A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

512 THE MAHABHARATA.and everything else ;and the last stage was that they hadto give up not only their throne, but go into exile. Thefive brothers of the Pandavas, they had to go. They wentinto exile, lived in the forest for ten or twelve years ;livedby hunting. And then they talked with sages and thatpart of the poem is vt^y interesting you see here there isscope to put in everything, old beautiful storiec of anrientIndia ; religious, philosophical, all these are put in there ;how these five brothers invited the sages to tell -ithemstories so as to make them bear lightly the burden of theirexile. One I will tellyou : *There was a king called Asva-pati ; the king had abeautiful daughter and she was so ; good and beautifulthat she was called Savitri it is the name of a cel^bra,tedpray^v, of the Hindu, good and pure as prayer. AndSavitri, she grew older and the father asked her to choosea husband for herself. These ancient Indian princesses werevery independent, you see. So, Savitri and her father wenton a tour over India stopping at different courts seeingdifferent princes. Not one of them could win the heart ofSavitri.Then they came to one of those forests in AncientIndia whole tracts of land reserved ; they were for theprotection of animals which were not allowed to be killed.The animals had lost the fear of man : the fish came andtook food out of the hand ;for thousauds of years nobodyhad killed any creature there and there the;sages and thebroken-down, they returned there and lived with theiranimals, with the deer, and all animals and birds ;even thecriminals were safe there. When a man got tired of life,he used to go to the forest and there in the company ofsages, talking of religion, meditating thereon, he passed hislife. There was another king. He was defeated by his