Transcriber's Notes

1. New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.

2. Certain hyphenation and spelling variations are retained as in original which is sourced by bibliographic references.

3. Footnotes were moved to the end of the book.

4. Illustrations were moved from middle to end of the paragraph.

SIR JOHN LUBBOCK’S
HUNDRED BOOKS

THE
RAMAYANA
AND THE
MAHABHARATA

Reprinted
by permission of George Bell and Sons
from “Bohn’s Standard Library”
for “Sir John Lubbock’s Hundred Books.”

Sir John Lubbock’s Hundred Books

THE GREAT INDIAN EPICS
THE STORIES OF THE
RAMAYANA
AND THE
MAHABHARATA
BY
JOHN CAMPBELL OMAN
PROFESSOR OF NATURAL SCIENCE IN THE GOVERNMENT COLLEGE LAHORE
AUTHOR OF “INDIAN LIFE RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL” ETC.
WITH NOTES APPENDICES AND ILLUSTRATIONS
NEW EDITION REVISED

London and New York
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS
LIMITED

CHISWICK PRESS:—CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.

PREFACE

The Indian Epics are precious relics of the spring-time of Eastern thought, revealing a new and singularly fascinating world, which differs very remarkably from that depicted in the epic poetry of Western lands. But although these epics are extremely interesting, and although they are accessible in English translations, more or less complete, they are such voluminous works that their mere bulk is enough to repel the ordinary English reader, and even the student, in these days of feverish occupation.

I may, no doubt, be justly reminded that every Indian History, written within recent years, contains abstracts of the two epics; but these abstracts, I would observe, are skeletons rather than miniatures of the poems; they are the dry bones, on which the historians try to support a fabric of historical inferences or conjectures, and they are necessarily deficient in the mythological, romantic and social elements so important to a proper comprehension of the “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata.” Besides, when the structures are so colossal, so composite and in many respects so beautiful, there can be no harm in having yet another view of them, taken probably from a new standpoint.

In Europe the Homeric poems are very extensively studied in the original Greek; they are productions of very moderate size in comparison with the Indian Epics; many and excellent translations of them, in both prose and verse, are always issuing from the press; and yet condensed epitomes of the “Iliad” and “Odyssey” are welcomed by the reading public, by whom also prose versions of the poetical narratives of even English poets—as Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare and Browning—are favourably received.

Such being the case, I make no apology for the appearance of this little volume, in which I have not only tried to reproduce faithfully, in a strictly limited space, the main incidents and more striking features of those gigantic and wonderful creations of the ancient bards of India—the “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata”—but also to direct attention to the abiding influence of those works upon the habits and conceptions of the modern Hindu.

As they are often very incorrectly cited in support of views for which there is no authority whatever in their multitudinous verses, it has been my especial aim to give as accurate a presentment as possible of the Indian Epics, taken as a whole; so that a fair and just idea—neither too high nor too low—of their varied contents and their intellectual level might be formed by the readers of this volume, be they Europeans or Indians. And from what I have recently learned, I have good ground for believing that both classes of readers will, after perusal of this little book, be in a position to see the erroneous character of many ideas in regard to life in ancient India which are current in their respective circles.

Where, for any reason, I have especially desired that an event recorded, or an opinion expressed, in the epics should be reproduced without the possibility of misrepresentation on my part, I have thought it best to quote verbatim the translations of them made by Hindu scholars; although, unfortunately, their versions are by no means elegant, and, indeed, often quite the reverse. But as they, no doubt, reflect the structure and texture of the poems in a way that no more free or polished English rendering could possibly do, I fancy the citations I have made will not be unwelcome to most readers.

My book is divided into two distinct parts dealing separately with the “Ramayana” and the “Mahabharata,” and at the end of each part I have given, in the form of an Appendix, one or two of the more striking legendary episodes lavishly scattered through these famous epics, and which, though not essential for the comprehension of the main story, are too beautiful or important to be omitted. Of these episodes I should say that they are the best-known portions of the “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata,” having been told and retold in all the leading Indian vernaculars, and having, most of them, been brought before the European world in both prose and verse.

A General Introduction to the two poems, and a concluding chapter, containing remarks and inferences based on the materials supplied to the reader in Parts I. and II., complete the scheme of this little volume, which, I trust, will be found to be something more than a mere epitome of the great Sanskrit epics; for, in its preparation, I have had the advantage of considerable local knowledge and an intimate acquaintance with the people of Aryavarta.

J. C. O.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

GREAT INDIAN EPICS

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Foremost amongst the many valuable relics of the old-world literature of India stand the two famous epics, the “Ramayana” and the “Mahabharata,” which are loved with an untiring love by the Hindus, for they have kept alive, through many a dreary century, the memory of the ancient heroes of the land, whose names are still borne by the patient husbandman and the proud chief.[1] These great poems have a special claim to the attention even of foreigners, if considered simply as representative illustrations of the genius of a most interesting people, their importance being enhanced by the fact that they are, to this day, accepted as entirely and literally true by some two hundred millions of the inhabitants of India. And they have the further recommendation of being rich in varied attractions, even when regarded merely as the ideal and unsubstantial creations of Oriental imagination.

Both the “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata” are very lengthy works which, taken together, would make up not less than about five and twenty printed volumes of ordinary size. They embrace detailed histories of wars and adventures and many a story that the Western World would now call a mere fairy tale, to be listened to by children with wide-eyed attention. But interwoven with the narrative of events and legendary romances is a great bulk of philosophical, theological, and ethical materials, covering probably the whole field of later Indian speculation. Indeed, the epics are a storehouse of Brahmanical instruction in the arts of politics and government; in cosmogony and religion; in mythology and mysticism; in ritualism and the conduct of daily life. They abound in dialogues wherein the subtle wisdom of the East is well displayed, and brim-over with stories and anecdotes intended to point some moral, to afford consolation in trouble, or to inculcate a useful lesson. To epitomize all this satisfactorily would be quite impossible; but what I have given in this little volume will, I hope, be sufficient to show the nature and structure of the epics, the characteristics that distinguish them as essentially Indian productions, and the light they throw upon the condition of India and the state of Hindu society at the time the several portions were written, or, at any rate, collected together. The narrative, brief though it be, will reflect the more abiding features of Indian national life, revealing some unfamiliar ideas and strange customs. Even within the narrow limits of the reduced picture here presented, the reader will get something more than a glimpse of those famous Eastern sages, whose half-comprehended story has furnished the Theosophists of our own day with the queer notion of their extraordinary Mahatmas; he will learn somewhat of the wisdom and pretensions of those sages, and will not fail to note that the belief in divine incarnations was firmly rooted in India in very early times. He will incidentally acquire a knowledge of all the fundamental religious ideas of the Hindus and of the highest developments of their philosophy; he will also become familiar with some primitive customs which have left unmistakable traces in the institutions of modern social life in the East as well as in the West; and will, perhaps, be able to track to their origin some strange conceptions which are floating about the intellectual atmosphere of our time.

Woven out of the old-time sagas of a remarkable people, “the ancient Aryans of India, in many respects the most wonderful race that ever lived on Earth,”[2] the Sanskrit epics must have a permanent interest for educated people in every land; while all Indian studies must have an attraction for those who desire to watch, with intelligent appreciation, the wonderfully interesting transformations in religion and manners, which contact with Western civilization is producing in the ancient and populous land of the Hindus. Not less interesting will such studies be to those who are able to note the curious, though as yet slight, reaction of Hindu thought upon modern European ideas in certain directions; as, for example, in the rise of Theosophy, in the sentimental tendency manifested in some quarters towards asceticism, Buddhism and Pantheism; in the approval by a small class in Europe of the cremation of the dead, and in the growing fascination of such doctrines as those of metempsychosis and Karma.

Although it is difficult for the Englishman of the nineteenth century to understand the intellectual attitude of modern India in respect to the wild legends of its youth, it may help towards a comprehension of this point if one reflects that had not Christianity superseded the original religions of Northern Europe, had the Eddas and Sagas, with their weird tales of wonder and mystery, continued to be authoritative scripture in Britain, the religious faith of England might now have been somewhat on a par with that of India to-day—an extraordinary medley of the wildest legends and deepest philosophy. It is a subject for wonder how the gods of the ancestors of the English people have entirely faded from popular recollection in Britain, how Sagas and Eddas have been completely forgotten, leaving only a substratum of old superstitions about witchcraft, omens, etc. (once religious beliefs), amongst the more backward of the populace. How many Englishmen ever think, how many of them even know, anything about Thor or Odin and the bloody sacrifices (often human sacrifices)[3] with which those deities were honoured? How many realize that the worship of these gods and the rites referred to had a footing in some parts of Europe as recently as eight hundred years ago?[4]

The almost complete extinction of the ancestral beliefs of the European nations is a striking fact to which the religious history of India presents no parallel. In Europe the great wall of Judaic Christianity—too often cemented with blood—has been reared, in colossal dimensions, between the past and the present, cutting off all communication between the indigenous faiths and modern speculative philosophy of the Western nations; while diverting the affectionate interest of the devout from local to foreign shrines.

No barrier of nearly similar proportions has ever been raised in India. Islam, it is true, has planted its towers in many parts of the country and has, to some restricted extent, blocked the old highways of thought, causing a certain estrangement between the old and new world of ideas; but the severance between the past and the present has nowhere been as complete as in Europe, for many an Indian Muslim, though professing monotheism, still lingers upon the threshold of the old Hindu temples, and still, in times of trouble, will stealthily invoke the aid of the national deities, who are not yet dead and buried like those of the Vikings. Hence it may be asserted of the vast majority of the Indian people that their vision extends reverentially backward, through an uninterrupted vista, to the gods and heroes of their remote ancestors.

And who were those remote ancestors, those Aryan invaders of India in the gray dawn of human history? We have had two answers to that question. A few years ago the philologists assured us, very positively, that the Aryans were a vigorous primitive race whose home was in central Asia and who had sent successive waves of emigration and conquest westwards, right across the continent of Europe, to be arrested in their onward march only by the wide waters of the Atlantic. We were also assured, by these learned investigators into the mysteries of words and languages, that one horde of Asiatic Aryans, instead of following the usual westward course adopted by their brethren, had turned their thoughts towards the sunnier climes of the South, and, scaling the northwestern barrier of India, had conquered the aborigines and settled in the great Indo-Gangetic plain at the foot of the Himalayas. These conclusions find a place in all our text-books of Indian or European history. The schoolboy, who has read his Hunter’s brief history[5] of India, knows well that “the forefathers of the Greek and the Roman, of the English and the Hindu, dwelt together in Central Asia, spoke the same tongue, worshipped the same gods,” and that “the history of ancient Europe is the story of the Aryan settlements around the shores of the Mediterranean.” However, these conclusions have recently undergone revision and radical modification. Within the last decade a theory, which originated in England with Dr. Latham and which met with contemptuous disregard when first propounded, has been revived by certain German savants and scientists.[6] Supported by the latest results of craniological and anthropological investigation, Latham’s theory, in a modified form, has, under the erudite advocacy of Dr. Schrader and Karl Penka, gained all but universal acceptance. The theory now in favour, which is founded more on inferences from racial than linguistic peculiarities, differs from the one referred to above in a very important respect. The home of the Aryans, instead of being found in Central Asia, is traced to Europe, so that the Aryan invaders of India, many centuries before Christ, were men of European descent who pushed their way eastward and gradually extended their dominion first over Iran and subsequently over Northern India, having scaled the snowclad Himalayas, literally in search of “fresh fields and pastures new.” When they reached India, after a long sojourn in Eastern countries, they were a mixed European and Asiatic race, with probably a large share of Turanian blood,[7] speaking a language of Aryan origin.[8] A strong, warlike, aggressive race, these Aryans won for themselves a dominant position in ancient India, and have left to this day the unmistakable traces of their language in many of the vernaculars of the land.

The decision of the question of the origin of the Aryans and the locality of their primitive home is not one of purely antiquarian interest, it is one of national importance, as anyone will be prepared to admit who knows, and can recall to mind, the effect upon the educated Hindus of the announcement that their own ancestors had been the irresistible subjugators of Europe. Whether the Norman conquerors of England were of Celtic or, as the late Professor Freeman insisted, of Teutonic stock, is not unimportant to the Englishman for the true comprehension of his national history and not without some influence even in practical politics; but of far greater moment will it be for the Hindu whether he learn to regard the Aryans of old as an Asiatic or a European race, cradled on the “Roof of the World” or in the flats of the Don.

Although all Hindus look upon the Aryan heroes of the Indian epics as the ancestors of their race, and fondly pride themselves in their mighty deeds, the claim, in the case of the vast majority, is, of course, untenable; since the great bulk of the Indian population has no real title to Aryan descent. Yet Rama and Arjuna are truly Indian creations, enshrined in the sacred literature of the land. And the pride and faith of the Hindus in these demigods has, perhaps, sustained their spirits and elevated their characters, through the vicissitudes of many a century since the heroic age of India.

What genuine facts, or real events, may underlie the poetical narratives of the authors of the “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata” will never be known. The details naïvely introduced are often such as to leave an irresistible impression that there is a substratum of substantial truth serving as a foundation for the fantastic and airy structure reared by the poets, and we now and then recognize, for instance in their despairing fatefulness, a distant echo of ideas which have travelled with the Aryan race to the Northern Seas. But the too fertile imagination of the Indian poets, their supreme contempt for details and utter disregard of topographical accuracy, leave little hope of our ever getting any satisfactory history out of the Sanskrit epics, or even of our establishing an identity in regard to localities and details of construction such as has been traced, in our own day, by Schliemann, between the buried citadel of Hissarlik on the Hellespont and vanished Ilion. For those who do not share these opinions there is a wide and deep field for industrious research; but I confess that I am somewhat indifferent regarding the extremely doubtful history or the very fanciful allegory that may be laboriously extracted from the Indian epics by ingenious historians and mythologists. Indeed I would protest against these grand epics being treated as history, for then they must be judged by the canons of historical composition and would be shorn of their highest merits. They are poems not history, they are the romantic legends and living aspirations of a people, not the sober annals of their social and political life.

Like the other great poems created by the genius of the past, the Indian epics have a value quite independent of either the history or the allegory which they enshrine. They appeal to our predilection for the marvellous and our love of the beautiful, while affording us striking pictures of the manners of a bygone age, which, for many reasons, we would not willingly lose.

Being religious books, the “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata” are, more or less, known to the Hindus; but it is a noteworthy fact that even educated Indians are but little acquainted with the details of these poems, although both epics have been translated into the leading vernaculars of the country and also into English. I have known educated young men, with more faith in their ancient books than knowledge of their contents, warmly deny the possibility of certain narratives having a place in these books, because, to their somewhat Europeanized ideas, they seemed too far-fetched to be probable. The more striking incidents are, however, familiar to every Hindu, for Brahmans wander all over the country, reciting the sacred poems to the people. They gather an audience of both sexes and all ages and read to them from the venerable Sanskrit, rendering the verses of the dead language of the Aryan invaders of India into the living speech of their hearers. Sometimes the Brahmans read and expound vernacular translations of these poems of Valmiki and Vyasa. Often-times these recitations are accompanied with much ceremony and dignified with a display of religious formalities.[9] Day after day the people congregate to listen, with rapt attention, to the old national stories, and the moral lessons drawn from them, for their instruction, by the Pandits. To this day a considerable proportion of the people of India order much of their lives upon the models supplied by their venerable epics, which have, moreover, mainly inspired such plastic and pictorial work as the Indian people have produced; being for the Hindu artist what the beautiful creations of Greek fancy, or the weird myths of the Middle Ages, have been for his European brother.

Impressed with the importance of some knowledge of the Indian epics on the part of everyone directly or indirectly interested in the life and opinions of the strange and highly intellectual Hindu race, which has preserved its marked individuality of character through so many centuries of foreign domination, I have written, for the benefit of those, whether Europeans or Indians, who may be acquainted with the English language, the brief epitomes of them contained in the following pages; deriving my materials not from the original Sanskrit poems, which are sealed books to me, but from the translations, more or less complete and literal, of these voluminous works, which have been given to the world by both European and Indian scholars. On all occasions where religious opinions or theological doctrines are concerned I have given the preference to the translations of native scholars, as I know that Indian Sanskritists have a happy contempt for Western interpretations of their sacred books, and it seemed very desirable, in such a case, to let the Hindus speak for themselves. Besides, I am of opinion that the English versions of the “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata,” now being given to the world by Indian scholars, have a unique value, which later translations will, in all probability, not possess. The present translators are orthodox Hindus possessing a competent knowledge of English, and their aim has been to produce English versions of their sacred poems, as understood and accepted by themselves and by the orthodox Indian world to-day, their renderings, no doubt, reflecting the traditional interpretation handed down from past times. Hereafter we shall have more learned translations, in which European ideas will do duty for Indian ones, and the old poems will be interpreted up to our own standard of science and philosophy. In wild legends we shall discover subtle allegories veiling sober history, in license and poetry we shall find deep religious mysteries, and in archaic notions shall recognize, with admiration, the structure of modern philosophy. Something of this has already come about, and that the rest is not far-off is evident; for we have only recently been told, that “in the shlokas of the ‘Ramayana’ and ‘Mahabharata’ we have many important historical truths relating to the ancient colonization of the Indian continent by conquering invaders ... all designedly concealed in the priestly phraseology of the Brahman, but with such exactitude of method, nicety of expression and particularity of detail, as to render the whole capable of being transformed into a sober, intelligible and probable history of the political revolutions that took place over the extent of India during ages antecedent to the records of authentic history, by anyone who will take the trouble to read the Sanskrit aright through the veil of allegory covering it.”[10]

While regretting my shortcomings in respect to the language of the bards who composed the Sanskrit epics, since I am thereby cut off from appreciating the beauty of their versification and the felicities of expression which no translation can possibly preserve, I derive consolation from the reflection, that with sufficiently accurate translations at hand—similar to our English versions of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures—a knowledge of Sanskrit is certainly not essential for the production of a work with the moderate pretensions of this little volume.

PART I
THE RAMAYANA

THE RAMAYANA
OR ADVENTURES OF RAMA

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

Once every year, at the great festival known as the Dasahra, the story of the famous Hindu epic, the “Ramayana,” is, throughout Northern India, recalled to popular memory, by a great out-door dramatic representation of the principal and crowning events in the life of the hero, Rama. The “Ramayana” is not merely a popular story, it is an inspired poem, every detail of which is, in the belief of the great majority of the Indian people, strictly true. Although composed at least nineteen centuries ago, it still lives enshrined in the hearts of the children of Aryavarta and is as familiar to them to-day as it has been to their ancestors for fifty generations. Pious pilgrims even now retrace, step by step, the wanderings, as well as the triumphal progress, of Rama, from his birth-place in Oudh to the distant island of Ceylon. Millions believe in the efficacy of his name alone to insure them safety and salvation. For these reasons the poem is of especial value and interest to anyone desirous of understanding the people of India; affording, as it does, an insight into the thoughts and feelings of the bard or bards who composed it and of a race of men who, through two thousand eventful years, have not grown weary of it.

In the following chapters I shall first give a brief summary of the leading events narrated in the “Ramayana” and then proceed to link, as it were, the past with the present, by describing the annual play as I have often witnessed it in Northern India.

The “Ramayana,” written in the Sanskrit language, embraces an account of the birth and adventures of Rama. The whole poem, which is divided into seven books or sections, contains about fifty thousand lines and occupies five goodly volumes in Mr. Ralph Griffith’s metrical translation,[11] which is, to a certain extent, an abridged version. To Valmiki is attributed the authorship of this famous epic, and a pretty story is told of the manner in which he came to write it. A renowned ascetic, a sort of celestial being, named Narada, had related to Valmiki the main incidents of the adventurous life of Rama, and had deeply interested that sage in the history of the hero and his companions. Pondering the events described by Narada, Valmiki went to the river to bathe. Close at hand two beautiful herons, in happy unconsciousness of danger, were disporting themselves on the wooded bank of the stream, when suddenly one of the innocent pair was laid prostrate by the arrow of an unseen fowler. The other bird, afflicted with grief, fluttered timidly about her dead mate, uttering sore cries of distress. Touched to the heart by her plaintive sorrow, Valmiki gave expression to his feelings of irritation and sympathy in words which, to his own surprise, had assumed a rhythmic measure and were capable of being chanted with an instrumental accompaniment. Presently, Brahma himself, the Creator of all, visited the sage in his hermitage, but Valmiki’s mind was so much occupied with the little tragedy at the river-side, that he unconsciously gave utterance to the verses he had extemporized on the occasion. Brahma, smiling, informed the hermit that the verses had come to his lips in order that he might compose the delightful and instructive story of Rama in that particular measure or shloka. Assuring Valmiki that all the details of the stirring tale would be revealed to him, the Supreme Being directed the sage to compose the great epic, which should endure as long as the mountains and seas exist upon this earth. How Valmiki acquired a knowledge of all the details of the story is worth remembering, as being peculiarly Indian in its conception.

“Sitting himself facing the east on a cushion of Kusa grass, and sipping water according to the ordinance, he addressed himself to the contemplation of the subject through Yoga.[12] And, by virtue of his Yoga powers, he clearly observed before him Rama and Lakshmana, and Sita, and Dasahratha, together with his wives, in his kingdom, laughing and talking and acting and bearing themselves as in real life.”[13]

CHAPTER II

THE STORY

The story of the “Ramayana,” in brief outline, is as follows:

In the ancient land of Kosala, watered by the River Surayu, stood the famous Ayodhya,[14] a fortified and impregnable city of matchless beauty, and resplendent with burnished gold, where everyone was virtuous, beautiful, rich and happy. Wide streets traversed this city in every direction, lined with elegant shops and stately palaces glittering all over with gems. There was no lack of food in Ayodhya, for “it abounded in paddy and rice, and its water was as sweet as the juice of the sugar-cane.” Gardens, mango-groves and “theatres for females” were to be found everywhere. Dulcet music from Venas and Panavas resounding on all sides, bore evidence to the taste of the people. Learned and virtuous Brahmans, skilled in sacrificial rites, formed a considerable proportion of the population; which also included a crowd of eulogists and “troops of courtesans.” The pride of ancient families supported a large number of genealogists. Hosts of skilled artisans of every kind contributed to the conveniences and elegancies of life, while an army of doughty warriors protected this magnificent and opulent city from its envious foes. Over this wonderful and prosperous capital of a flourishing kingdom, ruled King Dasahratha, a man some sixty thousand years of age, gifted with every virtue and blessed beyond most mortals. But, as if to prove that human happiness can never exist unalloyed with sorrow, even he had one serious cause for grief; he was childless, although he had three wives and seven hundred and fifty concubines.[15] Acting upon the advice of the priests, the Maharajah determined to offer, with all the complicated but necessary rites, the sacrifice of a horse, as a means of prevailing upon the gods to bless his house with offspring. The accomplishment of such a sacrifice was no easy matter, or to be lightly undertaken, even by a mighty monarch like Dasahratha, since it was an essential condition of success that the sacrifice should be conducted without error or omission in the minutest details of the ritual of an intricate ceremony, extending over three days. Not only would any flaw in the proceedings render the sacrifice nugatory, but it was to be feared that learned demons (Brahma-Rakshasas), ever maliciously on the look-out for shortcomings in the sacrifices attempted by men, might cause the destruction of the unfortunate performer of an imperfect sacrifice of such momentous importance. However, the sacrifice was actually performed on a magnificent scale and most satisfactorily, with the assistance of an army of artisans, astrologers, dancers, conductors of theatres, and persons learned in the ceremonial law. Birds, beasts, reptiles, and aquatic animals were sacrificed by the priests on this auspicious occasion, but the sacred horse itself was despatched, with three strokes, by the hand of Kauçalya, Dasahratha’s queen. When the ceremonies had been conducted to a successful close, Dasahratha showed his piety and generosity by making a free gift of the whole earth to the officiating priests; but they were content to restore the magnificent present, modestly accepting in its stead fabulous quantities of gold and silver and innumerable cows.

