Page:History of India Vol 1.djvu/164

124 the poem of the Ramayana and taught the boys to repeat it, and thus years were passed.

Then Rama decided to celebrate the Asvamedha sacrifice, and sent out the horse. The animal came as far as Valmiki's hermitage, and the boys playfully caught it and detained it. Rama's troops tried in vain



Reduced from Moor's "Hindu Pantheon."

to recover the animal. At last Rama himself saw the princely boys, but did not know who they were; he heard the poem Ramayana chanted by them, and it was in a passion of grief and regret that he at last knew them and embraced them as his own.

But there was no joy in store for Sita. The people's suspicions could not be allayed, and Rama was too weak to act against his people. The earth, which had given