The Rámáyan of Válmíki, translated into English verse
205 Dhanvantari, the physician of the Gods.
206 The poet plays upon the word and fancifully derives it from _apsu_,
the locative case plural of _ap_, water, and _rasa_, taste.… The
word is probably derived from _ap_, water, and _sri_, to go, and
seems to signify _inhabitants of the water_, nymphs of the stream;
or, as Goldstücker thinks (Dict. s.v.) these divinities were
originally personifications of the vapours which are attracted by
the sun and form into mist or clouds.
207 “_Surá_, in the feminine comprehends all sorts of intoxicating
liquors, many kinds of which the Indians from the earliest times
distilled and prepared from rice, sugar-cane, the palm tree, and
various flowers and plants. Nothing is considered more disgraceful
among orthodox Hindus than drunkenness, and the use of wine is
forbidden not only to Bráhmans but the two other orders as well.… So
it clearly appears derogatory to the dignity of the Gods to have
received a nymph so pernicious, who ought rather to have been made
over to the Titans. However the etymological fancy has prevailed.
The word _Sura_, a God, is derived from the indeclinable _Swar_
heaven.” SCHLEGEL.
208 Literally, high-eared, the horse of Indra. Compare the production of
the horse from the sea by Neptune.
209 “And Kaustubha the best
Of gems that burns with living light
Upon Lord Vishṇu’s breast.”
_Churning of the Ocean._
210 “That this story of the birth of Lakshmí is of considerable
antiquity is evident from one of her names _Kshírábdhi-tanayá_,
daughter of the Milky Sea, which is found in _Amarasinha_ the most
ancient of Indian lexicographers. The similarity to the Greek myth
of Venus being born from the foam of the sea is remarkable.”
“In this description of Lakshmí one thing only offends me, that she
is said to have four arms. Each of Vishṇu’s arms, single, as far as
the elbow, there branches into two; but Lakshmí in all the brass
seals that I possess or remember to have seen has two arms only. Nor
does this deformity of redundant limbs suit the pattern of perfect
beauty.” SCHLEGEL. I have omitted the offensive epithet.
211 Purandhar, a common title of Indra.
212 A few verses are here left untranslated on account of the subject
and language being offensive to modern taste.
213 “In this myth of Indra destroying the unborn fruit of Diti with his
thunderbolt, from which afterwards came the Maruts or Gods of Wind
and Storm, geological phenomena are, it seems, represented under
mythical images. In the great Mother of the Gods is, perhaps,
figured the dry earth: Indra the God of thunder rends it open, and
there issue from its rent bosom the Maruts or exhalations of the
earth. But such ancient myths are difficult to interpret with
absolute certainty.” GORRESIO.
214 Wind.
215 Indra, with _mahá_, great, prefixed.
216 The Heavenly Twins.
217 Not banished from heaven as the inferior Gods and demigods sometimes
were.
218 Kumárila says: “In the same manner, if it is said that Indra was the
seducer of Ahalyá this does not imply that the God Indra committed
such a crime, but Indra means the sun, and Ahalyá (from ahan and lí)
the night; and as the night is seduced and ruined by the sun of the
morning, therefore is Indra called the paramour of Ahalyá.” MAX
MULLER, _History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 530_.
219 “The preceding sixteen lines have occurred before in Canto XLVIII.
This Homeric custom of repeating a passage of several lines is
strange to our poet. This is the only instance I remember. The
repetition of single lines is common enough.” SCHLEGEL.
220 Divine personages of minute size produced from the hair of Brahmá,
and probably the origin of
“That small infantry
Warred on by cranes.”
221 Sweet, salt, pungent, bitter, acid, and astringent.
222 “Of old hoards and minerals in the earth, the king is entitled to
half by reason of his general protection, and because he is the lord
paramount of the soil.” MANU, Book VIII. 39.
223 Ghí or clarified butter, “holy oil,” being one of the essentials of
sacrifice.
224 “A Bráhman had five principal duties to discharge every day: study
and teaching the Veda, oblations to the manes or spirits of the
departed, sacrifice to the Gods, hospitable offerings to men, and _a
gift of food to all creatures_. The last consisted of rice or other
grain which the Bráhman was to offer every day outside his house in
the open air. MANU, Book III. 70.” GORRESIO.
225 These were certain sacred words of invocation such a _sváhá_,
_vashaṭ_, etc., pronounced at the time of sacrifice.
226 “It is well known that the Persians were called Pahlavas by the
Indians. The _Śakas_ are nomad tribes inhabiting Central Asia, the
Scythes of the Greeks, whom the Persians also, as Herodotus tells
us, called Sakæ just as the Indians did. Lib. VII 64 ὁι γὰρ Πέρσαι
πάντας τοὺς Σύθας. καλέουσι Σάκας. The name Yavans seems to be used
rather indefinitely for nations situated beyond Persia to the west.…
After the time of Alexander the Great the Indians as well as the
Persians called the Greeks also Yavans.” SCHLEGEL.
Lassen thinks that the Pahlavas were the same people as the Πάκτυες
of Herodotus, and that this non-Indian people dwelt on the
north-west confines of India.