The gods, Gandharvas and Siddhas, propitiated by the offerings profusely made to them, assembled, each one for his share,[16] and Dasahratha was promised four sons.[17] While these events were transpiring, a ten-headed Rakshasa named Ravana was making himself the terror of gods and men, under the protection of a boon bestowed upon him by the Creator (Brahma), that neither god nor demon should be able to deprive him of his life. This boon had been obtained by the Rakshasa as the reward of long and painful austerities.[18]

The hierarchy of minor gods, in their own interest and for the sake of the saints who were constantly being disturbed in their devotions by this Ravana and his fellows, appealed to the Supreme Deity to find some remedy for the evil. Brahma, after reflecting on the matter, replied—

“One only way I find
To stay this fiend of evil mind.
He prayed me once his life to guard
From demon, God and heavenly bard,
And spirits of the earth and air,
And I consenting heard his prayer.
But the proud giant in his scorn,
Recked not of man of woman born,
None else may take his life away
But only man the fiend may slay.”

—Griffith.

On receiving this reply the gods petitioned Vishnu to divide himself into four parts and to appear on earth, incarnate as the promised sons of Dasahratha, and thus, in human form, to rid the world of Ravana. Vishnu consented. He proceeded to the earth and appeared amidst the sacrificial flames of Dasahratha’s offering, in an assumed form “of matchless splendour, strength and size”—black, with a red face, and shaggy hair—apparelled in crimson robes, and adorned with celestial ornaments, holding in his hands a vase of gold, containing heavenly nectar, which he handed to the king, with instructions to make his three queens partake of the sacred draught, in order that they might be blessed with sons.

Dasahratha distributed the nectar amongst his wives, though not in equal proportions. In due time the promised sons were born, viz., Rama, Lakshmana, Bharata and Satrughna. Rama possessed the larger share of the divine nature and decidedly excelled his brothers in prowess. To him, especially, was allotted the task of destroying Ravana. And countless hosts of monkeys and bears were begotten by the gods, at Brahma’s[19] suggestion, to aid him in his work.

Whilst yet a mere stripling, Rama was appealed to by the sage Vishwamitra to destroy certain demons who interrupted the religious rites of the hermits.

The boy was only sixteen years of age, and Dasahratha, naturally solicitous for his safety, declined to let him go to fight the dreadful brood of demons, who had an evil reputation for cruelty and ferocity; but the mighty ascetic waxed so wrath at this refusal of his request, that “the entire earth began to tremble and the gods even were inspired with awe.” Vasishta, the king’s spiritual adviser, who had unbounded confidence in Vishwamitra’s power to protect the prince from all harm, strongly advised compliance with the ascetic’s request, and Dasahratha was prevailed upon to allow Rama and Lakshmana to leave Ayodhya with Vishwamitra.

The incidents of the journey reveal a very primitive state of society. The princes and their guide were all of them on foot, apparently quite unattended by servants and unprovided with even the most ordinary necessaries of life. When they reached the River Surayu,[20] Vishwamitra communicated certain mantras or spells to Rama, by the knowledge of which he would be protected from fatigue and fever[21] and from the possibility of being surprised by the Rakshasas against whom he was going to wage war.

The land through which our travellers journeyed was sparsely inhabited. A goodly portion of it seems to have been covered with woods, more or less pleasant, abounding in the hermitages of ascetics, some of whom had been carrying on their austerities for thousands of years. Beside these pleasant woods there were vast, trackless forests, infested by ferocious beasts and grim Rakshasas, and it was not long before the might of the semi-divine stripling, Rama, was tried against one of these terrible creatures, Tarika by name, an ogress of dreadful power, whom Rama undertook to destroy “in the interests of Brahmans, kine and celestials.” When the ascetic and the two princes arrived in the dark forest where the dreaded Tarika ruled supreme, Rama twanged his bowstring loudly, as a haughty challenge to this redoubtable giantess. Incensed at the audacious sound of the bowstring, Tarika uttered terrible roars and rushed out to attack the presumptuous prince. The ascetic raised a defiant roar in response. That was his entire contribution to the combat in which Rama and his adversary were immediately involved, Lakshmana taking part in it also. This, the first conflict in which Rama was engaged, may be taken as a type of all his subsequent battles. Raising clouds of dust, Tarika, “by help of illusion,” poured a shower of huge stones upon the brothers, but these ponderous missiles were met and arrested in mid-air by a volley of arrows. The battle raged fiercely, but the brothers succeeded with their shafts in depriving Tarika of her hands, her nose and her ears. Thus disabled and disfigured, Tarika changed her shape[22] and even concealed herself from view, while still continuing the fight with unabated fury; but Rama, guided by sound alone, assailed his invisible foe with such effect that he eventually laid her dead at his feet, to the joy of Vishwamitra and the relief of the denizens of the great forest over which she had terrorized.

After this successful combat, the ascetic, Vishwamitra, conferred on Rama a gift of strange weapons, which even the celestials were incapable of wielding. How very different the magic weapons received by Rama were from those familiar to the sons of men, will be apparent from the poet’s statement that the weapons themselves made their appearance spontaneously before Rama, “and with clasped hands, they, well-pleased, addressed Rama thus: These, O highly generous one, are thy servants, O Raghava. Whatever thou wishest, good betide thee, shall by all means be accomplished by us.”

Such wonderful and efficient weapons, endowed with a consciousness and individuality of their own, needed, however, to be kept under strict control, lest in their over-zeal or excitement they might effect undesigned and irreparable mischief. The sage accordingly communicated to Rama the various mantras or spells by which they might, on critical occasions, be restrained and regulated in their operations.

In their woodland wanderings amongst the hermitages the brothers and their guide came across many sages whose laborious austerities were constantly being hindered by wicked, flesh-eating Rakshasas. Indeed the world, outside the cities and villages,—which it would seem were very few and far between,—as pictured by Valmiki, is a very strange one, mostly peopled by two sets of beings, hermits striving after supernatural power through the practice of austerities, and demons bent on frustrating their endeavours by unseasonable interruptions of their rites, or impious pollution of their sacrifices. Sometimes, as in the case of Ravana, the demons themselves would practise austerities for the attainment of power.

Very prominent figures in the poem are the great ascetics, like Vishwamitra himself, who, a Kshatriya by caste and a king by lineage, had obtained, through dire austerities prolonged over thousands of years, the exalted rank and power of Brahmanhood. A single example of his self-inflicted hardships and the consequences resulting therefrom may not be out of place. He once restrained his breath for a thousand years, when vapours began to issue from his head, “and at this the three worlds became afflicted with fear.” Like most of his order, he was a very proud and irate personage, ready, upon very slight provocation, to utter a terrible and not-to-be-escaped-from curse.[23] Once, in a fit of rage against the celestials, Vishwamitra created entire systems of stars and even threatened, in his fury, to create another India by “the process of his self-earned asceticism.”

The life led by the princely brothers in their pedestrian wanderings with this mighty sage was simplicity itself. They performed their religious rites regularly, adoring the rising sun, the blazing fire or the flowing river, as the case might be. Their sojourn in the forests was enlivened by pleasant communion with the hermits to whose kind hospitality they were usually indebted for a night’s lodging, if such it can be called, and a simple fare of milk and fruits. Vishwamitra added interest to their journeyings by satisfying the curiosity of the brothers in regard to the history of the several places they visited. Here, as he informed them, the god Rudra had performed his austerities—for even the gods were not above the necessity and ambition of ascetic practices—and blasted the impious Kama into nothingness with a breath. There, the great god Vishnu of mighty asceticism, worshipped of all the deities, dwelt during hundreds of Yugas, for the purpose of carrying on his austerities and practising yoga.[24] At one time Vishwamitra would relate the history of the origin of Ganga and of her descent upon the earth, as the mighty and purifying Ganges, chief of rivers. At another time he would himself listen complacently, along with his princely companions, to the history of his own wonderful asceticism and marvellous performances, as the wise Satananda related it for the special edification of Rama.

So passed away the time in the forests, not altogether peacefully, however, for the object of the journey would not have been fulfilled without sundry fierce and entirely successful encounters with the Rakshasas, those fiendish interrupters of sacrifice and persistent enemies of the anchorites. Eventually the wanderers came to the kingdom of Mithila, whose king, Janaka,[25] had a lovely daughter to bestow upon the worthy and fortunate man who should bend a certain formidable bow which had belonged to Siva and which he had once threatened to use in the destruction of the gods.

Janaka’s daughter, the famous Sita, whose matrimonial future was thus connected with Siva’s bow, was of superhuman origin, having sprung from the earth in a mysterious manner; for, while Janaka was ploughing the ground in the course of a child-conferring sacrifice, the lovely maiden had, by the favour of the gods, come to him out of the furrow.

Allured by the fame of Sita’s beauty, suitor after suitor had come to Mithila and tried that tough bow of Siva’s, but without success; and Rama’s curiosity was awakened about both the mighty weapon and the maiden fair.

Having been introduced by Vishwamitra to the King of Mithila, Rama was allowed to essay his strength against the huge bow, and huge it was indeed, for it had to be carried on an eight-wheeled cart which “was with difficulty drawn along by five thousand stalwart persons of well-developed frames.” To Rama, however, the bending of this gigantic bow was an easy matter, and he not only bent but broke it too, at which event all present, overwhelmed by the noise, rolled head over heels, with the exception of Vishwamitra, the “king and the two Raghavas.” The lovely and much-coveted prize was Rama’s of course. Arrangements for the wedding were carried out in grand style. Dasahratha and his two other sons were invited to Mithila and brides were found, in the family of Janaka, for all the four brothers. Upon a daïs covered with a canopy, and decked with flowers, the happy brides and bridegrooms were placed, attended by the king and the priests of the two families. Water-pots, golden ladles, censers, and conches, together with platters containing rice, butter, curds and other things for the Hom sacrifice, were also arranged for use on the platform. The sacrificial fire was lighted, the appropriate mantras repeated, and the four bridegrooms led their brides first round the fire, and then round the king and the priests. At this stage of the proceedings showers of celestial flowers rained down upon the happy couples, now united in the bonds of matrimony.[26] After these marriages the return to Ayodhya was accomplished with rejoicings and in great state; but Vishwamitra took his solitary way to the Northern Mountains.

As the years went by and Rama was grown to man’s estate he was endowed with every princely virtue; the people idolized him, and his father, desirous of retiring from the cares of government, determined to place him upon the throne. But, although apparently simple of execution, this arrangement was beset with difficulties. Rama was the son of the Rajah’s eldest and principal wife; but Bharata was the son of his favourite wife, the slender-waisted Kaikeyi. The suffrages of the people and Dasahratha’s own wishes were entirely in favour of Rama, but, apparently unwilling to face the grief or opposition of his darling Kaikeyi, the king took advantage of Bharata’s absence on a visit to a distant court to carry out the rather sudden preparations for Rama’s installation as Yuva-Rajah, hoping, it would seem, to keep Kaikeyi in complete ignorance of what was being done. The whole city, however, was in a state of bustle and excitement at the approaching event. The streets were being washed and watered, flag-staffs were being erected on every side, gay bunting was floating about and garlands of flowers adorned the houses. Musicians played in the highways and in the temples, and, notwithstanding the seclusion of the women’s apartments, it was impossible to conceal from the inmates of the zenana what was going on in the great world outside. A deformed and cunning slave-girl, named Manthara, found out and revealed the whole plot to Bharata’s mother. At first Kaikeyi received the intelligence with pleasure, for Rama was dear to everybody; but the slave-girl so worked upon her feelings of envy and jealousy, by artfully picturing to her the very inferior position she would hold in the world’s estimation, the painful slights she would have to endure and the humiliation she would have to suffer, once Kauçalya’s son was raised to the throne, that in a passion of rage and grief, she threw away her ornaments and, with dishevelled hair, flew to the “chamber of sorrow” and flung herself down upon the floor, weeping bitterly. Here the old king found her “like a sky enveloped in darkness with the stars hid” and had to endure the angry reproaches of his disconsolate favourite. Acting upon a suggestion of the deformed slave-girl, the queen reminded her husband of a promise made by him long previously, that he would grant her any two requests she might make. She now demanded the fulfilment of the royal promise, her two requests being that Rama should be sent away into banishment in the forests for a period of fourteen years and that her own son Bharata should be elevated to the dignity of Yuva-Rajah. On these terms, and on these only, would the offended and ambitious Kaikeyi be reconciled to her uxorious lord. If these conditions were refused she was resolved to rid the king of her hated presence. Dasahratha, poor old man, was overwhelmed by this unexpected crisis. He fell at his wife’s feet, he explained that preparations for Rama’s installation had already commenced, he besought her not to expose him to ridicule and contempt, he coaxed and flattered her, alluding to her lovely eyes and shapely hips, he extolled Rama’s affectionate devotion to herself. He next heaped bitter reproaches upon Kaikeyi’s unreasonable pride and finally swooned away in despair. But she was firm in her purpose and would not be shaken by anything, kind or unkind, that this “lord of earth” could say to her. The royal word she knew was sacred, and had to be kept at any cost.

As soon as it came to be known what a strange and unforeseen turn events had taken, the female apartments were the scene of loud lamentations, and the entire city was plunged in mourning. Rama, of expansive and coppery eyes,[27] long-armed, dark blue like a lotus, a mighty bowman of matchless strength, with the gait of a mad elephant, brave, truthful, humble-minded, respectful and generous to Brahmans, and having his passions under complete control, was the idol of the zenana, the court, and the populace. The thought of his unmerited banishment to the forests was intolerable to everyone. But he himself, with exemplary filial devotion, prepared to go into exile at once, without a murmur. The poet devotes considerable space to a minute description of the sorrow experienced by the prominent characters in the story on account of Rama’s banishment. Each one indulges in a lengthy lamentation, picturing the privations and sufferings of the ill-fated trio, and nearly everyone protests that it will be impossible to live without Rama. With affectionate regard for Sita’s comfort, and loving apprehension for her safety, Rama resolved to leave her behind with his mother; but no argument, no inducement, could prevail upon the devoted wife to be parted from her beloved husband. What were the terrors of the forest to her, what the discomfort of the wilderness, when shared with Rama? Racked with sorrow at the proposed separation, Sita burst into a flood of tears and became almost insensible with grief. At the sight of her tribulation Rama, overcome with emotion, threw his arms about his dear wife and agreed to take her with him, come what may.

Lakshmana, with devoted loyalty, would also accompany his brother into exile.

Kaikeyi, apprehensive of delays, hurried on their preparations, and herself, unblushingly, provided them with the bark dresses worn by ascetics. The two brothers donned their new vestments in the king’s presence.

“But Sita, in her silks arrayed,
Threw glances, trembling and afraid,
On the bark coat she had to wear
Like a shy doe that eyes the snare.
Ashamed and weeping for distress
From the queen’s hand she took the dress.
The fair one, by her husband’s side,
Who matched heaven’s minstrel monarch, cried:
‘How bind they on their woodland dress,
Those hermits of the wilderness?’
There stood the pride of Janak’s race
Perplexed, with sad appealing face,
One coat the lady’s fingers grasped,
One round her neck she feebly clasped,
But failed again, again, confused
By the wild garb she ne’er had used.
Then quickly hastening Rama, pride
Of all who cherish virtue, tied
The rough bark mantle on her, o’er
The silken raiment that she wore.
Then the sad women when they saw
Rama the choice bark round her draw,
Rained water from each tender eye
And cried aloud with bitter cry.”[28]

—Griffith.

After giving away vast treasures to the Brahmans the ill-fated trio took a pathetic leave of the now miserable old king, of Kauçalya who mourned like a cow deprived of her calf, of Sumitra the mother of Lakshmana, and of their “other three hundred and fifty mothers.” With an exalted sense of filial duty the exiles also bid a respectful and affectionate farewell to Kaikeyi, the cruel author of their unmerited banishment, Rama remarking that it was not her own heart, but “Destiny alone that had made her press for the prevention of his installation.”

When Rama and his companions appeared in the streets of the capital, in the dress of ascetics, the populace loudly deplored their fate, extolling the virtues of Rama while giving vent to their feelings of disapproval at the king’s weak compliance with his favourite’s whim. Sita came in for her share of popular pity and admiration, since she “whom formerly the very rangers of the sky could not see, was to-day beheld by every passer-by.”

A royal chariot conveyed away to the inhospitable wilderness the two brothers and faithful Sita, torn from stately Ayodhya, their luxurious palaces and the arms of their fond parents. All they carried with them, in the chariot, was their armour and weapons, “a basket bound in hide and a hoe.” Crowds of people, abandoning their homes, followed in the track of the chariot, resolved to share the fate of the exiles. And such was the grief of the people that the dust raised by the wheels of the car occupied by Rama and his companions was laid by the tears of the citizens. They drove at once to the jungles and rested there for the night. During the hours of slumber the exiles considerately gave their followers the slip and hurried off, in the chariot, towards the great forest of Dandhaka. When they arrived at the banks of the sacred and delightful Ganges the charioteer was dismissed with tender messages to the old king from his exiled children. After the departure of the charioteer Rama and his companions began their forest wanderings on foot. Their hermit-life was now to commence in earnest. Before entering the dark forests that lay before them, the brothers resolved to wear “that ornament of ascetics, a head of matted hair,” and, accordingly, produced the desired coiffure with the aid of the glutinous sap of the banyan tree. Thus prepared and clothed in bark like the saints, the brothers, with faithful Sita, entered a boat which chanced to be at the river-side and began the passage of the Ganges. As they crossed the river the pious Sita, with joined hands, addressed the goddess of the sacred stream, praying for a happy return to Ayodhya, when their days of exile should be over. Having arrived on the other bank, the exiles entered the forest in Indian file, Lakshmana leading and Rama bringing up the rear. Passing by Sringavara on the Ganges, they proceeded to Prayaga at the junction of the Ganges and the Jumna. Here they were hospitably entertained by the sage Bharadvaja, who recommended them to seek an asylum on the pleasant slopes of wooded Chitrakuta. On the way thither Sita, ever mindful of her religious duties, adored the Kalindi river—which they crossed on a raft constructed by themselves—and paid her respects to a gigantic banyan tree, near which many ascetics had taken up their abode. On the romantic and picturesque side of Chitrakuta the exiles built themselves a cottage, thatched with leaves, “walled with wood, and furnished with doors.” Game, fruits, and roots abounded in the neighbourhood, so that they need have no anxiety about their supplies. So much did they appreciate the quiet beauties of their sylvan retreat, the cool shade, the perfumed flowers, the sparkling rivulets and the noble river, that they became almost reconciled to their separation from their friends and the lordly palaces of Ayodhya, in which city important things were happening.

The exile of Rama had been too much for the doting old Maharajah.[29] Weighed down by sorrow, he soon succumbed to his troubles, and Bharata, who was still absent at Giri-braja, was hastily summoned to take up the regal office. He, accompanied by his brother Satrughna, hurried to the capital, and finding, on his arrival, how matters really stood, heaped reproaches upon his wicked, ambitious mother, indignantly refusing to benefit by her artful machinations. In a transport of grief Bharata “fell to the earth sighing like an enraged snake,” while Satrughna, on his part, seized the deformed slave-girl Manthara, and literally shook the senses out of her. In Rama’s absence, Bharata performed his father’s obsequies with great pomp. The dead body of the late king, which had been preserved in oil, was carried in procession to the river side and there burnt, together with heaps of boiled rice and sacrificed animals. A few days later the sraddha ceremonies for the welfare of the spirit of the departed king were performed, and, as usual, costly presents,—money, lands, houses, goats and kine, also servant-men and servant-maids were bestowed upon the fortunate Brahmans.

When this pious duty, which occupied thirteen days, had been fulfilled, affairs of State demanded attention. Bharata, although pressed to do so, resolutely declined to accept the sceptre, and resolved to set out, with a vast following, on a visit to Rama in his retreat, hoping to persuade him to abandon his hermit-life and undertake the government of the realm. Great preparations had to be made for this visit to Rama, which was a sort of wholesale exodus of the people of Ayodhya of all ranks and occupations. A grand army was to accompany Bharata, and the court, with all the ladies of the royal family, including the no-doubt-reluctant Kaikeyi, were to swell the procession. A road had to be made for the projected march of this host; streams had to be bridged, ferries provided at the larger rivers, and able guides secured. When the road was ready and the preparations for the journey completed, chariots and horsemen in thousands crowded the way, mingled with a vast multitude of citizens riding in carts. Artificers of every kind attended the royal camp. Armourers, weavers, tailors, potters, glass-makers, goldsmiths and gem-cutters, were there; so also were physicians, actors and shampooers, peacock-dancers and men whose profession it was to provide warm baths for their customers. Of course the Brahman element was strongly represented in this great procession from the flourishing city to the solitudes of the forest. Bharata’s march is described at great length by the poet; but only one incident need be mentioned here. On the way the hermit Bharadvaja, desirous of doing Bharata honour, and probably not unwilling to display his power, invited him and his followers, of whom, as we have seen, there were many thousands, to a feast at his hermitage. At the command of the saint the forest became transformed into lovely gardens, abounding in flowers and fruit. Palaces of matchless beauty sprang into existence. Music filled the cool and perfumed air. Food and drink, including meat and wine, appeared in profusion:—soups and curries are especially mentioned, and the flesh of goats and bears, deer, peacocks and cocks; also rice, milk and sugar. In addition to all this, a host of heavenly nymphs from Swarga descended to indulge in soft dalliance with the ravished warriors of Bharata’s army.

“Then beauteous women, seven or eight,
Stood ready by each man to wait.
Beside the stream his limbs they stripped,
And in the cooling water dipped,
And then the fair ones, sparkling-eyed,
With soft hands rubbed his limbs and dried,
And sitting on the lovely bank
Held up the wine-cup as he drank.”

—Griffith.

For one day and one night the intoxicating enjoyment continued; and then, at the word of command, all the creations of the sage’s power vanished, leaving the forest in its wonted gloom.

Having taken a respectful leave of the mighty ascetic, Bharata and his followers threaded their way through the dense forests towards the Mountain Chitrakuta and the River Mandakini. After a long march they at last found the object of their desire, the high-souled Rama, “seated in a cottage, bearing a head of matted locks, clad in black deerskin and having tattered cloth and bark for his garment.” When Rama heard of his father’s death he was deeply moved and fell insensible upon the ground, “like a blooming tree that hath been hewn by an axe.” The loving Vaidehi (Sita) and the brothers Lakshmana and Bharata sprinkled water on the face of the prostrate man and restored him to animation, when he at once burst into loud and prolonged lamentations. Presently Rama pulled himself together and duly performed the funeral rites, pouring out libations of water and making an offering of ingudi fruits to the spirit of his departed father. These offerings were not worthy of being presented to the manes of so great a man as Dasahratha; but were justifiable, under the circumstances of the case, on the accepted principle that “that which is the fare of an individual is also the fare of his divinities.”[30] Bharata and the rest, respectfully sitting before Rama with joined hands, entreated him, with the greatest humility, to undertake the reins of government; but he was not to be persuaded to do so. He would not break the resolution he had made, nor would he be disloyal to his dead father’s commands. Then Javali, a Brahman atheist, insisting that there was and could be no hereafter, that Dasahratha, once his sire, was now mere nothing, advised the prince to yield to the reasonable wishes of the living and return with them to rule over the kingdom of his ancestors. Rama, however, warmly rebuked the atheist for his impiety, and all that Bharata could accomplish was merely to induce him to put off from his feet a pair of sandals adorned with gold, which he (Bharata) carried back with him in great state to the deserted Ayodhya—now inhabited only by cats and owls—as a visible symbol of his brother Rama, in whose name he undertook to carry on the affairs of the State until the appointed fourteen years of exile should have run their course.

