The Rámáyan of Válmíki, translated into English verse
moon which has been sunk in the ocean and the infernal regions, so
will I bring back Sítá.” GORRESIO.
596 That is, “Consider what answer you can give to your accusers when
they charge you with injustice in killing me.”
597 Manu, Book VIII. 318. “But men who have committed offences and have
received from kings the punishment due to them, go pure to heaven
and become as clear as those who have done well.”
598 Mándhátá was one of the earlier descendants of Ikshváku. His name is
mentioned in Ráma’s genealogy, p. 81.
599 I cannot understand how Válmíki could put such an excuse as this
into Ráma’s mouth. Ráma with all solemn ceremony, has made a league
of alliance with Báli’s younger brother whom he regards as a dear
friend and almost as an equal, and now he winds up his reasons for
killing Báli by coolly saying: “Besides you are only a monkey, you
know, after all, and as such I have every right to kill you how,
when, and where I like.”
600 A name of Garuḍa the king of birds, the great enemy of the Serpents.
601 Sugríva’s wife.
602 “Our deeds still follow with us from afar. And what we have been
makes us what we are.”
603 Sugríva and Angad.
604 Angad himself, being too young to govern, would be Yuvarája or
heir-apparent.
605 Susheṇa was the son of Varuṇa the God of the sea.
606 A demon with the tail of a dragon, that causes eclipses by
endeavouring to swallow the sun and moon.
607 The Lord of Stars is the Moon.
608 Or the passage may be interpreted: “Be neither too obsequious or
affectionate, nor wanting in due respect or love.”
609 Sacrifices and all religious rites begin and end with ablution, and
the wife of the officiating Bráhman takes an important part in the
performance of the holy ceremonies.
610 Viśvarúpa, a son of Twashṭri or Viśvakarmá the heavenly architect,
was a three-headed monster slain by Indra.
611 The Vánar chief, not to be confounded with Tárá.
612 Śrávaṇ: July-August. But the rains begin a month earlier, and what
follows must not be taken literally. The text has _púrvo’ yam
várshiko másah Śrávaṇah salilágamdh_. The Bengal recension has the
same, and Gorresio translates: “Equesto ilmese Srâvana
(luglio-agosto) primo della stagione piovosa, in cui dilagano le
acque.”
613 Kártik: October-November.
614 “Indras, as the nocturnal sun, hides himself, transformed, in the
starry heavens: the stars are his eyes. The hundred-eyed or
all-seeing (panoptês) Argos placed as a spy over the actions of the
cow beloved by Zeus, in the Hellenic equivalent of this form of
Indras.” DE GUBERNATIS, _Zoological Mythology_, Vol. I, p. 418.
615 Baudháyana and others.
616 Sugríva appears to have been consecrated with all the ceremonies
that attended the _Abhisheka_ or coronation of an Indian prince of
the Aryan race. Compare the preparations made for Ráma’s
consecration, Book II, Canto III. Thus Homer frequently introduces
into Troy the rites of Hellenic worship.
617 Vitex Negundo.
618 Mályavat: “The name of this mountain appears to me to be erroneous,
and I think that instead of Mályavat should be read Malayavat,
Malaya is a group of mountains situated exactly in that southern
part of India where Ráma now was, while Mályavat is placed to the
north east.” GORRESIO.
619 Mantles of the skin of the black antelope were the prescribed dress
of ascetics and religious students.
620 The sacred cord worn as the badge of religious initiation by men of
the three twice-born castes.
621 The hum with which students conduct their tasks.
622 I omit here a long general description of the rainy season which is
not found in the Bengal recension and appears to have been
interpolated by a far inferior and much later hand than Valmiki’s.
It is composed in a metre different from that of the rest of the
Canto, and contains figures of poetical rhetoric and common-places
which are the delight of more recent poets.
623 Praushthapada or Bhadra, the modern Bhadon, corresponds to half of
August and half of September.
624 The Sáman or Sáma-veda, the third of the four Vedas, is really
merely a reproduction of parts of the Rig-veda, transposed and
scattered about piece-meal, only 78 verses in the whole being, it is
said, untraceable to the present recension of the Rig-veda.
625 Áshádha is the month corresponding to parts of June and July.
626 Bharat, who was regent during Ráma’s absence.
627 Or with Gorresio, following the gloss of another commentary: “Has
completed every holy rite and accumulated stores of merit.”
628 The river on which Ayodhyá was built.
629 I omit a _śloka_ or four lines on gratitude and ingratitude repeated
word for word from the last Canto.
630 The Indian crane; a magnificent bird easily domesticated.
631 The troops who guard the frontiers on the north, south, east and
west.
632 The Chátaka, Cuculus, Melanoleucus, is supposed to drink nothing but
the water for the clouds.
633 The time for warlike expeditions began when the rains had ceased.
634 The rainbow.
635 Indra’s associates in arms, and musicians of his heaven.
636 Maireya, a spirituous liquor from the blossoms of the Lythrum
fruticosum, with sugar, &c.
637 Their names are as follows: Angad, Maínda, Dwida, Gavaya, Gaváksha,
Gaja, Śarabha, Vidyunmáli, Sampáti, Súryáksa, Hanumán, Vírabáhu,
Subáhu, Nala, Kúmuda, Susheṇa, Tára, Jámbuvatu, Dadhivakra, Níla,
Supátala, and Sunetra.
