Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. (IA mobot31753002412036).pdf/223

 182 HIKAYAT SRI RAMA. BOOK I. The first four chapters of Book I of the Sanskrit poem are introductory, describing how the poet Valmiki was led to write the Ramayana, and giving a summary of the contents of the entire work, and the appointment of rhapsodists to sing the poem at assemblies. Nothing from these four chapters is to be found in the Malay work. In the fifth chapter the poem opens with a de- scription of Ayodhya or Oude, capital of the kingdom of Kosala,¹ over which King Dasaratha, Rama's father, ruled. Dasaratha's three wives, Kausalya, Sumitra, and Kaikeyi, had borne him no son, he therefore makes a great Horse-sacrifice, which is so success- ful that the gods promise four sons to the king.2 In the 14th chapter of Book I, the gods, under the leadership of Indra, petition Brahma, the creator, to destroy Ravana, the king of the giant demons (rakshasa), who can only be killed by mankind. Vishnu joins the conclave, and promises to take the form of a man in order to kill Ravana. In chapter 15, a supernatural being, as tall as a mountain, appears at the Horse-sacrifice, and presents a cup of nectar for the wives of King Dasaratha to drink, half of which is given to Kausalya, the mother of Rama, the other half being di- vided between Sumitra, who bears two sons, Lakshmana and Satrughna, and Kaikeyi, who becomes the mother of Bharata. In chapter, 20, a hermit named Visvamitra comes to Dasaratha and requests that Rama, then a mere youth, should go to his hermitage to protect him and other devotees against the rakshasas. The story 1 In the Malay texts the name of Dasaratha's kingdom is given as Mandu Puri Nagara or Madu Pura Nagara. 2 Roorda van Eysinga's text commences with the story of King Dasa- rata. The Bodleian text has a long introduction dealing with the history of Ravana and the Raksasas, Dasarata's story beginning on page 51 of our text. In both Malay texts the king Dasarata is introduced as being in search of a suitable place to build a city, and finds a beautiful maiden in a magie clump of bamboo, which could only be cut down by the king's own sword; he marries the maiden, and calls her Mandu Dari, and also takes as his wife a concubine named Balia Dari, who saved him from a fall in the marriage procession. Having no children, the king applies to an ascetic (maharisi), who gives him four bezoar stones (guliga), of which he gives two to Mandu Dari and two to Balia Dari, with the result that the former bears him Sri Rama and Laksamana, and the latter Bardan and Chitradan. 3 In the Bodleian text there is no allusion whatever to the sacrifice, but in the analysis of Roorda van Eysinga's Sri Rama, given in the Journal Asiatique, we find the following: "Some time after he was established in his new capital, called Mandu Puri Nagara, Dasarata offers a sacrifice to the gods in order to have children, during which a raksasa in the form of a crow, Gagak Suara, grandfather of Ravana, the king of the raksasas, carries off a portion of the consecrated rice, destined to cause the wives of Dasarata to bear children. The maharisi or anchorite, who offers the sacri- fice, pronounces the following curse on Gagak Suara, which we shall see later came true: Thou shalt be killed by the son of Dasarata, and may whoever eats this rice have a daughter, who shall become the wife of Dasa- rata's son. Nevertheless Gagak carries the rice to Ravana, who eats it in the hope of having a son who might dominate the entire world."