Reading section 102

215 Indra, with _mahá_, great, prefixed.

216 The Heavenly Twins.

217 Not banished from heaven as the inferior Gods and demigods sometimes were.

218 Kumárila says: “In the same manner, if it is said that Indra was the seducer of Ahalyá this does not imply that the God Indra committed such a crime, but Indra means the sun, and Ahalyá (from ahan and lí) the night; and as the night is seduced and ruined by the sun of the morning, therefore is Indra called the paramour of Ahalyá.” MAX MULLER, _History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 530_.

219 “The preceding sixteen lines have occurred before in Canto XLVIII. This Homeric custom of repeating a passage of several lines is strange to our poet. This is the only instance I remember. The repetition of single lines is common enough.” SCHLEGEL.

220 Divine personages of minute size produced from the hair of Brahmá, and probably the origin of

“That small infantry Warred on by cranes.”

221 Sweet, salt, pungent, bitter, acid, and astringent.

222 “Of old hoards and minerals in the earth, the king is entitled to half by reason of his general protection, and because he is the lord paramount of the soil.” MANU, Book VIII. 39.

223 Ghí or clarified butter, “holy oil,” being one of the essentials of sacrifice.

224 “A Bráhman had five principal duties to discharge every day: study and teaching the Veda, oblations to the manes or spirits of the departed, sacrifice to the Gods, hospitable offerings to men, and _a gift of food to all creatures_. The last consisted of rice or other grain which the Bráhman was to offer every day outside his house in the open air. MANU, Book III. 70.” GORRESIO.

225 These were certain sacred words of invocation such a _sváhá_, _vashaṭ_, etc., pronounced at the time of sacrifice.

226 “It is well known that the Persians were called Pahlavas by the Indians. The _Śakas_ are nomad tribes inhabiting Central Asia, the Scythes of the Greeks, whom the Persians also, as Herodotus tells us, called Sakæ just as the Indians did. Lib. VII 64 ὁι γὰρ Πέρσαι πάντας τοὺς Σύθας. καλέουσι Σάκας. The name Yavans seems to be used rather indefinitely for nations situated beyond Persia to the west.… After the time of Alexander the Great the Indians as well as the Persians called the Greeks also Yavans.” SCHLEGEL.

Lassen thinks that the Pahlavas were the same people as the Πάκτυες of Herodotus, and that this non-Indian people dwelt on the north-west confines of India.

227 See page 13, note 6.

228 Barbarians, non-Sanskrit-speaking tribes.

229 A comprehensive term for foreign or outcast races of different faith and language from the Hindus.

230 The Kirátas and Hárítas are savage aborigines of India who occupy hills and jungles and are altogether different in race and character from the Hindus. Dr. Muir remarks in his Sanskrit Texts, Vol. I. p. 488 (second edition) that it does not appear that it is the object of this legend to represent this miraculous creation as the origin of these tribes, and that nothing more may have been intended than that the cow called into existence large armies, of the same stock with particular tribes previously existing.

231 The Great God, Śiva.

232 Nandi, the snow-white bull, the attendant and favourite vehicle of Śiva.

233 “The names of many of these weapons which are mythical and partly allegorical have occurred in Canto XXIX. The general signification of the story is clear enough. It is a contest for supremacy between the regal or military order and Bráhmanical or priestly authority, like one of those struggles which our own Europe saw in the middle ages when without employing warlike weapons the priesthood frequently gained the victory.” SCHLEGEL.

For a full account of the early contests between the Bráhmans and the Kshattriyas, see Muir’s Original Sanskrit Texts (Second edition) Vol. I. Ch. IV.

234 “Triśanku, king of Ayodhyá, was seventh in descent from Ikshváku, and Daśaratha holds the thirty-fourth place in the same genealogy. See Canto LXX. We are thrown back, therefore, to very ancient times, and it occasions some surprise to find Vaśishṭha and Viśvámitra, actors in these occurences, still alive in Rama’s time.”

