National Epics
By Kate Milner Rabb
The Râmâyana
“He who sings and hears this poem continually has attained to the highest state of enjoyment, and will finally be equal to the gods.”
The Râmâyana, the Hindu Iliad, is variously ascribed to the fifth, third, and first centuries B.C., its many interpolations making it almost impossible to determine its age by internal evidence. Its authorship is unknown, but according to legend it was sung by Kuça and Lava, the sons of Rama, to whom it was taught by Valmiki. Of the three versions now extant, one is attributed to Valmiki, another to Tuli Das, and a third to Vyasa.
Its historical basis, almost lost in the innumerable episodes and grotesque imaginings of the Hindu, is probably the conquest of southern India and Ceylon by the Aryans.
The Râmâyana is written in the Sanskrit language, is divided into seven books, or sections, and contains fifty thousand lines, the English translation of which, by Griffith, occupies five volumes.
The hero, Rama, is still an object of worship in India, the route of his wanderings being, each year, trodden by devout pilgrims. The poem is not a mere literary monument,–it is a part of the actual religion of the Hindu, and is held in such reverence that the mere reading or hearing of it, or certain passages of it, is believed to free from sin and grant his every desire to the reader or hearer.
Bibliography and Criticism, the Râmâyana.
G. W. Cox’s Mythology and Folklore, 1881, p. 313;
John Dowson’s Classical Dictionary of Hindu Mythology, Religion, Geography, History, and Literature, 1879;
Sir William Jones on the Literature of the Hindus (in his Works, vol. iv.);
Maj.-Gen. Vans Kennedy’s Researches into Hindu Mythology, 1831;
James Mill’s History of British India, 1840, vol. ii., pp. 47-123;
F. Max Müller’s Ancient Sanskrit Literature, 1859;
E. A. Reed’s Hindu Literature, 1891, pp. 153-271;
Albrecht Weber’s History of Indian Literature, 1878, pp. 191-195;
J. T. Wheeler’s History of India, 4 vols., 1876, vol. ii.;
Sir Monier Williams’s Indian Wisdom, 1863, Indian Epic Poetry, 1863;
Article on Sanskrit Literature in Encyclopćdia Britannica;
R. M. Gust’s The Râmâyana: a Sanskrit Epic (in his Linguistic and Oriental Essays, 1880, p. 56);
T. Goldstuecker’s Râmâyana (in his Literary Remains, 1879, vol. i., p. 155);
C. J. Stone’s Cradleland of Arts and Creeds, 1880, pp. 11-21;
Albrecht Weber’s On the Râmâyana, 1870; Westminster Review, 1849, vol. 1., p. 34;
J. C. Oman’s Great Indian Epics, 1874, pp. 13-81.
Standard English Translations, the Râmâyana.
The Râmâyana, Tr. by R. T. H. Griffith, 5 vols., 1870-1874 (Follows Bombay ed., Translated into metre of “Lady of the Lake”);
Extracts from the Râmâyana, Tr. by Sir William Jones (in his Works, vol. 13);
Iliad of the East, F. Richardson, 1873 (Popular translations of a set of legends from the Râmâyana);
The Râmâyana translated into English Prose, edited and published by Naumatha Nath Dutt, 7 vols., Calcutta, 1890-1894.
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