The History of Indian Literature c9.46.2

c9.46.2

Sítá, in the first place, whose abduction by a giant demon, and subsequent recovery by her husband Ráma, constitute the plot of the entire poem, is but the field-furrow, to which we find divine honours paid in the songs of the Ṛik, and still more in the Gṛihya ritual. She accordingly represents Aryan husbandry, which has to be protected by Ráma—whom I regard as originally identical with Balaráma "halabhṛit," "the plough-bearer," though the two were afterwards separated—against the attacks of the predatory aborigines. These latter appear as demons and giants; whereas those natives who were well disposed towards the Aryan civilisation are represented as monkeys,—a comparison which was doubtless not exactly intended to be flattering, and which rests on the striking ugliness of the Indian aborigines as compared with the Aryan race. Now this allegorical form of the Rámáyaṇa certainly indicates, *à priori*, that this poem is later than the war-part of the Mahá-Bhárata; and we might fairly assume, further, that the historical events upon which the two works are respectively based stand to each other in a similar relation. For the colonisation of Southern India could hardly begin until the settlement of Hindustán by the Aryans had been completed, and the feuds that arose there had been fought out. It is not, however, altogether necessary to suppose the latter;