The sanskrit epics, p.993
The Sanskrit Epics, page 993
As to the place of its origin, there is good reason for believing that the Rāmāyaṇa arose in Kosala, the country ruled by the race of Ikshvāku in Ayodhyā (Oudh). For we are told in the seventh book (canto 45) that the hermitage of Vālmīki lay on the south bank of the Ganges; the poet must further have been connected with the royal house of Ayodhyā, as the banished Sītā took refuge in his hermitage, where her twin sons were born, brought up, and later learnt the epic from his lips; and lastly, the statement is made in the first book (canto 5) that the Rāmāyaṇa arose in the family of the Ikshvākus. In Ayodhyā, then, there must have been current among the court bards (sūta) a number of epic tales narrating the fortunes of the Ikshvāku hero Rāma. Such legends, we may assume, Vālmīki worked up into a single homogeneous production, which, as the earliest epic of importance conforming to the rules of poetics, justly received the name of ādi-kāvya, or “first artificial poem,” from its author’s successors. This work was then learnt by professional rhapsodists (kuçīlava) and recited by them in public as they wandered about the country.
The original part of the Rāmāyaṇa appears to have been completed at a time when the epic kernel of the Mahābhārata had not as yet assumed definite shape. For while the heroes of the latter are not mentioned in the Rāmāyaṇa, the story of Rāma is often referred to in the longer epic. Again, in a passage of Book VII. of the Mahābhārata, which cannot be regarded as a later addition, two lines are quoted as Vālmīki’s that occur unaltered in Book VI. of the Rāmāyaṇa. The poem of Vālmīki must, therefore, have been generally known as an old work before the Mahābhārata assumed a coherent form. In Book III. (cantos 277–291) of the latter epic, moreover, there is a Rāmopākhyāna or “Episode of Rāma,” which seems to be based on the Rāmāyaṇa as it contains several verses agreeing more or less with Vālmīki’s lines, and its author presupposes on the part of his audience a knowledge of the Rāmāyaṇa as represented by the Bombay recension.
A further question of importance in determining the age of the Rāmāyaṇa is its relation to Buddhistic literature. Now, the story of Rāma is found in a somewhat altered form in one of the Pāli Birth-Stories, the Daçaratha Jātaka. As this version confines itself to the first part of Rāma’s adventures, his sojourn in the forest, it might at first sight seem to be the older of the two. There is, however, at least an indication that the second part of the story, the expedition to Lankā, was also known to the author of the Jātaka; for while Vālmīki’s poem concludes with the reunion of Rāma and Sītā, the Jātaka is made to end with the marriage of the couple after the manner of fairy tales, there being at the same time traces that they were wedded all along in the original source of the legend. Moreover, a verse from the old part of the Rāmāyaṇa (vi. 128) actually occurs in a Pāli form embedded in the prose of this Jātaka.
It might, indeed, be inferred from the greater freedom with which they handle the çloka metre that the canonical Buddhistic writings are older than the Rāmāyaṇa, in which the çloka is of the classical Sanskrit type. But, as a matter of fact, these Pāli works on the whole observe the laws of the classical çloka, their metrical irregularities being most probably caused by the recent application of Pāli to literary purposes as well as by the inferior preservation of Pāli works. On the other hand, Buddhistic literature early made use of the Āryā metre, which, though so popular in classical Sanskrit poetry, is not yet to be found in the Sanskrit epics.
The only mention of Buddha in the Rāmāyaṇa occurs in a passage which is evidently interpolated. Hence the balance of the evidence in relation to Buddhism seems to favour the pre-Buddhistic origin of the genuine Rāmāyaṇa.
