Let no man think lightly of evil, saying in his heart,‘It will not come near unto me.’ Even by the falling of water-drops a water-pot is filled; the fool becomes full of evil, even if he gathers it little by little. Let us live happily then, though we call nothing our own; not hating those who hate us, free from greed among the greedy. We shall then be like the bright gods, feeding on happiness.” NOTES ON HINDOO LITERATURE, ETC. The literature of India incalculably vast, and its individual works voluminous. The Mahâbhârata six times as long as the Iliad, Odyssey, and Æneid united; the Râmâyana half this size. The eighteen Purânas contain 1,600,000 lines. The library of one of the kings said to have numbered so many books that a hundred Brahmans were employed in taking care of it, and a thousand dromedaries were required to convey it from place to place; twenty years were consumed in condensing its contents, by the royal command, into an encyclopædia of 12,000 volumes. Sir William Jones computed that the longest life would not suffice for the perusal of all the Sanscrit writings.—First century B.C. believed to have been an Augustan age of Indian literature. Writing apparently unknown to the ancient Hindoos before the time of Pânini. No mention anywhere made, in the early works, of writing materials, pen or brush, paper, bark, or skin. The Vedic hymns sung or repeated probably for a thousand years before they were committed to writing. The use of the alphabet long regarded as impious. First letters appear in Buddhist inscriptions of the 3d century B.C. Later Indian manuscripts, beautifully inscribed on palm leaves. The letters of the Sanscrit alphabet thought to be the oldest forms of our Arabic figures, which came originally from India, as did also our decimal system. Chess one of the earliest inventions of the Hindoos—called chess (_king_) from the principal piece. The Brahman inventor, so the story goes, asked of the reigning emperor as his reward, a single grain of wheat for the first square of the chess-board, two for the second, four for the third, and so on to the sixty-fourth; apparently a modest price, but one that it would have taken years to pay with the wheat crop of the whole world. Elephants, horses, foot-soldiers, and chariots, the original chess-men. From India, the game found its way into China, Japan, and Persia, and finally into Europe.—Throwing dice, also, a favorite pastime; the “Game of Four Crowns,” with playing-cards, early known to the Hindoos. Square copper money coined in the 3d century B.C., and stamped with inscriptions in a Sanscrit dialect. CHAPTER II. _PERSIAN LITERATURE._