o them is thought by the devout Hindu
sufficiently meritorious to bring prosperity to his household here and
happiness in the next world; they are held also to give wealth to the poor,
health to the sick, wisdom to the ignorant; and the recitation of certain
_parvas_ and _shlokas_ in them can fill the household of the barren, it is
believed, with children. A concluding passage of the great poem says:--

"The reading of this Mahabharata destroys all sin and
produces virtue; so much so, that the pronunciation of a
single shloka is sufficient to wipe away much guilt. This
Mahabharata contains the history of the gods, of the Rishis
in heaven and those on earth, of the Gandharvas and the
Rakshasas. It also contains the life and actions of the one
God, holy, immutable, and true,--who is Krishna, who is the
creator and the ruler of this universe; who is seeking the
welfare of his creation by means of his incomparable and
indestructible power; whose actions are celebrated by all
sages; who has bound human beings in a chain, of which one
end is life and the other death; on whom the Rishis
meditate, and a knowledge of whom imparts unalloyed
happiness to their hearts, and for whose gratification and
favour all the daily devotions are performed by all
worshippers. If a man reads the Mahabharata and has faith in
its doctrines, he is free from all sin, and ascends to
heaven after his death."

In order to explain the portion of this Indian epic, here for the
first time published in English verse, I reprint a brief summary of
its plot:--

The "great war of Bharat" has its first scenes in Hastinapur, an
ancient and vanished city, formerly situated about sixty miles
north-east of the modern Delhi. The Ganges has washed away even the
ruins of this the metropolis of King Bharat's dominions. The poem
opens with a "sacrifice of snakes," but this is a prelude, connected
merely by a curious legend with the real beginning. That beginning is
reached when the five sons of "King Pandu the Pale" and the five sons
of "King Dhritarashtra the Blind," both of them descendants of Bharat,
are being brought up together in the palace. The first were called
Pandavas, the last Kauravas, and their lifelong feud is the main
subject of the epic. Yudhishthira, Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula, and Sahadeva
are the Pandava princes. Duryodhana is chief of the Kauravas. They
are ins