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Updated: June 7, 2025
Here was for nearly a whole generation a sublime spectacle the Northamptonshire shoemaker training the governing class of India in Sanskrit, Bengali, and Marathi all day, and translating the Ramayana and the Veda, and then, when the sun went down, returning to the society of "the maimed, the halt, and the blind, and many with the leprosy," to preach in several tongues the glad tidings of the Kingdom to the heathen of England as well as of India, and all with a loving tenderness and patient humility learned in the childlike school of Him who said, "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?"
The second period, to which belong the two great epic poems, the "Ramayana" and the "Mahabharata," according to the best authorities ends with the sixth or seventh century B.C. The third period embraces all the poetical and scientific works written from that time to the third or fourth century B.C., when the language, having been progressively refined, became fixed in the writings of Kalidasa, Jayadeva, and other poets.
The same evening, in Elphinstone's Theatre, there was given a special performance in honour of "the American Mission," as we are styled here. Native actors represented in Gujerati the ancient fairy drama Sita-Rama, that has been adapted from the Ramayana, the celebrated epic by Vilmiki. This drama is composed of fourteen acts and no end of tableaux, in addition to transformation scenes.
He translated the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and portions of the Cambodian lyrics into Siamese; introduced masks, with magnificence of costume and ornament; substituted theatres, or rather salas, for the temporary booth or the open plain; and elevated the matter and the style of dramatic compositions from the burlesque and buffoonery to the sentimental and majestic.
It would appear, therefore, that neither of the two Indian epics had reached their final form when they were carried by Hindu colonists to Java. That part of the Mahabharata which afterwards gave the poem its distinctive title had not yet been written, or at least added to the central myth; and the Ramayana then contained only the history of Rama.
The translation of the Ramayana, on which he and Marshman had been busy for a year, was stopped for ever; fifty years after the present writer came upon some charred sheets of the fourth volume, which had been on the press and rescued. The Circular Letter for April 1812 is printed on paper scorched at the edge.
Siwai Madhao Singh, Maharaja of Jeypore, is one of the most interesting persons in India, and he represents the one hundred and twenty-third of his family, descendants of the hero of a great Sanskrit epic called the Ramayana, while the emperor of Japan represents only the one hundred and twenty-third of his family, which is reckoned the oldest of royal blood.
Parts of the popular epic, Ramayana, are admirably rendered in this style. In front of the royal palace an immense transparent screen, mounted on great poles, is drawn across the esplanade, and behind this, at a moderate distance, great fires are lighted.
"If you consult the puranas you will find," said Ram Singh, "that this theory, though commonly received, is entirely untenable." "And if you will consult the Ramayana, and more particularly the canonical books on Buddhist discipline," cried my father, "you will find that the theory is unassailable." "But look at the Kullavagga," said our visitor earnestly.
Not that she has no faults; I daresay she has many more than I see myself. But the feeling of an indissoluble bond is there. Even so I feel for and about Hinduism with all its faults and limitations. Nothing delights me so much as the music of the GITA, or the RAMAYANA by Tulsidas. When I fancied I was taking my last breath, the GITA was my solace. Hinduism is not an exclusive religion.
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