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

confused, and scholars are still disputing as to the precise road which Rāma took, and the precise position of Pañchavaṭī, Ṛishyamūka, and Pampā. Nevertheless, the main threads of the story may well be considered historical. So at least Vālmīki seems to have regarded them. 23. The Rāmāyaṇa a blending of history and allegory.—It is also conceivable that the Rāmāyaṇa is a blending of history and some form of primitive nature-allegory. Thus in the Ṛigveda (iv. 57⁶,⁷, i. 140⁴) the word ‘sītā’ means furrow, and is not a proper name. Sītā’s birth from the Earth as narrated in the epic, the names of her twin sons (‘kuśa’ is a kind of grass, and ‘lava’ means reaping ¹), and Sītā’s final disappearance into the bosom of the Earth,—all this appears to be the mythology of some agricultural deity. If it were safe to think of Rāma as answering to the Vedic Rain-god Indra, the coincidence would harmonize well with the fact that the son of Rāvaṇa, who carries off Sītā, is called ‘Vanquisher of Indra’ or Indrajit, and also with the fact that Māruti, who like a rain- cloud in the monsoons, flies over the ocean and brings Rāma the comforting news about Sītā, means the ‘Son of the Wind-god’. All these things point to a possible commingling of history and certain features of agri- cultural mythology. The mythology, however, belongs to Vedic times. In Vālmīki’s days it must almost have ceased to be regarded as such. Thus the ultimate sources for the Rāmāyaṇa may have been threefold :

1. a real historical account about the palace-intrigue and exile; 2. another account also historical but more vague and uncertain about the experience of some early Aryan explorer (as distinguished from a colonizer and a permanent settler) of the south; and 3. the mythical account of Indra and his fight with the Enemy of the Harvest, an account which probably had lost most of its significance as nature-allegory, and had come to be regarded as genuine history dealing with persons as real as any legendary heroes are expected to be. It is no longer necessary to discuss the theory that Vālmīki derived the matter of his epic from the Iliad of Homer. The theory originated with Weber, and has been thoroughly answered by K. T. Telang (Indian Antiquary, 1872, pp. 143–7; 1873, pp. 123 ff.) and Professor Jacobi (Das Rāmāyaṇa, pp. 94–9). It is now no more than a literary curiosity.²

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from the West Indies, and on the basis | merely because the geography was wrong? of statements made by him and his | ¹ Otherwise explained at Raghuvamśa, xv. 32. sailors, an epic had been written de- | ² Per contra, Arthur Lillie (among others) scribing the discovery and exploration of | maintains that Homer took his themes America, could we have reasonably im- | from the Indian Epics : see ‘Rāma and pugned the truth of its main story | Homer’, London, 1912.