tained that she was in a palace in Ceylon, Rama and all the allied monkey forces marched down to the Coromandel coast, and, making a bridge by casting rocks into the sea, passed quickly into Lanka. After fighting a few battles the Rakshasas (demons) were defeated, Ravana was put to death by Rama, and Seeta rescued from her palace prison. Rama will, however, have nothing to say to his recovered wife until she has gone through “the ordeal of fire;” but as she passed through the blazing pile unhurt, and Brahma and other gods attested her fidelity, her husband once more received her with affection, and, the term of exile over, the whole party returned in happiness to Ayodhya. Such, in brief, is the story of the Ramayana, which is spun out into details and episodes of great length. It is read very extensively to listening crowds in India, who believe every word, no matter how improbable, as we would the most authentic records of our own history or our Holy Bible.
The Mahabarata is the second famous epic of India. We have only room to say that it describes a contest between the two branches of the Chundra, or Moon dynasty, for the sovereignty of the Ganges territory. The “Great War” (as the word Mahabarata expresses) is generally regarded as having taken place about two hundred years before the siege of Troy.
Princes are enumerated as taking part in the struggle from the Deccan, and the Indus, and even beyond the Indus, especially the Yarases, thought to be Greeks. Fifty-six royal leaders were assembled on the field of battle, which raged for eighteen days with prodigious slaughter—another proof of the division of India into many separate States, though occasionally combined, as in this poem, under the leadership of some great general on either side. The contest was waged between the sons of Pandu, the deceased Rajah, and their cousins the Kooroos, who denied their legitimacy—a never-failing subject of dispute in Hindoo successions. It ended in the victory of the Pandus; but what they gained by arms they lost through gaming. Yudisthira, the Agamemnon of the poem, departs with his brothers and the beautiful Draupadi into
