The Ramayana

Canto CXXX. The Consecration. (part 2)

Page 109.

Then with the royal chaplains they Took each his place in long array.

The twice born chiefs, with zealous heed, Made ready what the rite would need.

“Now about the office of a Purohita (house priest). The gods do not eat the food offered by a king, who has no house-priest (Purohita). Thence the king even when (not) intending to bring a sacrifice, should appoint a Bráhman to the office of house-priest.” HAUG’S Autareya Bráhmanam. Vol. II. p. 528.

Page 110.

There by the gate the Sáras screamed.

The Sáras or Indian Crane is a magnificent bird easily domesticated and speedily constituting himself the watchman of his master’s house and garden. Unfortunately he soon becomes a troublesome and even dangerous dependent, attacking strangers with his long bill and powerful wings, and warring especially upon “small infantry” with unrelenting ferocity.

Page 120.

My mothers or my sire the king.

All the wives of the king his father are regarded and spoken of by Ráma as his mothers.

Page 125.

Such blessings as the Gods o’erjoyed Poured forth when Vritra was destroyed.

“Mythology regards Vritra as a demon or Asur, the implacable enemy of Indra, but this is not the primitive idea contained in the name of Vritra. In the hymns of the Veda Vritra appears to be the thick dark cloud which Indra the God of the firmament attacks and disperses with his thunderbolt.” GORRESIO.

“In that class of Rig-veda hymns which there is reason to look upon as the oldest portion of Vedic poetry, the character of Indra is that of a mighty ruler of the firmament, and his principal feat is that of conquering the demon Vritra, a symbolical personification of the cloud which obstructs the clearness of the sky, and withholds the fructifying rain from the earth. In his battles with Vritra he is therefore described as ‘opening the receptacles of the waters,’ as ‘cleaving the cloud’ with his ‘far-whirling thunderbolt,’ as ‘casting the waters down to earth,’ and ‘restoring the sun to the sky.’ He is in consequence ‘the upholder of heaven, earth, and firmament,’ and the god ‘who has engendered the sun and the dawn.’ ” CHAMBERS’S CYCLOPÆDIA, Indra.

“Throughout these hymns two images stand out before us with overpowering distinctness. On one side is the bright god of the heaven, as beneficent as he is irresistible: on the other the demon of night and of darkness, as false and treachorous as he is malignant.… The latter (as his name Vritra, from var, to veil, indicates) is pre-eminently the thief who hides away the rain-clouds.… But the myth is yet in too early a state to allow of the definite designations which are brought before us in the conflicts of Zeus with Typhôn and his monstrous progeny, of Apollôn with the Pythôn, of Bellerophôn with Chimaira of Oidipous with the Sphinx, of Hercules with Cacus, of Sigurd with the dragon Fafnir; and thus not only is Vritra known by many names, but he is opposed sometimes by Indra, sometimes by Agni the fire-god, sometimes by Trita, Brihaspati, or other deities; or rather these are all names of one and the same god.” COX’S Mythology of the Aryan Nations. Vol. II. p. 326.

Page 125.

And that prized herb whose sovereign power Preserves from dark misfortune’s hour. “And yet more medicinal is it than that Moly, That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave; He called it Hæmony, and gave it me, And bade me keep it as of sovereign use ’Gainst all enchantment, mildew, blast, or damp, Or ghastly furies’ apparition.” Comus.

The Moly of Homer, which Dierbach considers to have been the Mandrake, is probably a corruption of the Sanskrit Múla a root.

Page 136.

True is the ancient saw: the Neem Can ne’er distil a honeyed stream.

The Neem tree, especially in the Rains, emits a strong unpleasant smell like that of onions. Its leaves however make an excellent cooling poultice, and the Extract of Neem is an admirable remedy for cutaneous disorders.

Page 152.

Who of Nisháda lineage came.

The following account of the origin of the Nishádas is taken from Wilson’s Vishṇu Puráṇa, Book I. Chap. 15. “Afterwards the Munis beheld a great dust arise, and they said to the people who were nigh: ‘What is this?’ And the people answered and said: ‘Now that the kingdom is without a king, the dishonest men have begun to seize the property of their neighbours. The great dust that you behold, excellent Munis, is raised by troops of clustering robbers, hastening to fall upon their prey.’ The sages, hearing this, consulted, and together rubbed the thigh of the king (Vena), who had left no offspring, to produce a son. From the thigh, thus rubbed, came forth a being of the complexion of a charred stake, with flattened features like a negro, and of dwarfish stature. ‘What am I to do,’ cried he eagerly to the Munis. ‘Sit down (nishída),’ said they. And thence his name was Nisháda. His descendants, the inhabitants of the Vindhyá mountain, great Muni, are still called Nishádas and are characterized by the exterior tokens of depravity.” Professor Wilson adds, in his note on the passage: “The Matsya says that there were born outcast or barbarous races, Mlechchhas, as black as collyrium. The Bhágavata describes an individual of dwarfish stature, with short arms and legs, of a complexion as black as a crow, with projecting chin, broad flat nose, red eyes, and tawny hair, whose descendants were mountaineers and foresters. The Padma (Bhúmi Khaṇḍa) has a similar deccription; adding to the dwarfish stature and black complexion, a wide mouth, large ears, and a protuberant belly. It also particularizes his posterity as Nishádas, Kirátas, Bhillas, and other barbarians and Mlechchhas, living in woods and on mountains. These passages intend, and do not much exaggerate, the uncouth appearance of the Gonds, Koles, Bhils, and other uncivilized tribes, scattered along the forests and mountains of Central India from Behar to Khandesh, and who are, not improbably, the predecessors of the present occupants of the cultivated portions of the country. They are always very black, ill-shapen, and dwarfish, and have countenances of a very African character.”

Manu gives a different origin of the Nishádas as the offspring of a Bráhman father and a Súdra mother. See Muir’s Sanskrit Texts, Vol. I. p. 481.

Page 157.

Beneath a fig-tree’s mighty shade, With countless pendent shoots displayed. “So counselled he, and both together went Into the thickest wood; there soon they chose The fig-tree: not that kind for fruit renowned, But such as at this day, to Indians known, In Malabar or Deccan spreads her arms Branching so broad and long, that in the ground The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow About the mother tree, a pillared shade High overarched, and echoing walks between.”

Paradise Lost, Book IX.

Page 161.

Now, Lakshmaṇ, as our cot is made, Must sacrifice be duly paid.

The rites performed in India on the completion of a house are represented in modern Europe by the familiar “house-warming.”

Page 169.

I longed with all my lawless will Some elephant by night to kill.

One of the regal or military caste was forbidden to kill an elephant except in battle.

Thy hand has made no Bráhman bleed.

“The punishment which the Code of Manu awards to the slayer of a Brahman was to be branded in the forehead with the mark of a headless corpse, and entirely banished from society; this being apparently commutable for a fine. The poem is therefore in accordance with the Code regarding the peculiar guilt of killing Brahmans; but in allowing a hermit who was not a Divija (twice-born) to go to heaven, the poem is far in advance of the Code. The youth in the poem is allowed to read the Veda, and to accumulate merit by his own as well as his father’s pious acts; whereas the exclusive Code reserves all such privileges to Divijas invested with the sacred cord.” Mrs. SPEIR’S Life in Ancient India, p. 107.

Page 174. The Praise Of Kings

“Compare this magnificent eulogium of kings and kingly government with what Samuel says of the king and his authority: And Samuel told all the words of the LORD unto the people that asked of him a king.

And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen: and some shall run before his chariots.

And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties, and will set them to work his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instrument of war, and instruments of his chariots.

And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers.

And he will take your fields, and your vineyards and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants.

And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants.

And he will take your men-servants, and your maid-servants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work.

He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants.

And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you. I. Samuel, VIII.

In India kingly government was ancient and consecrated by tradition: whence to change it seemed disorderly and revolutionary: in Judæa theocracy was ancient and consecrated by tradition, and therefore the innovation which would substitute a king was represented as full of dangers.” GORRESIO.

Page 176. Sálmalí.

According to the Bengal recension Śálmalí appears to have been another name of the Vipáśá. Śálmalí may be an epithet signifying rich in Bombax heptaphyllon. The commentator makes another river out of the word.

Page 178. Bharat’s Return.

“Two routes from Ayodhyá to Rájagriha or Girivraja are described. That taken by the envoys appears to have been the shorter one, and we are not told why Bharat returned by a different road. The capital of the Kekayas lay to the west of the Vipáśá. Between it and the Śatadru stretched the country of the Báhíkas. Upon the remaining portion of the road the two recensions differ. According to that of Bengal there follow towards the east the river Indamatí, then the town Ajakála belonging to the Bodhi, then Bhulingá, then the river Śaradaṇḍá. According to the other instead of the first river comes the Ikshumatí … instead of the first town Abhikála, instead of the second Kulingá, then the second river. According to the direction of the route both the above-mentioned rivers must be tributaries of the Śatadrú.… The road then crossed the Yamuná (Jumna), led beyond that river through the country of the Panchálas, and reached the Ganges at Hástinapura, where the ferry was. Thence it led over the Rámagangá and its eastern tributaries, then over the Gomati, and then in a southern direction along the Málini, beyond which it reached Ayodhyá. In Bharat’s journey the following rivers are passed from west to east: Kutikoshṭiká, Uttániká, Kuṭiká, Kapívatí, Gomatí according to Schlegel, and Hiraṇyavatí, Uttáriká, Kuṭilá, Kapívatí, Gomatí according to Gorresio. As these rivers are to be looked for on the east of the Ganges, the first must be the modern Koh, a small affluent of the Rámagangá, over which the highway cannot have gone as it bends too far to the north. The Uttániká or Uttáriká must be the Rámagangá, the Kuṭiká or Kuṭilá its eastern tributary, Kośilá, the Kapívatí the next tributary which on the maps has different names, Gurra or above Kailas, lower down Bhaigu. The Gomatí (Goomtee) retains its old name. The Máliní, mentioned only in the envoys’ journey, must have been the western tributary of the Sarayú now called Chuká.” LASSEN’S Indische Alterthumskunde, Vol. II. P. 524.

Page 183.

What worlds await thee, Queen, for this?

“Indian belief divided the universe into several worlds (lokáh). The three principal worlds were heaven, earth, and hell. But according to another division there were seven: Bhúrloka or the earth, Bhuvarloka or the space between the earth and the sun, the seat of the Munis, Siddhas, &c., Svarloka or the heaven of Indra between the sun and the polar star, and the seventh Brahmaloka or the world of Brahma. Spirits which reached the last were exempt from being born again.” GORRESIO.

Page 203.

When from a million herbs a blaze Of their own luminous glory plays.

This mention of lambent flames emitted by herbs at night may be compared with Lucan’s description of a similar phenomenon in the Druidical forest near Marseilles, (Pharsalia, III. 420.).

Non ardentis fulgere incendia silvae.

Seneca, speaking of Argolis, (Thyestes, Act IV), says:—

Tota solet

Micare flamma silva, et excelsae trabes Ardent sine igni.

Thus also the bush at Horeb (Exod. II.) flamed, but was not consumed.

The Indian explanation of the phenomenon is, that the sun before he sets deposits his rays for the night with the deciduous plants. See Journal of R. As. S. Bengal, Vol. II. p. 339.

Page 219.

We rank the Buddhist with the thief.

Schlegel says in his Preface: “Lubrico vestigio insistit V. Cl. Heerenius, prof. Gottingensis, in libro suo de commerciis veterum populorum (OPP. Vol. HIST. XII, pag. 129,) dum putat, ex mentione sectatorum Buddhae secundo libro Rameidos iniecta de tempore, quo totum carmen sit conditum, quicquam legitime concludi posse.… Sunt versus spurii, reiecti a Bengalis in sola commentatorum recensione leguntur. Buddhas quidem mille fere annis ante Christum natun vixit: sed post multa demumsecula, odiointernecivo inter Brachmanos et Buddhae sectatores orto, his denique ex India pulsis, fingi potuit iniquissima criminatio, eos animi immortalitatem poenasque et praemia in vita futura negare. Praeterea metrum, quo concinnati sunt hi versus, de quo metro mox disseram, recentiorem aetatem arguit.… Poenitet me nunc mei consilii, quod non statim ab initio, … eiecerim cuncta disticha diversis a sloco vulgari metris composita. Metra sunt duo: pariter ambo constant quatuor hemistichiis inter se aequalibus, alterum undenarum syllabarum, alterum duodenarum, hunc in modum:

[-)] [-] [)] [-] | [-] [)] [)] [-] | [)] [-] [-)] [)] [-] [)] [-] | [-] [)] [)] [-] | [)] [-] [)] [-)]

Cuius generis versus in primo et secundo Rameidos libro nusquam nisi ad finem capitum apposita inveniuntur, et huic loco unice sunt accommodata, quasi peroratio, lyricis numeris assurgens, quo magis canorae cadant clausulae: sicut musici in concentibus extremis omnium vocum instrumentorumque ictu fortiore aures percellere amant. Igitur disticha illa non ante divisionem per capita illatam addi potuerunt: hanc autem grammaticis deberi argumento est ipse recensionum dissensus, manifesto inde ortus, quod singuli editores in ea constituenda suo quisque iudicio usi sunt; praeterquam quod non credibile est, poetam artis suae peritum narrationem continuam in membra tam minuta dissecuisse. Porro discolor est dictio: magniloquentia affectatur, sed nimis turgida illa atque effusa, nec sententiarum pondere satis suffulta. Denique nihil fere novi affertur: ampli ficantur prius dicta, rarius aliquid ex capite sequente anticipatur. Si quis appendices hosce legendo transiliat, sentiet slocum ultimum cum primo capitis proximi apte coagmentatum, nec sine vi quadam inde avulsum. Eiusmodi versus exhibet utraque recensio, sed modo haec modo illa plures paucioresve numero, et lectio interdum magnopere variat.”

“The narrative of Ráma’s exile in the jungle is one of the most obscure portions of the Rámáyana, inasmuch as it is difficult to discover any trace of the original tradition, or any illustration of actual life and manners, beyond the artificial life of self-mortification and selfdenial said to have been led by the Brahman sages of olden time. At the same time, however, the story throws some light upon the significance of the poem, and upon the character in which the Brahmanical author desired to represent Ráma; and consequently it deserves more serious consideration than the nature of the subject-matter would otherwise seem to imply.

“According to the Rámáyana, the hero Ráma spent more than thirteen years of his exile in wandering amongst the different Brahmanical settlements, which appear to have been scattered over the country between the Ganges and the Godáveri; his wanderings extending from the hill of Chitra-kúṭa in Bundelkund, to the modern town of Nasik on the western side of India, near the source of the Godáveri river, and about seventy-five miles to the north-west of Bombay. The appearance of these Brahmanical hermitages in the country far away to the south of the Raj of Kasala, seems to call for critical inquiry. Each hermitage is said to have belonged to some particular sage, who is famous in Brahmanical tradition. But whether the sages named were really contemporaries of Ráma, or whether they could possibly have flourished at one and the same period, is open to serious question. It is of course impossible to fix with any degree of certainty the relative chronology of the several sages, who are said to have been visited by Ráma; but still it seems tolerably clear that some belonged to an age far anterior to that in which the Rámáyana was composed, and probably to an age anterior to that in which Ráma existed as a real and living personage; whilst, at least, one sage is to be found who could only have existed in the age during which the Rámáyana was produced in its present form. The main proofs of these inferences are as follows. An interval of many centuries seems to have elapsed between the composition of the Rig-Veda and that of the Rámáyana: a conclusion which has long been proved by the evidence of language, and is generally accepted by Sanskrit scholars. But three of the sages, said to have been contemporary with Ráma, namely, Viśvámitra, Atri and Agastya, are frequently mentioned in the hymns of the Rig-Veda; whilst Válmíki, the sage dwelling at Chitra-kúṭa, is said to have been himself the composer of the Rámáyana. Again, the sage Atri, whom Ráma visited immediately after his departure from Chitra-kúṭa, appears in the genealogical list preserved in the Mahá Bhárata, as the progenitor of the Moon, and consequently as the first ancestor of the Lunar race: whilst his grandson Buddha [Budha] is said to have married Ilá, the daughter of Ikhsváku who was himself the remote ancestor of the Solar race of Ayodhyá, from whom Ráma was removed by many generations. These conclusions are not perhaps based upon absolute proof, because they are drawn from untrustworthy authorities; but still the chronological difficulties have been fully apprehended by the Pundits, and an attempt has been made to reconcile all contradictions by representing the sages to have lived thousands of years, and to have often re-appeared upon earth in different ages widely removed from each other. Modern science refuses to accept such explanations; and consequently it is impossible to escape the conclusion that if Válmíki composed the Rámáyana in the form of Sanskrit in which it has been preserved, he could not have flourished in the same age as the sages who are named in the Rig-Veda.” WHEELER’S History of India, Vol. II, 229.

Page 249.

And King Himálaya’s Child.

Umá or Párvatí, was the daughter of Himálaya and Mená. She is the heroine of Kálidása’s Kumára-Sambhava or Birth of the War-God.

Page 250.

Strong Kumbhakarṇa slumbering deep In chains of never-ending sleep.

“Kumbhakarṇa, the gigantic brother of the titanic Rávaṇ,—named from the size of his ears which could contain a Kumbha or large water-jar—had such an appetite that he used to consume six months’ provisions in a single day. Brahmá, to relieve the alarm of the world, which had begun to entertain serious apprehensions of being eaten up, decreed that the giant should sleep six months at a time and wake for only one day during which he might consume his six months’ allowance without trespassing unduly on the reproductive capabilities of the ” Scenes front the Rámáyan, p. 153, 2nd Edit.

Page 257.

Like Śiva when his angry might Stayed Daksha’s sacrificial rite.

The following spirited version of this old story is from the pen of Mr. W. Waterfield:

“This is a favorite subject of Hindú sculpture, especially on the temples of Shiva, such as the caves of Elephanta and Ellora. It, no doubt, is an allegory of the contest between the followers of Shiva and the worshippers of the Elements, who observed the old ritual of the Vedas; in which the name of Shiva is never mentioned.

Daksha for devotion Made a mighty feast: Milk and curds and butter, Flesh of bird and beast, Rice and spice and honey, Sweetmeats ghí and gur,(1038) Gifts for all the Bráhmans, Food for all the poor. At the gates of Gangá(1039) Daksha held his feast; Called the gods unto it, Greatest as the least. All the gods were gathered Round with one accord; All the gods but Umá, All but Umá’s lord. Umá sat with Shiva On Kailása hill: Round them stood the Rudras Watching for their will. Who is this that cometh Lilting to his lute? All the birds of heaven Heard his music, mute. Round his head a garland Rich of hue was wreathed: Every sweetest odour From its blossoms breathed. ’Tis the Muni Nárad; ’Mong the gods he fares, Ever making mischief By the tales he bears. “Hail to lovely Umá! Hail to Umá’s lord! Wherefore are they absent For her father’s board? Multiplied his merits Would be truly thrice, Could he gain your favour For his sacrifice.” Worth of heart was Umá; To her lord she spake:— “Why dost thou, the mighty, Of no rite partake? Straight I speed to Daksha Such a sight to see: If he be my father, He must welcome thee.” Wondrous was in glory Daksha’s holy rite; Never had creation Viewed so brave a sight. Gods, and nymphs, find fathers, Sages, Bráhmans, sprites,— Every diverge creature Wrought that rite of rites. Quickly then a quaking Fell on all from far; Umá stood among them On her lion car. “Greeting, gods and sages, Greeting, father mine! Work hath wondrous virtue, Where such aids combine. Guest-hall never gathered Goodlier company: Seemeth all are welcome. All the gods but me.” Spake the Muni Daksha, Stern and cold his tone:— “Welcome thou, too, daughter, Since thou com’st alone. But thy frenzied husband Suits another shrine; He is no partaker Of this feast of mine. He who walks in darkness Loves no deeds of light: He who herds with demons Shuns each kindly sprite. Let him wander naked.— Wizard weapons wield,— Dance his frantic measure Round the funeral field. Art thou yet delighted With the reeking hide, Body smeared with ashes. Skulls in necklace tied? Thou to love this monster? Thou to plead his part! Know the moon and Gangá Share that faithless heart Vainly art thou vying With thy rivals’ charms. Are not coils of serpents Softer than thine arms?” Words like these from Daksha Daksha’s daughter heard: Then a sudden passion All her bosom stirred. Eyes with fury flashing. Speechless in her ire, Headlong did she hurl her ’Mid the holy fire. Then a trembling terror Overcame each one, And their minds were troubled Like a darkened sun; And a cruel Vision, Face of lurid flame, Umá’s Wrath incarnate, From the altar came. Fiendlike forms by thousands Started from his side, ’Gainst the sacrificers All their might they plied: Till the saints availed not Strength like theirs to stay, And the gods distracted Turned and fled away. Hushed were hymns and chanting, Priests were mocked and spurned; Food defiled and scattered; Altars overturned.— Then, to save the object Sought at such a price, Like a deer in semblance Sped the sacrifice. Soaring toward the heavens, Through the sky it fled? But the Rudras chasing Smote away its head. Prostrate on the pavement Daksha fell dismayed:— “Mightiest, thou hast conquered Thee we ask for aid. Let not our oblations All be rendered vain; Let our toilsome labour Full fruition gain.” Bright the broken altars Shone with Shiva’s form; “Be it so!” His blessing Soothed that frantic storm. Soon his anger ceases, Though it soon arise;— But the Deer’s Head ever Blazes in the skies.”

Indian Ballads and other Poems.

Page 286. Urvasí.

“The personification of Urvasî herself is as thin as that of Eôs or Selênê. Her name is often found in the Veda as a mere name for the morning, and in the plural number it is used to denote the dawns which passing over men bring them to old age and death. Urvasî is the bright flush of light overspreading the heaven before the sun rises, and is but another form of the many mythical beings of Greek mythology whose names take us back to the same idea or the same root. As the dawn in the Vedic hymns is called Urûkî, the far-going (Têlephassa, Têlephos), so is she also Uruasî, the wide-existing or wide-spreading; as are Eurôpê, Euryanassa, Euryphassa, and many more of the sisters of Athênê and Aphroditê. As such she is the mother of Vasishtha, the bright being, as Oidipous is the son of Iokastê; and although Vasishtha, like Oidipous, has become a mortal bard or sage, he is still the son of Mitra and Varuṇa, of night and day. Her lover Purûravas is the counterpart of the Hellenic Polydeukês; but the continuance of her union with him depends on the condition that she never sees him unclothed. But the Gandharvas, impatient of her long sojourn among mortal men resolved to bring her back to their bright home; and Purûravas is thus led unwitingly to disregard her warning. A ewe with two lambs was tied to her couch, and the Gandharvas stole one of them; Urvasî said, ‘They take away my darling, as if I lived in a land where there is no hero and no man.’ They stole the second, and she upbraided her husband again. Then Purûravas looked and said, ‘How can that be a land without heroes or men where I am?’ And naked he sprang up; he thought it was too long to put on his dress. Then the Gandharvas sent a flash of lighting, and Urvasî saw her husband naked as by daylight. Then she vanished. ‘I come back,’ she said, and went. ‘Then he bewailed his vanished love in bitter grief.’ Her promise to return was fulfilled, but for a moment only, at the Lotos-lake, and Purûravas in vain beseeches her to tarry longer. ‘What shall I do with thy speech?’ is the answer of Urvasî. ‘I am gone like the first of the dawns. Purûravas, go home again. I am hard to be caught like the winds.’ Her lover is in utter despair; but when he lies down to die, the heart of Urvasî was melted, and she bids him come to her on the last night of the year. On that night only he might be with her; but a son should be born to him. On that day he went up to the golden seats, and there Urvasî told him that the Gandharvas would grant him one wish, and that he must make his choice. ‘Choose thou for me,’ he said: and she answered, ‘Say to them, Let me be one of you.’ ”

COX’S Mythology of the Aryan Nations. Vol. I. p. 397.

Page 324.

The sovereign of the Vánar race.

“Vánar is one of the most frequently occurring names by which the poem calls the monkeys of Ráma’s army. Among the two or three derivations of which the word Vánar is susceptible, one is that which deduces it from vana which signifies a wood, and thus Vánar would mean a forester, an inhabitant of the wood. I have said elsewhere that the monkeys, the Vánars, whom Ráma led to the conquest of Ceylon were fierce woodland tribes who occupied the mountainous regions of the south of India, where their descendants may still be seen. I shall hence forth promiscuously employ the word Vánar to denote those monkeys, those fierce combatants of Ráma’s army.” GORRESIO.

Page 326.

No change of hue, no pose of limb Gave sign that aught was false in him. Concise, unfaltering, sweet and clear, Without a word to pain the ear, From chest to throat, nor high nor low, His accents came in measured flow.

Somewhat similarly in The Squire’s Tale:

“He with a manly voice said his message, After the form used in his language, Withouten vice of syllable or of letter. And for his talë shouldë seem the better Accordant to his wordës was his chere, As teacheth art of speech them that it lere.”

Page 329. Ráma’s Alliance With Sugríva.

“The literal interpretation of this portion of the Rámáyana is indeed deeply rooted in the mind of the Hindu. He implicitly believes that Ráma is Vishnu, who became incarnate for the purpose of destroying the demon Rávana: that he permitted his wife to be captured by Rávana for the sake of delivering the gods and Bráhmans from the oppressions of the Rákshasa; and that he ultimately assembled an army of monkeys, who were the progeny of the gods, and led them against the strong-hold of Rávana at Lanká, and delivered the world from the tyrant Rákshasa, whilst obtaining ample revenge for his own personal wrongs.

One other point seems to demand consideration, namely, the possibility of such an alliance as that which Ráma is said to have concluded with the monkeys. This possibility will of course be denied by modern critics, but still it is interesting to trace out the circumstances which seem to have led to the acceptance of such a wild belief by the dreamy and marvel loving Hindi. The south of India swarms with monkeys of curious intelligence and rare physical powers. Their wonderful instinct for organization, their attachment to particular localities, their occasional journeys in large numbers over mountains and across rivers, their obstinate assertion of supposed rights, and the ridiculous caricature which they exhibit of all that is animal and emotional in man, would naturally create a deep impression.… Indeed the habits of monkeys well deserve to be patiently studied; not as they appear in confinement, when much that is revolting in their nature is developed, but as they appear living in freedom amongst the trees of the forest, or in the streets of crowded cities, or precincts of temples. Such a study would not fail to awaken strange ideas; and although the European would not be prepared to regard monkeys as sacred animals he might be led to speculate as to their origin by the light of data, which are at present unknown to the naturalist whose observations have been derived from the menagerie alone.

Whatever, however, may have been the train of ideas which led the Hindú to regard the monkey as a being half human and half divine, there can be little doubt that in the Rámáyana the monkeys of southern India have been confounded with what may be called the aboriginal people of the country. The origin of this confusion may be easily conjectured. Perchance the aborigines of the country may have been regarded as a superior kind of monkeys; and to this day the features of the Marawars, who are supposed to be the aborigines of the southern part of the Carnatic, are not only different from those of their neighbours, but are of a character calculated to confirm the conjecture. Again, it is probable that the army of aborigines may have been accompanied by outlying bands of monkeys impelled by that magpie-like curiosity and love of plunder which are the peculiar characteristics of the monkey race; and this incident may have given rise to the story that the army was composed of Monkeys.”

WHEELER’S History of India. Vol. II. pp. 316 ff.

Page 342. The Fall Of Báli.

“As regards the narrative, it certainly seems to refer to some real event amongst the aboriginal tribes: namely, the quarrel between an elder and younger brother for the possession of a Ráj; and the subsequent alliance of Ráma with the younger brother. It is somewhat remarkable that Ráma appears to have formed an alliance with the wrong party, for the right of Báli was evidently superior to that of Sugríva; and it is especially worthy of note that Ráma compassed the death of Báli by an act contrary to all the laws of fair fighting. Again, Ráma seems to have tacitly sanctioned the transfer of Tárá from Báli to Sugríva, which was directly opposed to modern rule, although in conformity with the rude customs of a barbarous age; and it is remarkable that to this day the marriage of both widows and divorced women is practised by the Marawars, or aborigines of the southern Carnatic, contrary to the deeply-rooted prejudice which exists against such unions amongst the Hindús at large.”

WHEELER’S History of India, Vol. II. 324.

Page 370. The Vánar Host.

“The splendid Marutas form the army of Indras, the red-haired monkeys and bears that of Râmas; and the mythical and solar nature of the monkeys and bears of the Râmâyaṇam manifests itself several times. The king of the monkeys is a sun-god. The ancient king was named Bâlin, and was the son of Indras. His younger brother Sugrívas, he who changes his shape at pleasure (Kâmarúpas), who, helped by Râmas, usurped his throne, is said to be own child of the sun. Here it is evident that the Vedic antagonism between Indras and Vishṇus is reproduced in a zoological and entirely apish form. The old Zeus must give way to the new, the moon to the sun, the evening to the morning sun, the sun of winter to that of spring; the young son betrays and overthrows the old one.… Râmas, who treacherously kills the old king of the monkeys, Bâlin, is the equivalent of Vishṇus, who hurls his predecessor Indras from his throne; and Sugrívas, the new king of the monkeys resembles Indras when he promises to find the ravished Sítá, in the same way as Vishṇus in one of his incarnations finds again the lost vedás. And there are other indications in the Râmâyaṇam of opposition between Indras and the monkeys who assist Râmas. The great monkey Hanumant, of the reddish colour of gold, has his jaw broken, Indras having struck him with his thunderbolt and caused him to fall upon a mountain, because, while yet a child, he threw himself off a mountain into the air in order to arrest the course of the sun, whose rays had no effect upon him. (The cloud rises from the mountain and hides the sun, which is unable of itself to disperse it; the tempest comes, and brings flashes of lightning and thunder-bolts, which tear the cloud in pieces.)

The whole legend of the monkey Hanumant represents the sun entering into the cloud or darkness, and coming out of it. His father is said to be now the wind, now the elephant of the monkeys (Kapikunjaras), now Keśarin, the long-haired sun, the sun with a mane, the lion sun (whence his name of Keśariṇah putrah). From this point of view, Hanumant would seem to be the brother of Sugrívas, who is also the offspring of the sun.…

All the epic monkeys of the Râmâyaṇam are described in the twentieth canto of the first book by expressions which very closely resemble those applied in the Vedic hymns to the Marutas, as swift as the tempestuous wind, changing their shape at pleasure, making a noise like clouds, sounding like thunder, battling, hurling mountain-peaks, shaking great uprooted trees, stirring up the deep waters, crushing the earth with their arms, making the clouds fall. Thus Bâlin comes out of the cavern as the sun out of the cloud.…

But the legend of the monkey Hanumant presents another curious resemblance to that of Samson. Hanumant is bound with cords by Indrajit, son of Rávaṇas; he could easily free himself, but does not wish to do so. Rávaṇas to put him to shame, orders his tail to be burned, because the tail is the part most prized by monkeys.…

The tail of Hanumant, which sets fire to the city of the monsters, is probably a personification of the rays of the morning or spring sun, which sets fire to the eastern heavens, and destroys the abode of the nocturnal or winter monsters.”