227 See page 13, note 6.
228 Barbarians, non-Sanskrit-speaking tribes.
229 A comprehensive term for foreign or outcast races of different faith
and language from the Hindus.
230 The Kirátas and Hárítas are savage aborigines of India who occupy
hills and jungles and are altogether different in race and character
from the Hindus. Dr. Muir remarks in his Sanskrit Texts, Vol. I. p.
488 (second edition) that it does not appear that it is the object
of this legend to represent this miraculous creation as the origin
of these tribes, and that nothing more may have been intended than
that the cow called into existence large armies, of the same stock
with particular tribes previously existing.
231 The Great God, Śiva.
232 Nandi, the snow-white bull, the attendant and favourite vehicle of
Śiva.
233 “The names of many of these weapons which are mythical and partly
allegorical have occurred in Canto XXIX. The general signification
of the story is clear enough. It is a contest for supremacy between
the regal or military order and Bráhmanical or priestly authority,
like one of those struggles which our own Europe saw in the middle
ages when without employing warlike weapons the priesthood
frequently gained the victory.” SCHLEGEL.
For a full account of the early contests between the Bráhmans and
the Kshattriyas, see Muir’s Original Sanskrit Texts (Second edition)
Vol. I. Ch. IV.
234 “Triśanku, king of Ayodhyá, was seventh in descent from Ikshváku,
and Daśaratha holds the thirty-fourth place in the same genealogy.
See Canto LXX. We are thrown back, therefore, to very ancient times,
and it occasions some surprise to find Vaśishṭha and Viśvámitra,
actors in these occurences, still alive in Rama’s time.”
235 “It does not appear how Triśanku, in asking the aid of Vaśishṭha’s
sons after applying in vain to their father, could be charged with
resorting to another _śákhá_ (School) in the ordinary sense of that
word; as it is not conceivable that the sons should have been of
another Śákhá from the father, whose cause they espouse with so much
warmth. The commentator in the Bombay edition explains the word
_Śákhantaram_ as Yájanádiná rakshántaram, ‘one who by sacrificing
for thee, etc., will be another protector.’ Gorresio’s Gauḍa text,
which may often be used as a commentary on the older one, has the
following paraphrase of the words in question, ch. 60, 3. Múlam
utsṛijya kasmát tvam sákhásv ichhasi lambitum. ‘Why, forsaking the
root, dost thou desire to hang upon the branches?’ ” MUIR, Sanskrit
Texts, Vol. I., p. 401.
236 A Chaṇḍála was a man born of the illegal and impure union of a Śúdra
with a woman of one of the three higher castes.
237 “The Chaṇḍála was regarded as the vilest and most abject of the men
sprung from wedlock forbidden by the law (Mánavadharmaśástra, Lib.
X. 12.); a kind of social malediction weighed upon his head and
rejected him from human society.” GORRESIO.
238 This appellation, occuring nowhere else in the poem except as the
name of a city, appears twice in this Canto as a name of Vaśishṭha.
239 “The seven ancient rishis or saints, as has been said before, were
the seven stars of Ursa Major. The seven other new saints which are
here said to have been created by Viśvámitra should be seven new
southern stars, a sort of new Ursa. Von Schlegel thinks that this
mythical fiction of new stars created by Viśvámitra may signify that
these southern stars, unknown to the Indians as long as they
remained in the neighbourhood of the Ganges, became known to them at
a later date when they colonized the southern regions of India.”
GORRESIO.
240 “This cannot refer to the events just related: for Viśvámitra was
successful in the sacrifice performed for Triśanku. And yet no other
impediment is mentioned. Still his restless mind would not allow him
to remain longer in the same spot. So the character of Viśvámitra is
ingeniously and skilfully shadowed forth: as he had been formerly a
most warlike king, loving battle and glory, bold, active, sometimes
unjust, and more frequently magnanimous, such also he always shows
himself in his character of anchorite and ascetic.” SCHLEGEL.
241 Near the modern city of Ajmere. The place is sacred still, and the
name is preserved in the Hindí. Lassen, however, says that this
Pushkala or Pushkara, called by the Grecian writers Πευκελίτις, the
earliest place of pilgrimage mentioned by name, is not to be
confounded with the modern Pushkara in Ajmere.
242 “Ambarísha is the twenty-ninth in descent from Ikshváku, and is
therefore separated by an immense space of time from Triśanku in
whose story Viśvámitra had played so important a part. Yet Richíka,
who is represented as having young sons while Ambarísha was yet
reigning being himself the son of Bhrigu and to be numbered with the
most ancient sages, is said to have married the younger sister of
Viśvámitra. But I need not again remark that there is a perpetual
anachronism in Indian mythology.” SCHLEGEL..
“In the mythical story related in this and the following Canto we
may discover, I think, some indication of the epoch at which the
immolation of lower animals was substituted for human sacrifice.… So
when Iphigenia was about to be sacrificed at Aulis, one legend tells
us that a hind was substituted for the virgin.” GORRESIO.
So the ram caught in the thicket took the place of Isaac, or, as the
Musalmáns say, of Ishmael.
243 The Indian Cupid.
244 “The same as she whose praises Viśvámitra has already sung in Canto
XXXV, and whom the poet brings yet alive upon the scene in Canto