Indian Antiquary Vol 01

SR No.: 032493
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 430
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 22 MB

Page 143

APRIL 5, 1872.]
WEBER ON THE RAMAYANA.
121
the text. In this legend the Ik sh vák u king, pura, on opposite banks of the river Rohini :: Ambat tharájan, to please a young wife, exilar and thus we are brought into the immediate neighall his elder children, four sons and five daughters. | boarhood of Ayudhya. The young princes, when they have reached the And now with regard to the expedition to Lanka. forest, intermarry with their sisters, with the view In opposition to the hitherto received views of providing & mutual safeguard against the that the poet intended under this representation degeneracy of their race through mésalliance, and to depict the spread of Aryan civilisation toward they instal their eldest sister Piya in the place of the south, and especially to Ceylon, Talboys mother. When, after a time, the latter is stricken Wheeler has recently given to the world his with leprosy, they remove her to another part of opinion that the account of this expedition only the forest; and there she is found by a king gives expression to the hostilo feeling entertained Rám a, who has also been driven by leprosy into the by the Brahmans toward the Buddhists of Ceylon, forest but has recovered ; and by him she is cured and who are to be identified with the Rakshasa of the wedded. Now, whatever points of difference the poem. This view receives support from the fact legend here presents the mutual relations of these three that Rávans and his brothers are represented as forms of thestory cannot be mistaken. In the Dasa- having themselves sprung from the Brahmanical rathajátaka, in addition to the reasons for the exile race, and as having by their penances won and the intermarriage of the brothers and sisters, the favour of Brahma, Agni and other we find mention made of the names Dasaratha, gods; and in this representation there may lurk
L a kshmana, Bharata, and Sitá; and an allusion to the Aryan origin of the royal race of Ráma is spoken of, not as a prince who was un- Ceylon. And it is at least quite as consisacquainted with the exiled family, but as one of tent with the circumstances (if not even more so) their number and occupying the chief place among that an Indian poet writing about the beginthem. And the poet of the Ramayana, following ing of the Christian era and the work of the main idea of the story thus presented, has not Valmiki can hardly date earlier than this, as we only represented R á ma and Sítá as lovers, but, shall presently see) should have taken as the subject what is most important, has added the rape of of his representation the conflicts with the BudSitá and the expedition to Laská. He dhists, which were by that time being fiercely has also changed the home of the exilee from waged, and have depicted a conquest of their chief Váránasí to Ayodhy á, and, on the other seat in the South-as that he should have selected hand, he has shifted the scene of the banislunent for his theme an idea so abstract as a picture of the from the Himavant to the Dekhan (Dan- “spread of Aryan civilisation." The Monkeys of daka forest, &c.)
the poem, too, which are undoubtedly to be regarded Now, when we consider this question of the as the representatives of the aborigines of the change of locality, it becomes evident that the re- Dekhan, appear throughout (with the single exmoval of the place of the exile to the Dekhan can ception of Bálin) as the allies of Ráma, and easily be explained by the poet's intention to de- therefore as already brought completely within scribe an expedition to Lanká ; while the alteration the influence of the Aryan culture. This holds true of Váránasí into Ayodhyá is perhaps connected with also of king Guha with his Nisha da. And An older form of the Saga, and one no doubt cur- though Wheeler certainly presses his theory too far rent at the time of the Dasaratha játalea, when, for instance, he talks of the molestations according to which both Brahmadatta and which the sages of Chitrakúta and of the DanAmbatthará jan lived in Váránasi, but daka-forest suffered at the hands of the Rákshasa the exiled children of the latter, or at least their de- and to save them from which Ráma took them scendants, the Sáky a and Koliya, settled in under his protection, and makes these refer solely Kapilapura (Kapilavatthu) and Koliya- to the Buddhists it yet it must be allowed that
• Vide Monatsberichte der K. Ak. d. W. 1859 p. 830ff. & Vide Lassen, Ind. A. K. I. 585 and my Vorles. tiber Ind Stud. V 415 ff. Ind. Streifen. I, 235 ff., and Rogers, Ind. L. G., P. 181. " Buddhaghosa's Parables" p. 175. The legend had already In the second volume of his History of India (Lonbeen made known by Turnour, Csoma Köröai, and Hardy. don 1869). #work which can hardly indeed be said to if not textually, at all events in substance. See also Emil correspond to its title, but which notwithstanding its exSchlagintweit, Die Könige von Tibet (München, 1866) p. 13 travagant Euhemerism, is rich in valuable views and sug82ff.
gestions. + In the Mahdranso, p. 184-185, mention is made of a place Romagama on the banks of the Gang (with a sacred
As grandchildren of Pulastya, I. 22, 15, 17. IV. 10, 13.
* In the Uttarakanda it appears pretty certain that stupa) as existing in the time of As'ok a, and as belonging in the quite decided separation of the Rakshasa of Lanka to the Koliya (Cf. Also Bigandet, Life of Buddha p. into the Paulastya and the S'alakatamkata (2 VIII. 846.) Contemporaneously therewith Fa-Hian (Chap. 22, at 23 24) or Sálamkatamkațá (? IV. 20, 23) we are to recogthe end,) and later alio Hwen Thang mention a land bordering on Kapila vastu called Lanmo; which
nise the double peopling of Ceylon by aborigines and by Stan. Julien (IL., 825) and Beal (Fa-Hian p. 89) translate
Aryans of the Brahmapical stock. by Rámagram.
f While the special description of these Rakshasa, for
instance in Ram, fii, 1, 15 ff., points unmistakably not to the " By Klaproth said to come from the mountains of Buddhists, but to hostile aberígines, who were still leading Nepal, and after uniting with the Mahanada to fall into AAVA life. Vide Muir, Orig. 8. Tects, II, 4261. Monier the Rapti, near Gorakhpur."-Hardy.
Williams, Ind. Epic Poetry p. 10.
KAR: 285
a bal Harga