235 “It does not appear how Triśanku, in asking the aid of Vaśishṭha’s sons after applying in vain to their father, could be charged with resorting to another _śákhá_ (School) in the ordinary sense of that word; as it is not conceivable that the sons should have been of another Śákhá from the father, whose cause they espouse with so much warmth. The commentator in the Bombay edition explains the word _Śákhantaram_ as Yájanádiná rakshántaram, ‘one who by sacrificing for thee, etc., will be another protector.’ Gorresio’s Gauḍa text, which may often be used as a commentary on the older one, has the following paraphrase of the words in question, ch. 60, 3. Múlam utsṛijya kasmát tvam sákhásv ichhasi lambitum. ‘Why, forsaking the root, dost thou desire to hang upon the branches?’ ” MUIR, Sanskrit Texts, Vol. I., p. 401.

236 A Chaṇḍála was a man born of the illegal and impure union of a Śúdra with a woman of one of the three higher castes.

237 “The Chaṇḍála was regarded as the vilest and most abject of the men sprung from wedlock forbidden by the law (Mánavadharmaśástra, Lib. X. 12.); a kind of social malediction weighed upon his head and rejected him from human society.” GORRESIO.

238 This appellation, occuring nowhere else in the poem except as the name of a city, appears twice in this Canto as a name of Vaśishṭha.

239 “The seven ancient rishis or saints, as has been said before, were the seven stars of Ursa Major. The seven other new saints which are here said to have been created by Viśvámitra should be seven new southern stars, a sort of new Ursa. Von Schlegel thinks that this mythical fiction of new stars created by Viśvámitra may signify that these southern stars, unknown to the Indians as long as they remained in the neighbourhood of the Ganges, became known to them at a later date when they colonized the southern regions of India.” GORRESIO.

240 “This cannot refer to the events just related: for Viśvámitra was successful in the sacrifice performed for Triśanku. And yet no other impediment is mentioned. Still his restless mind would not allow him to remain longer in the same spot. So the character of Viśvámitra is ingeniously and skilfully shadowed forth: as he had been formerly a most warlike king, loving battle and glory, bold, active, sometimes unjust, and more frequently magnanimous, such also he always shows himself in his character of anchorite and ascetic.” SCHLEGEL.

241 Near the modern city of Ajmere. The place is sacred still, and the name is preserved in the Hindí. Lassen, however, says that this Pushkala or Pushkara, called by the Grecian writers Πευκελίτις, the earliest place of pilgrimage mentioned by name, is not to be confounded with the modern Pushkara in Ajmere.

242 “Ambarísha is the twenty-ninth in descent from Ikshváku, and is therefore separated by an immense space of time from Triśanku in whose story Viśvámitra had played so important a part. Yet Richíka, who is represented as having young sons while Ambarísha was yet reigning being himself the son of Bhrigu and to be numbered with the most ancient sages, is said to have married the younger sister of Viśvámitra. But I need not again remark that there is a perpetual anachronism in Indian mythology.” SCHLEGEL..

“In the mythical story related in this and the following Canto we may discover, I think, some indication of the epoch at which the immolation of lower animals was substituted for human sacrifice.… So when Iphigenia was about to be sacrificed at Aulis, one legend tells us that a hind was substituted for the virgin.” GORRESIO.

So the ram caught in the thicket took the place of Isaac, or, as the Musalmáns say, of Ishmael.