The incidents connected with Rama’s exile to the forests, his life and rambles at Chitrakuta, Bharata’s imposing march through the same wooded country which the exiles had traversed, affords the poet of the “Ramayana” rare opportunities of displaying his love for the picturesque and his strong natural leaning towards the serene, if uneventful, life of the hermit. Often in these early forest rovings, and indeed throughout the fourteen years of exile, does Rama, or some other one, linger to note and admire the beauties of woodland and landscape, and to hold loving communion with the fair things of field and forest. Though he praises the cities, and pictures their grandeur of gold and gems, it is plain throughout that the poet’s heart is in the woods, displaying on his part an appreciation of the charms of nature and scenery, very remarkable, indeed, when we consider how slowly the taste for the beauties of inanimate nature was developed in Europe. After Bharata’s return to Ayodhya, Rama and his companions moved further southwards, in the direction of the great forest of Dandhaka, which extended indeed as far as the Godavari. In their wanderings they came to the abode of a certain ascetic whose wife, having performed severe austerities for ten thousand years, was privileged, during ten years of drought, to create fruits and roots for the sustenance of the people and to divert the course of the river Jumna, so that its waters should flow by the thirsty asylum of the hermits. This ancient dame took a great fancy to Vaidehi, and, woman-like, gave her fair disciple a worthy gift, consisting of fine apparel, of beautiful ornaments, a precious cosmetic for the beautification of her person, and a rare garland of flowers. Nor was the old lady contented until she had seen the effect of her present on Janaka’s charming daughter, who had pleased her much by her good sense in affirming that “the asceticism of woman is ministering unto her husband.”

Wheresoever the exiles turned their steps, in these almost trackless forests, they were told of the evil doings of the Rakshasas, who not only interrupted the sacrifices, but actually carried off and devoured the anchorites. Very curious, too, were the ways in which some of these Rakshasas compassed the destruction of the saints. One of them, the wily Ilwala, well acquainted with Sanskrit, would assume the form of a Brahman and invite the hermits to a sraddha feast. His brother, in the assumed form of a sheep, would be slaughtered and cooked for his guests. When they had enjoyed their repast the cruel Ilwala would command his brother Vatapi to “come forth,” which he would do unreluctantly, and with a vengeance, bleating loudly and rending the bodies of the unhappy guests, of whom thousands were disposed of in this truly Rakshasa fashion. It is noteworthy that those ascetics who had, by long and severe austerities, acquired a goodly store of merit, might easily have made short work of the Rakshasas; but, on the other hand, if they allowed their angry passions to rise, even against such impious beings, they would, while punishing their tormentors, have inevitably lost the entire advantage of their long and painful labours. Hence many of the hermits made a direct appeal to Rama for protection.

Entering the forest of Dandhaka the exiles encountered a huge, terrible and misshapen monster, besmeared with fat and covered with blood, who was roaring horribly with his widely distended mouth, while with his single spear he held transfixed before him quite a menagerie of lions, tigers, leopards and other wild animals. This awful being rushed towards the trio, and, quick as thought, snatched up the gentle Vaidehi in his arms, bellowing out “I am a Rakshasa, Viradha by name. This forest is my fortress. Accoutred in arms I range (here), feeding on the flesh of ascetics. This transcendantly beauteous one shall be my wife. And in battle I shall drink your blood, wretches that ye are.” At this juncture, Rama, as on some other trying occasions, gave way to unseasonable lamentations and tears; but Lakshmana, always practical, bravely recalled him to the necessity of immediate action. The Rakshasa, having ascertained who his opponents were, vauntingly assured them that, having gratified Brahma by his asceticism, he had obtained this boon from him, that no one in the world could slay him with weapons; and he mockingly advised the princes to renounce Sita and go their way. But Rama’s wrath was now kindled, and he began a vigorous attack upon the monster, piercing him with many arrows. A short, though fierce, combat ensued, the result being that the Rakshasa seized and carried off both Rama and Lakshmana on his ample shoulders. His victory now seemed complete, and Sita,—who had apparently been dropped during the combat,—dreading to be left alone in the terrible wilderness, piteously implored the monster (whom she insinuatingly addressed as the “best of Rakshasas”) to take her and to release the noble princes. The sound of her dear voice acted like a charm upon the brothers, and, with a vigorous and simultaneous effort, they broke both the monster’s arms at once, and then attacked him with their fists. They brought him to the ground exhausted, and Rama, planting his foot upon the throat of his prostrate foe, directed Lakshmana to dig a deep pit for his reception, and when it was ready, they flung him into it. The dying monster, thus overcome, though not with weapons, explained that he had been imprisoned in that dreadful form of his by the curse of a famous ascetic, and was destined to be freed from it only by the hand of Rama. With this explanation the spirit of the departed Viradha passed into the celestial regions.

Rama, with his wife and brother, now sought the hermitage of the sage Sarabhanga, and on approaching it, a strange, unexpected and imposing sight presented itself to Rama’s view:—Indra, attended by his court, in conversation with the forest sage! The god of heaven, in clean apparel and adorned with celestial jewels, was seated in a wondrous car drawn by green horses up in the sky. Over him was expanded a spotless umbrella, and two lovely damsels waved gold-handled chowrees above his head. About him were bands of resplendent celestials hymning his praises.

At Rama’s approach the god withdrew and the sage advised the prince to seek the guidance of another ascetic named Sutikshna, adding, “This is thy course, thou best of men. Do thou now, my child, for a space look at me while I leave off my limbs, even as a serpent renounces its slough.” Then kindling a sacrificial fire, and making oblations to it with the appropriate mantras, Sarabhanga entered the flames himself. The fire consumed his old decrepit body, and he was gradually transformed, in the midst of the flames, into a splendid youth of dazzling brightness, and, mounting upwards, ascended to the heaven of Brahma. After Sarabhanga had left the earth in this striking manner, bands of ascetics waited on Rama, reminded him of his duty as a king, and solicited his protection against the Rakshasas. As Rama and his companions wandered on through the forests another wonder soon engaged their attention. Sweet music reached them from beneath the waters of a charming lake covered with lotuses, and on inquiring about the strange phenomenon, a hermit told them that a great ascetic had formed that lake. By his fierce austerities, extending over ten thousand years, he had acquired such a store of merit that the gods, with Agni at their head, began to fear that he desired a position of equality with themselves. To lure him away from such ideas they sent him five lovely Apsaras to try the power of their charms upon him. Sage though he was, he succumbed to their allurements, and now, weaned from his old ambitions, he passed his time in youth and happiness—the reward of his austerities and yoga practices—in the company of the seductive sirens whose sweet voices, blending with the tinklings of their instruments, came softly to the ears of the wandering princes.

Sita, who had confidently followed her husband, like his very shadow, through all these adventurous years in the forest, seems at length to have been somewhat shaken by the very risky encounter with Viradha, of which she had been an unwilling and terrified eye-witness, in which her own person had been the object of contention, and which had threatened, at one critical moment, to end very tragically for her and her loved ones. Under the influence of these recent and impressive experiences, Sita ventured, in her gentle, womanly way, to suggest to her husband the advisability of avoiding all semblance of hostility towards the Rakshasas. There were, she timidly assured her husband, three sins to which desire gave rise: untruthfulness, the coveting of other men’s wives, and the wish to indulge in unnecessary hostilities. Of untruthfulness, and of allowing his thoughts to stray towards other women, Sita unhesitatingly exonerated her lord; but she artfully insinuated that, in his dealings with the Rakshasas, he was giving way to the sin of provoking hostilities without adequate cause, and she advised his laying aside his arms during his wanderings in the forest; since the mere carrying of bows and arrows was enough to kindle the wish to use them. To give point to this contention, Vaidehi related how, in the olden time, there lived in the woods a truthful ascetic whose incessant austerities Indra desired, for some reason or other, to frustrate. For the attainment of his end the king of heaven visited the hermit in the guise of a warrior, and left his sword with him as a trust. Scrupulously regardful of his obligation to his visitor, the ascetic carried the sword with him wherever duty or necessity directed his footsteps, till constant association with the weapon began to engender fierce sentiments, leading eventually to the spiritual downfall of the poor ascetic, whose ultimate portion was hell. Rama received Sita’s advice in the loving spirit in which it was offered, and thanking her for it, explained that it was his duty to protect the saints from the oppression of the evil Rakshasas, and that Kshatriyas carried bows in order that the word “distressed” might not be known on this earth.

Several years of exile slipped away, not unpleasantly, in the shady forests through which the royal brothers roamed from hermitage to hermitage, always accompanied by the lovely and faithful Sita, whose part throughout is one of affectionate, unfaltering and unselfish devotion to her husband. On the banks of the Godavari, Lakshmana, who has to do all the hard work for the party, built them a spacious hut of clay, leaves and bamboos, propped with pillars and furnished with a fine level floor, and there they lived happily near the rushing river. At length the brothers got involved in a contest with a brood of giants who roved about the woods of Dandhaka, delighting, as usual, in the flesh of hermits and the interruption of sacred rites. This time it was a woman who was at the bottom of their troubles. Surpanakha, an ugly giantess and sister of Ravana, charmed with the beauty and grace of Rama, came to him, and, madly in love, offered to be his wife. But Rama in flattering terms put her off, saying he was already married. In sport, apparently, he bid her try her luck with Lakshmana. She took his advice, but Lakshmana does not seem to have been tempted by the offer, and, while artfully addressing her as “supremely charming and superbly beautiful lady,” advised her to become the younger wife of Rama, to whom he referred her again. Enraged by this double rejection, the giantess attempted to kill Sita, as the hated obstacle to the fulfilment of her desires. The brothers, of course, interposed, and Lakshmana, always impetuous, punished the monster by cutting off her nose. Surpanakha fled away to her brother Khara, and roused the giant Rakshasas to avenge her wounds. These terrible giants possessed the power of changing their forms at will; but their numbers and their prowess were alike of little avail against the valour and skill of Rama, who, alone and unaided,—for he sent Lakshmana away with Sita into an inaccessible cave,—destroyed fourteen thousand of them in a single day. The combat, which was witnessed by the gods and Gandharvas, Siddhas and Charanas, is described at great length, and the narrative is copiously interspersed with the boastful speeches of the rival chiefs. In the bewildering conflict of that day his fourteen thousand assailants poured upon Rama showers of arrows, rocks, and trees. Coming to close quarters they attacked him vigorously with clubs, darts, and nooses. Although hard pressed and sorely wounded, the hero maintained the conflict with undaunted courage, sending such thousands of wonderful arrows from his bow that the sun was darkened and the missiles of his enemies warded off by them. Finally Rama succeeded in laying dead upon that awful field of carnage nearly the entire number of his fierce assailants. Khara, the leader of the opposing host, a worthy adversary and possessed of wondrous weapons, still lived. Enraged at, but undaunted by, the wholesale destruction of his followers, Khara boldly continued the fight. In his war-chariot, bright as the sun, he seemed to be the Destroyer himself, as he fiercely assailed the victorious Rama. With one arrow he severed the hero’s bow in his hand; with seven other shafts like thunder-bolts he severed his armour joints, so that the glittering mail fell from his body. He next wounded the prince with a thousand darts. Not yet overcome, however, Rama strung another bow, the mighty bow of Vishnu, and discharging shafts with golden feathers, brought Khara’s standard to the ground. Transported with wrath at this ill-omened event, Khara poured five arrows into Rama’s bosom. The prince responded with six terrible bolts, some of them crescent-headed. One struck the chief in the head, two of the others entered his arms, and the remaining three his chest. Following these up with thirteen of the same kind, Rama destroyed his enemy’s chariot, killed his horses, decapitated his charioteer, and shattered his bow in his grasp. Khara jumped to the ground armed with a mace, ready to renew the conflict. At this juncture Rama paused a moment to read the Rakshasa a homily on his evil doings; the latter replied with fierce boasts, and hurled his mace at Rama, who cut it into two fragments with his arrows as it sped through the air. Khara now uprooted a lofty tree and hurled it at his foe; but, as before, Rama cut it into pieces with his arrow ere it reached him, and with a shaft resembling fire put a period to the life of the gallant Rakshasa. At this conclusion of the conflict the celestials sounded their kettle-drums, and showered down flowers upon the victorious son of Dasahratha. Thus perished the Rakshasa army and its mighty leader:

“But of the host of giants one,
Akampan, from the field had run,
And sped to Lanka to relate
In Ravana’s ear the demon’s fate.”

—Griffith.

This fugitive made his way to the court of Ravana, the king of the giants, and related to him the sad fate of his followers. Close on the heels of Akampan came Surpanakha herself, with her cruelly mutilated face. Transported with rage at the destruction of his armies and at sight of the disfigured countenance of his sister, the terrible Rakshasa chief vowed vengeance on Rama and Lakshmana. But the necessity for great caution in dealing with such valorous foes was apparent, and Ravana did not seem over-anxious to leave his comfortable capital, Lanka, in order to seek out the formidable brothers in the woods of Dandhaka. But Surpanakha, scorned and mutilated, was thirsting for an early and bitter revenge. Reproaching her brother for his unkingly supineness, she artfully gave him a description of Sita’s beauty, far superior to that of any goddess, which served to kindle unlawful desires in his heart. She referred to Vaidehi’s golden complexion, her moon-like face, her lotus eyes, her slender waist, her taper fingers, her swelling bosom, her ample hips and lovely thighs, till the giant was only too willing to assent to her suggestion, that the most effectual and agreeable revenge he could take for the destruction of his hosts, and the cruel insults to his sister, would be to carry off the fair Sita, by stratagem, from the arms of her devoted husband, and thus add the lovely daughter of Janaka to the number, not very small, of the beauties who adorned his palace at Lanka. We shall presently see that the plot was ingeniously contrived and too successfully carried out.

How conveniently the race of Rakshasas could assume at will the forms in which they chose to appear, we know already. Taking advantage of this faculty of metamorphosis, a Rakshasa named Maricha, in obedience to Ravana’s orders, showed himself near Rama’s hermitage, in the shape of a wonderful golden deer, spotted with silver, having horns resembling jewels, a belly like a sapphire, and sides like madbuka flowers. The strange creature captivated the fancy of Sita, and she was so eager to possess it, alive or dead, that Rama was induced to go in pursuit of it. Suspecting mischief from this unusual appearance, Rama left his brother with Sita, commanding him on no account to quit her side until he returned from his pursuit of the jewelled deer. The chase led him to a considerable distance from the hermitage. Weary of his endeavours to secure the deer, Rama grew angry, and, with one of his flaming arrows, pierced it in the breast. It bounded off the ground to the height of a palm tree and, in the act of dying, began to cry, exactly in the voice of Rama, “Ah! Sita; Ah! Lakshmana.” The words reached the hermitage, as they were intended to do, and Sita, in an agony of terror, implored Lakshmana to go to the aid of his brother, who seemed to be in some dire trouble. Lakshmana, however, protested that it was all illusion, and refused to believe that Rama could be in any real danger; for, as he assured the trembling wife, “even the Almighty Himself with the celestials and the three worlds cannot defeat him” (Dutt, 609). But Vaidehi took another view of the matter, and turning sharply upon her brother-in-law accused him roundly of desiring the destruction of Rama in order that he might gratify an improper wish to possess her himself. This, indeed, she said, must have been the reason that brought him all the way from Ayodhya. What, if any, grounds the charming lady may have had for this accusation does not appear. They could have been known only to herself and to Lakshmana, who, with joined hands, humbly reproached her for her cruel words, and bending low before her went off, with a heavy heart, in search of his brother.

In a garment (probably a saree) of yellow silk, Sita sat alone at the door of her thatched cottage, weeping bitterly, when Ravana presented himself before her, in the guise of a pious medicant. Ravished by her beauty, this pious medicant began, without ceremony, to praise the various charms of Sita’s person with the most reprehensible license of detail. Nor did he stop there, but telling her that she had carried away his heart, as a stream carries away its banks, invited her to accompany him out of the gloomy forest, tenanted by Rakshasas and wild beasts, and quite unfit for the abode of a goddess like herself.

As her visitor was in appearance a Brahman, she dutifully attended to him, bringing him water to wash his feet with, and food to eat, while her eyes were straining through the forest for her absent lord. Dreading that her Brahman guest might curse her if she did not speak to him, Vaidehi began to relate the history of her exile, addressing the seeming medicant in such flattering terms as “thou best of twice born ones.” After listening to her story, Ravana revealed himself to her, and again declaring his love, invited her to become his wife in the great city of Lanka, where she should live in luxury, attended by five thousand maid-servants. Sita indignantly spurned the offer, threatening the Rakshasa with the consequences of her husband’s anger. While indulging in boastful speeches regarding his own prowess, Ravana assumed his natural form, with ten heads and twenty arms. As he stood there before Vaidehi, “his eyes were bloody,” and he appeared beautiful like unto blue clouds, being dressed in gold-hued apparel (Dutt). Approaching the adorable Sita, the enamoured giant caught her hair with one hand and her legs with another and carried her off, through the air, in his golden car drawn by asses. As she was being borne away, the fair lady cried aloud for help, invoking the sylvan deities to tell her husband whither, and by whom, she had been carried off. Her voice reached the virtuous Jatayus, the king of birds, who, though sixty thousand years old, immediately interposed to rescue her.

A furious and picturesque battle ensued, in which the huge vulture-king, with his formidable beak, talons, and wings, made a gallant stand against Ravana, in the cause of virtue and his friend Rama, but eventually lost his noble life in the struggle, and left his huge bones to mark, to this day, the scene of his terrible aërial conflict with the demon.[31] The victorious Ravana carried Sita away through the air in his arms. Some of her ornaments fell to the ground as the two sped along in their journey towards Lanka, and showers of blossoms, falling from her head, were scattered around. At this sorrowful event the sun hid his face and all nature was oppressed with grief. Not yet despairing of succour, the brave-hearted Sita observed, as she passed along in mid-air, five monkey-chiefs seated on the summit of a hill, and, unnoticed by Ravana, dropped amongst them her gold-coloured sheet and some glittering ornaments, in the hope that they might convey to Rama the intelligence of her abduction by the giant. But Fate had more sorrow in store for her. Over mountain peaks, over rivers, over the sea, Ravana conveyed his prize without meeting with further opposition, and lodged her safely in his magnificent palace in Lanka, where he treated her with the greatest consideration, and wooed her like a youthful lover, placing her tender feet upon his heads and professing himself her obedient slave.

The Abduction of Sita.

(From an illustrated Urdu version of the “Ramayana.”)

Rama, on discovering the loss he had suffered, was in despair. Sometimes he would indulge in excessive lamentations, wildly calling upon the trees and streams, the deer of the forest and the birds of the air, to tell him where his love had gone. At other times, assuming a different tone, he would petulantly threaten to destroy “the three worlds,” if the celestials did not restore Vaidehi to his arms. At such moments Lakshmana would address his brother in the most abject terms of flattery, and gently remind him of the necessity of doing his duty and preserving his dignity.

Roaming about in search of the lost Sita, the brothers came across Jatayus lying, in mortal agony, amidst the fragments of Ravana’s wonderful car and his shattered umbrella. All that Rama could learn from the dying king of the vultures was the name and rank of the Rakshasa who had carried off his wife, and in a frenzy of grief he rolled upon the ground, uttering vain lamentations. Presently the brothers piously erected a funeral pile for the dead bird, and having cremated the body, proceeded in their search for Sita, when they encountered a horrid deformed monster, named Kabandha; thus described by the poet:

“There stood before their wondering eyes
A fiend, broad-chested, huge of size;
A vast misshapen trunk they saw
In height surpassing nature’s law.
It stood before them dire and dread,
Without a neck, without a head,
Tall as some hill aloft in air,
Its limbs were clothed with bristling hair,
And deep below the monster’s waist
His vast misshapen mouth was placed.
His form was huge, his voice was loud
As some dark-tinted thunder-cloud.
A brilliance as of gushing flame
Beneath long lashes dark and keen
The monster’s single eye was seen.”[32]

In the battle which ensued the terrible monster had his two arms cut off by Rama and Lakshmana respectively, and in this helpless condition he explained that, though naturally endowed with a surpassingly beautiful form, he used to assume this monstrous one in order to frighten the ascetics in the forests; but one of these saints, in a moment of anger, invoked this curse upon him, that he should retain the disgusting form he had adopted, at least till, in course of time, Rama should in person deliver him from its repulsive deformity. The brothers placed the giant’s bulky body on a funeral pyre, and from the ashes arose a beautiful being, clad in celestial raiment, at whose suggestion Rama sought the friendship and aid of Sugriva, King of the Vanaras, by whose assistance he hoped to find out to what particular spot his beloved wife had been conveyed by Ravana. Rama, in due course, found Sugriva and made the acquaintance of his chief councillor the famous Hanuman, a son of the god of the winds. When Rama met Sugriva, the latter was, like himself, an exile from his native land, having been expelled from it by his elder brother, King Bali, who had also taken unto himself Ruma, Sugriva’s wife. The deposed monarch was wandering, with a few faithful monkey companions, in the forest, and it was amongst them, resting together on a mountain peak, that Sita had dropped her yellow robe and golden ornaments. A sort of offensive and defensive alliance was formed between the two banished princes, who were, moreover, drawn towards one another by the fact that each had been forcibly deprived of his consort. Rama was to help Sugriva to overthrow Bali, secure the Vanar sceptre and recover his wife Ruma; while Sugriva, on his part, was to assist Rama to discover Sita’s whereabouts and to destroy her abductor. So great was the dread Sugriva entertained of the prowess of his warlike brother Bali, that, before committing himself to this alliance with Rama, he desired that prince to give him some practical illustration of what he could do as a wielder of warlike weapons; whereupon Rama shot from his mighty bow a wondrous arrow, which, after passing through the stems of seven palm trees, traversed a hill which stood behind them, then flew through six subterranean realms and finally returned to the hands of the bowman. Before this feat all Sugriva’s doubts vanished and he was ready for action.

At Rama’s suggestion he proceeded to the great Vanar city Kishkindha, and, in a voice of thunder, dared Bali to single combat. The impetuous and passionate King of the Vanars accepted the challenge at once, and an exceedingly fierce encounter took place between the brothers outside the walls of the city. At length Sugriva seemed to be failing, when Rama, who was standing by in ambush, pierced Bali in the breast with one of those fatal arrows of his. As might have been expected, Bali, with the life-blood welling from his wounds, reproached Rama bitterly for his base, unfair, and cowardly interposition in the battle between himself and Sugriva; but Rama justified his action by saying that he was lord paramount of the whole country, that Kishkindha came within the realm of Dasahratha, and that Bali had justly forfeited his life by his misconduct in appropriating his brother’s wife. Rama further remarked, contemptuously, that the lives of mere Vanars or monkeys, as of other animals, were of little account in the eyes of men; a remark which seems strange, indeed, when we reflect that Bali was the king of a magnificent city decorated with gold, silver and ivory, and that Bali’s brother was Rama’s much desired ally.[33]

As Bali lay prostrate on the ground his disconsolate queen, Tara, hastened to the fatal spot, with her little son Angad, and, in a passion of grief, threw herself upon the body of her husband. She gave way to the most touching sorrow and lamentation over the dying warrior and seemed inconsolable, both then and later on when performing the last rites for the deceased king. Had we seen no more of Tara she would have lived as a tender and pleasant memory in our minds; but, unfortunately, she reappears a very short time after as Sugriva’s much loved and ardent consort, and actually appears grateful to Rama for the benefit his deed had conferred upon the new king and herself.

By the time Sugriva was formerly installed in the government of Kishkindha, the rainy season came round,—a time of the year when, in a roadless country, all military or other movements were impossible. Rama, faithful to the conditions of his exile, would not enter the city, and easily contented himself with a life in the woodland, which, with its glittering fountains and laughing streams, its stately trees, sweet-throated birds and odorous flowers, he was never tired of admiring.

