Thus far we have a moon fairy; but we find the moon designated at other times in the Râmâyaṇam by its common masculine name. The guardian of the forest of honey, Dadhimukhas, in which forest, with its honey, the heroes who accompany Sîtâ enjoy themselves, is said to be generated by the god Lunus.[180] And the moon, who assists Hanumant in his search of Sîtâ, is said to shine like a white bull with a sharpened horn, with a full horn;[181] in which we come back to the moon as a horned animal, and to the cornucopia. Moreover, we find the same lunar horn again in the city of Çṛiñgaveram, where first the solar hero Râmas, and afterwards his brother Bharatas, are hospitably received when the sun is darkened,[182] by Guhas, king of the black Wishâdâs, who also is of the colour of a black cloud;[183] and Râmas and Bharatas take their departure in the morning from Guhas, who is said to wander always in the forests.[184] Now, this Guhas, who, though always hidden, yet wishes to entertain the solar hero during the night with presents of the town of Çṛiñgaveram, appears to me to be just another form of the solar hero himself, who enters and hides himself in the night, hospitably received in the lunar habitation, another form of the god Indras, whom we have seen in the Ṛigvedas united during the night to Indus or Somas—that is, to the moon—and who, in the Râmâyaṇam[185], when Sîtâ is in the power of the monster, comes down during the night to console her, lulls her keepers to sleep, and nourishes her with the ambrosial milk (with Soma, the moon, the same moon which, in the Ṛigvedas, the dawn, the girl beloved of Indras, and whom therefore he does good to, brings him as a present), encouraging her with the prospect of the near advent of Râmas, the deliverer.
But it remains to us to adduce clearer evidence to show that in the Râmâyaṇam Râmas is the sun, and Sîtâ the dawn, or aurora.
Without taking into account that Râmas is the most popular personification of Vishṇus, and that Vishṇus is often the solar hero (although he is not seldom identified with the moon), let us see how Râmas manifests himself, and what he does in the Râmâyaṇam to vindicate especially his solar nature.
It is my opinion that the best way to prove this is to show how Râmas performs the very same miracles that Indras does. Râmas, like Indras, gives, while still young, extraordinary proofs of his strength; Râmas, like Indras, achieves his greatest enterprises while he is himself hidden; Râmas, like Indras, vanquishes the monster, reconquers Sîtâ, and enjoys of right the company of his wife. Till Râmas goes into the forests, as Indras into the clouds and shadows, his great epopee does not begin. Indras has for assistants the winds (the Marutas); Râmas has for his greatest help Hanumant, the son of the wind (Mârutâtmagah);[186] Hanumant amuses himself with the monsters, as the wind with the archer-clouds of the thousand-eyed Indras;[187] and it is said that Râmas gets on Hanumant's back, as Indras does on the elephant Âiravatas. The elephant with a proboscis is not unfrequently substituted, in the brâhmanic tradition, for the horned bull of the Vedâs.[188] But the bull Indras is reproduced in the bull Râmas, and the monkeys who assist Râmas have kept at least the tail of the Vedic cows, the helpers of Indras, whence their generic name of golâñgulâs (who have cows' tails).[189] The bow with which Râmas shoots the monsters is made of a horn, whence his name of Çârngadhanvant (he who shoots with the horn);[190] Râmas receives the shower of hostile darts, as a bull upon its horns the abundant rains of autumn.[191] Sîtâ herself calls both her Râmas and his brother Lakshmaṇas by the name of siṇharshabhâu,[192] or the lion and the bull, which are conjoined so frequently in the mythology, on account of equal strength; hence the terror of the lion when he hears the bull bellow in the first book of the Pańćatantram, and in all the numerous Eastern and Western variations of that book. Indras has his conflicts in the cloudy, rainy, and gloomy sky; these are also the battle-fields of Râmas. The names of the monsters of the Râmâyaṇam, as, for instance, Vidyuǵǵivas (he who lives upon thunderbolts), Vaǵrodarî (she who has thunderbolts in her stomach), Indraǵit (who vanquishes Indras with magical arts), Meghanâdas (thundering cloud),[193] and others, show us the nature of the battle. In the battle-field of Râmas, instead, the assisting hero is now a bull (ṛishabhas), now an ox's eye (gavâkshas), now gavayas (bos gavœus), and beings of similar appellations, which remind us of the Vedic deities. Indras strikes with lightning the celestial ocean; Râmas, an Indian Xerxes, chastises the sea with burning arrows.