The longest poem in existence is composed in Sanscrit, and, although begun before the Ramayana, it was completed only about one hundred years after. It consists of some two hundred and twenty thousand lines, divided into eighteen sections (parvans), each of which forms a large volume. Although the whole work has never been translated into English verse, many portions of it have been reproduced both in verse and prose.
The Hindus consider this one of their most sacred books, attribute its authorship to Vyasa, and claim that the reading of a small portion of it will obliterate sin, while the perusal of the whole will insure heavenly bliss. Its name signifies "the great war," and its historical kernel,—including one-fifth of the whole work,—consists of an account of an eighteen days' battle (in the thirteenth or fourteenth century B.C.) between rival tribes. The poem is, besides, a general repository of the mythological, legendary, and philosophical lore of the Hindus, and reached its present state of development only by degrees and at the end of several centuries.
Bharata, the real founder of the principal Indian dynasty, is so famous a character, that the Hindus often designate their whole country as "the land of Bharata." We are told that Rajah Dushyanta, a descendant of the Moon, while hunting one day beheld the beautiful Sakuntala, daughter of a sage, whom he persuaded to consent to a clandestine marriage. But, after a short time, the bridegroom departed, leaving his bride a ring as a pledge of his troth.
Absorbed in thoughts of her absent lover, Sakuntala once failed to notice the approach of a sage, who cursed her, saying she should be forgotten by the man she loved, but who relenting after a while declared this curse would be annulled when her husband beheld his ring.
Some time after this, on the way to rejoin her spouse to inform him she was about to become a mother, Sakuntala, while bathing in a sacred pool, accidentally dropped this ring. On appearing without it before Dushyanta, he sternly denied all acquaintance with her and ordered her driven out into the jungle, where she soon gave birth to their son Bharata.
The lad was about six years old when a fisherman found in the stomach of a fish the lost ring, which he carried to the rajah. On beholding this token, Dushyanta, remembering all, hastened to seek poor Sakuntala, whom he discovered in the jungle, watching her boy fearlessly play with lion cubs. Proud of such a son, the rajah bore his family home; and Bharata, after having a long reign, gave birth to Hastin, founder of Hastinapur, a city on the bank of the Ganges about sixty miles from the modern Delhi.
A grandson of this Hastin married the Goddess of the Ganges,—who was doing penance on earth,—and their children were animated by the souls of deities condemned for a time to assume human form. In order to enable these fellow-gods to return to heaven as soon as possible, Ganga undertook to drown each of her babies soon after birth, provided the gods would pledge themselves to endow one of her descendants with their strength, and would allow him to live, if not to perpetuate his species.
After seeing seven of his children cast into the water without daring to object, the rajah, although he knew his goddess-wife would leave him if he found fault with anything she did, protested so vehemently against the similar disposal of his eighth son that his wife disappeared with the child. But a few years later this son, Bhishma, the terrible, having grown up, was restored to his father.
To comfort himself for the loss of his first wife, the king now married the beautiful daughter of a fisherman, solemnly promising her son should succeed him, for Bhishma voluntarily relinquished all right to the throne and took a vow to remain celibate. The new wife's main attraction seems to have been a sweet odor, bestowed by a saint, who restored her virginity after she had borne him a son named Vyasa, the author of this poem.
By the Rajah the fishermaid now had two sons, one of whom was slain at the end of a three years' fight, while the other began his reign under the wise regency of Bhishma. When it was time for his royal step-brother to marry, Bhishma sent him to a Bride's Choice (Swayamvara), where three lovely princesses were to be awarded to the victor. Without waiting to win them fairly, the young prince kidnapped all three, and, when the disappointed suitors pursued him, Bhishma held them at bay by shooting ten thousand arrows at once, and thus enabled his step-brother and brides to escape.
Although thus provided with three royal wives, our prince was soon deserted by one of them and was never fortunate enough to have children by the two others. After he had died, custom required that his nearest kinsman should raise issue for him, so,—owing to Bhishma's vow,—Vyasa, who was fabulously ugly, undertook to visit the two widows. One of them, catching a glimpse of him, bore him a blind son (Dhritarashtra), while the other was so frightened that she bore a son of such pale complexion that he was known as Pandu, the White.
Neither of these youths being deemed perfect enough to represent properly the royal race, Vyasa announced he would pay the widows another visit, but this time they hired a slave to take their place, so it was she who brought into the world Vidura, God of Justice. Because one prince was blind and the other the offspring of a slave, the third was set upon his throne by his uncle Bhishma, who in due time provided him with two lovely wives.
