Ramayana, Epic of Rama, Prince of India

Epilogue by the Translator - 170
in these modern translations; they have heard it recited in the houses of the rich;
and they have seen it acted on the stage at religious festivals in every great town
and every populous village through the length and breadth of India.
More than this, the story of Rama has inspired our religious reformers, and
purified the popular faith of our modern times, Rama, the true and dutiful, was
accepted as the Spirit of God descended on earth, as an incarnation of VISHNU
the Preserver of the World. The great teacher Ramanuja proclaimed the
monotheism of VISHNU in Southern India in the twelfth century; the reformer
Ramananda proclaimed the same faith in Northern India in the thirteenth or
fourteenth century; and his follower the gifted Kabir conceived the bold idea of
uniting Hindus and Mahomedans in the worship of One God, “The God of the
Hindus,” he said, “is the God of the Mahomedans, be he invoked as Rama or
Ali,” “The city of the Hindu God is Benares, and the city of the Mahomedan
God is Mecca: but search your hearts, and there you will find the God both of
Hindus and Mahomedans,” “If the Creator dwells in tabernacles, whose dwelling
is the universe?”
The reformer Chaitanya preached the same sublime monotheism in Bengal, and
the reformer Nanak in the Punjab, in the sixteenth century. And down to the
present day the popular mind in India, led away by the worship of many images
in many temples, nevertheless holds fast to the cardinal idea of One God, and
believes the heroes of the ancient Epics – Krishna and Rama – to be the
incarnations of that God. The various sects of the Hindus, specially the sects of
Vishnu and of Siva who form the great majority of the people, quarrel about a
name as they often did in Europe in the Middle Ages, and each sect gives to the
Deity the special name by which the sect is known. In the teeming villages of
Bengal, in the ancient shrines of Northern India, and far away in the towns and
hamlets of Southern India, the prevailing faith of the million is a popular
monotheism underlying the various ceremonials in honour of various images
and forms, – and that popular monotheism generally recognises the heroes of
the two ancient Epics, – Krishna and Rama, [192] as the earthly Incarnations of
the great God who pervades and rules, the universe.
To know the Indian Epics is to understand the Indian people better. And to trace
the influence of the Indian Epics on the life and civilisation of the nation, and
on the development of their modern languages, literatures, and religious
reforms, is to comprehend the real history of the people during three thousand
years.
Romesh Dutt
University College, London
13 th August 1899.