Page:Valmiki - Ramayana, Griffith, 1895.djvu/25

 INTRODUCTION. lx

octosyllabic metre which will generally be found to reproduce it without, as a rule, either condensation or amplification. Blank verse, even if the translator could write it, would never represent the gloka, a verse generally commensurate with the sentence ; and a Sanskrit distich must either be condensed into one heroic couplet or expanded to rill two.

For the first two Rooks I translate from Schlegel's edition, and from the Bombay edition for the remaining portion of the poem.

The notes, necessarily brief and simple. I owe chiefly to Schlegel and Gorresio : I have also borrowed freely from Wilson, Lassen, Muir, Max Miiller, Goldstucker, and Professor Monier Williams, English readers will, I trust, remember that 1 write partly for Indians, and Indians that the notes which they may think superfluous are necessary to enable Europeans to understand the poem.

There are many archaisms in the original, and I have not entirely excluded them from my translation. My verses. 1 know, are frequently rough, prosaic, and dull, but I believe that any elaborate polish or the studied use of more modern poetical phraseology would only impair still further their likeness to the simple distichs of Valmiki.

Judged by a European standard there is but little true poetry in the first Book of the Ramayan, and much of the aroma of that little has probably evaporated in the process of translation. Still, though fully aware of its many shortcomings, and only trusting that longer study, greater practice, and the lessons of intelligent criticism may make each succeeding volume less imperfect. I submit this first volume to the public with some confidence, as I am fully persuaded that the work when completed will supply a want which has long been felt in India if not in England.

I beg to offer my sincere thanks to the Governments of Bengal, the Punjab, Bombay, Mysore, the Central Provinces, and Oudh, for the liberal aid which, at the recommendation of the several Directors of Public Instruction, they have given to my undertaking ; and more especially am 1 bound to render my best thanks to the very distinguished oriental scholar at the head of the Government of the North- Western Provinces those Provinces in which Valmiki composed his immortal poem, and in which this first metrical translation of it has been begun and will, I hope, be completed.

found to be usually the form adopted, with occasional exceptions. The following, are examples:

asididam tamobhutamaprajnatamalakshanam

apratarkyamavijneyam prasuptamivasarvvatah

1 This universe had become darkness, undiscerned, uncharacterised, indescribable, incomprehensible, as if everywhere in a deep sleep.' Manu.

. r. j. ~. - ~ || . | f. ~ - | - . ||

ma nishada pratishtham twamagarnah sasvati samah,

yat kraunchamithunadekarnabadhih kamamohitam

' Never, barbarian, mayest thou acquire fame for endless years, since thou hast slain one of these birds, heedless through passion.' Ramayana. Tradition affirms of this that it is the first &loka or auushtup verse ever composed.'

WILSON'S Sanskrit Grammar, p. 436.