Chapter 95

To a reader of sensibility, such recurrences wear an air of child-like simplicity, beautifully recalling the features of Homer’s primitive age. But they would have appeared faults to all commonplace critics in literary ages.”

DE QUINCEY. _Homer and the Homeridæ_.

550 Bráhmans the sacerdotal caste. Kshatriyas the royal and military, Vaiśyas the mercantile, and Śúdras the servile.

551 A protracted sacrifice extending over several days. See Book I, p. 24 Note.

552 Possessed of all the auspicious personal marks that indicate capacity of universal sovereignty. See Book I. p. 2, and Note 3.

553 Kabandha. See Book III. Canto LXXIII.

554 Fire for sacred purposes is produced by the attrition of two pieces of wood. In marriage and other solemn covenants fire is regarded as the holy witness in whose presence the agreement is made. Spenser in a description of a marriage, has borrowed from the Roman rite what he calls the housling, or “matrimonial rite.”

“His owne two hands the holy knots did knit That none but death forever can divide. His owne two hands, for such a turn most fit, The housling fire did kindle and provide.”

Faery Queen, Book I. XII. 37.

555 Indra.

556 Báli the king _de facto_.

557 With the Indians, as with the ancient Greeks, the throbbing of the right eye in a man is an auspicious sign, the throbbing of the left eye is the opposite. In a woman the significations of signs are reversed.

558 The Vedas stolen by the demons Madhu and Kaiṭabha.

“The text has [Sanskrit text] which signifies literally ‘the lost vedic tradition.’ It seems that allusion is here made to the Vedas submerged in the depth of the sea, but promptly recovered by Vishṇu in one of his incarnations, as the brahmanic legend relates, with which the orthodoxy of the Bráhmans intended perhaps to allude to the prompt restoration and uninterrupted continuity of the ancient vedic tradition.”

GORRESIO.

559 Like the wife of a Nága or Serpent-God carried off by an eagle. The enmity between the King of birds and the serpent is of very frequent occurrence. It seems to be a modification of the strife between the Vedic Indra and the Ahi, the serpent or drought-fiend; between Apollôn and the Python, Adam and the Serpent.

560 He means that he has never ventured to raise his eyes to her arms and face, though he has ever been her devoted servant.

561 The wood in which Skanda or Kártikeva was brought up:

“The Warrior-God Whose infant steps amid the thickets strayed Where the reeds wave over the holy sod.”

See also Book I, Canto XXIX.

562 “Sugríva’s story paints in vivid colours the manners, customs and ideas of the wild mountain tribes which inhabited Kishkindhya or the southern hills of the Deccan, of the people whom the poem calls monkeys, tribes altogether different in origin and civilization from the Indo-Sanskrit race.” GORRESIO.

563 A fiend slain by Báli.

564 Báli’s mountain city.

565 The canopy or royal umbrella, one of the usual Indian regalia.

566 Whisks made of the hair of the Yak or Bos grunniers, also regal insignia.

567 Righteous because he never transgresses his bounds, and

“over his great tides Fidelity presides.”

568 Himálaya, the Lord of Snow, is the father of Umá the wife of Śiva or Śankar.

569 Indra’s celestial elephant.

570 Báli was the son of Indra. See p. 28.

571 An Asur slain by Indra. See p. 261 Note. He is, like Vritra, a form of the demon of drought destroyed by the beneficent God of the firmament.

572 Another name of Indra or Mahendra.

573 The Bengal recension makes it return in the form of a swan.

574 Varuṇa is one of the oldest of the Vedic Gods, corresponding in name and partly in character to the Οὐρανός of the Greeks and is often regarded as the supreme deity. He upholds heaven and earth, possesses extraordinary power and wisdom, sends his messengers through both worlds, numbers the very winkings of men’s eyes, punishes transgressors whom he seizes with his deadly noose, and pardons the sins of those who are penitent. In later mythology he has become the God of the sea.

575 Budha, not to be confounded with the great reformer Buddha, is the son of Soma or the Moon, and regent of the planet Mercury. Angára is the regent of Mars who is called the red or the fiery planet. The encounter between Michael and Satan is similarly said to have been as if

“Two planets rushing from aspect malign Of fiercest opposition in midsky Should combat, and their jarring spheres compound.”

_Paradise Lost._ Book VI.

576 The Aśvins or Heavenly Twins, the Dioskuri or Castor and Pollux of the Hindus, have frequently been mentioned. See p. 36, Note.