DE GUBERNATIS, Zoological Mythology, Vol. II. pp. 100 ff.

“The Jaitwas of Rajputana, a tribe politically reckoned as Rajputs, nevertheless trace their descent from the monkey-god Hanuman, and confirm it by alleging that their princes still bear its evidence in a tail-like prolongation of the spine; a tradition which has probably a real ethnological meaning, pointing out the Jaitwas as of non-Aryan race.”(1040) TYLOR’S Primitive Culture, Vol. I. p. 341.

Page 372.

The names of peoples occurring in the following ślokas are omitted in the metrical translation:

“Go to the Brahmamálas,(1041) the Videhas,(1042) the Málavas,(1043) the Káśikośalas,(1044) the Mágadnas,(1045) the Puṇḍras,(1046) and the Angas,(1047) and the land of the weavers of silk, and the land of the mines of silver, and the hills that stretch into the sea, and the towns and the hamlets that are about the top of Mandar, and the Karṇaprávaraṇas,(1048) and the Oshṭhakarṇakas,(1049) and the Ghoralohamukhas,(1050) and the swift Ekapádakas,(1051) and the strong imperishable Eaters of Men, and the Kirátas(1052) with stiff hair-tufts, men like gold and fair to look upon: And the Eaters of Raw Fish, and the Kirátas who dwell in islands, and the fierce Tiger-men(1053) who live amid the waters.”

Page 374.

“Go to the Vidarbhas(1054) and the Rishṭikas(1055) and the Mahishikas,(1056) and the Matsyas(1057) and Kalingas(1058) and the Kauśikas(1059) … and the Andhras(1060) and the Puṇḍras(1061) and the Cholas(1062) and the Paṇḍyas(1063) and the Keralas,(1064) Mlechchhas(1065) and the Pulindas(1066) and the Śúrasenas,(1067) and the Prasthalas and the Bharatas and Madrakas(1068) and the Kámbojas(1069) and the Yavanas(1070) and the towns of the Śakas(1071) and the Varadas.”(1072)

Page 378. Northern Kurus.

Professor Lassen remarks in the Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, ii. 62: “At the furthest accessible extremity of the earth appears Harivarsha with the northern Kurus. The region of Hari or Vishṇu belongs to the system of mythical geography; but the case is different with the Uttara Kurus. Here there is a real basis of geographical fact; of which fable has only taken advantage, without creating it. The Uttara Kurus were formerly quite independent of the mythical system of dvípas, though they were included in it at an early date.” Again the same writer says at p. 65: “That the conception of the Uttara Kurus is based upon an actual country and not on mere invention, is proved (1) by the way in which they are mentioned in the Vedas; (2) by the existence of Uttara Kuru in historical times as a real country; and (3) by the way in which the legend makes mention of that region as the home of primitive customs. To begin with the last point the Mahábhárata speaks as follows of the freer mode of life which women led in the early world, Book I. verses 4719-22: ‘Women were formerly unconfined and roved about at their pleasure, independent. Though in their youthful innocence they abandoned their husbands, they were guilty of no offence; for such was the rule in early times. This ancient custom is even now the law for creatures born as brutes, which are free from lust and anger. This custom is supported by authority and is observed by great rishis, and it is still practiced among the northern Kurus.’

“The idea which is here conveyed is that of the continuance in one part of the world of that original blessedness which prevailed in the golden age. To afford a conception of the happy condition of the southern Kurus it is said in another place (M.-Bh, i. 4346.) ‘The southern Kurus vied in happiness with the northern Kurus and with the divine rishis and bards.’

Professor Lassen goes on to say: ‘Ptolemy (vi. 16.) is also acquainted with Uttara Kuru. He speaks of a mountain, a people, and a city called Ottorakorra. Most of the other ancient authors who elsewhere mention this name, have it from him. It is a part of the country which he calls Serica; according to him the city lies twelve degrees west from the metropolis of Sera, and the mountain extends from thence far to the eastward. As Ptolemy has misplaced the whole of eastern Asia beyond the Ganges, the relative position which he assigns will guide us better that the absolute one, which removes Ottorakorra so far to the east that a correction is inevitable. According to my opinion the Ottorakorra of Ptolemy must be sought for to the east of Kashgar.’ Lassen also thinks that Magasthenes had the Uttara Kurus in view when he referred to the Hyperboreans who were fabled by Indian writers to live a thousand years. In his Indian antiquities, (Ind. Alterthumskunde, i. 511, 512. and note,) the same writer concludes that though the passages above cited relative to the Uttara Kurus indicate a belief in the existence of a really existing country of that name in the far north, yet that the descriptions there given are to be taken as pictures of an ideal paradise, and not as founded on any recollections of the northern origin of the Kurus. It is probable, he thinks, that some such reminiscences originally existed, and still survived in the Vedic era, though there is no trace of their existence in latter times.” MUIR’S Sanskrit Texts, Vol. II. pp. 336, 337.

Page 428.

Trust to these mighty Vánars.

The corresponding passage in the Bengal recension has “these silvans in the forms of monkeys, vánaráh kapirupinah.” “Here it manifestly appears,” says Gorresio, “that these hosts of combatants whom Ráma led to the conquest of Lanká (Ceylon) the kingdom and seat of the Hamitic race, and whom the poem calls monkeys, were in fact as I have elsewhere observed, inhabitants of the mountainous and southern regions of India, who were wild-looking and not altogether unlike monkeys. They were perhaps the remote ancestors of the Malay races.”

Page 431.

"Art thou not he who slew of old The Serpent-Gods, and stormed their hold."

All these exploits of Rávaṇ are detailed in the Uttarakáṇḍa, and epitomized in the Appendix.

Page 434.

Within the consecrated hall.

The Bráhman householder ought to maintain three sacred fires, the Gárhapatya, the Ahavaniya and the Dakshiṇa. These three fires were made use of in many Brahmanical solemnities, for example in funeral rites when the three fires were arranged in prescribed order.

Page 436.

Fair Punjikasthalá I met.

“I have not noticed in the Úttara Káṇda any story about the daughter of Varuṇa, but the commentator on the text (VI 60, 11) explains the allusion to her thus:

“The daughter of Varuṇa was Punjikasthalí. On her account, a curse of Brahmá, involving the penalty of death, [was pronounced] on the rape of women.” MUIR, Sanskrit Texts, Part IV. Appendix.

Page 452.

_“__Shall no funereal honours grace_ The parted lord of Raghu’s race?_”_

“Here are indicated those admirable rites and those funeral prayers which Professor Müller has described in his excellent work, Die Todtenbestattung bei den Brahmanen, Sítá laments that the body of Ráma will not be honoured with those rites and prayers, nor will the Bráhman priest while laying the ashes from the pile in the bosom of the earth, pronounce over them those solemn and magnificent words: ‘Go unto the earth, thy mother, the ample, wide, and blessed earth.… And do thou, O Earth, open and receive him as a friend with sweet greeting: enfold him in thy bosom as a mother wraps her child in her robes.’ ” GORRESIO.

Page 462.

Each glorious sign That stamps the future queen is mine.

We read in Josephus that Caesar was so well versed in chiromancy that when one day a soi-disant son of Herod had audience of him, he at once detected the impostor because his hand was destitute of all marks of royalty.

Page 466.

In battle’s wild Gandharva dance.

“Here the commentator explains: ‘the battle resembled the dance of the Gandharvas,’ in accordance with the notion of the Gandharvas entertained in his day. They were regarded as celestial musicians enlivening with their melodies Indra’s heaven and the banquets of the Gods. But the Gandharvas before becoming celestial musicians in popular tradition, were in the primitive and true signification of the name heroes, spirited and ardent warriors, followers of Indra, and combined the heroical character with their atmospherical deity. Under this aspect the dance of the Gandharvas may be a very different thing from what the commentator means, and may signify the horrid dance of war.” GORRESIO.

The Homeric expression is similar, “to dance a war-dance before Ares.”

Page 470.

By Anaraṇya’s lips of old.

“The story of Anaraṇya is told in the Uttara Kaṇḍa of the Rámáyaṇa.… Anaraṇya a descendant of Ixváku and King of Ayodhyá, when called upon to fight with Rávaṇa or acknowledge himself conquered, prefers the former alternative; but his army is overcome, and he himself is thrown from his chariot.

When Rávaṇa triumphs over his prostrate foe, the latter says that he has been vanquished not by him but by fate, and that Rávaṇa is only the instrument of his overthrow; and he predicts that Rávaṇa shall one day be slain by his descendant Ráma.” Sanskrit Texts, IV., Appendix.

Page 497.

“With regard to the magic image of Sítá made by Indrajit, we may observe that this thoroughly oriental idea is also found in Greece in Homer’s Iliad, where Apollo forms an image of Æneas to save that hero beloved by the Gods: it occurs too in the Æneid of Virgil where Juno forms a fictitious Æneas to save Turnus:

Tum dea nube cava tenuem sine viribus umbram In faciem Æneæ (visu mirabile monstrum) Dardaniis ornat telis; clipeumque jubasque Divini assimulat capitis; dat inania verba; Dat sine mente sonum, gressusque effingit euntis.

(Æneidos, lib. X.)” GORRESIO.

Page 489.

"To Raghu’s son my chariot lend."

“Analogous to this passage of the Rámáyana, where Indra sends to Ráma his own chariot, his own charioteer, and his own arms, is the passage in the Æneid where Venus descending from heaven brings celestial arms to her son Æneas when he is about to enter the battle:

At Venus æthereos inter dea candida nimbos Dona fereus aderat;… … Arma sub adversa posuit radiantia quercum. Ille, deæ donis et tanto lætus honore, Expleri nequit, atque oculus per singula volvit, Miraturque, interque manus et brachia versat Terribilem cristis galeam flammasque vomentem, Fatiferumque ensem, loricam ex ære rigentem.

(Æneidos, lib. VIII)” GORRESIO.

Page 489.

Agastya came and gently spake.

“The Muni or saint Agastya, author of several Vedic hymns, was celebrated in Indo-Sanskrit tradition for having directed the first brahmanical settlements in the southern regions of India; and the Mahábhárata gives him the credit of having subjected those countries, expelled the Rákshases. and given security to the solitary ascetics, who were settled there. Hence Agastya was regarded in ancient legend as the conqueror and ruler of the southern country. This tradition refers to the earliest migrations made by the Sanskrit Indians towards the south of India. To Agastya are attributed many marvellous mythic deeds which adumbrate and veil ancient events; some of which are alluded to here and there in the Rámáyana.” GORRESIO.

The following is the literal translation of the Canto, text and commentary, from the Calcutta edition:

Having found Ráma weary with fighting and buried in deep thought, and Rávaṇ standing before him ready to engage in battle, the holy Agastya, who had come to see the battle, approached Ráma and spoke to him thus: “O mighty Ráma, listen to the old mystery by which thou wilt conquer all thy foes in the battle. Having daily repeated the Ádityahridaya (the delighter of the mind of the Sun) the holy prayer which destroys all enemies (of him who repeats it) gives victory, removes all sins, sorrows and distress, increases life, and which is the blessing of all blessings, worship the rising and splendid sun who is respected by both the Gods and demons, who gives light to all bodies and who is the rich lord of all the worlds, (To the question why this prayer claims so great reverence; the sage answers) Since yonder(1073) sun is full of glory and all gods reside in him (he being their material cause) and bestows being and the active principle on all creatures by his rays; and since he protects all deities, demons and men with his rays.

He is Brahmá,(1074) Vishṇu,(1075) Śiva,(1076) Skanda,(1077) Prajápati,(1078) Mahendra,(1079) Dhanada,(1080) Kála,(1081) Yáma,(1082) Soma,(1083) Apàm Pati i.e. The lord of waters, Pitris,(1084) Vasus,(1085) Sádhyas,(1086) Aśvins,(1087) Maruts,(1088) Manu,(1089) Váyu,(1090) Vahni,(1091) Prajá,(1092) Práṇa,(1093) Ritukartá,(1094) Prabhákara,(1095) (Thou,(1096) art) Aditya,(1097) Savitá,(1098) Súrya,(1099) Khaga,(1100) Púshan,(1101) Gabhastimán,(1102) Śuvarṇasadriśa,(1103) Bhánu,(1104) Hiraṇyaretas,(1105) Divákara,(1106) Haridaśva,(1107) Sahasrárchish,(1108) Saptasapti,(1109) Marichimán,(1110) Timironmathana,(1111) Sambhu,(1112) Twashtá,(1113) Mártanda,(1114) Anśumán,(1115) Hiranyagarbha,(1116) Siśira,(1117) Tapana,(1118) Ahaskara,(1119) Ravi,(1120) Agnigarbha,(1121) Aditiputra,(1122) Sankha,(1123) Siśiranáśana,(1124) Vyomanátha,(1125) Tamobhedí,(1126) Rigyajussámapáraga,(1127) Ghanavríshti,(1128) Apám-Mitra,(1129) Vindhyavíthíplavangama,(1130) Átapí,(1131) Mandalí,(1132) Mrityu (death), Pingala,(1133) Sarvatápana,(1134) Kavi,(1135) Viśva,(1136) Mahátejas,(1137) Rakta,(1138) Sarvabhavodbhava.(1139) The Lord of stars, planets, and other luminous bodies, Viśvabhávana,(1140) Tejasvinám-Tejasvi,(1141) Dwádaśátman:(1142) I salute thee. I salute thee who art the eastern mountain. I salute thee who art the western mountain. I salute thee who art the Lord of all the luminous bodies. I salute thee who art the Lord of days.

I respectfully salute thee who art Jaya,(1143) Jayabhadra,(1144) Haryaśa,(1145) O Thou who hast a thousand rays, I repeatedly salute thee. I repeatedly and respectfully salute thee who art Áditya, I repeatedly salute thee who art Ugra,(1146) Víra,(1147) and Sáranga.(1148) I salute thee who openest the lotuses (or the lotus of the heart). I salute thee who art furious. I salute thee who art the Lord of Brahmá, Śiva and Vishṇu. I salute thee who art the sun, Ádityavarchas,(1149) splendid, Sarvabhaksha,(1150)and Raudravapush.(1151)

I salute thee who destroyest darkness, cold and enemies: whose form is boundless, who art the destroyer of the ungrateful; who art Deva;(1152) who art the Lord of the luminous bodies, and who appearest like the heated gold. I salute thee who art Hari,(1153) Viśvakarman,(1154) the destroyer of darkness, and who art splendid and Lokasákshin.(1155) Yonder sun destroys the whole of the material world and also creates it. Yonder sun dries (all earthly things), destroys them and causes rain with his rays. He wakes when our senses are asleep; and resides within all beings. Yonder sun is Agnihotra(1156) and also the fruit obtained by the performer of Agnihotra. He is identified with the gods, sacrifices, and the fruit of the sacrifices. He is the Lord of all the duties known to the world, if any man, O Rághava, in calamities, miseries, forests and dangers, prays to yonder sun, he is never overwhelmed by distress.

Worship, with close attention Him the God of gods and the Lord of the world; and recite these verses thrice, whereby thou wilt be victorious in the battle. O brave one, thou wilt kill Rávaṇa this very instant.”

Thereupon Agastya having said this went away as he came. The glorious Ráma having heard this became free from sorrow. Rághava whose senses were under control, being pleased, committed the hymn to memory, recited it facing the sun, and obtained great delight. The brave Ráma having sipped water thrice and become pure took his bow, and seeing Rávaṇa, was delighted, and meditated on the sun.

Page 492. Rávan’s Funeral.

“In the funeral ceremonies of India the fire was placed on three sides of the pyre; the Dakshiṇa on the south, the Gárhapatya on the west, and the Áhavaníya on the east. The funeral rites are not described in detail here, and it is therefore difficult to elucidate and explain them. The poem assigns the funeral ceremonies of Aryan Brahmans to the Rákshases, a race different from them in origin and religion, in the same way as Homer sometimes introduces into Troy the rites of the Grecian cult.” GORRESIO.

Mr. Muir translates the description of the funeral from the Calcutta edition, as follows: “They formed, with Vedic rites, a funeral pile of faggots of sandal-wood, with padmaka wood, uśira grass, and sandal, and covered with a quilt of deer’s hair. They then performed an unrivalled obsequial ceremony for the Ráxasa prince, placing the sacrificial ground to the S.E. and the fire in the proper situation. They cast the ladle filled with curds and ghee on the shoulder(1157) of the deceased; he (?) placed the car on the feet, and the mortar between the thighs. Having deposited all the wooden vessels, the [upper] and lower fire-wood, and the other pestle, in their proper places, they departed. The Ráxasas having then slain a victim to their prince in the manner prescribed in the Śástras, and enjoined by great rishis, cast [into the fire] the coverlet of the king saturated with ghee. They then, Vibhíshaṇa included, with afflicted hearts, adorned Rávaṇa with perfumes and garlands, and with various vestments, and besprinkled him with fried grain. Vibhíshaṇa having bathed, and having, with his clothes wet, scattered in proper form tila seeds mixed with darbha grass, and moistened with water, applied the fire [to the pile].”

Page 496.

The following is a literal translation of Brahmá’s address to Ráma according to the Calcutta edition, text and commentary:

“O Ráma, how dost thou, being the creator of all the world, best of all those who have profound knowledge of the Upanishads and all-powerful as thou art, suffer Sítá to fall in the fire? How dost thou not know thyself as the best of the gods? Thou art one of the primeval Vasus,(1158) and also their lord and creator. Thou art thyself the lord and first creator of the three worlds. Thou art the eighth (that is Mahádeva) of the Rudras,(1159) and also the fifth(1160) of the Sádhyas.(1161) (The poet describes Ráma as made of the following gods) The Aśvinikumáras (the twin divine physicians of the gods) are thy ears; the sun and the moon are thy eyes; and thou hast been seen in the beginning and at the end of creation. How dost thou neglect the daughter of Videha (Janaka} like a man whose actions are directed by the dictates of nature?” Thus addressed by Indra, Brahmá and the other gods, Ráma the descendant of Raghu, lord of the world and the best of the virtuous, spoke to the chief of the gods. “As I take myself to be a man of the name of Ráma and son of Daśaratha, therefore, sir, please tell me who I am and whence have I come.” “O thou whose might is never failing,” said Brahmá to Kákutstha the foremost of those who thoroughly know Brahmá, “Thou art Náráyaṇa,(1162) almighty, possessed of fortune, and armed with the discus. Thou art the boar(1163) with one tusk; the conqueror of thy past and future foes. Thou art Brahmá true and eternal or undecaying. Thou art Viśvaksena,(1164) having four arms; Thou art Hrishíkeśa,(1165) whose bow is made of horn; Thou art Purusha,(1166) the best of all beings; Thou art one who is never defeated by any body; Thou art the holder of the sword (named Nandaka). Thou art Vishṇu (the pervader of all); blue in colour: of great might; the commander of armies; and lord of villages. Thou art truth. Thou art embodied intelligence, forgiveness, control over the senses, creation, and destruction. Thou art Upendra(1167) and Madhusúdana.(1168) Thou art the creator of Indra, the ruler over all the world, Padmanábha,(1169) and destroyer of enemies in the battle. The divine Rishis call thee shelter of refugees, as well as the giver of shelter. Thou hast a thousand horns,(1170) a hundred heads.(1171) Thou art respected of the respected; and the lord and first creator of the three worlds. Thou art the forefather and shelter of Siddhas,(1172) and Sádhyas.(1173) Thou art sacrifices; Vashaṭkára,(1174) Omkára.(1175) Thou art beyond those who are beyond our senses. There is none who knows who thou art and who knows thy beginning and end. Thou art seen in all material objects, in Bráhmans, in cows, and also in all the quarters, sky and streams. Thou hast a thousand feet, a hundred heads, and a thousand eyes. Thou hast borne the material objects and the earth with the mountains; and at the bottom of the ocean thou art seen the great serpent. O Ráma, Thou hast borne the three worlds, gods, Gandharvas,(1176) and demons. I am, O Ráma, thy heart; the goddess of learning is thy tongue; the gods are the hairs of thy body; the closing of thy eyelids is called the night: and their opening is called the day. The Vedas are thy Sanskáras.(1177) Nothing can exist without thee. The whole world is thy body; the surface of the earth is thy stability.”

O Śrívatsalakshaṇa, fire is thy anger, and the moon is thy favour. In the time of thy incarnation named Vámana, thou didst pervade the three worlds with thy three steps; and Mahendra was made the king of paradise by thee having confined the fearful Bali.(1178) Sítá (thy wife) is Lakshmí; and thou art the God Vishṇu,(1179) Krishṇa,(1180) and Prajápati. To kill Rávaṇ thou hast assumed the form of a man; therefore, O best of the virtuous, thou hast completed this task imposed by us (gods). O Ráma, Rávaṇa has been killed by thee: now being joyful (i.e. having for some time reigned in the kingdom of Ayodhyá,) go to paradise. O glorious Ráma, thy power and thy valour are never failing. The visit to thee and the prayers made to thee are never fruitless. Thy devotees will never be unsuccessful. Thy devotees who obtain thee (thy favour) who art first and best of mankind, shall obtain their desires in this world as well as in the next. They who recite this prayer, founded on the Vedas (or first uttered by the sages), and the old and divine account of (Ráma) shall never suffer defeat.”

Page 503. The Meeting.

The Bharat-Miláp or meeting with Bharat, is the closing scene of the dramatic representation of Ráma’s great victory and triumphant return which takes place annually in October in many of the cities of Northern India. The Rám-Lalá or Play of Ráma, as the great drama is called, is performed in the open air and lasts with one day’s break through fifteen successive days. At Benares there are three nearly simultaneous performances, one provided by H. H. the Maharajah of Benares near his palace at Ramnaggur, one by H. H. the Maharajah of Vizianagram near the Missionary settlement at Sigra and at other places in the city, and one by the leading gentry of the city at Chowká Ghát near the College. The scene especially on the great day when the brothers meet is most interesting: the procession of elephants with their gorgeous howdahs of silver and gold and their magnificently dressed riders with priceless jewels sparkling in their turbans, the enthusiasm of the thousands of spectators who fill the streets and squares, the balconies and the housetops, the flowers that are rained down upon the advancing car, the wild music, the shouting and the joy, make an impression that is not easily forgotten.

Still on his head, well trained in lore Of duty, Ráma’s shoes he bore.

Ráma’s shoes are here regarded as the emblems of royalty or possession. We may compare the Hebrew “Over Edom will I cast forth my shoe.” A curiously similar passage occurs in LYSCHANDER’S Chronicon Greenlandiæ Rhythmicon:

“Han sendte til Irland sin skiden skoe, Og böd den Konge. Som der monne boe, Han skulde dem hæderlig bære Pan Juuledag i sin kongelig Pragt, Og kjende han havde sit Rige og Magt Af Norges og Quernes Herre.”

He sent to Ireland his dirty shoes, And commanded the king who lived there To wear them with honour On Christmas Day in his royal state, And to own that he had his kingdom and power From the Lord of Norway and the Isles. Notes & Queries, March 30, 1872.

Final Notes.

I end these notes with an extract which I translate from Signor Gorresio’s Preface to the tenth volume of his Rámáyan, and I take this opportunity of again thankfully acknowledging my great obligations to this eminent Śanskritist from whom I have so frequently borrowed. As Mr. Muir has observed, the Bengal recension which Signor Gorresio has most ably edited is throughout an admirable commentary on the genuine Rámáyan of northern India, and I have made constant reference to the faithful and elegant translation which accompanies the text for assistance and confirmation in difficulties:

“Towards the southern extremity and in the island of Lanká (Ceylon) there existed undoubtedly a black and ferocious race, averse to the Aryans and hostile to their mode of worship: their ramifications extended through the islands of the Archipelago, and some traces of them remain in Java to this day.

The Sanskrit-Indians, applying to this race a name expressive of hatred which occurs in the Vedas as the name of hostile, savage and detested beings, called it the Rákshas race: it is against these Rákshases that the expedition of Ráma which the Rámáyan celebrates is directed. The Sanskrit-Indians certainly altered in their traditions the real character of this race: they attributed to it physical and moral qualities not found in human nature; they transformed it into a race of giants; they represented it as monstrous, hideous, truculent, changing forms at will, blood-thirsty and ravenous, just as the Semites represented the races that opposed them as impious, horrible and of monstrous size. But notwithstanding these mythical exaggerations, which are partly due to the genius of the Aryans so prone to magnify everything without measure, the Rámáyan in the course of its epic narration has still preserved and noted here and there some traits and peculiarities of the race which reveal its true character. It represents the Rákshases as black of hue, and compares them with black clouds and masses of black collyrium; it attributes to them curly woolly hair and thick lips, it depicts them as loaded with chains, collars and girdles of gold, and the other bright ornaments which their race has always loved, and in which the kindred races of the Soudan still delight. It describes them as worshippers of matter and force. They are hostile to the religion of the Aryans whose rites and sacrifices they disturb and ruin … Such is the Rákshas race as represented in the Rámáyan; and the war of the Aryan Ráma forms the subject of the epic, a subject certainly real and historical as far as regards its substance, but greatly exaggerated by the ancient myth. In Sanskrit-Indian tradition are found traces of another struggle of the Aryans with the Rákshas races, which preceded the war of Ráma. According to some pauranic legends, Kárttavírya, a descendant of the royal tribe of the Yádavas, contemporary with Parasurama and a little anterior to Ráma, attacked Lanká and took Rávaṇ prisoner. This well shows how ancient and how deeply rooted in the Aryan race is the thought of this war which the Rámáyan celebrates.

“But,” says an eminent Indianist(1181) whose learning I highly appreciate, “the Rámáyan is an allegorical epic, and no precise and historical value can be assigned to it. Sítá signifies the furrow made by the plough, and under this symbolical aspect has already appeared honoured with worship in the hymns of the Rig-veda; Ráma is the bearer of the plough (this assertion is entirely gratuitous); these two allegorical personages represented agriculture introduced to the southern regions of India by the race of the Kosalas from whom Ráma was descended; the Rákshases on whom he makes war are races of demons and giants who have little or nothing human about them; allegory therefore predominates in the poem, and the exact reality of an historical event must not be looked for in it.” Such is Professor Weber’s opinion. If he means to say that mythical fictions are mingled with real events,

Forsan in alcun vero suo arco percuote,

as Dante says, and I fully concede the point. The interweaving of the myth with the historical truth belongs to the essence, so to speak, of the primitive epopeia. If Sítá is born, as the Rámáyan feigns, from the furrow which King Janak opened when he ploughed the earth, not a whit more real is the origin of Helen and Æneas as related in Homer and Virgil, and if the characters in the Rámáyan exceed human nature, and in a greater degree perhaps than is the case in analogous epics, this springs in part from the nature of the subject and still more from the symbol-loving genius of the orient. Still the characters of the Rámáyan, although they exceed more or less the limits of human nature, act notwithstanding in the course of the poem, speak, feel, rejoice and grieve according to the natural impulse of human passions. But if by saying that the Rámáyan is an allegorical epic, it is meant that its fundamental subject is nothing but allegory, that the war of the Aryan Ráma against the Rákshas race is an allegory, that the conquest of the southern region and of the island of Lanká is an allegory, I do not hesitate to answer that such a presumption cannot be admitted and that the thing is in my opinion impossible. Father Paolíno da S. Bartolommeo,(1182) had already, together with other strange opinions of his own on Indian matters, brought forward a similar idea, that is to say that the exploit of Ráma which is the subject of the Rámáyan was a symbol and represented the course of the sun: thus he imagined that Brahmá was the earth, Vishṇu the water, and that his avatárs were the blessings brought by the fertilizing waters, etc. But such ideas, born at a time when Indo-sanskrit antiquities were enveloped in darkness, have been dissipated by the light of new studies. How could an epic so dear in India to the memory of the people, so deeply rooted for many centuries in the minds of all, so propagated and diffused through all the dialects and languages of those regions, which had become the source of many dramas which are still represented in India, which is itself represented every year with such magnificence and to such crowds of people in the neighbourhood of Ayodhyá, a poem welcomed at its very birth with such favour, as the legend relates, that the recitation of it by the first wandering Rhapsodists has consecrated and made famous all the places celebrated by them, and where Ráma made a shorter or longer stay, how, I ask, could such an epic have been purely allegorical? How, upon a pure invention, upon a simple allegory, could a poem have been composed of about fifty thousand verses, relating with such force and power the events, and giving details with such exactness? On a theme purely allegorical there may easily be composed a short mythical poem, as for example a poem on Proserpine or Psyche: but never an epic so full of traditions and historical memories, so intimately connected with the life of the people, as the Rámáyan.(1183) Excessive readiness to find allegory whenever some traces of symbolism occur, where the myth partly veils the historical reality, may lead and often has led to error. What poetical work of mythical times could stand this mode of trial? could there not be made, or rather has there not been made a work altogether allegorical, out of the Homeric poems? We have all heard of the ingenious idea of the anonymous writer, who in order to prove how easily we may pass beyond the truth in our wish to seek and find allegory everywhere, undertook with keen subtlety to prove that the great personality of Napoleon I. was altogether allegorical and represented the sun. Napoleon was born in an island, his course was from west to east, his twelve marshals were the twelve signs of the zodiac, etc.

I conclude then, that the fundamental theme of the Rámáyan, that is to say the war of the Aryan Ráma against the Rákshases, an Hamitic race settled in the south, ought to be regarded as real and historical as far as regards its substance, although the mythic element intermingled with the true sometimes alters its natural and genuine aspect.

