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The two Indian epics vis-à-vis archaeology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

B. B. Lal
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Extract

The historicity of the two Indian epics, viz., the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyana, has been the subject of heated debate ever since these epics attracted the attention of scholars, both in India and abroad. Thus, while there are some who hold that every event mentioned in these epics is historically true, there are others who regard them as mere figments of the imagination. Apart from the possibility that ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘reactionary attitude’ may respectively be partly responsible for such extremely divergent views, the confusion seems to arise from the fact that these epics are neither contemporary documentation of the episodes concerned nor have their texts remained immune from large-scale interpolations.

Type
Articles
Information
Antiquity , Volume 55 , Issue 213 , March 1981 , pp. 27 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1981

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