577 Called respectively Gárhapatya, Áhavaniya, and Dakshiṇa, household, sacrificial, and southern.

578 The store of merit accumulated by a holy or austere life secures only a temporary seat in the mansion of bliss. When by the lapse of time this store is exhausted, return to earth is unavoidable.

579 The conflagration which destroys the world at the end of a Yuga or age.

580 Himálaya.

581 Tárá means “star.” The poet plays upon the name by comparing her beauty to that of the Lord of stars, the Moon.

582 Suparṇa, the Well-winged, is another name of Garuḍa the King of Birds. See p. 28, Note.

583 The God of Death.

584 The flag-staff erected in honour of the God Indra is lowered when the festival is over. Aśvíní in astronomy is the head of Aries or the first of the twenty-eight lunar mansions or asterisms.

585 Indra the father of Báli.

586 It is believed that every creature killed by Ráma obtained in consequence immediate beatitude.

“And blessed the hand that gave so dear a death.”

587 “Yayáti was invited to heaven by Indra, and conveyed on the way thither by Mátali, Indra’s charioteer. He afterwards returned to earth where, by his virtuous administration he rendered all his subjects exempt from passion and decay.” GARRETT’S C. D. OF INDIA.

588 The ascetic’s dress which he wore during his exile.

589 There is much inconsistency in the passages of the poem in which the Vánars are spoken of, which seems to point to two widely different legends. The Vánars are generally represented as semi-divine beings with preternatural powers, living in houses and eating and drinking like men sometimes as here, as monkeys pure and simple, living is woods and eating fruit and roots.

590 For a younger brother to marry before the elder is a gross violation of Indian law and duty. The same law applied to daughters with the Hebrews: “It must not be so done in our country to give the younger before the first-born.” GENESIS xix. 26.

591 “The hedgehog and porcupine, the lizard, the rhinoceros, the tortoise, and the rabbit or hare, wise legislators declare lawful food among five-toed animals.” MANU, v. 18.

592 “He can not buckle his distempered cause Within the belt of rule.”

MACBETH.

593 The _Ankuś_ or iron hook with which an elephant is driven and guided.

594 Hayagríva, Horse-necked, is a form of Vishṇu.

595 “Aśvatara is the name of a chief of the Nágas or serpents which inhabit the regions under the earth; it is also the name of a Gandharva. Aśvatarí ought to be the wife of one of the two, but I am not sure that this conjecture is right. The commentator does not say who this Aśvatarí is, or what tradition or myth is alluded to. Vimalabodha reads Aśvatarí in the nominative case, and explains, Aśvatarí is the sun, and as the sun with his rays brings back the moon which has been sunk in the ocean and the infernal regions, so will I bring back Sítá.” GORRESIO.

596 That is, “Consider what answer you can give to your accusers when they charge you with injustice in killing me.”

597 Manu, Book VIII. 318. “But men who have committed offences and have received from kings the punishment due to them, go pure to heaven and become as clear as those who have done well.”

598 Mándhátá was one of the earlier descendants of Ikshváku. His name is mentioned in Ráma’s genealogy, p. 81.

599 I cannot understand how Válmíki could put such an excuse as this into Ráma’s mouth. Ráma with all solemn ceremony, has made a league of alliance with Báli’s younger brother whom he regards as a dear friend and almost as an equal, and now he winds up his reasons for killing Báli by coolly saying: “Besides you are only a monkey, you know, after all, and as such I have every right to kill you how, when, and where I like.”

600 A name of Garuḍa the king of birds, the great enemy of the Serpents.

601 Sugríva’s wife.

602 “Our deeds still follow with us from afar. And what we have been makes us what we are.”

603 Sugríva and Angad.

604 Angad himself, being too young to govern, would be Yuvarája or heir-apparent.

605 Susheṇa was the son of Varuṇa the God of the sea.

606 A demon with the tail of a dragon, that causes eclipses by endeavouring to swallow the sun and moon.

607 The Lord of Stars is the Moon.

608 Or the passage may be interpreted: “Be neither too obsequious or affectionate, nor wanting in due respect or love.”

609 Sacrifices and all religious rites begin and end with ablution, and the wife of the officiating Bráhman takes an important part in the performance of the holy ceremonies.

