Page:History of India Vol 1.djvu/165

Rh Sita birth, opened and received its long-suffering child. The Vedic conception of Sita, as the field furrow, manifests itself in the epic in this incident; but to millions of Hindus, Sita is a real human character, a pattern of female virtue and female self-abnegation. There are few Hindu women throughout the length and breadth of India to whom the story of Sita is not known, and to whom her character is not a model to strive after and to imitate. And Rama, too, though scarcely equal to Sita in worth of character, has been a pattern to men for his truth, his obedience, and his piety. And thus the epic has been for the millions of India a means of moral education, the value of which can hardly be overestimated.



From a native painting.