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No self-respecting nineteenth century infant would have credited the account of his travels which he gave us on his return. But we were different, and had had no opportunity of learning to determine the line between the possible and the impossible. Our Mahabharata and Ramayana gave us no clue to it. Nor had we then any children's illustrated books to guide us in the way a child should go.
Relate if thou canst. Bhima replied, 'He is even my brother, excellent with every perfection, and endued with intelligence and strength both of mind and body. And he is the illustrious chief of monkeys, renowned in the Ramayana. And for Rama's queen, that king of the monkeys even with one leap crossed the ocean extending over a hundred yojanas. That mighty one is my brother.
The programme, including the procession, provided for the representation of a sort of drama, borrowed partly from the Ramayana, and partly from the ancient observances of the kings of Cambodia. The whole royal establishment was set in motion. About nine thousand young women, among them the most beautiful of the concubines, were cast for parts in the mammoth play.
There have been, with us, too great ups and downs of civilization; too little continuity. We might have grown to it by now, had that medieval pralaya been a quiet and natural thing, instead of what it was: a smash-up total and orgy of brutalities come as punishment for our sins done in the prime of manvantara. A word or two as to the Ramayana.
Such great expressions of emotional theism as the Râmâyana of Tulsi Das are likely to find sympathetic readers in Europe, but the most original feature of Indian thought is that, as already mentioned, it produces systems which can hardly be refused the name of religion and yet are hardly theistic.
The Hindu language is founded on the Sanskrit, of which we may name the books of the Vedas, 1500 B.C. All the poetical works of Asia, China and Japan are taken almost entirely from the Hindu, while in Southern Russia the meagre literature of the Kalmucks is borrowed entirely from the same source. The Ramayana, or great Hindu poem, must have had its origin in the history-to-be of Christ.
For forty years Badauní lived at court in company with Shaikh Mubárik and his sons Faizí and Abulfazl, but there was no real friendship between them, as Badauní, an orthodox Musalmán, always regarded them as heretics. Under instructions from Akbar he translated the Rámáyana from its original Sanscrit into Persian, as well as part of the Máhábhárata.
To this last may be added a story in the Kathá Manjari, a Canarese collection, of the stupid fellow and the Rámáyana, one of the two great Hindú epics: One day a man was reading the Rámáyana in the bazaar, and a woman, thinking her husband might be instructed by hearing it, sent him there.
In nature its work is that of a servant who has to make his appearance at appointed times, but in the heart of man it comes like a messenger from the King. In the Ramayana, when Sita, forcibly separated from her husband, was bewailing her evil fate in Ravana's golden palace, she was met by a messenger who brought with him a ring of her beloved Ramachandra himself.
Dialogue is occasionally introduced, the favorite subjects being passages from the Hindoo Avatars, the epic "Ramayana," and the "Mahabharata"; or from legends, peculiar to Siam, of gods, heroes, and demons. Throughout their literature, mythology is the all-pervading element; history, science, arts, customs, conversation, opinion, doctrine, are alike colored and flavored with it.
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