3. The Mahabharata and the Ramayana are the classics of our nation. The characters that figure in them have become one with our lives. For thousands of years now the whole of Indian life has been, as it were, consecrated by the heroes and heroines of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata like Rama, Sita, Dharmaraj, Draupadi, Bhishma and Hanuman. The characters of no other classics in the world have thus blended with the lives of the people. 

Looked at in this way the Mahabharata and the Ramayana are undoubtedly wonderful works. If the Ramayana is an enthralling ethical poem, the Mahabharata is a comprehensive treatise on the science of society. Vyasa has in his hundred thousand slokas given us innumerable portraits, customs and heroic actions which are as beautiful as they are real. The Mahabharata tells us clearly that none but God is wholly free from blemish; that none too is an embodiment of absolute evil. 

On the one hand, faults are pointed
out even in Bhishma and Yudhishthira, and, on the other, light is out shed on the good points of Karna and, Duryodhana. The Mahabharata describes human life as a fabric woven out of both black and white threads. Himself standing aloof, Bhagavan Vyasa projects on the screen of the world a picture, made up of both light and shade of the universal movement. Because of this perfect detachment and the big literary skill of Vyasa, the Mahabharata has turned out to be a huge mine containing pure gold.  Let us now explore it and carry away from it all the wealth we can. 

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