The conclusions as to the genesis of epic to we are thus far led are strengthened by a study of the Sanskrit Malalblifirata. There was a like warrior class, the Kshatriyas, proud of its valorous deeds and delighting in their celebra tion in song; and there is no reason to doubt that, in India as in Greece, Iceland, Germany, and France, popular poetry flourished in the form of short epic lays. The Mahtlbhil•ata, which con sists of about 107,000 alokas, or couplets. nearly eight times the length of the Iliad and the Odyssey together, shows internal evidence, confirmed by statements in the poem, of an early nucleus of perhaps one-fifth of that amount. This is the portion which relates the feud of the two great Bharata houses whose rivalry forms the main plot of the poem. But this in its turn has grown out of shorter handlings of different parts of the story. The Puranas, or collections of ancient tra ditions, especially ethical and theosophic, agree in much of their matter with the if ahabhdrata, and seem to show that the compilers of both drew upon a common body of popular verse tales.
That the poems which are sometimes called the epics of growth were formed out of earlier kleine Lieder is now doubted by no one. What is still a warmly disputed point is the mode in the combination was finally effected. Was the epos a mere compilation of these shorter lays, more or less ingeniously fitted together. with the help, perhaps, of some new connecting links, but still with such preservation of the original masses that the modern scholar with his criti cal acumen can discern the junctures? Or, was the entire material so fused in the mind of some one great poet as to come forth a homogeneous and organically related whole? In 1795 F. A. Wolf published his famous Prolegomena to Ho mer, in which he argued at length for the view that "Pisistratus was the first who had the 'Homeric poems committed to writing and brought into that order in which we now read them." Karl Laehmann, in two papers read to the Berlin Acad emy in 1S37 and 1841, maintained that the Iliad was made of sixteen independent lays, with vari ous enlargements and interpolations, all finally redneed to order by Pisistratus. Lachmann had already investigated the structure of the Nibeiangen/ayi, and had reached the conchision that it consisted of twenty ancient ballads \ vhich had been put together about 1210; that the col !Mir or editor had connected them by stanzas of his own composition, and that in the ancient bal lads themselves he had inserted unauthentic verses. Since that time the Homeric question has lawn much discussed, and widely divergent theories, differing both in principle and in detail, have been put forth by scholars who deny the unity of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Mr. Walter Leaf, for instance. one of the latest, in his (`om panion to the Iliad (1892), holds that, to an orig inal Wrath of Achilles (about 3400 lines in length), there were added in different ages exten sive expansions and interpolations, as well as short passages by which the transitions from one piece to another of different age were managed; and he presents a tentative scheme of the lines belonging to each of the five strata that he pos tulates. In regard to the Nibelungenlied, Lichtenberger, a sane critic, believes that some nameless redactor put together the ancient lays after they had been adapted to the manners of an age of chivalry; and 1\1. Gaston Paris is inclined
to call the poet of the Chanson de Roland an orrangcur rather than an autcur, although "he is more than an ordinary 'renourelcur—he has transformed the old poem." It may be noted, too, that in the Mahabhfirata, the authorship is attributed to Aryfisa, the 'arranger' or 'din skeuast.' One of the most important recent contribu to the subject of epic poetry in general, as well as to the character of a particular epic poem, is Signore Comparetti's study of the Fin nish Kalevala. The poetry of the Finns is entire ly written in runes; the metre and style are everywhere the same, whatever he the nature of the song. Out of the entire body of the tradi tional poems of this people, by a process of selec tion and arrangement and by the insertion of short transitional runes, Dr. Liffinrot constructed a perfect epos; though the popular singers. the laulajat, not only knew no such poem, but were unable to imagine one. The first edition was published in 1835, and contained thirty-two cantos and over 12,000 lines. In the last of 1849 there are fifty cantos and 22,800 lines. Ilere, if anywhere, we have the genesis of an epic in accordance with the Wolfian and Lach mannian theory. Liffinrot, it is true, did not merely stitch together such definitely shaped songs as those into which Lachmann resolved the Nibelungenlied and the Iliad. In working out his conception of this poem, which, as he believed, existed in fragments in the songs of the people, and which he himself was simply recomposing, he was obliged at times to divide the runes and recombine their parts, and to choose out of the innumerable variants those best fitted for his pur pose. But in doing this without adding anything essential of his own invention, he imposed upon himself a restriction impossible for a genuine laulaja, and showed herein the point of view and method of procedure, not of the poet, but of the scholar—the heir of the ages, familiar with the Homeric question and with the theory of the epos. Comparetti argues at length that, to sup pose a Greek of the time of Pisistratus, a jon gleur, or even the Indian Vyitsa capable of work ing in this way, is to commit a mere anachronism: that the Kalerala has in no sense that unity which is apparent in the Iliad and the Odyssey, in the Chanson de Roland, and even in the Nibe lungenlied ; and, finally, that "a long poem, creat ed by the people, does not exist, cannot exist ; epic popular songs, such as could be put together into a true poem, have never been seen, and are not likely to be seen among any people. Every long poem, without exception. anonymous or not, is the work of an individual—is a work of art." Epic poetry has not been produced by all races nor by all nations. Thus. among the Servians, Russians, and Siberian Tatars, we find epic or epic-lyric songs; but they are never welded to gether into an epos. The Caine is true of the Celts, who, in both the branches of the race, the Gadhelie and the Cymric, developed an abun dance of .1)•nmterial. especially in the trio great cycles of tradition, the Fingalian or Ossi anic, and the Arthurian. The Anglo-Saxon Rio /rug is finely epic in substance, but has scarcely the breadth and complexity of a great epos. Spain, too, had her truly figure—the Cid, the Roland of his country. But the ballads and the poem that sing his praises were never worked up into a great national epic.