The question whether the Greeks were known to the author of our epic is, of course, also of chronological moment. An examination of the poem shows that the Yavanas (Greeks) are only mentioned twice, once in Book I. and once in a canto of Book IV., which Professor Jacobi shows to be an interpolation. The only conclusion to be drawn from this is that the additions to the original poem were made some time after 300 B.C. Professor Weber’s assumption of Greek influence in the story of the Rāmāyaṇa seems to lack foundation. For the tale of the abduction of Sītā and the expedition to Lankā for her recovery has no real correspondence with that of the rape of Helen and the Trojan war. Nor is there any sufficient reason to suppose that the account of Rāma bending a powerful bow in order to win Sītā was borrowed from the adventures of Ulysses. Stories of similar feats of strength for a like object are to be found in the poetry of other nations besides the Greeks, and could easily have arisen independently.
The political aspect of Eastern India as revealed by the Rāmāyaṇa sheds some additional light on the age of the epic. In the first place, no mention is made of the city of Pāṭaliputra (Patna), which was founded by King Kālāçoka (under whom the second Buddhist council was held at Vaiçālī about 380 B.C.), and which by the time of Megasthenes (300 B.C.) had become the capital of India. Yet Rāma is in Book I. (canto 35) described as passing the very spot where that city stood, and the poet makes a point (in cantos 32–33) of referring to the foundation of a number of cities in Eastern Hindustan, such as Kauçāmbī, Kānyakubja, and Kāmpilya, in order to show how far the fame of the Rāmāyaṇa spread beyond the confines of Kosala, the land of its origin. Had Pāṭaliputra existed at the time, it could not have failed to be mentioned.
It is further a noteworthy fact that the capital of Kosala is in the original Rāmāyaṇa regularly called Ayodhyā, while the Buddhists, Jains, Greeks, and Patanjali always give it the name of Sāketa. Now in the last book of the Rāmāyaṇa we are told that Rāma’s son, Lava, fixed the seat of his government at Çrāvastī, a city not mentioned at all in the old part of the epic; and in Buddha’s time King Prasenajit of Kosala is known to have reigned at Çrāvastī. All this points to the conclusion that the original Rāmāyaṇa was composed when the ancient Ayodhyā had not yet been deserted, but was still the chief city of Kosala, when its new name of Sāketa was still unknown, and before the seat of government was transferred to Çrāvastī.
Again, in the old part of Book I., Mithilā and Viçālā are spoken of as twin cities under separate rulers, while we know that by Buddha’s time they had coalesced to the famous city of Vaiçālī, which was then ruled by an oligarchy.
The political conditions described in the Rāmāyaṇa indicate the patriarchal rule of kings possessing only a small territory, and never point to the existence of more complex states; while the references of the poets of the Mahābhārata to the dominions in Eastern India ruled by a powerful king, Jarāsandha, and embracing many lands besides Magadha, reflect the political conditions of the fourth century B.C. The cumulative evidence of the above arguments makes it difficult to avoid the conclusion that the kernel of the Rāmāyaṇa was composed before 500 B.C., while the more recent portions were probably not added till the second century B.C. and later.
This conclusion does not at first sight seem to be borne out by the linguistic evidence of the Rāmāyaṇa, For the epic (ārsha) dialect of the Bombay recension, which is practically the same as that of the Mahābhārata, both betrays a stage of development decidedly later than that of Pāṇini, and is taken no notice of by that grammarian. But it is, for all that, not necessarily later in date. For Pāṇini deals only with the refined Sanskrit of the cultured (çishṭa), that is to say, of the Brahmans, which would be more archaic than the popular dialect of wandering rhapsodists; and he would naturally have ignored the latter. Now at the time of the Açoka inscriptions, or hardly more than half a century later than Pāṇini, Prākrit was the language of the people in the part of India where the Rāmāyaṇa was composed. It is, therefore, not at all likely that the Rāmāyaṇa, which aimed at popularity, should have been composed as late as the time of Pāṇini, when it could not have been generally understood. If the language of the epic is later than Pāṇini, it is difficult to see how it escaped the dominating influence of his grammar. It is more likely that the popular Sanskrit of the epics received general currency at a much earlier date by the composition of a poem like that of Vālmīki. A searching comparative investigation of the classical Kāvyas will probably show that they are linguistically more closely connected with the old epic poetry, and that they deviate more from the Pāṇinean standard than is usually supposed.
