ABSTRACT
We have now come to the last act of the drama of Hindu History, and the curtain rises on a truly great spectacle. The victor of a great and patriotic war, the patron of reviving Hinduism, the centre of all that is best and most beautiful in modern Sanscrit literature, and the subject of a hundred legends, Vikramâditya the Great is to the Hindus what Charlemagne is to the French, what Alfred is to the English, what Asoka is to Buddhists, and what Harun Ar’Rashid is to Mahommedans. To the learned as to the illiterate, to the poet as to the storyteller, to old men as to schoolboys, his name is as familiar in India as the name of any prince or potentate in any country. Tender recollections of Sakuntalâ and Urvasî rise in the minds of Hindu scholars with the name of the prince in whose court Kâlidâsa flourished. Hindu astronomers cherish the memory of the patron of Varâhamihira ; and Hindu lexicographers honour the name of the potentate who honoured Amara Sinha. And as if his true claims to glory were not enough, a hundred tales familiarise his name to the illiterate and the simple. Villagers assemble to this day under the umbrageous pepul tree to hear how the thirty-two speaking puppets, who bore aloft the throne of the great emperor, would not brook his successor, and departed, each telling a story of Vikrama’s glory. And little boys in every village school in India still learh with wondering admiration how the undaunted Vikrama struggled in the midst of darkness and scenes of terror to obtain mastery over a mighty spirit, and how he succeeded at last, by his indomitable bravery, his never wavering judgment, his never failing self-possession and valour.
