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English version of the greatest national epic of the Hindoos, which is justly regarded by them not only as a sublime specimen of poetry but a store of practical human wisdom, and of encyclopedical characters that cannot fail to stike the foreigner with astonishment and wonder. The version is beautiful, though not as literal as it might be, and great care has been taken to adapt the style more to popular taste than to scholastic precision. We confidently hope that those unacquainted with the Sanscrit language will be able to obtain a fair idea of the social position of the Hindus at this great epic period by the study of this English version. The got up is also fine, and the printing correctly executed, though, for obvious reasons, we wished that the paper were a little more glazed and thick. The magnitude of the task undertaken by Protap Baboo repuires, we need hardly say, the sympathy and co-operation of all who are in a position to accord them, and we earnestly hope that our countrymen will come forward and help the patriotic endeavours of this zealous publisher.—The East.
The Mahabharat.—We are in receipt of the first part of the Mahabharat translated into English prose and published and distributed gratis by Baboo Pratap Chandra Roy of Calcutta. This gentlemen is the founder of the "Datavya Karyalya," an institution of national importance the chief object of which is to popularise in India and elsewhere the great religious tales of the Hindoos by translation into English and into the many Indian vernaculars. It is not at all a commercial speculation, the produce of the Datavya Karyalya is distributed gratis, thus making that institution the fountain of a laudable intellectual charity as well as of practical partiotism. To open the hidden stores of Indian mythology and mythological history and place before the literatures of Europe and America the delicate and different beauties of Sanskrit literature are objects which may command our admiration, and as such the objects of Baboo Pratap Chandra Roy have obtained the appreciative approval of such great men as Lord Hartington, Professors Monier Williams and Max Muller, and other great men of India and England. The arithmetical results of the Datavya Karyalya for the last seven years that it has been in exitence have no reason to disappoint us, for we find that not less than 9,000 copies of two of the religious books of India have been already distributed gratis, and the number will be doubled as soon as one or two other books are out of the printer's hand. This amounts to the fact that national amusement and intellectual instruction have been given free of cost, to as many thousands of people as the number of copies issued if not fully to three times that number, and that a genuine interest and not only an excusable but a necessary pride in the glories of Sanskrit literature have been created in their minds. From the magnitude of the work already done, we may presume that proper support has been as yet accorded to Babu Pratap Chander Roy by those who habitually indulge in