243 The Indian Cupid.

244 “The same as she whose praises Viśvámitra has already sung in Canto XXXV, and whom the poet brings yet alive upon the scene in Canto LXI. Her proper name was _Satyavatí_ (Truthful); the patronymic, Kauśikí was preserved by the river into which she is said to have been changed, and is still recognized in the corrupted forms Kuśa and Kuśí. The river flows from the heights of the Himálaya towards the Ganges, bounding on the east the country of Videha (Behar). The name is no doubt half hidden in the _Cosoagus_ of Pliny and the _Kossounos_ of Arrian. But each author has fallen into the same error in his enumeration of these rivers (Condochatem, Erannoboam, Cosoagum, Sonum). The Erannoboas, (Hiraṇyaváha) and the Sone are not different streams, but well-known names of the same river. Moreover the order is disturbed, in which on the right and left they fall into the Ganges. To be consistent with geography it should be written: Erannoboam sive Sonum, Condochatem (Gandakí), Cosoagum.” SCHLEGEL.

245 “Daksha was one of the ancient Progenitors or Prajápatis created by Brahmá. The sacrifice which is here spoken of and in which Śankar or Śiva (called also here Rudra and Bhava) smote the Gods because he had not been invited to share the sacred oblations with them, seems to refer to the origin of the worship of Śiva, to its increase and to the struggle it maintained with other older forms of worship.” GORRESIO.

246 Sítá means a furrow.

“Great Erectheus swayed, That owed his nurture to the blue-eyed maid, But from the teeming furrow took his birth, The mighty offspring of the foodful earth.”

Iliad, Book II.

247 “The whole story of Sítá, as will be seen in the course of the poem has a great analogy with the ancient myth of Proserpine.” GORRESIO.

248 A different lady from the Goddess of the Jumna who bears the same name.

249 This is another fanciful derivation, _Sa_—with, and _gara_—poison.

_ 250 Purushádak_ means a cannibal. First called _Kalmáshapáda_ on account of his spotted feet he is said to have been turned into a cannibal for killing the son of Vaśishṭha.

251 “In the setting forth of these royal genealogies the Bengal recension varies but slightly from the Northern. The first six names of the genealogy of the Kings of Ayodhyá are partly theogonical and partly cosmogonical; the other names are no doubt in accordance with tradition and deserve the same amount of credence as the ancient traditional genealogies of other nations.” GORRESIO.

252 The tenth of the lunar asterisms, composed of five stars.

253 There are two lunar asterisms of this name, one following the other immediately, forming the eleventh and twelfth of the lunar mansions.

254 This is another Ráma, son of Jamadagni, called Paraśuráma, or Ráma with the axe, from the weapon which he carried. He was while he lived the terror of the Warrior caste, and his name recalls long and fierce struggles between the sacerdotal and military order in which the latter suffered severely at the hands of their implacable enemy.

255 “The author of the _Raghuvaṅśa_ places the mountain Mahendra in the territory of the king of the Kalingans, whose palace commanded a view of the ocean. It is well known that the country along the coast to the south of the mouths of the Ganges was the seat of this people. Hence it may be suspected that this Mahendra is what Pliny calls ‘promontorium Calingon.’ The modern name, _Cape Palmyras_, from the palmyras Borassus flabelliformis, which abound there agrees remarkably with the description of the poet who speaks of the groves of these trees. _Raghuvaṅśa_, VI. 51.” SCHLEGEL.

256 Śiva.

257 Siva. God of the Azure Neck.

258 Śatrughna means slayer of foes, and the word is repeated as an intensive epithet.

259 Alluding to the images of Vishṇu, which have four arms, the four princes being portions of the substance of that God.

260 Chief of the insignia of imperial dignity.

261 Whisks, usually made of the long tails of the Yak.

262 Chitraratha, King of the Gandharvas.

263 The Chandrakánta or Moonstone, a sort of crystal supposed to be composed of congealed moonbeams.

264 A customary mark of respect to a superior.

265 Ráhu, the ascending node, is in mythology a demon with the tail of a dragon whose head was severed from his body by Vishṇu, but being immortal, the head and tail retained their separate existence and being transferred to the stellar sphere became the authors of eclipses; the first especially by endeavouring to swallow the sun and moon.

266 In eclipse.

267 The seventh of the lunar asterisms.