Page:Works of Tagore from the Modern Review, 1909-24 Segment 1.pdf/124

Rh Ramayan is the epic of that household. The Ramayan has thrown this domestic life into adversity and imparted a peculiar glory to it by placing it amidst the sufferings of exile in the forest. The rude shock of the conspiracy of Kaikeyi and Mantharā shatters the royal house of Ayodhydá, but still, in spite of it, the Ramayan proclaims the invincible firmness of domestic life. It is not physical prowess, it is not lust of conquest, it is not political greatness, but the peace-imbrued domestic life that the Ramayan has seated on the throne of heroic strength, after giving it the coronation-bath of tender tears.

A foreign critic has said that the characters described in the Ramayan are supernatural. My reply is, it is a question of temperament; what appears supernatural to the people of a certain character, appears as quite natural to a race of a different character. India has never detected any supernatural exaggeration in the Ramayan. A thousand years have proved that in no part has the story of the Ramayan ever appeared hyperbolical to India. This story has not only given instruction to all ages and all ranks of India, it has given them delight; they have not only placed it on their heads (in reverence), but have also enshrined it in their hearts; it is not merely a scripture to them, it is their romance.

It would never have been possible for Ram to be at once human and divine to us, it would never have been possible for the Ramayan to win our reverence and delight at the same time,—if the poetry of this epic had been to India a thing of a far-off realm of fancy, and not something included within the bounds of our society.

If a foreign critic, judging by the standard of the epics of his land, calls such a poem unnatural,—it only makes a peculiarity of India's genius the clearer by contrast with that of his country. In the Ramayan India has got what she craves for. In the Ramayan's simple anushtup rhythm the heart of India has been beating for thousands of years.

Reader, look not upon Valmiki's life of Ram as a mere poet's creation; know it as INDIA'S Ramayan; for then only will you be able to understand India truly through the Ramayan, and that epic truly through India. Remember that India wanted to hear not a historical tale of (national) achievement, but the ideal character of the full man, and this she has been hearing (in the epic) with ceaseless delight even to our day.

India has a passionate craving for. She has never despised or doubted it as beyond objective reality. She has admitted it as truth indeed, and in it only has she found delight. By inspiring and gratifying this thirst for fulness, the author of the