Ancient Indian Historical Tradition c29.232

c29.232

The story of Daśaratha’s son Rāma⁵ brings South India into view definitely for the first time. The Yādavas had established themselves in the north-west portion of the Dekhan, and all the rest of the Dekhan lay outside the scope of traditional history except in the above notices of the two Rāvaṇas, and was largely occupied by the great Daṇḍaka forest. Yet the religion of North India had penetrated that region, for the story often speaks of munis there whom the Rākṣasas maltreated. There was a large colony of people who are called Rākṣasas in the lower Godāvarī valley called Janasthāna,¹ and it appertained to a flourishing kingdom of Rākṣasas in Ceylon with their capital Laṅkā, which is described as situated on a hill in or jutting out into the southern ocean.² These so-called Rākṣasas were not uncivilized, for Laṅkā is described in the most glowing terms,³ and allowing for poetical exaggeration both therein and also to the contrary in personal descriptions,⁴ it is obvious that their civilization was as high as that of North India.⁵ These Rākṣasas were evidently a sea-going people, as the connexion of their colony in Janasthāna with Laṅkā indicates. Their king was ‘Rāvaṇa’, called also Daśagrīva (and synonymously Daśasīrsa, Daśānana &c.). Rāvaṇa, a name given also to the two earlier kings above mentioned, was probably the royal title, the Tamil *iraivan*, ‘king’ (p. 242); and Daśagrīva or one of its synonymous forms was probably his personal Dravidian name Sanskritized, which accordingly gave rise to the fable that he had ten heads. The story of Rāma appears now largely as fable, but it is fairly clear that the fabulous in it is a perversion of simpler occurrences distorted gradually in accordance with later brahmanical ideas about Rākṣasas and the marvellous, especially in the Rāmāyaṇa.