tions 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 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. The Hindu
scarcely lives, man or woman, high or low, educated or ignorant,
whose earliest recollections do not cling round the story and the
characters of the great Epics. The almost illiterate oil-manufacturer
or confectioner of Bengal spells out some modern translation of the
Maha-bharata to while away his leisure hour. The tall and stalwart
peasantry of the North-West know of the five Pandav brothers, and of
their friend the righteous Krishna. The people of Bombay and Madras
cherish with equal ardour the story of the righteous war. And even
the traditions and tales interspersed in the Epic, and which spoil
the work as an Epic, have themselves a charm and an attraction;
and the morals inculcated in these tales sink into the hearts of
a naturally religious people, and form the basis of their moral
education. Mothers in India know no better theme for imparting wisdom
and instruction to their daughters, and elderly men know no richer
storehouse for narrating tales to children, than these stories
preserved in the Epics. No work in Europe, not Homer in Greece or
Virgil in Italy, not Shakespeare or Milton in English-speaking lands,
is the national property of the nations to the same extent as the
Epics of India are