creed and practice have their source in these scriptures.
Brahmanism may be represented as a system of law and custom in
the Laws of Manu; as a philosophy in the Upanishads; and as a
mythology in the Ramayana and Mahabharata.


MAHABHARATA


The word "Mahabharata" means "The Great Bharata," the name of a
well-known people in ancient India. The epic so called is a very long
one, containing at least 220,000 lengthy lines. It is really an
encyclopaedia of Hindu history, legend, mythology, and philosophy.
Four-fifths of the poem consist of episodes, some of them very
beautiful, as the tale of Nala and his wife Damayanti. These have no
primary connection with the original, though they are worked in so
deftly as to make the whole appear a splendid unity. For pathos,
sublimity, and matchless language, no poem in the world exceeds this
one.

It is arranged in eighteen books, all of which claim to have been
composed by Vyasa--another name for the god Krishna--who is said also in
the course of the epic to have composed the Vedas and the Puranas. This
is, of course, mythology, and not literary history.

The historical nucleus underlying this poem is the conflict which raged
in ancient India between two neighbouring tribes, the Kurus (or
Kauravas) and the Pandavas. But this is worked up into another long tale
into which and around which Brahman teachers and philosophers have woven
a very network of religious, theosophic, and philosophic speculation.