In return for the service rendered him by Rama, his ally Sugriva, now King of the Vanars, assembled countless numbers (hundreds of hundreds of millions!) of Vanars (monkeys and bears of different colours—white, yellow and green) and sent them forth to search for Sita. North, south, east and west, these Vanars traversed every land and searched every possible retreat. From north, east and west, were received reports of want of success; but from the south came welcome tidings of the discovery of Sita by Hanuman, one of the chief captains of the Vanar host, a son of the wind-god by a nymph of paradise. The discovery of Sita’s place of captivity was made in this way. In their active search for traces of her whereabouts, some captains of the Vanar army of the south came across Sampati, the huge brother of Jatayus, the king of the vultures, lying upon the top of a high mountain. Bulky and powerful, the bird was yet quite disabled and helpless, having had his wings scorched and destroyed in a too adventurous flight towards the sun, which he had once undertaken in a spirit of vanity and boastfulness. But even in this unhappy state, dependent for his daily food upon the filial devotion of his son, the old bird could, with his penetrating eye, see clearly to enormous distances. He had witnessed Ravana’s hurried flight through the air, with his beautiful prize, and had noted also that she had been conveyed by the Rakshasa to Lanka beyond the sea. This information he now communicated to the inquiring Vanars, and having thereby performed a signal service to the son of Dasahratha, his feathers sprouted again and he joyfully mounted once more into his native element on new and lusty pinions.

Sita’s place of captivity was thus known to the Vanar; but how to reach Lanka—separated as it was from the mainland by an arm of the sea—became the urgent problem of the hour to the Vanar commanders of the army of the south. If Sita was to be restored to the arms of Rama, it was absolutely necessary that some one should get to Lanka as a spy, in order to ascertain the facts in regard to Sita’s captivity there, and to discover the strength of Ravana’s army and his means of resisting an attack from without. Ships or even boats were, in those primitive times, not to be thought of; but the monkey could leap, and so it was proposed that some leader of the race should essay the rather long jump across the strait which separated Lanka from the continent. Who was so fitted for this undertaking as the son of the wind-god, the redoubtable Hanuman? Accordingly, after a great deal of boasting, Hanuman, assuming a gigantic size, took the flying leap. The gods were well disposed towards his brave venture, but there were also enemies on the path, who endeavoured to stop him on his way. One of these was Surasa, the mother of the Nagas, who, rushing upon him with wide-extended jaws, mockingly told him that he must pass through her mouth before proceeding any further on his journey. Hanuman dilated his person till his stature attained many leagues, but the monster’s mouth grew larger still. The cunning monkey now suddenly contracted his dimensions to the size of a man’s thumb and jumped airily into and out of Surasa’s gaping mouth. He had fulfilled his enemy’s conditions and she good-naturedly acknowledged her defeat. His next opponent, a terrific she-dragon, the fierce Sinhika, marvellously caught his shadow as it glided over the sea, and in some mysterious way retarded his progress thereby. With open mouth she made a furious onslaught upon the wind-god’s son. Hanuman, equal to the occasion, craftily contracted his dimensions, and jumping into Sinhika’s cavern-like mouth, inflicted so much injury upon her that she died. After this interruption he continued his aërial journey to Lanka, probably making Sinhika’s carcass the base of a fresh leap towards the island, though this is not expressly mentioned by the poet.

When he had reached the island-kingdom of Ravana, the Vanar spy, contracting his dimensions to those of an ordinary cat, found his way by moonlight within the golden walls of the city, and, lost in admiration, wandered about the wonderful streets of Ravana’s capital, where tonsured priests and mail-clad warriors mingled freely with bands of ascetics in deerskins, and fiends both foul and fair. Eluding the guards, Hanuman crept into the palace. Here everything was on a scale to astonish even the wind-god’s son, familiar with the glories of Kishkindha; but most of all did he find food for admiration in Ravana’s enchanted car, avowedly the most perfect work that had been produced by Visvakarma, the architect of the gods.

“There shone with gems that flashed afar,
The marvel of the Flower-named car,
’Mid wondrous dwellings still confessed
Supreme and nobler than the rest.
Thereon with wondrous art designed
Were turkis birds of varied kind,
And many a sculptured serpent rolled
His twisted coil in burnished gold.
And steeds were there of noblest form,
With flying feet as fleet as storm;
And elephants with deftest skill
Stood sculptured by a silver rill,
Each bearing on his trunk a wreath
Of lilies from the flood beneath.
There Lakshmi, beauty’s heavenly queen,
Wrought by the artist’s skill was seen
Beside a flower-clad pool to stand,
Holding a lotus in her hand.”[34]

—Griffith (bk. v., canto vii.).

The zenana or women’s apartment, guarded by she-demons,[35] which Hanuman next entered in the still hours of the night, when the feast was over, the music had ceased and all the inmates were hushed in slumber, affords the poet the opportunity of painting a charming picture, which the reader will, I am sure, thank me for reproducing here in Mr. Griffith’s agreeable version:

“He stood within a spacious hall
With fretted roof and painted wall,
The giant Ravan’s boast and pride,
Loved even as a lovely bride.
’Twere long to tell each marvel there,
The crystal floor, the jewelled stair,
The gold, the silver, and the shine
Of crysolite and almandine.
There breathed the fairest blooms of spring;
There flashed the proud swan’s silver wing,
The splendour of whose feathers broke
Through fragrant wreaths of aloe smoke.
‘’Tis Indra’s heaven,’ the Vanar cried,
Gazing in joy from side to side;
‘The home of all the gods is this,
The mansion of eternal bliss!’
There were the softest carpets spread,
Delightful to the sight and tread,
Where many a lovely woman lay
O’ercome by sleep, fatigued with play.
The wine no longer cheered the feast,
The sound of revelry had ceased.
The tinkling feet no longer stirred,
No chiming of a zone was heard.
So, when each bird has sought her nest,
And swans are mute and wild bees rest,
Sleep the fair lilies on the lake
Till the sun’s kiss shall bid them wake.
Like the calm field of winter’s sky
Which stars unnumbered glorify,
So shone and glowed the sumptuous room
With living stars that chased the gloom.
'These are the stars,’ the chieftain cried,
'In autumn nights that earthward glide,
In brighter forms to reappear
And shine in matchless lustre here.’
With wondering eyes awhile he viewed
Each graceful form and attitude.
One lady’s head was backward thrown,
Bare was her arm and loose her zone.
The garland that her brow had graced
Hung closely round another’s waist.
Here gleamed two little feet all bare
Of anklets that had sparkled there.
Here lay a queenly dame at rest
In all her glorious garments dressed.
There slept another whose small hand
Had loosened every tie and band.
In careless grace another lay,
With gems and jewels cast away,
Like a young creeper when the tread
Of the wild elephant had spread
Confusion and destruction round,
And cast it flowerless to the ground.
Here lay a slumberer still as death,
Save only that her balmy breath
Raised ever and anon the lace
That floated o’er her sleeping face.
There, sunk in sleep, an amorous maid
Her sweet head on a mirror laid,
Like a fair lily bending till
Her petals rest upon the rill.
Another black-eyed damsel pressed
Her lute upon her heaving breast,
As though her loving arms were twined
Round him for whom her bosom pined.
Another pretty sleeper round
A silver vase her arms had wound,
That seemed, so fresh and fair and young,
A wreath of flowers that o’er it hung.
In sweet disorder lay a throng
Weary of dance and play and song,
Where heedless girls had sunk to rest,
One pillowed on another’s breast,
Her tender cheek half seen beneath
Red roses of the falling wreath,
The while her long soft hair concealed
The beauties that her friend revealed.
With limbs at random interlaced
Round arm and leg and throat and waist,
That wreath of women lay asleep
Like blossoms in a careless heap.”[36]

—Griffith (bk. v., canto ix.).

Still in eager quest of Sita the Vanar roamed stealthily from place to place within the spacious bounds of the royal palace, and, as day was breaking, entered the enchanting ashoka grove, a sort of ideal retreat in fairyland. Here Rama’s messenger discovered the weeping, but still peerless, captive, guarded by fierce she-demons of monstrous shapes—a weird, frightful troupe—some earless, some with ears hanging down to their feet, some one-eyed, some long-necked and covered with hair, some huge, some dwarfish, some with faces of buffaloes, others with the heads of dogs and swine. Perched upon a bough, and concealed by its foliage, Hanuman watched his opportunity to open communication with the object of his search. Presently Ravana, in great state, heralded by music and attended by a crowd of ravishing beauties, with tinkling zones, entered the grove. Sita, in utter despair, fell upon the ground

“Like Hope when all her dreams are o’er.”

Approaching her kindly, the King of Lanka, who was passionately enamoured of her beauty, endeavoured to reassure her, and wooed her softly with all the arts of flattery, with offers of boundless wealth, and with protestations of deep affection.

“Methinks when thy sweet form was made
His hand the wise Creator stayed;
For never more could he design
A beauty meet to rival thine.
Come let us love while yet we may,
For youth will fly and charms decay.”

—Griffith.

Sita, ever faithful to her lord, treated his suit with scorn; whereupon the demon king, waxing wrath, threatened to have her killed and served up at his table if she persisted in rejecting his advances. Turning to leave the palace in high dudgeon, he directed the demon guards to bend the fair captive to his will by threats and blandishments of every kind. Their persuasions being unsuccessful, these horrid monsters assailed the unfortunate princess with threatening weapons; but even in this critical moment the pure, chaste wife of Rama preferred death to dishonour.[37]

Amidst the persecutions of the luckless Sita an old Rakshasa matron, named Trajata, raised a warning voice; for she had dreamed a dream which foreboded the destruction of Lanka by Rama, and she counselled the demons to deal kindly by Sita, if they hoped for mercy from the conquerors.

It seems necessary to explain now that it was not a sense of honour or a feeling of chivalry that had restrained the unscrupulous King of Lanka from the gratification of his passion. It was fear only that kept him back; for, as he confidentially explained to his assembled lords, having once, under the influence of ungovernable desire, dishonoured one of the nymphs of Indra’s heaven, fair Punjikashthala, Brahma had decreed that if Ravana committed the same offence again his head should be rent in pieces. Of course this fact and the protection thus enjoyed by Sita, through dread of Brahma’s decree, were quite unknown to Rama, whose knowledge was merely human.

At length the Vanar found the long wished-for opportunity of communicating with Sita and of consoling her with the hope of an early rescue. He even offered to carry her off, there and then, on his shoulders, but her modesty shrank from the mere thought of voluntarily touching the body of any male person beside Rama. The monkey-god then set about committing as much destruction as he could in the city of Lanka, which, built by Visvakarma, the architect of the gods, is described as surpassingly beautiful and encircled by a golden wall. After a succession of fierce and successful battles with the giants—thousands at the time with their most famous captains—Hanuman, covered from head to foot with wounds, was noosed by means of a magic shaft from the bow of Ravana’s son, Indrajit, overpowered and taken prisoner. Exceedingly incensed, Ravana ordered the destructive and formidable Vanar to be put to death at once. One of his counsellors, however, suggesting that Hanuman might be regarded in the light of an envoy from Rama, it was decided to spare his life, but, at the same time, to treat him with the greatest indignity before releasing him. In pursuance of this determination his tail was wrapped round with cloth dipped in oil, which was then set on fire; but at the prayer of Sita, who came to know what was going on in the city, the flames abstained from harming her friend. By contracting his dimensions, Hanuman easily freed himself from his bonds, and now, by means of his blazing tail, carried fire and destruction through the beautiful city; after which he once more performed his perilous journey through the air, back to the mainland of India, bearing tidings of his doings to his master and Rama.

When the place of Sita’s captivity became known, the Vanar armies were rapidly advanced southward, and encamped on the border of the strait which separates Lanka from the mainland of India. Here they were joined by Vibhishana, Ravana’s brother, who, with four attendants, had fled through the air from Lanka, in dread of the consequences of the offence he had given his king, by counselling conciliatory proceedings towards Rama, of whose formidable prowess he seems to have formed a just estimate.

Vibhishana, on account of his local knowledge and great wisdom, was of much service to the Vanar host.

The sea, although it could be crossed by the Rakshasas and by the wind-god’s son, Hanuman, was a serious impediment to Rama and his Vanar allies. Standing on the margin of the trackless ocean which barred his march, the chief vented his impatience in a shower of his wonderful arrows, which he angrily shot into the wide bosom of the deep. His attack stirred the waters to their very depths and terrified its strange denizens out of their wits. As the hero laid against his bow a more formidable arrow than the rest (a fiery dart of mystic power), by means of which he threatened to dry up the waters of the sea and pass his legions over on dry land, all Nature was horrified, darkness fell upon land and sea, bright meteors flashed across the murky sky, red lightning struck the trembling earth, and the firm mountains began to break and crumble away. At this critical moment of universal terror the grand form of the king of the ocean, attended by glittering sea-serpents, rose majestically above the seething billows of his watery realm.[38] Addressing Rama with great reverence, the ocean-king protested that it was impossible to make a dry pathway through the sea.

“Air, ether, fire, earth, water, true
To Nature’s will, their course pursue;
And I, as ancient laws ordain,
Unfordable must still remain.”

—Griffith.

But he advised that Nala, a Vanar chief, who was the son of the architect of the gods (Visvakarma) should be requested to bridge the strait that intervened between Rama and the object of his expedition. Nala undertook the work, and, under his direction, the bridge was successfully completed. The construction of the bridge was not opposed, nor the passage disputed, so the countless hosts[39] of Vanars passed over to the island, with Rama mounted on Hanuman’s back, Lakshmana on Angad’s back, and camped[40] near Ravana’s capital. Even at this stage of events Ravana, still under the spell of his passion for the lovely Sita, resorted to a stratagem to obtain her consent to his wishes. He got a magician of his court to prepare a head exactly resembling Rama’s, and also a bow and arrows such as the hero usually carried, and had them brought into Sita’s presence, with the tale that her lord had been killed while asleep in his camp. Sita, completely deceived by the wizard’s art, was lamenting her bitter loss, when a messenger hurriedly summoned Ravana away to see to the defence of his capital, and a female attendant took advantage of the moment to relieve the fair captive’s mind, by explaining the deception that had been practised upon her.

The attack that shortly followed and the defence made by the giants are described by Valmiki in considerable detail, and with much monotonous repetition. The Vanars had, for arms, uprooted trees, rocks, and mountain peaks; while the Rakshasas fought with bows and arrows, swords and spears. Many single combats are described. Indrajit, the redoubtable son of Ravana, in a desperate encounter, concealed himself in a magic mist. Under this protection he fired some wondrous serpent-arrows at Rama and Lakshmana, which bound the royal brothers in a noose. He then, with a storm of missiles, laid them prostrate and apparently dying. But it was not thus that the contest was to end. From their helpless condition Rama and Lakshmana were freed by Garuda, who, as the king of birds, possessed a special power over the serpent-arrows.

On another occasion Rama with his brother Lakshmana, both sorely wounded, and ever so many of their Vanar allies, were restored to life and vigour, by the scent of some healing herbs brought by the swift-footed Hanuman from the distant Himalayas. In the combats around the walls of Lanka, as in other contests narrated in the “Ramayana,” the poet describes the power of the various archers to interrupt with their arrows the shafts of their adversaries, or even the most ponderous missiles hurled at them, such as trees and rocks.

With varying success the fierce contest raged round the walls of Lanka, when at length the giants, sorely pressed, called upon Kumbhakarna to assist them. This dreadful monster was Ravana’s brother and a terror to men and gods. At his birth, or shortly after it, he devoured a thousand men. Indra interposed to save the human race from his ravages, but only to be himself discomfited and driven to seek the protection of Brahma, who decreed that Kumbhakarna should sleep for six months at a time, and then only wake for a single day. The mere appearance of the monstrous giant caused a panic in the Vanar army. Multitudes perished under Kumbhakarna’s arm and were devoured by him; but such was his voracity that he captured and flung thousands of living Vanars into his mouth, out of which some fortunate ones managed to escape, through his nostrils and ears. But formidable as he was, Kumbhakarna at length fell by a crescent-headed arrow from Rama’s bow.

“Through skin and flesh and bone it smote,
And rent asunder head and throat.
Down, with the sound of thunder, rolled
The head adorned with rings of gold,
And crushed to pieces in its fall
A gate, a tower, a massive wall.
Hurled to the sea the body fell,
Terrific was the ocean’s swell,
Nor could swift fin and nimble leap
Save the crushed creatures of the deep.”

—Griffith (bk. vi., canto lxvii.).

One memorable episode in this siege of Lanka was a night attack, planned and successfully carried out by Sugriva. Overpowering the guards, the Vanars entered the city, and, amidst the most terrible carnage, gave beautiful and stately Lanka over to the flames:

“As earth with fervent head will glow
When comes her final overthrow;
From gate to gate, from court to spire,
Proud Lanka was one blaze of fire,
And every headland, rock and bay
Shone bright a hundred leagues away!”

—Griffith.

Succeeding this night attack came the final struggle. Ravana sallied forth from Lanka with a marvellous array of chariots,[41] elephants, horses, and men. He himself was the most formidable adversary yet encountered by Rama, having in his time subjugated the Nagas, defeated the gods of heaven, and even successfully invaded the land of departed spirits, ruled over by the dreaded Yama. During the battle that ensued, Indra, anxious, no doubt, to pay off old scores, sent his own chariot to Rama, who, mounted on it, encountered Ravana in single combat, and after a long contest killed his adversary with an arrow which had been made by Brahma himself. As the giant fell, celestial music filled the air, perfumed breezes wandered pleasantly over the field, and heavenly blossoms were rained down upon the conquering hero, the champion of the gods.

With the death of Ravana the war was at an end, and Vibhishana was installed king in his place. Sita, so long and so ardently sought, was now brought forth in state from Lanka, borne in a screened litter on the shoulders of sturdy Rakshasas, to meet her victorious lord. The inquisitive Vanars pressed round to see Vaidehi, on whose account they had so often risked their lives; but the attendants rudely drove them back. Rama, however, interposing, commanded that the lady should descend from the litter and proceed on foot, unveiled, so that his Vanar friends might have a good look at her; for, as he said:

“At holy rites, in war and woe
Her face unveiled a dame may show;
When at the maiden’s choice they meet,
When marriage troops parade the street.
And she, my queen, who long has lain
In prison, racked with care and pain,
May cease awhile her face to hide,
For is not Rama by her side?”

The meeting between Rama and his long-lost queen is a highly dramatic and unexpected scene. Instead of Rama folding his darling in his arms, as one might have expected he would have done, after all his piteous laments about her loss and his often expressed desire to possess his peerless wife once more, we find him coldly repulsing her, on the ground of her long captivity in Ravana’s power. More than that, he cruelly tells her that it was not love for her, but a desire to vindicate his outraged honour, that had brought him to Lanka. Quite unprepared for this undeserved and heartless reception, poor Vaidehi asks her husband most touchingly if the past is all forgotten, if her love and unfaltering devotion have quite faded from his memory? And, waxing sadly indignant, she requests Lakshmana, in a voice broken with sobs, to prepare a funeral pile for her, the only refuge she had left to her in her dark despair. With Rama’s tacit consent the pyre was erected and ignited. Boldly did the virtuous queen enter the flames, and as she fell overpowered by them a cry of grief rose from the bystanders. At this important moment a band of celestial beings, headed by Brahma himself, appeared before the assembled multitude and revealed to Rama his true nature, that he was Vishnu and no mortal man, while the god of fire raised Sita out of the flames, and, publicly attesting her purity, restored her to Rama, who now joyfully received her back to his heart and home. Before the gods departed to their celestial abodes, Indra, at Rama’s considerate request, restored to life all the Vanars who had fallen in his cause. Thus was the great war brought to a conclusion.

Rama now proceeded to Ayodhya, carried aloft through the clouds, over sea and land, in the famous magic car Pushpak, already referred to. With the returning hero went Sita and Lakshmana, the Vanar chiefs and Vibhishana too. After a meeting with his brother Bharata, who came forth with joy to welcome him back, Rama assumed the government of Dasahratha’s kingdom, and reigned over it for ten thousand years.[42]

But his life and Sita’s had still more trouble in them. The people of Ayodhya mocked at Rama for taking back his wife, after she had been so long in the giant’s power. They even attributed a famine which desolated the land to the anger of the gods on account of Rama’s conduct. About to become a mother, Sita expressed a great desire to visit the forest hermitages of the saints. Her husband accorded his consent to her wishes, and directed Lakshmana to conduct her thither. Unable to endure the jibes of his people, Rama resolved to abandon his innocent, unsuspecting wife, alone and unprotected, in the immense forests of Dandhaka, near the sources of the Godavari. The bitter duty was intrusted to Lakshmana, who, ever obedient, carried it out to the letter. Alas! poor Vaidehi, such was the reward of her pure, unselfish love and devotion through many trying years of hardship and sorrow! Cast adrift, alone in the pathless wilderness, Sita was found by the saint Valmiki himself, and tenderly entertained by the holy women of the hermitage. Shortly after this she gave birth to twin sons, who were named Kusa and Lava. In his forest-home, Valmiki, under divine inspiration, composed the “Ramayana,” and taught the sons of Sita to recite the immortal epic. On the occasion of a grand ceremony at Ayodhya, Kusa and Lava had the honour of reciting the great poem in the presence of their father, who, after inquiry, acknowledged them as his sons, and invited Sita to come forward and assert her innocence publicly.

HANUMAN AND THE VANARS REJOICING AT THE RESTORATION OF SITA.

(Reduced from Moor’s “Hindu Pantheon.”)

“But Sita’s heart was too full, this second ordeal was beyond even her power to submit to, and the poet rose above the ordinary Hindu level of women when he ventured to paint her conscious purity as rebelling. Beholding all the spectators, and clothed in red garments, Sita, clasping her hands, and bending low her face, spoke thus in a voice choked with tears: ‘As I, even in mind, have never thought of any other person than Rama, so may Madhavi, the goddess of earth, grant me a hiding-place.’ As Sita made the oath, lo! a marvel appeared. Suddenly cleaving the earth, a divine throne of marvellous beauty rose up, borne by resplendent dragons on their heads, and seated on it the goddess of earth, raising Sita with her arm, said to her, ‘Welcome to thee,’ and placed her by her side. And as the queen, seated on the throne, slowly descended to Hades, a continuous shower of flowers fell down from Heaven on her head.”[43]

Thus in sadness, and with the sting of injustice rankling in her heart, does the gentle Sita disappear for ever.

In bidding farewell to Vaidehi we would notice that throughout this epic all the female characters are much more human than those of the opposite sex, and, in their genuine womanhood, they naturally interest us in a far greater degree than the heroes of the story, be they lofty demigods, cruel Rakshasas, volatile Vanars, or Rishis endowed with superhuman powers.

We have yet to trace the further fortunes of the sons of Dasahratha. When Rama had reigned for a long period at Ayodhya, Time, as an ascetic, sought an interview with him, at which no one might intrude on pain of certain death. As messenger from Brahma, Time explained to Rama his real nature and position, leaving it to him to continue longer on earth or to return to heaven. During the interview an impatient Rishi desired immediate audience of Rama. Lakshmana, who knew the penalty of intruding upon him at this moment, raised some difficulties; but the irate saint threatened to launch a curse against Rama and all his kinsfolk if he were not admitted to his presence forthwith. Lakshmana, dreading, for Rama’s sake, the Rishi’s curse, interrupted his interview with Time and thereby incurred the penalty of death. Lakshmana accordingly went to the river Surayu and was thence conveyed bodily to heaven. Rama, accompanied by his brothers Bharata and Satrughna, and attended by the goddess of earth, also by all his weapons in human shapes, the Vedas in the form of Brahmans, and his women and servants, proceeded to the Surayu and entered its waters. As he did so the voice of Brahma was heard from the sky, saying: “Approach, Vishnu, Raghav, thou hast happily arrived with thy godlike brothers. Enter thine own body as Vishnu or the eternal ether.” He and his followers were then all of them translated to heaven.[44]

Such is the famous story of Rama and Sita. Ordinary men and women are of little account and scarcely figure at all amongst the poet’s creations. Nearly everything in the “Ramayana” is superhuman. The dire conflicts which occupy so large a part of the epic are waged between demigods and fiends, or giants. The weapons employed are celestial, or perhaps only charmed. Mystic spells are of the greatest efficacy, and the results are proportionally great.

