Allocating Subarrays in Mergesort - recursion

Question

What's happening, folks.
So, I've done a fair amount of research on merge sort, and in spite of getting the "gist" of it, I am still baffled by how one is supposed to store the subarrays in order to merge them back together—in other words, save them somewhere so that they would "know" each other, as you would otherwise—in classic recursive fashion—have all these independent function calls returning data that I would assume would go out of scope.
Here's what I first thought: create a new array named "subs" to store the subarrays in upon each division (I also considered using a closure to do this and would like to know whether this is advisable). But, as you proceed to the next division, what are you gonna do—replace each element in subs with its subarrays? Then, you would be facing more costly work, especially once you consider how you're gonna move things around in subs in order to ensure that each subarray has its own index.
Heh—I have a bad feeling that this might be a far cry from what's actually supposed to be done. I understand that this algorithm is a classic example of the divide-and-conquer approach, but it's just strange to me that one couldn't just cut to the chase by splitting the array into all of its elements right off the bat (after all, that's the base case, and what would be wrong with throwing in a greedy approach to solving the problem?).
Thanks!
EDIT:
Alright, so I figured it out.
To sum it up: I used indices to track where to place elements (and obviate the need for built-in list functions that may slow down runtime).
By using nested functions and a (hidden) pointer to the new array, I kept data in scope. An auxiliary array buffers data from the subarrays.
In retrospect, what I originally had in mind vaguely resembled insertion sort was, in fact, bottom-up merge sort. Having previously questioned the efficiency and purpose of top-down merge sort, I now understand that by breaking down the problem, it expedites comparisons and swaps (especially when operating on larger lists, which insertion sort would prove to be less efficient in sorting). I did not attempt to implement my initial idea because I did not have a clear enough picture of recursion and how data is passed.
#!/bin/python
import sys
def merge_sort(arr):
def merge(*indices): # indices = first, last, and pivot indices, respectively
head, tail = indices[0], indices[1]
pivot = indices[2]
i = head
j = pivot+1
k = 0
while (i <= pivot and j <= tail):
if new[i] <= new[j]:
aux[k] = new[i]
i += 1
k += 1
else:
aux[k] = new[j]
j += 1
k += 1
while (i <= pivot):
aux[k] = new[i]
i += 1
k += 1
while (j <= tail):
aux[k] = new[j]
j += 1
k += 1
for x in xrange(head, tail+1):
new[x] = aux[x-head]
# end merge
def split(a, *indices): # indices = first and last indices, respectively
head, tail = indices[0], indices[1]
pivot = (head+tail) / 2
if head < tail:
l_sub = a[head:pivot+1]
r_sub = a[pivot+1:tail+1]
split(l_sub, head, pivot)
split(r_sub, pivot+1, tail)
merge(head, tail, pivot)
# end split
new = arr
aux = list(new)
tail = len(new)-1
split(new, 0, tail)
return new
# end merge_sort
if __name__ == "__main__":
loops = int(raw_input().strip())
for _ in xrange(loops):
arr = map(int, raw_input().strip().split(' '))
result = merge_sort(arr)
print result