Page:A history of Sanskrit literature (1900), Macdonell, Arthur Anthony.djvu/329

 words lamenting the death of her mate and threatening vengeance on the wicked murderer. But, strange to tell, his utterance is no ordinary speech and flows in a melodious stream. As he wanders, lost in thought, towards his hut, Brahmā appears and announces to the poet that he has unconsciously created the rhythm of the çloka metre. The deity then bids him compose in this measure the divine poem on the life and deeds of Rāma. This story may have a historical significance, for it indicates with some probability that the classical form of the çloka was first fixed by Vālmīki, the author of the original part of the Rāmāyaṇa.

The epic contains the following verse foretelling its everlasting fame:—


 * As long as mountain ranges stand
 * And rivers flow upon the earth:
 * So long will this Rāmāyaṇa
 * Survive upon the lips of men.

This prophecy has been perhaps even more abundantly fulfilled than the well-known prediction of Horace. No product of Sanskrit literature has enjoyed a greater popularity in India down to the present day than the Rāmāyaṇa. Its story furnishes the subject of many other Sanskrit poems as well as plays, and still delights, from the lips of reciters, the hearts of myriads of the Indian people, as at the great annual Rāma festival held at Benares. It has been translated into many Indian vernaculars. Above all, it inspired the greatest poet of mediæval Hindustan, Tulsī Dās, to compose in Hindī his version of the epic entitled Rām Charit Mānas, which, with its ideal standard of virtue and purity, is a kind of bible to a hundred millions of the people of Northern India.