A History of Sanskrit Literature c9.s2.1

c9.s2.1

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.