Studies in the Epics and Puranas c7.s2.16

c7.s2.16

Several scholars who made valuable contributions to the Mbh studies, such as Jacobi, Ludwig, Dahlmann, Hopkins, Lévi, Vaidya, Sukthankar, etc. have enriched the field of studies in the other epic as well. The Rām studies may be said to have been inaugurated by Lassen who discussed the problems of the Rām and pointed to the development of the Rāma story into four stages, suggesting that the Rām was an allegorical representation of the Aryan conquest of the south. According to Lassen, the first construction of the poem did not carry the narrative beyond the banishment of Rāma to the Himālaya and the circumstances which caused his wife Sītā and his brother Lakṣmaṇa to follow him into exile. The second changed the place of banishment to the Godāvari, and described the protection afforded to the hermits against the attacks of the aborigines. The third embraced the account of the first attempts to subdue the inhabitants of the Deccan. The fourth amplification, which resulted from the knowledge gained by the Hindus of the island of Ceylon, included the description of Rāma’s expedition against Laṅkā.⁵⁶ Lassen was followed by Weber, Muir, Freiderich and Monier Williams. Weber was the first to discuss in a comprehensive manner all the problems of the Rām, though his work has suffered oblivion on account of his unpopular and wrong theory of Vālmīki’s indebtedness to Homer, which was rightly refuted by Telang, Jacobi, Hopkins, Vaidya and others. Weber regards the Rām to have been composed to account for the spread of the Aryan culture to the south and to Ceylon.⁵⁷ His critical remarks on the Rām MSS will be of help to critical editors of the epic.⁵⁸ Jacobi’s Das Rāmāyaṇa,⁵⁹ however, contains the most systematic treatment of the subject. It discusses several problems such as the genesis of the different recensions of the Rām and their relation to one another; interpolations; origin and development of the Rām; Buddhistic and Greek influence; and the age, language, poetic art and the saga of the Rām. There is also a summary of the contents of the Bombay edition (Southern recension) and the concordance of the Bombay and Bengal editions. According to Jacobi, the Rām originally comprised only five books (II-VI), the seventh book is a later addition at the end, and the first book is similarly added at the beginning. Though the interpolations are but loosely connected with the original body they are pervaded by the same spirit as the old part and hence Jacobi does not regard them as due to a Brāhmaṇa revision intended to transform the original Kṣatriya epic. Though these additions were effected before the different recensions arose, the transformation of the original tribal hero into the national hero and his identification with God Viṣṇu indicate the passage of a considerable time between the composition of the original poem and that of the additional matter.