[194] Indras, in the Ṛigvedas, crosses the sea and passes ninety-nine rivers; Râmas crosses the ocean upon a bridge of mountains, in carrying which Hanumant, the son of the wind, shows himself peculiarly skilful; the winds carry the clouds, which we have seen, in the language of the Vedâs, represented as mountains. And that clouds, and not real mountains, are here spoken of, we deduce from observing, as we read, that while the animal army of Râmas carries the bridge on to the ocean, or the winds carry the clouds into the sky, the sun cannot burn the weary monkey-workers, because that clouds arise and cover it, rain falls, and the wind expires.[195] The field of this epic battle is evidently the same as that of the mythical battle of Indras. And in the Râmâyaṇam we find at every step the similarity of the combatants to the dark clouds, the bellowing clouds, the clouds carried by the wind. The forest which Râmas goes through is compared to a group of clouds.[196] The name of wanderer by night (raǵanîćaras), afterwards given frequently in the Râmâyaṇam, to the monster whom Râmas combats, implies, of course, that the battle is fought by night. The fact that, as we read, the witch Çûrpaṇakhâ comes in winter to seduce Râmas whilst he is in the forest,[197] and the monster Kumbhakarṇas awakens after six months' sleep, like a rainy cloud which increases towards the end of summer (tapânte),[198] shows us that the epic poem of Râmas embraces, besides the nightly battle of the sun over darkness, also the great annual battle of the sun in winter to recover and rejoin the spring. Anyhow, it is always a battle of the sun against the monster of darkness. Râmas, in the very beginning of the great poem, says to his brother Lakshmaṇas:—"See, O Lakshmaṇas, Mârićas is come here with his followers, making a noise like thunder, and with him the wanderer by night Subâhus; thou wilt see them to-day, like a mass of dark clouds, dispersed by me in a moment, like clouds by the wind."[199] Here we find almost the whole battle of Indras.
And similar battles in the clouds are found in several other episodes of the Râmâyaṇam. The dart of Râmas falls upon the monster Kharas (the monster ass), as upon a great tree falls the thunderbolt hurled by Indras.[200] Heroes and monsters combat with stones and rocks from the great mountain, and fall, overthrown on the earth, like mountains. The monster Râvaṇas carries off Sîtâ with the magic of the wind and the tempest.[201] Heroes and monsters fight with trunks of trees from the great forest; moreover, the trunks themselves, having become monsters, join the fray, stretch out their strange arms, and devour the hero in their cavities. And here we come upon the interesting legend of Kabandhas, in which we find again the forests and trees combating, and the barrel of the Vedâs carried by the divine bull. The Dânavâs or demons also appear, in the Mahâbhâratam,[202] in the forms of sounding barrels. In the Râmâyaṇam, the highest of the demons (dânavottamah) is called by the name of Kabandhas (barrel and trunk), compared to a black thundering cloud, and represented as an enormous trunk, having one large yellowish eye, and an enormous devouring mouth in his chest.[203] In Tuscany, we say of water that gushes copiously out of a reservoir, that it pours as from a barrel's mouth. The monster Kabandhas draws towards himself, with his long arms, the two brothers Râmas and Lakshmaṇas (compared several times in the Râmâyaṇam[204] to the two Açvinâu, who resemble each other in everything). Râmas and Lakshmaṇas, i.e., the two Açvinâu, the morning and evening, the spring and autumn suns, the two twilights, who, in a passage of the Râmâyaṇam, are called the two ears of Râmas, cut off the two extremities, the two long arms, of the monster Kabandhas; upon which the trunk, able no longer to support itself, falls to the ground. The fallen monster then relates to the two brothers that he was once a beautiful demon; but that, by a malediction, Indras one day