638 The Kalpadruma or Wishing-tree is one of the trees of Svarga or
Indra’s Paradise: it has the power of granting all desires.
639 The meaning is that if a man promises to give a horse and then
breaks his word he commits a sin as great as if he had killed a
hundred horses.
640 The story is told in Book I, Canto LXIII, but the charmer there is
called Menaká.
641 Rohiṇí is the name of the ninth Nakshatra or lunar asterism
personified as a daughter of Daksha, and the favourite wife of the
Moon. Aldebaran is the principal star in the constellation.
642 Válmíki and succeeding poets make the second vowel in this name long
or short at their pleasure.
643 Some of the mountains here mentioned are fabulous and others it is
impossible to identify. Sugríva means to include all the mountains
of India from Kailás the residence of the God Kuvera, regarded as
one of the loftiest peaks of the Himálayas, to Mahendra in the
extreme south, from the mountain in the east where the sun is said
to rise to Astáchal or the western mountain where he sets. The
commentators give little assistance: that Maháśaila, &c. are certain
mountains is about all the information they give.
644 One of the celestial elephants of the Gods who protect the four
quarters and intermediate points of the compass.
645 Váyu or the Wind was the father of Hanumán.
646 The path or station of Vishṇu is the space between the seven Rishis
or Ursa Major, and Dhruva or the polar star.
647 One of the seven seas which surround the earth in concentric
circles.
648 The title of Maheśvar or Mighty Lord is sometimes given to Indra,
but more generally to Śiva whom it here denotes.
649 See Book I, Canto XVI.
650 The numbers are unmanageable in English verse. The poet speaks of
hundreds of _arbudas_; and an _arbuda_ is a hundred millions.
651 Anuhláda or Anuhráda is one of the four sons of the mighty
Hiraṇyakaśipu, an Asur or a Daitya son of Kaśyapa and Diti and
killed by Vishṇu in his incarnation of the Man-Lion _Narasinha_.
According to the Bhágavata Puráṇa the Daitya or Asur Hiraṇyakaśipu
and Hiraṇyáksha his brother, both killed by Vishṇu, were born again
as Rávaṇ and Kumbhakarṇa his brother.
652 Puloma, a demon, was the father-in-law of Indra who destroyed him in
order to avert an imprecation. Paulomí is a patronymic denoting
Śachí the daughter of Puloma.
653 “Observe the variety of colours which the poem attributes to all
these inhabitants of the different mountainous regions, some white,
others yellow, &c. Such different colours were perhaps peculiar and
distinctive characteristics of those various races.” GORRESSIO.
654 Susheṇ.
655 Tára.
656 Kesarí was the husband of Hanúmán’s mother, and is here called his
father.
657 “I here unite under one heading two animals of very diverse nature
and race, but which from some gross resemblances, probably helped by
an equivoque in the language, are closely affiliated in the Hindoo
myth … a reddish colour of the skin, want of symmetry and
ungainliness of form, strength in hugging with the fore paws or
arms, the faculty of climbing, shortness of tail(?), sensuality,
capacity of instruction in dancing and in music, are all
characteristics which more or less distinguish and meet in bears as
well as in monkeys. In the _Rámáyaṇam_, the wise Jámnavant, the
Odysseus of the expedition of Lanká, is called now king of the bears
(rikshaparthivah), now great monkey (_Mahákapih_).” DE GUBERNATIS:
_Zoological Mythology_, Vol. II. p. 97.
658 Gandhamádana, Angad, Tára, Indrajánu, Rambha, Durmukha, Hanumán,
Nala, Da mukha, Śarabha, Kumuda, Vahni.
659 Daityas and Dánavas are fiends and enemies of the Gods, like the
Titans of Greek mythology.
660 I reduce the unwieldy numbers of the original to more modest
figures.
661 Sarayú now Sarjú is the river on which Ayodhyá was built.
662 Kauśikí is a river which flows through Behar, commonly called Kosi.
663 Bhagírath’s daughter is Gangá or the Ganges. The legend is told at
length in Book I Canto XLIV. _The Descent of Gangá_.
664 A mountain not identified.
665 The Jumna. The river is personified as the twin sister of Yáma, and
hence regarded as the daughter of the Sun.
666 The Sarasvatí (corruptly called Sursooty, is supposed to join the
Ganges and Jumna at Prayág or Allahabad. It rises in the mountains
bounding the north-east part of the province of Delhi, and running
in a south-westerly direction becomes lost in the sands of the great
desert.
667 The Sindhu is the Indus, the Sanskrit _s_ becoming _h_ in Persian
and being in this instance dropped by the Greeks.
668 The Sone which rises in the district of Nagpore and falls into the
Ganges above Patna.
669 Mahí is a river rising in Malwa and falling into the gulf of Cambay
after a westerly course of 280 miles.
670 There is nothing to show what parts of the country the poet intended
to denote as silk-producing and silver-producing.
671 Yavadwipa means the island of Yava, wherever that may be.
672 Śiśir is said to be a mountain ridge projecting from the base of
Meru on the south. Wilson’s _Vishnu Puráṇa_, ed. Hall, Vol. II. p.
117.
673 This appears to be some mythical stream and not the well-known Śone.
The name means red-coloured.
674 A fabulous thorny rod of the cotton tree used for torturing the
wicked in hell. The tree gives its name, Śálmalí, to one of the
seven Dwípas, or great divisions of the known continent: and also to
a hell where the wicked are tormented with the pickles of the tree.
675 The king of the feathered creation.