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

Introduction [lx 24. Later modifications of the Rāma-story : 1. Buddhistic form.— The Buddhistic form of the Rāma-story is to be found in the ‘Daśaratha- Jātaka’ (Faüsboll, iv. pp. 124 ff.). The story is as follows. Daśaratha, king of Benares, had three children: Rāma, Lakshmaṇa, and Sītā, all born from his first wife, after whose death he marries a second, and has by her a fourth child, a son named Bharata. Overjoyed at having another son born to him, Daśaratha grants a boon to his wife. After seven or eight years the wife remembers the boon and asks Daśaratha to fulfil it by giving the throne to her son. The king refuses to grant her request; but fearing the machinations of the woman, he advises the three children by his first wife to stay away from the court for twelve years. He makes it twelve years, because astrologers had told him that he would live so long. Rāma, with his brother Lakshmaṇa and his sister Sītā, repairs to the Himalayas. Contrary to the prophecy of the astrologers Daśaratha dies in the ninth year. The widowed queen tries to secure the throne for Bharata, but he sternly refuses and goes to seek his eldest brother, to whom the throne by right belonged. Rāma, however, is unwilling to come immediately, seeing that the period of twelve years assigned to him by his father was not yet over. He stays away another three years and then returns, marries Sītā, and rules in peace. This feeble, distorted, unmotivated story was once regarded as a possible source of Vālmīki’s Rāmāyaṇa. Professor Jacobi (Das Rāmāyaṇa, pp. 84–93) has already shown the utter untenability of such a view. And now we have definite evidence to prove that the Rāma-Rāvaṇa story was already well known¹ before 300 B.C. **25. Later modifications of the Rāma-story : 2. Jain forms.—**The Jain forms of the Rāma-story are to be found in works like the Padma-Purāṇa of Ravisheṇa, the Dharma-parīkshā of Amitagati, and the Trishashṭhiśa- lākāpurushacharita (chap. vii) of Hemachandra. The story in the main follows Vālmīki’s Rāmāyaṇa, and the evident object of these works must be to utilize an already existing story for preaching the special doctrines of the cult. Thus they make Rāma a pious Jain, a total abstainer from meat. This of course involved the omission of the golden deer incident (see § 18, J); Rāvaṇa abducts Sītā while Rāma is engaged in the battle with the fourteen thousand. Similarly Rāma kills Vālin in a fair fight (contrast § 18, K). Years after her abandonment, when Rāma meets Sītā once more, it was not through the instrumentality of Vālmīki, or through the incidents attending

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¹ See Kauṭilīya, p. 11, line 3 from the bottom.          the reference to the Rāmāyaṇa in one of     As Bhāsa’s date is uncertain, the fact of          his plays (Avimāraka, p. 16, line 2) cannot     his having written two Rāma-plays and          have much significance chronologically.