Excerpt from The Great Epic of India, Its Character and Origin The best way, of course, to take up the historical investiga tion of a literary product the origin of which is well known is to begin with the source and afterwards to study the character of the completed whole. But if the origin be unknown, and we wish to discover it, we must invert the process, and begin our study with an examination of the character of the work. When the results of our analysis become plain, we may group together those elements which appear ...
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Excerpt from The Great Epic of India, Its Character and Origin The best way, of course, to take up the historical investiga tion of a literary product the origin of which is well known is to begin with the source and afterwards to study the character of the completed whole. But if the origin be unknown, and we wish to discover it, we must invert the process, and begin our study with an examination of the character of the work. When the results of our analysis become plain, we may group together those elements which appear to have existed from the first, and thus, on the basis of analysis, reconstruct the past. To begin with a synthesis (so called) of whatever is preserved in the product, and so to postulate for the beginning exactly what we find to be the completed whole, is a process that leads us only to the point from which we started. As vaguely incorrect as is the des ignation synthesis for the method so called is the method itself, which thus does away with all analysis. Analysis is an examination of constituents. As a method it is, like any other, obnoxious to error, but it is not on that account an erroneous method. It is in fact, as turned upon history, nothing but inevitable critique; and synthesis without such critique becomes merely the exploitation of individual opin ion, which selects what pleases it and rejects, without visible cause, what is incompatible with the synthetic scheme. In the case of the great epic of India, the peremptory demand that we should reject the test of analysis is the more remarkable as the poem has never been completely analyzed. The literature mentioned in it has been ably collected in the well-known memoirs of Professor Holtzmann, who has also indicated what in his opinion may be supplied from allusions; but the poem has not been thoroughly examined to see what literature it reflects from the age of the later Upanishads or Vedic schools; it has not received a careful investigation from the metrical side; its philosophy has been reviewed only in the most haphazard fashion; and its inner relation to other epic poetry has been almost ignored. Yet critic after critic has passed judgment on the question of the date and origin of this poem, of which we know as yet scarcely more than that, before a definitive answer can be given, the whole huge structure must be studied from many points of view. And last of all the synthesist comes also, with his ready-made answer to a problem the conditions of which have not yet been clearly stated. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at ... This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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