Page:The Rámáyana of Tulsi Dás.djvu/416

 356 THE FOREST. lotus flower, I unceasingly worship Ráma the merciful, the mighty-armed, the dispeller of all life's terrors; of immeasurable strength; without beginning and unborn; the indivisible; the one; beyond the reach of all the senses; the incar- nate Govinda; the annihilator of duality; the profound in wisdom; the supporter of the earth; an everlasting deliglht to the soul of the saints, who practise the spell of Ráma's name. I unceasingly worship Ráma, the friend of the unsen- sual, the destroyer of lust and every other wickedness. He, whom the scrip- tures hymn under the name of the passionless Brahm, the all-pervading, the supreme spirit, the unbegotten; to whom the saints attain after infinite study and contemplation, penance and abstraction; he the all merciful, the all-radiant, the unapproachable, has now become manifest for the delight of the world. He who is at once inaccessible and accessible, like and unlike, the essentially pure, the unfailing comforter, whom ascetics behold only when they have laboriously subdued their mind and senses; even Ráma, the spouse of Lakshmi, who is ever at the command of his servants, though the lord of the three spheres, may he abide in my heart, the terminator of transmigration, whose praises make pure." Dohá 27. After asking the boon of perfect faith, the vulture departed for Hari's sphere. Ráma with his own hands performed his funeral rites with all due ceremony. Chaupái. The tender-hearted and compassionate Raghunath, who shows mercy even on the undeserving, bestowed upon a vulture, an unclean flesh-eating bird, such a place in heaven as the greatest ascetics desire. Hearken, Uma; the most miserable of men are they who abandon Hari and become attached to objects of sense, The two brothers in their search for Síta visited and examined many woods, tangled with creepers, dense with trees, and swarming with birds, deer, elephants and lions. As they went on their way they overthrew Kabandha, who declared the whole history of the curse. "Durvásas' cursed me, but now that I have seen my 1 The reference to Durvásas is obscure. According to the legend as told by Válmíki, Kabandha had been a beautiful youth by name Danu, who as a reward for penance obtained from heaven the boon of a long life. On the strength of this promise he ventured to challenge Indra to battle, who launched his thunderbolt against him and drove his head and shoulders down into his body, which was thus made a horriblo headloss shapeless truuk. To keep bim from starving, since he needs must live, his arms were made a league long; and a huge mouth was oponed in his belly. In the text, as translated by Grifith, there is mention of a sage Sthúla-Siras (Great-head) who had been annoyed by Danu and therefore cursed him : but the passage has rather the air of an interpolation, and does not appear in Gorresio's edition, The meaning of tho word kabandha is 'a headless trunk.