महावीरचरितम् (महाकवि भवभूति - वीररस-प्रधान रामकथा नाटक सम्पूर्ण ७ अङ्क सटीक)

lv] History of the Rāma-story 18, Q.—Soon after the disappearance of Sītā, Rāma feels his own end drawing near. The kingdom is divided amongst the four brothers, who in turn settle it upon their children. In the meantime the aged Queen- mothers die. Thereafter Lakshmaṇa, whom Rāma, for no fault of his own, was compelled to send away from him, gives up the ghost. Finally Rāma himself enters the waters of the river Sarayū, and his other brothers, and the whole city of Ayodhyā in fact, follow after him to heaven. END OF UTTARA-KĀṆḌA. 19. Vālmīki's Rāmāyaṇa not the sole source of our play.—Professor Jacobi (in his book entitled Das Rāmāyaṇa, Geschichte und Inhalt, nebst Concordanz, Bonn, 1893, p. 111), upon linguistic, geographical, astronomical, and various other grounds, assigns the Rāmāyaṇa to the period between 800 and 500 B.C. By this he means of course the oldest strata of the epic. Additions and interpolations came to be made from time to time even down to the beginning of the Christian era. Besides the few cantos here and there which carry the marks of spuriousness on their face, it is almost certain that the major part of the Bāla-kāṇḍa (where for the first time we find an attempt to treat Rāma as a divine Avatar) and the whole of the Uttara-kāṇḍa (which deals with the later history of Rāma) are relatively late additions. The present play, as its title shows, deals with the later history of Rāma; and since it differs in many essential respects from the account given in the last book of the Rāmāyaṇa, the question arises whether Bhavabhūti used for his plot other sources than Vālmīki's epic. The Mahā-Bhārata contains, at iii. 273 ff., a ‘Rāma-episode’ or Rāmo- pākhyāna; but this text does not carry the story beyond Rāma's coronation. In this fact some see a reason for considering the Rāmāyaṇa (at least in its present form) as later than the Mahā-Bhārata. This does not follow; for, considering that Mārkaṇḍeya relates the episode to illustrate how good people, fallen in misfortune, do in turn gain happiness, there is no motive for him to carry the story beyond the return to Ayodhyā, even if he knew it. Further, the Mahā-Bhārata does elsewhere (vii. 59) narrate the story of Rāma's death; but it is very short, and is of no significance for the present problem. The Rāma-story is given with more or less detail in the various Purāṇas such as the Brahma-Purāṇa (of which the Adhyātma Rāmāyaṇa forms a part), the Bhāgavata, Garuḍa, Skanda, Agni, Kūrma, and so on. But in discuss- ing the sources of Bhavabhūti's plays, and particularly of the present play, the most important text is the Padma-Purāṇa. 20. Three forms of the Rāma-story in the Padma-Purāṇa.—The Padma gives the Rāma-story in three different places, each time with significant variations. These differing versions could not of course have been intro-