In the war that raged around the walls of Ilium the gods did, certainly, interfere in the combats, and sometimes unfairly too; they even attacked each other occasionally; but, notwithstanding the supernatural element, the Trojan war was still a war of men and heroes. Not so that which ensanguined the hills and plains of Lanka.

The India of the “Ramayana” was covered with forests, and it is noteworthy that Rama’s progress is traced rather from forest to forest than from city to city, which last were very few and far between.

The hero of the tale is a very different one from those who figure in the Homeric poems. As a son he is most dutiful, pushing the idea of filial respect and obedience to the extreme, bearing no enmity even towards his designing stepmother. As a layman he is religious and unfeignedly respectful to Brahmans and saints. As a prince he is patriotic and benign; as a warrior, skilful and fearless in the fight. As an elder brother, however, he is often somewhat exacting and inconsiderate, and as a husband his behaviour is, to say the least, disappointing. On the whole the prominent characteristic of this hero, limned by Brahman artists, is a spirit of mild self-sacrifice, as distinguished from bold self-assertion.

The reader who has glanced through even the brief epitome of Valmiki’s poem now presented will not have omitted to note the wealth of imagination displayed by the author or authors, nor will he have failed to be charmed by many a beautiful picture and many an interesting situation.

CHAPTER III

THE RAM LILA OR PLAY OF RAMA

Let us now see how the stirring events of this Indian epic are brought dramatically before nineteenth century spectators.

Days before the time fixed for the Dasahra festival, men, done up like monkeys and attended by drummers, may be seen in the bazaars collecting money for the fair, at which the more striking leading incidents of the epic are annually performed, part by part, in a rude pantomimic fashion. Sometimes the opening scene is a great marriage procession. One such, on an unusually large scale, was got up in Lahore in 1884, at the expense of certain rich bankers. This motley and gigantic procession was made up of very heterogeneous elements. Several camels led the way; some bulky elephants put in an appearance, and a great number of mounted men, on good cavalry horses, gave dignity to the procession. Three or four well-filled carriages, gaily decorated with tinsel, flowers and coloured cloths, had the honour of accommodating the friends of Rama. A few huge litters, each borne aloft on the shoulders of sixteen or twenty bearers, were conspicuous objects in the throng. On some of these sat men personating the gods and goddesses of India in all their grotesqueness; on others squatted favourite female singers with their attendant minstrels, who delighted the audience with their grace and vocal performances. Imitation artillery armed with explosive bombs, dancers, mountebanks, musicians, and an innumerable crowd of ordinary citizens on foot, raised noise and dust enough to gratify the most pleasure-seeking Indian mob. The hero, Rama, and his inseparable brother, were dragged along on wooden horses, placed on a wheeled platform. There they sat, side by side, holding tiny bows and arrows in their hands, in a most ridiculous way, while the less important mythological personages, divine or other, came along in carriages or litters. There was a painful want of organization about the procession, and the usual mixture of the sumptuous and tawdry, the rich and squalid, to which one is accustomed in India.

A feature of the Dasahra festival is the number of men, disfigured with paint and ashes, who go about with iron skewers or pieces of cane passed through the skin of their arms, legs, sides, and throat, or even through the tongue. I once called up a party of these men and examined them. In answer to my remark, thrown out as a feeler, that the skewers had been passed through old perforations, the leader of the party indignantly pulled a young man before me, pinched up a good bit of the skin of his forearm, and there and then passed a blunt iron needle through it, which could not have been much thinner than an ordinary lead pencil. No blood flowed, and certainly the man operated upon did not wince in the slightest degree. After this the leader of the party, having satisfied me that the skin of his own neck below the chin was perfectly sound, passed a skewer through it with his own hand. In both cases a tolerable amount of force was necessary to pass the iron through the skin, but no blood flowed. These men, who are looked upon with a sort of awe by the vulgar, assured me that they were protected from pain or injury by a secret mantra of Guru Gorucknath’s known only to themselves.

They have probably learned, by the experience of many generations, safe places for the insertion of their skewers; but I was told by a native medical man that serious consequences sometimes follow their senseless ill-treatment of their own persons. The present of a rupee sent these absurd fellows away apparently well satisfied.

MEN WITH KNIVES AND SKEWERS PASSED THROUGH THEIR FLESH.

(From a photograph by W. C. Oman.)

Near the temple of Vishnu, by Rattan Singh’s Serai, arrangements had been made for a dramatic representation of Rama’s famous history. When I first came upon the spot there were five or six hundred people assembled. The women and children, arrayed in their holiday best, crowded the roofs of the surrounding buildings to witness the performance and, with the gay red and yellow of their dresses and their tinkling anklets, gave colour and animation to the scene. Men and boys were below. Three merry-go-rounds of the kind patronized by the people, were in full operation, creaking hideously.

Of the Ram Lila itself the only signs were two wooden horses, like those to be seen in European nurseries, only nearly life-size, standing, side by side, on a single wooden platform placed on wheels: They were painted white, with gaudy patches of red all over them. A few boys with monkey-masks on, capered about with switches in their hands. The crowd gradually increased, and the arrival of the performers was eagerly expected. But even yet some money-making bunniahs, surrounded by their pots and pans, their jars and other vessels, were busily plying their trade in oil, right in the midst of the assembling crowd; while on one side several women kept diligently separating the chaff from the wheat and sending clouds of dust amongst the spectators. At length a great shout announced the arrival of Rama and Lakshmana, who were carried in a gaudy litter on the shoulders of a number of men. This was the signal for the commencement of business. The crowd began to settle down. The central space was cleared. Rama and Lakshmana walked bare-footed round the arena, showing themselves to the spectators. They were attired in yellow garments adorned with tinsel, and had on their heads high and much decorated hats, which, I happened to learn subsequently, cost just three rupees each. Garlands of flowers encircled their necks, and their hats were literally covered with floral wreaths. Their faces were thickly painted with what looked like yellow tumeric, daubed over with some red powder, these pigments being, no doubt, considered most suitable for imparting beauty to an Indian complexion. The brothers carried small bows, like those usually placed in the hands of Cupids, and were attended by a man who vigorously waved a chowree over their heads. After this preliminary exhibition, during which several masked figures began to appear on the scene, a white-headed Brahman, book in hand (it was the Hindi version of Tulsi Das[45]) began to instruct the performers in their several parts. Seated all together—demigods, monkeys, and Brahman—in the open space, before all the spectators, they learned the first act of the day’s performance. In deference to their position, and probably also out of consideration for their fine clothes, Rama and his brother were made to sit on a white sheet, whilst the others squatted comfortably in the dust. When the actors had received their instructions, they proceeded to carry them out in a style which rendered it very difficult to comprehend what they actually meant to represent; but the Hindu spectators, familiar with the old tale and its usual dramatic rendering, seemed to recognize at least the leading events which it was intended to bring before them. At the conclusion of the act, or scene, Rama and his brother, with the rest, came together again to receive their instructions from the old Brahman stage-manager, and, when duly instructed, again dispersed to perform their several parts in a more or less imperfect manner. One portion of the performance consisted in dragging the brothers round the arena on their wooden horses. The acting or pantomime was very rude, and the whole seemed childish in the extreme. But the old story, thus brought before them, was evidently as much appreciated by the spectators as it had been by their ancestors for fifty generations. And rude and childish though the performance might be, it was probably not more so than the Miracle Plays which delighted our forefathers in the Middle Ages.

The dramatic representation extended over several days, the most popular scenes being the amputation of Surpanakha’s nose and the abduction of Sita. The former, a mere rough and tumble performance, without anything striking or dramatic about it, was greeted with uproarious mirth by the spectators, and may, possibly, be the original suggestion and sanction of much of the female nose-cutting so commonly practised in India by jealous husbands. In the other scene Ravana appeared as a hermit. The supernatural doe was dragged about the arena. Rama and his brother were, of course, lured into pursuit of the deceiver and Sita, left alone, was carried off by Ravana. Jatayus, the vulture king,—represented by a huge paper bird carried about by a man hither and thither in a wild sort of way,—rushed to the rescue of the fair dame; but after a brief, though fierce, struggle was hacked to pieces by the demon. After this lamentable encounter, Sita, to the great grief of the onlookers, was carried away to Lanka.

The downfall of Lanka and final triumph of Rama are scenes of too great importance to be dealt with like the rest. For these, special preparations and as large a theatre as possible—some wide open plain for example—are requisite, as thousands gather to see Lanka and the demons given over to the flames.

I select for description a favourable instance of the siege and destruction of Lanka which I witnessed at the military station of Meean Meer a few years ago. It was got up by the sepoys of some of the native regiments stationed there.

Upon an open maidan or plain was assembled an eager crowd of spectators. A large space for the performance of the Ram Lila was kept clear by sepoys, placed as sentries at short intervals. About the centre of this space towered two huge effigies, without legs, probably forty feet high, representing Ravana and Kumbhakarna. Each figure stood with its arms extended right and left, level with the shoulders, in the most absurd of attitudes, resembling the pictures of men which young children are so fond of drawing. Ravana had ten faces,[46] and two arms with twenty hands,[47] while Kumbhakarna had two hands only. There they stood, the terrible demon king of Lanka, and his no less formidable brother, grotesqueness itself. At one side, opposite to and facing the figures, was a painted wooden car—lent by the king of the celestials to Rama on this memorable occasion—standing on small wheels, like a child’s toy, with two wooden horses attached to it. On the car were seated two handsome, bare-legged and bare-footed boys, dressed in yellow satin robes, with bows in their hands. Their hats somewhat resembled a bishop’s mitre in shape, and were made of red and silver materials. These boys, the reader does not need to be told, represented Rama and his brother Lakshmana. In attendance upon them were about thirty men, dressed in dusky red clothes, and with marks on their faces, who personated the army of monkeys that assisted the heroes. To the right of the two huge figures was an inclosed space which stood for the city or citadel of Lanka. Various mythological figures were also to be seen moving about the plain, in a more or less objectless manner. Two tall men, got up as women, went springing about, brandishing naked swords. They represented female Rakshasas. A man dressed up to look very corpulent, clothed in yellow, with long flowing hair and having serpents coiled round his throat, was dragged about upon a wooden bull over the field. This corpulent personage was no other than Mahadeva (Siva) on his bull (Nandi). Thus far the show was, at least, mythological and Hindu. But, by a curious anachronism, the features of a modern fair mixed themselves up with the old-world representation. Perhaps Indian taste in this nineteenth century demanded something more than the undiluted ancient epic. Whatever may have been the cause, I observed, with surprise, that within the inclosure several natives with painted faces personated Europeans of both sexes, to the great amusement of the onlookers. A man in shaggy furs, holding a torn umbrella over his head, and attended by a fellow disguised as a European policeman, was announced to the spectators as the “Nawab of Cabul.” There were also imitation bears with their leaders and such like grotesque shows for the amusement of the populace. Although the vast majority of the spectators were natives, many Europeans were present, some in their carriages, some on elephants, and one or two on camels. The scene, which was certainly strange and picturesque, became especially lively when, towards the close of the proceedings, the explosion of bombs and the discharge of rockets alarmed the horses and elephants. One huge beast, carrying a European gentleman and three ladies in a big howdah, was an object of interest and a cause of some anxiety to me, for his restive and erratic movements seemed to threaten destruction to me or to my carriage, at the least.

“THE TERRIBLE DEMON KING OF LANKA AND HIS NO LESS FORMIDABLE BROTHER.”

(From a photograph by W. C. Oman.)

The proceedings commenced by Ravana’s car, wooden horses and all, being dragged by men round the inclosure attended by the monkeys. This was apparently a challenge to the enemy; for during the second circumambulation a party of men, dressed in dark blue or black, who had hitherto been kept out of sight, sprang forward to oppose Rama’s progress. These sable warriors were terrible Rakshasas, before whom Rama and his allies had to beat a retreat, pursued by the victors. Before long, however, the tide of battle seemed to turn. Victory changed sides! The Rakshasas retreated, followed by Rama and his people. This alternate success of one party or the other was repeated several times, apparently to prolong the proceedings, and was a most uninteresting and childish exhibition. Whenever Rama was advancing he was carried along discharging feeble arrows that rarely fell beyond the line of men yoked to his car. But when the hero was retreating before the enemy he was generally on foot, probably to obviate the necessity of his turning his back to his foes. At length the demigods made a furious and altogether successful onslaught. The black warriors were supposed to have been completely exterminated. They lay stretched on the field dead and dying for a minute or two, and then, in the most inconsistent manner, got up and squatted on the grass to watch the further proceedings. When Ravana’s forces were thus destroyed, a number of fireworks were lighted all over the field. Then the fort of Lanka was given over to the flames, and as it was well-filled with fireworks it made a brilliant display. Next perished Kumbhakarna, similarly in a blaze of rockets, and amidst the thunder of exploding bombs. And last of all, the gigantic Ravana disappeared, by what to any bystander would seem a process of spontaneous combustion. All the time the drama lasted a regimental brass band played European music; so that Rama’s forces may be said to have been animated to the assault of Lanka by the soul-stirring music of European composers.

This was all! Sita the patient, faithful, loving wife was never brought forward. The woman’s part was a quite subordinate one and was left to the imagination of the spectators. The conquering Rama was everything; the long-suffering Sita was forgotten on this occasion. However, the gentle wife of Rama has a place of her own in the affectionate regard of the people of her native land and her history is well remembered. I have seen a picture of the car in which Sita was abducted tattooed on the arm of an ignorant woman of the lower classes, and found on inquiry that she knew the old old story well.

The Ram Lila I have just described was a particularly good example of the annual celebration. Ordinarily, huge figures, stuffed with straw, represent the demons. Rama and Lakshmana, seated on a stage, are carried about on the shoulders of men and, after traversing the ground, hither and thither, without any apparent object, at length set fire to the effigies, whose combustion concludes the play, if such it can be called; whereupon the crowds assembled to see the sport depart in clouds of dust and smoke. Often several sets of demons and Ramas may be seen on the same field, got up by rival parties, by different sections of a city, or by separate villages.

It appears that there is some difficulty in getting boys to personate Rama and his brother on the occasion of the Ram Lila festival, as it is the popular belief that they never live to attain manhood.[48] There is also another, if less superstitious reason for the difficulty in question, and it is this: At the close of the festival Rama and Lakshmana have to feast the Brahmans, and that involves no inconsiderable outlay of money. Hence, in the somewhat lawless border districts on the Indus, it is the usual thing for the sons of well-to-do persons to be actually kidnapped and carried off to play Rama and Lakshmana at the annual festival.

For ten days during the feast they are believed to be literally possessed by the god and are worshipped as Vishnu. But the worship of these boys creates, I was told, a curious and interesting difficulty about the selection of Rama and Lakshmana. The two heroes were men of the warrior caste, and so should their modern representatives be, but, as they have divine honours paid to them during the festival, it would not suit the Brahmans to bow down to and touch the feet of youths of inferior caste, while even personating demigods, and so, in defiance of history, Brahman youths are generally selected to represent the Kshatriya heroes in the Ram Lila.

What the Indian artist’s conception of the form and appearance of Rama is, may be partially understood from the statuettes in stone made at the present day and frequently to be met with, at least in Northern India. They are usually sculptured in white marble, but painted (I may say enamelled) jet black, the only unblackened portion being the whites of the eyes. The eyebrows are gilded and so is the loin-cloth or dhoty, which is the only piece of clothing on the person of the god-man. Two big ornaments, shaped like stumpy reels, fill big holes in the lobes of the ears, and make them stick out on either side. On the forehead is the Vishnu caste-mark, the central line in red, and the two side lines, diverging from the top of the nose, in gold. These figures chiselled by the Indian sculptor are always stiff and somewhat conventional.

The Dasahra festival of Northern India is replaced in Bengal by the Durga Puja, and consequently the Bengalees do not perform the Ram Lila; but I remember to have seen, years ago, in Bengal, a large collection of colossal groups of figures representing favourite incidents in the “Mahabharata” and “Ramayana,” prepared at the expense of the Maharajah of Burdwan, to which show, an annual one, I believe, the public were freely admitted. The grotesque forms of the monsters of the Indian epics were reproduced in huge clay statues, variously coloured and clothed. Some, armed with the strange weapons which the poets had imagined, were engaged in deadly combat. Gigantic arrows were conspicuous, and some of them, with the aid of thread supports, were shown in the air on their way to some ill-fated warrior or other. More peaceful scenes were also represented, as where Ravana, in the disguise of a Brahman, visits Sita in the forest. Various holy hermits were also there in all the repulsiveness of dirt and emaciation. The figures were coloured yellow, blue, green, brown, or black, according to the text of the poet, the conventional notions of the people, or the taste and fancy of the artists. Some of these clay statues were decidedly well modelled. They had real hair on their heads, faces and breasts; they were clothed in cotton fabrics, according to the not very elaborate fashions of the country, and, in some cases, were by no means unartistic representations of the men, demons and demigods of the sacred epics of India.

APPENDIX

The Story of the Descent of Ganga (the Ganges), as related in the “Ramayana”

In ancient times lived Sangara, a virtuous king of Ayodhya. He had two wives but no children. As he and his consorts longed for offspring, the three of them went to the Himalayas and practised austerities there. When they had been thus engaged for a hundred years, a Brahman ascetic of great power granted this boon to Sangara; that one of his wives should give birth to a son who should perpetuate his race and the other should be the mother of sixty thousand manly and high-spirited sons. In due time the elder wife bore the promised son, who was named Asamanja, and the younger wife a gourd. From this gourd, when it burst open, came forth sixty thousand tiny sons, who were fostered, during their helpless infancy, by keeping them in jars filled with clarified butter. When his numerous sons had grown to man’s estate the king, their father, determined to offer a horse-sacrifice. In accordance with this resolution a horse was, in the usual way, set free to wander where it listed, attended, for its protection, by mighty warriors of Sangara’s army.

Now it came to pass that one day Vasava, assuming the form of a Rakshasa, stole the horse away. The sixty thousand sons of the King of Ayodhya thereupon commenced, at their father’s command, a diligent search for the missing animal. They scoured the world in vain for the stolen horse and then set about making a rigorous search in the bowels of the earth, digging downwards some sixty thousand yojanas. In these subterranean explorations they committed great havoc amongst the dwellers in the under-world; but they persevered in their quest and presently, in the Southern Quarter, came upon a huge elephant resembling a hill. This colossal elephant, named Verupaksha, supported the entire earth upon his head and caused earthquakes whenever he happened to move his head from fatigue. Going round this mighty beast, the sons of Sangara continued their search in the interior of the earth. They at last found the stolen horse and observed, quite close to it, “the eternal Vasudeva in the guise of Kapila,” upon whom they rushed with blind but impotent fury; for he, uttering a tremendous roar, instantly reduced them all to ashes.

As the princes did not return home Sangara became alarmed for their safety and sent his grandson—Asamanja’s son—to look for tidings of them. This heroic prince, following the traces they had left of their eventful journey, at length reached the spot where the missing horse was detained and there discovered also the ashes of his sixty thousand uncles. Being piously desirous of making the usual oblations of water to the ashes of his deceased relatives, Asamanja’s son looked about for water but could find none. However, he met, in these nether regions, Suparna, a maternal uncle of his, “resembling the wind,” and from him he learned that the sixty thousand dead princes would be translated to heaven if only the waters of Ganga could be brought down from the celestial regions to lave their dust.

Seeing there was nothing that he could do for the manes of his dead relatives, the young prince took the horse, and returning with it to Ayodhya helped to complete Sangara’s sacrifice.

Sangara himself died after a reign of thirty thousand years. Ançumat, who succeeded him, practised rigid austerities, “on the romantic summit of Himavat,” for thirty-two thousand years, and left the kingdom to Dilipa, whose constant thought was how he should bring Ganga down from heaven for the benefit of his dead ancestors; but though he performed numerous sacrifices during his long reign of thirty thousand years, he made no progress in this matter. Dilipa’s son, Bhagiratha, earnestly devoted himself to the same object, and practised severe austerities with the view of obtaining the wished-for boon. “Restraining his senses and eating once a month and surrounding himself with five fires and with arms uplifted, he for a long lapse of time performed austerities at Gokara.” Brahma, pleased with the king’s asceticism, appeared before him and granted his wish, advising him, at the same time, to invoke the aid of Siva to accomplish it, as the earth would not be able to sustain the direct shock of the descent of Ganga from the celestial regions.

To obtain the assistance of Siva, Bhagiratha spent a whole year in adoring that god, who at the end of that period was graciously pleased to say to the king: “O foremost of men, I am well-pleased with thee. I will do what will be for thy welfare—I will hold the Mountain’s daughter on my head.” Upon this Ganga precipitated herself from the heavens upon Siva’s head, arrogantly thinking to reach the earth without delay, but Siva, vexed by her proud thought, caused her to wander for many a year amongst the tangles of his long hair. It was only when Bhagiratha had recourse to fresh austerities that Siva “cast Ganga off in the direction of the Vindu lake,” and she flowed in many channels over the joyful earth, to the delight and admiration of the celestials who witnessed her wonderful descent from the sky.

Ganga, following the royal ascetic Bhagiratha, flooded with her waters the “sacrificial ground of the high-souled Jahna of wonderful deeds, as he was performing a sacrifice.” The saint drank up her waters in a rage. When this occurred the deities and Gandharvas began to worship the angry Jahna, who, being propitiated by their attentions, allowed the river to flow off through his ears. Proceeding again in the wake of Bhagiratha’s chariot, Ganga, having reached the ocean, entered the under-world where the ashes of the sixty thousand sons of Sangara still lay. Her sanctifying waters flowed over their earthly remains and their spirits ascended to heaven.

Such is the history of the most sacred river of the Hindus, into whose heaven-descended waters millions upon millions of men and women crowd annually to have their sins washed away.

NOTES

I. Antiquity of the “Ramayana.”—Older than the “Ramayana” ascribed to Valmiki is the “Ramasaga” itself, which exists as a Buddhist story, known as the “Dasahrathajataka.” This is substantially the history of Rama and Sita, with the important omission of the rape of Sita and the expedition against Lanka, which incidents the poet of the “Ramayana” is believed by Dr. Albrecht Weber to have borrowed from the Homeric legends.[49] If this conjecture be correct, the treatment of the incidents in question by Valmiki is no slavish imitation of that of Homer. In the “Mahabharata” the story of Rama and Sita is narrated to Yudhisthira as an example, taken from the olden time, by way of consolation on a certain occasion, and agrees so closely with the work of Valmiki that it certainly looks very much like an epitome of that work. In regard to the age of this epic, Sir Monier Williams says: “We cannot be far wrong in asserting that a great portion of the ‘Ramayana,’ if not the entire ‘Ramayana,’ before us, must have been current in India as early as the fifth century B.C.”[50]

II. English versions of the “Ramayana.”—The English reader desirous of learning more of the details of the “Ramayana” than is contained in this epitome, may consult the following works: (1) The excellent metrical version of Mr. Ralph Griffith, in five volumes; (2) the prose translation now in course of publication by Babu Manmatha Nath Dutt, M.A.; (3) Mr. Taiboys Wheeler’s “History of India,” vol. iii.; and (4) The “Ramayana” of Tulsi Das, translated by Mr. F. T. Growse.

III. The “Ramayana” only a nature myth.—While one scholar finds history in the pages of the “Ramayana,” and discovers in its interesting details a poetical version of the conquest of Southern India by the Aryans, another, with a turn for mythological interpretation, assures us that it is only a nature myth. “The whole story,” he writes, “is clearly an account of how the full moon wanes and finally disappears from sight during the last fourteen days of the lunar month, which are the fourteen years of Rama and Sita’s exile. Her final disappearance is represented by her rape by Ravana, and her rescue means the return of the new moon. In the course of the story the triumph of the dark night, lightened by the moon and stars, is further represented by the conquest of Vali, the god of tempests of the monkey race, who had obscured the stars.”[51]

PART II
THE MAHABHARATA

THE MAHABHARATA

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

Standing on the beautiful fluted column of red sandstone, known as the Kutub Minar, which towers loftily above the lifeless quietude of ancient Delhi, the eye surveys a landscape which embraces one of the most classic regions in Hindustan.

