Yudhishthira.

When on yon earth our dead die, neither love nor hate again they feel.
Neither can ever help them there, else never there had I quitted them.
Worst of the four great crimes of life is treason done to faithful love.
This brute hath faithfully followed me; I will to hell if he goeth, Lord!

But the dog was all the while Yama, the God of Death, disguised; and that grim Deity, as he resumes his proper form, praises the gentle-hearted King, and leads the way into Paradise. Yet another trial, however, awaits his perfect virtue, for on entering the jewelled gates of Indra's abode, Yudhishthira beholds the Kauravas, but not his own kinsmen, there; and believing himself deceived, turns away and strides downwards to the gate of Narak, the Brahman hell. Outside its dismal portals he is assailed by noisome odours and horrible sights, but he hears the voice of Draupadí inside, and beats fiercely for entrance. As the ghastly porch opens, the foul and murky air suddenly clears, the evil noises turn to exquisite music, hell becomes a dissolving vision—maya—an illusion, which gives place to the real and glorious Heaven of the high Gods; and Yudhishthira, thrice-tried and found perfect, obtains immortal bliss for himself and for all those dear to him.

Such is the barest outline of this mighty and ancient poem, which has had far more rapt listeners than ever the "Iliad" or "Odyssey" could boast—which may claim a grander scheme page 21 and higher aims than either, and which in many a beautiful and sonorous passage does not yield in music or invention or majesty to the flow of Homer's own Greek. Outside the mam story and its many episodes the gigantic work contains, as an ocean embraces islands, the separate compositions of the Bhagavad-Gita, with the legends of Krishna and the three famous stories of Nala and Damayanti, Devayani and Vayati, and—though this was interpolated—Chandrahasna and Bikya. The Mahabharata is, in truth, an ocean of poetry, whose coast-line we have merely indicated, yet we have accomplished our purpose in praising the industry which has summarized it in Mr. Talboys Wheeler's admirable first volume; the spirit which has aided him in Messrs. Trübner's well-known interest in Oriental learning; and the devotion, above all, of that nameless scholar whose toil has sounded tor us the depths of this almost boundless sea. We have dipped but a cup or two from its musical wavelets of love alternating with mighty rolling billows of tempestuous passion, and sinking back again into ripples of restful peace and the calm of the dark waters at night. It was our desire, while doing justice to a recent notable work, to convey some slight idea to the English public of this vast antique epic, which to the present hour feeds with by-gone but immortal melody the hearts of all the Indian people. If we have effected this, our purpose is accomplished. In another paper, and on a future occasion, we hope to notice the remarkable translation which Mr. Ralph Griffith, of the Benares College, has achieved from the Sanskrit of that sister-poem of the Mahábhárata—the voluminous Rámáyana.