With these the monarch withdrew to the Himalayas to spend his honeymoon, and while there proved unfortunate enough to wound a couple of deer who were hermits in disguise. In dying they predicted he would perish in the arms of one of his wives, whereupon Pandu decided to refrain from all intercourse with them, graciously allowing them instead to bear him five sons by five different gods. These youth, known in the poem as the sons of Pandu, the Pandavs (or the Pandavas), are the main heroes of India. As a prediction made by an ascetic was bound to come true, the king, momentarily forgetting the baleful curse, died in the embrace of his second wife, who, in token of grief, was burned with his remains, this being the earliest mention of a suttee.
Meantime the blind prince had married a lady to whom a famous ascetic had promised she should be mother to one hundred sons! All these came into the world at one birth, in the shape of a lump of flesh, which the ascetic divided into one hundred and one pieces, each of which was enclosed in a pot of rarefied butter, where these germs gradually developed into one hundred sons and one daughter.
As long as Pandu sojourned in the Himalayas, the blind prince reigned in his stead, but when he died, his surviving widow brought to the capital (Hastinapur) her five divine sons, the Pandavs. There the blind uncle had them brought up with their cousins, the hundred Kurus (or Kauravas), with whom, however, they were never able to live in perfect peace. Once, as the result of a boyish quarrel, a Kuru flung Bhima, one of the Pandavs, into the Ganges, where, instead of sinking, this hero was inoculated by serpent-bites with the strength of ten thousand elephants before he returned to his wonted place at home.
The young princes, who had all been trained to fight by their tutor, Drona, and who had already given sundry proofs of their proficiency in arms, were finally invited by the blind monarch to give a public exhibition of their skill. The poem gives us a lengthy description of this tournament, expatiating on the flower-decked booths reserved for the principal spectators, and dilating particularly on the fact that the blind monarch, unable to see with, his own eyes, made some one sit beside him to describe all that was going on.
After the preliminary sacrifice offered by the tutor, the skill of the princes, as archers, was tested on foot, on horseback, in howdahs, and in chariots; then they indulged in mock fights with swords and bucklers, closely watched by Drona, who pronounced his favorite Arjuna, the third Pandav, the finest athlete ever seen.
Still the princes shook their weapons, drove the deep resounding car,
Or on steed or tusker mounted waged the glorious mimic war!
Mighty sword and ample buckler, ponderous mace the princes wield,
Brightly gleam their lightning rapiers as they range the listed field,
Brave and fearless is their action, and their movements quick and light,
Skilled and true the thrust and parry of their weapons flaming bright![42]
Thereupon, from the ranks of the spectators, emerged Karna, son of a charioteer, who challenged Arjuna to fight with him, but the prince refused on the score that they were not of equal rank. Still a legend assures us that Karna was a child of the Sun-god, set afloat by his mother on the river Jumna, whence this Hindu Moses, floating down into the Ganges, was rescued and brought up by the charioteer, his reputed father. Meantime the four Pandav brothers were greatly elated by the eulogy bestowed upon their brother, but their jealous cousins became so enraged that, when the time came for the youths to face each other in club exercises, the sham battle degenerated into an earnest fight.
With ponderous mace they waged the daring fight.
As for a tender mate two rival elephants
Engage in frantic fury, so the youths
Encountered, and amidst the rapid sphere
Of fire their whirling weapons clashing wove
Their persons vanished from the anxious eye.
Still more and more incensed their combat grew,
And life hung doubtful on the desperate conflict;
With awe the crowd beheld the fierce encounter
And amidst hope and fear suspended tossed,
Like ocean shaken by conflicting winds.
Seeing this, the horrified tutor separated the contestants, whom he soon after sent off separately to war against a neighboring rajah. In this conflict the one hundred Kurus were badly worsted, while the five Pandavs scored a brilliant triumph. They also subdued sundry other kings, thereby so rousing the jealous hatred of their uncle and cousins that these finally began to plot their death. The five Pandavs and their mother were therefore invited to a feast in a neighboring city (Allahabad), where the Kurus arranged they should be burned alive in their booth. But, duly warned by the God of Justice, the Pandavs had an underground passage dug from their hut to the forest, by means of which they escaped, little suspecting that a beggar woman and her five children—who had sought refuge in the empty hut—would be burned to death there in their stead.
