Page:The Rámáyana of Tulsi Dás.djvu/51

 CHILDHOOD. Răma's deeds all labour and trouble count for nothing. A sensible poet under- stands this, and sings only of Hari, the redeemer, and his virtues. To recount the doings of common people is mere idle beating of the head, which the Muse loathes. Genius is as it were a shell in the sea of the soul, waiting for the Octo- ber rain of inspiration ; if a gracious shower falls, each drop is a lovely pearl of poetry. Dohá 16. Then dexterously pierced and strung together on the thread of Răma's adventures, they form a beautiful chain to be worn on a good man's breast. Chaupái. Men born in this grim iron age are outwardly swans, but inwardly as black as crows ; walking in evil paths, abandoning the Veda,' embodiments of falsehood, vessels of impurity, hypocrites, professing devotion to Ráma, but slaves of gold, of passion and of lust. Among them I give the first place to myself, a hypocrite, alas ! of the very first rank ; but were I to tell all my vices, the list would so grow that it would have no end. I have therefore said but very little, but a word is enough for the wise. Let none of my hearers blame me for offering so many apologies; whoever is troubled in mind by them is more stupid and dull of wit than I am myself. Though I am no poet, and have no pretensions to cleverness, I sing as best I can the virtues of Ráma. How unfathomable his actions, how shallow my poor world-entangled intellect! Before the strong wind that could uproot Mount Meru, of what account is such When I think of Ráma's infinite majesty a mere fleck of cotton as I am? I tremble as I write. Dohá 17. For Sarasvati, Sesh-nág, Siva and Brahma, the Shástras, the Veda, the Puránas, all are unceasingly singing his perfection, yet fail to declare it. Chaupái. All know the greatness of the lord to be thus unutterable, yet none can refrain from attempting to expound it. For this reason the Veda also has declared many different modes of effectual worship. There is one GoD, pas- sionless, formless, uncreated, the universal soul, the supreme spirit, the all- I By the Veda, to which Tulsi Dás so frequently appeals, must be understood not the original Veda itself, with which he had absolutely nothing in common, but only the Upanishads, which are also popularly quoted as of Vedic authority. They are brief speculative treatises, over 200 in all, in a discursive and rhapsodical style and of an ultra-Pantheistic tendency, which are attached to the end of the Vedas, but are for the most part of much later date,