The sanskrit epics, p.147
The Sanskrit Epics, page 147
11
One of the most prominent objects of worship in the Rig-veda, Indra was superseded in later times by the more popular deities Vishṇu and Śiva. He is the God of the firmament, and answers in many respects to the Jupiter Pluvius of the Romans. See Additional Notes.
12
The second God of the Trimúrti or Indian Trinity. Derived from the root viś to penetrate, the meaning of the name appears to be he who penetrates or pervades all things. An embodiment of the preserving power of nature, he is worshipped as a Saviour who has nine times been incarnate for the good of the world and will descend on earth once more. See Additional Notes and Muir’s Sanskrit Texts passim.
13
In Sanskrit devarshi. Rishi is the general appellation of sages, and another word is frequently prefixed to distinguish the degrees. A Brahmarshi is a theologian or Bráhmanical sage; a Rájarshi is a royal sage or sainted king; a Devarshi is a divine or deified sage or saint.
14
Trikálajǹa. Literally knower of the three times. Both Schlegel and Gorresio quote Homer’s.
Ὅς ἤδη τ’ ἐόντα, τά τ’ ἐσσόμενα,
πρό τ’ ἐόντα.
“That sacred seer, whose comprehensive view,
The past, the present, and the future knew.”
The Bombay edition reads trilokajǹa, who knows the three worlds (earth, air and heaven.) “It is by tapas (austere fervour) that rishis of subdued souls, subsisting on roots, fruits and air, obtain a vision of the three worlds with all things moving and stationary.” Manu, XI. 236.
15
Son of Manu, the first king of Kośala and founder of the solar dynasty or family of the Children of the Sun, the God of that luminary being the father of Manu.
16
The Indians paid great attention to the art of physiognomy and believed that character and fortune could be foretold not from the face only but from marks upon the neck and hands. Three lines under the chin like those at the mouth of a conch (Śańkha) were regarded as a peculiarly auspicious sign indicating, as did also the mark of Vishṇu’s discus on the hand, one born to be a chakravartin or universal emperor. In the palmistry of Europe the line of fortune, as well as the line of life, is in the hand. Cardan says that marks on the nails and teeth also show what is to happen to us: “Sunt etiam in nobis vestigia quædam futurorum eventuum in unguibus atque etiam in dentibus.” Though the palmy days of Indian chiromancy have passed away, the art is still to some extent studied and believed in.
17
Long arms were regarded as a sign of heroic strength.
18
“Veda means originally knowing or knowledge, and this name is given by the Bráhmans not to one work, but to the whole body of their most ancient sacred literature. Veda is the same word which appears in the Greek οίδα, I know, and in the English wise, wisdom, to wit. The name of Veda is commonly given to four collections of hymns, which are respectively known by the names of Rig-veda, Yajur-veda, Sáma-veda, and Atharva-veda.”
“As the language of the Veda, the Sanskrit, is the most ancient type of the English of the present day, (Sanskrit and English are but varieties of one and the same language,) so its thoughts and feelings contain in reality the first roots and germs of that intellectual growth which by an unbroken chain connects our own generation with the ancestors of the Aryan race, — with those very people who at the rising and setting of the sun listened with trembling hearts to the songs of the Veda, that told them of bright powers above, and of a life to come after the sun of their own lives had set in the clouds of the evening. These men were the true ancestors of our race, and the Veda is the oldest book we have in which to study the first beginnings of our language, and of all that is embodied in language. We are by nature Aryan, Indo-European, not Semitic: our spiritual kith and kin are to be found in India, Persia, Greece, Italy, Germany: not in Mesopotamia, Egypt, or Palestine.”
Chips from a German Workshop, Vol. I. pp. 8. 4.
19
As with the ancient Persians and Scythians, Indian princes were carefully instructed in archery which stands for military science in general, of which, among Hindu heroes, it was the most important branch.
20
Chief of the three queens of Daśaratha and mother of Ráma.
21
From hima snow, (Greek χειμ-ών, Latin hiems) and álaya abode, the Mansion of snow.
22
The moon (Soma, Indu, Chandra etc.) is masculine with the Indians as with the Germans.
