The original poem no doubt took the part of the Kurus against the Pandus, of the Bharatas against the Panchalas. In some passages of the old poem, which have remained intact, Duryodhana, _i.e._ Bad-fighter, is called Suyodhana, _i.e._ Good-fighter. It is not by their bravery but by their cunning that the Pandus were victorious. The words of the dying Duryodhana: "The Pandus have fought with subtlety and shame, and by shame have obtained the victory," are an invention made from this point of view. The vengeance which follows close after the victory of the Pandus, the massacre of their army in the following night, through which the life of the dying Duryodhana is prolonged; the fulfilment of the curse which the mother of Duryodhana pronounces upon Krishna and the Yadavas--at a later time the tribes of the Yadavas disappeared, at any rate in these regions--all enable us to detect the original form and object of the poem. It was the lament over the fall of the famous race of the Kurus, which had founded the oldest kingdom in India, over the death of Bhishma and his hundred sons, and the narration of the vengeance which overtook the crime of Krishna and the Pandus. In any case certain traits which reappear in the Epic poetry of the Greeks and the Germans--the contest with the bow for Draupadi, the death of the young hero of half-divine descent by an arrow shot in secret, the fall of an ancient hero with his hundred sons, the destruction even of the victors in the great battle--are evidence that old Indo-Germanic conceptions must have formed the basis of the original poem. Even in the form in which we now have them they remind us of the grand, mighty, rude style of the oldest Epic poetry. In other respects also traits of antiquity are not wanting--the marriage of five brothers with one wife, the hazard of goods, kingdom, wife, and even personal liberty, on a single throw of the dice, which is an outcome of the passionate nature already known to us through the songs of the Vedas. In the songs of the conquests and struggles on the Yamuna and Ganges, sung by the minstrels to the princes and nobles of these new states, these elements became amalgamated with the praises of the deeds achieved by their ancestors at their first foundation. This is proved by the tone of the poem, which penetrates even the description of the great war. It was only before princes who made war and battle their noblest occupation, before assemblies of a warlike nobility, and in the spirit of such circles, that songs could be recited, telling of the contests in all knightly accomplishments--the wooing of the king's daughter by the bow, the choice of a husband by the princess, who gives her hand to the noblest knight. Only there could such lively and detailed descriptions of single contests and battles be given, and the laws of knightly honour and warfare be extolled with such enthusiasm. These must have penetrated