How then did the Indo-Sanskrit epopeia form and complete itself? What elements did it interweave in its progress? How did it embody, how did it clothe the naked and simple primitive datum? We must first of all remember that the Indo-European races possessed the epic genius in the highest degree, and that they alone in the different regions they occupied produced epic poetry … But other causes and particular influences combined to nourish and develop the epic germ of the Sanskrit-Indians. Already in the Rig-veda are found hymns in which the Aryan genius preluded, so to speak, to the future epopeia, in songs that celebrated the heroic deeds of Indra, the combats and the victories of the tutelary Gods of the Aryan races over enemies secret or open, human or superhuman, the exploits and the memories of ancient heroes. More recently, at certain solemn occasions, as the very learned A. Weber remarks, at the solemnity, for example of the Aśvamedha or sacrifice of the horse, the praises of the king who ordained the great rite were sung by bards and minstrels in songs composed for the purpose, the memories of past times were recalled and honourable mention was made of the just and pious kings of old. In the Bráhmaṇas, a sort of prose commentaries annexed to the Vedas, are found recorded stories and legends which allude to historical events of the past ages, to ancient memories, and to mythical events. Such popular legends which the Bráhmaṇas undoubtedly gathered from tradition admirably suited the epic tissue with which they were interwoven by successive hands.… Many and various mythico-historical traditions, suitable for epic development, were diffused among the Aryan races, those for example which are related in the four chapters containing the description of the earth, the Descent of the Ganges, etc. The epic genius however sometimes created beings of its own and gave body and life to ideal conceptions. Some of the persons in the Rámáyan must be, in my opinion, either personifications of the forces of nature like those which are described with such vigour in the Sháhnámah, or if not exactly created, exaggerated beyond human proportions; others, vedic personages much more ancient than Ráma, were introduced into the epic and woven into its narrations, to bring together men who lived in different and distant ages, as has been the case in times nearer to our own, in the epics, I mean, of the middle ages.

In the introduction I have discussed the antiquity of the Rámáyan; and by means of those critical and inductive proofs which are all that an antiquity without precise historical dates can furnish I have endeavoured to establish with all the certainty that the subject admitted, that the original composition of the Rámáyan is to be assigned to about the twelfth century before the Christian era. Not that I believe that the epic then sprang to life in the form in which we now possess it; I think, and I have elsewhere expressed the opinion, that the poem during the course of its rhapsodical and oral propagation appropriated by way of episodes, traditions, legends and ancient myths.… But as far as regards the epic poem properly so called which celebrates the expedition of Ráma against the Rákshases I think that I have sufficiently shown that its origin and first appearance should be placed about the twelfth century B.C.; nor have I hitherto met with anything to oppose this chronological result, or to oblige me to rectify or reject it.… But an eminent philologist already quoted, deeply versed in these studies, A. Weber, has expressed in some of his writings a totally different opinion; and the authority of his name, if not the number and cogency of his arguments, compels me to say something on the subject. From the fact or rather the assumption that Megasthenes(1184) who lived some time in India has made no mention either of the Mahábhárat or the Rámáyan Professor Weber argues that neither of these poems could have existed at that time; as regards the Rámáyan, the unity of its composition, the chain that binds together its different parts, and its allegorical character, show it, says Professor Weber, to be much more recent than the age to which I have assigned it, near to our own era, and according to him, later than the Mahábhárat. As for Megasthenes it should be observed, that he did not write a history of India, much less a literary history or anything at all resembling one, but a simple description, in great part physical, of India: whence, from his silence on literary matters to draw inferences regarding the history of Sanskrit literature would be the same thing as from the silence of a geologist with respect to the literature of a country whose valleys, mountains, and internal structure he is exploring, to conjecture that such and such a poem or history not mentioned by him did not exist at his time. We have only to look at the fragments of Megasthenes collected and published by Schwanbeck to see what was the nature and scope of his Indica.… But only a few fragments of Megasthenes are extant; and to pretend that they should be argument and proof enough to judge the antiquity of a poem is to press the laws of criticism too far. To Professor Weber’s argument as to the more or less recent age of the Rámáyan from the unity of its composition, I will make one sole reply, which is that if unity of composition were really a proof of a more recent age, it would be necessary to reduce by a thousand years at least the age of Homer and bring him down to the age of Augustus and Virgil; for certainly there is much more unity of composition, a greater accord and harmony of parts in the Iliad and the Odyssey than in the Rámáyan. But in the fine arts perfection is no proof of a recent age: while the experience and the continuous labour of successive ages are necessary to extend and perfect the physical or natural sciences, art which is spontaneous in its nature can produce and has produced in remote times works of such perfection as later ages have not been able to equal.”

INDEX OF PRINCIPAL NAMES

Abhijit, 24.

Abhikála, 176.

Abhíra, 444.

Abravanti, 374.

Aditi, 31, 57, 58, 125, 201, 245, 246.

Ádityas, 246, 403.

Agastya, 5, 9, 40, 132, 151, 239, 240, 242, 244, 262, 265, 280, 375, 480, 491, 500.

Ágneya, 178.

Agni, 28, 74, 109, 132, 240, 243, 276.

Agnivarṇa, 82, 220.

Agniketu, 433 note, 459.

Ahalyá, 60, 61, 62.

Ailadhána, 178.

Air, 2, 28, 203.

Airávat, 14, 110, 178, 246, 256, 267, 335, 399, 402, 415, 429, 437, 472.

Aja, 82, 220, 465.

Ájas, 270, 271.

Akampan, 265, 266, 468, 481.

Aksha, 6, 420, 469, 471.

Akurvati, 178.

Alaka, 203 note.

Alambúshá, 59, 198, 199.

Alarka, 104, 107.

Amarávatí, 13, 203 note, 286.

Ambarísha, 72, 73, 74, 82, 220.

Amúrtarajas, 46.

Anala, 455 note.

Analá, 245, 246.

Ananta, 373.

Anaraṇya, 81, 219, 470.

Anasúyá, 9, 226, 227, 228.

Andhak, 264.

Andhras, 549.

Anga, 38.

Angad, 342, 348, 350, 352 ff., 363, 364 note, 367, 374, 379 ff, 391, 402, 425 ff., 439, 442, 445, 448, 456, 458, 459, 475, 479 ff, 505.

Angas, 15, 18, 19, 21, 102.

Angiras, 133, 245.

Anjan, 14, 368, 369.

Anjaná, 392.

Anśudhána, 179.

Anśumán, 50, 53, 56, 82, 220.

Anuhláda, 370.

Aparparyat, 178.

Apartála, 175.

Apsarases, 57, 198, 199, 229, 378.

Aptoryám, 24.

Arishta, 424, 425.

Aríshṭanemi, 49, 245, 392.

Arjun, 86.

Arjuna, 518.

Arthasádhak, 14.

Aruṇ, 246,

Arundhatí, 19, 244, 413.

Aryaman, 124.

Áryan, 92.

Asamanj, 50, 53, 82, 138, 220.

Asit, 81, 219.

Aśok, 14, 175.

Aśoka, 6, 10, 101, 205, 278, 296, 297, 300, 318, 321, 357, 403, 444, 452, 456.

Asta, 377, 379 note.

Asurs, 57, 58, 380, 381, 387, 394, 407, 413, 420.

Aśvagríva, 246.

Aśvamedh, 29, 236 note.

Aśvapati, 89, 131, 178, 183.

Aśvatarí, 346.

Aśvin, 371.

Aśvíní, 343.

Aśvins, 28, 36, 60, 62, 163, 246, 339, 343, 403, 490.

Atikáya, 468, 478 ff.

Atirátra, 24.

Atri, 245, 561.

Aurva, 373 note.

Avantí, 374.

Avindhya, 415.

Ayodhyá, 4, 6, 11, 12, 14, 19, 32, 33, 38, 49, 70, 72, 79, 81, 83, 84, 85, 88, 95, 96, passim.

Ayomukh, 374.

Ayomukhi, 310.

Báhíka, 176.

Bahuputra, 245.

Bala, 264.

Bálakhilyas, 63, 235, 270, 271, 374.

Bali, 43, 59, 107, 275, 302, 421.

Báli, 5, 9, 29, 318, 324, 328, 329, 333 ff., 344, 356 ff., 362, 364, 366, 367, 379, 380, 391, 404, 412, 420, 440, 442, 448, 456, 458, 475, 478, 500, 503, 505.

Barbars, 66.

Beauty, 26, 29, 58, 88, 283, 455.

Bhadamadrá, 246.

Bhadra, 52.

Bhaga, 124, 243.

Bhagírath, 53, 54, 55, 82, 220, 372.

Bhágírathí, 56.

Bharadvája, 4, 7, 9, 10, 158, 159, 193, 196, 197, 199, 200, 201, 501.

Bharat, 4, 9, 10, 32, 81, 83, 84, 88, 89, 94, 97, passim.

Bharatas, 550.

Bháruṇḍa, 178.

Bhásí, 246.

Bhásakarṇa, 420.

Bhava, 78.

Bhímá, 198.

Bhogavatí, 12 note, 267, 375.

Bhrigu, 40, 63, 73, 81, 85, 86, 88, 133, 220.

Brahmá, 6, 7, 10, 19, 25, 26, 33, 38, 39, 42, 46, 48, 54, 56, 59, 61, 63, 65, 67, 68, 74, 75, 77, 81, passim.

Brahmadatta, 46, 47.

Brahmádikas, 133 note.

Bhrahmamálas, 548.

Budha, 287.

Buddhist, 219.

Cancer, 109.

Ceylon, 375 note.

Chaitra, 91.

Chaitraratha, 41, 178, 199, 267, 279, 315, 493.

Chakraván, 376.

Champá, 30.

Chaṇḍa, 448.

Chaṇḍála, 69, 70.

Chandra, 464.

Chatushṭom, 24.

Chitrá, 111, 250, 283.

Chitrakúṭa, 4, 9, 160, 161, 197, 200, 201, 202, 209, 235, 236, 317, 416, 501.

Chitraratha, 132.

Cholas, 549.

Chúli, 47.

Chyavan, 81, 220.

Dadhimukh, 426.

Dadhivakra, 364 note.

Daitya, 125, 152, 211, 246, 289, 306, 371, 418.

Daksha, 36, 78, 228, 245, 257, 396.

Dánav, 255, 270, 306, 307, 311, 371, 372, 382, 432, 443, 477.

Daṇḍak, 9, 99, 103, 117, 124, 126, 130, 166, 181, 199, 211, 238, 271, 374.

Daṇḍaká, 5.

Danú, 245, 246, 313.

Dapple skin, 64, 65.

Dardar, 110, 198.

Dardur, 448.

Darímukha, 371.

Daśárṇa, 374.

Dasáratha, 3, 9, 12, 14, 16, 18 ff., 25, 26, 29, 30, 32, 34, 41, 61, 62, 77, 79, 80 ff., 91, 92, 95, passim.

Dasyus, 444.

Devamíḍha, 82.

Devántak, 479, 480.

Devarát, 77, 82, 86.

Devasakhá, 378.

Devavatí, 515.

Dhanvantari, 57 note.

Dhanyamáliní, 481.

Dharmabhrit, 240.

Dharmapál, 14.

Dharmáraṇya, 46.

Dharmavardhan, 179.

Dhritaráshṭrí, 246.

Dhrishṭaketu, 82.

Dhrishṭi, 14, 202.

Dhruvasandhi, 81, 219.

Dhúmra, 371, 448.

Dhúmráksha, 433 note, 465, 466.

Dhúmráśva, 60, 481.

Dhundhumár, 81, 171, 219.

Dikshá, 44.

Dilípa, 5 note, 53, 54, 56, 82, 171, 190, 220.

Diti, 58, 59, 245, 246, 323.

Dragon, 101.

Driḍhanetra, 68.

Drishṭi, 202.

Droṇa, 464.

Drumakulya, 444.

Dundubhi, 333, 335, 338.

Durdhar, 420.

Durdharsha, 433 note.

Durjaya, 256 note.

Durmukha, 432, 433 note.

Durvásas, 521.

Dúshaṇ, 5, 250, 254, 255, 256, 258, 259, 261, 264, 265, 267-271, 294, 461, 502.

Dwida, 364 note.

Dwijihva, 474.

Dwivid, 371, 428, 430, 449, 451, 475, 483, 484.

Dwivida, 28.

Dyumatsena, 129.

Ekapádakas, 549.

Ekaśála, 179.

Fame, 26, 283.

Fate, 42, 68, 70, 71, 81, 119, 122, 123, 130, 181, 182, 195, 256, 293, 296, 309, 343, 349, 351, 354, 386, 404, 415, 439, 492.

Fire, 2, 30, 45, 49, 218, 374.

Fortune, 2, 58, 90, 94, 124, 146, 160, 188, 242, 244, 283, 449, 453.

Fire-god, 74, 124, 328.

Gádhi, 40, 48, 63, 64, 67, 68.

Gaja, 364 note, 371, 429, 449, 459.

Gálava, 518.

Gandhamádan, 28, 159, 381, 429, 446, 476.

Gandharva, 199, 256, 258, 259, 278, 285, 351, 396, 425, 437, 441, 454, 466, 468, 491.

Gandharvas, 267, 270, 281, 283, 306, 307, 308, 318, 364, 370, 375, 377, 388, 394, 409, 420, 432, 449, 455, 472.

Gandharví, 246, 265.

Gangá, 7, 9, 37, 38, 45, 48, 49, passim.

Garga, 133.

Garuḍ, 28, 29, 53, 246, 271, 373, 453, 465, 470, 475.

Gautam, 60, 61, 62, 505.

Gautama, 236.

Gaváksha, 364 note, 429, 449, 468, 475, 476.

Gavaya, 364 note, 371, 429, 448, 468.

Gaya, 482.

Gayá, 216.

Gáyatrí, 243.

Ghoralohamukhas, 548.

Ghritáchí, 46, 198, 367.

Girivraja, 46, 176.

Glory, 301.

Godávarí, 245, 247, 248, 249, 282, 303, 310, 374, 500.

Gokarna, 54.

Golabh, 351.

Gomatí, 151, 179, 448, 502, 503.

Gopa, 199.

Guha, 4, 9, 152-156, 162, 192, 193, 194, 208, 501.

Guhyakas, 378.

Háhá, 198.

Haihayas, 81, 219.

Hanúmán, 5, 9, 10, 28, 324 ff., 328, 332, 337, 340, 350, 355, 359, 360, 363, 364 note, 368, 371, 374, 378 ff., 392 ff., 411 ff., 424 ff., 449, 456.

Hara, 448.

Harí, 246.

Hárítas, 66.

Haryaśva, 82.

Hástinapura, 176.

Hastiprishṭhak, 179.

Havishyand, 68.

Hayagriva, 346, 376.

Hemá, 198, 382.

Hemachandra, 60.

Heti, 515.

Himálaya, 3, 14, 45, 48, 49, 50, 53, 54, 61, 67, 76, 81, 88.

Himaváu, 380.

Hiraṇyakaśipu, 391 note, 407.

Hiraṇyanábha, 500.

Hládini, 55, 178.

Honour, 283.

Hotri, 24.

Hraśvaromá, 82.

Huhú, 198.

Ikshumatí, 80, 176.

Ikshváku, 2, 11, 13, 18, 24, 25, 35, 59, 60, 69, 70, 71, 73, 81, 82, 83, 90, 94, 96, 103, 219, 390.

Ilval, 241.

Indra, 2, 5, 13, 14, 25, 28, 29, 36, 39, 40, 43 ff., 50, 56, passim.

Indrajánu, 371 note.

Indrajít, 420, 432, 436, 437, 441, 455, 459 ff., 482, 485.

Indraśatru, 433 note.

Indraśira, 178.

Irávatí, 246.

Jábáli, 505.

Jahnu, 55.

Jáhnaví, 49, 55, 154.

Jamadagni, 85, 86, 87, 119.

Jámbaván, 371, 374, 388, 391, 393, 402, 425, 428, 429, 439, 446, 448, 456, 464, 483, 503.

Jambudvip, 51, 373.

Jambumálí, 418, 419, 420, 459, 460.

Jambuprastha, 179.

Jámbuvatu, 364 note.

Janak, 4, 8, 9, 21, 45, 60, 61, 62, 77-85, 88, 090, passim.

Janamejaya, 171.

Janasthán, 225, 251, 254, 255, 264, 265, 271, 281, 282, 294, 295, 298, 308, 404, 439, 454, 463, 474, 493, 500.

Játarúpa, 373.

Jaṭáyu, 5.

Jaṭáyus, 245, 247, 280, 288, 290, 308, 385 ff., 500, 502.

Java, 231.

Jáváli, 20, 80, 174, 217, 218, 219, 222.

Jayá, 36.

Jayanta, 14, 175.

Jumna, 109, 501, 502.

Jupiter, 144.

Justice, 3, 35, 42, 149, 243, 346, 454.

Jyotishṭom, 24.

Kabandha, 5, 9, 310-316, 446, 500.

Kadrú, 246.

Kadrumá, 246.

Kaikasí, 516.

Kaikeyí, 3, 4, 9, 27, 32, 88, 96-103, passim.

Kailása, 38, 85, 92, 96, 110, 111, 267, 286, 357, 364, 368, 369, 373, 378, 421, 431.

Kakustha, 35, 37, 82, 109, 110, 123, 137, 142, 147, 149, 151, 153, 192, 208, 211, 220, 311.

Kalá, 378.

Kálak, 246.

Kálaká, 245, 246.

Kálakámuka, 256 note.

Kálamahí, 372.

Kalinda, 178.

Kálindí, 81, 160, 220.

Kalinga, 179.

Kalingas, 549,

Kalmáshapáda, 82, 220.

Káma 37, 38, 42, 283, 286, 296.

Kámboja, 13, 66.

Kámbojas, 66.

Kámpili, 47

Kaṇdu, 118, 380, 440.

Kandarpa, 37, 74, 75, 76, 250, 269.

Kaṇva, 440.

Kanyákubja, 47.

Kapil, 51, 52, 53.

Kapivati, 179.

Kardam, 245.

Karṇaprávaraṇas, 548.

Kártikeya, 243.

Kárttavírya, 518.

Káśi, 21, 102.

Kásíkosalas, 548.

Kaśyap, 15, 16, 20, 30, 57-59, 80, 81, 86, 87, 91, 92, 118, 219, 215, passim.

Kátyáyan, 505.

Kátyáyana, 80, 174.

Kauśalyá, 3, 23, 27, 30, 31, 79, 84, 88, 93, 94, 97, 98, 100, passim.

Kauśámbí, 46.

Kauśikas, 549.

Kauśikí, 48, 372.

Káverí, 375.

Kaustubha, 58.

Kávya, 40.

Kekaya, 21, 84, 88, 90, 137, 139, 174, 175.

Kerala, 190.

Keralas, 549.

Kesarí, 371.

Keśini, 49, 50.

Khara, 9, 225, 250 ff., 281, 288, 290, 294, 295, 433, 446, 451, 461, 477, 493.

Kinnars, 270, 306, 308, 318, 321, 373, 425.

Kimpurushas, 28 note.

Kirátas, 66, 549.

Kírtirát, 82.

Kirtirátha, 82.

Kishkindhá, 5, 333, 334, 336, 338, 339, 351, 357, 362, 369, 385, 449, 464, 500.

Kośal, 11, 102, 273, 307, 359, 418.

Kośala, 151, 173.

Krathan, 448.

Kratu, 245.

Krauncha, 310, 378, 476.

Kraunchi, 246.

Kriśáśva, 36, 41, 43.

Krishṇa, 497.

Krishṇagiri, 448.

Krishṇveni, 374.

Krita, 57, 395.

Krodhavaśá, 245, 246.

Kshatriyas, 246, 346.

Kukshi, 81, 219.

Kulingá, 176.

Kumbha, 484.

Kumbhakarṇa, 10, 250, 399, 411, 435 ff., 441, 470 ff.

Kúmuda, 364 note, 448.

Kunjar, 375, 392.

Kuru(s), North, 198, 203, 315.

Kurujángal, 176.

Kuśa, 10, 46, 48, 63, 526.

Kuśadhwaj, 80, 82, 88.

Kuśámba, 46.

Kuśanábha, 46, 47, 48, 63.

Kuśáśva, 60.

Kuśik, 33, 35, 36, 38, 44, 56, 62, 63, 68, 70 ff., 83.

Kuṭíká, 179.

Kuṭikoshṭiká, 179.

Kuvera, 23, 88, 109, 110, 111, 112, 198, 199, 204, 232, 267, 378, 422, 431, 432, 483.

Lakshmaṇ, 4, 8, 11, 32, 36, 38, 40, 41, 44, 45, 56, 61, 79, 80, 82-84, 88, 91, 94, 97, 98, passim.

Lakshmí, 88, 116, 146, 227, 400, 453, 462, 497.

Lamba, 397.

Lanká, 5, 10, 265, 267, 284, 286, 293, 295-297, 367, 387, 397, 411, 423 ff., 439, 456 ff.

Lankaṭankaṭá, 515.

Lava, 10, 526.

Lohitya, 179.

Lokapálas, 485.

Lomapád, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 30.

Mádhaví, 520.

Madhu, 26, 51, 57, 87, 95.

Madhúka, 245.

Madhushyand, 68, 74.

Madrakas, 550.

Magadh, 46, 102.

Mágadnas, 548.

Maghá, 83.

Mahábír, 82.

Mahábala, 433 note.

Mahábhárat, 520, 524, 551, 554.

Mahádeva, 61, 515.

Mahákapála, 256 note, 260.

Mahámáli, 256 note.

Mahándhrak, 82.

Mahápadma, 14, 52.

Mahápáráśva, 433, 436, 455, 478, 480, 487.

Mahárath, 68.

Maháromá, 82.

Maháruṇ, 368.

Maháśaila, 368.

Mahendra, 28, 59, 86, 87, 88, 140, 167, 213, 243, 244, 307, 336, 344, 364, 368, 370, 375, 490, 531, 554.

Maheśwar, 369, 498.

Mahí, 372.

Máhishmatí, 518.

Mahishikas, 549.

Mahodar, 433 note, 450, 455, 474, 478 ff.

Mahodaya, 46, 70, 71, 488.

Maináka, 10, 394, 500 note.

Mainda, 28, 364 note, 371, 428, 430, 439, 449, 451, 458, 482, 483.

Makaráksha, 485 note.

Malaja, 39.

Málavas, 548.

Malaya, 198, 324, 328, 375, 379, 430.

Málí, 515, 516.

Máliní, 175, 539.

Malyaván, 454, 455.

Mályavat, 515, 516.

Mánas, 38.

Mandakarṇi, 240.

Mandákiní, 200, 201, 203, 209, 234, 235, 304, 322, 416 note.

Mandalí, 556.

Mandar, 57, 163, 285, 362, 368, 372, 399, 402, 421, 485, 491, 493, 525.

Mandarí, 444.

Mándhátá, 81, 219, 347, 518.

Mándavi, 84.

Máṇḍavya, 226 note.

Mandehas, 373.

Mandodarí, 402, 492, 500, 516.

Mandra, 14.

Maṇibhadra, 441.

Manthará, 40, 96, 97, 99, 187.

Manu, 11, 12, 13, 81, 103, 151, 179, 219, 245, 246, 347, 490, 505, 537, 555.

Marícha, 58.

Márícha, 5, 9, 35, 39, 40, 44, 266, 271-280, 298.

Maríchi, 81, 91, 219, 245.

Maríchipas, 270, 271.

Márkaṇḍeya, 80, 174.

Mars, 93, 144, 339, 404, 445, 467, 489.

Maru, 82, 220.

Maruts, 25, 54, 59, 403, 517, 547, 555.

Máshas, 270, 271.

Mátali, 109, 142, 489, 491, 493.

Matanga, 14, 246, 315, 316, 317, 318, 319, 336, 337, 380.

Mátangí, 246.

Mátariśva, 389.

Matsya, 102, 523, 537, 549.

Maya, 293, 382, 432, 488.

Máyá, 293, 521.

Máyáví, 333, 334, 379.

Meghamáli, 256 note.

Meghanáda, 10.

Mekhal, 374.

Mená, 49, 394 note.

Menaká, 74.

Mercury, 144, 339, 467.

Meru, 4, 49, 92, 109, 110, 142, 182, 232, 236, 254, 291, 315, 368, 370, 377, 380, 418, 493.

Meruśavarṇi, 382.

Mina, 32.

Miśrakeśí, 199.

Mithi, 82.

Míthilá, 9 note, 21, 45, 60, 61, 78, 81, 83, 84, 85.

Mitraghna, 459.

Mlechchhas, 66, 537, 550.

Modesty, 26.

Moon, 30, 42, 58, 109 ff., 124, 218, 227, 243, 276, 367, 413, 414, 488.

Mriga, 14.

Mrigamandá, 246.

Mrigí, 246.

Mudgalya, 174.

Nábhág, 82, 220.

Nágadantá, 198.

Nágas, 12, 55, 66, 68, 145, 270, 273, 395, 409, 413, 420, 427, 518.

Nahush, 82, 95, 171, 190, 220, 307.

Nairrit, 430.

Nala, 10, 340, 364 note, 428, 444, 445, 448, 449, 468, 475, 483.

Nalá, 246.

Naliní, 55, 203, 204, 267, 436.

Namuchi, 39, 261, 264, 275, 336.

Nandá, 415.

Nandan, 26, 175, 200, 267, 279, 315, 316, 426.

Nandi, 249, 421.

Nandigráma, 4, 6, 9, 224, 502, 503.

Nandíśvara, 471.

Nandivardhan, 82.

Nárad, 1, 2, 8, 9, 124, 199, 543.

Narak, 479.

Narántak, 479.

Náráyaṇ, 25, 26, 95, 393, 474, 497, 516, 517, 522, 535, 559.

Narmadá, 374, 448, 518.

Nikumbha, 432, 433 note, 437, 459, 484.

Níla, 28, 340, 352, 360, 364 note, 371, 374, 428, 429, 430, 446, 448, 449, 456, 458, 459, 469, 472, 475, 482.

Nimi, 77, 82.

Niśakar, 389, 390.

Nishádas, 4, 152, 192, 196, 271, 501, 537.

Ocean, 10, 95, 144, 285, 286, 336, 346, 387.

Oshṭhakarṇakas, 548.

Pahlavas, 66.

Páka, 252, 297, 498.

Pampá, 5, 9, 235, 293, 314-321, 327.

Panas, 371, 428, 448, 464.

Panasa, 455 note.

Panchajan, 376.

Panchála, 176, 539.

Panchápsaras, 240.

Panchavaṭa, 9.

Panchavaṭí, 244, 245, 247.

Páṇḍyas, 375, 549.

Paráśara, 517.

Paraśuráma, 119 note, 523, 531.

Paravíráksha, 256 note.

Páriyátra, 376, 448.

Parjanya, 112, 174, 261, 448.

Párvati, 249 note, 515, 542.

Paulastya, 472.

Paulomí, 29, 370.

Pávaní, 55.

Phálguní, 83.

Pináka, 67.

Pitris, 550.

Prabháva, 363.

Prachetas, 1, 245.

Praghas, 420, 459, 460.

Prágvaṭ, 179.

Prahasta, 399, 418, 419, 421, 422, 432 ff., 441, 451, 452, 455, 456, 471, 481.

Praheti, 515.

Prahláda, 391.

Prajangha, 459, 460.

Prajápati, 133 note, 554, 560.

Pralamba, 175.

Pramátha, 256 note.

Pramathí, 260, 448.

Pramati, 455 note.

Prasenajit, 81, 219.

Praśravaṇ, 304, 357, 380, 383, 415, 426.

Prasthalas, 550.

Praśuśśruka, 82, 220.

Pratindhak, 82.

Pravargya, 22.

Prayág, 158, 159, 196.

Prithu, 81, 219.

Prithuśyáma, 256 note.

Proshṭhapadá, 32.

Pulah, 245.

Pulastya, 35, 245, 254, 268, 288, 408, 515.

Pulindas, 550.

Puloma, 370.

Punarvasu, 93.

Puṇḍaríká, 199.

Puṇḍras, 548, 549.

Punjikasthalá, 436, 552.

Puranda, 522.

Purandara, 384, 522.

Purúravas, 286, 544, 545.

Purusha, 256 note, 559.

Purushádak, 82, 220.

Purushottam, 498, 517.

Púshá, 124.

Pushpak, 10, 80, 286, 499, 519.

Pushya, 32, 90, 92, 94, 96, 98, 109, 126.

Rabhasa, 433 note.

Rághava, 5 note.

Raghu, 5, 9, 22, 32 ff., 50, 56, 61, passim.

Raghunandana, 522.

Ráhu, 93, 223, 261, 272, 303, 351, 480.

Rain, Lord of, 92, 222.

Rájagriha, 174, 175.

Ráma, passim.

Rámáyana, 8 note, 10, 11, 541, 542.

Rambhá, 75, 232, 448.

Ramaṇá, 199.

Raśmiketu, 433 note, 459.

Rávaṇ, 5, 9, 10, 25, 26, 32, 35, passim.

Reṇuká, 63, 119.

Richíka, 48, 73, 86.

Right, 42, 68.

Riksharajas, 386, 442.

Rikshaván, 448.

Rishabh, 373, 375, 429, 446, 476, 483.

Rishṭikas, 549.

Rishyamúka, 9, 314, 315, 316, 318 ff., 332, 335, 339, 340, 353, 380, 500.

Rishyaśring, 15-24, 29, 30.

Rohiṇí, 4, 112, 223, 227, 246, 251, 282, 287, 367, 404, 413, 445.

Rohitas, 376, 558.

Rudhiráśana, 256 note.

Rudra, 49, 57, 67, 77, 78, 162, 249, 257, 264, 283, 296, 378, 413, 483.

Rudras, 246, 558.

Rukmiṇí, 517.

Rumá, 346, 349, 350, 363, 366, 367, 371, 385, 403.

Ruman, 371.

Sachí, 29, 202, 234, 238, 276, 286, 297, 370, 408, 415, 494, 519, 522.

Canto CXXX. The Consecration. (part 3)

Sádhyas, 490, 555, 558, 559.

Sagar, 11, 50 ff., 82, 119, 137, 171, 441.

Sahadeva, 60.

Sahya, 429, 430.

Śaivya, 104, 107, 171, 533.

Śakas, 66, 550.

Śakra, 75, 234, 307, 313, 336, 344, 448, 464.

Śálmalí, 176, 539.

Śályakartan, 178.

Śáman, 186, 326, 359.

Śambar, 479.

Śambara, 99, 100.

Sampáti, 5, 9, 246, 364 note, 385, 387 ff., 412, 455 note, 459, 460, 464.

Samprakshálas, 235.

Sanatkumár, 15, 16.

Sandhyá, 515.

Sanháras, 36.

Sanhráda, 474.

Śaniśchar, 283.

Śankan, 82.

Śankar, 57, 335.

Sánkáśyá, 80, 81, 82, 83.

Śankha, 555.

Śankhan, 220, 432.

Sanrochan, 448.

Śanśray, 245.

Śántá, 16, 19, 29, 30, 31.

Śarabh, 364 note, 439, 476.

Śarabhanga, 9, 233, 234, 235, 236, 265, 502.

Śaradaṇḍá, 176, 539.

Saramá, 452, 453.

Sáraṇ, 446, 447, 455.

Sarandib, 375 note.

Sáranga, 556.

Sarasvatí, 178, 372, 516, 522.

Śárdúla, 441, 449, 450.

Śárdúlí, 246.

Sarjú, 11, 20, 22, 36, 37, 38, 50, passim.

Sárvabhauma, 429.

Sarvartírtha, 179.

Śaśivindhus, 81, 219.