23
Kuvera, the Indian Plutus, or God of Wealth.
24
The events here briefly mentioned will be related fully in the course of the poem. The first four cantos are introductory, and are evidently the work of a later hand than Valmiki’s.
25
“Chandra, or the Moon, is fabled to have been married to the twenty-seven daughters of the patriarch Daksha, or Aśviní and the rest, who are in fact personifications of the Lunar Asterisms. His favourite amongst them was Rohiṇí to whom he so wholly devoted himself as to neglect the rest. They complained to their father, and Daksha repeatedly interposed, till, finding his remonstrances vain, he denounced a curse upon his son-in-law, in consequence of which he remained childless and became affected by consumption. The wives of Chandra having interceded in his behalf with their father, Daksha modified an imprecation which he could not recall, and pronounced that the decay should be periodical only, not permanent, and that it should alternate with periods of recovery. Hence the successive wane and increase of the Moon. Padma, Puráṇa, Swarga-Khaṇḍa, Sec. II. Rohiṇí in Astronomy is the fourth lunar mansion, containing five stars, the principal of which is Aldebaran.” Wilson, Specimens of the Hindu Theatre. Vol. I. p. 234.
The Bengal recension has a different reading:
“Shone with her husband like the light
Attendant on the Lord of Night.”
26
The garb prescribed for ascetics by Manu.
27
“Mount Meru, situated like Kailása in the lofty regions to the north of the Himálayas, is celebrated in the traditions and myths of India. Meru and Kailása are the two Indian Olympi. Perhaps they were held in such veneration because the Sanskrit-speaking Indians remembered the ancient home where they dwelt with the other primitive peoples of their family before they descended to occupy the vast plains which extend between the Indus and the Ganges.” Gorresio.
28
The third God of the Indian Triad, the God of destruction and reproduction. See Additional Notes.
29
The epithet dwija, or twice-born, is usually appropriate to Bráhmans, but is applicable to the three higher castes. Investiture with the sacred thread and initiation of the neophyte into certain religious mysteries are regarded as his regeneration or second birth.
30
His shoes to be a memorial of the absent heir and to maintain his right. Kálidása (Raghuvaṅśa, XII. 17.) says that they were to be adhidevate or guardian deities of the kingdom.
31
Jaṭáyu, a semi-divine bird, the friend of Ráma, who fought in defence of Sítá.
32
Raghu was one of the most celebrated ancestors of Ráma whose commonest appellation is, therefore, Rághava or descendant of Raghu. Kálidása in the Raghuraṇśa makes him the son of Dilípa and great-grandfather of Ráma. See Idylls from the Sanskrit, “Aja” and “Dilípa.”
33
Dundhubi.
34
Literally ten yojanas. The yojana is a measure of uncertain length variously reckoned as equal to nine miles, five, and a little less.
35
Ceylon.
36
The Jonesia Aśoka is a most beautiful tree bearing a profusion of red blossoms.
37
Brahmá, the Creator, is usually regarded as the first God of the Indian Trinity, although, as Kálidása says:
“Of Brahmá, Vishṇu, Śiva, each may be
First, second, third, amid the blessed Three.”
Brahmá had guaranteed Rávaṇ’s life against all enemies except man.
38
Ocean personified.
39
The rocks lying between Ceylon and the mainland are still called Ráma’s Bridge by the Hindus.
40
“The Bráhmans, with a system rather cosmogonical than chronological, divide the present mundane period into four ages or yugas as they call them: the Krita, the Tretá, the Dwápara, and the Kali. The Krita, called also the Deva-yuga or that of the Gods, is the age of truth, the perfect age, the Tretá is the age of the three sacred fires, domestic and sacrificial; the Dwápara is the age of doubt; the Kali, the present age, is the age of evil.” Gorresio.
41
The ancient kings of India enjoyed lives of more than patriarchal length as will appear in the course of the poem.
42
Śúdras, men of the fourth and lowest pure caste, were not allowed to read the poem, but might hear it recited.
43
The three ślokes or distichs which these twelve lines represent are evidently a still later and very awkward addition to the introduction.
