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Updated: June 7, 2025
Brahmanism may be represented as a system of law and custom in the Laws of Manu; as a philosophy in the Upanishads; and as a mythology in the Ramayana and Mahabharata. The word "Mahabharata" means "The Great Bharata," the name of a well-known people in ancient India. The epic so called is a very long one, containing at least 220,000 lengthy lines.
The two great epics, the Mahabharata, with its wonderful episode, the Baghavat-Ghita, which is the apotheosis of Krishna, and the Ramayana, which tells the story of Rama, show the infusion into Hinduism of a distinctly national spirit in direct opposition to the almost cosmopolitan catholicity of Buddhism, sufficiently elastic to adapt itself even to the political aspirations of non-Hindu conquerors as well as of non-Hindu races beyond the borders of Hindustan, in Nepal and in Ceylon, in Burma and in Tibet, in China and in Japan.
My initiation into literature had its origin, at the same time, in the books which were in vogue in the servants' quarters. Chief among these were a Bengali translation of Chanakya's aphorisms, and the Ramayana of Krittivasa. A picture of one day's reading of the Ramayana comes clearly back to me. The day was a cloudy one. I was playing about in the long verandah overlooking the road.
A series of sculptures which has been preserved almost intact on the inner side of the parapet wall of the Siva Temple is a repetition of the first part of the Rama legend as told in the Indian epic, "Ramayana," and it is thought that the corresponding series of the other temples may have represented the sequel to that history.
The Ramayana was written by Valmiki, a poet belonging to an unknown period. It consists of seven cantos, and contains twenty-five thousand verses. The original, with its translation into Italian, was published in Paris by the government of Sardinia about the middle of this century.
At a later period other epic poems were written, either as abridgments of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, or founded on episodes contained in them. These, however, belong to a lower order of composition, and cannot be compared with the great works of Valmiki and Vyasa.
Some parts of them were no doubt written in the centuries after Christ; there is room enough to allow for this, when you think that the one contains between ninety and a hundred thousand, the other about twenty-four thousand couplets; the Mahabharata being about seven times, the Ramayana about twice as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey combined.
Some Greek writer says the Indians were familiar with Homer; whereupon we take up the cry, The Ramayana is evidently a plagiarism from the Iliad; the abduction of Sita by Ravan, of the abduction of Helen by Paris; the siege of Lanka, of the siege of Troy. And the Mahabharata is too; because, because it must be; there's a deal of fighting in both.
This erstwhile schoolmaster had discovered a way of keeping us quiet in the evenings. Every evening he would gather us round the cracked castor-oil lamp and read out to us stories from the Ramayana and Mahabharata. Some of the other servants would also come and join the audience.
All the dances illustrated episodes from the Ramayana or other Hindu mythologies localized, the story being recited in a monotonous, sing-song chant, in the old Kawi or sacred language, by a professional accompanist who sat, cross-legged, in the orchestra.
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