The pulls it down again. Unfortunately there are no ancient temples, or palaces, or works of art in India to serve as guides. very idea of stone buildings does not go back beyond the time of the invasion of India by Alexander. The most ancient stone buildings are the buildings dating from Asoka's time in the third century, and though many of them contain relics in the shape of jewels and gold ornaments, they have not yielded as yet any real works of art, not even weapons, or armour, or warlike ornaments. The Mahâbhârata tells us of weapons, which remind us of some of the weapons found by Schliemann at Mycena. We find descriptions of golden bosses on the wood of a bow, tipped with gold at either end, and of golden insects worked on the staff of another bow. We read of brilliant suns on other weapons, and of golden fireflies glinting in the yellow light of day. A sword is called toad-engraven, and all these things seem to testify to an early cultivation of arts and crafts of which no remnants have survived. Again, we read of mimes and actors, and of bards reciting ancient songs; but of the poems themselves which they recited, or of the plays which they acted, nothing remains to us, not even their names and titles. As a mine of information the Mahâbhârata is inexhaustible, and will for a long time remain unexhausted. We are all the more grateful to Mr. Romesh Dutt for having given us a kind of photographic representation, a snap-shot, as it were, of the old poem-the longest poem, I believe, in the whole world-and having enabled students of literature to form for themselves some kind of idea of what our Aryan brothers in India admired and still admire in the epic poetry of their country. F. MAX MÜLLER. OXFORD, January 1899. CONTENTS 1. Sita-Swayamvara (The Bridal of Sita) II. Vana-Gamana-Adesa (The Banishment) III. Dasaratha-Viyoga (The Death of the King) IV. Rama-Bharata-Sambada (The Meeting of the Princes). v. Panchavati (On the Banks of the Godavari) VII. Kishkindha (In the Nilgiri Mountains) VIII. Sita-Sandesa (Sita Discovered) |