The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c9.18

c9.18

epics, the Râmâyana and the Mahâbhârata; to take part in musical festivals, and to listen to the tales of the village *kathak*, or story-teller. It was here, also, that by listening to the learned disputations between the pandits of the village, or of wandering ascetics versed in the spiritual lore of the Aryan sages, that the Indian peasant, illiterate only in the narrowest technical sense, acquired that familiarity with abstruse philo-