Disguised as Brahmans, the five brothers and their mother now dwelt for a time in the jungle, where they proceeded to slay some demons, to marry others, and to perform sundry astounding feats of strength. We are told, for instance, that whenever the mother and brothers were tired, the strongest of the Pandavs, Bhima, carried them all with the utmost ease.
While in the jungle they were visited by their grandfather Vyasa, who bade them attend the Bride's Choice of Draupadi, daughter of a neighboring king, who—Minerva-like—came into the world full grown.
Human mother never bore her, human bosom never fed,
From the altar sprang the maiden who some prince will wed!
She was so beautiful that her father decided the suitor she favored would have to prove himself worthy of her by spanning a bow which no one as yet had been able to bend, and by sending an arrow through a rapidly revolving wheel into the eye of a gold fish stationed beyond it.
Owing to the extreme loveliness of Draupadi, many rajahs flocked to the tournament to compete for her hand, and the five Pandavs betook themselves thither in Brahman garb. After the preliminary exercises, the beautiful princess—to whom all her suitors had been duly named—gave the signal for the contest to begin. The mere sight of the huge bow proved enough to decide several of the contestants to withdraw, but a few determined to risk all in hopes of obtaining Draupadi's hand. No man, however, proved able to bend the bow until Arjuna stepped forward, begging permission to try his luck. While the rajahs were protesting that no Brahman should compete, this Pandav spanned the bow and sent five successive shafts straight to the goal, amid the loud acclamations of all present.
He grasped the ponderous weapon in his hand
And with one vigorous effort braced the string.
Quickly the shafts were aimed and swiftly they flew;
The mark fell pierced; a shout of victory
Rang through the vast arena; from the sky
Garlands of flowers crowned the hero's head,
Ten thousand fluttering scarfs waved in the air,
And drum and trumpet sounded forth his triumph.
The beautiful princess, captivated by the goodly appearance of this suitor, immediately hung around his neck the crown of flowers, although the defeated rajahs muttered a mere Brahman should not aspire to the hand of a princess. In fact, had not his four brothers, aided by Krishna (a divine suitor), stood beside him, and had not the king insisted there should be no fracas, the young winner might have had a hard time. Then, as the princess seemed perfectly willing, the wedding was celebrated, and the five brothers returned to the humble hut where they lived on alms, calling out to their mother that they had won a prize! On hearing these tidings, the mother—without knowing what the prize was—rejoined, "Share it among you," an injunction which settled for good and all that Draupadi should be common wife to all five. But the legend adds that this came to pass mainly because the maiden had prayed five times for a husband, and that the gods were answering each of her prayers separately!
Shortly after this fivefold marriage,—which assured the Pandavs a royal ally,—Bhishma persuaded the blind rajah—who had meantime discovered his nephews were not dead—to give them one half of his realm. Taking up their abode there, the Pandavs built the city of Indraprastha (Delhi) on the banks of the Jumna, before they decided that the eldest among them (Yudhishthira) should be king, the others humbly serving as his escort wherever he went.
One day this eldest Pandav went to visit the eldest Kuru, a proficient gambler, with whom he played until he had lost realm, brothers, wife, and freedom! But, when the victor undertook to take forcible possession of the fair Draupadi, and publicly stripped her of her garments, the gods, in pity, supplied her with one layer of vesture after another, so that the brutal Kuru was not able to shame her as he wished. Furious to see the treatment their common wife was undergoing at the victor's hands, the five Pandavs made grim threats, and raised such a protest that the blind uncle, interfering, sent them off to the forest with their wife for twelve years. He also decreed that, during the thirteenth, all must serve in some menial capacity, with the proviso that, if discovered by their cousins, they should never regain their realm.
"'Tis no fault of thine, fair princess! fallen to this servile state,
Wife and son rule not their actions, others rule their hapless fate!
Thy Yudhishthir sold his birthright, sold thee at the impious play,
And the wife falls with the husband, and her duty—to obey!"
During the twelve years which the Pandavs spent in the forest, with the beautiful and faithful Draupadi (who was once carried away by a demon but rescued by one of her spouses), they met with sundry adventures. Not only did they clear the jungle, rescue from cannibals the jealous cousins who came to humiliate them, and perform other astounding feats, but they were entertained by tales told by Vyasa, among which are a quaint account of the Deluge, of the descent of the Ganges, a recitation of the Ramayana, and the romance of Nala and of Savitri, of which brief sketches are given at the end of this article. All this material is contained in the "Fo............