Page:Stories of India's Gods & Heroes.djvu/12

8 great hero, who is represented as the seventh of the incarnations of the god Vishnu. This deity, according to Hindu legend, had appeared several times on earth already, generally in forms not human: for example, a fish, a tortoise, a boar, etc. This Vishnu, under one name or another, is, perhaps, the most popular of all the Hindu gods. Under the name of Rama, he still receives the worship of millions; and Krishna, the incarnation following Rama, is even more popular than his predecessor, though, according to Western notions, very much less worthy of honour.

The Ramayana is a poem of great length—about 60,000 lines—but it is short compared with the Mahabharata. This enormous poem—evidently the work of many hands, at widely differing dates—runs to no less than 210,000 lines as long as those of Macaulay's Armada. The main subject is the struggle between two branches of a royal family for supremacy in the country round Delhi; but every part of the poem abounds in "side shows" of every sort, and there are few well-known subjects or legends of Hindu religion which are not handled in the Mahabharata.

The main story of each of these great poems is shortly told in this book; and several of the minor tales are taken, either wholly or in part, from one or the other.

The last important class of books which gives us material for these tales is called the Puranas. These are, generally speaking, much later than the Epics, and some of them clearly belong to a date comparatively recent. The main idea of the