Ramayana, Epic of Rama, Prince of India

77
Book V. Panchavati
(On the Banks of the Godavari)
[77] The wanderings of Rama in the Deccan, his meeting with Saint Agastya,
and his residence on the banks of the Godavari river, are narrated in this Book.
The reader has now left Northern India and crossed the Vindhya mountains; and
the scene of the present and succeeding five Books is laid in the Deccan and
Southern India. The name of Agastya is connected with the Deccan, and many
are the legends told of this great Saint, before whom the Vindhya mountains
bent in awe, and by whose might the Southern ocean was drained. It is likely
that some religious teacher of that name first penetrated beyond the Vindhyas,
and founded the first Aryan settlement in the Deccan, three thousand years ago.
He was pioneer, discoverer and settler, – the Indian Columbus who opened out
Southern India to Aryan colonization and Aryan religion.
Two yojanas from Agastya’ a hermitage, Rama built his forest dwelling in the
woods of Panchavati, near the sources of the Godavari river, and within a
hundred miles from the modern city of Bombay. There he lived with his wife
and brother in peace and piety, and the Book closes with the description of an
Indian winter morning, when the brothers and Sita went for their ablutions to
the Godavari, and thought of their distant home in Oudh. The description of the
peaceful forest-life of the exiles comes in most appropriately on the eve of
stirring events which immediately succeed, and which give a new turn to the
story of the Epic, We now stand therefore at the turning point of the poet’s
narrative; [78] he has sung of domestic incidents and of peaceful hermitages so
far; he sings of dissensions and wars hereafter.
The portions translated in this Book form Sections i., xii., xiii., xv., and xvi, of
Book iii. of the original text.
I. The Hermitage of Agastya
Righteous Rama, soft-eyed Sita, and the gallant Lakshman stood
In the wilderness of Dandak, – trackless, pathless, boundless wood,
But within its gloomy gorges, dark and deep and known to few,
Humble homes of hermit sages rose before the princes’ view.
Coats of bark and scattered kusa spake their peaceful pure abode,
Seat of pious rite and penance which with holy splendour glowed,
Forest songsters knew the asram and the wild deer cropt its blade,
And the sweet-voiced sylvan wood-nymph haunted oft its holy shade,