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A History of Sanskrit Literature c9.s2: 2. The Testimony of the Rāmāyaṇa

A History of Sanskrit Literature c9.s2

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2. The Testimony of the Rāmāyaṇa

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The validity of the *Rāmāyaṇa* as evidence of the growth of the Kāvya has been disputed on the score that the poem was, even if in large measure early in date,² still under constant revision, so that those features in it which foreshadow the later Kāvya and justify its own claim to that title as the first of Kāvyas may be dismissed as interpolations. The argument, however, is clearly unsatisfactory, and does not establish the result at which it aims. We may readily agree that some part at least of the elegancies of style³ which mark the poem is a later addition, but there is no ground whatever to admit that these additions fall later than the second century B. C., and they may be earlier in date. The *Rāmāyaṇa* in fact, as we have it, affords an illustration of the process of refinement which style was undergoing, but it is essential to realize that even in its original form the poem must have shown a distinct tendency to conscious ornament. The mere theme, the blending together of two distinct legends, the court intrigues of Ayodhyā and the legend of Rāma's war on Rāvaṇa for the rape of Sītā—in ultimate origin a nature myth—is the work of an artist, and the same trait is revealed in the uniformity of the language and the delicate perfection of the metre, when compared with the simpler and less polished *Mahābhārata*. Vālmīki and those who improved on him, probably in the period 400–200 B.C., are clearly the legitimate ancestors of the court epic.

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² Keith, JRAS. 1915, pp. 318 ff.

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³ Jacobi, *Rāmāyaṇa*, pp. 119 ff. The *Rāmāyaṇa* also shows the development of the Çloka metre almost to its classic state; cf. SIFI. VIII. ii. 38 ff. See also Krishnamachariar, *Raghuvaṅçavimarça* (1908).

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Ānandavardhana¹ has not inaptly contrasted the object of the court epic with that of the legend (*itihāsa*); the latter is content to narrate what has happened, the former is essentially dependent on form. The *Rāmāyaṇa* occupies an intermediate place, and its formal merits are not slight. But in any case it essentially anticipates the means by which the later poets seek to lend distinction and charm to their subject-matter; as they drew deeply upon it for their themes, so they found in it the models for the ornaments of their style. If the city of Ayodhyā appears in human form to the king in Kālidāsa's *Raghuvaṁça*, Vālmīki has set the example in his vision of Laṅkā in the Sundarakāṇḍa. The action in the later Kāvya is all but obstructed by the wealth of the poet's descriptive powers; Vālmīki's followers have described with no less than twenty-nine similes the woes of Sītā in her captivity, with sixteen the sad plight of Ayodhyā bereft of Rāma.² Descriptions of the seasons, of mountains and rivers, bulk largely in the Kāvya, but Vālmīki has set the example in his elaborate accounts of the rainy season and autumn, of the winter, of Mount Citrakūṭa, and of the river Mandākinī.³ Metaphors of beauty abound in the Kāvya side by side with those of strained taste and pointless wit; the *Rāmāyaṇa* is guilty of

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¹ *Dhvanyāloka*, p. 148.

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² ii. 19 and 114.

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³ iv. 28; iii. 16; ii. 94, 95. There is a brilliant picture of the sound of the sea: *parvasūdīrṇavegasya sāgarasyeva niḥsvanaḥ*.

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*viṣādanakrādhyuṣite paritrāsormimālini*
*kiṁ māṁ na trāyase magnāṁ vipule çokasāgare?*

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‘Why dost thou not save me that am sunk in a broad ocean of woe, whose coronal of waves is horror, and in which dwell the crocodiles of despondency?’

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Much happier is the famous simile:

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*sāgaraṁ cāmbaraprakhyaṁ ambaraṁ sāgaropamam*
*Rāmarāvaṇayor yuddhaṁ Rāmarāvaṇayor iva.*

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‘Ocean peer of sky, sky ocean’s counterpart; Rāma and Rāvaṇa alone could match their mortal combat.’ A later commonplace is foreshadowed in:

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*tvāṁ kṛtvoparato manye rūpakartā sa viçvakṛt*
*na hi rūpopamā hy anyā tavāsti çubhadarçane.*

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‘When he had made thee, I ween, the All-maker stayed from his making of lovely forms, for there is no beauty on earth to match thine, o fair-faced one.’ As later, we find as prognostications of good the wind that blows free from dust, the clear skies, the flowers that are rained down to earth, and the resonance of the drums of the gods. Indra’s banner, erected and then taken down at the festival in his honour, affords material for similes; eyes expand with joy (*harṣotphullanayana*); men drink in faces with their eyes (*locanābhyām pibann iva*); breasts are like golden bowls (*kucau suvarṇakalaçopamau*); before men’s wondering eyes the host stands as if in a picture; the Ganges shows her white teeth as she smiles in the foam of her waves (*phenanirmalahāsinī*); winds blow with fragrant coolness; the clouds rumble with deep and pleasant sound (*snigdhagambhīraghoṣa*); the action of the fool is like that of the moth that flies into the flame; man leaves his worn frame as the snake its old skin. The love of alliteration is already present, as in *dakṣiṇā dakṣiṇaṁ tīram*; we find even an example of the figure, concise expression (*samāsokti*), in which the dawn is treated on the analogy of a loving maiden:

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*cañcaccandrakarasparçaharṣonmīlitatārakā*
*aho rāgavatī saṁdhyā jahātu svayam ambaram.*

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‘Ah that the enamoured twilight should lay aside her garment of sky, now that the stars are quickened to life by the touch of the rays of the dancing moon.’ The *Rāmāyaṇa* is not given to erotic descriptions; its tone is serious and grave, but such passages¹ as the description of the vision by Hanumant of the sleeping wives of Rāvaṇa mark the beginning of a tradition which Açvaghoṣa handed on to his successors. Imitation in detail of the *Rāmāyaṇa* is frequent and patent, and its language and verse technique deeply affected the whole of the history of the Kāvya.

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¹ Not probably by Vālmīki. For Vedic precedents in alliteration and Yamakas see Hillebrandt, *Kālidāsa*, pp. 161 ff.; for the epic, Hopkins, *Great Epic*, pp. 200 ff.

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The content of the *Mahābhārata* naturally afforded to later poets an inexhaustible material for their labours, but save in its later additions the great epic suffered little elaboration of style, and affords no evidence comparable to that of the *Rāmāyaṇa* attesting the development of the Kāvya style.

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