Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/227

 |IV.] BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. 197 We need not preceed with the tale of the The con. tents. The Mahabharata at any length. The main story is not jain atary the whole preoccupation of the poem. The Gita in the Udyoga Parva, together with the moral and the spiritual discourses of Bhisma, in the Canti Parva, yields to no episode of the main plot, in the interest which they evoke in the mind of the readers. The story of Nala and Damayanti, of Cakuntala, of Carmista and hundreds of such engrafted pieces, which are now inseparable from the main poem, have little bearing on the incidents of the Great War. An account of the Kauravas and the Pan- davas only would convey a very inadequate idea of the contents of the epic. Briefly speaking, the story is as follows :—The princes of the lines of Kuru and of Pandu were born and brought up under circumstances which led to feelings of animosity on either side, ultimately bursting into the most sanguinary warfare on the fields of Kuruksetra. The five brothers, Yudhisthira, Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula and Sahadeva, tried by all possible means to avert the war. They were the rightful heirs to half the kingdom; but Duryyodhana and _ his brothers would not part with this. Yudhisthira, the eldest Pandava, asked of King, Duryyodhana, a grant of five villages only, so that the five brothers might have some refuge in the world. Even this Duryyodhana refused to give, saying ‘“ Not half the earth, that may be covered by the point of a needle, willl give without war.’’ Added to this Were the great wrongs committed against the Pandavas by Duryyodhana from boyhood upwards, —the conspiracies to assassinate them, from each of which they had a narrow escape, and the last act,