Across the ruin-strewn plain, towards the lordly minarets and cupolas of modern Delhi, the spectator may note, just a little towards the east, the massive remains of the Poorana killa, or old fort, which still preserves, in its traditionary name of Indrapat or Indraprasta, a suggestion of the glory it enjoyed some fifteen centuries before Christ.

Not only in India and to the Hindus is the Indraprasta a name of reverence; for, away in distant Cambodia, the people believe that they are descended from colonists who immigrated into the southern peninsula from the far-off banks of the Jumna, and the stupendous remains of Angkor and Battambang, near the great lake of Toulé-sap, point unmistakably to Hindu and Buddhist origin, and bear silent witness to the existence, in the remote past, of a powerful and flourishing kingdom of Indian origin.[52]

Delhi, and the great plain north of it, are associated with the most stirring events in both the ancient and modern history of India, and have witnessed the most decisive struggles for empire which have occurred south of the Himalayas.

Perhaps the “Mahabharata” was based on simple Aryan sagas like those of the Norsemen—historical traditions of deeds performed by gallant warriors to whose nervous hands the spear and axe were more familiar than the plough and the pen,[53] but, if so, the poets who have used the materials of the sagas of their ancestors to build up the great national epic, have been not too careful to preserve the strict accuracy of the traditions, and when the narrative of events is interrupted by long disquisitions and endless palavers, we discern unmistakably the hand of the Brahman compiler and his contribution to the record. We may, then, as well admit at once that little real history can be gleaned out of the one hundred thousand verses of the “Mahabharata.” Yet a very great deal of valuable matter, that does not fall under the usual denomination of history, may be readily found in this voluminous epic, giving it a high value for all time.

The authorship of the “Mahabharata” is ascribed to the sage Vyasa, or the compiler, and its production is, at least, as remarkable as that of the “Ramayana” already referred to. We are told in the introduction to the poem itself that, “The son of Satyavati (Vyasa) having by penance and meditation analyzed the eternal Veda afterwards compiled this holy history.” When he had completed the vast epic, without, however, committing any portion of it to writing, he began to consider how he could teach it to his disciples. Sympathizing with his desire to extend to others the benefits of this most sacred and interesting poem, Brahma, the Supreme Being, appeared before the saint. “And when Vyasa, surrounded by all the tribes of Munis, saw him, he was surprised; and standing with joined palms, he bowed and he ordered a seat to be brought. And Vyasa having gone round him, who is called Hiranyagarbha, seated on that distinguished seat, stood near it, and, being commanded by Brahma Parameshti, he sat down near the seat full of affection and smiling in joy” (P. C. Roy).[54] After expressing his entire approval of the poem Vyasa had composed, the Supreme Being said: “Let Ganesa be thought of, O Muni, for the purpose of writing the poem,” and then “retired to his own abode.” Ganesa, the god of wisdom, being invoked by Vyasa, repaired at once to his hermitage and consented to commit the wondrous tale to writing, provided his pen were not allowed to cease its work for a single moment. This condition was agreed to and observed. Thus was the “Mahabharata” recorded, as undying and infallible scripture, from the lips of its inspired bard.

In respect of its importance and sanctity we need only cite the following passages from the poem itself. “There is not a story current in this world, but doth depend upon this history, even as the body upon the food that it taketh.”

“The study of the ‘Bharata’ is an act of piety. He that readeth even one foot believing hath his sins entirely purged away.”

“The man who with reverence daily listeneth to this sacred work acquireth long life and renown and ascendeth to heaven.”

“A Brahmana whatever sins he may commit during the day through his senses, is freed from them all by reading the ‘Bharata’ in the evening. Whatever sins he may commit also in the night by deed, words, or mind, he is freed from them all by reading the ‘Bharata’ in the first twilight (morning).”

What effects such beliefs were likely to have upon the morals of a people we do not stop to inquire.

“Chaque peuple,” says Prévost-Paradol, “a dans son histoire un grand fait, auquel il rattache tout son passé et tout son avenir, et dont la mémoire est un mot de ralliement, une promesse de salut. La fuite d’Egypte, disaient les Juifs; le renversement des Mèdes, disaient les Perses; les guerres Médiques, disent à leur tour les Grecs. On les rappellera à tout propos pour en tirer des arguments, des prétentions politiques, des mouvements oratoires, des encouragements patriotiques dans les grandes crises, et plus tard, les regrets éternels.”[55]

For the Indian people it is the great war ending with Kurukshetra, which is the central event of their history. It closes for them their golden age. Before that was a world of transcendent knowledge and heroic deeds; since then intellectual decay and physical degeneracy. Nor is this merely a sentiment, it is a deeply-rooted belief, which the highly-educated Indian holds in common with his ignorant countryman. I have known an educated Hindu to maintain with much warmth that in the golden age the Rishis and others were well acquainted with the art of aërial navigation, and probably with other rapid modes of locomotion unknown to us moderns. I have heard him assert boldly that even the telephone, microphone, and phonograph had been known to the Hindu sages up to the time when the sciences and arts of the ancient world perished, wholesale and for ever, with the heroes of the “Mahabharata” on the fatal field of Kurukshetra. However little one might be disposed to import such romantic statements into a sober history of science, they are, at any rate, true as regards the non-existence of anything like even the germs of progressive science among the people of India from a very remote date up to the present time.

Of the one hundred thousand verses of the “Mahabharata” not more than a fourth part is concerned with the main story of the epic—the rest consists of more or less irrelevant, though often beautiful episodes, and of disquisitions on government, morals and theology. It is the main story that I have endeavoured to reproduce in brief outline in this volume, and I have also attempted to preserve, as far as possible, the important doctrinal features of the great epic.

CHAPTER II

THE STORY OF THE GREAT WAR

Amongst the long line of kings descended from Chandra, the Moon, who reigned in Northern India, was Shantanu, with whom our narrative may conveniently commence. This king was, like most of the sovereigns of his house, a pious man and an able administrator, whose sway, we are told, was owned by the whole world. He had two wives in succession, first the goddess Ganga, afterwards Satyavati, and the story of his loves is worth recording.

Strange as it may seem, his marriage with the lovely Ganga, the divinity of the sacred river Ganges, resulted from a curse uttered by one of those terrible saints, so common in Indian poetry, whose irritability of temper seems to have been in direct proportion to the importance of their austerities. The saint in question, Vasishta by name, was once engaged in his devotions when a party of celestial beings, known as Vasus, unwittingly passed between him and the rising or setting sun. “Be born among men!” exclaimed the irate Rishi to the unwelcome intruders, and his malediction, once uttered was, of course, irrevocable.[56] Expelled from Heaven, these unfortunate Vasus were met by the goddess Ganga to whom they explained their sad destiny, imploring of her to become a woman, so that they might be born of her and not of a mere mortal. The goddess who, on account of a slight indiscretion on her part, was herself under the obligation of assuming the human form, agreed to their proposal, and made choice of Shantanu to be their father. The goddess promised the Vasus that as each one of them was born of her, he should be thrown, as a mere infant, into the water and destroyed, so that all might regain their celestial home as speedily as possible. But Ganga stipulated that each one of the Vasus should contribute an eighth part of his energy for the production of a son who should be allowed to live his life on earth, but should himself die childless. These preliminaries being settled amongst the gods, behind the scenes as it were, the play had to be played out on the terrestrial stage with men as the puppets. To this end Ganga took an opportunity of presenting herself before Shantanu for the purpose of captivating his heart,—no difficult task for the goddess. So, one day as he was wandering along the banks of the Ganges, “he saw a lovely maiden of blazing beauty and like unto another Sree herself. Of faultless and pearly teeth and decked with celestial ornaments, she was attired in garments of fine texture, and resembled in splendour the filaments of the lotus. And the monarch beholding that damsel became surprised. With steadfast gaze he seemed to be drinking her charms, but repeated draughts failed to quench his thirst. The damsel also beholding the monarch of blazing splendour moving about in great agitation, was moved herself, and experienced an affection for him. She gazed and gazed and longed to gaze at him evermore. The monarch then in soft words addressed her and said: ‘O thou slender-waisted one, beest thou a goddess or the daughter of a Danava, beest thou of the race of the Gandharvas, or Apsaras, beest thou of the Yakshas or of the Nagas or beest thou of human origin, O thou of celestial beauty, I solicit thee to be my wife.’”

This wooing, simple enough in form and very much to the point, was, we need not say, entirely successful; the goddess without revealing her identity, consenting at once to become the king’s wife, on condition that she should be free to leave him the moment he interfered with her actions or addressed an unkind word to her. The enamoured prince readily agreed to these terms, and Ganga became his wife. Seven beautiful children born of this union were, to the king’s intense horror, thrown by their mother, each in its turn, into the waters of the Ganges with the words “This is for thy good.” Shantanu’s dread of losing the companionship of his lovely wife, of whom he was dotingly fond, kept him tongue-tied even in presence of such enormities; but when the eighth child was about to be destroyed like the others, his paternal feelings could not be controlled, and he broke out in remonstrance and upbraidings which saved his son’s life, but lost him his wife’s society for ever. Ganga, with much dignity, revealed herself to the king, explained to him the real circumstances of the case, and the motives which had influenced her actions and, reminding him of the stipulations of the contract between them, took a kind but final farewell of the husband of so many years. She thereupon disappeared, carrying the child away with her.

Later on, the river-goddess appeared once more to King Shantanu, and made over to him his half-celestial son, a youth of the most wonderful intellect, learning, strength and daring. This son, indifferently named Ganga-datta and Deva-bratta, was eventually best-known as Bhisma, or the terrible, for a reason to be explained immediately.

In the foregoing legend about the incarnations of the Vasus, we have an instructive and interesting illustration of the ideas of the Hindus with respect to the soul in man, which, as in this case, might be a spirit from the celestial regions. We also learn how the poor mortal’s destiny on earth is but the fulfilment of predestined events.

Shantanu, deserted by the goddess-queen, seems to have had a heart ready for the reception of another love, and, as his romantic fortune would have it, he was one day rambling on the banks of the Jumna when his attention was attracted by a delicious perfume. To trace this fragrance to its source the king roamed hither and thither through the woods, “and, in the course of his rambles, he beheld a black-eyed maiden of celestial beauty, the daughter of a fisherman.” In those primitive times, when men carried their hearts on their sleeves and the forms of social life were simple and natural, no tedious courtship was necessary; so, “the king addressing her said: ‘Who art thou, and whose daughter? What dost thou do here, O timid one?’ She answered, ‘Blest be thou, I am the daughter of the chief of the fishermen. At his command for religious merit I am engaged in rowing the passengers across this river in my boat.’ And Shantanu beholding that maiden of celestial form endued with beauty, amiableness and such fragrance, desired her for wife. And repairing unto her father the king solicited his consent to the proposed match.”

The fisherman was willing to bestow his daughter on the king, but only on condition that the son born to her should occupy the throne to the exclusion of all others. This was a difficulty that staggered the king, for he could not find it in his heart to set aside Deva-bratta, the glorious son of Ganga. The matter accordingly dropped, but his disappointment was very great, and he could not conceal from the world that there was something preying upon his mind. Deva-bratta, being much concerned about Shantanu’s unhappiness, found out the cause of it, and going to the father of the sweet-scented maiden, Satyavati, he formally renounced his own right to the succession, and recorded a vow of perpetual celibacy.

Upon this “the Apsaras and the gods with the tribes of the Rishis began to rain down flowers from the firmament upon the head of Deva-bratta, and exclaimed 'This one is Bhisma’ (the terrible).”

Everything was now arranged to the satisfaction of the contracting parties, and Satyavati, the ferry-girl, became the proud queen of Bharatvarsha. But this beauteous and odoriferous damsel had already a history, which, though unknown to the king her husband, may be unfolded here.

In the discharge of her pious office of ferrying across the Jumna those who desired it, the maiden on one occasion had as her companion in the boat “the great and wise Rishi Parashara, foremost of all virtuous men.” This illustrious saint, who seems to have had an eye for a pretty wench, immediately made advances to the boat-girl. Dread of her father, and a natural disinclination of being seen from the shore, made Satyavati coy; but, on the other hand, she was also in terror of the Rishi’s curse, in case she disobliged him. The sage Parashara was not to be denied. He enveloped the boat in a mist, and, promising the boat-girl that her virginity should be restored, and that a certain fishy smell which emanated from her person should be changed into a sweet perfume, had his way with her. The offspring of this union was no other than the renowned Vyasa, who arranged the Vedas and wrote the “Mahabharata,” and of whom we shall hear more very soon.

Satyavati by her union with King Shantanu became the mother of two sons, Chitrangada and Vichitra-virya. The former was after a short reign killed, in a three years’ combat, by the King of the Gandharvas, and Vichitra-virya was placed on the throne; but being a minor the kingdom was ruled by Bhisma, in subordination to Queen Satyavati. When the king was old enough to be married Bhisma set about finding a wife for him. Learning that the three lovely daughters of the King of Kasi would elect husbands in a public swayamvara, or maiden’s choice, he repaired thither and, acting in accordance with the lawless customs of the times, carried the fair princesses off in his chariot, challenging anyone and everyone to fight him for the coveted prize. A desperate battle ensued, of the kind familiar to the reader of the previous portion of this volume. Bhisma, alone and unaided, assailed by ten thousand arrows at the same time, was able to check these missiles in mid-air by showers of innumerable darts from his own bow, and after prodigious slaughter effected the object he had in view.[57] Of the three captured princesses one, named Amba, was allowed to go back to her people, as she explained that she had fully made up her mind to elect the King of Sanva for her husband, that he had given her his heart, and that her father was willing. The Rajah, however, coldly rejected Amba, on the ground that she had been in another man’s house; so, after undergoing painful austerities, with the object of being avenged for the humiliations she had suffered, the unhappy princess immolated herself on the funeral pile. In her case the swayamvara was, it would appear, only intended to be a formal ceremony. The other two princesses became the wives of Vichitra-virya; but, after a short reign, he died, leaving behind him no heirs of his body.

This failure of issue threatened the extinction of the Lunar dynasty. But, according to the ideas of those primitive times, the deficiency of heirs might still be supplied, for Vichitra-virya’s two widows, Amvika and Amvalika, still survived, and some kinsman might raise up seed to the dead man. Queen Satyavati pressed Bhisma to undertake the duty, but he, unwittingly fulfilling his destiny, held his vow of celibacy too sacred to be broken even in such a dynastic emergency. On his refusal Satyavati thought of her son Vyasa as perpetuator of the Lunar race, and the sage, nothing loth, undertook the family duty and visited the widows in turn. Now this celebrated sage had, by reason of his austerities, a terrible and repulsive appearance. The elder widow, Amvika, shut her eyes when she saw him, as he approached in the lamplight, and the son born of her was, in consequence, blind. The other widow was so blanched with fear at the sight of the sage, that the son she gave birth to was of quite a pale complexion. The blind son was named Dhritarashtra, and the white one Pandu.[58]

Neither of these sons being perfect, Satyavati desired Vyasa to beget yet another son. For this purpose he was to visit Amvika again; but she, poor soul, had had enough of the wild-looking anchorite, whose grim visage and strong odour had made a deep and disagreeable impression upon her, so she sent a beautiful slave-girl to him in her stead. The Sudra maiden made herself agreeable to the sage who was, of course, too wise to be taken in by the attempted deception. “And when he rose up to go away he addressed her and said ‘Amiable one, thou shalt no longer be a slave. Thy child also shall be greatly fortunate and virtuous and the foremost of all intelligent men on earth.’” This third son of Vyasa was named Vidura, and, although the offspring of a Sudra wench was, it seems, no other than the god of justice himself, incarnate in human form, owing, as we might well guess, to the potent curse of a holy ascetic. This is how it came about. The ascetic was performing his penances under a vow of silence, when there came to his asylum a band of robbers fleeing from the officers of justice. They hid their booty and themselves in the asylum. The police officers who were on their track came to the asylum and requested the hermit to point out where the thieves had hidden themselves. The ascetic vouchsafed no answer, but the officers themselves soon found both the thieves and the stolen property. As an accomplice in the crime that had been committed, the ascetic was apprehended and sentenced to death. He was in due course impaled, but, even on the cruel stake which was rending his body, he serenely devoted himself to contemplation. For days he lived quietly upon the stake, a fact which was brought to the king’s knowledge, and greatly alarmed him. He came in person to the ascetic, addressed him with great humility, begged his forgiveness, and ordered his immediate removal from the stake. All attempts to extract the stake having failed, it was cut off at the surface of the body, and the ascetic, apparently none the worse for this addition to his internal economy, went about as usual, but he was by no means content. Of the god of justice he demanded what crime he had committed which entailed so heavy a punishment. The god explained that the ascetic had once in his childhood pierced a little insect with a blade of grass, hence his impalement. In the Rishi’s opinion the punishment was out of all proportion to the offence, particularly as the Shastras exempted children from responsibility for their actions, and, waxing wroth, he uttered the following imprecation: “Thou shalt, therefore, O god of justice, have to be born among men even in the Sudra order.”[59]

Dhritarashtra was set aside on account of his blindness, and Vidura on account of his servile birth, so the raj fell to Pandu, during whose minority the country was governed by his uncle, Bhisma.[60]

Pandu became a great and celebrated rajah. He had two wives, Kunti and Madri. The former, although very beautiful, had no suitors in her maidenhood; so the king, her father, invited to his court the princes and monarchs of the neighbouring countries, and desired Kunti to choose her husband from amongst his guests. The princess attracted by the appearance of Pandu who was there, approached him modestly, and “quivering with emotion,” as the poet tells us, placed the nuptial garland round his neck. In this romantic fashion Pandu got his first wife. For the second, Madri, who was selected for him by Bhisma, he had to pay a very considerable price in gold and precious stones, elephants, horses and other things; for, it seems, it was the custom in her family for the daughters to be disposed of for such price as could be got for them.

After he had reigned a while, Pandu retired with his two wives into the forests on the slopes of the Himalaya Mountains to indulge his love of freedom and the chase.

One day while out hunting he discharged his arrows at two deer sporting together. Now these, as ill luck would have it, were, in reality, a Brahman sage and his wife. In the agonies of death the Brahman assumed his proper form and, as we might expect, cursed the unfortunate Pandu, saying that he would assuredly die in the embrace of one of his wives.

Up to this time Pandu had had no children, and owing to his dread of the Brahman’s curse was cut off from any further hope of offspring. Deeming it a most indispensable religious duty to have heirs, he consulted the ascetics in the woods on the subject, saying: “Ye ascetics I am not yet freed from the debt I owe to my (deceased) ancestors! The best of men are born in this world to beget children for discharging that debt. I would ask ye, should children be begotten in my soil (upon my wives) as I myself was begotten in the soil of my father by the eminent Rishi?”

The ascetics having given the king an answer in the affirmative, he desired his wife, Kunti, “to raise up offspring from the seed of some Brahman of high ascetic merit.” But Kunti had another resource to fall back upon. It seems that in her maiden days she had pleased a Rishi by her attentions, and he had taught her, as a reward, a mantra, or spell, by the repetition of which she could cause any celestial being she thought of to present himself to her and be obedient to her will, whether he liked it or not. Of the efficacy of this spell Kunti had already had practical experience, for in her early days she had, just to test the value of the spell, compelled the attendance of Surya, the sun-god, and had a son by him, named Karna, of whom we shall hear again. Prudently omitting any mention of Surya and Karna, Kunti told her husband of the mantra she possessed, and, with his consent, had three sons for him by three different gods, viz., Yudhisthira by Dharma,[61] Bhisma by Vayu, and Arjuna by Indra.

But Pandu wanted more sons, and persuaded Kunti to communicate the spell to Madri who, greedy of offspring, summoned the twins Açwins to her bed, and gave birth in due course to two sons, Nakula and Sahadeva. These five sons, known as the five Pandavas, are the real heroes of the great war which forms the main incident of the “Mahabharata.”

Pandu himself met with a tragic end. One day in lovely spring weather, when wandering with his younger wife, Madri, through the pleasant woodlands he, in a weak moment, yielded to his passions and, in fulfilment of the Brahman’s curse, died in the arms of his wife, who, in testimony of her affection for her husband, and on the ground that she was his favourite wife, had herself burnt with his remains.[62]

The party opposed to the Pandavas, known as the Kauravas, consisted primarily of the one hundred sons of Dhritarashtra, by his wife Gandhari. Of course it was necessary that persons who had to play a leading part in the poet’s story should come into the world in some extraordinary manner, and equally necessary that a Rishi should have a prominent share in the event. Gandhari appears to have been lucky enough to please by her hospitalities the great ascetic Dwaipayana, and he granted her the boon she asked, viz., one hundred sons, each equal to her lord in strength and accomplishments. Instead of sons, however, the queen gave birth to a shapeless mass of flesh and, in despair, was about to throw it away, when the sage who, in his hermitage, knew exactly what was transpiring at the palace, appeared unexpectedly on the scene and, cutting the piece of flesh into one hundred and one pieces, placed each separately in a pot full of clarified butter; whence, in due time, one hundred sons and one daughter were taken out. Of these hundred sons, four—Duryodhana, Dhusashana, Vikarna, and Chittrasena—afterwards became prominent characters in the story of this epic.

During the practical abdication of the throne by Pandu, Dhritarashtra seems to have ruled the country; but Pandu’s sons, as the Pandavas were considered to be, had a claim to the throne, and the surviving widow of the ill-fated king proceeded at once to Hastinapur with the five boys. A great number of ascetics accompanied them and, having testified before Dhritarashtra and his court to the celestial parentage of these sons of Kunti and Madri, vanished into thin air before the eyes of all present. The young sons of Pandu were, after this, well received by the blind old king, and took up their abode with his wife, Gandhari, and his sons. But the cousins, if such they can be called, could not live amicably together, and many feuds arose between them. To such a pass did the bitterness of feeling between the kinsmen come, that the eldest son of the blind king, jealous of the strength of Bhima, cunningly drugged him, bound him hand and foot, and then flung him into the Ganges. But Bhima did not perish. As he sank through the water snakes attacked him, and the venom of their bites, counteracting the effects of the drug he had swallowed, restored him to consciousness. He immediately burst his bonds, and found that he had descended to the city of the Serpent-king in the interior of the earth, where he was hospitably entertained, and given a draught of nectar which endowed him with the strength of ten thousand elephants. After that he was carried by the Nagas from under the waters and restored to the place whence he had been thrown into the river. On his return to Hastinapur, Bhima related his adventures to his brothers, but was cautioned to say nothing about the matter in the presence of his cousins, so as not to awaken their suspicions.

In accordance with the warlike tastes of the times, all the young princes, Dhritarashtra’s sons and nephews alike, were trained to arms and instructed in the science of warfare by a famous Brahman preceptor, named Drona, on condition that they would fight for him against Draupada, Rajah of Panchala, with whom he had a feud of long standing. This Drona, it is needless to say, was of extraordinary origin, otherwise he would not have been preceptor to the princes. He was the son of a Rishi, named Bharadvaja, but was not born of woman. The Pandavas and their cousins had also another famous tutor, named Kripa, who had sprung into existence from a clump of heather.

When the scions of the royal house of Pandu had been sufficiently trained in the use of arms, their preceptor, Drona, arranged for an exhibition of their skill before the chiefs and people of the Raj. An auspicious day was fixed upon, and the people informed by proclamation of the important function. It was a day of excitement and bustle in the land of the Kurus; spectators flocked from far and near to witness the royal assault-at-arms. The wealthier part of the visitors pitched their tents near the arena, and others put up convenient stages from which to view the events of the day. For the king and his courtiers a theatre was erected “according to the rules laid down in the scriptures.” It was constructed of gold, and adorned with strings of pearls and lapiz lazuli. The ladies had a separate gallery to themselves, and came to the fête gorgeously attired.

