RECENSION OF THE MAHABHARATA 199
history of books in India. What were the first manuscripts of Mahabharata written on? When "the three Vedas" are referred to with such clearness and distinctness, how does the writer or speaker conceive of them ? Is the picture in his mind that of a book or a manuscript; and if so of what composed? Or is it a choir of Brahmans, having as many parts and divisions as the Vedas themselves?
Behind all the exuberance of prosperity and happiness, moreover, in this poem, stands the life of reverence and earnest aspiration ; the ideals of faith, purity, and courage, which pervade all classes of the people alike, and are the same to-day as they were under the empire of Pataliputra. As regards his ideal of learning, a young Bengali scholar of to-day belongs still to the culture of the Gupta period. A knowledge of Sanskrit from the ancient Vedic to fje fashionable literary language of the day ; an acquaintance with certain books; and the knowledge of a definite scheme of metaphysics, logic, and philosophy may be taken as the type of scholarship then. And very few are the Bengali minds that have yet reached a point in the assimilation and expression of a new form of thought and knowledge, which would make it possible to say that they are of another age than that of Vikramaditya. Of that new age Science is to be the pivot and centre, and there can be no doubt that the era of Science, with its collateral development of geography and history,
