MAHABHARATA

How did it fulfil-how is it still continuing to fulfil-this function? By its gospel of dharma, which like a golden thread runs through all the complex movements in the epic; by its lesson that hatred breeds hatred, that covetousness and violence lead inevitably to ruin, that the only real conquest is in the battle against one's lower nature.

Indeed the Mahabharata has another name known among scholars-JAYA-which means victory, conveying the moral herein indicated. 'Jaya' is the name, by which the work is referred to, in the first invocatory verse of the epic.

'If a foreigner reads this book-translation and epitome though it is-and, closes it with a feeling that he has read a good and elevating work, be may be confident that he has grasped the spirit of India and can understand her people high and low, rich and I poor.

MADRAS: C. RAJAGOPALACHARI

10th January 1952.

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