Some time ago I wrote and published, in a paper entitled “The Iliad and Odyssey of India,” the following passages:
“There exist two colossal, two unparalleled, epic poems in the sacred language of India, -the Mahâbhârata and the Râmâyana, -which were not known to Europe, even by name, until Sir William Jones announced their existence; and one of which, the larger, since his time, has been made public only by fragments, by mere specimens, hearing to those vast treasures of Sanskrit literature such small proportion as cabinet samples of ore have to the riches of a mine. Yet these most remarkable poems contain almost all the history of ancient India, so far as it can be recovered; together with such inexhaustible details of its political, social, and religious life, that the antique Hindu world really stands epitomized in them.