In style the Rāmāyaṇa is already far removed from the naïve popular epic, in which the story is the chief thing, and not its form. Vālmīki is rich in similes, which he often cumulates; he not infrequently uses the cognate figure called rūpaka or “identification” (e.g. “foot-lotus”) with much skill, and also occasionally employs other ornaments familiar to the classical poets, besides approximating to them in the style of his descriptions. The Rāmāyaṇa, in fact, represents the dawn of the later artificial poetry (kāvya), which was in all probability the direct continuation and development of the art handed down by the rhapsodists who recited Vālmīki’s work. Such a relationship is distinctly recognised by the authors of the great classical epics (mahākavis) when they refer to him as the ādi-kavi or “first poet.”
The story of the Rāmāyaṇa, as narrated in the five genuine books, consists of two distinct parts. The first describes the events at the court of King Daçaratha at Ayodhyā and their consequences. Here we have a purely human and natural account of the intrigues of a queen to set her son upon the throne. There is nothing fantastic in the narrative, nor has it any mythological background. If the epic ended with the return of Rāma’s brother, Bharata, to the capital, after the old king’s death, it might pass for a historical saga. For Ikshvāku, Daçaratha, and Rāma are the names of celebrated and mighty kings, mentioned even in the Rigveda, though not there connected with one another in any way.
The character of the second part is entirely different. Based on a foundation of myths, it is full of the marvellous and fantastic. The oldest theory as to the significance of the story was that of Lassen, who held that it was intended to represent allegorically the first attempt of the Aryans to conquer the South. But Rāma is nowhere described as founding an Aryan realm in the Dekhan, nor is any such intention on his part indicated anywhere in the epic. Weber subsequently expressed the same view in a somewhat modified form. According to him, the Rāmāyaṇa was meant to account for the spread of Aryan culture to the South and to Ceylon. But this form of the allegorical theory also lacks any confirmation from the statements of the epic itself; for Rāma’s expedition is nowhere represented as producing any change or improvement in the civilisation of the South. The poet knows nothing about the Dekhan beyond the fact that Brahman hermitages are to be found there. Otherwise it is a region haunted by the monsters and fabulous beings with which an Indian imagination would people an unknown land.
There is much more probability in the opinion of Jacobi, that the Rāmāyaṇa contains no allegory at all, but is based on Indian mythology. The foundation of the second part would thus be a celestial myth of the Veda transformed into a narrative of earthly adventures according to a not uncommon development. Sītā, can be traced to the Rigveda, where she appears as the Furrow personified and invoked as a goddess. In some of the Gṛihya Sūtras she again appears as a genius of the ploughed field, is praised as a being of great beauty, and is accounted the wife of Indra or Parjanya, the rain-god. There are traces of this origin in the Rāmāyaṇa itself. For Sītā is represented (i. 66) as having emerged from the earth when her father Janaka was once ploughing, and at last she disappears underground in the arms of the goddess Earth (vii. 97). Her husband, Rāma, would be no other than Indra, and his conflict with Rāvaṇa, chief of the demons, would represent the Indra-Vṛitra myth of the Rigveda. This identification is confirmed by the name of Rāvaṇa’s son being Indrajit, “Conqueror of Indra,” or Indraçatru, “Foe of Indra,” the latter being actually an epithet of Vṛitra in the Rigveda. Rāvaṇa’s most notable feat, the rape of Sītā, has its prototype in the stealing of the cows recovered by Indra. Hanumat, the chief of the monkeys and Rāma’s ally in the recovery of Sītā, is the son of the wind-god, with the patronymic Māruti, and is described as flying hundreds of leagues through the air to find Sītā. Hence in his figure perhaps survives a reminiscence of Indra’s alliance with the Maruts in his conflict with Vṛitra, and of the dog Saramā, who, as Indra’s messenger, crosses the waters of the Rasā and tracks the cows. Saramā recurs as the name of a demoness who consoles Sītā in her captivity. The name of Hanumat being Sanskrit, the character is probably not borrowed from the aborigines. As Hanumat is at the present day the tutelary deity of village settlements all over India, Prof. Jacobi’s surmise that he must have been connected with agriculture, and may have been a genius of the monsoon, has some probability.
