Page:Valmiki - Ramayana, Griffith, 1895.djvu/20

iv Rois du Krchmir, par M. A. Troyer, LIB. I. L, 166.). Damodara, second of that name among the kings of Kashmir, was cursed by certain B rah mans, and the malediction was to cease on the day on which he should hear the entire Ramayan recited. Now Damodara the Second, in the series of the kings of Kashmir, precedes by five kings Gonarda the Third who according to the computation of M. Troyer, the sagacious and learned translator and commentator of the History of Kashmir, is to be placed in the year 1182 before Christ (Rajatarangini. Tom. II. p. 375), Reckoning backward from this point to Damodara the Second through an interval of five reigns the average duration of each of which is about twenty-four years, we arrive at the beginning of the fourteenth century before the Christian era. I am far from wishing to attribute any great precision to these chronological computations, nor do I pretend to determine exactly the age of the Ramayan. but I maintain that from the passage of the Rajatarangini cited the remote antiquity of the poem may with all confidence be inferred. This antiquity is confirmed by the various popular traditions diffused through the whole of India upon the epopea of Valmiki, upon the exploits which are celebrated in it, upon the principal actors in that great epic drama, since traditions and popular legends gather round ancient monuments as ivy and parasitical plants cling only to the trunks of aged oaks. The whole of India is full of such legends originated by the celebrity of the epic of Valmiki. The fame of Rama and of Hanuman his mighty ally, accompanied with popular legends, has penetrated into the most remote parts of the southern regions of India and even into Tibet. A proof of the antiquity of the Ramayan is the fact that many poets both dramatic and epic have had recourse to the great fountain of his poem as the Grecian poets have drawn their materials from the epics of Homer, The antiquity of the Ram a van is proved by the numerous various readings which are found in it and which can have arisen only from its antiquity and its diffusion by many mouths through distant regions. And as an epic poem is the faithful image of the creeds, the cult, the customs of the age in which it arose, so finding no mention of a creed, a cult, a custom, or a region in an epic is a very probable indication that it did not exist when the poem was composed. It is worthy of being remarked that in the Ramayan no traces are found of that mystic devotion which absorbs all the faculties of man, of that passionate, ardent worship called bhakti which is not of the greatest antiquity but still must have sprung up before our era, as it is mentioned in the Mahabharata. There are indeed in the Ramayan examples of prodigious austerities, but these have nothing to do with the religion called bhakti, and spring from another cause, a principle more profound. They appear to have been originated by an inner feeling, deeply rooted and of great antiquity in India, that is to say that expiation was to restore fallen human nature. Nor is there found in the Ramayan any mention of Buddha or Buddhism, although other heterodox creeds are spoken of. Nor is the Island of Ceylon against which the expedition of Rama was directed called Taprobane or Tamraparni, or Palesimundu or Palisimanta, names anterior by some centuries to the Christian era. Nor is it even called by the name of Sinhala (Seat of Lions) which name is connected with the occupation of the island by Vijaya several centuries before our era. The name which Ceylon bears in the Ramayan is always the primitive, the most ancient, Lanka. I could adduce many other conjectural proofs of the antiquity of the Ramayan, such for instance as the nature of the style, and its qualifying, as Homer does, with nich epithets as venerable, benign, divine, the night, the day, the woods, the mountains, and the rivers.