610 Viśvarúpa, a son of Twashṭri or Viśvakarmá the heavenly architect, was a three-headed monster slain by Indra.

611 The Vánar chief, not to be confounded with Tárá.

612 Śrávaṇ: July-August. But the rains begin a month earlier, and what follows must not be taken literally. The text has _púrvo’ yam várshiko másah Śrávaṇah salilágamdh_. The Bengal recension has the same, and Gorresio translates: “Equesto ilmese Srâvana (luglio-agosto) primo della stagione piovosa, in cui dilagano le acque.”

613 Kártik: October-November.

614 “Indras, as the nocturnal sun, hides himself, transformed, in the starry heavens: the stars are his eyes. The hundred-eyed or all-seeing (panoptês) Argos placed as a spy over the actions of the cow beloved by Zeus, in the Hellenic equivalent of this form of Indras.” DE GUBERNATIS, _Zoological Mythology_, Vol. I, p. 418.

615 Baudháyana and others.

616 Sugríva appears to have been consecrated with all the ceremonies that attended the _Abhisheka_ or coronation of an Indian prince of the Aryan race. Compare the preparations made for Ráma’s consecration, Book II, Canto III. Thus Homer frequently introduces into Troy the rites of Hellenic worship.

617 Vitex Negundo.

618 Mályavat: “The name of this mountain appears to me to be erroneous, and I think that instead of Mályavat should be read Malayavat, Malaya is a group of mountains situated exactly in that southern part of India where Ráma now was, while Mályavat is placed to the north east.” GORRESIO.

619 Mantles of the skin of the black antelope were the prescribed dress of ascetics and religious students.

620 The sacred cord worn as the badge of religious initiation by men of the three twice-born castes.

621 The hum with which students conduct their tasks.

622 I omit here a long general description of the rainy season which is not found in the Bengal recension and appears to have been interpolated by a far inferior and much later hand than Valmiki’s. It is composed in a metre different from that of the rest of the Canto, and contains figures of poetical rhetoric and common-places which are the delight of more recent poets.

623 Praushthapada or Bhadra, the modern Bhadon, corresponds to half of August and half of September.

624 The Sáman or Sáma-veda, the third of the four Vedas, is really merely a reproduction of parts of the Rig-veda, transposed and scattered about piece-meal, only 78 verses in the whole being, it is said, untraceable to the present recension of the Rig-veda.

625 Áshádha is the month corresponding to parts of June and July.

626 Bharat, who was regent during Ráma’s absence.

627 Or with Gorresio, following the gloss of another commentary: “Has completed every holy rite and accumulated stores of merit.”

628 The river on which Ayodhyá was built.

629 I omit a _śloka_ or four lines on gratitude and ingratitude repeated word for word from the last Canto.

630 The Indian crane; a magnificent bird easily domesticated.

631 The troops who guard the frontiers on the north, south, east and west.

632 The Chátaka, Cuculus, Melanoleucus, is supposed to drink nothing but the water for the clouds.

633 The time for warlike expeditions began when the rains had ceased.

634 The rainbow.

635 Indra’s associates in arms, and musicians of his heaven.

636 Maireya, a spirituous liquor from the blossoms of the Lythrum fruticosum, with sugar, &c.

637 Their names are as follows: Angad, Maínda, Dwida, Gavaya, Gaváksha, Gaja, Śarabha, Vidyunmáli, Sampáti, Súryáksa, Hanumán, Vírabáhu, Subáhu, Nala, Kúmuda, Susheṇa, Tára, Jámbuvatu, Dadhivakra, Níla, Supátala, and Sunetra.

638 The Kalpadruma or Wishing-tree is one of the trees of Svarga or Indra’s Paradise: it has the power of granting all desires.

639 The meaning is that if a man promises to give a horse and then breaks his word he commits a sin as great as if he had killed a hundred horses.

640 The story is told in Book I, Canto LXIII, but the charmer there is called Menaká.

641 Rohiṇí is the name of the ninth Nakshatra or lunar asterism personified as a daughter of Daksha, and the favourite wife of the Moon. Aldebaran is the principal star in the constellation.

642 Válmíki and succeeding poets make the second vowel in this name long or short at their pleasure.

643 Some of the mountains here mentioned are fabulous and others it is impossible to identify. Sugríva means to include all the mountains of India from Kailás the residence of the God Kuvera, regarded as one of the loftiest peaks of the Himálayas, to Mahendra in the extreme south, from the mountain in the east where the sun is said to rise to Astáchal or the western mountain where he sets. The commentators give little assistance: that Maháśaila, &c. are certain mountains is about all the information they give.

