Both the “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata” are very lengthy works which, taken together, would make up not less than about five and twenty printed volumes of ordinary size. They embrace detailed histories of wars and adventures and many a story that the Western World would now call a mere fairy tale, to be listened to by children with wide-eyed attention. But interwoven with the narrative of events and legendary romances is a great bulk of philosophical, theological, and ethical materials, covering probably the whole field of later Indian speculation. Indeed, the epics are a storehouse of Brahmanical instruction in the arts of politics and government; in cosmogony and religion; in mythology and mysticism; in ritualism and the conduct of daily life. They abound in dialogues wherein the subtle wisdom of the East is well displayed, and brim-over with stories and anecdotes intended to point some moral, to afford consolation in trouble, or to inculcate a useful lesson. To epitomize all this satisfactorily would be quite impossible; but what I have given in this little volume will, I hope, be sufficient to show the nature and structure of the epics, the characteristics that distinguish them as essentially Indian productions, and the light they throw upon the condition of India and the state of Hindu society at the time the several portions were written, or, at any rate, collected together. The narrative, brief though it be, will reflect the more abiding features of Indian national life, revealing some unfamiliar ideas and strange customs. Even within the narrow limits of the reduced picture here presented, the reader will get something more than a glimpse of those famous Eastern sages, whose half-comprehended story has furnished the Theosophists of our own day with the queer notion of their extraordinary _Mahatmas_; he will learn somewhat of the wisdom and pretensions of those sages, and will not fail to note that the belief in divine incarnations was firmly rooted in India in very early times. He will incidentally acquire a knowledge of all the fundamental religious ideas of the Hindus and of the highest developments of their philosophy; he will also become familiar with some primitive customs which have left unmistakable traces in the institutions of modern social life in the East as well as in the West; and will, perhaps, be able to track to their origin some strange conceptions which are floating about the intellectual atmosphere of our time.