The main story of the Rāmāyaṇa begins with an account of the city of Ayodhyā under the rule of the mighty King Daçaratha, the sons of whose three wives, Kauçalyā, Kaikeyī, and Sumitrā, are Rāma, Bharata, and Lakshmaṇa respectively. Rāma is married to Sītā, daughter of Janaka, king of Videha. Daçaratha, feeling the approach of old age, one day announces in a great assembly that he desires to make Rāma heir-apparent, an announcement received with general rejoicing because of Rāma’s great popularity. Kaikeyī, meanwhile, wishing her son Bharata to succeed, reminds the king that he had once offered her the choice of two boons, of which she had as yet not availed herself. When Daçaratha at last promises to fulfil whatever she may desire, Kaikeyī requests him to appoint Bharata his successor, and to banish Rāma for fourteen years. The king, having in vain implored her to retract, passes a sleepless night. Next day, when the solemn consecration of Rāma is to take place, Daçaratha sends for his son and informs him of his fate. Rāma receives the news calmly and prepares to obey his father’s command as his highest duty. Sītā and Lakshmaṇa resolve on sharing his fortunes, and accompany him in his exile. The aged king, overcome with grief at parting from his son, withdraws from Kaikeyī, and passing the remainder of his days with Rāma’s mother, Kauçalyā, finally dies lamenting for his banished son. Rāma has meanwhile lived peacefully and happily with Sītā and his brother in the wild forest of Daṇḍaka. On the death of the old king, Bharata, who in the interval has lived with the parents of his mother, is summoned to the throne. Refusing the succession with noble indignation, he sets out for the forest in order to bring Rāma back to Ayodhyā. Rāma, though much moved by his brother’s request, declines to return because he must fulfil his vow of exile. Taking off his gold-embroidered shoes, he gives them to Bharata as a sign that he hands over his inheritance to him. Bharata returning to Ayodhyā, places Rāma’s shoes on the throne, and keeping the royal umbrella over them, holds council and dispenses justice by their side.
Rāma now sets about the task of combating the formidable giants that infest the Daṇḍaka forest and are a terror to the pious hermits settled there. Having, by the advice of the sage Agastya, procured the weapons of Indra, he begins a successful conflict, in which he slays many thousands of demons. Their chief, Rāvaṇa, enraged and determined on revenge, turns one of his followers into a golden deer, which appears to Sītā. While Rāma and Lakshmaṇa are engaged, at her request, in pursuit of it, Rāvaṇa in the guise of an ascetic approaches Sītā, carries her off by force, and wounds the vulture Jaṭāyu, which guards her abode. Rāma on his return is seized with grief and despair; but, as he is burning the remains of the vulture, a voice from the pyre proclaims to him how he can conquer his foes and recover his wife. He now proceeds to conclude a solemn alliance with the chiefs of the monkeys, Hanumat and Sugrīva. With the help of the latter, Rāma slays the terrible giant Bali. Hanumat meanwhile crosses from the mainland to the island of Lankā, the abode of Rāvaṇa, in search of Sītā. Here he finds her wandering sadly in a grove and announces to her that deliverance is at hand. After slaying a number of demons, he returns and reports his discovery to Rāma. A plan of campaign is now arranged. The monkeys having miraculously built a bridge from the continent to Lankā with the aid of the god of the sea, Rāma leads his army across, slays Rāvaṇa, and wins back Sītā. After she has purified herself from the suspicion of infidelity by the ordeal of fire, Rāma joyfully returns with her to Ayodhyā, where he reigns gloriously in association with his faithful brother Bharata, and gladdens his subjects with a new golden age.
