Note 4 — Preface.

Even the Mahâ Bhârata, however, gives no consecutive and reliable account of the original settlement in the country. Franz Bopp, one of the earliest to attempt its translation, thus happily describes it. He likens it to an Egyptian obelisk covered with hieroglyphics, “an dem die Grundform von der Erde zum Himmel strebe, aber eine Fülle von Gestalten, (von denen eine auf die andre deute, eine ohne die andre räthselhaft bleibe,) neben und durch einander hinziehe und Irdisches und Himmlisches wundersam verbinde.”—The pervading plan of the work is one straining from earth upwards to heaven, but overlaid with a multiplicity of figures, each one so intimately related with the other, that any would be incomprehensible without the rest; the thread of the life of one interwoven with those of the others, and all of them together creating a wondrous bond between the things of this world and the things which are above.