ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to construct an account of how Vyasa, Homer, Valmiki, and Virgil responded to time and yet remained beyond time. Hence it is also meant to examine human conduct portrayed in their works in keeping with their cultural heritages. By means of a hypothetical reconstruction of the course trodden by human society, built on the internal evidence found in the works themselves, a guess is hazarded: The Mahābhārata probably belongs to an age prior to Homer’s Iliad. Apart from a couple of quotations concerning the dating of The Mahābhārata, the entire chapter stands on the strength of the events internal to the epics. The chapter also tries to study the contrasting stances the West and other cultures took on male–female relations, as reflected in the epics. Did the difference give the West the power to steer ahead of the others?
More than a study of poetry or literature, the chapter may well be construed as the story of the people who responded to Time; also as the story of those who thought it their prerogative to treat Time to their ‘divine neglect’ but could not escape the inevitability of coming under the power and influence of those who listened to Time!