644 One of the celestial elephants of the Gods who protect the four quarters and intermediate points of the compass.

645 Váyu or the Wind was the father of Hanumán.

646 The path or station of Vishṇu is the space between the seven Rishis or Ursa Major, and Dhruva or the polar star.

647 One of the seven seas which surround the earth in concentric circles.

648 The title of Maheśvar or Mighty Lord is sometimes given to Indra, but more generally to Śiva whom it here denotes.

649 See Book I, Canto XVI.

650 The numbers are unmanageable in English verse. The poet speaks of hundreds of _arbudas_; and an _arbuda_ is a hundred millions.

651 Anuhláda or Anuhráda is one of the four sons of the mighty Hiraṇyakaśipu, an Asur or a Daitya son of Kaśyapa and Diti and killed by Vishṇu in his incarnation of the Man-Lion _Narasinha_. According to the Bhágavata Puráṇa the Daitya or Asur Hiraṇyakaśipu and Hiraṇyáksha his brother, both killed by Vishṇu, were born again as Rávaṇ and Kumbhakarṇa his brother.

652 Puloma, a demon, was the father-in-law of Indra who destroyed him in order to avert an imprecation. Paulomí is a patronymic denoting Śachí the daughter of Puloma.

653 “Observe the variety of colours which the poem attributes to all these inhabitants of the different mountainous regions, some white, others yellow, &c. Such different colours were perhaps peculiar and distinctive characteristics of those various races.” GORRESSIO.

654 Susheṇ.

655 Tára.

656 Kesarí was the husband of Hanúmán’s mother, and is here called his father.

657 “I here unite under one heading two animals of very diverse nature and race, but which from some gross resemblances, probably helped by an equivoque in the language, are closely affiliated in the Hindoo myth … a reddish colour of the skin, want of symmetry and ungainliness of form, strength in hugging with the fore paws or arms, the faculty of climbing, shortness of tail(?), sensuality, capacity of instruction in dancing and in music, are all characteristics which more or less distinguish and meet in bears as well as in monkeys. In the _Rámáyaṇam_, the wise Jámnavant, the Odysseus of the expedition of Lanká, is called now king of the bears (rikshaparthivah), now great monkey (_Mahákapih_).” DE GUBERNATIS: _Zoological Mythology_, Vol. II. p. 97.

658 Gandhamádana, Angad, Tára, Indrajánu, Rambha, Durmukha, Hanumán, Nala, Da mukha, Śarabha, Kumuda, Vahni.

659 Daityas and Dánavas are fiends and enemies of the Gods, like the Titans of Greek mythology.

660 I reduce the unwieldy numbers of the original to more modest figures.

661 Sarayú now Sarjú is the river on which Ayodhyá was built.

662 Kauśikí is a river which flows through Behar, commonly called Kosi.

663 Bhagírath’s daughter is Gangá or the Ganges. The legend is told at length in Book I Canto XLIV. _The Descent of Gangá_.

664 A mountain not identified.

665 The Jumna. The river is personified as the twin sister of Yáma, and hence regarded as the daughter of the Sun.

666 The Sarasvatí (corruptly called Sursooty, is supposed to join the Ganges and Jumna at Prayág or Allahabad. It rises in the mountains bounding the north-east part of the province of Delhi, and running in a south-westerly direction becomes lost in the sands of the great desert.

667 The Sindhu is the Indus, the Sanskrit _s_ becoming _h_ in Persian and being in this instance dropped by the Greeks.

668 The Sone which rises in the district of Nagpore and falls into the Ganges above Patna.

669 Mahí is a river rising in Malwa and falling into the gulf of Cambay after a westerly course of 280 miles.

670 There is nothing to show what parts of the country the poet intended to denote as silk-producing and silver-producing.

671 Yavadwipa means the island of Yava, wherever that may be.

672 Śiśir is said to be a mountain ridge projecting from the base of Meru on the south. Wilson’s _Vishnu Puráṇa_, ed. Hall, Vol. II. p. 117.

673 This appears to be some mythical stream and not the well-known Śone. The name means red-coloured.

674 A fabulous thorny rod of the cotton tree used for torturing the wicked in hell. The tree gives its name, Śálmalí, to one of the seven Dwípas, or great divisions of the known continent: and also to a hell where the wicked are tormented with the pickles of the tree.

