ho can say? But this much, perhaps, we may
venture without fear: the Kshattriyas of the Epic age were not
the same as those of the Upanishads. They were not Adept-Kings
and Teachers in the same way. By Epic age, I mean the age in
which the epics were written, not that of which they tell. And
neither the _Mahabharata_ nor the _Ramayana_ was composed in a
day; but in many centuries;--and it is quite likely that on them
too Brahmanical hands have been tactfully at work. Some parts of
them were no doubt written in the centuries after Christ; there
is room enough to allow for this, when you think that the one
contains between ninety and a hundred thousand, the other about
twenty-four thousand couplets;--the _Mahabharata_ being about
seven times, the _Ramayana_ about twice as long as the _Iliad_
and the _Odyssey_ combined. So the Age of the Epics must be
narrowed down again, to mean the age that gave birth to the
nuclei of them.

As to when it may have been, I do not know that there is any clue
to be found. Modern criticism has been at work, of course, to
reduce all things to as commonplace and brain-mind a basis as
possible; but its methods are entirely the wrong ones. Mr.
Romesh Dutt, who published abridged translations of the two poems
in the late nineties, says of the _Mahabharata_ that the great
war which it tells of "is believed to have been fought in the
thirteenth or fourteenth century before Christ"; and of the
_Ramayana,_ that it tells the story of nations that flourished in
Northern India about a thousand years B. C.--Is believed by whom,
pray? It is also believed, and has been from time immemorial, in
India, that Krishna, who figures largely in the _Mahabharata,_
died in the year 3102 B.C.; and that he was the eighth avatar of
Vishnu; and that Rama, the hero of the _Ramayana,_ was the
seventh. Now brain-mind criticism of the modern type is the most
untrustworthy thing, because it is based solely on circumstantial
evidence; and when you work upon that, you ought to go very
warily;--it is always likely that half the circumstances remain
un-discovered; and even if you have ninety and nine out of the
hundred possible, the hundredth, if you had it, might well change
the whole complexion of the case. And this kind of criticism
leads precisely nowhere, does not build anything, but pulls down
what was built of old. So I think we must be content to wait for
real knowledge till those who hold it may choose t