Mahabharata, Epic of the Bharatas

Translator’s Epilogue – 158
insulters; the calm beauty of the forest life of the Pandavs; the cattle-lifting in
Matsyaland in which the gallant Arjun threw off his disguise and stood forth as
warrior and conqueror; and the Homeric speeches of the warriors in the council
of war 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 [380] 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’a horse-sacrifice.
“The poems of Homer,” says Mr. Gladstone, “differ from all other known poetry
in this that they constitute in themselves an encyclopaedia 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 Mahabharata;
it is an encyclopaedia 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 [381] 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 modern 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.