NOTES
I.Antiquity of the “Ramayana.”—Older than the “Ramayana” ascribed to Valmiki is the “Ramasaga” itself, which exists as a Buddhist story, known as the “Dasahrathajataka.” This is substantially the history of Rama and Sita, with the important omission of the rape of Sita and the expedition against Lanka, which incidents the poet of the “Ramayana” is believed by Dr. Albrecht Weber to have borrowed from the Homeric legends.[49]If this conjecture be correct, the treatment of the incidents in question by Valmiki is no slavish imitation of that of Homer. In the “Mahabharata” the story of Rama and Sita is narrated to Yudhisthira as an example, taken from the olden time, by way of consolation on a certain occasion, and agrees so closely with the work of Valmiki that it certainly looks very much like an epitome of that work. In regard to the age of this epic, Sir Monier Williams says: “We cannot be far wrong in asserting that a great portion of the ‘Ramayana,’ if not the entire ‘Ramayana,’ before us, must have been current in India as early as the fifth centuryB.C.”[50]
II.English versions of the “Ramayana.”—The English reader desirous of learning more of the details of the “Ramayana” than is contained in this epitome, may consult the following works: (1) The excellent metrical version of Mr. Ralph Griffith, in five volumes; (2) the prose translationnow in course of publication by Babu Manmatha Nath Dutt, M.A.; (3) Mr. Taiboys Wheeler’s “History of India,” vol. iii.; and (4) The “Ramayana” of Tulsi Das, translated by Mr. F. T. Growse.
III.The “Ramayana” only a nature myth.—While one scholar findshistoryin the pages of the “Ramayana,” and discovers in its interesting details a poetical version of the conquest of Southern India by the Aryans, another, with a turn for mythological interpretation, assures us that it is only a nature myth. “The whole story,” he writes, “is clearly an account of how the full moon wanes and finally disappears from sight during the last fourteen days of the lunar month, which are the fourteen years of Rama and Sita’s exile. Her final disappearance is represented by her rape by Ravana, and her rescue means the return of the new moon. In the course of the story the triumph of the dark night, lightened by the moon and stars, is further represented by the conquest of Vali, the god of tempests of the monkey race, who had obscured the stars.”[51]