4- * he circle of territory embraced by the story of Ramayana reaches to the Videhas in the east, to the Surastras in the south-west and to the Vindhya and Dandaka in the south, and therefore more restricted in area, while the Mahabharata represents the Aryan settlers as having spread themselves to the mouths of the Ganges, to the Coromandel and the Malabar Coasts. Even Ceylon brings them tribute.
5* The religious system of the Mahabharata is far more catholic and popular. The idea of the supreme importance of the hero is not strong. Krishna is by no means the head of the Hindu pantheon. In the Ramayana, Rama's divinity is undisputed and Rama's character in a way illustrates the onesided exclusion of Brahminism.
6. The Ramayana forms the first source of recorded infor-•mation of the tenets of Hinduism as perfected by the firahminical influence. We can discern no confusion of religious principles and the growth of spiritual ideas has reached an unmistakable position, whereas the Mahabharata reflects the mutilated character of Hinduism and a confused combination of monotheism and polytheism, of orthodox intolerance and materialistic Catholicism.
7. " Notwithstanding wild ideas and absurd figments, the Mahabharata contains many more illustrations of real life and of domestic and social manners than the sister epic."
8* Though simple and natural in style and language the Mahabharata comprehends a diversity of composition, resorting at times to loose and irregular constructions and exhibit* ing complex grammatical forms, vedic and archaic, The frullfindustan.f Sita, has its prototype in the stealing of the cows recovered by Indra* Hanumat, the chief of the monkeys and Rama's ally in the recovery of Sita, is the son of the wind-god wit& the patronymic Maruti and is described as flying hundreds o£ ? The later Puranas tell us he was an incarnation, of Vlshnu-^bmt Vishnu himself had not risen to prominence;