Śatabali, 371, 377, 379, 380.

Śatadrú, 178, 539.

Śatahradá, 231.

Śatánanda, 62, 63, 77, 79, 80, 81, 84.

Śatrughna, 32, 83, 84, 88, 89, 97, passim.

Śatrunjay, 504.

Satyaván, 129.

Satyavatí, 48.

Sávitrí, 129, 227.

Śavarí, 315, 316, 317.

Saumanas, 373.

Sávarṇí, 377.

Seven Rishis, 23.

Śesha, 245.

Siddhárth, 14, 137, 138, 175.

Siddhas, 28 note, 540, 559.

Śíghraga, 82, 220.

Śilá, 178.

Śilávahá, 178.

Sindhu, 13, 21, 55, 102, 372, 376, 443.

Sinhiká, 10, 396.

Śiśir(a), 372, 555.

Sítá, 4 ff., 55, 78, 79, 83, 84, 88, 93, passim.

Śiva, 4, 36, 42, 54, 55, 57, 67, 78, 82, 85, 86, 109, 110, 205, 523, 524, 543, 554.

Skanda, 554.

Soma, 52, 58, 198, 267, 378, 554.

Somadatta, 60.

Somadá, 47.

Somagiri, 376, 378.

Śoṇa, 45, 48, 372.

Śringavera, 4, 192, 196, 223, 501, 502.

Srinjay, 60.

Srutakírti, 84.

Stháṇu, 25, 37, 245.

Stháṇumatí, 179.

Sthúláksha, 256 note, 260.

Sthúlaśiras, 313.

Subáhu, 364 note.

Suchakshu, 55.

Suchandra, 60.

Śuchi, 238.

Sudámá, 178.

Sudáman, 81, 176.

Sudarśan, 82, 83, 220, 373, 378, 448.

Sudarśandwíp, 374.

Sudhanvá, 82.

Sudhriti, 82.

Śúdras, 6, 13, 246.

Sugríva, 5, 6, 9, 28, 29, 314, 316, 318, 324 ff., 337, 339, 344, 346 ff., 371, 375 ff., 412, 414, 422, 424, 430, 439 ff., 446, 450, 519, 545.

Śuka, 442, 446, 447, 455 ff.

Sukeśa, 515, 516.

Suketu, 39, 82.

Sukí, 246.

Śukra, 124, 210, 279, 384, 429.

Sumáli, 515, 516.

Sumágadhí, 46.

Sumantra, 15, 16, 19, 21, 80, 92, passim.

Sumati, 49, 50, 59, 60.

Sumitrá, 27, 30, 32, 88, 94, passim.

Sun, 93, 109, 110, 124, 243.

Sunábha, 425.

Śunahśepha, 72, 73, 74

Sunda, 35, 39.

Sunetra, 364 note.

Suparṇa, 53, 125, 231, 343, 349, 388.

Supárśva, 388.

Supátala, 364 note.

Suptaghna, 433 note.

Surá, 58.

Surabhí, 183, 246.

Surapati, 522.

Suras, 58.

Surasá, 246, 395.

Suráshṭra, 21, 102, 376.

Súrasenas, 550.

Śúrpaṇakhá, 5, 9, 249 ff., 267 ff., 288, 502.

Súrya, 555.

Súryáksha, 364 note.

Súryaśatru, 433 note.

Súryaván, 375.

Susandhi, 81, 219.

Susheṇ, 28, 351, 364 note, 376, 379, 380.

Sutanu, 199.

Sutíkshṇa, 9, 234, 236, 237, 240, 241.

Suváhu, 35, 44, 45, 146.

Suvarat, 220.

Suvela, 450, 456, 457.

Suvíra, 21, 102.

Suyajǹa, 20, 132.

Svayambhu, 394.

Svayamprabhá, 382.

Śvetáraṇya, 264.

Swarga, 54, 101, 202, 493.

Swarṇaromá, 82.

Śweta, 448.

Śyáma, 160.

Syandiká, 151.

Śyenagámí, 256 note, 260.

Śyení, 246.

Táḍaká, 38, 39, 40, 41.

Táḍakeya, 266.

Taittiríya, 132.

Takshak, 432.

Takshaka, 267.

Tálajanghas, 81, 219.

Tamasá, 7, 147, 148, 149.

Támrá, 245, 246.

Támraparṇí, 375.

Tapan, 459, 555.

Tára, 364 note, 379 ff.

Tárá, 9, 336, 349 ff., 355, 359, 362, 363, 366, 367, 369, 371, 385, 403, 449, 546.

Tárak, 430.

Tárkshya, 214.

Ten-necked, 250.

Thirty-three Gods, 51.

Thousand-eyed, 41, 59, 60, 74, 75, 76, 86, 90, 112, 252, 297, 504.

Three-eyed God, 86.

Thunderer, 234.

Titan, 58, 67, 72, 79, 109, 114, 124.

Toraṇ, 179.

Town-Destroyer, 59, 60.

Trident, 68.

Trident-wielding, 54, 57.

Trijaṭ, 133.

Trijaṭá, 410, 463.

Trikúṭa, 456, 457, 500, 515.

Triṇavindu, 515.

Trípathagá, 56.

Tripur, 306.

Tripura, 85, 86.

Triśanku, 68-72, 81, 144, 219, 429.

Triśirá, 9.

Triśirás, 256 note, 260, 261, 264, 267, 271, 478, 479, 480, 502.

Tumburu, 198, 199, 232.

Uchchaihśravas, 58, 522.

Udayagiri, 379 note.

Udávasu, 82.

Ujjiháná, 179.

Ukthya, 24.

Umá, 49, 54, 205, 249 note, 471, 542, 543.

Upasad, 22.

Upasunda, 35.

Upendra, 74, 559.

Urmilá, 47, 83, 84, 88, 228.

Urvaśí, 286, 544, 545.

Uśanas, 382.

Utkal, 374.

Uttániká, 179, 539.

Váhli, 13.

Váhlíka, 376.

Vahni, 555.

Vaidyut, 375.

Vaijayanta, 99, 179, 522.

Vaikhánasas, 270, 271, 374.

Vainateya, 388.

Vaiśravaṇ, 265, 285, 378, 414, 515.

Vaiśyas, 246.

Vaitaraṇí, 293.

Vajra, 376.

Vajradanshṭra, 432, 433 note, 466, 467.

Válmíki, 1, 7-11, 161, 519, 542.

Vámadeva, 14, 79, 80, 91, 174, 222, 505.

Vámana, 14, 523.

Váṇa, 81, 219.

Vanáyu, 13.

Vangas, 102.

Varadas, 550.

Varuṇ, 1 note, 28, 42, 67, 88, 109, 124, 228, 243, 272, 293, 338, 377, 383, 448, 471, 518.

Varáśya, 256 note.

Varútha, 179.

Vásav, 92.

Vásava, 236, 522.

Vaśishṭha, 14, 15, 19-22, 25, 32, passim.

Vásudeva, 51, 52.

Vásuki, 57, 267, 375, 432, 518, 522.

Vasus, 14, 46, 246, 283, 377, 403, 522, 554.

Vasvaukasárá, 203.

Vátápi, 241, 280.

Váyu, 59, 243, 369, 427, 428, 555.

Vedas, 1 note, 3, 12, 22, 70, 89, 109, 125, 147, 184, 229, 559.

Vedaśrutí, 151.

Vedavatí, 470, 517.

Vegadarśí, 429, 446, 483.

Veṇá, 448, 537.

Vibháṇḍak, 15, 16, 17, 18, 25.

Vibhíshaṇ, 6, 10, 250, 273, 415, 422, 423, 433 ff., 449 ff., 472, 483, 487 ff., 516.

Vibudh, 82.

Vidarbha, 46, 49.

Vidarbhas, 549.

Videha, 79 ff., 129, 130, 142, 166, 195, 227.

Videhan, 9, 79, 95, 104, 119, 125, passim.

Videhas, 548.

Vidyádharí, 203 note.

Vidyujjihva, 450.

Vidyunmáli, 364 note.

Vidyutkeśa, 515.

Vihangama, 256 note.

Vijay, 14, 36, 175, 505.

Vikaṭá, 409.

Vikrit, 245.

Vikukshi, 81, 219.

Vinata, 179, 379, 380, 388, 448.

Vinatá, 53, 125, 246.

Vindhya, 14, 51, 242, 364, 370, 374, 380.

Vindu, 55.

Vipáśá, 176, 539.

Vírabáhu, 364 note.

Virádha, 5, 9, 229, 232, 404, 446, 502.

Viráj, 124.

Viramatsya, 178.

Virochan, 40, 43.

Virtue, 223, 272.

Virúpáksha, 52, 420, 433, 459, 460, 487.

Viśákhás, 144, 430.

Viśálá, 56, 57, 59, 60, 62.

Vishṇu, 1 note, 2, 3, 25, 32, 40, passim.

Viśravas, 35, 309, 408, 515, 516.

Viśváchi, 198.

Viśvajit, 24.

Viśvakarmá, 28, 42, 198, 376, 387, 444, 445, 448, 499, 500, 515, 556.

Viśvámitra, 9, 32 ff., 39, 41, 44, 45, passim.

Viśvarúpa, 353.

Viśvas, 377.

Viśvávasu, 198.

Viśvedevas, 162.

Vitardan, 474.

Vivasvat, 81, 171, 219, 245, 386, 532.

Vraṇa, 444.

Vrihadratha, 82.

Vrihaspati, 28, 31, 95, 124, 210, 307, 464, 517.

Vritra, 125, 264, 288, 387, 487, 491, 536.

Vulture-king, 9.

War-god, 124, 476.

Wind, 30, 218.

Wind-god, 10, 36, 42, 68, 325, 326, 379, 392 ff., 417 ff., 449, 470, 478, 481, 488, 502, 503.

Yavadwípa, 372.

Yajnakopa, 433 note, 459.

Yajush, 326.

Yajnaśatru, 256 note.

Yaksha, 236 note, 306, 318, 363, 375, 394, 420, 422, 425, 431, 454, 458, 468.

Yáma, 68, 71, 112, 117, 124, 140, 166, 171, 241, 248, 262, 275, 287, 313, 343 ff., 432, 437, 449, 472, 475, 496, 518, 554.

Yamuná, 158, 159, 160, 178, 214, 223, 372.

Yámun, 372.

Yavanas, 66, 550.

Yayáti, 82, 95, 107, 119, 163, 186, 307, 344.

Yudhájit, 84, 88, 180, 190.

Yúpáksha, 420, 472.

Yuvanáśva, 81, 219.

FOOTNOTES

1 The MSS. vary very considerably in these stanzas of invocation: many lines are generally prefixed in which not only the poet, but those who play the chief parts in the poem are panegyrized. It is self-apparent that they are not by the author of the Rámáyan himself.

2 “Válmíki was the son of Varuṇa, the regent of the waters, one of whose names is Prachetas. According to the Adhyátmá Rámáyaṇa, the sage, although a Bráhman by birth, associated with foresters and robbers. Attacking on one occasion the seven Rishis, they expostulated with him successfully, and taught him the mantra of Ráma reversed, or Mará, Mará, in the inaudible repetition of which he remained immovable for thousands of years, so that when the sages returned to the same spot they found him still there, converted into a valmík or ant-hill, by the nests of the termites, whence his name of Válmíki.”

WILSON. Specimens of the Hindu Theatre, Vol. I. p. 313.

“Válmíki is said to have lived a solitary life in the woods: he is called both a muni and a rishi. The former word properly signifies an anchorite or hermit; the latter has reference chiefly to wisdom. The two words are frequently used promiscuously, and may both be rendered by the Latin vates in its earliest meaning of seer: Válmíki was both poet and seer, as he is said to have sung the exploits of Ráma by the aid of divining insight rather than of knowledge naturally acquired.” SCHLEGEL.

3 Literally, Kokila, the Koïl, or Indian Cuckoo. Schlegel translates “luscinium.”

4 Comparison with the Ganges is implied, that river being called the purifier of the world.

5 “This name may have been given to the father of Válmíki allegorically. If we look at the derivation of the word (pra, before, and chetas, mind) it is as if the poet were called the son of Prometheus, the Forethinker.” SCHLEGEL.

6 Called in Sanskrit also Bála-Káṇḍa, and in Hindí Bál-Káṇḍ, i.e. the Book describing Ráma’s childhood, bála meaning a boy up to his sixteenth year.

7 A divine saint, son of Brahmá. He is the eloquent messenger of the Gods, a musician of exquisite skill, and the inventor of the víṇá or Indian lute. He bears a strong resemblance to Hermes or Mercury.

8 This mystic syllable, said to typify the supreme Deity, the Gods collectively, the Vedas, the three spheres of the world, the three holy fires, the three steps of Vishṇu etc., prefaces the prayers and most venerated writings of the Hindus.

9 This colloquy is supposed to have taken place about sixteen years after Ráma’s return from his wanderings and occupation of his ancestral throne.

10 Called also Śrí and Lakshmí, the consort of Vishṇu, the Queen of Beauty as well as the Dea Fortuna. Her birth “from the full-flushed wave” is described in Canto XLV of this Book.

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.

84 One of the Pleiades and generally regarded as the model of wifely excellence.

85 The Hindu year is divided into six seasons of two months each, spring, summer, rains, autumn, winter, and dews.

86 It was essential that the horse should wander free for a year before immolation, as a sign that his master’s paramount sovereignty was acknowledged by all neighbouring princes.

87 Called also Vidcha, later Tirabhukti, corrupted into the modern Tirhut, a province bounded on the west and east by the Gaudakí and Kauśikí rivers, on the south by the Ganges, and on the north by the skirts of the Himálayas.

88 The celebrated city of Benares. See Dr. Hall’s learned and exhaustive Monograph in the Sacred City of the Hindus, by the Rev. M. A. Sherring.

89 Kekaya is supposed to have been in the Panjáb. The name of the king was Aśvapati (Lord of Horses), father of Daśaratha’s wife Kaikeyí.

90 Surat.

91 Apparently in the west of India not far from the Indus.

92 “The Pravargya ceremony lasts for three days, and is always performed twice a day, in the forenoon and afternoon. It precedes the animal and Soma sacrifices. For without having undergone it, no one is allowed to take part in the solemn Soma feast prepared for the gods.” Haug’s Aitareya Bráhmaṇam. Vol. II. p. 41. note q.v.

_ 93 Upasads_. “The Gods said, Let us perform the burnt offerings called Upasads (i.e. besieging). For by means of an Upasad, i.e. besieging, they conquer a large (fortified) town.”—Ibid. p. 32.

94 The Soma plant, or Asclepias Acida. Its fermented juice was drunk in sacrifice by the priests and offered to the Gods who enjoyed the intoxicating draught.

95 “Tum in cærimoniarum intervallis Brachmanæ facundi, sollertes, crebros sermones de rerum causis instituebant, alter alterum vincendi cupidi. This public disputation in the assembly of Bráhmans on the nature of things, and the almost fraternal connexion between theology and philosophy deserves some notice; whereas the priests of some religions are generally but little inclined to show favour to philosophers, nay, sometimes persecute them with the most rancorous hatred, as we are taught both by history and experience.… This śloka is found in the MSS. of different recensions of the Rámáyan, and we have, therefore, the most trustworthy testimony to the antiquity of philosophy among the Indians.” SCHLEGEL.

96 The Angas or appendices of the Vedas, pronunciation, prosody, grammar, ritual, astronomy, and explanation of obscurities.

97 In Sanskrit vilva, the Ægle Marmelos. “He who desires food and wishes to grow fat, ought to make his Yúpa (sacrificial post) of Bilva wood.” Haug’s Aítareya Bráhmanam. Vol. II. p. 73.

98 The Mimosa Catechu. “He who desires heaven ought to make his Yúpa of Khádira wood.”—Ibid.

99 The Butea Frondosa. “He who desires beauty and sacred knowledge ought to make his Yúpa of Paláśa wood.”—Ibid.

100 The Cardia Latifolia.

101 A kind of pine. The word means literally the tree of the Gods. Compare the Hebrew עצי יהוה “trees of the Lord.”

102 The Hindus call the constellation of Ursa Major the Seven Rishis or Saints.

103 A minute account of these ancient ceremonies would be out of place here. “Ágnishṭoma is the name of a sacrifice, or rather a series of offerings to fire for five days. It is the first and principal part of the Jyotishṭoma, one of the great sacrifices in which especially the juice of the Soma plant is offered for the purpose of obtaining Swarga or heaven.” GOLDSTÜCKER’S DICTIONARY. “The Ágnishṭoma is Agni. It is called so because they (the gods) praised him with this Stoma. They called it so to hide the proper meaning of the word: for the gods like to hide the proper meaning of words.”

“On account of four classes of gods having praised Agni with four Stomas, the whole was called Chatushṭoma (containing four Stomas).”

“It (the Ágnishṭoma) is called Jyotishṭoma, for they praised Agni when he had risen up (to the sky) in the shape of a light (jyotis).”

“This (Ágnishṭoma) is a sacrificial performance which has no beginning and no end.” HAUG’S Aitareya Bráhmaṇam.

The Atirátra, literally lasting through the night, is a division of the service of the Jyotishṭoma.

The Abhijit, the everywhere victorious, is the name of a sub-division of the great sacrifice of the Gavámanaya.

The Viśvajit, or the all-conquering, is a similar sub-division.

Áyus is the name of a service forming a division of the Abhiplava sacrifice.

The Aptoryám, is the seventh or last part of the Jyotishṭoma, for the performance of which it is not essentially necessary, but a voluntary sacrifice instituted for the attainment of a specific desire. The literal meaning of the word would be in conformity with the Prauḍhamanoramá, “a sacrifice which procures the attainment of the desired object.” GOLDSTÜCKER’S DICTIONARY.

“The Ukthya is a slight modification of the Ágnishṭoma sacrifice. The noun to be supplied to it is kratu. It is a Soma sacrifice also, and one of the seven Saṇsthas or component parts of the Jyotishṭoma. Its name indicates its nature. For Ukthya means ‘what refers to the Uktha,’ which is an older name for Shástra, i.e. recitation of one of the Hotri priests at the time of the Soma libations. Thus this sacrifice is only a kind of supplement to the Ágnishṭoma.” HAUG. Ai. B.

104 “Four classes of priests were required in India at the most solemn sacrifices. 1. The officiating priests, manual labourers, and acolytes, who had chiefly to prepare the sacrificial ground, to dress the altar, slay the victims, and pour out the libations. 2. The choristers, who chant the sacred hymns. 3. The reciters or readers, who repeat certain hymns. 4. The overseers or bishops, who watch and superintend the proceedings of the other priests, and ought to be familiar with all the Vedas. The formulas and verses to be muttered by the first class are contained in the Yajur-veda-sanhitá. The hymns to be sung by the second class are in the Sama-veda-sanhitá. The Atharva-veda is said to be intended for the Brahman or overseer, who is to watch the proceedings of the sacrifice, and to remedy any mistake that may occur. The hymns to be recited by the third class are contained in the Rigveda,” Chips from a German Workshop.

105 The Maruts are the winds, deified in the religion of the Veda like other mighty powers and phenomena of nature.

106 A Titan or fiend whose destruction has given Vishṇu one of his well-known titles, Mádhava.

107 The garden of Indra.

108 One of the most ancient and popular of the numerous names of Vishṇu. The word has been derived in several ways, and may mean he who moved on the (primordial) waters, or he who pervades or influences men or their thoughts.

109 The Horse-Sacrifice, just described.

110 To walk round an object keeping the right side towards it is a mark of great respect. The Sanskrit word for the observance is pradakshiṇá, from pra pro, and daksha right, Greek δεξίος, Latin dexter, Gaelic deas-il. A similar ceremony is observed by the Gaels.

“In the meantime she traced around him, with wavering steps, the propitiation, which some have thought has been derived from the Druidical mythology. It consists, as is well known, in the person who makes the deasil walking three times round the person who is the object of the ceremony, taking care to move according to the course of the sun.”

SCOTT. The Two Drovers.

111 The Amrit, the nectar of the Indian Gods.

_ 112 Gandharvas_ (Southey’s Glendoveers) are celestial musicians inhabiting Indra’s heaven and forming the orchestra at all the banquets of the principal deities.

_ 113 Yakshas_, demigods attendant especially on Kuvera, and employed by him in the care of his garden and treasures.

_ 114 Kimpurushas_, demigods attached also to the service of Kuvera, celestial musicians, represented like centaurs reversed with human figures and horses’ heads.

_ 115 Siddhas_, demigods or spirits of undefined attributes, occupying with the Vidyádharas the middle air or region between the earth and the sun.

Schlegel translates: “Divi, Sapientes, Fidicines, Præpetes, illustres Genii, Præconesque procrearunt natos, masculos, silvicolas; angues porro, Hippocephali Beati, Aligeri, Serpentesque frequentes alacriter generavere prolem innumerabilem.”

116 A mountain in the south of India.

117 The preceptor of the Gods and regent of the planet Jupiter.

118 The celestial architect, the Indian Hephæstus, Mulciber, or Vulcan.

119 The God of Fire.

120 Twin children of the Sun, the physicians of Swarga or Indra’s heaven.

121 The deity of the waters.

122 Parjanya, sometimes confounded with Indra.

123 The bird and vehicle of Vishṇu. He is generally represented as a being something between a man and a bird and considered as the sovereign of the feathered race. He may be compared with the Simurgh of the Persians, the ’Anká of the Arabs, the Griffin of chivalry, the Phœnix of Egypt, and the bird that sits upon the ash Yggdrasil of the Edda.

124 This Canto will appear ridiculous to the European reader. But it should be remembered that the monkeys of an Indian forest, the “bough-deer” as the poets call them, are very different animals from the “turpissima bestia” that accompanies the itinerant organ-grinder or grins in the Zoological Gardens of London. Milton has made his hero, Satan, assume the forms of a cormorant, a toad, and a serpent, and I cannot see that this creation of semi-divine Vánars, or monkeys, is more ridiculous or undignified.

125 The consort of Indra, called also Śachí and Indráṇí.

126 The Michelia champaca. It bears a scented yellow blossom:

“The maid of India blest again to hold In her full lap the Champac’s leaves of gold.”

Lallah Rookh.

127 Vibháṇdak, the father of Rishyaśring

128 A hemiśloka is wanting in Schlegel’s text, which he thus fills up in his Latin translation.

129 Rishyaśring, a Bráhman, had married Śántá who was of the Kshatriya or Warrior caste and an expiatory ceremony was necessary on account of this violation of the law.

130 “The poet no doubt intended to indicate the vernal equinox as the birthday of Ráma. For the month Chaitra is the first of the two months assigned to the spring; it corresponds with the latter half of March and the former half of April in our division of the year. Aditi, the mother of the Gods, is lady of the seventh lunar mansion which is called Punarvasu. The five planets and their positions in the Zodiac are thus enumerated by both commentators: the Sun in Aries, Mars in Capricorn, Saturn in Libra, Jupiter in Cancer, Venus in Pisces.… I leave to astronomers to examine whether the parts of the description agree with one another, and, if this be the case, thence to deduce the date. The Indians place the nativity of Ráma in the confines of the second age (tretá) and the third (dwápara): but it seems that this should be taken in an allegorical sense.… We may consider that the poet had an eye to the time in which, immediately before his own age, the aspects of the heavenly bodies were such as he has described.” SCHLEGEL.

131 The regent of the planet Jupiter.

132 Indra = Jupiter Tonans.

133 “Pushya is the name of a month; but here it means the eighth mansion. The ninth is called Asleshá, or the snake. It is evident from this that Bharat, though his birth is mentioned before that of the twins, was the youngest of the four brothers and Ráma’s junior by eleven months.” SCHLEGEL.

134 A fish, the Zodiacal sign Pisces.

135 One of the constellations, containing stars in the wing of Pegasus.

136 Ráma means the Delight (of the World); Bharat, the Supporter; Lakshmaṇ, the Auspicious; Śatrughna, the Slayer of Foes.

137 Schlegel, in the Indische Bibliothek, remarks that the proficiency of the Indians in this art early attracted the attention of Alexander’s successors, and natives of India were so long exclusively employed in this service that the name Indian was applied to any elephant-driver, to whatever country he might belong.

138 The story of this famous saint is given at sufficient length in Cantos LI-LV.

This saint has given his name to the district and city to the east of Benares. The original name, preserved in a land-grant on copper now in the Museum of the Benares College, has been Moslemized into Ghazeepore (the City of the Soldier-martyr).

139 The son of Kuśik is Viśvámitra.

140 At the recollection of their former enmity, to be described hereafter.

141 The Indian nectar or drink of the Gods.

142 Great joy, according to the Hindu belief, has this effect, not causing each particular hair to stand on end, but gently raising all the down upon the body.

143 The Rákshasas, giants, or fiends who are represented as disturbing the sacrifice, signify here, as often elsewhere, merely the savage tribes which placed themselves in hostile opposition to Bráhmanical institutions.

144 Consisting of horse, foot, chariots, and elephants.

145 “The Gandharvas, or heavenly bards, had originally a warlike character but were afterwards reduced to the office of celestial musicians cheering the banquets of the Gods. Dr. Kuhn has shown their identity with the Centaurs in name, origin and attributes.” GORRESIO.

146 These mysterious animated weapons are enumerated in Cantos XXIX and XXX. Daksha was the son of Brahmá and one of the Prajápatis, Demiurgi, or secondary authors of creation.

147 Youths of the Kshatriya class used to leave unshorn the side locks of their hair. These were called Káka-paksha, or raven’s wings.

148 The Rákshas or giant Rávaṇ, king of Lanká.

149 “The meaning of Aśvins (from aśva a horse, Persian asp, Greek ἵππος, Latin equus, Welsh ech) is Horsemen. They were twin deities of whom frequent mention is made in the Vedas and the Indian myths. The Aśvins have much in common with the Dioscuri of Greece, and their mythical genealogy seems to indicate that their origin was astronomical. They were, perhaps, at first the morning star and evening star. They are said to be the children of the sun and the nymph Aśviní, who is one of the lunar asterisms personified. In the popular mythology they are regarded as the physicians of the Gods.” GORRESIO.

150 The word Kumára (a young prince, a Childe) is also a proper name of Skanda or Kártikeya God of War, the son of Śiva and Umá. The babe was matured in the fire.

151 “At the rising of the sun as well as at noon certain observances, invocations, and prayers were prescribed which might under no circumstances be omitted. One of these observances was the recitation of the Sávitrí, a Vedic hymn to the Sun of wonderful beauty.” GORRESIO.

_ 152 Tripathaga_, Three-path-go, flowing in heaven, on earth, and under the earth. See Canto XLV.

153 Tennyson’s “Indian Cama,” the God of Love, known also by many other names.

_ 154 Umá, or Parvatí, was daughter of Himálaya, Monarch of mountains, and wife of Śiva. See Kálidasa’s Kumára Sambhava_, or Birth of the War-God.

_ 155 Stháṇu_. The Unmoving one, a name of Śiva.

156 “The practice of austerities, voluntary tortures, and mortifications was anciently universal in India, and was held by the Indians to be of immense efficacy. Hence they mortified themselves to expiate sins, to acquire merits, and to obtain superhuman gifts and powers; the Gods themselves sometimes exercised themselves in such austerities, either to raise themselves to greater power and grandeur, or to counteract the austerities of man which threatened to prevail over them and to deprive them of heaven.… Such austerities were called in India tapas (burning ardour, fervent devotion) and he who practised them tapasvin.” GORRESIO.

_ 157 The Bodiless one._

158 “A celebrated lake regarded in India as sacred. It lies in the lofty region between the northern highlands of the Himálayas and mount Kailása, the region of the sacred lakes. The poem, following the popular Indian belief, makes the river Sarayú (now Sarjú) flow from the Mánasa lake; the sources of the river are a little to the south about a day’s journey from the lake. See Lassen, Indische Alterthumshunde, page 34.” GORRESIO. Manas means mind; mánasa, mental, mind-born.

_ 159 Sarovar_ means best of lakes. This is another of the poet’s fanciful etymologies.

160 The confluence of two or more rivers is often a venerated and holy place. The most famous is Prayág or Allahabad, where the Sarasvatí by an underground course is believed to join the Jumna and the Ganges.

161 The botanical names of the trees mentioned in the text are Grislea Tormentosa, Shorea Robusta, Echites Antidysenterica, Bignonia Suaveolens, Œgle Marmelos, and Diospyrus Glutinosa. I have omitted the Kutaja (Echites) and the Tiṇḍuka (Diospyrus).

162 Here we meet with a fresh myth to account for the name of these regions. Malaja is probably a non-Aryan word signifying a hilly country: taken as a Sanskrit compound it means sprung from defilement. The word Karúsha appears to have a somewhat similar meaning.

163 “This is one of those indefinable mythic personages who are found in the ancient traditions of many nations, and in whom cosmogonical or astronomical notions are generally figured. Thus it is related of Agastya that the Vindhyan mountains prostrated themselves before him; and yet the same Agastya is believed to be regent of the star Canopus.” GORRESIO.

He will appear as the friend and helper of Ráma farther on in the poem.

164 The famous pleasure-garden of Kuvera the God of Wealth.

165 “The whole of this Canto together with the following one, regards the belief, formerly prevalent in India, that by virtue of certain spells, to be learnt and muttered, secret knowledge and superhuman powers might be acquired. To this the poet has already alluded in Canto xxiii. These incorporeal weapons are partly represented according to the fashion of those ascribed to the Gods and the different orders of demi-gods, partly are the mere creations of fancy; and it would not be easy to say what idea the poet had of them in his own mind, or what powers he meant to assign to each.” SCHLEGEL.

166 “In Sanskrit Sankára, a word which has various significations but the primary meaning of which is the act of seizing. A magical power seems to be implied of employing the weapons when and where required. The remarks I have made on the preceding Canto apply with still greater force to this. The MSS. greatly vary in the enumeration of these Sankáras, and it is not surprising that copyists have incorrectly written the names which they did not well understand. The commentators throw no light upon the subject.” SCHLEGEL. I have taken the liberty of omitting four of these which Schlegel translates “Scleromphalum, Euomphalum, Centiventrem, and Chrysomphalum.”

167 I omit, after this line, eight ślokes which, as Schlegel allows, are quite out of place.

168 This is the fifth of the avatárs, descents or incarnations of Vishṇu.

169 This is a solar allegory. Vishṇu is the sun, the three steps being his rising, culmination, and setting.

170 Certain ceremonies preliminary to a sacrifice.

171 A river which rises in Budelcund and falls into the Ganges near Patna. It is called also Hiraṇyaráhu, Golden-armed, and Hiraṇyaráha, Auriferous.

