4.

From him alone all works proceed,

All wishes and all feelings spring,
Serene and calm, he never speaks,
But in himself holds everything!
He is the Self within my heart,

He is Brahmâ! - holding all,

And when I leave this world- to him
Will flee my liberated soul!

VOL. IX.-8.

THE MAHABHARATA

TRANSLATED BY SIR EDWIN ARNOLD

"Whatever is not in the Mahabharata is not to be found in the land of the Bharata [Indian people].”

"The reading of this Mahabharata destroys all sin and creates virtue;

The saying of a single stanza is enough to wipe away much guilt. It has bound human beings in a chain of which the ends are Life

and Death.

Who reads the Mahabharata with faith and wisdom, at his death is freed

From evil Life and rises to the gods."

-THE MAHABHARATA.

THE MAHABHARATA

(INTRODUCTION)

HIS name means "the Great History of the Bharatas,"

THIS

or people of India. As has been explained in the general introduction, this poem is the great epic narrative of India, the delight equally of her scholars and her people. Like everything in India it is vast in size, being over seven times as long as its Greek rivals, the Iliad and the Odyssey, combined. It is said to be the work of the poet Vyása; but vyása means "an arranger," and the poem is not only too enormous to be the work of one man, but it is also quite obviously a gathering and arranging of many poems from different ages. In its present form it probably dates from 400 or 500 B.C., and some of the older tales included within it must be several centuries older. The whole consists to-day of over two hundred thousand lines of sixteen syllables each. Of these about one-fourth keep to the central story; all the rest is made up of other stories, histories, or sermons. The most celebrated part of all is the Bhagavad Gîta, which is a didactic or philosophic poem, the highest and most widely accepted moral preachment in India, and which Sir Edwin Arnold has beautifully translated under the title of "The Song Celestial."

The central story of this truly stupendous epic tells of a great war, probably founded on some real war, between the rival descendants of the mighty king and ancient sage, Bhishma. His great grandsons, the Kauravas, are represented as ruling India. They number a hundred brothers, headed by the bold but evil Duryodhana. They are pledged to share the realm with their cousins, the five sons of Pandu, called the Pandavas. But Duryodhana keeps the sovereignty for himself, and wars against the five Pandavas, who are the heroes of the tale. The oldest of them is Yudhishthira, the