A History of Sanskrit Literature c13.5

c13.5

Hand in hand with this fondness for introducing the marvellous and supernatural into the description of human events goes a tendency to exaggeration. Thus King Viçvāmitra, we are told, practised penance for thousands of years in succession; and the power of asceticism is described as so great as to cause even the worlds and the gods to tremble. The very bulk of the *Mahābhārata*, consisting as it does of more than 200,000 lines, is a concrete illustration of this defective sense of proportion.