44
There are several rivers in India of this name, now corrupted into Tonse. The river here spoken of is that which falls into the Ganges a little below Allahabad.
45
“In Book II, Canto LIV, we meet with a saint of this name presiding over a convent of disciples in his hermitage at the confluence of the Ganges and the Jumna. Thence the later author of these introductory cantos has borrowed the name and person, inconsistently indeed, but with the intention of enhancing the dignity of the poet by ascribing to him so celebrated a disciple.” Schlegel.
46
The poet plays upon the similarity in sound of the two words: śoka, means grief, śloka, the heroic measure in which the poem is composed. It need scarcely be said that the derivation is fanciful.
47
Brahmá, the Creator, is usually regarded as the first person of the divine triad of India. The four heads with which he is represented are supposed to have allusion to the four corners of the earth which he is sometimes considered to personify. As an object of adoration Brahmá has been entirely superseded by Śiva and Vishṇu. In the whole of India there is, I believe, but one temple dedicated to his worship. In this point the first of the Indian triad curiously resembles the last of the divine fraternity of Greece, Aïdes the brother of Zeus and Poseidon. “In all Greece, says Pausanias, there is no single temple of Aïdes, except at a single spot in Elis.” See Gladstone’s Juventus Mundi, p. 253.
48
The argha or arghya was a libation or offering to a deity, a Bráhman, or other venerable personage. According to one authority it consisted of water, milk, the points of Kúsa-grass, curds, clarified butter, rice, barley, and white mustard, according to another, of saffron, bel, unbroken grain, flowers, curds, dúrbá-grass, kúsa-grass, and sesamum.
49
Sítá, daughter of Janak king of Míthilá.
50
“I congratulate myself,” says Schlegel in the preface to his, alas, unfinished edition of the Rámáyan, “that, by the favour of the Supreme Deity, I have been allowed to begin so great a work; I glory and make my boast that I too after so many ages have helped to confirm that ancient oracle declared to Válmíki by the Father of Gods and men:
Dum stabunt montes, campis dum flumina current,
Usque tuum toto carmen celebrabitur orbe.”
51
“The sipping of water is a requisite introduction of all rites: without it, says the Sámha Purána, all acts of religion are vain.” Colebrooke.
52
The darhha or kuśa (Pea cynosuroides), a kind of grass used in sacrifice by the Hindus as cerbena was by the Romans.
53
The direction in which the grass should be placed upon the ground as a seat for the Gods, on occasion of offerings made to them.
54
Paraśuráma or Ráma with the Axe. See Canto LXXIV.
55
Sítá. Videha was the country of which Míthilá was the capital.
56
The twin sons of Ráma and Sítá, born after Ráma had repudiated Sítá, and brought up in the hermitage of Válmíki. As they were the first rhapsodists the combined name Kuśílava signifies a reciter of poems, or an improvisatore, even to the present day.
57
Perhaps the bass, tenor, and treble, or quick, slow and middle times. we know but little of the ancient music of the Hindus.
58
Eight flavours or sentiments are usually enumerated, love, mirth, tenderness, anger, heroism, terror, disgust, and surprise; tranquility or content, or paternal tenderness, is sometimes considered the ninth. Wilson. See the Sáhitya Darpaṇa or Mirror of Composition translated by Dr. Ballantyne and Bábú Pramadádása Mittra in the Bibliotheca Indica.
59
Saccharum Munja is a plant from whose fibres is twisted the sacred string which a Bráhman wears over one shoulder after he has been initiated by a rite which in some respects answers to confirmation.
60
A description of an Aśvamedha or Horse Sacrifice is given in Canto XIII. of this Book.
61
This exploit is related in Canto XL.
62
The Sarjú or Ghaghra, anciently called Sarayú, rises in the Himalayas, and after flowing through the province of Oudh, falls into the Ganges.
63
The ruins of the ancient capital of Ráma and the Children of the Sun may still be traced in the present Ajudhyá near Fyzabad. Ajudhyá is the Jerusalem or Mecca of the Hindus.