172 The modern Berar.

173 According to the Bengal recension the first (Kuśámba) is called Kuśáśva, and his city Kauśáśví. This name does not occur elsewhere. The reading of the northern recension is confirmed by Foê Kouê Ki; p. 385, where the city Kiaoshangmi is mentioned. It lay 500 lis to the south-west of Prayága, on the south bank of the Jumna. Mahodaya is another name of Kanyakubja: Dharmáraṇya, the wood to which the God of Justice is said to have fled through fear of Soma the Moon-God was in Magadh. Girivraja was in the same neighbourhood. See Lasson’s I, A. Vol. I. p. 604.

174 That is, the City of the Bent Virgins, the modern Kanauj or Canouge.

175 Literally, Given by Brahma or devout contemplation.

176 Now called Kośí (Cosy) corrupted from Kauśikí, daughter of Kuś]a.

“This is one of those personifications of rivers so frequent in the Grecian mythology, but in the similar myths is seen the impress of the genius of each people, austere and profoundly religious in India, graceful and devoted to the worship of external beauty in Greece.” GORRESIO.

177 One of the names of the Ganges considered as the daughter of Jahnu. See Canto XLIV.

178 The Indian Crane.

179 Or, rather, geese.

180 A name of the God Śiva.

181 Garuḍa.

182 Ikshváku, the name of a king of Ayodhyá who is regarded as the founder of the Solar race, means also a gourd. Hence, perhaps, the myth.

183 “The region here spoken of is called in the Laws of Manu Madhyadeśa or the middle region. ‘The region situated between the Himálaya and the Vindhya Mountains … is called Madhyadeśa, or the middle region; the space comprised between these two mountains from the eastern to the western sea is called by sages Áryávartta, the seat of honourable men.’ (MANU, II, 21, 22.) The Sanskrit Indians called themselves Áryans, which means honourable, noble, to distinguish themselves from the surrounding nations of different origin.” GORRESIO.

184 Said to be so called from the Jambu, or Rose Apple, abounding in it, and signifying according to the Puránas the central division of the world, the known world.

185 Here used as a name of Vishṇu.

186 Kings are called the husbands of their kingdoms or of the earth; “She and his kingdom were his only brides.” Raghuvaṅśa.

“Doubly divorced! Bad men, you violate A double marriage, ’twixt my crown and me, And then between me and my married wife.”

King Richard II. Act V. Sc. I.

187 The thirty-three Gods are said in the Aitareya Bráhmaṇa, Book I. ch. II. 10. to be the eight Vasus, the eleven Rudras, the twelve Ádityas, Prajápati, either Brahmá or Daksha, and Vashatkára or deified oblation. This must have been the actual number at the beginning of the Vedic religion gradually increased by successive mythical and religious creations till the Indian Pantheon was crowded with abstractions of every kind. Through the reverence with which the words of the Veda were regarded, the immense host of multiplied divinities, in later times, still bore the name of the Thirty-three Gods.

188 “One of the elephants which, according to an ancient belief popular in India, supported the earth with their enormous backs; when one of these elephants shook his wearied head the earth trembled with its woods and hills. An idea, or rather a mythical fancy, similar to this, but reduced to proportions less grand, is found in Virgil when he speaks of Enceladus buried under Ætna:”

“adi semiustum fulmine corpus Urgeri mole hac, ingentemque insuper Ætnam Impositam, ruptis flammam expirare caminis; Et fessum quoties mutat latus, intre mere omnem iam, et cœlum subtexere fumo.”

Æneid. Lib. III. GORRESIO.

189 “The Devas and Asuras (Gods and Titans) fought in the east, the south, the west, and the north, and the Devas were defeated by the Asuras in all these directions. They then fought in the north-eastern direction; there the Devas did not sustain defeat. This direction is aparájitá, i.e. unconquerable. Thence one should do work in this direction, and have it done there; for such a one (alone) is able to clear off his debts.” HAUG’S Aitareya Bráhmanam, Vol. II, p. 33.

The debts here spoken of are a man’s religious obligations to the Gods, the Pitaras or Manes, and men.

190 Vishṇu.

191 “It appears to me that this mythical story has reference to the volcanic phenomena of nature. Kapil may very possibly be that hidden fiery force which suddenly unprisons itself and bursts forth in volcanic effects. Kapil is, moreover, one of the names of Agni the God of Fire.” GORRESIO.

192 Garuḍ was the son of Kaśyap and Vinatá.

193 Garuḍ.

194 A famous and venerated region near the Malabar coast.

195 That is four fires and the sun.

196 Heaven.

197 Wind-Gods.

198 Śiva.

199 The lake Vindu does not exist. Of the seven rivers here mentioned two only, the Ganges and the Sindhu or Indus, are known to geographers. Hládiní means the Gladdener, Pávaní the Purifier, Naliní the Lotus-Clad, and Suchakshu the Fair-eyed.

200 The First or Golden Age.

201 Diti and Aditi were wives of Kaśyap, and mothers respectively of Titans and Gods.

202 One of the seven seas surrounding as many worlds in concentric rings.

203 Śankar and Rudra are names of Śiva.

204 “Śárṅgin, literally carrying a bow of horn, is a constantly recurring name of Vishṇu. The Indians also, therefore, knew the art of making bows out of the hons of antelopes or wild goats, which Homer ascribes to the Trojans of the heroic age.” SCHLEGEL.

205 Dhanvantari, the physician of the Gods.

206 The poet plays upon the word and fancifully derives it from apsu, the locative case plural of ap, water, and rasa, taste.… The word is probably derived from ap, water, and sri, to go, and seems to signify inhabitants of the water, nymphs of the stream; or, as Goldstücker thinks (Dict. s.v.) these divinities were originally personifications of the vapours which are attracted by the sun and form into mist or clouds.

207 “Surá, in the feminine comprehends all sorts of intoxicating liquors, many kinds of which the Indians from the earliest times distilled and prepared from rice, sugar-cane, the palm tree, and various flowers and plants. Nothing is considered more disgraceful among orthodox Hindus than drunkenness, and the use of wine is forbidden not only to Bráhmans but the two other orders as well.… So it clearly appears derogatory to the dignity of the Gods to have received a nymph so pernicious, who ought rather to have been made over to the Titans. However the etymological fancy has prevailed. The word Sura, a God, is derived from the indeclinable Swar heaven.” SCHLEGEL.

208 Literally, high-eared, the horse of Indra. Compare the production of the horse from the sea by Neptune.

209 “And Kaustubha the best Of gems that burns with living light Upon Lord Vishṇu’s breast.”

Churning of the Ocean.

210 “That this story of the birth of Lakshmí is of considerable antiquity is evident from one of her names Kshírábdhi-tanayá, daughter of the Milky Sea, which is found in Amarasinha the most ancient of Indian lexicographers. The similarity to the Greek myth of Venus being born from the foam of the sea is remarkable.”

“In this description of Lakshmí one thing only offends me, that she is said to have four arms. Each of Vishṇu’s arms, single, as far as the elbow, there branches into two; but Lakshmí in all the brass seals that I possess or remember to have seen has two arms only. Nor does this deformity of redundant limbs suit the pattern of perfect beauty.” SCHLEGEL. I have omitted the offensive epithet.

211 Purandhar, a common title of Indra.

212 A few verses are here left untranslated on account of the subject and language being offensive to modern taste.

213 “In this myth of Indra destroying the unborn fruit of Diti with his thunderbolt, from which afterwards came the Maruts or Gods of Wind and Storm, geological phenomena are, it seems, represented under mythical images. In the great Mother of the Gods is, perhaps, figured the dry earth: Indra the God of thunder rends it open, and there issue from its rent bosom the Maruts or exhalations of the earth. But such ancient myths are difficult to interpret with absolute certainty.” GORRESIO.

214 Wind.

215 Indra, with mahá, great, prefixed.

216 The Heavenly Twins.

217 Not banished from heaven as the inferior Gods and demigods sometimes were.

218 Kumárila says: “In the same manner, if it is said that Indra was the seducer of Ahalyá this does not imply that the God Indra committed such a crime, but Indra means the sun, and Ahalyá (from ahan and lí) the night; and as the night is seduced and ruined by the sun of the morning, therefore is Indra called the paramour of Ahalyá.” MAX MULLER, History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 530.

219 “The preceding sixteen lines have occurred before in Canto XLVIII. This Homeric custom of repeating a passage of several lines is strange to our poet. This is the only instance I remember. The repetition of single lines is common enough.” SCHLEGEL.

220 Divine personages of minute size produced from the hair of Brahmá, and probably the origin of

“That small infantry Warred on by cranes.”

221 Sweet, salt, pungent, bitter, acid, and astringent.

222 “Of old hoards and minerals in the earth, the king is entitled to half by reason of his general protection, and because he is the lord paramount of the soil.” MANU, Book VIII. 39.

223 Ghí or clarified butter, “holy oil,” being one of the essentials of sacrifice.

224 “A Bráhman had five principal duties to discharge every day: study and teaching the Veda, oblations to the manes or spirits of the departed, sacrifice to the Gods, hospitable offerings to men, and a gift of food to all creatures. The last consisted of rice or other grain which the Bráhman was to offer every day outside his house in the open air. MANU, Book III. 70.” GORRESIO.

225 These were certain sacred words of invocation such a sváhá, vashaṭ, etc., pronounced at the time of sacrifice.

226 “It is well known that the Persians were called Pahlavas by the Indians. The Śakas are nomad tribes inhabiting Central Asia, the Scythes of the Greeks, whom the Persians also, as Herodotus tells us, called Sakæ just as the Indians did. Lib. VII 64 ὁι γὰρ Πέρσαι πάντας τοὺς Σύθας. καλέουσι Σάκας. The name Yavans seems to be used rather indefinitely for nations situated beyond Persia to the west.… After the time of Alexander the Great the Indians as well as the Persians called the Greeks also Yavans.” SCHLEGEL.

Lassen thinks that the Pahlavas were the same people as the Πάκτυες of Herodotus, and that this non-Indian people dwelt on the north-west confines of India.

227 See page 13, note 6.

228 Barbarians, non-Sanskrit-speaking tribes.

229 A comprehensive term for foreign or outcast races of different faith and language from the Hindus.

230 The Kirátas and Hárítas are savage aborigines of India who occupy hills and jungles and are altogether different in race and character from the Hindus. Dr. Muir remarks in his Sanskrit Texts, Vol. I. p. 488 (second edition) that it does not appear that it is the object of this legend to represent this miraculous creation as the origin of these tribes, and that nothing more may have been intended than that the cow called into existence large armies, of the same stock with particular tribes previously existing.

231 The Great God, Śiva.

232 Nandi, the snow-white bull, the attendant and favourite vehicle of Śiva.

233 “The names of many of these weapons which are mythical and partly allegorical have occurred in Canto XXIX. The general signification of the story is clear enough. It is a contest for supremacy between the regal or military order and Bráhmanical or priestly authority, like one of those struggles which our own Europe saw in the middle ages when without employing warlike weapons the priesthood frequently gained the victory.” SCHLEGEL.

For a full account of the early contests between the Bráhmans and the Kshattriyas, see Muir’s Original Sanskrit Texts (Second edition) Vol. I. Ch. IV.

234 “Triśanku, king of Ayodhyá, was seventh in descent from Ikshváku, and Daśaratha holds the thirty-fourth place in the same genealogy. See Canto LXX. We are thrown back, therefore, to very ancient times, and it occasions some surprise to find Vaśishṭha and Viśvámitra, actors in these occurences, still alive in Rama’s time.”

235 “It does not appear how Triśanku, in asking the aid of Vaśishṭha’s sons after applying in vain to their father, could be charged with resorting to another śákhá (School) in the ordinary sense of that word; as it is not conceivable that the sons should have been of another Śákhá from the father, whose cause they espouse with so much warmth. The commentator in the Bombay edition explains the word Śákhantaram as Yájanádiná rakshántaram, ‘one who by sacrificing for thee, etc., will be another protector.’ Gorresio’s Gauḍa text, which may often be used as a commentary on the older one, has the following paraphrase of the words in question, ch. 60, 3. Múlam utsṛijya kasmát tvam sákhásv ichhasi lambitum. ‘Why, forsaking the root, dost thou desire to hang upon the branches?’ ” MUIR, Sanskrit Texts, Vol. I., p. 401.

236 A Chaṇḍála was a man born of the illegal and impure union of a Śúdra with a woman of one of the three higher castes.

237 “The Chaṇḍála was regarded as the vilest and most abject of the men sprung from wedlock forbidden by the law (Mánavadharmaśástra, Lib. X. 12.); a kind of social malediction weighed upon his head and rejected him from human society.” GORRESIO.

238 This appellation, occuring nowhere else in the poem except as the name of a city, appears twice in this Canto as a name of Vaśishṭha.

239 “The seven ancient rishis or saints, as has been said before, were the seven stars of Ursa Major. The seven other new saints which are here said to have been created by Viśvámitra should be seven new southern stars, a sort of new Ursa. Von Schlegel thinks that this mythical fiction of new stars created by Viśvámitra may signify that these southern stars, unknown to the Indians as long as they remained in the neighbourhood of the Ganges, became known to them at a later date when they colonized the southern regions of India.” GORRESIO.

240 “This cannot refer to the events just related: for Viśvámitra was successful in the sacrifice performed for Triśanku. And yet no other impediment is mentioned. Still his restless mind would not allow him to remain longer in the same spot. So the character of Viśvámitra is ingeniously and skilfully shadowed forth: as he had been formerly a most warlike king, loving battle and glory, bold, active, sometimes unjust, and more frequently magnanimous, such also he always shows himself in his character of anchorite and ascetic.” SCHLEGEL.

241 Near the modern city of Ajmere. The place is sacred still, and the name is preserved in the Hindí. Lassen, however, says that this Pushkala or Pushkara, called by the Grecian writers Πευκελίτις, the earliest place of pilgrimage mentioned by name, is not to be confounded with the modern Pushkara in Ajmere.

242 “Ambarísha is the twenty-ninth in descent from Ikshváku, and is therefore separated by an immense space of time from Triśanku in whose story Viśvámitra had played so important a part. Yet Richíka, who is represented as having young sons while Ambarísha was yet reigning being himself the son of Bhrigu and to be numbered with the most ancient sages, is said to have married the younger sister of Viśvámitra. But I need not again remark that there is a perpetual anachronism in Indian mythology.” SCHLEGEL..

“In the mythical story related in this and the following Canto we may discover, I think, some indication of the epoch at which the immolation of lower animals was substituted for human sacrifice.… So when Iphigenia was about to be sacrificed at Aulis, one legend tells us that a hind was substituted for the virgin.” GORRESIO.

So the ram caught in the thicket took the place of Isaac, or, as the Musalmáns say, of Ishmael.

243 The Indian Cupid.

244 “The same as she whose praises Viśvámitra has already sung in Canto XXXV, and whom the poet brings yet alive upon the scene in Canto LXI. Her proper name was Satyavatí (Truthful); the patronymic, Kauśikí was preserved by the river into which she is said to have been changed, and is still recognized in the corrupted forms Kuśa and Kuśí. The river flows from the heights of the Himálaya towards the Ganges, bounding on the east the country of Videha (Behar). The name is no doubt half hidden in the Cosoagus of Pliny and the Kossounos of Arrian. But each author has fallen into the same error in his enumeration of these rivers (Condochatem, Erannoboam, Cosoagum, Sonum). The Erannoboas, (Hiraṇyaváha) and the Sone are not different streams, but well-known names of the same river. Moreover the order is disturbed, in which on the right and left they fall into the Ganges. To be consistent with geography it should be written: Erannoboam sive Sonum, Condochatem (Gandakí), Cosoagum.” SCHLEGEL.

245 “Daksha was one of the ancient Progenitors or Prajápatis created by Brahmá. The sacrifice which is here spoken of and in which Śankar or Śiva (called also here Rudra and Bhava) smote the Gods because he had not been invited to share the sacred oblations with them, seems to refer to the origin of the worship of Śiva, to its increase and to the struggle it maintained with other older forms of worship.” GORRESIO.

246 Sítá means a furrow.

“Great Erectheus swayed, That owed his nurture to the blue-eyed maid, But from the teeming furrow took his birth, The mighty offspring of the foodful earth.”

Iliad, Book II.

247 “The whole story of Sítá, as will be seen in the course of the poem has a great analogy with the ancient myth of Proserpine.” GORRESIO.

248 A different lady from the Goddess of the Jumna who bears the same name.

249 This is another fanciful derivation, Sa—with, and gara—poison.

_ 250 Purushádak_ means a cannibal. First called Kalmáshapáda on account of his spotted feet he is said to have been turned into a cannibal for killing the son of Vaśishṭha.

251 “In the setting forth of these royal genealogies the Bengal recension varies but slightly from the Northern. The first six names of the genealogy of the Kings of Ayodhyá are partly theogonical and partly cosmogonical; the other names are no doubt in accordance with tradition and deserve the same amount of credence as the ancient traditional genealogies of other nations.” GORRESIO.

252 The tenth of the lunar asterisms, composed of five stars.

253 There are two lunar asterisms of this name, one following the other immediately, forming the eleventh and twelfth of the lunar mansions.

254 This is another Ráma, son of Jamadagni, called Paraśuráma, or Ráma with the axe, from the weapon which he carried. He was while he lived the terror of the Warrior caste, and his name recalls long and fierce struggles between the sacerdotal and military order in which the latter suffered severely at the hands of their implacable enemy.

255 “The author of the Raghuvaṅśa places the mountain Mahendra in the territory of the king of the Kalingans, whose palace commanded a view of the ocean. It is well known that the country along the coast to the south of the mouths of the Ganges was the seat of this people. Hence it may be suspected that this Mahendra is what Pliny calls ‘promontorium Calingon.’ The modern name, Cape Palmyras, from the palmyras Borassus flabelliformis, which abound there agrees remarkably with the description of the poet who speaks of the groves of these trees. Raghuvaṅśa, VI. 51.” SCHLEGEL.

256 Śiva.

257 Siva. God of the Azure Neck.

258 Śatrughna means slayer of foes, and the word is repeated as an intensive epithet.

259 Alluding to the images of Vishṇu, which have four arms, the four princes being portions of the substance of that God.

260 Chief of the insignia of imperial dignity.

261 Whisks, usually made of the long tails of the Yak.

262 Chitraratha, King of the Gandharvas.

263 The Chandrakánta or Moonstone, a sort of crystal supposed to be composed of congealed moonbeams.

264 A customary mark of respect to a superior.

265 Ráhu, the ascending node, is in mythology a demon with the tail of a dragon whose head was severed from his body by Vishṇu, but being immortal, the head and tail retained their separate existence and being transferred to the stellar sphere became the authors of eclipses; the first especially by endeavouring to swallow the sun and moon.

266 In eclipse.

267 The seventh of the lunar asterisms.

268 Kauśalyá and Sumitrá.

269 A king of the Lunar race, and father of Yayáti.

270 Literally the chamber of wrath, a “growlery,” a small, dark, unfurnished room to which it seems, the wives and ladies of the king betook themselves when offended and sulky.

271 In these four lines I do not translate faithfully, and I do not venture to follow Kaikeyí farther in her eulogy of the hump-back’s charms.

272 These verses are evidently an interpolation. They contain nothing that has not been already related: the words only are altered. As the whole poem could not be recited at once, the rhapsodists at the beginning of a fresh recitation would naturally remind their hearers of the events immediately preceding.

273 The śloka or distich which I have been forced to expand into these nine lines is evidently spurious, but is found in all the commented MSS. which Schlegel consulted.

274 Manmatha, Mind-disturber, a name of Káma or Love.

275 This story is told in the Mahábhárat. A free version of it may be found in Scenes from the Rámáyan, etc.

276 Only the highest merit obtains a home in heaven for ever. Minor degrees of merit procure only leases of heavenly mansions terminable after periods proportioned to the fund which buys them. King Yayáti went to heaven and when his term expired was unceremoniously ejected, and thrown down to earth.

277 See Additional Notes, THE SUPPLIANT DOVE.

278 Indra, called also Purandara, Town-destroyer.

279 Indra’s charioteer.

280 The elephant of Indra.

281 A star in the spike of Virgo: hence the name of the mouth Chaitra or Chait.

282 The Rain-God.

283 In a former life.

284 One of the lunar asterisms, represented as the favourite wife of the Moon. See p. 4, note.

285 The Sea.

286 The Moon.

287 The comparison may to a European reader seem a homely one. But Spenser likens an infuriate woman to a cow “That is berobbed of her youngling dere.” Shakspeare also makes King Henry VI compare himself to the calf’s mother that “Runs lowing up and down, Looking the way her harmless young one went.” “Cows,” says De Quincey, “are amongst the gentlest of breathing creatures; none show more passionate tenderness to their young, when deprived of them, and, in short, I am not ashamed to profess a deep love for these gentle creatures.”

288 The commentators say that, in a former creation, Ocean grieved his mother and suffered in consequence the pains of hell.

289 As described in Book I Canto XL.

290 Parasúráma.

291 The Sanskrit word hasta signifies both hand, and the trunk of “The beast that bears between his eyes a serpent for a head.”

292 See P. 41.

293 The first progeny of Brahmá or Brahmá himself.

294 These are three names of the Sun.

295 See P. 1.

296 The saints who form the constellation of Ursa Major.

297 The regent of the planet Venus.

298 Kuvera.

_ 299 Bali_, or the presentation of food to all created beings, is one of the five great sacraments of the Hindu religion: it consists in throwing a small parcel of the offering, Ghee, or rice, or the like, into the open air at the back of the house.

300 In mythology, a demon slain by Indra.

301 Called also Garuḍ, the King of the birds, offspring of Vinatá. See p. 53.

302 See P. 56.

303 See P. 43.

304 The story of Sávitrí, told in the Mahábhárat, has been admirably translated by Rückert, and elegantly epitomized by Mrs. Manning in India, Ancient and Mediæval. There is a free rendering of the story in Idylls from the Sanskrit.

305 Fire for sacrificial purposes is produced by the attrition of two pieces of wood.

306 Kaikeyí.

307 The chapel where the sacred fire used in worship is kept.

308 The students and teachers of the Taittiríya portion of the Yajur Veda.

309 Two of the divine personages called Prajápatis and Brahmádikas who were first created by Brahmá.

310 It was the custom of the kings of the solar dynasty to resign in their extreme old age the kingdom to the heir, and spend the remainder of their days in holy meditation in the forest:

“For such through ages in their life’s decline Is the good custom of Ikshváku’s line.”

Raghuraṅśa.

311 See Book I, Canto XXXIX. An Indian prince in more modern times appears to have diverted himself in a similar way.

It is still reported in Belgaum that Appay Deasy was wont to amuse himself “by making several young and beautiful women stand side by side on a narrow balcony, without a parapet, overhanging the deep reservoir at the new palace in Nipani. He used then to pass along the line of trembling creatures, and suddenly thrusting one of them headlong into the water below, he used to watch her drowning, and derive pleasure from her dying agonies.”—History of the Belgaum District. By H. J. Stokes, M. S. C.

312 Chitraratha, King of the celestial choristers.

313 It is said that the bamboo dies after flowering.

314 “Thirty centuries have passed since he began this memorable journey. Every step of it is known and is annually traversed by thousands: hero worship is not extinct. What can Faith do! How strong are the ties of religion when entwined with the legends of a country! How many a cart creeps creaking and weary along the road from Ayodhyá to Chitrakúṭ. It is this that gives the Rámáyan a strange interest, the story still lives.” Calcutta Review: Vol. XXIII.

315 See p. 72.

316 Four stars of the sixteenth lunar asterism.

317 In the marriage service.

318 The husks and chaff of the rice offered to the Gods.

319 An important sacrifice at which seventeen victims were immolated.

320 The great pilgrimage to the Himálayas, in order to die there.

321 Known to Europeans as the Goomtee.

322 A tree, commonly called Ingua.

323 Sacrificial posts to which the victims were tied.

324 Daughter of Jahnu, a name of the Ganges. See p. 55.

325 The Mainá or Gracula religiosa, a favourite cage-bird, easily taught to talk.

326 The Jumna.

327 The Hindu name of Allahabad.

328 The Langúr is a large monkey.

329 A mountain said to lie to the east of Meru.

330 Another name of the Jumna, daughter of the Sun.

331 “We have often looked on that green hill: it is the holiest spot of that sect of the Hindu faith who devote themselves to this incarnation of Vishṇu. The whole neighbourhood is Ráma’s country. Every headland has some legend, every cavern is connected with his name; some of the wild fruits are still called Sítáphal, being the reputed food of the exile. Thousands and thousands annually visit the spot, and round the hill is a raised foot-path, on which the devotee, with naked feet, treads full of pious awe.” Calcutta Review, Vol. XXIII.

332 Deities of a particular class in which five or ten are enumerated. They are worshipped particularly at the funeral obsequies in honour of deceased progenitors.

333 “So in Homer the horses of Achilles lamented with many bitter tears the death of Patroclus slain by Hector:”

“Ἵπποι δ’ Αἰακίδαο, μάχης ἀπάνευθεν ἐότες, Κλᾶιον, ἐπειδὴ πρῶτα πυθέσθην ἡνιόχοιο Ἐν κονίνσι πεσόντος ὑφ’ Ἕκτορος ἀνδροφόνοιο”

ILIAD. XVII. 426.

“Ancient poesy frequently associated nature with the joys and sorrows of man.” GORRESIO.

334 The lines containing this heap of forced metaphors are marked as spurious by Schlegel.

335 The southern region is the abode of Yama the Indian Pluto, and of departed spirits.

336 The five elements of which the body consists, and to which it returns.

337 So dying York cries over the body of Suffolk:

“Tarry, dear cousin Suffolk! My soul shall thine keep company to heaven: Tarry, sweet soul, for mine, then fly abreast.”

King Henry V, Act IV, 6.

338 Kauśalyá, daughter of the king of another Kośal.

339 Rájagriha, or Girivraja was the capital of Aśvapati, Bharat’s maternal grandfather.

340 The Kekayas or Kaikayas in the Punjab appear amongst the chief nations in the war of the Mahábhárata; their king being a kinsman of Krishṇa.

341 Hástinapura was the capital of the kingdom of Kuru, near the modern Delhi.

342 The Panchálas occupied the upper part of the Doab.

343 “Kurujángala and its inhabitants are frequently mentioned in the Mahábhárata, as in the Ádi-parv. 3789, 4337, et al.” WILSON’S Vishṇu Puráṇa, Vol. II. p. 176. DR. HALL’S Note.

344 “The Ὁξύματις of Arrian. See As. Res. Vol. XV. p. 420, 421, also Indische Alterthumskunde, Vol. I. p. 602, first footnote.” WILSON’S Vishṇu Puráṇa, Vol. I. p. 421. DR. HALL’S Edition. The Ikshumatí was a river in Kurukshetra.

345 “The Báhíkas are described in the Mahábhárata, Karṇa Parvan, with some detail, and comprehend the different nations of the Punjab from the Sutlej to the Indus.” WILSON’S Vishṇu Puráṇa, Vol. I. p. 167.

346 The Beas, Hyphasis, or Bibasis.

347 It would be lost labour to attempt to verify all the towns and streams mentioned in Cantos LXVIII and LXXII. Professor Wilson observes (Vishṇu Puráṇa, p. 139. Dr. Hall’s Edition) “States, and tribes, and cities have disappeared, even from recollection; and some of the natural features of the country, especially the rivers, have undergone a total alteration.… Notwithstanding these impediments, however, we should be able to identify at least mountains and rivers, to a much greater extent than is now practicable, if our maps were not so miserably defective in their nomenclature. None of our surveyors or geographers have been oriental scholars. It may be doubted if any of them have been conversant with the spoken language of the country. They have, consequently, put down names at random, according to their own inaccurate appreciation of sounds carelessly, vulgarly, and corruptly uttered; and their maps of India are crowded with appellations which bear no similitude whatever either to past or present denominations. We need not wonder that we cannot discover Sanskrit names in English maps, when, in the immediate vicinity of Calcutta, Barnagore represents Baráhanagar, Dakshineśwar is metamorphosed into Duckinsore, Ulubaría into Willoughbury.… There is scarcely a name in our Indian maps that does not afford proof of extreme indifference to accuracy in nomenclature, and of an incorrectness in estimating sounds, which is, in some degree, perhaps, a national defect.”

For further information regarding the road from Ayodhyá to Rájagriha, see Additional Notes.

348 “The Śatadrú, ‘the hundred-channeled’—the Zaradrus of Ptolemy, Hesydrus of Pliny—is the Sutlej.” WILSON’S Vishṇu Puráṇa, Vol. II. p. 130.

349 The Sarasvatí or Sursooty is a tributary of the Caggar or Guggur in Sirhind.

_ 350 Súryamcha pratimehatu_, adversus solem mingat. An offence expressly forbidden by the Laws of Manu.

351 Bharat does not intend these curses for any particular person: he merely wishes to prove his own innocence by invoking them on his own head if he had any share in banishing Ráma.

352 The Sáma-veda, the hymns of which are chanted aloud.

353 Walking from right to left.

354 Birth and death, pleasure and pain, loss and gain.

355 Erected upon a tree or high staff in honour of Indra.

356 I follow in this stanza the Bombay edition in preference to Schlegel’s which gives the tears of joy to the courtiers.

357 The commentator says “Śatrughna accompanied by the other sons of the king.”

358 Not Bharat’s uncle, but some councillor.

_ 359 Śatakratu_, Lord of a hundred sacrifices, the performance of a hundred Aśvamedhas or sacrifices of a horse entitling the sacrificer to this exalted dignity.

360 The modern Malabar.

361 Now Sungroor, in the Allahabad district.

362 Ráma, Lakshmaṇ, and Sumantra.

363 The svastika, a little cross with a transverse line at each extremity.

364 When an army marched it was customary to burn the huts in which it had spent the night.

365 Yáma, Varuṇa, and Kuvera.

366 “A happy land in the remote north where the inhabitants enjoy a natural pefection attended with complete happiness obtained without exertion. There is there no vicissitude, nor decrepitude, nor death, nor fear: no distinction of virtue and vice, none of the inequalities denoted by the words best, worst, and intermediate, nor any change resulting from the succession of the four Yugas.” See MUIR’S Sanskrit Texts, Vol. I. p. 492.

367 The Moon.

368 The poet does not tell us what these lakes contained.

369 These ten lines are a substitution for, and not a translation of the text which Carey and Marshman thus render: “This mountain adorned with mango, jumboo, usuna, lodhra, piala, punusa, dhava, unkotha, bhuvya, tinisha, vilwa, tindooka, bamboo, kashmaree, urista, uruna, madhooka, tilaka, vuduree, amluka, nipa, vetra, dhunwuna, veejaka, and other trees affording flowers, and fruits, and the most delightful shade, how charming does it appear!”

_ 370 Vidyadharis_, Spirits of Air, sylphs.

