A History of Indian Literature v1.c9.s4.41

v1.c9.s4.41

The Rāma2) episode, too, is a kind of epic within an epic. But while the Nala poem (in spite of some disfiguring additions and insertions, from which indeed *no* part of the Mahābhārata is quite free) is a work of art and a valuable survival of the ancient bard-poetry, the narrative of Rāma has only a purely literary significance for the history of the second great epic of the Indians, the Rāmāyaṇa. For the Rāma episode can scarcely be regarded as anything but a rather inartistically abridged rendering of either the Rāmāyaṇa itself,3) or of those heroic songs from which Vālmīki composed his great poem. In no case is it these oldest heroic songs of Rāma themselves, which we find in the Mahābhārata. The Rāma episode is related by the ṛṣi Mārkaṇḍeya to console Yudhiṣṭhira, who is much depressed on account of the rape of Draupadī4); for Rāma's wife, too, Sītā, was abducted, and was held in captivity for a long time by the demon Rāvaṇa. References to the Rāma legend are not rare in other parts of the Mahābhārata either. I point out only the meeting of Bhīma with the monkey Hanumat.¹