64
A legislator and saint, the son of Brahmá or a personification of Brahmá himself, the creator of the world, and progenitor of mankind. Derived from the root man to think, the word means originally man, the thinker, and is found in this sense in the Rig-veda.
Manu as a legislator is identified with the Cretan Minos, as progenitor of mankind with the German Mannus: “Celebrant carminibus antiquis, quod unum apud illos memoriæ et annalium genus est, Tuisconem deum terra editum, et filium Mannum, originem gentis conditoresque.” Tacitus, Germania, Cap. II.
65
The Sál (Shorea Robusta) is a valuable timber tree of considerable height.
66
The city of Indra is called Amarávatí or Home of the Immortals.
67
Schlegel thinks that this refers to the marble of different colours with which the houses were adorned. It seems more natural to understand it as implying the regularity of the streets and houses.
68
The Śataghní i.e. centicide, or slayer of a hundred, is generally supposed to be a sort of fire-arms, or the ancient Indian rocket; but it is also described as a stone set round with iron spikes.
69
The Nágas (serpents) are demigods with a human face and serpent body. They inhabit Pátála or the regions under the earth. Bhogavatí is the name of their capital city. Serpents are still worshipped in India. See Fergusson’s Tree and Serpent Worship.
70
The fourth and lowest pure caste whose duty was to serve the three first classes.
71
By forbidden marriages between persons of different castes.
72
Váhlí or Váhlíka is Bactriana; its name is preserved in the modern Balkh.
73
The Sanskrit word Sindhu is in the singular the name of the river Indus, in the plural of the people and territories on its banks. The name appears as Hidku in the cuneiform inscription of Darius’ son of Hystaspes, in which the nations tributary to that king are enumerated.
The Hebrew form is Hodda (Esther, I. 1.). In Zend it appears as Hendu in a somewhat wider sense. With the Persians later the signification of Hind seems to have co-extended with their increasing acquaintance with the country. The weak Ionic dialect omitted the Persian h, and we find in Hecatæus and Herodotus Ἴνδος and ἡ Ἰνδική. In this form the Romans received the names and transmitted them to us. The Arabian geographers in their ignorance that Hind and Sind are two forms of the same word have made of them two brothers and traced their decent from Noah. See Lassen’s Indische Alterthumskunde Vol. I. pp. 2, 3.
74
The situation of Vanáyu is not exactly determined: it seems to have lain to the north-west of India.
75
Kámboja was probably still further to the north-west. Lassen thinks that the name is etymologically connected with Cambyses which in the cuneiform inscription of Behistun is written Ka(m)bujia.
76
The elephants of Indra and other deities who preside over the four points of the compass.
77
“There are four kinds of elephants. 1 Bhaddar. It is well proportioned, has an erect head, a broad chest, large ears, a long tail, and is bold and can bear fatigue. 2 Mand. It is black, has yellow eyes, a uniformly sized body, and is wild and ungovernable. 3 Mirg. It has a whitish skin, with black spots. 4 Mir. It has a small head, and obeys readily. It gets frightened when it thunders.” Aín-i-Akbarí.. Translated by H. Blochmann, Aín 41, The Imperial Elephant Stables.
78
Ayodhyá means not to be fought against.
79
Attendants of Indra, eight Gods whose names signify fire, light and its phenomena.
80
Kaśyap was a grandson of the God Brahmá. He is supposed to have given his name to Kashmír = Kaśyapa-míra, Kaśyap’s Lake.
81
The people of Anga. “Anga is said in the lexicons to be Bengal; but here certainly another region is intended situated at the confluence of the Sarjú with the Ganges, and not far distant from Daśaratha’s dominions.” Gorresio. It comprised part of Behar and Bhagulpur.
82
The Koïl or kokila (Cuculus Indicus) as the harbinger of spring and love is a universal favourite with Indian poets. His voice when first heard in a glorious spring morning is not unpleasant, but becomes in the hot season intolerably wearisome to European ears.
83
“Sons and Paradise are intimately connected in Indian belief. A man desires above every thing to have a son to perpetuate his race, and to assist with sacrifices and funeral rites to make him worthy to obtain a lofty seat in heaven or to preserve that which he has already obtained.” Gorresio.