371 A lake attached either to Amarávatí the residence of Indra, or Alaká that of Kuvera.

372 The Ganges of heaven.

373 Naliní, as here, may be the name of any lake covered with lotuses.

374 This canto is allowed, by Indian commentators, to be an interpolation. It cannot be the work of Válmíki.

375 A fine bird with a strong, sweet note, and great imitative powers.

376 Bauhinea variegata, a species of ebony.

377 The rainbow is called the bow of Indra.

378 Bhogavatí, the abode of the Nágas or Serpent race.

379 “The order of the procession on these occasions is that the children precede according to age, then the women and after that the men according to age, the youngest first and the eldest last: when they descend into the water this is reversed and resumed when they come out of it.” CAREY AND MARSHMAN.

380 Vṛihaspati, the preceptor of the Gods.

381 Garuḍ, the king of birds.

382 To be won by virtue.

383 The four religious orders, referable to different times of life are, that of the student, that of the householder, that of the anchorite, and that of the mendicant.

384 To Gods, men, and Manes.

385 Gayá is a very holy city in Behar. Every good Hindu ought once in his life to make funeral offerings in Gayá in honour of his ancestors.

_ 386 Put_ is the name of that region of hell to which men are doomed who leave no son to perform the funeral rites which are necessary to assure the happiness of the departed. Putra, the common word for a son is said by the highest authority to be derived from Put and tra deliverer.

387 It was the custom of Indian women when mourning for their absent husbands to bind their hair in a long single braid.

Carey and Marshman translate, “the one-tailed city.”

388 The verses in a different metre with which some cantos end are all to be regarded with suspicion. Schlegel regrets that he did not exclude them all from his edition. These lines are manifestly spurious. See Additional Notes.

389 This genealogy is a repetition with slight variation of that given in Book I, Canto LXX.

390 In Gorresio’s recension identified with Vishṇu. See Muir’s Sanskrit Texts, Vol. IV. pp 29, 30.

391 From sa with, and gara poison.

392 See Book I. Canto XL.

393 A practice which has frequently been described, under the name of dherna, by European travellers in India.

394 Compare Milton’s “beseeching or beseiging.”

395 Ten-headed, ten-necked, ten faced, are common epithets of Rávaṇ the giant king of Lanká.

396 The spouse of Rohiṇí is the Moon: Ráhu is the demon who causes eclipses.

397 “Once,” says the Commentator Tírtha, “in the battle between the Gods and demons the Gods were vanquished, and the sun was overthrown by Ráhu. At the request of the Gods Atri undertook the management of the sun for a week.”

398 Now Nundgaon, in Oudh.

399 A part of the great Daṇḍak forest.

400 When the saint Máṇḍavya had doomed some saint’s wife, who was Anasúyá’s friend, to become a widow on the morrow.

401 Heavenly nymphs.

402 The ball or present of food to all created beings.

403 The clarified butter &c. cast into the sacred fire.

404 The Moon-God: “he is,” says the commentator, “the special deity of Bráhmans.”

405 “Because he was an incarnation of the deity,” says the commentator, “otherwise such honour paid by men of the sacerdotal caste to one of the military would be improper.”

406 The king of birds.

_ 407 Kálántakayamopamam_, resembling Yáma the destroyer.

408 Somewhat inconsistently with this part of the story Tumburu is mentioned in Book II, Canto XII as one of the Gandharvas or heavenly minstrels summoned to perform at Bharadvája’s feast.

409 Rambhá appears in Book I Canto LXIV as the temptress of Viśvámitra.

410 The conclusion of this Canto is all a vain repetition: it is manifestly spurious and a very feeble imitation of Válmíki’s style. See Additional Notes.

411 “Even when he had alighted,” says the commentator: The feet of Gods do not touch the ground.

412 A name of Indra.

413 Śachí is the consort of Indra.

414 The spheres or mansions gained by those who have duly performed the sacrifices required of them. Different situations are assigned to these spheres, some placing them near the sun, others near the moon.

Canto CXXX. The Consecration. (part 4)

415 Hermits who live upon roots which they dig out of the earth: literally diggers, derived from the prefix vi and khan to dig.

416 Generally, divine personages of the height of a man’s thumb, produced from Brahmá’s hair: here, according to the commentator followed by Gorresio, hermits who when they have obtained fresh food throw away what they had laid up before.

417 Sprung from the washings of Vishṇuu’s feet.

418 Four fires burning round them, and the sun above.

419 The tax allowed to the king by the Laws of Manu.

420 Near the celebrated Rámagiri or Ráma’s Hill, now Rám-ṭek, near Nagpore—the scene of the Yaksha’s exile in the Messenger Cloud.

421 A hundred Aśvamedhas or sacrifices of a horse raise the sacrificer to the dignity of Indra.

422 Indra.

423 Gorresio observes that Daśaratha was dead and that Sítá had been informed of his death. In his translation he substitutes for the words of the text “thy relations and mine.” This is quite superfluous. Daśaratha though in heaven still took a loving interest in the fortunes of his son.

424 One of the hermits who had followed Ráma.

425 The lake of the five nymphs.

426 The holy fig-tree.

427 The bread-fruit tree, Artocarpus integrifolia.

428 A fine timber tree, Shorea robusta.

429 The God of fire.

430 Kuvera, the God of riches.

431 The Sun.

432 Brahmá, the creator.

433 Śiva.

434 The Wind-God.

435 The God of the sea.

436 A class of demi-gods, eight in number.

437 The holiest text of the Vedas, deified.

438 Vásuki.

439 Garuḍ.

440 The War-God.

441 One of the Pleiades generally regarded as the model of wifely excellence.

442 The Madhúka, or, as it is now called, Mahuwá, is the Bassia latifolia, a tree from whose blossoms a spirit is extracted.

443 “I should have doubted whether Manu could have been the right reading here, but that it occurs again in verse 29, where it is in like manner followed in verse 31 by Analá, so that it would certainly seem that the name Manu is intended to stand for a female, the daughter of Daksha. The Gauḍa recension, followed by Signor Gorresio (III 20, 12), adopts an entirely different reading at the end of the line, viz. Balám Atibalám api, ‘Balá and Atibilá,’ instead of Manu and Analá. I see that Professor Roth s.v. adduces the authority of the Amara Kosha and of the Commentator on Páṇini for stating that the word sometimes means ‘the wife of Manu.’ In the following text of the Mahábhárata I. 2553. also, Manu appears to be the name of a female: ‘Anaradyam, Manum, Vañsám, Asurám, Márgaṇapriyám, Anúpám, Subhagám, Bhásím iti, Prádhá vyajayata. Prádhá (daughter of Daksha) bore Anavadyá, Manu, Vanśá, Márgaṇapriyá, Anúpá, Subhagá. and Bhásí.’ ” Muir’s Sanskrit Text, Vol. I. p. 116.

444 The elephant of Indra.

_ 445 Golángúlas_, described as a kind of monkey, of a black colour, and having a tail like a cow.

446 Eight elephants attached to the four quarters and intermediate points of the compass, to support and guard the earth.

447 Some scholars identify the centaurs with the Gandharvas.

448 The hooded serpents, says the commentator Tírtha, were the offspring of Surasá: all others of Kadrú.

449 The text reads Kaśyapa, “a descendant of Kaśyapa,” who according to Rám. II. l0, 6, ought to be Vivasvat. But as it is stated in the preceding part of this passage III. 14, 11 f. that Manu was one of Kaśyapa’s eight wives, we must here read Kaśyap. The Ganda recension reads (III, 20, 30) Manur manushyáms cha tatha janayámása Rághana, instead of the corresponding line in the Bombay edition. Muir’s Sanskrit Text, Vol I, p. 117.

450 The original verses merely name the trees. I have been obliged to amplify slightly and to omit some quas versu dicere non est; e.g. the tiniśa (Dalbergia ougeiniensis), punnága (Rottleria tinctoria), tilaka (not named), syandana (Dalbergia ougeiniensis again), vandana (unknown), nípa (Nauclea Kadamba), lakucha (Artœarpus lacucha), dhava (Grislea tomentosa), Aśvakarna (another name for the Sál), Śamí (Acacia Suma), khadira (Mimosa catechu), kinśuka (Butea frondosa), pátala (Bignonia suaveolens).

451 Acacia Suma.

452 The south is supposed to be the residence of the departed.

453 The sun.

454 The night is divided into three watches of four hours each.

455 The chief chamberlain and attendant of Śiva or Rudra.

456 Umá or Párvati, the consort of Śiva.

457 A star, one of the favourites of the Moon.

458 The God of love.

459 A demon slain by Indra.

460 Chitraratha, King of the Gandharvas.

461 Titanic.

462 The Sáriká is the Maina, a bird like a starling.

463 Mahákapála, Sthúláksha, Pramátha, Triśiras.

464 Vishṇu, who bears a chakra or discus.

465 Śiva.

466 See Additional Notes—DAKSHA’S SACRIFICE.

467 Himálaya.

468 One of the mysterious weapons given to Ráma.

469 A periphrasis for the body.

470 Triśirás.

471 The Three-headed.

472 The demon who causes eclipses.

473 “This Asura was a friend of Indra, and taking advantage of his friend’s confidence, he drank up Indra’s strength along with a draught of wine and Soma. Indra then told the Aśvins and Sarasvatí that Namuchi had drunk up his strength. The Aśvins in consequence gave Indra a thunderbolt in the form of a foam, with which he smote off the head of Namuchi.” GARRETT’S Classical Dictionary of India. See also Book I. p. 39.

474 Indra.

475 Popularly supposed to cause death.

476 Garuḍ, the King of Birds, carried off the Amrit or drink of Paradise from Indra’s custody.

477 A demon, son of Kaśyap and Diti, slain by Rudra or Śiva when he attempted to carry off the tree of Paradise.

478 Namuchi and Vritra were two demons slain by Indra. Vritra personifies drought, the enemy of Indra, who imprisons the rain in the cloud.

479 Another demon slain by Indra.

480 The capital of the giant king Rávaṇ.

481 Kuvera, the God of gold.

482 In the great deluge.

483 The giant Márícha, son of Táḍaká. Táḍaká was slain by Ráma. See p. 39.

484 Indra’s elephant.

485 Bhogavatí, in Pátála in the regions under the earth, is the capital of the serpent race whose king is Vásuki.

486 the grove of Indra.

487 Pulastya is considered as the ancestor of the Rakshases or giants, as he is the father of Viśravas, the father of Rávaṇ and his brethren.

488 Beings with the body of a man and the head of a horse.

489 Ájas, Maríchipas, Vaikhánasas, Máshas, and Bálakhilyas are classes of supernatural beings who lead the lives of hermits.

490 “The younger brother of the giant Rávaṇ; when he and his brother had practiced austerities for a long series of years, Brahmá appeared to offer them boons: Vibhishaṇa asked that he might never meditate any unrighteousness.… On the death of Rávaṇ Vibhishaṇa was installed as Rája of Lanká.” GARRETT’S Classical Dictionary of India.

491 Serpent-gods.

492 See p. 33.

493 The Sanskrit words for car and jewels begin with ra.

494 A race of beings of human shape but with the heads of horses, like centaurs reversed.

495 The favourite wife of the Moon.

496 The planet Saturn.

497 Another favourite of the Moon; one of the lunar mansions.

498 The Rudras, agents in creation, are eight in number; they sprang from the forehead of Brahmá.

499 Maruts, the attendants of Indra.

500 Radiant demi-gods.

501 The mountain which was used by the Gods as a churning stick at the Churning of the Ocean.

502 The story will be found in GARRETT’S Classical Dictionary. See ADDITIONAL NOTES.

503 Mercury: to be carefully distinguished from Buddha.

504 The spirits of the good dwell in heaven until their store of accumulated merit is exhausted. Then they redescend to earth in the form of falling stars.

505 See The Descent of Gangá, Book I Canto XLIV.

506 See Book I Canto XXV.

_ 507 Aśoka_ is compounded of a not and śoka grief.

508 See Book I Canto XXXI.

509 An Asur or demon, king of Tripura, the modern Tipperah.

510 Śiva.

511 See Book I, Canto LIX.

512 The preceptor of the Gods.

513 From the root vid, to find.

514 Rávaṇ.

515 Or Curlews’ Wood.

516 Iron-faced.

517 Kabandha means a trunk.

518 A class of mythological giants. In the Epic period they were probably personifications of the aborigines of India.

519 Peace, war, marching, halting, sowing dissensions, and seeking protection.

520 See Book I, Canto XVI.

521 Or as the commentator Tírtha says, Śilápidháná, rock-covered, may be the name of the cavern.

522 Pampá is said by the commentator to be the name both of a lake and a brook which flows into it. The brook is said to rise in the hill Rishyamúka.

523 Who was acting as Regent for Ráma and leading an ascetic life while he mourned for his absent brother.

524 The Indian Cuckoo.

525 The Cassia Fistula or Amaltás is a splendid tree like a giant laburnum covered with a profusion of chains and tassels of gold. Dr. Roxburgh well describes it as “uncommonly beautiful when in flower, few trees surpassing it in the elegance of its numerous long pendulous racemes of large bright-yellow flowers intermixed with the young lively green foliage.” It is remarkable also for its curious cylindrical black seed-pods about two feet long, which are called monkeys’ walking-sticks.

526 “The Jonesia Asoca is a tree of considerable size, native of southern India. It blossoms in February and March with large erect compact clusters of flowers, varying in colour from pale-orange to scarlet, almost to be mistaken, on a hasty glance, for immense trusses of bloom of an Ixora. Mr. Fortune considered this tree, when in full bloom, superior in beauty even to the Amherstia.

The first time I saw the Asoc in flower was on the hill where the famous rock-cut temple of Kárlí is situated, and a large concourse of natives had assembled for the celebration of some Hindoo festival. Before proceeding to the temple the Mahratta women gathered from two trees, which were flowering somewhat below, each a fine truss of blossom, and inserted it in the hair at the back of her head.… As they moved about in groups it is impossible to imagine a more delightful effect than the rich scarlet bunches of flowers presented on their fine glossy jet-black hair.” FIRMINGER, Gardening for India.

527 No other word can express the movements of peafowl under the influence of pleasing excitement, especially when after the long drought they hear the welcome roar of the thunder and feel that the rain is near.

528 The Dewy Season is one of the six ancient seasons of the Indian year, lasting from the middle of January to the middle of March.

529 Ráma appears to mean that on a former occasion a crow flying high overhead was an omen that indicated his approaching separation from Sítá; and that now the same bird’s perching on a tree near him may be regarded as a happy augury that she will soon be restored to her husband.

530 A tree with beautiful and fragrant blossoms.

531 A race of semi-divine musicians attached to the service of Kuvera, represented as centaurs reversed with human figures and horses’ heads.

532 Butea Frondosa. A tree that bears a profusion of brilliant red flowers which appear before the leaves.

533 I omit five ślokas which contain nothing but a list of trees for which, with one or two exceptions, there are no equivalent names in English. The following is Gorresio’s translation of the corresponding passage in the Bengal recension:—

“Oh come risplendono in questa stagione di primavera i vitici, le galedupe, le bassie, le dalbergie, i diospyri … le tile, le michelie, le rottlerie, le pentaptere ed i pterospermi, i bombaci, le grislee, gli abri, gli amaranti e le dalbergie; i sirii, le galedupe, le barringtonie ed i palmizi, i xanthocymi, il pepebetel, le verbosine e le ticaie, le nauclee le erythrine, gli asochi, e le tapie fanno d’ogni intorno pompa de’ lor fiori.”

534 A sacred stream often mentioned in the course of the poem. See Book II, Canto XCV.

535 A daughter of Daksha who became one of the wives of Kaśyapa and mother of the Daityas. She is termed the general mother of Titans and malignant beings. See Book I Cantos XLV, XLVI.

536 Sugríva, the ex-king of the Vánars, foresters, or monkeys, an exile from his home, wandering about the mountain Rishyamúka with his four faithful ex-ministers.

537 The hermitage of the Saint Matanga which his curse prevented Báli, the present king of the Vánars, from entering. The story is told at length in Canto XI of this Book.

538 Hanumán, Sugríva’s chief general, was the son of the God of Wind. See Book I, Canto XVI.

539 A range of hills in Malabar; the Western Ghats in the Deccan.

540 Válmíki makes the second vowel in this name long or short to suit the exigencies of the verse. Other Indian poets have followed his example, and the same licence will be used in this translation.

541 I omit a recapitulatory and interpolated verse in a different metre, which is as follows:—Reverencing with the words, So be it, the speech of the greatly terrified and unequalled monkey king, the magnanimous Hanumán then went where (stood) the very mighty Ráma with Lakshmaṇ.

542 The semi divine Hanumán possesses, like the Gods and demons, the power of wearing all shapes at will. He is one of the Kámarúpís.

Like Milton’s good and bad angels “as they please They limb themselves, and colour, shape, or size Assume as likes them best, condense or rare.”

543 Himálaya is of course par excellence the Monarch of mountains, but the complimentary title is frequently given to other hills as here to Malaya.

544 Twisted up in a matted coil as was the custom of ascetics.

545 The sun and moon.

546 The rainbow.

547 The Vedas are four in number, the Rich or Rig-veda, the Yajush or Yajur-veda; the Sáman or Sáma-veda, and the Atharvan or Atharva-veda. See p. 3. Note.

548 The chest, the throat, and the head.

549 “In our own metrical romances, or wherever a poem is meant not for readers but for chanters and oral reciters, these formulæ, to meet the same recurring case, exist by scores. Thus every woman in these metrical romances who happens to be young, is described as ‘so bright of ble,’ or complexion; always a man goes ‘the mountenance of a mile’ before he overtakes or is overtaken. And so on through a vast bead-roll of cases. In the same spirit Homer has his eternal τον δ’αρ’ ὑποδρα ιδων, or τον δ’απαμειβομενος προσφη, &c.

To a reader of sensibility, such recurrences wear an air of child-like simplicity, beautifully recalling the features of Homer’s primitive age. But they would have appeared faults to all commonplace critics in literary ages.”

DE QUINCEY. Homer and the Homeridæ.

550 Bráhmans the sacerdotal caste. Kshatriyas the royal and military, Vaiśyas the mercantile, and Śúdras the servile.

551 A protracted sacrifice extending over several days. See Book I, p. 24 Note.

552 Possessed of all the auspicious personal marks that indicate capacity of universal sovereignty. See Book I. p. 2, and Note 3.

553 Kabandha. See Book III. Canto LXXIII.

554 Fire for sacred purposes is produced by the attrition of two pieces of wood. In marriage and other solemn covenants fire is regarded as the holy witness in whose presence the agreement is made. Spenser in a description of a marriage, has borrowed from the Roman rite what he calls the housling, or “matrimonial rite.”

“His owne two hands the holy knots did knit That none but death forever can divide. His owne two hands, for such a turn most fit, The housling fire did kindle and provide.”

Faery Queen, Book I. XII. 37.

555 Indra.

556 Báli the king de facto.

557 With the Indians, as with the ancient Greeks, the throbbing of the right eye in a man is an auspicious sign, the throbbing of the left eye is the opposite. In a woman the significations of signs are reversed.

558 The Vedas stolen by the demons Madhu and Kaiṭabha.

“The text has [Sanskrit text] which signifies literally ‘the lost vedic tradition.’ It seems that allusion is here made to the Vedas submerged in the depth of the sea, but promptly recovered by Vishṇu in one of his incarnations, as the brahmanic legend relates, with which the orthodoxy of the Bráhmans intended perhaps to allude to the prompt restoration and uninterrupted continuity of the ancient vedic tradition.”

GORRESIO.

559 Like the wife of a Nága or Serpent-God carried off by an eagle. The enmity between the King of birds and the serpent is of very frequent occurrence. It seems to be a modification of the strife between the Vedic Indra and the Ahi, the serpent or drought-fiend; between Apollôn and the Python, Adam and the Serpent.

560 He means that he has never ventured to raise his eyes to her arms and face, though he has ever been her devoted servant.

561 The wood in which Skanda or Kártikeva was brought up:

“The Warrior-God Whose infant steps amid the thickets strayed Where the reeds wave over the holy sod.”

See also Book I, Canto XXIX.

562 “Sugríva’s story paints in vivid colours the manners, customs and ideas of the wild mountain tribes which inhabited Kishkindhya or the southern hills of the Deccan, of the people whom the poem calls monkeys, tribes altogether different in origin and civilization from the Indo-Sanskrit race.” GORRESIO.

563 A fiend slain by Báli.

564 Báli’s mountain city.

565 The canopy or royal umbrella, one of the usual Indian regalia.

566 Whisks made of the hair of the Yak or Bos grunniers, also regal insignia.

567 Righteous because he never transgresses his bounds, and

“over his great tides Fidelity presides.”

568 Himálaya, the Lord of Snow, is the father of Umá the wife of Śiva or Śankar.

569 Indra’s celestial elephant.

570 Báli was the son of Indra. See p. 28.

571 An Asur slain by Indra. See p. 261 Note. He is, like Vritra, a form of the demon of drought destroyed by the beneficent God of the firmament.

572 Another name of Indra or Mahendra.

573 The Bengal recension makes it return in the form of a swan.

574 Varuṇa is one of the oldest of the Vedic Gods, corresponding in name and partly in character to the Οὐρανός of the Greeks and is often regarded as the supreme deity. He upholds heaven and earth, possesses extraordinary power and wisdom, sends his messengers through both worlds, numbers the very winkings of men’s eyes, punishes transgressors whom he seizes with his deadly noose, and pardons the sins of those who are penitent. In later mythology he has become the God of the sea.

575 Budha, not to be confounded with the great reformer Buddha, is the son of Soma or the Moon, and regent of the planet Mercury. Angára is the regent of Mars who is called the red or the fiery planet. The encounter between Michael and Satan is similarly said to have been as if

“Two planets rushing from aspect malign Of fiercest opposition in midsky Should combat, and their jarring spheres compound.”

Paradise Lost. Book VI.

576 The Aśvins or Heavenly Twins, the Dioskuri or Castor and Pollux of the Hindus, have frequently been mentioned. See p. 36, Note.

577 Called respectively Gárhapatya, Áhavaniya, and Dakshiṇa, household, sacrificial, and southern.

578 The store of merit accumulated by a holy or austere life secures only a temporary seat in the mansion of bliss. When by the lapse of time this store is exhausted, return to earth is unavoidable.

579 The conflagration which destroys the world at the end of a Yuga or age.

580 Himálaya.

581 Tárá means “star.” The poet plays upon the name by comparing her beauty to that of the Lord of stars, the Moon.

582 Suparṇa, the Well-winged, is another name of Garuḍa the King of Birds. See p. 28, Note.

583 The God of Death.

584 The flag-staff erected in honour of the God Indra is lowered when the festival is over. Aśvíní in astronomy is the head of Aries or the first of the twenty-eight lunar mansions or asterisms.

585 Indra the father of Báli.

586 It is believed that every creature killed by Ráma obtained in consequence immediate beatitude.

“And blessed the hand that gave so dear a death.”

587 “Yayáti was invited to heaven by Indra, and conveyed on the way thither by Mátali, Indra’s charioteer. He afterwards returned to earth where, by his virtuous administration he rendered all his subjects exempt from passion and decay.” GARRETT’S C. D. OF INDIA.

588 The ascetic’s dress which he wore during his exile.

589 There is much inconsistency in the passages of the poem in which the Vánars are spoken of, which seems to point to two widely different legends. The Vánars are generally represented as semi-divine beings with preternatural powers, living in houses and eating and drinking like men sometimes as here, as monkeys pure and simple, living is woods and eating fruit and roots.

590 For a younger brother to marry before the elder is a gross violation of Indian law and duty. The same law applied to daughters with the Hebrews: “It must not be so done in our country to give the younger before the first-born.” GENESIS xix. 26.

591 “The hedgehog and porcupine, the lizard, the rhinoceros, the tortoise, and the rabbit or hare, wise legislators declare lawful food among five-toed animals.” MANU, v. 18.

592 “He can not buckle his distempered cause Within the belt of rule.”

MACBETH.

593 The Ankuś or iron hook with which an elephant is driven and guided.

594 Hayagríva, Horse-necked, is a form of Vishṇu.

595 “Aśvatara is the name of a chief of the Nágas or serpents which inhabit the regions under the earth; it is also the name of a Gandharva. Aśvatarí ought to be the wife of one of the two, but I am not sure that this conjecture is right. The commentator does not say who this Aśvatarí is, or what tradition or myth is alluded to. Vimalabodha reads Aśvatarí in the nominative case, and explains, Aśvatarí is the sun, and as the sun with his rays brings back the moon which has been sunk in the ocean and the infernal regions, so will I bring back Sítá.” GORRESIO.

596 That is, “Consider what answer you can give to your accusers when they charge you with injustice in killing me.”

597 Manu, Book VIII. 318. “But men who have committed offences and have received from kings the punishment due to them, go pure to heaven and become as clear as those who have done well.”

598 Mándhátá was one of the earlier descendants of Ikshváku. His name is mentioned in Ráma’s genealogy, p. 81.

599 I cannot understand how Válmíki could put such an excuse as this into Ráma’s mouth. Ráma with all solemn ceremony, has made a league of alliance with Báli’s younger brother whom he regards as a dear friend and almost as an equal, and now he winds up his reasons for killing Báli by coolly saying: “Besides you are only a monkey, you know, after all, and as such I have every right to kill you how, when, and where I like.”

600 A name of Garuḍa the king of birds, the great enemy of the Serpents.

601 Sugríva’s wife.

602 “Our deeds still follow with us from afar. And what we have been makes us what we are.”

603 Sugríva and Angad.

604 Angad himself, being too young to govern, would be Yuvarája or heir-apparent.

605 Susheṇa was the son of Varuṇa the God of the sea.

606 A demon with the tail of a dragon, that causes eclipses by endeavouring to swallow the sun and moon.

607 The Lord of Stars is the Moon.

608 Or the passage may be interpreted: “Be neither too obsequious or affectionate, nor wanting in due respect or love.”

609 Sacrifices and all religious rites begin and end with ablution, and the wife of the officiating Bráhman takes an important part in the performance of the holy ceremonies.

610 Viśvarúpa, a son of Twashṭri or Viśvakarmá the heavenly architect, was a three-headed monster slain by Indra.

611 The Vánar chief, not to be confounded with Tárá.

612 Śrávaṇ: July-August. But the rains begin a month earlier, and what follows must not be taken literally. The text has púrvo’ yam várshiko másah Śrávaṇah salilágamdh. The Bengal recension has the same, and Gorresio translates: “Equesto ilmese Srâvana (luglio-agosto) primo della stagione piovosa, in cui dilagano le acque.”

613 Kártik: October-November.

614 “Indras, as the nocturnal sun, hides himself, transformed, in the starry heavens: the stars are his eyes. The hundred-eyed or all-seeing (panoptês) Argos placed as a spy over the actions of the cow beloved by Zeus, in the Hellenic equivalent of this form of Indras.” DE GUBERNATIS, Zoological Mythology, Vol. I, p. 418.

615 Baudháyana and others.

616 Sugríva appears to have been consecrated with all the ceremonies that attended the Abhisheka or coronation of an Indian prince of the Aryan race. Compare the preparations made for Ráma’s consecration, Book II, Canto III. Thus Homer frequently introduces into Troy the rites of Hellenic worship.

617 Vitex Negundo.

618 Mályavat: “The name of this mountain appears to me to be erroneous, and I think that instead of Mályavat should be read Malayavat, Malaya is a group of mountains situated exactly in that southern part of India where Ráma now was, while Mályavat is placed to the north east.” GORRESIO.

619 Mantles of the skin of the black antelope were the prescribed dress of ascetics and religious students.

620 The sacred cord worn as the badge of religious initiation by men of the three twice-born castes.

621 The hum with which students conduct their tasks.

622 I omit here a long general description of the rainy season which is not found in the Bengal recension and appears to have been interpolated by a far inferior and much later hand than Valmiki’s. It is composed in a metre different from that of the rest of the Canto, and contains figures of poetical rhetoric and common-places which are the delight of more recent poets.

623 Praushthapada or Bhadra, the modern Bhadon, corresponds to half of August and half of September.

624 The Sáman or Sáma-veda, the third of the four Vedas, is really merely a reproduction of parts of the Rig-veda, transposed and scattered about piece-meal, only 78 verses in the whole being, it is said, untraceable to the present recension of the Rig-veda.

625 Áshádha is the month corresponding to parts of June and July.

626 Bharat, who was regent during Ráma’s absence.

627 Or with Gorresio, following the gloss of another commentary: “Has completed every holy rite and accumulated stores of merit.”

628 The river on which Ayodhyá was built.

629 I omit a śloka or four lines on gratitude and ingratitude repeated word for word from the last Canto.

630 The Indian crane; a magnificent bird easily domesticated.

631 The troops who guard the frontiers on the north, south, east and west.

632 The Chátaka, Cuculus, Melanoleucus, is supposed to drink nothing but the water for the clouds.

633 The time for warlike expeditions began when the rains had ceased.

634 The rainbow.

635 Indra’s associates in arms, and musicians of his heaven.

636 Maireya, a spirituous liquor from the blossoms of the Lythrum fruticosum, with sugar, &c.

637 Their names are as follows: Angad, Maínda, Dwida, Gavaya, Gaváksha, Gaja, Śarabha, Vidyunmáli, Sampáti, Súryáksa, Hanumán, Vírabáhu, Subáhu, Nala, Kúmuda, Susheṇa, Tára, Jámbuvatu, Dadhivakra, Níla, Supátala, and Sunetra.

638 The Kalpadruma or Wishing-tree is one of the trees of Svarga or Indra’s Paradise: it has the power of granting all desires.

639 The meaning is that if a man promises to give a horse and then breaks his word he commits a sin as great as if he had killed a hundred horses.

640 The story is told in Book I, Canto LXIII, but the charmer there is called Menaká.

641 Rohiṇí is the name of the ninth Nakshatra or lunar asterism personified as a daughter of Daksha, and the favourite wife of the Moon. Aldebaran is the principal star in the constellation.

642 Válmíki and succeeding poets make the second vowel in this name long or short at their pleasure.

643 Some of the mountains here mentioned are fabulous and others it is impossible to identify. Sugríva means to include all the mountains of India from Kailás the residence of the God Kuvera, regarded as one of the loftiest peaks of the Himálayas, to Mahendra in the extreme south, from the mountain in the east where the sun is said to rise to Astáchal or the western mountain where he sets. The commentators give little assistance: that Maháśaila, &c. are certain mountains is about all the information they give.

