The Ramayana, Valmiki [best authors to read txt] 📗
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>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
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