Page:A history of Sanskrit literature (1900), Macdonell, Arthur Anthony.djvu/303

 the Mahābhārata begun at Calcutta in 1875. The earliest extant commentator of the great epic is, large fragments of whose notes have been preserved, and who cannot have written later than in the second half of the fourteenth century, but may be somewhat older.

The main story of the Mahābhārata in the briefest possible outline is as follows: In the country of the Bharatas, which, from the name of the ruling race, had come to be called Kurukshetra, or "Land of the Kurus," there lived at Hastināpura, fifty-seven miles north-east of the modern Delhi, two princes named Dhṛitarāshṭra and Pāṇḍu. The elder of these brothers being blind, Pāṇḍu succeeded to the throne and reigned gloriously. He had five sons called Pāṇḍavas, the chief of whom were Yudhishṭhira, Bhīma, and Arjuna. Dhṛitarāshṭra had a hundred sons, usually called Kauravas, or Kuru princes, the most prominent of whom was Duryodhana. On the premature death of Pāṇḍu, Dhṛitarāshṭra took over the reins of government, and receiving his five nephews into his palace, had them brought up with his own sons. As the Pāṇḍus distinguished themselves greatly in feats of arms and helped him to victory, the king appointed his eldest nephew, Yudhishṭhira, to be heir-apparent. The Pāṇḍu princes, however, soon found it necessary to escape from the plots their cousins now began to set on foot against them. They made their way to the king of Panchāla, whose daughter Draupadī was won, in a contest between many kings and heroes, by Arjuna, who alone was able to bend the king's great bow and to hit a certain mark. In order to avoid strife, Draupadī consented to become the common wife of the five princes. At Draupadī's svayaṃvara (public choice of a husband)