WEBER ON THE RAMAYANA.

APRIL 5, 1872.]

exile of R 4 m a seems intended to represent the winter-time, during which the activity of Nature, and especially the operations of agriculture, are at a stand-still. Any other direct evidence, how ever, of such a connection between these two is not

in the meantime forthcoming. But on the other hand, as regards R 4 m a 's wife Sí tá, there are two points that are all the more deserving of notice — namely, first, her mythical character itself ; second ly, and specially her relation to the similarly named goddess of the Vedic ritual, the symbol of the

field-furrow (sitá); and indeed the significance of both these points should be so fully recognised as that it could hardly be called in question. The accounts

in the Rāmāyana regarding her being born from a ploughed field” and regarding her return into

the bosom of her Mother Earthf; the name of her sister U'r m i lá, which can be explained as “waving seed-field :" finally, the surnamef of her father Janak a Sira dhvaja “bearing a plough on a banner :” are alone decisive of her mythical, symbolical character. Fortunately, be sides, for the working out of the conception, there was available the glorified representation of the similarly named spouse of Indra or Parjanya in

the grihya texts, which picture her appearances in such plastic youthful beauty that the pencil of the poet needed only to add a few touches here and there. || Endowed with these characteristics of the national goddess, the representation of the wife of

• Ram, I, 66, 14, 15, (27) Schl: atha me krishatah

kshetram, lángalád utthitá tatah || kshetram sºdhayatá labdhá námná S i t e ti vis'ruté, b h it a 1 & d utthitti sã tu, vurdha máná mamá ‘tmajá viryas'ulketi me kanya sthāpite ayonijá || b h it al ād utthitam tăm tu.. f First mentioned indeed in the Uttarakanda.

! First, so far as I have been able to discover, in the Uttara Ramacharita.

§ Cf. my Abh. iiber Omina und Portenta pp. 370, 373. | Sºriyam tvá manavo viduh are the words used so

early as in the Kaus'. 106, naturally, however, without any reference to the later position of Sri as the wife of

W i s h n u, or to the identifiation of S ſta, as the wife of Rá m a, with the later.

Ráma must have awakened the widest interestſ; and this conception of her was admirably fitted either for purely poetical uses, or for the purpose of bringing back the hearers to their allegiance to the Brahmanical gods. Vālmīki has besides introduced an additional element into his

representation of Sítá, by making her the daughter of the pious Videh a king, Jan a ka, highly honoured on account of his relations with Yājna Valkya in the Brahmana of the White Yajus, and in various legends of the Mahābhārata, a circum stance which is no doubt partly due to the desire

of giving, by means of this paternity, a decidedly Brahmanical colouring to her descent, and which in fact may easily be understood as in some measure favouring an earlier conjecture of my own” namely, that Valmiki himself belonged to that

part of India which corresponds to the king dom of Kos' a 1 a, bordering on the region of the Videha, and standing in the closest relations with

them—in the chief city of which kingdom, A yo dhyā, the scene of Vālmiki's work is laid. It is also deserving of notice that As v ap a ti, the king of the Kek a y a , f who appears in the Rand !yana as the brother-in-law of Dasaratha, is men tioned in the Brahmana of the White Yajus f as being nearly contemporary with J an a ka. § And

the

name of

S it à

herself occurs

in a

Yajus-text as even then in use as a proper name : though the bearer of it appears there in a relation Stud. IX, 481); it was permitted to expose new-born female children, but not males: tasmat striyam jätäm partisyanti, na pumánsam.

I 10, 6, 1, 1 (Chand. Up. VII, 11, vide Ind. Stud. I, 179, 216, 265.)

s' With

regard to this special reference to glorified

names in the White Yajus, it should be added that Valmiki’s own name, as is well-known, appears aunong the teachers who are mentioned in the Taittiriya-Prat. And indeed it appears in one passage (I, 9, 4) as coming next to that of gnives ya, vide Ind. Stud. I, 147, where I have called at tention to the fact that a Rāmāyana is also ascribed to one A’g n iv e sºa. It is apparently, to be sure, quite a modern performance (pide Aufrecht, Catal. Codd. MSS. Sanskrit,

1216,) bearing the name Rāmachandracharitrasſiram, and

"I Was it Walmiki's finding of the two names, R & m a and Sítá united in the Buddhistic legend, that suggested to

him the idea of making use of them for his contemplated work, which had for its object the restoration of the national

gods 2 Or may we conjecture that he made such a use of these names with the intention of lowering the estimation

in which Buddha was held, by glorifying his ancestor Rám a 2–a question which it is natural to ask, especially if Wheeler's view be adopted, with reference to the legend regarding the origin of the

123

i.

race.

Whether we

are also to maintain, with regard to these Buddhistic legends of Ráma the progenitor of the Sãky a, and of R a m a and S it i as children of D a sºar at ha, that there is such a connection between them on the one hand, and R & m a

Halabh r it and the S it i of the grihya-ritual on the other, as I have assumed regarding the representations Válmiki :—this seems to me to be at least very question

able.

• Wide Akad. Worles. tiber Ind. Lit. p. 182.

t The Sopeithes, king of the Knxso, who waited upon Alexander the Great in person, is evidently only the ana lºgue of As’vapati vide Lassen, Ind. Alt. I, 300 n. II, 161. Kašaiz the name which his country also bears, I connect (let me say in passing) with Katha, the name of the Vedic Yajus-school. The practice of infanticide is mentioned in the Kathaka 27, 9 (Cf. Ts, WI, 5, 10, 3. Nir. III, 4. Ind.

composed in 102 sardillarikridita-verses ; but the indicat ing of this name is certainly significant, especially when we consider that Bhavabhuti Jätukarnºputra (for the form of this name vide Satap XIV.9,4,30) who celebrated Rd ma's exploits in a dramatic form, belonged to a Brahmanic family which studied the Taittiriya (in the Bhag. Pur.

IX, 2, 21, ed. Burnouf, p. 191 Jatūkarna–Agniresya); that further there exists a drama called mahanátakan (vide

Taylor, Catalogue of Or. MSS. I, 11. Madras 1857) composed by Bodh a y an a ch a ri (Baudhaiyanāchārya º in sºloka and corresponding to the first six kanda of the Rāmāyana ;

and that, finally, the names of the Sages, B h a rad v iij a and Atri, which are so remarkably prominent in Valmiki's description of the exile, appear also among the teachers of the Taitt. Veda. From all this, then, it appears to be

fairly presumable that the Rama-Saga was very carefully preserved among the followers of the Yajus, especially of the Taitt, Veda ; though this is perhaps to be accounted for only on the ground that Valmiki, the first who made a poetical use of the Saga, was one of themselves, and bore a name peculiar to them. According to the tradition of the Adhyatma Rimayana II, 6,64 f., vide Hall in the Ind. Strei. fen II, 85 and Wheeler p. 312, Valmiki was “of low caste” But neither in his work itself nor in Bhavabhuti is there any thing to be found that bears out this assertion. | Taitt, Br. II, 3, 10, 1-3.