Jessie Laidlay Weston

“ But the poems selected by Professor von Schroeder for discussion offer us a further, and more curious, parallel with the Grail romances.
In Section VIII. of the work referred to the author discusses the story of Rishyacringa, as the Mahabharata names the hero; here we find a young Brahmin brought up by his father, Vibhandaka, in a lonely forest hermitage [8] absolutely ignorant of the outside world, and even of the very existence of beings other than his father and himself. He has never seen a woman, and does not know that such a creature exists. ”

“ A drought falls upon a neighbouring kingdom, and the inhabitants are reduced to great straits for lack of food. The King, seeking to know by what means the sufferings of his people may be relieved, learns that so long as Rishyacringa continues chaste so long will the drought endure. An old woman, who has a fair daughter of irregular life, undertakes the seduction of the hero. ”

“ We must first note that a very considerable number of the Rig-Veda hymns depend for their initial inspiration on the actual bodily needs and requirements of a mainly agricultural population, i.e., of a people that depend upon the fruits of the earth for their subsistence, and to whom the regular and ordered sequence of the processes of Nature was a vital necessity. ”

“ There is consequently small cause for surprise when we find, throughout the collection, the god who bestows upon them this much desired boon to be the one to whom by far the greater proportion of the hymns are addressed. ”

“ J. Hertel (Der Ursprung des Indischen Dramas und Epos) went still further, and while accepting, and demonstrating, the justice of this interpretation of the 'Dialogue' poems, suggested a similar origin for certain 'Monologues' found in the same collection. ”