The Ramayana, Valmiki [best authors to read txt] 📗
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“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:”
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.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
“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
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