The following pages offer an imperfect and unpretending analysis of the opening portions of the Great Indian Epic, the Mahábhárata; with a free version here and there of striking passages, and in most of these instances the Sanskrit text. So cumbrous an introduction to the mighty Poem was, perhaps, compiled in days long subsequent to those of the finer sections of the Epic. It seems principally directed to the exaltation of Brahmans, and the glorification of Royal and Saintly Pedigrees; but a closer study—as, for example, of the long catalogue which occurs in the description of the Serpent-People—would probably give useful results to ethnology and geography.