MAHABHARATA CONDENSED INTO ENGLISH ... - Mandhata Global

them down, but he never seems to go in quest of them, he is never anxious to beautify
and decorate. He seems to trust entirely to his grand narrative, to his heroic characters, to
his stirring incidents, to hold millions of listeners in perpetual thrall. The majestic and
sonorous Sanscrit metre is at his command, and even this he uses, carelessly, and with
frequent slips, known as arsha to later grammarians. The poet certainly seeks for no art to
decorate his tale, he trusts to the lofty chronicle of bygone heroes to enchain the listening
mankind.
And what heroes! In the delineation of character the Maha-bharata is far above anything
which we find in later Sanscrit poetry. Indeed, with much that is fresh and sweet and
lovely in later Sanscrit poetry, there is little or no portraiture of character. All heroes are
cast much in the same heroic mould; all love-sick heroines suffer in silence and burn with
fever, all fools are shrewd and impudent by turns, all knaves are heartless and cruel and
suffer in the end. There is not much to distinguish between one warrior and another,
between one tender woman and her sister. In the Maha-bharata we find just the reverse;
each hero has a distinct individuality, a character of his own, clearly discernible from that
of other heroes. No work of the imagination that could be named, always excepting the
Iliad, is so rich and so true as the Maha-bharata in the portraiture of the human
character,-not in torment and suffering as in Dante, not under overwhelming passions as
in Shakespeare,--but human character in its calm dignity of strength and repose, like
those immortal figures in marble which the ancients turned out, and which modern
sculptors have vainly sought to reproduce. The old Kuru monarch Dhrita-rashtra,
sightless and feeble, but majestic in his ancient grandeur; the noble grandsire Bhishma,
"death's subduer" and unconquerable in war; the doughty Drona, venerable priest and
vengeful warrior; and the proud and peerless archer Karna-have each a distinct character
of his own which can not be mistaken for a moment. The good and royal Yudhishthir, (I
omit the final a in some long names which occur frequently), the "tiger-waisted" Bhima,
and the "helmet-wearing" Arjun are the Agamemnon, the Ajax, and the Achilles of the
Indian Epic. The proud and unyielding Duryodhan, and the fierce and fiery Duhsasan
stand out foremost among the wrathful sons of the feeble old Kuru monarch. And
Krishna possesses a character higher than that of Ulysses; unmatched in human wisdom,
ever striving for righteousness and peace, he is thorough and unrelenting in war when
war has begun. And the women of the Indian Epic possess characters as marked as those
of the men. The stately and majestic queen Gandhari, the loving and doting mother
Pritha, the proud and scornful Draupadi nursing her wrath till her wrongs are fearfully
revenged, and the bright and brilliant and sunny Subhadra,--these are distinct images
pencilled by the hand of a true master in the realm of creative imagination.
And if the characters of the Maha-bharata impress themselves on the reader, the
incidents of the Epic are no less striking. Every scene on the shifting stage is a perfect
and impressive picture. The tournament of the princes in which Arjun and Karna-the
Achilles and Hector of the Indian Epic-first met and each marked the other for his foe;
the gorgeous bridal of Draupadi; the equally gorgeous coronation of Yudhishthir and the
death of the proud and boisterous Sisupala; the fatal game of dice and the scornful wrath
of Draupadi against her insulters; the calm beauty of the forest life of the Pandavs; the
cattle-lifting in Matsyaland in which the gallant Arjun threw off his disguise and stood