Ramayana, Epic of Rama, Prince of India

Epilogue by the Translator - 166
together. And these descriptions, essentially of Hindu life, are yet so true to
nature that they apply to all races and nations.
There is something indescribably touching and tender in the description of the
love of Rama for his subjects and the loyalty of his people towards Rama, – that
loyalty which has ever been a part of the Hindu character in every age –
“As a father to his children to his loving men he came,
Blessed our homes and maids and matrons till our infants lisped his name,
For our humble woes and troubles Rama hath the ready tear,
To our humble tales of suffering Rama lends his willing ear!”
Deeper than this was Rama’s duty towards his father and his father’s fondness
for Rama; and the portion of the Epic which narrates the dark scheme by which
the prince was at last torn from the heart and home of his dying father is one of
the most powerful and pathetic passages in Indian literature. The step-mother of
Rama, won by the virtues and the kindliness of the prince, regards his proposed
coronation with pride and pleasure, but her old nurse creeps into her confidence
like a creeping serpent, and envenoms her heart with the poison of her own
wickedness. She arouses the [186] slumbering jealousy of a woman and awakens
the alarms of a mother, till –
“Like a slow deadly poison worked the ancient nurse’s tears,
And a wife’s undying impulse mingled with a mother’s fears!”
The nurse’s dark insinuations work on the mind of the queen till she becomes a
desperate woman, resolved to maintain her own influence on her husband, and
to see her own son on the throne. The determination of the young queen tells
with terrible effect on the weakness and vacillation of the feeble old monarch,
and Rama is banished at last. And the scene closes with a pathetic story in which
the monarch recounts his misdeed of past years, accepts his present suffering as
the fruit of that misdeed, and dies in agony for his banished son. The inner
workings of the human heart and of human motives, the dark intrigue of a
scheming dependant, the awakening jealousy and alarm of a wife and a mother,
the determination of a woman and an imperious queen, and the feebleness and
despair and death of a fond old father and husband, have never been more
vividly described. Shakespeare himself has not depicted the workings of stormy
passions in the human heart more graphically or more vividly, with greater
truth or with more terrible power.
It is truth and power in the depicting of such scenes, and not in the delineation
of warriors and warlike incidents, that the Ramayana excels, It is in the
delineation of domestic incidents, domestic affections and domestic jealousies,
which are appreciated by the prince and the peasant alike, that the Ramayana
bases its appeal to the hearts of the million in India. And beyond all this, the