| I appeal
particularly to the young men in schools and colleges to read these books. There is not a
page in them hut after reading you will emerge with greater courage, stronger 'will and
purer mind, They are not just story books, although they are very good in that way too.
They are the records of the mind and spirit of our fore fathers who cared for the good,
ever so much more than for the pleasant and who saw more of the mystery of life than we
can do in our interminable pursuit for petty and illusory achievements ill the material
plane. We should be thankful to those who preserved
for us these many-centuries-old epics in spite of all the Vicissitudes through which our
nation passed since Vyasa and Valmiki's time. Even the poets who wrote these epics in thc
original did not create but built out of the inherited bricks of national memory prior to
their own time. Reading the Ramayana and Mahabharata even in the form I have given them,
we go back to live with our ancient forbears and listen to their grand voice. |
