MAHABHARATA CONDENSED INTO ENGLISH ... - Mandhata Global

forth as warrior and conqueror; and the Homeric speeches of the warriors in the council
of wax on the eve of the great contest,--each scene of this venerable old Epic impresses
itself on the mind of the hushed and astonished reader. Then follows the war of eighteen
days. The first few days are more or less uneventful, and have been condensed in this
translation often into a few couplets; but the interest of the reader increases as he
approaches the final battle and fall of the grand old fighter Bhishma. Then follows the
stirring story of the death of Arjun's gallant boy, and Arjun's fierce revenge, and the death
of the priest and warrior, doughty Drona. Last comes the crowning event of the Epic, the
final contest between Arjun and Karna, the heroes of the Epic, and the war ends in a
midnight slaughter and the death of Duryodhan. The rest of the story is told in this
translation in two books describing the funerals of the deceased warriors, and
Yudhishthir's horse-sacrifice.
"The poems of Homer," says Mr. Gladstone, "differ from all other known poetry in this,
that they constitute in themselves an encyclopædia of life and knowledge; at a time when
knowledge, indeed, such as lies beyond the bounds of actual experience, was extremely
limited, and when life was singularly fresh, vivid, and expansive." This remark applies
with even greater force to the Maha-bharata; it is an encyclopædia of the life and
knowledge of Ancient India. And it discloses to us an ancient and forgotten world, a
proud and noble civilisation which has passed away. Northern India was then parcelled
among warlike races living side by side under their warlike kings, speaking the same
language, performing the same religious rites and ceremonies, rejoicing in a common
literature, rivalling each other in their schools of philosophy and learning as in the arts of
peace and civilisation, and forming a confederation of Hindu nations unknown to and
unknowing the outside world. What this confederation of nations has done for the cause
of human knowledge and human civilisation is a matter of history. Their inquiries into
the hidden truths of religion, embalmed in the ancient Upanishads, have never been
excelled within the last three thousand years. Their inquiries into philosophy, preserved
in the Sankhya and the Vedanta systems, were the first systems of true philosophy which
the world produced. And their great works of imagination, the Maha-bharata and the
Ramayana, will be placed without hesitation by the side of Homer by critics who survey
the world's literatures from a lofty standpoint, and judge impartially of the wares turned
out by the hand of man in all parts of the globe. It is scarcely necessary to add that the
discoveries of the ancient Hindus in science, and specially in mathematics, are the
heritage of the modern world; and that the lofty religion of Buddha, proclaimed in India
five centuries before Christ, is now the religion of a third of the human race. For the rest,
the people of modem India know how to appreciate their ancient heritage. It is not an
exaggeration to state that the two hundred millions of Hindus of the present day cherish
in their hearts the story of their ancient Epics. The Hindu scarcely lives, man or woman,
high or low, educated or ignorant, whose earliest recollections do not cling round the
story and the characters of the great Epics. The almost illiterate oil-manufacturer or
confectioner of Bengal spells out some modern translation of the Maha-bharata to while
away his leisure hour. The tall and stalwart peasantry of the North-West know of the five
Pandav brothers, and of their friend the righteous Krishna. The people of Bombay and
Madras cherish with equal ardour the story of the righteous war. And even the traditions
and tales interspersed in the Epic, and which spoil the work as an Epic, have themselves a