675 The king of the feathered creation.

676 Viśvakarmá, the Mulciber of the Indian heaven.

677 “The terrific fiends named Mandehas attempt to devour the sun: for Brahmá denounced this curse upon them, that without the power to perish they should die every day (and revive by night) and therefore a fierce contest occurs (daily) between them and the sun.” WILSON’S Vishṇu Puráṇa. Vol. II. p. 250.

678 Said in the _Vishṇu Puráṇa_ to be a ridge projecting from the base of Meru to the north.

679 Kinnars are centaurs reversed, beings with equine head and human bodies.

680 Yakshas are demi-gods attendant on Kuvera the God of wealth.

681 Aurva was one of the descendants of Bhrigu. From his wrath proceeded a flame that threatened to destroy the world, had not Aurva cast it into the ocean where it remained concealed, and having the face of a horse. The legend is told in the _Mahábhárat_. I. 6802.

682 The word Játarúpa means gold.

683 The celebrated mythological serpent king Sesha, called also Ananta or the infinite, represented as bearing the earth on one of his thousand heads.

684 Jambudwípa is in the centre of the seven great _dwípas_ or continents into which the world is divided, and in the centre of Jambudwípa is the golden mountain Meru 84,000 yojans high, and crowned by the great city of Brahmá. See WILSON’S _Vishṇu Puráṇa_, Vol. II. p. 110.

685 Vaikhánases are a race of hermit saints said to have sprung from the nails of Prajápati.

686 “The wife of Kratu, Samnati, brought forth the sixty thousand Válakhilyas, pigmy sages, no bigger than a joint of the thumb, chaste, pious, resplendent as the rays of the Sun.” WILSON’S _Vishṇu Puráṇa_.

687 The continent in which Sudarśan or Meru stands, _i.e._ Jambudwíp.

688 The names of some historical peoples which occur in this Canto and in the Cantos describing the south and north will be found in the ADDITIONAL NOTES. They are bare lists, not susceptible of a metrical version.

689 Suhotra, Śarári, Śaragulma, Gayá, Gaváksha, Gavaya, Susheṇa, Gandhamádana, Ulkámukha, and Ananga.

690 The modern Nerbudda.

691 Krishṇaveṇí is mentioned in the _Vishṇu Puráṇa_ as “the deep Krishṇaveṇí” but there appears to be no clue to its identification.

692 The modern Godavery.

693 The Mekhalas or Mekalas according to the Paráṇas live in the Vindhya hills, but here they appear among the peoples of the south.

694 Utkal is still the native name of Orissa.

695 The land of the people of the “ten forts.” Professor Hall in a note on WILSON’S _Vishṇu Puráṇa_, Vol. II. p. 160 says: “The oral traditions of the vicinity to this day assign the name of Daśárna to a region lying to the east of the District of Chundeyree.”

696 Avantí is one of the ancient names of the celebrated Ujjayin or Oujein in Central India.

697 Not identified.

698 Ayomukh means iron faced. The mountain is not identified.

699 The Káverí or modern Cauvery is well known and has always borne the same appellation, being the Chaberis of Ptolemy.

700 One of the seven principal mountain chains: the southern portion of the Western Gháts.

701 Agastya is the great sage who has already frequently appeared as Ráma’s friend and benefactor.

702 Támraparṇí is a river rising in Malaya.

703 The Páṇḍyas are a people of the Deccan.

704 Mahendra is the chain of hills that extends from Orissa and the northern Sircars to Gondwána, part of which near Ganjam is still called Mahendra Malay or hills of Mahendra.

705 Lanká, Sinhaladvípa, Sarandib, or Ceylon.

706 The Flowery Hill of course is mythical.

707 The whole of the geography south of Lanká is of course mythical. Súryaván means Sunny.

708 Vaidyut means connected with lightning.

709 Agastya is here placed far to the south of Lanká. Earlier in this Canto he was said to dwell on Malaya.

710 Bhogavatí has been frequently mentioned: it is the capital of the serpent Gods or demons, and usually represented as being in the regions under the earth.

711 Vásuki is according to some accounts the king of the Nágas or serpent Gods.

712 Śailúsha, Gramiṇi, Siksha, Suka, Babhru.

713 The distant south beyond the confines of the earth is the home of departed spirits and the city of Yáma the God of Death.

714 Suráshṭra, the “good country,” is the modern Sura

715 A country north-west of Afghanistan, Baíkh.