644 One of the celestial elephants of the Gods who protect the four quarters and intermediate points of the compass.

645 Váyu or the Wind was the father of Hanumán.

646 The path or station of Vishṇu is the space between the seven Rishis or Ursa Major, and Dhruva or the polar star.

647 One of the seven seas which surround the earth in concentric circles.

648 The title of Maheśvar or Mighty Lord is sometimes given to Indra, but more generally to Śiva whom it here denotes.

649 See Book I, Canto XVI.

650 The numbers are unmanageable in English verse. The poet speaks of hundreds of arbudas; and an arbuda is a hundred millions.

651 Anuhláda or Anuhráda is one of the four sons of the mighty Hiraṇyakaśipu, an Asur or a Daitya son of Kaśyapa and Diti and killed by Vishṇu in his incarnation of the Man-Lion Narasinha. According to the Bhágavata Puráṇa the Daitya or Asur Hiraṇyakaśipu and Hiraṇyáksha his brother, both killed by Vishṇu, were born again as Rávaṇ and Kumbhakarṇa his brother.

652 Puloma, a demon, was the father-in-law of Indra who destroyed him in order to avert an imprecation. Paulomí is a patronymic denoting Śachí the daughter of Puloma.

653 “Observe the variety of colours which the poem attributes to all these inhabitants of the different mountainous regions, some white, others yellow, &c. Such different colours were perhaps peculiar and distinctive characteristics of those various races.” GORRESSIO.

654 Susheṇ.

655 Tára.

656 Kesarí was the husband of Hanúmán’s mother, and is here called his father.

657 “I here unite under one heading two animals of very diverse nature and race, but which from some gross resemblances, probably helped by an equivoque in the language, are closely affiliated in the Hindoo myth … a reddish colour of the skin, want of symmetry and ungainliness of form, strength in hugging with the fore paws or arms, the faculty of climbing, shortness of tail(?), sensuality, capacity of instruction in dancing and in music, are all characteristics which more or less distinguish and meet in bears as well as in monkeys. In the Rámáyaṇam, the wise Jámnavant, the Odysseus of the expedition of Lanká, is called now king of the bears (rikshaparthivah), now great monkey (Mahákapih).” DE GUBERNATIS: Zoological Mythology, Vol. II. p. 97.

658 Gandhamádana, Angad, Tára, Indrajánu, Rambha, Durmukha, Hanumán, Nala, Da mukha, Śarabha, Kumuda, Vahni.

659 Daityas and Dánavas are fiends and enemies of the Gods, like the Titans of Greek mythology.

660 I reduce the unwieldy numbers of the original to more modest figures.

661 Sarayú now Sarjú is the river on which Ayodhyá was built.

662 Kauśikí is a river which flows through Behar, commonly called Kosi.

663 Bhagírath’s daughter is Gangá or the Ganges. The legend is told at length in Book I Canto XLIV. The Descent of Gangá.

664 A mountain not identified.

665 The Jumna. The river is personified as the twin sister of Yáma, and hence regarded as the daughter of the Sun.

666 The Sarasvatí (corruptly called Sursooty, is supposed to join the Ganges and Jumna at Prayág or Allahabad. It rises in the mountains bounding the north-east part of the province of Delhi, and running in a south-westerly direction becomes lost in the sands of the great desert.

667 The Sindhu is the Indus, the Sanskrit s becoming h in Persian and being in this instance dropped by the Greeks.

668 The Sone which rises in the district of Nagpore and falls into the Ganges above Patna.

669 Mahí is a river rising in Malwa and falling into the gulf of Cambay after a westerly course of 280 miles.

670 There is nothing to show what parts of the country the poet intended to denote as silk-producing and silver-producing.

671 Yavadwipa means the island of Yava, wherever that may be.

672 Śiśir is said to be a mountain ridge projecting from the base of Meru on the south. Wilson’s Vishnu Puráṇa, ed. Hall, Vol. II. p. 117.

673 This appears to be some mythical stream and not the well-known Śone. The name means red-coloured.

674 A fabulous thorny rod of the cotton tree used for torturing the wicked in hell. The tree gives its name, Śálmalí, to one of the seven Dwípas, or great divisions of the known continent: and also to a hell where the wicked are tormented with the pickles of the tree.

675 The king of the feathered creation.

676 Viśvakarmá, the Mulciber of the Indian heaven.

677 “The terrific fiends named Mandehas attempt to devour the sun: for Brahmá denounced this curse upon them, that without the power to perish they should die every day (and revive by night) and therefore a fierce contest occurs (daily) between them and the sun.” WILSON’S Vishṇu Puráṇa. Vol. II. p. 250.

678 Said in the Vishṇu Puráṇa to be a ridge projecting from the base of Meru to the north.

679 Kinnars are centaurs reversed, beings with equine head and human bodies.

680 Yakshas are demi-gods attendant on Kuvera the God of wealth.

681 Aurva was one of the descendants of Bhrigu. From his wrath proceeded a flame that threatened to destroy the world, had not Aurva cast it into the ocean where it remained concealed, and having the face of a horse. The legend is told in the Mahábhárat. I. 6802.

682 The word Játarúpa means gold.

683 The celebrated mythological serpent king Sesha, called also Ananta or the infinite, represented as bearing the earth on one of his thousand heads.

684 Jambudwípa is in the centre of the seven great dwípas or continents into which the world is divided, and in the centre of Jambudwípa is the golden mountain Meru 84,000 yojans high, and crowned by the great city of Brahmá. See WILSON’S Vishṇu Puráṇa, Vol. II. p. 110.

685 Vaikhánases are a race of hermit saints said to have sprung from the nails of Prajápati.

686 “The wife of Kratu, Samnati, brought forth the sixty thousand Válakhilyas, pigmy sages, no bigger than a joint of the thumb, chaste, pious, resplendent as the rays of the Sun.” WILSON’S Vishṇu Puráṇa.

687 The continent in which Sudarśan or Meru stands, i.e. Jambudwíp.

688 The names of some historical peoples which occur in this Canto and in the Cantos describing the south and north will be found in the ADDITIONAL NOTES. They are bare lists, not susceptible of a metrical version.

689 Suhotra, Śarári, Śaragulma, Gayá, Gaváksha, Gavaya, Susheṇa, Gandhamádana, Ulkámukha, and Ananga.

690 The modern Nerbudda.

691 Krishṇaveṇí is mentioned in the Vishṇu Puráṇa as “the deep Krishṇaveṇí” but there appears to be no clue to its identification.

692 The modern Godavery.

693 The Mekhalas or Mekalas according to the Paráṇas live in the Vindhya hills, but here they appear among the peoples of the south.

694 Utkal is still the native name of Orissa.

695 The land of the people of the “ten forts.” Professor Hall in a note on WILSON’S Vishṇu Puráṇa, Vol. II. p. 160 says: “The oral traditions of the vicinity to this day assign the name of Daśárna to a region lying to the east of the District of Chundeyree.”

696 Avantí is one of the ancient names of the celebrated Ujjayin or Oujein in Central India.

697 Not identified.

698 Ayomukh means iron faced. The mountain is not identified.

699 The Káverí or modern Cauvery is well known and has always borne the same appellation, being the Chaberis of Ptolemy.

700 One of the seven principal mountain chains: the southern portion of the Western Gháts.

701 Agastya is the great sage who has already frequently appeared as Ráma’s friend and benefactor.

702 Támraparṇí is a river rising in Malaya.

703 The Páṇḍyas are a people of the Deccan.

704 Mahendra is the chain of hills that extends from Orissa and the northern Sircars to Gondwána, part of which near Ganjam is still called Mahendra Malay or hills of Mahendra.

705 Lanká, Sinhaladvípa, Sarandib, or Ceylon.

706 The Flowery Hill of course is mythical.

707 The whole of the geography south of Lanká is of course mythical. Súryaván means Sunny.

708 Vaidyut means connected with lightning.

709 Agastya is here placed far to the south of Lanká. Earlier in this Canto he was said to dwell on Malaya.

710 Bhogavatí has been frequently mentioned: it is the capital of the serpent Gods or demons, and usually represented as being in the regions under the earth.

711 Vásuki is according to some accounts the king of the Nágas or serpent Gods.

712 Śailúsha, Gramiṇi, Siksha, Suka, Babhru.

713 The distant south beyond the confines of the earth is the home of departed spirits and the city of Yáma the God of Death.

714 Suráshṭra, the “good country,” is the modern Sura

715 A country north-west of Afghanistan, Baíkh.

716 The Moon-mountain here is mythical.

717 Sindhu is the Indus.

718 Páriyátra, or as more usually written Páripátra, is the central or western portion of the Vindhya chain which skirts the province of Malwa.

719 Vajra means both diamond and thunderbolt, the two substances being supposed to be identical.

720 Chakraván means the discus-bearer.

721 The discus is the favourite weapon of Vishṇu.

722 The Indian Hephaistos or Vulcan.

723 Panchajan was a demon who lived in the sea in the form of a conch shell. WILSON’S Vishṇu Puráṇa, V. 21.

724 Hayagríva, Horse-necked, is the name of a Daitya who at the dissolution of the universe caused by Brahmá’s sleep, seized and carried off the Vedas. Vishṇu slew him and recovered the sacred treasures.

725 Meru stands in the centre of Jambudwípa and consequently of the earth. “The sun travels round the world, keeping Meru always on his right. To the spectator who fronts him, therefore, as he rises Meru must be always on the north; and as the sun’s rays do not penetrate beyond the centre of the mountain, the regions beyond, or to the north of it must be in darkness, whilst those on the south of it must be in light: north and south being relative, not absolute, terms, depending on the position of the spectator with regard to the Sun and Meru.” WILSON’S Vishṇu Puráṇa, Vol. II. p. 243. Note.

726 The Viśvadevas are a class of deities to whom sacrifices should be daily offered, as part of the ordinary worship of the householder. According to the Váyu Puráṇa, this is a privilege conferred on them by Brahmá and the Pitris as a reward for religious austerities practised by them upon Himálaya.

727 The eight Vasus were originally personifications like other Vedic deities, of natural phenomena, such as Fire, Wind, &c. Their appellations are variously given by different authorities.

728 The Maruts or Storm-Gods, frequently addressed and worshipped as the attendants and allies of Indra.

729 The mountain behind which the sun sets.

730 One of the oldest and mightiest of the Vedic deities; in later mythology regarded as the God of the sea.

731 The knotted noose with which he seizes and punishes transgressors.

732 Sávarṇi is a Manu, offspring of the Sun by Chháyá.

733 The poet has not said who the sons of Yáma are.

734 The Lodhra or Lodh (Symplocos Racemosa) and the Devadáru or Deodar are well known trees.

735 The hills mentioned are not identifiable. Soma means the Moon. Kála, black; Sudaraśan, fair to see; and Devasakhá friend of the Gods.

736 The God of Wealth.

737 The nymphs of Paradise.

738 Kuvera the son of Viśravas.

739 A class of demigods who, like the Yakshas, are the attendants of Kuvera, and the guardians of his treasures.

740 Situated in the eastern part of the Himálaya chain, on the north of Assam. The mountain was torn asunder and the pass formed by the War-God Kártikeya and Paraśuráma.

741 “The Uttara Kurus, it should be remarked, may have been a real people, as they are mentioned in the Aitareya Bráhmaṇa, VIII. 14.… Wherefore the several nations who dwell in this northern quarter, beyond the Himavat, the Uttara Kurus and the Uttara Madras are consecrated to glorious dominion, and people term them the glorious. In another passage of the same work, however, the Uttara Kurus are treated as belonging to the domain of mythology.” MUIR’S Sanskrit Texts. Vol. I. p. 494. See ADDITIONAL NOTES.

742 The Moon-mountain.

743 The Rudras are the same as the storm winds, more usually called Maruts, and are often associated with Indra. In the later mythology the Rudras are regarded as inferior manifestations of Śiva, and most of their names are also names of Śiva.

744 Canto IX.

745 Udayagiri or the hill from which the sun rises.

746 Asta is the mountain behind which the sun sets.

747 Himálaya, the Hills of Snow.

748 Canto XI.

749 Hanumán was the leader of the army of the south which was under the nominal command of Angad the heir apparent.

750 The Bengal recension—Gorresio’s edition—calls this Asur or demon the son of Márícha.

751 The skin of the black antelope was the ascetic’s proper garb.

752 Uśanas is the name of a sage mentioned in the Vedas. In the epic poems he is identified with Śukra, the regent of the planet Venus, and described as the preceptor of the Asuras or Daityas, and possessor of vast knowledge.

753 Hemá is one of the nymphs of Paradise.

754 Merusávarṇi is a general name for the last four of the fourteen Manus.

755 Svayamprabhá, the “self-luminous,” is according to DE GUBERNATIS the moon: “In the Svayamprabhá too, we meet with the moon as a good fairy who, from the golden palace which she reserves for her friend Hemá (the golden one:) is during a month the guide, in the vast cavern of Hanumant and his companions, who have lost their way in the search of the dawn Sítá.” This is is not quite accurate: Hanumán and his companions wander for a month in the cavern without a guide, and then Svayamprabhá leads them out.

756 Purandara, the destroyer of cities; the cities being the clouds which the God of the firmament bursts open with his thunderbolts, to release the waters imprisoned in these fortresses of the demons of drought.

757 Perceived that Angad had secured, through the love of the Vánars, the reversion of Sugríva’s kingdom; or, as another commentator explains it, perceived that Angad had obtained a new kingdom in the enchanted cave which the Vánars, through love of him, would consent to occupy.

758 Vṛihaspati, Lord of Speech, the Preceptor of the Gods.

759 Śukra is the regent of the planet Venus, and the preceptor of the Daityas.

760 The name of various kinds of grass used at sacrificial ceremonies, especially, of the Kuśa grass, Poa cynosuroides, which was used to strew the ground in preparing for a sacrifice, the officiating Brahmans being purified by sitting on it.

761 Sampáti is the eldest son of the celebrated Garuḍa the king of birds.

762 Vivasvat or the Sun is the father of Yáma the God of Death.

763 Book III, Canto LI.

764 Daśaratha’s rash oath and fatal promise to his wife Kaikeyí.

765 Vritra, “the coverer, hider, obstructer (of rain)” is the name of the Vedic personification of an imaginary malignant influence or demon of darkness and drought supposed to take possession of the clouds, causing them to obstruct the clearness of the sky and keep back the waters. Indra is represented as battling with this evil influence, and the pent-up clouds being practically represented as mountains or castles are shattered by his thunderbolt and made to open their receptacles.

766 Frequent mention has been made of the three steps of Vishṇu typifying the rising, culmination, and setting of the sun.

767 For the Churning of the Sea, see Book I, Canto XLV.

768 Kuvera, the God of Wealth.

769 The architect of the gods.

770 Garuḍa, son of Vinatá, the sovereign of the birds.

771 “The well winged one,” Garuḍa.

772 The god of the sea.

773 Mahendra is chain of mountains generally identified with part of the Gháts of the Peninsula.

774 Mátariśva is identified with Váyu, the wind.

775 Of course not equal to the whole earth, says the Commentator, but equal to Janasthán.

776 This appears to be the Indian form of the stories of Phaethon and Dædalus and Icarus.

777 According to the promise, given him by Brahmá. See Book I, Canto XIV.

778 In the Bengal recension the fourth Book ends here, the remaining Cantos being placed in the fifth.

779 Each chief comes forward and says how far he can leap. Gaja says he can leap ten yojans. Gavaksha can leap twenty. Gavaya thirty, and so on up to ninety.

780 Prahláda, the son of Hiraṇyakaśipu, was a pious Datya remarkable for his devotion to Vishṇu, and was on this account persecuted by his father.

781 The Bengal recension calls him Aríshṭanemi’s brother. “The commentator says ‘Aríshṭanemi is Aruṇa.’ Aruṇa the charioteer of the sun is the son of Kaśyapa and Vinatá and by consequence brother of Garuḍa, called Vainateya from Vinatá, his mother.” GORRESSIO.

782 A nymph of Paradise.

783 Hanu or Hanú means jaw. Hanumán or Hanúmán means properly one with a large jaw.

784 Vishṇu, the God of the Three Steps.

785 Náráyaṇ, “He who moved upon the waters,” is Vishnu. The allusion is to the famous three steps of that God.

786 The Milky Way.

787 This Book is called Sundar or the Beatiful. To a European taste it is the most intolerably tedious of the whole poem, abounding in repetition, overloaded description, and long and useless speeches which impede the action of the poem. Manifest interpolations of whole Cantos also occur. I have omitted none of the action of the Book, but have occasionally omitted long passages of common-place description, lamentation, and long stories which have been again and again repeated.

788 Brahmá the Self-Existent.

789 Maináka was the son of Himálaya and Mená or Menaká.

790 Thus Milton makes the hills of heaven self-moving at command:

“At his command the uprooted hills retired Each to his place, they heard his voice and went Obsequious”

791 The spirit of the mountain is separable from the mountain. Himalaya has also been represented as standing in human form on one of his own peaks.

792 Ságar or the Sea is said to have derived its name from Sagar. The story is fully told in Book I, Cantos XLII, XLIII, and XLIV.

793 Kritu is the first of the four ages of the world, the golden age, also called Satya.

_ 794 Parvata_ means a mountain and in the Vedas a cloud. Hence in later mythology the mountains have taken the place of the clouds as the objects of the attacks of Indra the Sun-God. The feathered king is Garuḍa.

795 “The children of Surasá were a thousand mighty many-headed serpents, traversing the sky.” WILSON’S Vishṇu Puráṇa, Vol. II. p. 73.

796 She means, says the Commentator, pursue thy journey if thou can.

797 If Milton’s spirits are allowed the power of infinite self-extension and compression the same must be conceded to Válmíki’s supernatural beings. Given the power as in Milton the result in Válmíki is perfectly consistent.

798 “Daksha is the son of Brahmá and one of the Prajápatis or divine progenitors. He had sixty daughters, twenty-seven of whom married to Kaśyapa produced, according to one of the Indian cosmogonies, all mundane beings. Does the epithet, Descendant of Daksha, given to Surasá, mean that she is one of those daughters? I think not. This epithet is perhaps an appellation common to all created beings as having sprung from Daksha.” GORRESSIO.

799 Sinhiká is the mother of Ráhu the dragon’s head or ascending node, the chief agent in eclipses.

800 According to De Gubernatis, the author of the very learned, ingenious, and interesting though too fanciful Zoological Mythology. Hanumán here represents the sun entering into and escaping from a cloud. The biblical Jonah, according to him, typifies the same phenomenon. Sá’dí, speaking of sunset, says Yùnas andar-i-dihán-imáhi shud: Jonas was within the fish’s mouth. See ADDITIONAL NOTES.

801 The Buchanania Latifolia.

802 The Bauhinia Variegata.

803 Through the power that Rávaṇ’s stern mortifications had won for him his trees bore flowers and fruit simultaneously.

804 Viśvakarmá is the architect of the Gods.

805 So in Paradise Lost Satan when he has stealthily entered the garden of Eden assumes the form of a cormorant.

806 Priests who fought only with the weapons of religion, the sacred grass used like the verbena of the Romans at sacred rites and the consecrated fire to consume the offering of ghee.

807 One of the Rákshas lords.

808 The brother Rávaṇ.

809 Indra’s elephant.

810 Rávaṇ’s palace appears to have occupied the whole extent of ground, and to have contained within its outer walls the mansions of all the great Rákshas chiefs. Rávaṇ’s own dwelling seems to have been situated within the enchanted chariot Pushpak: but the description is involved and confused, and it is difficult to say whether the chariot was inside the palace or the palace inside the chariot.

811 Pushpak from pushpa a flower. The car has been mentioned before in Rávaṇ’s expedition to carry off Sítá, Book III, Canto XXXV.

812 Lakshmí is the wife of Vishṇu and the Goddess of Beauty and Felicity. She rose, like Aphrodite, from the foam of the sea. For an account of her birth and beauty, see Book I, Canto XLV.

813 Viśvakarmá is the architect of the Gods, the Hephaestos or Mulciber of the Indian heaven.

814 Rávaṇ in the resistless power which his long austerities had endowed him with, had conquered his brother Kuvera the God of Gold and taken from him his greatest treasure this enchanted car.

815 Like Milton’s heavenly car, “Itself instinct with spirit.”

816 Women, says Válmíki. But the Commentator says that automatic figures only are meant. Women would have seen Hanumán and given the alarm.

817 Rávaṇ had fought against Indra and the Gods, and his body was still scarred by the wounds inflicted by the tusks of Indra’s elephant and by the fiery bolts of the Thunderer.

818 The Vasus are a class of eight deities, originally personifications of natural phenomena.

819 The Maruts are the winds or Storm-Gods.

820 The Ádityas originally seven deities of the heavenly sphere of whom Varuṇa is the chief. The name Áditya was afterwards given to any God, specially to Súrya the Sun.

821 The Aśvins are the Heavenly Twins, the Castor and Pollux of the Hindus.

822 The poet forgets that Hanumán has reduced himself to the size of a cat.

823 Sítá “not of woman born,” was found by King Janak as he was turning up the ground in preparation for a sacrifice. See Book II, Canto CXVIII.

824 The six Angas or subordinate branches of the Vedas are 1. Sikshá, the science of proper articulation and pronunciation: 2. Chhandas, metre: 3. Vyákarana, linguistic analysis or grammar: 4. Nirukta, explanation of difficult Vedic words: 5. Jyotishṭom, Astronomy, or rather the Vedic Calendar: 6. Kalpa, ceremonial.

825 There appears to be some confusion of time here. It was already morning when Hanumán entered the grove, and the torches would be needless.

826 Rávaṇ is one of those beings who can “climb them as they will,” and can of course assume the loveliest form to please human eyes as well as the terrific shape that suits the king of the Rákshases.

827 White and lovely as the Arant or nectar recovered from the depths of the Milky Sea when churned by the assembled Gods. See Book I, Canto XLV.

828 Rávaṇ in his magic car carrying off the most beautiful women reminds us of the magician in Orlando Furioso, possesor of the flying horse.

“Volando talor s’alza ne le stelle, E poi quasi talor la terra rade; E ne porta con lui tutte le belle Donne che trova per quelle contrade.”

829 Indian women twisted their long hair in a single braid as a sign of mourning for their absent husbands.

830 Janak, king of Míthilá, was Sítá’s father.

831 Hiraṇyakaśipu was a king of the Daityas celebrated for his blasphemous impieties. When his pious son Prahlada praised Vishṇu the Daitya tried to kill him, when the God appeared in the incarnation of the man-lion and tore the tyrant to pieces.

832 Do unto others as thou wouldst they should do unto thee, is a precept frequently occurring in the old Indian poems. This charity is to embrace not human beings only, but bird and beast as well: “He prayeth best who loveth best all things both great and small.”

833 It was the custom of Indian warriors to mark their arrows with their ciphers or names, and it seems to have been regarded as a point of honour to give an enemy the satisfaction of knowing who had shot at him. This passage however contains, if my memory serves me well, the first mention in the poem of this practice, and as arrows have been so frequently mentioned and described with almost every conceivable epithet, its occurrence here seems suspicious. No mention of, or allusion to writing has hitherto occurred in the poem.

834 This threat in the same words occurs in Book III, Canto LVI.

835 Rávaṇ carried off and kept in his palace not only earthly princesses but the daughters of Gods and Gandharvas.

836 The wife of Indra.

837 These four lines have occurred before. Book III, Canto LVI.

838 Prajápatis are the ten lords of created beings first created by Brahmá; somewhat like the Demiurgi of the Gnostics.

839 “This is the number of the Vedic divinities mentioned in the Rig-veda. In Ashṭaka I. Súkta XXXIV, the Rishi Hiraṇyastúpa invoking the Aśvins says: Á Násatyá tribhirekádaśairiha devebniryátam: ‘O Násatyas (Aśvins) come hither with the thrice eleven Gods.’ And in Súkta XLV, the Rishi Praskanva addressing his hymn to Agni (ignis, fire), thus invokes him: ‘Lord of the red steeds, propitiated by our prayers lead hither the thirty-three Gods.’ This number must certainly have been the actual number in the early days of the Vedic religion: although it appears probable enough that the thirty-three Vedic divinities could not then be found co-ordinated in so systematic a way as they were arranged more recently by the authors of the Upanishads. In the later ages of Bramanism the number went on increasing without measure by successive mythical and religious creations which peopled the Indian Olympus with abstract beings of every kind. But through lasting veneration of the word of the Veda the custom regained of giving the name of ‘the thirty-three Gods’ to the immense phalanx of the multiplied deities.” GORRESIO.

840 Serpent-Gods who dwell in the regions under the earth.

841 In the mythology of the epics the Gandharvas are the heavenly singers or musicians who form the orchestra at the banquets of the Gods, and they belong to the heaven of India in whose battles they share.

842 The mother of Ráma.

843 The mother of Lakshmaṇ.

844 In the south is the region of Yáma the God of Death, the place of departed spirits.

845 Kumbhakarṇa was one of Rávaṇ’s brothers.

846 The guards are still in the grove, but they are asleep; and Sítá has crept to a tree at some distance from them.

847 “As the reason assigned in these passages for not addressing Sítá in Sanskrit such as a Bráhman would use is not that she would not understand it, but that it would alarm her and be unsuitable to the speaker, we must take them as indicating that Sanskrit, if not spoken by women of the upper classes at the time when the Rámáyaṇa was written (whenever that may have been), was at least understood by them, and was commonly spoken by men of the priestly class, and other educated persons. By the Sanskrit proper to an [ordinary] man, alluded to in the second passage, may perhaps be understood not a language in which words different from Sanskrit were used, but the employment of formal and elaborate diction.” MUIR’S Sanskrit Texts, Part II. p. 166.

848 Svayambhu, the Self-existent, Brahmá.

849 Vṛihaspati or Váchaspati, the Lord of Speech and preceptor of the Gods.

850 The Asurs were the fierce enemies of the Gods.

851 The Rudras are manifestations of Śiva.

852 The Maruts or Storm Gods.

853 Rohiṇí is an asterism personified as the daughter of Daksha and the favourite wife of the Moon. The chief star in the constellation is Aldebaran.

854 Arundhatí was the wife of the great sage Vaśishṭha, and regarded as the pattern of conjugal excellence. She was raised to the heavens as one of the Pleiades.

855 The Gods do not shed tears; nor do they touch the ground when they walk or stand. Similarly Milton’s angels marched above the ground and “the passive air upbore their nimble tread.” Virgil’s “vera incessu patuit dea” may refer to the same belief.

856 That a friend of Ráma would praise him as he should be praised, and that if the stranger were Rávaṇ in disguise he would avoid the subject.

857 Kuvera the God of Gold.

858 Sítá of course knows nothing of what has happened to Ráma since the time when she was carried away by Rávaṇ. The poet therefore thinks it necessary to repeat the whole story of the meeting between Ráma and Sugríva, the defeat of Bálí, and subsequent events. I give the briefest possible outline of the story.

859 DE GUBERNATIS thinks that this ring which the Sun Ráma sends to the Dawn Sítá is a symbol of the sun’s disc.

860 Śachí is the loved and lovely wife of Indra, and she is taken as the type of a woman protected by a jealous and all-powerful husband.

861 The mountain near Kishkindhá.

862 Airávat is the mighty elephant on which Indra delights to ride.

863 Vibhishaṇ is the wicked Rávaṇ’s good brother.

864 Her name is Kalá, or in the Bengal recension Nandá.

865 One of Rávaṇ’s chief councillors.

866 Hanumán when he entered the city had in order to escape observation condensed himself to the size of a cat.

867 The brook Mandákiní, not far from Chitrakúṭa where Ráma sojourned for a time.

868 The poet here changes from the second person to the third.

869 The whole long story is repeated with some slight variations and additions from Book II, Canto XCVI. I give here only the outline.

870 The expedients to vanquish an enemy or to make him come to terms are said to be four: conciliation, gifts, disunion, and force or punishment. Hanumán considers it useless to employ the first three and resolves to punish Rávaṇ by destroying his pleasure-grounds.

871 Kinkar means the special servant of a sovereign, who receives his orders immediately from his master. The Bengal recension gives these Rákshases an epithet which the Commentator explains “as generated in the mind of Brahmá.”

872 Ráma de jure King of Kośal of which Ayodhyá was the capital.

_ 873 Chaityaprásáda_ is explained by the Commentator as the place where the Gods of the Rákshases were kept. Gorresio translates it by “un grande edificio.”

874 The bow of Indra is the rainbow.

875 We were told a few lines before that the chariot of Jambumáli was drawn by asses. Here horses are spoken of. The Commentator notices the discrepancy and says that by horses asses are meant.

876 Armed with the bow of Indra, the rainbow.

877 Rávaṇ’s son.

878 Conqueror of Indra, another of Rávaṇ’s sons.

879 The śloka which follows is probably an interpolation, as it is inconsistent with the questioning in Canto L.:

He looked on Rávaṇ in his pride, And boldly to the monarch cried: “I came an envoy to this place From him who rules the Vánar race.”

880 The ten heads of Rávaṇ have provoked much ridicule from European critics. It should be remembered that Spenser tells us of “two brethren giants, the one of which had two heads, the other three;” and Milton speaks of the “four-fold visaged Four,” the four Cherubic shapes each of whom had four faces.

881 Durdhar, or as the Bengal recension reads Mahodara, Prahasta, Mahápárśva, and Nikumbha.

882 The chief attendant of Śiva.

883 Bali, not to be confounded with Báli the Vánar, was a celebrated Daitya or demon who had usurped the empire of the three worlds, and who was deprived of two thirds of his dominions by Vishṇu in the Dwarf-incarnation.

884 When Hanumán was bound with cords, Indrajít released his captive from the spell laid upon him by the magic weapon.

885 “One who murders an ambassador (rája bhata) goes to Taptakumbha, the hell of heated caldrons.” WILSON’S Vishṇu Puraṇa, Vol. II. p. 217.

886 The fire which is supposed to burn beneath the sea.

887 Sítá is likened to the fire which is an emblem of purity.

888 I omit two stanzas which continue the metaphor of the sea or lake of air. The moon is its lotus, the sun its wild-duck, the clouds are its water-weeds, Mars is its shark and so on. Gorresio remarks: “This comparison of a great lake to the sky and of celestial to aquatic objects is one of those ideas which the view and qualities of natural scenery awake in lively fancies. Imagine one of those grand and splendid lakes of India covered with lotus blossoms, furrowed by wild-ducks of the most vivid colours, mantled over here and there with flowers and water weeds &c. and it will be understood how the fancy of the poet could readily compare to the sky radiant with celestial azure the blue expanse of the water, to the soft light of the moon the inner hue of the lotus, to the splendour of the sun the brilliant colours of the wild-fowl, to the stars the flowers, to the cloud the weeds that float upon the water &c.”

889 Sunábha is the mountain that rose from the sea when Hanumán passed over to Lanká.

890 Three Cantos of repetition are omitted.

_ 891 Madhuvan_ the “honey-wood.”

