A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

508 THE MAHABHARATA.Now, there came kings and princes from different partsof India, and one after the other they tried, and every onefailed. You know, there are four castes in India : thehighest caste is the hereditary priest, the Brahman ;nextto him, the caste of Kshatriya, the kings and the fighters ;next to them are trat&rs or businessmen, and then, theservants. Now, this princess was, of course, one el th^second caste, Kshatriya. But these kings and princes havingfailed, her brother stood up and said : "Anyothe/ caste,any man, who can hit the mark, him will Draupadi makeher husband."And there the five brothers were, of the Brahmancaste apparently. The third brother was celebrated inarchery, the hero of the whole army. Mind you, hrthoseit was not mere bows and arrowsdays,*$he poem says,only ;it was magic archery: one man could fightmillions of men and burn them at will ;and ifyou sendone arrow it will rain and thunder you can make everything burn, and so on. It was all divine magic.But one fact is most curious in both of these poems ;in both of these poems, along with these magic arrows andother things, you see the c?nnon already in use ;this thatyou call "cannon" it is an old, old thing used by theChinese and the Hindus. On the walls of the cities werehundreds of curious weapons, made of hollow iron tubes,which, with powder and ball, would send a ball that couldkill hundreds of men.It used to be said that theChinese by magic put thedevil inside of an iron hollow tube and when they applieda little fire to a hole, the devil came out with terrific noiseand killed many people.But they were fighting with magic arrows ;they hadgot arrangements tactics, even in these old days : there