Amidst the blare of trumpets and the sound of drums, Drona, all in white, his Brahmanical cord conspicuously displayed, entered the arena attended by his son. The young princes followed in the order of their ages. After some preliminary displays of dexterity in archery and fencing, and of skill in horsemanship and the management of war-chariots, a contest with maces came off between Duryodhana and Bhima. They roared at each other “like two mad elephants contending for a female one,” and what was meant to be a sham fight soon changed into a real combat. The princely competitors, actuated by mutual animosity, charged each other “like infuriated elephants,” and battered each other most vindictively with their ponderous maces. This single combat caused great excitement amongst the spectators, who took sides, and applauded their favourites. Drona had to interpose between the heated combatants. He commanded the music to cease and, to make a diversion, quickly brought forward Arjuna, clad in golden mail, to display his inimitable skill in bowmanship. In this art, the most important of the warlike arts in the India of those times, Arjuna hopelessly surpassed all his rivals and, indeed, besides the extraordinary skill he displayed, there was much to wonder at in his performances, for “by the Agneya weapon he created fire, and by the Varuna weapon he created water, and by the Vayavya weapon he created air, and by the Paryanya weapon he created clouds, and by the Bhanma weapon he created land, and by the Parvatya weapon mountains came into being. And by the Antardhyana weapon these were all made to disappear.”

When the exhibition was nearly over a formidable champion thundered at the gates of the arena. It was Karna, son of Kunti, already mentioned, and, as became the offspring of the sun-god, an archer of most wonderful skill. On being admitted, the tall and handsome Karna, proudly arrayed in the glittering coat of mail in which he was born, and the ear-rings which had similarly come into the world with him, presented a dazzling and most striking appearance. He haughtily assured Arjuna that he would perform before the multitude there assembled feats that would excel all that had been exhibited that day. He even expressed his eagerness for a single combat with the hero. The two glorious sons of Kunti, unconscious of their relationship, appeared in the lists; their respective fathers, Indra and Surya, anxiously watched events from their positions in the welkin, and Kunti, as became a fond mother, fainted away. At this juncture Kripa interposed, inquiring the race and lineage of the newcomer. This action on Kripa’s part was, apparently, only a device to avert the threatened fight. Duryodhana was furious at this interruption, and, to remove any objection on the score of difference of rank between the contending parties, raised Karna on the spot to the Rajahship of Anga not, however, without the indispensable aid of the Brahmans, their mantras and ceremonies. All this took time; and more time was wasted in altercations in which Bhima took a prominent part, insulting Karna in an outrageous fashion, to the great indignation of Duryodhana. Presently the sun went down over the scene, and the royal tournament with its exciting incidents was necessarily brought to an end.

The princes having thus publicly proved that they were capable of bearing arms, Drona called upon them to fulfil their part of the terms upon which he had educated them. Joint or common action amongst the cousins being out of the question, the Kauravas and their friends went forth alone and attacked the Rajah of Panchala. They were defeated and compelled to retreat. Then the Pandavas marched out against their tutor’s enemy, and after a bloody conflict of the usual kind,—in which arrows fly from each single bow like flights of locusts; in which thousands of elephants, horses and men are slain; in which the principal combatants, although pierced with scores of shafts, seem none the worse for them—the Pandavas met with complete success, bringing the defeated Rajah along with them as a prisoner. He was afterwards liberated at the expense of half his kingdom, which was appropriated by the successful Drona.

Fresh causes of jealousy arose between the cousins. Yudhisthira’s claim to the succession could not be set aside, as the people were all in favour of him; so he was appointed by the blind king, very reluctantly, we may presume, to the office of Yuva-Rajah, or heir-apparent. The Pandavas, elated by their success against the King of Panchala, and confident in themselves, commenced a series of unprovoked attacks upon the neighbouring princes. Of course the Pandavas performed prodigies of valour in these invasions. For example, two of them with a single chariot, “subjugated all the kings of the East backed by ten thousand chariots.”

These great achievements inflamed the jealousy of even the blind king to such a pitch that he disclosed his feelings to Kanika, his Brahman counsellor, “well skilled in the science of politics.” As became a sage politician, Kanika advised his master to put the obnoxious Pandavas out of the way as soon as possible. He explained to Dhritarashtra his obvious duty in such a case, and impressed upon his sovereign such important maxims of state policy as the following: “When thy foe is in thy power destroy him by every means, open or secret: Do not show him any mercy although he seeketh thy protection.... If thy son, friend, brother, father or even spiritual preceptor, becometh thy foe, thou shouldst, if desirous of prosperity, slay him without scruples. By curses and incantations, by gift of wealth, by poison, or by deception the foe should be slain. He should never be neglected from disdain.”

His counsels fell on only too willing ears. Dhritarashtra was ready to do his duty as thus explained to him, but thought it best to act warily. Duryodhana suggested that the Pandavas should be induced to go to Varanavartha,[63] and there be disposed of.

Praises of this place were cunningly circulated in Dhritarashtra’s court, and the king suggested to the Pandavas that they might go there for a holiday. Suspicions naturally arose in the minds of the sons of Pandu; but there seemed to be no way of eluding the king’s proposal. Their departure was a day of public mourning in Hastinapur, and, before they went, Vidura found an opportunity to warn them of a plot which had been formed to burn them to death in a house made of combustible materials, which would be erected for their reception at Varanavartha. To be forewarned was to be forearmed, and the Pandavas determined to be even with their enemies. Purochana, a confidential agent of Duryodhana’s, preceded them on their journey, and began in all haste to construct for their reception at Varanavartha and for their ultimate destruction by fire, the famous house of lac. What sort of mansion this was we may judge from Yudhisthira’s opinion of it, expressed confidentially to Bhima, after a critical inspection of the edifice, on their arrival at their destination. “The enemy, it is evident, by the aid of trusted artists, well skilled in the construction of houses, have finely built this mansion, after procuring hemp, resin, heath, straw and bamboos, all soaked in clarified butter.”

To escape destruction should their house be set on fire, the Pandavas secretly caused a subterranean passage to be made leading out of the dwelling. The work was executed by a trusty messenger, well skilled in mining, who had been sent to their assistance by Vidura. One evening Kunti fed a large number of Brahmans at this combustible house of hers. After the guests were gone, the Pandavas, assuring themselves that their enemy, Purochana, was fast asleep, quietly fastened the doors of the house, and themselves set fire to it in several places. As if impelled by Fate, a Nishada woman with her five sons had come, uninvited guests, to Kunti’s feast, and, becoming intoxicated with the wine of which they had partaken too freely, lay drunk upon the premises. These six drunk and incapable persons perished with Purochana, and their remains, found by the citizens after the conflagration had been extinguished, left no doubt in men’s minds that Kunti and her sons had all been miserably burnt to death.[64]

The five Pandava brothers disguised as Brahmans, accompanied by their mother, Kunti, made their escape into the forests and commenced a long course of wanderings, in which they experienced much hardship and many adventures. Often were they wearied out by their long marches, all except the giant Bhima who, on such occasions, would carry the whole family on his back and shoulders or under his arms. Of this episode Bhima is indisputably the hero. It is he who forces his way by giant strength through the almost impenetrable forests, treading down trees and creepers to make a passage for himself and his burden. It is he who kills the terrible Rakshasa bent upon devouring Kunti and her sons. It is Bhima with whom the cannibal’s sister falls ardently in love and whom, after strange adventurous journeys through the air, she eventually makes the happy father of a son, Ghatotkacha, afterwards a famous champion in the final struggles between the rival parties. It is Bhima again who, when they sojourned in Ekachakra (the inhabitants of which town had to pay a daily toll of a live human being for the table of a fierce Rakshasa), killed the monster single-handed, and delivered the trembling citizens from the gloomy horror under which they had been living.[65]

During their residence at Ekachakra, where they lived disguised as Brahmans, the Pandavas were visited by the famous Rishi Vyasa, who, it will be remembered, was really their grandfather, and also the compiler of the “Mahabharata” itself. By him they were informed that the lovely princess, Krishná, or Draupadi, the daughter of the King of the Panchalas, was about to hold a swayamvara, or “self choice,” at which she would select a husband. Vyasa also told them the wonderful history of this Draupadi, and thereby greatly excited their interest and curiosity in the handsome maiden, who was no ordinary girl, but had sprung into existence, mature and beautiful, in the midst of a great sacrifice for offspring, offered by Draupada, King of the Panchalas.

When, as has already been narrated, Draupada was defeated by Drona, and deprived by him of half his kingdom, a spirit of revenge took complete possession of the discomfited monarch, and his one thought was to find a means of compassing the overthrow of his successful foe, the redoubtable son of Bharadvaja. How could this object be attained when there was not a single one amongst the heroes of Panchala to cope with Drona, that mightiest of bowmen and possessor of the terrible Brahma-weapon? In such a difficulty the Indian chieftain naturally built his hopes upon those great national resources—the assistance of potent Brahmans, and the efficacy of properly conducted sacrifices. For the handsome fee of ten thousand kine the king succeeded in inducing a couple of learned Brahmans, who had long been engaged in austerities, to undertake a sacrifice for the express purpose of obtaining a son who should be invincible in war and capable of slaying Drona. The result of the ceremonies and sacrifices conducted by the learned and not too scrupulous Brahmans was completely successful, for out of the sacrificial flames which they had kindled emerged a stately youth, encased in full armour, with a crown on his head, and bearing a bow and arrows in his hands. He was wonderful to behold, and appeared upon the scene uttering loud roars. This was Dhrista-dyumna. After him appeared a beautiful maiden. “Her eyes were black, and large as lotus leaves, her complexion was dark, and her locks were blue and curly. Her nails were beautifully convex and bright as burnished copper, her eyebrows were fair, and her bosom was deep.... Her body emitted a fragrance as that of a blue lotus, perceivable from a distance of full two miles.” This damsel, because she was so dark complexioned, received the name of Krishná (the dark), but is more commonly known as Draupadi. Being the most lovely woman in the world at that time, her swayamvara would naturally attract the chiefs and princes of all nations, and not chiefs and princes only, but also Brahmans in crowds, ready to graciously accept the presents which the liberality or ostentation of the high-born suitors might prompt them to distribute on the occasion.

The young Pandavas were much excited about the coming event, and set off without delay to witness and, if possible, to take part in the proceedings of lovely Draupadi’s swayamvara. When they arrived at Panchala they took up their abode in the house of a humble potter, and, still disguised as Brahmans, supported themselves by begging alms of the people.

A great amphitheatre covered with a canopy was prepared for the important occasion. It was erected on a level plain, surrounded by lofty seven-storeyed palaces covered with gold, set with diamonds and adorned with garlands of fragrant flowers. In these costly mansions, “perfectly white and resembling the cloud-kissing peaks of Kailasa,” were lodged the kings and princes who had been invited to the swayamvara by the father of Draupadi. Commodious platforms were constructed all round the amphitheatre for the convenience of less august visitors, and on one of these platforms the Pandavas found places for themselves in the company of a number of Brahmans. Public rejoicings, music, dancing, and performances of various kinds, extending over sixteen days, served as a prelude to the business of the great assembly. At one end of the plain a tall pole was erected, and on the top of this pole was fixed a golden fish, and below the golden fish a chakra, or wheel, kept whirling round and round. The condition of the swayamvara was that each competitor should be provided with a particular bow and five selected arrows. If he succeeded with these in discharging an arrow through the chakra, and in striking the eye of the golden fish behind it, he should be the husband of the dark beauty of Panchala.

On the sixteenth day, when the meeting-place was quite full, Draupadi entered the amphitheatre richly attired and adorned with ornaments. In her hands she carried a golden dish with the usual offerings to Agni, the god of fire, and a garland of flowers for the neck of the happy man who should win her in the competition. After the offerings had been cast into the sacrificial fire and the appropriate mantras recited by the Brahmans appointed to perform the duty, Dhrista-dyumna led his sister before the assembly and, in a loud voice, proclaimed the conditions of the competition.

Amongst the innumerable suitors present there, we need only mention Duryodhana and Karna, who are already known to the reader.

The sight of the beautiful Draupadi fired the ardour of the assembled princes. One after the other they came forward to essay the feat but, though they tugged and strained and sweated till their faces were distorted and their clothes disordered, they were not even able to string the mighty bow. Karna at length stepped up and stringing the bow with ease placed an arrow for the trial. But seeing Karna, Draupadi loudly exclaimed: “I will not elect a Suta for my lord.”[66] “Then Karna, laughing in vexation and casting a glance on the sun, threw aside the bow already drawn to a circle.” Other competitors, princes of great renown, still pressed forward to try what they could do, but met with no success. When all the Kshatriya lords had retired discomfited, Arjuna advanced from his place amongst the Brahmans and, amidst a great deal of clamour, strung the bow and, with unerring skill, shot the mark. A tumultuous shout arose from the assembled multitude; there was a great uproar in the firmament, and the gods showered down flowers upon the happy hero. “And Krishná beholding the mark shot and beholding Partha (Arjuna) also like unto Indra himself, who had shot the mark, was filled with joy, and approached the son of Kunti with a white robe and a garland of flowers.” The Kshatriya Rajahs and chiefs were wild at their defeat by a Brahman, and although they were prepared to admit that their kingdoms, and they themselves also, existed solely for the benefit of the Brahmans, they demurred to such a conclusion of the swayamvara of a Kshatriya princess, and made a fierce attack upon King Draupada, who was willing to hand Draupadi over to the victor. Arjuna rushed at once to the king’s rescue, accompanied by the redoubtable Bhima, armed with nothing less than an uprooted tree and, though a desperate fight ensued, the Pandava brothers succeeded, partly through the mediation of Krishna—whom we here meet for the first time—in leaving the amphitheatre, closely followed by beautiful Draupadi.

Then those illustrious “sons of Pretha returning to the potter’s abode, approached their mother. And those first of men represented Yájnaseni (Draupadi) unto their mother as the alms they had obtained that day. And Kunti who was there within the room and saw not her sons replied, saying, ‘Enjoy ye all (what ye have obtained).’” The moment after she beheld Krishná, and then she said, “O, what have I said?” However, Draupadi was fated to have five husbands for, in a previous existence on the earth, she had, on five different occasions, asked the gods for a good husband as the reward of the austerities she practised. Yudhisthira knew this. It had been revealed to him by Vyasa. So when the matter was referred to him, as head of the family, he said simply: “The auspicious Draupadi shall be the common wife of us all;” a decision which pleased his brothers considerably for, as the poet tells us, “The sons of Pandu then hearing those words of their eldest brother, began to revolve them in their minds in great cheerfulness.”

Their life in the potter’s house was simplicity itself. Krishná prepared the food for the family and served it out to the several members, taking only a little for herself and eating it last of all. At night all seven slept on a bed of kusa grass covered with deerskins. The brothers lay side by side, their mother along the line of their heads, and Krishná “along the line of their feet as their nether pillow.”

When Draupadi, nothing loth, had gone away with the handsome victor, the King of Panchala was naturally very anxious to find out who the successful suitor really was. By a little artful eavesdropping on the part of Dhrista-dyumna, the secret became known to him, and he rejoiced to find what a good match Krishná had made. Arjuna caused great preparations to be undertaken for the wedding. He did not quite like the proposed fivefold arrangement; but was induced to consent to it, after Vyasa himself had explained to him how polyandry was not in itself sinful, and how this particular marriage had been pre-arranged by Destiny. It only remained for Draupadi to be led round the sacred fire on five successive days by the five brothers in turn. After the five weddings the King of the Panchalas made valuable presents to Draupadi’s husbands, including gold, chariots, horses and elephants, “and he also gave them a hundred female servants, all in the prime of youth and decked in costly robes and ornaments and floral wreaths.” Krishna also bestowed upon the happy Pandavas presents of various sorts,—costly robes, soft blankets, golden ornaments, and superb vessels set with gems and diamonds. And, in addition to these, “many elephants and horses, crores of gold coins, and thousands of young and beautiful female servants brought from various countries.”[67]

The alliance thus formed with the Rajah of Penchala made a great change in the fortunes of the Pandavas, and induced their cousins at Hastinapur to make overtures of friendship to them. The negotiations led, at length, to an amicable arrangement, by which the Kauravas continued to remain and rule at Hastinapur, while the Pandavas were assisted to settle themselves in Khandava-prasta on the banks of the Jumna. The portion of the country assigned to the sons of Pandu “was an unreclaimed desert,” but they soon built a gorgeous and wonderful city there, Indraprasta,[68] “surrounded by a trench as wide as the sea, and by walls reaching high into the heavens ... and the gateways that protected the town were high as the Mandara Mountain and massy as the clouds.”

At Indraprasta the brothers lived happily with their wife, having, upon the advice of a Rishi, arranged “that when one of them would be sitting with Draupadi, if any other of the four would see that one thus, he (the intruder) must retire into the forest for twelve years, passing his days as a Brahmachárin.” One day a Brahman, who had been robbed of his cattle, came in great haste to the king’s palace and, lamenting bitterly, accused the Pandavas of allowing him to be deprived of his property by contemptible thieves. Arjuna, recognizing his duty to afford the Brahman redress and protection, resolved to pursue the robbers; but his arms were in the room where Draupadi was sitting with Yudhisthira. Balancing against each other the sin of allowing the Brahman’s wrongs to go unavenged, and the breach of decorum involved in entering the chamber when his brother was engaged with Draupadi, he deliberately chose the latter, notwithstanding the consequences of their mutual agreement on that point. Once in possession of his arms he pursued the thieves, recovered the stolen property, and restored it to the Brahman; but on returning to the palace he voluntarily determined to go into exile in fulfilment of the terms of the compact about Draupadi.

Arjuna’s twelve years of exile were full of adventure. At the spot where the Ganges enters the plains (Hurdwar) he stepped into the sacred stream for a bath, was drawn down into the water by Ulupi, the daughter of the King of the Nagas, and taken by her to the beautiful mansion of her father. The love-sick Ulupi courted Arjuna so warmly that he could not find it in his heart to resist her solicitations. In return, Ulupi bestowed upon Arjuna the gift of invisibility in water.

From one sacred stream to another, from one holy place to another, wandered the willing exile, giving away much wealth to the Brahmans. At length he travelled as far as Munipur. Now the King of Munipur had a beautiful daughter named Chitrángadá. Arjuna saw, and fell desperately in love with the fair maiden. He asked her hand in marriage and obtained it, on condition that the first son born of the union should be considered to belong to the King of Munipur, in order to succeed him on the throne of that country. Three years did Arjuna live at Munipur, but when a son was born to Chitrángadá he took an affectionate farewell of her, and set out again upon his wanderings. Visiting many lands and experiencing strange adventures, he at length arrived at Dwarka, on the shore of the Southern Sea, the capital of his kinsman, Krishna, King of the Yadhavas. A casual sight of Subhadrá, the handsome sister of Krishna, made a strong and visible impression upon the susceptible heart of Arjuna. Krishna perceived the effect produced by his sister’s charms, and was not indisposed to an alliance with the Pandava hero. Should Subhadrá, now of age, hold a swayamvara or maiden’s choice? Krishna thought the result of such a plan might be disappointing; for who could say what choice a capricious girl might make! So, he artfully suggested to Arjuna to carry off the maiden by force, since “in the case of Kshatriyas that are brave, a forcible abduction for purposes of marriage is applauded, as the learned have said.” Arjuna, who was ready to achieve anything achievable by man to obtain “that girl of sweet smiles,” soon put the suggestion into practice, to the great indignation of the Yadhava chiefs; but Krishna threw oil upon the troubled waters, and everything was amicably settled in the end, the wedding being celebrated on a magnificent scale. After the prescribed twelve years of exile were completed, Arjuna returned to Khandava-prasta with Subhadrá, and was loyally welcomed by all. But when he visited Draupadi she evinced very natural signs of jealousy, and recommended Arjuna to go to the daughter of the Satwata race. However he coaxed her over, and when Subhadrá, dressed in red silk, but in the simple fashion of a cow-keeper, approached and bowed down to Draupadi, saying, “I am thy maid,” her resentful feelings were disarmed; she rose hastily and embraced her young rival with the significant greeting: “Let thy husband be without a foe.”

Krishna, the Prince of Dwarka, now visited his brother-in-law in great state, and brought with him a vast store of valuable gifts, amongst which we need only notice “a thousand damsels well skilled in assisting at the operations of bathing and at drinking.” No light recommendations apparently, for it would seem that in those good old times the practice of drinking wine was quite common; as we are told by the poet, in connection with a great picnic, given by Arjuna and Krishna, that “the women of the party, all of full rotund hips and fine deep bosoms and handsome eyes, and gait unsteady with wine, began to sport there at the command of Krishna and Partha (Arjuna). And some amongst the women sported as they liked in the woods, and some in the waters, and some within the mansions as directed by Partha and Govinda (Krishna). And Draupadi and Subhadrá, exhilarated with wine, began to give away unto the women so sporting their costly robes and ornaments. And some amongst those women began to dance in joy, and some began to sing, and some amongst them began to laugh and jest, and some to drink excellent wines.”

The picnic referred to was succeeded by a terrible conflict, in which Krishna and Arjuna, in the interests of Agni, opposed Indra and his celestial hosts. Agni, the god of fire, having drunk a continuous stream of clarified butter for twelve years, during the sacrifice of King Swetaki, was satiated with his greasy fare, had become pale and could not shine as before. To recover his health a change of diet was necessary for the god, and he, therefore, wished to devour, with his flaming tongues, the forest of Khandava in that land; but whenever he attempted to do this, Indra opposed him, quenching the flames raised by the fire-god with torrents of rain from above. However, Arjuna, in his wonderful way, “covered the forest of Khandava with innumerable arrows, like the moon covering the atmosphere with a thick fog,” and in this manner protected the burning forest from Indra’s drenching showers. A fierce battle with Indra, backed by Asuras, Gandharvas, Yakshas, and a host of others, resulted in the complete victory of Arjuna and his kinsman, in the total consumption of the forest by fire, and the almost wholesale destruction of all its inhabitants of every kind.

Only six of the dwellers in the forest of Khandava were allowed to escape with their lives. Aswa-Sena, Maya, and four birds called Sharugakos. Now Maya was the chief architect of the Danavas and, in gratitude for his preservation, built a wonderful Sabha, or hall, for the Pandavas, the most beautiful structure of its kind in the whole world.

One day, while the Pandavas were holding their court in this hall, the celestial Rishi Narada visited them, and the subject of conversation having turned upon the splendours of Maya’s handiwork, the Rishi described the courts of Indra, Yama, Varuna, and Kuvera, as also “the assembly-house of the grandsire, that house which none can describe, saying, it is such, for within a moment it assumes a different form that language fails to paint.”

Within the narrow limits I have allowed myself, these highly interesting pictures of the different heavens of the Hindus cannot be reproduced; but their more salient features must not be passed over, since they are highly characteristic of the ideas of the people who conceived them. The hall of Brahma, the Supreme Being, the Creator of everything, is an indescribable mansion, peopled by a most august, if somewhat shadowy, assembly. Here, in the presence of the grandsire of all, attend, in their personified forms, the various forces and phenomena of nature, such as time and space, heat and air, day and night, the months and seasons, the years and Yugas. Here also are ever to be found religion, joy, tranquillity, aversion and asceticism; here wisdom, intelligence and fame; here the four Vedas, sacrifices and mantras. Here also perpetually attend hymns, dramas, songs and stories, together with all the sciences, in the company of countless celestial Rishis and all the deities.

