Abstract
The translation into English by Pratap Chandra Roy of The Mahabharata filled sixteen volumes published over the years from 1883 to 1896. Kipling had dutifully read the first instalments as they appeared, finding them increasingly tedious. Earlier in 1886 he had been provoked to discover William Morris citing The Mahabharata as among the ‘hundred best books’, and he wrote to express his annoyed skepticism to his old school-master Cormell Price:
I see by this week’s P [all] M[all] Gazette that the worthy William Morris has been giving his opinion on the Hundred best books. Lord! Lord! What a lying world it is. He has gravely stuck down the Mahabarat and I will wager everything 1 have that he hasn’t the ghost of a conception what he means when he advises the study of that monstrous midden.… I see every now and then at home some man who hasn’t touched ’em lifting up his voice in praise of ‘the golden mines of Oriental Literature’ and I snort (18–27 February 1886: copy, the Kipling Society).
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© 1986 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Pinney, T. (1986). The Epics of India. In: Pinney, T. (eds) Kipling’s India: Uncollected Sketches 1884–88. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-07710-6_33
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-07710-6_33
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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