I PROCEED to note a few obvious points that force themselves on the attention in comparing the two great Indian Epics with each other, and with the Homeric poems. I have already stated that the episodes of the Mahā-bhārata occupy more than three-fourths of the whole poem. It is, in fact, not one poem, but a combination of many poems: not a Kāvya, like the poem of Vālmīki, by one author, but an Itihāsa by many authors. This is one great distinctive feature in comparing it with the Rāmāyaṇa. In both Epics there is a leading story, about which are collected a multitude of other stories; but in the Mahā-bhārata the main narrative only acts as a slender thread to connect together a vast mass of independent legends, and religious, moral, and political precepts; while in the Rāmāyaṇa the episodes, though numerous, never break the solid chain of one principal and paramount subject, which is ever kept in view. Moreover, in the Rāmāyaṇa there are few didactic discourses and a remarkable paucity of sententious maxims.

It should be remembered that the two Epics belong to different periods and different localities. Not only was a large part of the Mahā-bhārata composed later than the Rāmāyaṇa, parts of it being comparatively modern, but the places which gave birth to the two poems are distinct (see p. 320). Moreover, in the Rāmāyaṇa the circle of territory represented as occupied by the Āryans is more restricted than that in the Mahā-bhārata. It reaches to Videha or Mithilā and Anga in the East, to Su-rāshṭra in the South-west, to the Yamunā and great Daṇḍaka forest in the South.