304 CRADLE TALES OF HINDUISM
that the city is ancient, and even to imagine that it may first have been built by King Yudisthira, four or five thousand years ago.
For that is the claim, — that Indraprastha was first built before the Great War broke out, by the Pandava heroes, Yudisthira and his four brothers, and that it was their capital until the day when all their enemies were slain, and they went in state to Hastinapura, near the modern Meerut, to reign as sovereigns over the whole country.
What a district it is I Rome, wath all her ruins, is not so old, nor so imposing. From Thaneswar, fifty miles to the west of Delhi, to Meerut, thirty miles to the north, the whole country is covered with the remains of ancient buildings, and the memories of ancient war. Many times has the supremacy of India been decided on this spot, once by Yudisthira, in the battle of Kurukshetra, again by Prithi Rai and Mahmoud of Ghazni, and many times since then, even down to the other day.
But it is far away from these last, back into the twilight of time, that we wish to go — back as far as those early days of the Pandava knights, and their cousins the Kurus, when the country was known as " Maha Bharata," Great India, because she was the mother of heroes, and their deeds were the deeds of the great. In those days, the chief of both clans alike was Bhishraa, ^' the
