half-divine heroes. We see him becoming identified with old
gods, and finally rising to the rank of the Supreme Deity whose
worship he had himself taught in his lifetime, the Brahma of the
philosophers and the Most High God of the theists. As has happened
many a time, the teacher has become the God of his Church.

CHAPTER III

THE EPICS, AND LATER

I. VISHNU-KRISHNA

We now enter upon an age in which the old gods, Indra and Brahma,
retire to the background, while Vishnu and Siva stand in the forefront
of the stage.

The Hindus are of the same opinion as the Latin poet: _ferrea nunc
aetas agitur_. We are now living in an Iron Age, according to them;
and it began in the year 3102 B.C., shortly after the great war
described in the Mahabharata. The date 3102, I need hardly remark, is
of no historical value, being based merely upon the theories of
comparatively late astronomers; but the statement as a whole is
important. The Great War marks an epoch. It came at the end of what
may be called the pre-historic period, and was followed by a new age.
To be strictly correct, we must say that the age which followed the
Great War was not new in the sense that it introduced any startling
novelties that had been unknown previously; but it was new in the
sense that after the Great War India speedily became the India that we
know from historical records. A certain fusion of different races,
cultures, and ideals had to take place in order that the peculiar
civilisation of India might unfold itself; and this fusion was
accomplished about the time of the Great War, and partly no doubt by
means of the Great War, some ten centuries before the Christian era.

The story of the Great War is told with a wild profusion of mythical
and legendary colouring in the Mahabharata, an epic the name of which
means literally "The Great Tale of the Bharata Clan." It relates how
the blind old King Dhritarashtra of Hastinapura had a hundred sons,
known as the Kuru or Kaurava princes, the eldest of whom was
Duryodhana, and Dhritarashtra's brother Pandu had five sons, the
Pandava brethren; how the Pandavas were ousted by the Kauravas from
the kingdom, the eldest Pandava prince Yudhishthira having been
induced to stake the fortunes of himself and his brethren on a game of
dice, in which he was defeated; how the five Pandavas, with their
common wife Draupadi (observe this curious and ugly feature of
polyandry, which is quite opposed to standard Hi