremely unstable kind; and layers upon layers of episodical matter, consisting of tales of the gods, narratives of ascetic penances, and the powers they create, tediously long expositions of philosophical doctrines and systems, so entirely impair the collective unity that we are forced to regard many of them as later accretions. But, however this may be, the spirit from which these stupendous poems have originated bears constant witness to an imagination, which is not only anterior to all prosaic culture, but as a rule is wholly incompatible with the faculty of ordinary common sense, and is capable in fact of endowing the fundamental tendencies of this national consciousness, in its essentially unique and collective conception of the universe, with an original artistic form. The later Epics, on the contrary, which are called Puranas, in the more restricted sense of the term, that is, poems of the Past, appear rather to be compiled in the prosaic and dull style similar to that adopted by post-Homeric cyclic poets, and pursue their downward course at great length from the creation of the gods and the universe to the genealogies of human heroes and princes. Finally the epic care of the old myths dissolves into vapour and artificial elegance of a purely external poetic form and diction, while on the one hand the phantasy, which exhausted itself in a dreamy wonderland, becomes the wisdom of fables whose most important function is to instruct us in morality and worldly wisdom.
(γ) We may compare side by side in a third division of epic Oriental poetry that respectively belonging to Hebrews, Arabs, and Persians.
(αα) The sublimity of the Jewish imagination no doubt in its conception of the Creation, in the histories of the Patriarchs, the wandering in the wilderness, the conquest of Canaan, and in the further historical course of national event, full as such a vision is of sterling content and natural truth, possesses many elements of primitive epic poetry; the religious interest is here, however, so predominant, that, instead of being genuine Epopaea, they merely approximate either to religious myths in the guise of poetry, or to religious narratives which are wholly didactic.
(ββ) The Arabs have always possessed a poetic nature, and from very early days we find genuine poets among them. Even their heroic songs of lyric narrative, styled the moallakat, which in part originate in the century immediately previous to Mahomet, depict either with a few bold and detached strokes and vehement ostentation, or at other times with more tranquil self-possession, or a melting softness, the original conditions of the still pagan Arabs. Here we find the honour of the clan, the passion of revenge, the rights of hospitality, love, delight in adventure, benevolence, sorrow, and yearning, in undiminished strength, and in traits which remind us of the romantic character of Spanish chivalry. Here, too, we meet with in the East for the first time a real poetry, without fantastic elements, or prose, without mythology, without gods, demons, fairies, genii, and everything else of the kind common to the East, but rather with solid and self-sufficient characters and, however unique and marvellous in the play of its images and similes, yet for all that humanly real and self-contained. We have the vision of a similar pagan world also set before us by a later age in the collected poems of Hamasa, as also in the not yet edited "Divans of the Hudsilites." After the extensive and successful conquests of the Mohammedan Arabs this primitive heroic character gradually disappears; and, in the course of the centuries, the province of Epic poetry is replaced in part by the instructive fable and the witty proverb, in part by the fairy-like narratives, of which the "Thousand and One Nights" is an example, or in those tales of adventures which Rückert, through a translation which reproduces for us the equally witty and artistically elaborate Macamen of the Hariri in their metre, rhymes, and articulate meaning, has unveiled in a manner deserving thoughtful attention.
(γγ) In some contrast to this the efflorescence of Persian poetry falls in the period of that reconstructed culture effected by the change of language and nationality under the influence of Mohammedanism. We, however, come across, in the very first opening of this lonely springtime, an epic poem which, at least in its material, takes us back to the remotest Past of ancient Persian saga and myth, and carries forward its narrative through the heroic age right down to the last days of the Sussanides. This comprehensive work is the Shahnameh of Firdusi, the son of the gardener of Tus, a work the origins of which are traceable to the Bastanameh.[31] We are, however, unable to call even this poem a genuine Epopaea, because it does not make any specific and individual line of action its focal centre. On account of the lapse of centuries we lose our hold of the costume appropriate to an age or a locality, and in particular the most ancient mythical figures and gloomy intricate traditions hover in a world of the phantasy, among the indefinite outlines of which we are often at a loss to know whether we are face to face with persons or entire clans; and then again we are often suddenly confronted with really historical characters. As a Mohammedan the poet was no doubt able to handle his subject-matter more freely; but it is just in this type of freedom that we fail to meet with the stability in definite characterization, as it was present in the design of the primitive heroic songs; and, on account of the great gulf which separates him from that long-buried world of saga, the freshness and breath of its immediate life vanish, though absolutely necessary to the national Epos.
In its further course the epic art of the Persians expands into Love-epopees of excessive softness and sweetness, as an author of which Risami is pre-eminently distinguished. It further makes use of its rich stores of life-experience in the interest of the teacher. In this sphere the far-travelled Saadi was master. Finally, it plunges into that pantheistic Mysticism, which Dschelaleddin Rumi recommends and teaches in tales and legendary narrative.
I must, I fear, restrict myself to the above sketch.
(b) In the poetry of Greece and Rome we find ourselves for the first time in the genuine sphere of epic art.
(α) Among these above all are included of course the Homeric poems, which we have already noted as the culminating point of all.
(αα) Either of these poems, despite all that may be advanced to the contrary, is essentially self-complete, so definite and sensitive to its construction as a whole, that in my own opinion the very view which regards the present form of both as merely that in which they were sung and handed down to posterity by rhapsodists, simply amounts to little more than the just eulogy of such works in virtue of the fact that they are, with regard to the entire atmosphere of their content, national and realistic, and even in their particular parts are so consummately finished, that all and each of them may be taken as a whole in itself. Whereas in the East what is substantive[32] and universal in the poet's survey still impairs the individuality of character, and its aims and exploits by its symbolism or deliberate instruction, and thereby injures the definite articulation and unity of the whole. Here for the first time in these poems[33]we find a world beautifully suspended as it were between the general life-conditions of morality in family, state and religious belief, and the individuality of distinctive character, and in this fair balance between the claims of spirit and Nature, intentional action and objective event, between a national basis of enterprise and particular aims and deeds, even though individual heroes appear as the predominant feature in their free and animated movement, yet this too is so mediated by the distinctiveness of the aims proposed and the severe presence of destiny, that the entire exposition can only remain even for ourselves the ne plus ultra of all attainment that we can either enjoy or admire in epic composition. For we find no difficulty here in recognizing the real significance of even the gods who withstand or assist these primitive masculine heroes in their bravery, their straightforward and noble actions: nor can we fail to return the merry smiles of an art which depicts them as we see them here in all the naïveté of their very human, if also godlike impersonations.