The courts of the other gods, which are less solemn and sedate, always resound with strains of delightful vocal and instrumental music, and are enlivened with the graceful dancing of the charming Apsaras and Gandharvas. But it is Yama’s Sabha that most concerns the human race, for it is there that, for the most part, the disembodied spirits of men are to be found. “Bright as burnished gold, that assembly-house covers an area of much more than a hundred Yojanas. Possessed of the splendour of the sun it yieldeth everything that one may desire. Neither very cool nor very hot, it delighteth the heart. In that assembly-house there is neither grief nor weakness of age, neither hunger nor thirst. Nothing disagreeable findeth a place there, nor wretchedness or distress. There can be no fatigue or any kind of evil feelings there. Every object of desire, celestial or human, is to be found in that mansion. And all kinds of enjoyable articles, as also of sweet juicy, agreeable, and delicious edibles in profusion, that are licked, sucked and drunk, are there. And the floral wreaths in that mansion are of the most delicious fragrance, and the trees that stand around it yield fruits that are desired of them. And there are both cold and hot waters, and these are sweet and agreeable. And in that mansion many royal sages of great sanctity and Brahmana sages also of great purity wait upon and worship Yama, the son Vivaswat.... And Agastya and Mataiya and Kála and Mrityu (Death), performers of sacrifices, and Siddhas and many Yogins; the Pitris ... the wheel of time and the illustrious conveyer himself of the sacrificial butter; all sinners among human beings, as also that have died during the winter solstice; those officers of Yama who have been appointed to count the allotted days of everybody and everything, the Shingshapa, Palasha, Kasha, and Kusha, trees and plants, in their embodied forms:—these all wait upon and worship the god of justice in that assembly-house of his.... And many illustrious Gandharvas and many Apsaras fill every part of that mansion with music, both instrumental and vocal, and with the sounds of laughter and dance. And excellent perfumes, and sweet sounds, and garlands of celestial flowers always contribute to make that mansion supremely blest. And hundreds of thousands of virtuous persons of celestial beauty and great wisdom always wait upon and worship the illustrious lord of created beings in that assembly-house.”[69]

During the period in the history of the Pandavas which we have now reached, Draupadi bore five sons[70] to her five husbands, and Subhadrá also became the mother of the afterwards famous Abhimanyu.

In their new home the Pandavas had flourished greatly, and having established an undisputed supremacy over all the chieftains in their immediate neighbourhood, they thought of performing a rajasuya or sacrifice of triumph, a sort of formal declaration of imperial claims. But there was a serious difficulty in the way of the accomplishment of this proud function; for there reigned at Mathura, the capital of Magadha, a powerful king, named Jarásandha who, having himself already brought no less than eighty-six kings under his dominion, was not, by any means, likely to acknowledge the superiority of Yudhisthira. Hence it followed that, until Jarásandha were overcome, the rajasuya could not be undertaken.

To conquer or otherwise dispose of Jarásandha was, therefore, the problem before the sons of Pandu. Their kinsman, Krishna, “foremost of personages whose strength consists in wisdom and policy,” was on a visit to Indraprasta, and willingly accompanied Arjuna and Bhima (all three disguised as Brahmans) to Mathura. Once in the presence of their formidable rival they threw off the mask and made themselves known to him. Krishna upbraided Jarásandha with his cruel purpose of offering up the vanquished kings, whom he held in captivity, as sacrifices to the god Rudra and, without hesitation, intimated that he and his companions had come to Mathura expressly to slay him. In addressing the King of Magadha Krishna gave expression to sentiments which remind one forcibly of the warlike ideas of the Norsemen. “Know,” said he “O bull among men, that Kshatriyas engage in battle with heaven in view.... Study of Vedas, great fame, ascetic penances, and death in battle are all acts that lead to heaven. The attainment of heaven by the other three acts may be uncertain. But death in battle hath that for its certain consequence.” The challenge thus given was accepted in the chivalrous spirit of the times. A single and public combat was arranged between Bhima and Jarásandha. Crowds of all classes of citizens, including women, were present to see the event. Both heroes fought without weapons. The encounter, which was carried on with great ferocity, lasted thirteen days without intermission for rest or food, and finally resulted in Jarásandha’s backbone being broken against Bhima’s knee. “And the roar of the Pandava, mingling with that of Jarásandha while he was being broken on Bhima’s knee, caused a loud uproar that struck fear into the heart of every creature.” After Jarásandha had been slain, Krishna released his royal prisoners, and engaged them to assist Yudhisthira in the celebration of the proposed rajasuya sacrifice.

As soon as the occurrences at Mathura had been made known to Yudhisthira, he despatched his four brothers to the four points of the compass to collect tribute from all the Rajahs of the world.[71] These expeditions were fruitful of wonderful adventures, but we have not space to recount them here, though we must not omit to note, in passing, that when those unprovoked aggressors, the sons of Pandu, vanquished any prince who offered resistance, he at once and, as a matter of course, joined the victors with his forces, and helped to subjugate the unfortunate king upon whose territories the advancing tide of invasion next broke.[72]

As a sequel to the conquests of the Pandavas, a crowd of Brahmans, with scores of Rajahs, flocked to Indraprasta from all parts of the country, and were right royally lodged and entertained by Yudhisthira’s commands. The various duties demanded by the occasion were intrusted to the different members of the family and to intimate friends of the Pandavas. Dhusashana was appointed to cater for the visitors; Kripa to look after the gold and gems; Duryodhana to receive the tributes; and Krishna, at his own desire, was engaged in washing the feet of the Brahmans.

Arrangements for the rajasuya were pushed forward, and all was hubbub and excitement in Indraprasta. The Brahman sages found the occasion a grand one for disputations with one another, and they took full advantage of it; but a suppressed fire of discontent and jealousy was smouldering in the hearts of the assembled Rajahs, which was set ablaze by a proposal to regard Krishna as the foremost chieftain present. Angry and contemptuous objections were made to his being given precedence in the assembly. The wise Bhisma, however, fully aware who and what his kinsman really was, solemnly assured the malcontents that “Krishna is the origin of the universe, and that in which the universe is to dissolve. Indeed this universe of mobile and immobile creatures has sprung into existence for Krishna only. He is the unmanifest primal matter, the Creator, the eternal and beyond (the ken of) all creatures.” Notwithstanding this testimony the opposition did not cease. Indeed Shishupala, the mighty King of Chedi, ridiculed the old man’s words, heaped contempt upon Krishna, and eventually, with many taunts and jeers, challenged him to fight. “And while Shishupala was speaking thus, the exalted slayer of Madhu thought in his mind of the discus that humbleth the pride of the Asuras. And as soon as the discus came into his hands the illustrious one skilled in speech loudly uttered these words! ‘Listen, ye lords of earth, why this one had hitherto been pardoned by me. Asked by his mother, a hundred offences (of his) were to be pardoned by me. Even this was the boon she had asked and even this I granted her. That number, ye kings, hath become full. I shall now slay him in your presence, ye monarchs.’ Having said this, the chief of the Yadus, that slayer of all foes, in anger instantly cut off the head of the ruler of Chedi by means of his discus. And the mighty-armed one fell down like a cliff struck with thunder. And the assembled kings then beheld a fierce energy, like unto the sun in the sky, issue out of the body of the King of Chedi. And that energy then adored Krishna, possessed of eyes like lotus leaves and worshipped of all the worlds, and entered his body. And the kings beholding the energy which entered that mighty-armed chief of men regarded it as wonderful.” And indeed they might well do so, yet the poet tells us that many of the chiefs were excited to fierce if suppressed anger by what they had witnessed.[73]

At length the great sacrifice for imperial sway was successfully accomplished, and with the greatest imaginable splendour. After which the subject Rajahs were courteously dismissed to their respective principalities.

But the grandeur and wealth displayed on this occasion served to re-awaken or inflame the old jealousy of the Kauravas, particularly of Duryodhana, who had been the unwilling collector of the vast tribute poured into Yudhisthira’s treasury at Indraprasta. Despairing of injuring their rivals by open and fair means, the Kauravas determined to resort once more to artifice, having, as usual, discussed the pros and cons of the question from all points of view; for these old-time heroes of India were nothing if not argumentative.[74] They built a sumptuous reception-hall, “a crystal-arched palace,” full two miles square, decorated with gold and lapis lazuli, with a thousand columns and one hundred gates. Hither they invited a large number of royal friends, but the principal guests were the Pandavas, whom they challenged to a friendly gambling match. Yudhisthira well understood and clearly stated the objectionable features of gambling, and was fully aware that the game of chance he was challenged to take part in would not be fairly conducted. However, as a Kshatriya, he could not decline the match, and so sat down to play against Shakuni, Queen Gandhari’s brother, a skilful and unscrupulous dice-player, who was backed by Duryodhana.

In a succession of games Yudhisthira lost all his money and jewels, all his cattle, jewelled chariots, war-elephants, slaves and slave-girls, and then the whole of the kingdom of the Pandavas. Driven to despair, the luckless gambler would persist in continuing to play while there remained anything at all to stake. But his success was no better than before, and he staked and lost his brothers, one by one, then himself and, lastly, the joint-wife of the Pandavas, the famous Draupadi.

An exciting and most sensational scene followed. To complete the humiliation of their rivals, the successful gamesters ordered Draupadi to be conducted into the gaming hall. She astutely objected that, as Yudhisthira had first staked and lost himself, and thus entered a servile condition before he played for her, he was not legally competent to dispose of her person; but her protest was unheeded. Being dressed at the time in a single robe of cloth, a simple saree apparently, she refused to appear in that attire before the assembled chiefs. But Dhusashana, with brutal unceremoniousness, dragged her into the great hall by the hair of her head, treating her, in the presence of her husbands, with the familiar license which they were accustomed to indulge in when dealing with their female slaves. Dhusashana even went so far as to attempt to strip beautiful Draupadi in the presence of the assembly. In her trouble she prayed aloud to Krishna for help, invoking him as the lover of the gopis (milkmaids), the dweller in Dwarka, the soul of the universe, the Creator of all things. And Krishna, hearing her prayer, miraculously multiplied her garments as fast as they were removed. Yet notwithstanding these manifestations of divine protection, Duryodhana, not to be behind in affronting his rivals, indecently bared his left thigh and showed it to the modest Draupadi, who, as she said, had never since the occasion of her swayamvara been beheld by an assembly like this. These gross indignities, it may be well imagined, must have driven the Pandavas frantic. Why then did they not dare to interpose? Because they were bound by the acts of their elder brother; and submission to authority seems ever to have been the highest virtue of these Hindu heroes! Only Bhima, with an impetuosity which was not to be restrained even by respect for his elder brother, took a solemn oath before the assembly that, for the deeds that they had done that day, he would break the thigh of Duryodhana and drink the blood of Dhusashana, or forfeit his hopes of heaven. Both these vows he accomplished in the great war to be subsequently referred to.

While this sensational scene was being enacted, a jackal howled in the homa-chamber of King Dhritarashtra. Terrified by this omen of dire evil, the old king began to reprove Duryodhana for his conduct; and, addressing Draupadi, in respectful and affectionate terms, desired her to ask of him any boon she pleased. Without hesitation she demanded at once that Yudhisthira should be freed from slavery. A second boon being offered her, she solicited the freedom of her other husbands; but when she was given the option of a third boon she declined to accept the favour, saying: “O king, these my husbands, freed from the wretched state of bondage, will be able to achieve prosperity by their own virtuous acts.” However, Dhritarashtra dismissed the Pandavas in honour to their own city, desiring them to think no more of the unpleasant episode of the gambling match.

The crestfallen visitors hastened to take advantage of the blind king’s permission to depart, and they set out at once on their homeward journey, revolving in their minds many a scheme of future vengeance. The Kauravas, however, felt, and justly too, that after what had passed that day the matter could not be thus easily settled. They knew their outraged cousins would burn to wipe out the insults they had received, and so they entreated the blind old king, their father, to recall the Pandavas and induce them to play a final game, upon the issue of which one party or the other should go into voluntary exile. The Pandavas were brought back to try the fortune of the dice once more, and it was arranged that the losing side should go into exile, spending twelve years in the forests and one additional year in any city they might find convenient; and that if the exiles were discovered, during the time of their concealment in the city, they would have to go through another exile of thirteen years. The game upon which so much hung was duly played, with the result that the Pandavas had to exchange the splendour and luxury of the palace for the simple life and scanty fare of the forest, with which they had already become acquainted in their earlier wanderings.

When Dhusashana saw that Sakuni had won the game, he danced about for joy, and cried out: “Now is established the Raj of Duryodhana!” But Bhima said: “Be not elated with joy, but remember my words. The day will come when I shall drink your blood, or never attain to regions of blessedness!” The Pandavas seeing that they had lost their wager, threw off their garments, put on deerskins, and prepared to depart into the forest with their joint-wife, their mother Kunti, and their priest Dhaumya; but Vidura representing to Yudhisthira that Kunti was, by reason of her years, unfitted to bear the hardships of exile, proposed that she should be left to his care, and this kindly offer was readily accepted. From the assembly the sons of Pandu went out, hanging down their heads with shame, and covering their faces with their garments. Only Bhima, always more impulsive than his brothers, threw out his long, mighty arms, and glared at the Kauravas furiously, while Draupadi spread her long black hair over her face and wept bitterly. The blind old king regarded the departure of his nephews with grave misgivings, for he felt that inevitable destruction awaited him and his at the hands of the Pandavas. All this, he well knew, was the work of his son Duryodhana, constrained by destiny, since “the whole universe moveth at the will of the Creator under the controlling influence of fate:” and, as Sanjaya said, in allusion to Duryodhana, “the gods first deprive that man of his reason unto whom they send defeat and disgrace.”

Surely it is only a Hindu bard who could imagine such sudden and complete reverses of fortune and such tame, almost abject, acquiescence in the circumstances of the hour, on the part of such redoubtable heroes as the sons of Pandu! Nor is it comprehensible why exile to the forest should always entail the hermit garb and utter destitution.

That King Yudhisthira felt his altered position bitterly is evident from the words he addressed to the Brahmans who accompanied him and his brothers out of the city. “Robbed,” he says, “of our prosperity and kingdom, robbed of everything, we are about to enter the deep woods in sorrow: depending for our food on fruits and roots and the produce of the chase. The forest too is full of dangers and abounds with reptiles and beasts of prey.” However his anticipations were worse than the reality. By the advice of a Brahman the exiled monarch made an appeal to the sun for help, addressing him in such terms as these. “Thou art, O sun, the eye of the universe! Thou art the soul of all corporeal existences! Thou art the origin of all things.... Thou art called Indra, thou art Vishnu, thou art Brahma, thou art Prajapati! Thou art fire and thou art the subtle mind! and thou art the lord and the eternal Brahma.”[75] In response to this appeal the sun-god appeared to the king, and presented him with a copper cooking-vessel, which proved to be an inexhaustible source of fruits and roots, meat and vegetables to the exiles during their twelve years of enforced sojourn in the woods.[76]

Their forest wanderings were productive of many stirring adventures, the narrative of which occupies a large portion of the original poem, but we can find space to notice only a few of these.

Following the advice of the sage Vyasa, Arjuna visited the Himalayas in order to gain the favour of Siva, and to obtain from him certain most potent celestial weapons for the destruction of the Kauravas, of whom the Pandava heroes seem, notwithstanding their own wonderful fighting qualities, to have had a wholesome dread. Having arrived upon the sacred mountains, Arjuna went through a course of austerities “with arms upraised, leaning upon nothing and standing on the tips of his toes.” For food he at first had withered leaves, but eventually he fed on air alone. Such was the fervour of his penances that the earth around him began to smoke, and the alarmed Rishis came in a body to Siva, and asked him to interfere. The chief of all the gods sent them away with comforting assurances and, having assumed the appearance of a Kiráta, or low-class hunter, came upon Arjuna and provoked him to an encounter. The battle was fierce, culminating in a desperate personal struggle; but where one of the combatants was the Supreme Being the issue could not be doubtful, and Arjuna fell smitten senseless by the god. He soon recovered consciousness, and “mentally prostrating himself before the gracious god of gods, and making a clay image of that deity, he worshipped it with offerings of floral garlands.”[77] To his surprise he found the garland he had offered to the clay image adorning the head of his victorious enemy, the Kiráta, who thus revealed himself to the much-relieved son of Pandu. Arjuna prostrated himself before the deity, who expressed his approval of his worshipper, and presently bestowed upon him the gift of a terrible celestial weapon, called the Pácupata, with instructions in regard to the appropriate mantras or spells to be used with it. At that moment the whole earth, with its mountains, plains, and rivers, trembled with excitement, a terrible hurricane expressed the concern of nature in the important event, and the “terrible weapon in its embodied form” stood by the side of Arjuna ready to obey his behests. When Siva had vanished from sight, the guardians of the four regions (lokapalah) Kuvera, Varuna, Yama, and Indra appeared in great splendour upon the mountain top, and presented Arjuna with other celestial weapons; after which he was carried in a wondrous car to the heaven of his real father, the god Indra. It was a glorious and delightful region, lighted with its own inherent brilliancy, adorned with flowers of every season, fanned by fragrant breezes and resounding with celestial music. Here there were bands of lovely Apsaras and Gandharvas, who gladdened all hearts with their ravishing songs and dances. It was a region for the virtuous alone, and not for those “who had turned their back on the field of battle.”

In this delightful place Arjuna passed five years of his life, treated with the highest honour and consideration, learning the use of the various celestial weapons with which he was eventually to overthrow those redoubtable champions, Kripa and Drona, Bhisma and Karna. Nor were lighter studies neglected. Arjuna, under a competent instructor, became proficient in the arts of music and dancing.

That he might be made “to taste the joys of heaven,” properly, the lovely Apsara,[78] Urvasi, of wide hips, crisp soft hair, beautiful eyes and full bosom, was specially commanded to make herself agreeable to Arjuna. Her sensual beauty, described in some detail by the poet, failed, however, to subdue the hero, who met her amatory advances with a somewhat exaggerated respect, which so enraged the fair temptress that she cursed him, saying: “Since thou disregardest a woman come to thy mansion at the command of thy father and of her own motion—a woman, besides, who is pierced by the shafts of Kama,—therefore, O Partha, thou shalt have to pass thy time among females, unregarded, and as a dancer and destitute of manhood.”

While Arjuna was in the heaven of Indra, King Yudhisthira passed some time in the forest of Kamyaka, in company with his three younger brothers and Draupadi, attended by his family priest, Dhaumya, and a number of faithful Brahmans. Here he learned, from an illustrious Rishi, Vrihadaçwa, “the science of dice in its entirety,” ignorance of which science had cost him so dear. After a while the party set out on a pilgrimage to visit and bathe in those tirthas, or sacred waters, which abound all over India to this day. Each tirtha is famous for some event in the history of the gods or the saints of the lands, and the water of each one has a virtue of its own. A dip in one cleanses the bather from all his sins, a dip in another confers upon him the merit of having bestowed a thousand kine upon the Brahmans, or, perhaps, that of having performed a horse-sacrifice. By a plunge in a third tirtha the pilgrim acquires the power of disappearance at will, or some other coveted power; while ablution in the water of a fourth places the heaven of Indra, or of some other god, within his reach. It is evident that by making a round of these tirthas a man might acquire superhuman power and the highest felicity in this and a future life.

Journeying leisurely from tirtha to tirtha, from the Punjab to the Southern Sea, under the guidance of the sage Lomaça, King Yudhisthira, with the others, pleasantly acquired an enormous store of merits of various kinds. But, anxious for reunion with Arjuna, they wended their way back to the North, visiting the tirthas on their route, till they found themselves in the Himalayas. Pushing into the sacred solitude of these giant mountains they met with many adventures, in which Bhima’s son, Ghatotkacha, was very helpful to them. At last, from a lofty summit, these fortunate travellers got a glimpse of the abode of Kuvera, the god of wealth, “adorned with golden and crystal palaces, surrounded on all sides by golden walls having the splendour of all gems, furnished with gardens all around, higher than a mountain peak, beautiful with ramparts and towers, and adorned with doorways and gates and rows of pennons. And the abode was graced with dallying damsels dancing around, and also with pennons wafted by the breeze.... And gladdening all creatures, there was blowing a breeze, carrying all perfumes, and of balmy feel. And there were various beautiful and wonderful trees of diverse hues, resounding with diverse dulcet notes.”

Kuvera came out to meet the Pandavas, and after some excellent advice to Yudhisthira, in which he pointed out to the king that success in human affairs depended upon “patience, ability (appropriate), time and place and prowess,” requested them to retire to a somewhat less elevated position on the mountains, and there await the return of their brother. And it came to pass that one day, while they were thinking of Arjuna, a blazing chariot driven by Indra’s charioteer, Matali, filled the sky with its brilliancy and, stopping near them, their long-absent brother descended from it, in a resplendent form, adorned with a diadem and celestial garlands. He paid his respects, in due form, first to the family priest and then to Bhima; after that he received the salutations of his younger brothers; he next cheered his beloved Krishná by his presence, and finally stood, in an attitude of humility, before the king. The Pandavas worshipped Matali as if he were Indra himself, and then “duly inquired of him after the health of all the gods.” At dawn next day Indra himself, attended by hosts of Gandharvas and Apsaras, visited the Pandavas and, having received their adoration, and having assured Yudhisthira that he would yet rule the earth, desired him to go back to Kamyaka, whereupon the Pandavas, of course, commenced their return journey.

Arjuna, restored to the companionship of his brothers, related to them some of his adventures during the five years of his absence, and dwelt in some detail upon the successful destruction of certain Danavas, named Nivata-Kavachas, which he had carried out single-handed. These were ancient and powerful enemies of Indra, dwellers in the womb of the ocean, and numbering thirty millions.[79] Against these puissant demons Arjuna was sent in Indra’s chariot, driven by Matali; and, after prodigies of valour and the most marvellous performances with the celestial weapons which he had received from the gods, he completely overthrew them and destroyed their wonderful aërial city, Hiranyapura. Shortly after these events Krishna came on a visit to his friends, and they were also joined by the sage Markandeya, who lightened the tedium of their wanderings with interesting narratives of past events, and profitable discourses on important religious and philosophical subjects. How competent he was for such a task will be readily admitted, when we learn from himself that he, and he alone, of the race of men or created beings, was privileged to see the entire universe run its cycle of changes through the four appointed Yugas or ages; to watch it undergo gradual degeneracy and decay; and, finally, to witness its total destruction by fire,—with all animated beings, even gods and demons,—only to be recreated again in order to run its appointed course through the ages once more.[80]

Markandeya relates to the Pandavas the whole story of the “Ramayana” and many another legend of the olden time. Let me here reproduce his story of the flood, as it has an interest not confined to India or Hindus, and also his explanation of the doctrine of Karma, of which we are beginning to hear so much in these days.

Markandeya’s Account of the Universal Deluge.—There was once a powerful and great Rishi, named Manu, who “was equal unto Brahma in glory.” For ten thousand years he practised the severest austerities in the forest, standing on one leg with uplifted hand and bowed head. One day as he was undergoing his self-inflicted penance, with matted locks and dripping garments, a little fish, approaching the bank of the stream near which the Rishi stood, entreated his protection against the cruel voracity of the bigger fishes; “for,” said the little suppliant, “this fixed custom is well established among us, that the strong fish always prey upon the weak ones.” The sage, touched with compassion, took the little fish out of the river, and put it for safety into an earthen vessel of water, and tended it carefully. In its new home it grew apace and, at its own request, was removed to a tank. Here its dimensions increased so wonderfully that “although the tank was two yojanas in length and one yojana in width,” there was not sufficient room in it for the fish, who again appealed to Manu, asking him to place it in the Ganges, “the favourite spouse of the ocean.” Gigantic as the fish was, the wonderful Rishi put it into the river with his own hands; but the Ganges itself was too small for this monster of the waters, and the Muni carried it to the sea-shore and consigned it to the bosom of the mighty ocean.

“And when it was thrown into the sea by Manu, it said these words to him with a smile:[81] ‘O adorable being thou hast protected me with special care; do thou now listen to me as to what thou shouldst do in the fulness of time! O fortunate and worshipful sir, the dissolution of this mobile and immobile world is nigh at hand. The time for the purging of this world is now ripe. Therefore do I now explain what is well for thee. The mobile and the immobile divisions of the creation, those that have the power of locomotion and those that have it not, of all these the terrible doom hath now approached. Thou shalt build a strong and massive ark, and have it furnished with a long rope. On that must thou ascend, O great Muni, with the seven Rishis, and take with thee all the different seeds which were enumerated by regenerate Brahmans in days of yore, and separately and carefully must thou preserve them therein. And whilst there, O beloved of the Munis, thou shalt wait for me, and I shall appear to thee like a horned animal, and thus, O ascetic, shalt thou recognize me.’”