892 Indra’s pleasure-ground or elysium.

893 Janak was king of Videha or Mithilá in Behar.

894 The original contains two more Cantos which end the Book. Canto LXVII begins thus: “Hanumán thus addressed by the great-souled son of Raghu related to the son of Raghu all that Sítá had said.” And the two Cantos contain nothing but Hanumán’s account of his interview with Sítá, and the report of his own speeches as well as of hers.

895 The Sixth Book is called in Sanskrit Yuddha-Káṇḍa or The War, and Lanká-Káṇda. It is generally known at the present day by the latter title.

896 Váyu is the God of Wind.

897 Garuḍa the King of Birds.

898 Serpent-Gods.

899 The God of the sea.

900 Indra’s elephant.

901 Kuvera, God of wealth.

902 Kuvera’s elephant.

903 The planet Venus, or its regent who is regarded as the son of Bhrigu and preceptor of the Daityas.

904 The seven rishis or saints who form the constellation of the Great Bear.

905 Triśanku was raised to the skies to form a constellation in the southern hemisphere. The story in told in Book I, Canto LX.

906 The sage Viśvámitra, who performed for Triśanku the great sacrifice which raised him to the heavens.

907 One of the lunar asterisms containing four or originally two stars under the regency of a dual divinity Indrágni, Indra and Agni.

908 The lunar asterism Múla, belonging to the Rákshases.

909 The Asurs or demons dwell imprisoned in the depths beneath the sea.

910 The God of Riches, brother and enemy of Rávaṇ and first possessor of Pushpak the flying car.

911 King of the Serpents. Śankha and Takshak are two of the eight Serpent Chiefs.

912 The God of Death, the Pluto of the Hindus.

913 Literally Indra’s conqueror, so called from his victory over that God.

914 Their names are Nikumbha, Rabhasa, Súryaśatru, Suptaghna, Yajnakopa, Mahápárśva, Mahodara, Agniketu, Raśmiketu, Durdharsha, Indraśatru, Prahasta, Virúpáksha, Vajradanshṭra, Dhúmráksha, Durmukha, Mahábala.

915 Similarly Antenor urges the restoration of Helen:

“Let Sparta’s treasures be this hour restored, And Argive Helen own her ancient lord. As this advice ye practise or reject, So hope success, or dread the dire effect,”

POPE’S Homer’s Iliad, Book VII.

916 The Agnisálá or room where the sacrificial fire was kept.

917 The exudation of a fragrant fluid from the male elephant’s temples, especially at certain seasons, is frequently spoken of in Sanskrit poetry. It is said to deceive and attract the bees, and is regarded as a sign of health and masculine vigour.

918 Consisting of warriors on elephants, warriors in chariots, charioteers, and infantry.

919 Indra, generally represented as surrounded by the Maruts or Storm-Gods.

920 Janasthán, where Ráma lived as an ascetic.

921 Máyá, regarded as the paragon of female beauty, was the creation of Maya the chief artificer of the Daityas or Dánavs.

922 One of the Nymphs of Indra’s heaven.

923 The Lotus River, a branch of the heavenly Gangá.

_ 924 Trilokanátha_, Lord of the Three Worlds, is a title of Indra.

925 The celestial elephant that carries Indra.

926 As producers of the ghi, clarified butter or sacrificial oil, used in fire-offerings.

927 This desertion to the enemy is somewhat abrupt, and is narrated with brevity not usual with Válmíki. In the Bengal recension the preceding speakers and speeches differ considerably from those given in the text which I follow. Vibhishaṇ is kicked from his seat by Rávaṇ, and then, after telling his mother what has happened, he flies to Mount Kailása where he has an interview with Śiva, and by his advice seeks Ráma and the Vánar army.

928 Vṛihaspati the preceptor of the Gods.

929 In Book II, Canto XXI, Kaṇdu is mentioned by Ráma as an example of filial obedience. At the command of his father he is said to have killed a cow.

930 A King of the Yakshas, or Kuvera himself, the God of Gold.

931 The brace protects the left arm from injury from the bow-string, and the guard protects the fingers of the right hand.

932 The story is told in Book I, Cantos XL, XLI, XLII.

933 Fiends and enemies of the Gods.

934 The Indus.

935 Cowherds, sprung from a Bráhman and a woman of the medical tribe, the modern Ahírs.

936 Barbarians or outcasts.

_ 937 Vraṇa_ means wound or rent.

938 Here in the Bengal recension (Gorresio’s edition), begins Book VI.

939 The Goomtee.

940 The Anglicized Nerbudda.

941 According to a Pauranik legend Keśarí Hanumán’s putative father had killed an Asur or demon who appeared in the form of an elephant, and hence arose the hostility between Vánars and elephants.

942 Here follows the enumeration of Sugríva’s forces which I do not attempt to follow. It soon reaches a hundred thousand billions.

943 I omit the rest of this canto, which is mere repetition. Rávaṇ gives in the same words his former answer that the Gods, Gandharvas and fiends combined shall not force him to give up Sítá. He then orders Śárdúla to tell him the names of the Vánar chieftains whom he has seen in Ráma’s army. These have already been mentioned by Śuka and Sáraṇ.

944 Lakshmí is the Goddess both of beauty and fortune, and is represented with a lotus in her hand.

945 The poet appears to have forgotten that Śuka and Sáraṇ were dismissed with ignominy in Canto XXIX, and have not been reinstated.

946 The four who fled with him. Their names are Anala, Panasa, Sampáti, and Pramati.

947 The numbers here are comparatively moderate: ten thousand elephants, ten thousand chariots, twenty thousand horses and ten million giants.

948 The Kinśuk, also called Paláśa, is Butea Frondosa, a tree that bears beautiful red crescent shaped blossoms and is deservedly a favorite with poets. The Seemal or Śálmalí is the silk cotton tree which also bears red blossoms.

949 Varuṇa.

950 The duty of a king to save the lives of his people and avoid bloodshed until milder methods have been tried in vain.

951 I have omitted several of these single combats, as there is little variety in the details and each duel results in the victory of the Vánar or his ally.

952 Yajnaśatru, Mahápárśva, Mahodar, Vajradanshṭra, Śuka, and Sáraṇ.

953 Angad.

954 A mysterious weapon consisting of serpents transformed to arrows which deprived the wounded object of all sense and power of motion.

955 On each foot, and at the root of each finger.

956 Varuṇ.

957 The name of one of the mystical weapons the command over which was given by Viśvámitra to Ráma, as related in Book I.

958 One of Sítá’s guard, and her comforter on a former occasion also.

959 The preceptor of the Gods.

960 Ráma’s grandfather.

961 The Gandharvas are warriors and Minstrels of Indra’s heaven.

962 “It is to be understood,” says the commentator, “that this is not the Akampan who has already been slain.”

963 Rávaṇ’s son, whom Hanumán killed when he first visited Lanká.

964 Níla was the son of Agni the God of Fire, and possessed, like Milton’s demons, the power of dilating and condensing his form at pleasure.

965 An ancient king of Ayodhyá said by some to have been Prithu’s father.

966 The daughter of King Kuśadhwaja. She became an ascetic, and being insulted by Rávaṇ in the woods where she was performing penance, destroyed herself by entering fire, but was born again as Sítá to be in turn the destruction of him who had insulted her.

967 Nandíśvara was Śiva’s chief attendant. Rávaṇ had despised and laughed at him for appearing in the form of a monkey and the irritated Nandíśvara cursed him and foretold his destruction by monkeys.

968 Rávaṇ once upheaved and shook Mount Kailása the favourite dwelling place of Śiva the consort of Umá, and was cursed in consequence by the offended Goddess.

969 Rambhá, who has several times been mentioned in the course of the poem, was one of the nymphs of heaven, and had been insulted by Rávaṇ.

970 Punjikasthalá was the daughter of Varuṇ. Rávaṇ himself has mentioned in this book his insult to her, and the curse pronounced in consequence by Brahmá.

971 Pulastya was the son of Brahmá and father of Viśravas or Paulastya the father of Rávaṇ and Kumbhakarṇa.

972 I omit a tedious sermon on the danger of rashness and the advantages of prudence, sufficient to irritate a less passionate hearer than Rávaṇ.

973 The Bengal recension assigns a very different speech to Kumbhakarṇa and makes him say that Nárad the messenger of the Gods had formerly told him that Vishṇu himself incarnate as Daśaratha’s son should come to destroy Rávaṇ.

974 Mahodar, Dwijihva, Sanhráda, and Vitardan.

975 A name of Vishṇu.

976 There is so much commonplace repetition in these Sallies of the Rákshas chieftains that omissions are frequently necessary. The usual ill omens attend the sally of Kumbhakarṇa, and the Canto ends with a description of the terrified Vánars’ flight which is briefly repeated in different words at the beginning of the next Canto.

977 Kártikeya the God of War, and the hero and incarnation Paraśuráma are said to have cut a passage through the mountain Krauncha, a part of the Himálayan range, in the same way as the immense gorge that splits the Pyrenees under the towers of Marboré was cloven at one blow of Roland’s sword Durandal.

978 Rishabh, Śarabh, Níla, Gaváksha, and Gandhamádan.

979 Angad. The text calls him the son of the son of him who holds the thunderbolt, i.e. the grandson of Indra.

980 Literally, weighing a thousand bháras. The bhára is a weight equal to 2000 palas, the pala is equal to four karśas, and the karśa to 11375 French grammes or about 176 grains troy. The spear seems very light for a warrior of Kumbhakarṇa’s strength and stature and the work performed with it.

981 The custom of throwing parched or roasted grain, with wreaths and flowers, on the heads of kings and conquerors when they go forth to battle and return is frequently mentioned by Indian poets.

982 Lakshmaṇ.

983 I have abridged this long Canto by omitting some vain repetitions, commonplace epithets and similes and other unimportant matter. There are many verses in this Canto which European scholars would rigidly exclude as unmistakeably the work of later rhapsodists. Even the reverent Commentator whom I follow ventures to remark once or twice: Ayam śloka prak shipta iti bahavah, “This śloka or verse is in the opinion of many interpolated.”

984 Narak was a demon, son of Bhúmi or Earth, who haunted the city Prágjyotisha.

985 Śambar was a demon of drought.

986 Indra.

987 Devántak (Slayer of Gods) Narántak (Slayer of Men) Atikáya (Huge of Frame) and Triśirás (Three Headed) were all sons of Rávaṇ.

988 The demon of eclipse who seizes the Sun and Moon.

989 Lakshmaṇ.

990 In such cases as this I am not careful to reproduce the numbers of the poet, which in the text which I follow are 670000000; the Bengal recension being content with thirty million less.

991 The discus or quoit, a sharp-edged circular missile is the favourite weapon of Vishṇu.

992 To destroy Tripura the triple city in the sky, air and earth, built by Maya for a celebrated Asur or demon, or as another commentator explains, to destroy Kandarpa or Love.

993 The Lokapálas are sometimes regarded as deities appointed by Brahmá at the creation of the word to act as guardians of different orders of beings, but more commonly they are identified with the deities presiding over the four cardinal and four intermediate points of the compass, which, according to Manu V. 96, are 1, Indra, guardian of the East; 2, Agni, of the South-east; 3, Yáma, of the South; 4, Súrya, of the South-west; 5, Varuṇa, of the West; 6, Pavana or Váyu, of the North-west; 7, Kuvera, of the North; 8, Soma or Chandra, of the North-east.

994 The chariots of Rávaṇ’s present army are said to have been one hundred and fifty million in number with three hundred million elephants, and twelve hundred million horses and asses. The footmen are merely said to have been “unnumbered.”

995 It is not very easy to see the advantage of having arrows headed in the way mentioned. Fanciful names for war-engines and weapons derived from their resemblance to various animals are not confined to India. The “War-wolf” was used by Edward I. at the siege of Brechin, the “Cat-house” and the “Sow” were used by Edward III. at the siege of Dunbar.

996 Apparently a peak of the Himalaya chain.

997 This exploit of Hanumán is related with inordinate prolixity in the Bengal recension (Gortesio’s text). Among other adventures he narrowly escapes being shot by Bharat as he passes over Nandigrama near Ayodhyá. Hanumán stays Bharat in time, and gives him an account of what has befallen Ráma and Sítá in the forest and in Lanká.

998 As Garuḍ the king of birds is the mortal enemy of serpents the weapon sacred to him is of course best calculated to destroy the serpent arrows of Rávaṇ.

999 The celebrated saint who has on former occasions assisted Ráma with his gifts and counsel.

1000 Indra.

1001 Yáma.

1002 Kártikeya.

1003 Kubera.

1004 Varuṇ.

1005 The Pitris, forefathers or spirits of the dead, are of two kinds, either the spirits of the father, grandfathers and great-grandfathers of an individual or the progenitors of mankind generally, to both of whom obsequial worship is paid and oblations of food are presented.

1006 The Maruts or Storm-Gods.

1007 The Heavenly Twins, the Castor and Pollux of the Hindus.

1008 The Man par excellence, the representative man and father of the human race regarded also as God.

1009 The Vasus, a class of deities originally personifications of natural phenomena.

1010 A class of celestial beings who dwell between the earth and the sun.

1011 The seven horses are supposed to symbolize the seven days of the week.

1012 One for each month in the year.

1013 The garden of Kuvera, the God of Riches.

1014 The consort of Indra.

1015 The Swayamvara, Self-choice or election of a husband by a princess or daughter of a Kshatriya at a public assembly of suitors held for the purpose. For a description of the ceremony see Nala and Damayantí an episode of the Mahábhárat translated by the late Dean Milman, and Idylls from the Sanskrit.

1016 The Pitris or Manes, the spirits of the dead.

1017 Kuvera, the God of Wealth.

1018 Varuṇ, God of the sea.

1019 Mahádeva or Śiva whose ensign is a bull.

1020 The Address to Ráma, both text and commentary, will be found literally translated in the Additional Notes. A paraphrase of a portion is all that I have attempted here.

1021 Rávaṇ’s queen.

1022 Or Maináka.

1023 Here, in the North-west recension, Sítá expresses a wish that Tárá and the wives of the Vánar chiefs should be invited to accompany her to Ayodhyá. The car decends, and the Vánar matrons are added to the party. The Bengal recension ignores this palpable interruption.

1024 The arghya, a respectful offering to Gods and venerable men consisting of rice, dúivá grass, flowers etc., with water.

1025 I have abridged Hanumán’s outline of Ráma’s adventures, with the details of which we are already sufficiently acquainted.

1026 In these respectful salutations the person who salutes his superior mentions his own name even when it is well known to the person whom he salutes.

1027 I have omitted the chieftains’ names as they could not be introduced without padding. They are Mainda, Dwivid, Níla, Rishabh, Susheṇ, Nala, Gaváksha, Gandhamádan, Śarabh, and Panas.

1028 The following addition is found in the Bengal recension: But Vaiśravaṇ (Kuvera) when he beheld his chariot said unto it: “Go, and carry Ráma, and come unto me when my thought shall call thee, And the chariot returned unto Ráma;” and he honoured it when he had heard what had passed.

1029 Here follows in the original an enumeration of the chief blessings which will attend the man or woman who reads or hears read this tale of Ráma. These blessings are briefly mentioned at the end of the first Canto of the first book, and it appears unnecessary to repeat them here in their amplified form. The Bengal recension (Gorresio’s edition) gives them more concisely as follows: “This is the great first poem blessed and glorious, which gives long life to men and victory to kings, the poem which Válmíki made. He who listens to this wondrous tale of Ráma unwearied in action shall be absolved from all his sins. By listening to the deeds of Ráma he who wishes for sons shall obtain his heart’s desire, and to him who longs for riches shall riches be given. The virgin who asks for a husband shall obtain a husband suited to her mind, and shall meet again her dear kinsfolk who are far away. They who hear this poem which Válmíki made shall obtain all their desires and all their prayers shall be fulfilled.”

_ 1030 The Academy_, Vol. III., No 43, contains an able and interesting notice of this work from the pen of the Professor of Sanskrit in the University of Cambridge: “The Uttarakáṇḍa,” Mr. Cowell remarks, “bears the same relation to the Rámáyaṇa as the Cyclic poems to the Iliad. Just as the Cypria of Stasinus, the Æthiopis of Arctinus, and the little Iliad of Lesches completed the story of the Iliad, and not only added the series of events which preceded and followed it, but also founded episodes of their own on isolated allusions in Homer, so the Uttarakáṇḍa is intended to complete the Rámáyaṇa, and at the same time to supplement it by intervening episodes to explain casual allusions or isolated incidents which occur in it. Thus the early history of the giant Rávaṇa and his family fills nearly forty Chapters, and we have a full account of his wars with the gods and his conquest of Lanká, which all happened long before the action of the poem commences, just as the Cypria narrated the birth and early history of Helen, and the two expeditions of the Greeks against Troy; and the latter chapters continue the history of the hero Ráma after his triumphant return to his paternal kingdom, and the poem closes with his death and that of his brothers, and the founding by their descendants of various kingdoms in different parts of India.”

1031 MUIR, Sanskrit Texts, Part IV., pp. 414 ff.

1032 MUIR, Sanskrit Texts, Part IV., 391, 392.

1033 See Academy, III., 43.

_ 1034 Academy_, Vol. III., No. 43.

1035 E. B. Cowell. Academy, No. 43. The story of Sítá’s banishment will be found roughly translated from the Raghuvaṇśa, in the Additional Notes.

1036 E. B. Cowell. Academy, Vol, III, No. 43.

1037 MUIR, Sanskrit Texts, Part IV., Appendix.

1038 Ghí: clarified butter. Gur: molasses.

1039 Haridwar (Anglicè Hurdwar) where the Ganges enters the plain country.

1040 Campbell in “Journ. As. Soc. Bengal,” 1866, Part ii. p. 132; Latham, “Descr. Eth.” Vol. ii. p. 456; Tod, “Annals of Rajasthan,” Vol. i. p. 114.

1041 Said by the commentator to be an eastern people between the Himálayan and Vindhyan chains.

1042 Videha was a district in the province of Behar, the ancient Mithilá or the modern Tirhoot.

1043 The people of Malwa.

1044 “The Káśikośalas are a central nation in the Váyu Puráṇa. The Rámáyaṇa places them in the east. The combination indicates the country between Benares and Oude.… Kośala is a name variously applied. Its earliest and most celebrated application is to the country on the banks of the Sarayú, the kingdom of Ráma, of which Ayodhyá was the capital.… In the Mahábhárata we have one Kośala in the east and another in the south, besides the Prák-Kośalas and Uttara Kośalas in the east and north. The Puráṇas place the Kośalas amongst the people on the back of Vindhya; and it would appear from the Váyu that Kuśa the son of Ráma transferred his kingdom to a more central position; he ruled over Kośala at his capital of Kúśasthali of Kuśavatí, built upon the Vindhyan precipices.” WILSON’S Vishnṇu Púraṇa, Vol. II. pp. 157, 172.

1045 The people of south Behar.

1046 The Puṇḍras are said to be the inhabitants of the western provinces of Bengal. “In the Aitareyabráhmaṇa, VII. 18, it is said that the elder sons of Viśvamitra were cursed to become progenitors of most abject races, such as Andhras, Puṇḍras, Śabaras, Pulindas, and Mútibas.” WILSON’S Vishṇu Puráṇa Vol. II. 170.

1047 Anga is the country about Bhagulpore, of which Champá was the capital.

1048 A fabulous people, “men who use their ears as a covering.” So Sir John Maundevile says: “And in another Yle ben folk that han gret Eres and long, that hangen down to here knees,” and Pliny, lib. iv. c. 13: “In quibus nuda alioquin corpora prægrandes ipsorum aures tota contegunt.” Isidore calls them Panotii.

1049 “Those whose ears hang down to their lips.”

1050 “The Iron-faces.”

1051 “The One-footed.”

“In that Contree,” says Sir John Maundevile, “ben folk, that han but o foot and thei gon so fast that it is marvaylle: and the foot is so large that it schadeweth alle the Body azen the Sonne, when thei wole lye and rest hem.” So Pliny, Natural History, lib. vii. c. 2: speaks of “Hominumn gens … singulis cruribus, miræ pernicitatis ad saltum; eosdemque Sciopodas vocari, quod in majori æstu, humi jacentes resupini, umbrâ se pedum protegant.”

These epithets are, as Professor Wilson remarks, “exaggerations of national ugliness, or allusions to peculiar customs, which were not literally intended, although they may have furnished the Mandevilles of ancient and modern times.”

Vishṇu Puráṇa, Vol. II. p. 162.

1052 The Kirrhadæ of Arrian: a general name for savage tribes living in woods and mountains.

1053 Said by the commentator to be half tigers half men.

1054 The kingdom seems to have corresponded with the greater part of Berar and Khandesh.

1055 The Bengal recension has Kishikas, and places them both in the south and the north.

1056 The people of Mysore.

1057 “There are two Matsyas, one of which, according to the Yantra Samráj, is identifiable with Jeypoor. In the Digvijaya of Nakula he subdues the Matsyas further to the west, or Gujerat.” WILSON’S Vishṇu Puráṇa, Vol. II. 158. Dr. Hall observes: “In the Mahábhárata Sabhá-parwan, 1105 and 1108, notice is taken of the king of Matsya and of the Aparamatsyas; and, at 1082, the Matsyas figure as an eastern people. They are placed among the nations of the south in the Rámáyaṇa Kishkindhá-káṇda, XLI., II, while the Bengal recension, Kishkindhá-káṇḍa, XLIV., 12, locates them in the north.”

1058 The Kalingas were the people of the upper part of the Coromandel Coast, well known, in the traditions of the Eastern Archipelago, as Kling. Ptolemy has a city in that part, called Caliga; and Pliny Calingæ proximi mari. WILSON’S Vishṇu Puráṇa, Vol. II. 156, Note.

1059 The Kauśikas do not appear to be identifiable.

1060 The Andhras probably occupied the modern Telingana.

1061 The Puṇḍras have already been mentioned in Canto XL.

1062 The inhabitants of the lower part of the Coromandel Coast; so called, after them, Cholamaṇdala.

1063 A people in the Deccan.

1064 The Keralas were the people of Malabar proper.

1065 A generic term for persons speaking any language but Sanskrit and not conforming to the usual Hindu institutions.

1066 “Pulinda is applied to any wild or barbarous tribe. Those here named are some of the people of the deserts along the Indus; but Pulindas are met with in many other positions, especially in the mountains and forests across Central India, the haunts of the Bheels and Gonds. So Ptolemy places the Pulindas along the banks of the Narmadá, to the frontiers of Larice, the Látá or Lár of the Hindus,—Khandesh and part of Gujerat.” WILSON’S Vishṇu Puráṇa, Vol. II. 159, Note.

Canto CXXX. The Consecration. (part 5)

Dr. Hall observes that “in the Bengal recension of the Rámáyaṇa the Pulindas appear both in the south and in the north. The real Rámáyaṇa K.-k., XLIII., speaks of the northern Pulindas.”

1067 The Śúrasenas were the inhabitants of Mathurá, the Suraseni of Arrian.

1068 These the Mardi of the Greeks and the two preceding tribes appear to have dwelt in the north-west of Hindustan.

1069 The Kámbojas are said to be the people of Arachosia. They are always mentioned with the north-western tribes.

1070 “The term Yavanas, although, in later times, applied to the Mohammedans, designated formerly the Greeks.… The Greeks were known throughout Western Asia by the term Yavan, or Ion. That the Macedonian or Bactrian Greeks were most usually intended is not only probable from their position and relations with India, but from their being usually named in concurrence with the north-western tribes, Kámbojas, Daradas, Páradas, Báhlíkas, Śakas &c., in the Rámáyaṇa. Mahábhárata, Puránas, Manu, and in various poems and plays.” WILSON’S Vishṇu Puráṇa Vol. II. p. 181, Note.

1071 These people, the Sakai and Sacæ of classical writers, the Indo-Scythians of Ptolemy, extended, about the commencement of our era, along the west of India, from the Hindu Kosh to the mouths of the Indus.

1072 The corresponding passage in the Bengal recension has instead of Varadas Daradas the Dards or inhabitants of the modern Dardistan along the course of the Indus, above the Himálayas, just before it descends to India.

1073 From the word yonder it would appear that the prayer is to be repeated at the rising of the Sun.

1074 The creator of the world and the first of the Hindu triad.

1075 He who pervades all beings; or the second of the Hindu triad who preserves the world.

1076 The bestower of blessings; the third of the Hindu triad and the destroyer of the world.

1077 A name of the War-God; also one who urges the senses to action.

1078 The lord of creatures; or the God of sacrifices.

1079 A name of the King of Gods; also all-powerful.

1080 The giver of wealth. A name of the God of riches.

1081 One who directly urges the mental faculties to action.

1082 One who moderates the senses, also the God of the regions of the dead.

1083 One who produces nectar (amrita) or one who is always possessed of light; or one together with Umá (Ardhanáríśvara).

1084 The names or spirits of departed ancestors.

1085 Name of a class of eight Gods, also wealthy.

1086 They who are to be served by Yogís; or a class of Gods named Sádhyas.

1087 The two physicians of the Gods: or they who pervade all beings.

1088 They who are immortal; or a class of Gods forty-nine in number.

1089 Omniscient; or the first king of the world.

1090 He that moves; life; or the God of wind.

1091 The God of fire.

1092 Lord of creatures.

1093 One who prolongs our lives.

1094 The material cause of knowledge and of the seasons.

1095 One who shines. The giver of light.

1096 The hymn entitled the Ádityahridaya begins from this verse and the words, thou art, are understood in the beginning of this verse.

1097 One who enjoys all (pleasurable) objects; The son of Aditi, the lord of the solar disk.

1098 One who creates the world, i.e., endows beings with life or soul, and by his rays causes rain and thereby produces corn.

1099 One who urges the world to action or puts the world in motion, who is omnipresent.

1100 One who walks through the sky; or pervades the soul.

1101 One who nourishes the world, i.e., is the supporter.

1102 One having rays (Gabhasti) or he who is possessed of the all-pervading goddess Lakshmí.

1103 One resembling gold.

1104 One who is resplendent or who gives light to other objects.

1105 One whose seed (Retas) is gold; or quicksilver, the material cause of gold.

1106 One who is the cause of day.

1107 One whose horses are of tawny colour; or one who pervades the whole space or quarters.

1108 One whose knowledge is boundless or who has a thousand rays.

1109 One who urges the seven (Práṇas) that is the two eyes, the two ears, the nostrils and the organ of speech, or whose chariot, is drawn by seven horses.

1110 Vide Gabhastimán.

1111 One who destroys darkness, or ignorance.

1112 One from whom our blessings or the enjoyments of Paradise come.

1113 The architect of the gods; or one who lessens the miseries of our birth and death.

1114 One who gives life to the lifeless world.

1115 One who pervades the internal and external worlds; or one who is resplendent.

1116 He who is identified with the Hindu triad, i.e. the creator (Brahmá) the supporter (Vishnu) and the destroyer (Śiva).

1117 Cold or good natured. He is so called because he allays the three sorts of pain.

1118 One who is the lord of all.

1119 Vide Divákara.

1120 One who teaches Brahmá and others the Vedas.

1121 One from whom Rudra the destroyer or the third of the Hindu triad springs.

1122 One who is knowable through Aditi, i.e., the eternal Brahmavidyá.

1123 Great happiness or the sky.

1124 The destroyer of cold or stupidity.

1125 The Lord of the sky.

1126 Vide Timironmathana.

1127 One who is known through the Upanishads.

1128 He who is the cause of heavy rain.

1129 He who is a friend to the good, or who is the cause of water.

1130 One who moves in the solar orbit.

1131 One who determines the creation of the world; or who is possessed of heat.

1132 One who has a mass of rays; or who has Kaustubha and other precious stones as his ornaments.

1133 He who urges all to action; or who is yellow in colour.

1134 One who is the destroyer of all.

1135 One who is omniscient; or a poet.

1136 One who is identified with the whole world.

1137 One who is of huge form.

1138 One who pleases all by giving nourishment; or who is red in colour.

1139 One who is the cause of the whole world.

1140 One who protects the whole world.

1141 The most glorious of all that are glorious.

1142 One who is identical with the twelve months.

1143 One who gives victory over all the worlds to those who are faithfully devoted to him; or the porter of Brahmá, named Jaya.

1144 One who is identical with the blessing which can be obtained by conquering all the worlds; or with the porter of Brahmá named Jayabhadra.

1145 One who has Hanúmán as his conveyance.

1146 One who controls the senses; or is furious with those who are not his devotees.

1147 He who is free in moving the senses; or urges all beings to action.

1148 He who can be known through the Pranava (the mystical Om-kára.)

1149 One who is the knowledge of Brahmá.

1150 One who devours all things.

1151 He who is the destroyer of all pains; and of love, and hate, the causes of pain; and ignorance which is the cause of love and hate.

1152 One who is bliss; or the mover.

1153 One who destroys ignorance and its effects.

1154 The doer of all actions.

1155 One who beholds the universe; who is a witness of good and bad actions.

1156 Sacrifice of the five sensual fires.

1157 According to Ápastamba (says the commentator) “it should have been placed on the nose: this must therefore have been done in conformity with some other Sútras.”

1158 A class of eight gods.

1159 A class of eleven gods called Rudras.

1160 Named Víryaván.

1161 A class of divine devotees named Sádhyas.

1162 One who resides in the water.

1163 The third incarnation of Vishṇu, that bore the earth on his tusk.

1164 One whose armies are everywhere.

1165 One who controls the senses.

1166 He who resides in the heart, or who is full, or all-pervading.

1167 Vámana, or the Dwarf incarnation of Vishṇu.

1168 The killer of Madhu, a demon.

1169 He from whose navel, the lotus, from which Brahmá was born, springs.

1170 He who has a thousand horns. The horns are here the Sákhás of the Sáma-veda.

1171 One who has a hundred heads. The heads are here meant to devote a hundred commandments of the Vedas.

1172 Siddhas are those who have already gained the summit of their desires.

1173 Sádhyas are those that are still trying to gain the summit.

1174 A mystic syllable uttered in Mantras.

1175 A mystic syllable made of the letters which respectively denote Brahmá, Vishṇu, and Śiva.

1176 A class of divine gods.

1177 Sanskáras are those sacred writings through which the divine commands and prohibitions are known.

1178 Bali, a demon whom Vámana confined in Pátála.

1179 Vishṇu, the second of the Hindu triad.

1180 Krishṇa, (black coloured) one of the ten incarnations of Vishṇu.

1181 A. Weber, Akademische Vorlesungen, p. 181.

1182 Systema brahmanicum, liturgicum, mythologicum, civile, exmonumentis Indicis, etc.

1183 Not only have the races of India translated or epitomized it, but foreign nations have appropriated it wholly or in part, Persia, Java, and Japan itself.

1184 In the third century B.C.