Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 441

HINDU EPICS
401
not in a position to give any particulars as to their merit,
or even of their contents, seeing that I have never taken
the trouble to read any of them.
More fortunate than the French, who are never weary
of repeating that no epic poem exists in their literature,
the Hindus boast of a great number.
The two most
celebrated are the Ramayana and the Bhagavata.
Both
The former recounts the deeds
are of inordinate length.
and exploits of Vishnu under the incarnation of Rama
;
while the latter relates the adventures of Vishnu meta-
morphosed in the form of Krishna. Their authors have
introduced into them the whole idolatrous system of the
country a system on which they are often at variance
among themselves. It may be easily understood that the
unities prescribed by Aristotle have not been observed in
these epics.
The Bhagavata takes up its hero even before
his birth, and does not quit him till after he is dead.
The fertile imagination of the ancient Greeks conceived
nothing that can be compared with the incredible powers
and wonderful achievements of the Hindu heroes, whose
exploits are celebrated in these books.
Even the colossal
Enceladus and the giant Briareus, with his fifty heads and
his hundred hands, were but pigmies compared with the
wonderful giants who, according to the Ramayana, some-
times fought for Rama and sometimes against him.
—
'
'
CHAPTER
Brahmin Philosophy.
XXIII
— The Six Sects called Shan
Mata.
— The Doctrine
of the Buddhists.
I have previously shown (in Part II, Chapter XI) that
the ancient Brahmins recognized one Supreme and Almighty
Being, possessing all the attributes that reasonable man
should ascribe to such a Being. It is impossible to believe
that these sages, being thus impressed with the idea of so
perfect a Godhead, could have countenanced the absurdities
It was their successors who
of polytheism and idolatry.
adopted these absurdities, little by little, until they led the
nation, whose oracles they were, into all the extravagant
doctrines in which they are now involved.
It must never-