Ramayana, Epic of Rama, Prince of India

Epilogue by the Translator - 164
daughter of Janak and the heroine of the Epic, is the ideal of a faithful woman
and a devoted wife. A pious reverence for the past pervades the great Epic; a
lofty admiration of what is true and ennobling in the human character sanctifies
the work; and delineations of the domestic life and the domestic virtues of the
ancient Hindus, rich in tenderness and pathos, endear the picture to the hearts of
the people of India to the present day.
It is probable that the first connected narrative of this Epic was composed within
a few centuries after the glorious age of the Kosalas and the Videhas. But the
work became so popular that it grew with age. It grew, – not like the Mahabharata
by the incorporation of new episodes, tales and traditions, – but by fresh
descriptions of the same scenes and incidents. Generations of poets [183] were
never tired of adding to the description of scenes which were dear to the Hindu,
and patient Hindu listeners were never tired of listening to such repetitions. The
virtues of Rama and the faithfulness of Sita were described again and again in
added lines and cantos. The grief of the old monarch at the banishment of the
prince, and the sorrows of the mother at parting from her son, were depicted by
succeeding versifiers in fresh verses. The loving devotion of Rama’s brothers,
the sanctity of saints, and the peacefulness of the hermitages visited by Rama,
were described with endless reiteration. The long account of the grief of Rama
at the loss of his wife, and stories of unending battles waged for her recovery,
occupied generations of busy interpolators.
The Sloka verse in which much of the Ramayana is composed is the easiest of
Sanscrit metres, and afforded a fatal facility to poets; and often we have the
same scene, fully and amply described in one canto, repeated again in the two or
three succeeding cantos. The unity of the composition is lost by these additions,
and the effect of the narrative is considerably weakened by such endless
repetition.
It would appear that the original work ended with the sixth Book, which
describes the return of the hero to his country and to his loving subjects. The
seventh Book is called Uttara or Supplemental, and in it we are told something
of the dimensions of the poem, apparently after the fatal process of additions
and interpolations had gone on for centuries. We are informed that the poem
consists of six Books and a Supplemental Book; and that it comprises 500 cantos
and 24,000 couplets. And we are also told in this Supplemental Book that the
descendants of Rama and his brothers founded some of the great towns and
states which, we know from other sources, flourished in the fifth and fourth
centuries before Christ. It is probable therefore that the Epic, commenced after
1000 B.C., had assumed something like its present shape a few centuries before
the Christian Era.
The foregoing account of the genesis and growth of the Ramayana will indicate
in what respects it resembles the Maha-bharata and in what respects the two
Indian Epics differ from each other. The Maha-bharata, grew out of the legends