Ramayana, Epic of Rama, Prince of India

100
Book VII. Kishkindha
(In the Nilgiri Mountains)
[104] Rama’s wanderings in the Nilgiri mountains, and his alliance with Sugriva
the chief of these regions, form the subject of the Book. With that contempt for
aboriginal races which has marked civilized conquerors in all ages, the poet
describes the dwellers of these regions as monkeys and bears. But the modern
reader sees through these strange epithets; and in the description of the social
and domestic manners, the arts and industries, the sacred rites and ceremonies,
and the civic and political life of the Vanars, the reader will find that the poet
even imports Aryan customs into his account of the dwellers of Southern India.
They formed an alliance with Rama, they fought for him and triumphed with
him, and they helped him to recover his wife from the king of Ceylon.
The portions translated in this Book form Sections v., xv., xvi., xxvi., a portion
of Section xxviii., and an abstract of Sections xi. to xliii. of Book iv, of the
original text.
I. Friends in Misfortune
Long and loud lamented Rama by his lonesome cottage door,
Janasthana’s woodlands answered, Panchavati’s echoing shore,
Long he searched in wood and jungle, mountain crest and pathless plain,
Till he reached the Malya mountains stretching to the southern main.
[105] There Sugriva king of Vanars, Hanuman his henchman brave,
Banished from their home and empire lived within the forest cave,
To the exiled king Sugriva, Hanuman his purpose told,
As he marked the pensive Rama wand’ring with his brother bold:
“Mark the sons of Dasa-ratha banished from their royal home,
Duteous to their father’s mandate in these pathless forests roam,
Great was monarch Dasa-ratha famed for sacrifice divine,
Raja-suya, Aswa-medha, and for gift of gold and kine,
By a monarch’s stainless duty people’s love the monarch won,
By a woman’s false contrivance banished he his eldest son!
True to duty, true to virtue, Rama passed his forest life,
Till a false perfidious Raksha stole his fair and faithful wife,