made his head and legs enter his body; his arms having been lacerated by the two brothers, the monster is disenchanted from this malediction, and having resumed his form of a splendid demon, he ascends to heaven in a luminous form. Here we have the all-radiant sun shut up in the cloud, he being the yellow eye, the burning mouth, of Kabandhas, and, in union with the cloud, forming a hideous monster; the hero comes to destroy his monstrous form, and the monster thanks him, for thus he becomes the glorious god, the splendid being, the handsome prince he was before. Râmas who delivers Kabandhas from his monstrous form by cutting off his two arms, is the sun Râmas coming forth from the gloomy forest, and uncovering the sky in the east and in the west. Râmas delivering Kabandhas is simply the sun delivering himself from the monster of gloom and cloud that envelops him. And, indeed, the greater part of the myths have their origin in the plurality of appellations given to the same phenomenon. Each appellation grows into a distinct personality, and the various personalities fight with each other. Hence the hero who delivers himself becomes the deliverer of the hero, viewed as a different person from the hero; the monstrous form which envelops the hero is often his own malediction; the hero who comes to kill this monstrous form is his benefactor.[205]
This theory of the monster who thanks the hero that kills him, agrees with what we find on several other occasions in the Râmâyaṇam, as in the case of the stag Marîćas,[206] which, after being killed by Râmas, re-ascends to heaven in a luminous form; of the sea-monster, which Hanumant destroys, and restores to its primitive form, that of a celestial nymph; of the old Çavarî, who, after having seen Râmas, sacrifices herself in the fire, and re-ascends young and beautiful to heaven (the usual Vedic young girl, the dawn whom, ugly during the night, Indras, by taking off her ugly skin, restores to beauty in the morning); an episodical variation of what afterwards happens to Sîtâ herself, who, having been ugly when in the power of the monster Râvaṇas, recovers her beauty by the sacrifice of fire, in order to prove her innocence to her husband Râmas, and shines again a young girl, like the young sun, adorned with burning gold, and wearing a red dress;[207] and when Râmas comes near (like the young dawn, when she sees her husband), she resembles the first light (Prabhâ), the wife of the sun.[208] This Sîtâ, daughter of Ǵanakas (the generator), whom the Tâittiriya Brâhmaṇam calls Savitar[209] or the sun, seems to me to be no other than the dawn, the daughter of light, the daughter of Indras, the god of the Vedic texts. These, indeed, sometimes represent Sûryâ, the daughter of the sun, as the lover of the moon (who is then masculine); but we find more frequently the loves of the dawn and the sun, of the beautiful heroine and the splendid solar hero, while the moon is generally the brother, or the pitying sister of the hero and the heroine, the beneficent old man, the foreseeing fairy, the good hostess, who aids them in their enterprises; although we also find the dawn as a sister of the sun and his succourer. In fact, the Buddhist tradition of the legend of Râmas, illustrated by Weber,[210] represents Sîtâ to us as the sister of the two brothers Râmas and Lakshmaṇas, who go into banishment for twelve years to escape the persecutions of their cruel step-mother (of whom the Kâikeyî of the Râmâyaṇam offers a confused image), in the same way as the Vedic dawn is united to the twin Açvinâu; and the same tradition makes Râmas, at the termination of his exile, end with marrying his own sister Sîtâ, as the sun marries the dawn. And the fact of Sîtâ being not born from the womb, but produced from the ground, a girl of heavenly beauty, destined to be the reward of valour,[211] not only does not exclude her relationship with the dawn, but confirms it; for we have seen the dawn rise from the mountain, as the daughter of light and the sun, whom the young sun wins for his bride, as a reward for his wonderful skill as an archer against the monsters of darkness; and we have seen that the dawn marries only her predestined husband, and her predestined husband is he who performs the greatest miracles, restores her lost gaiety, and most resembles her. We have just seen the old Çavarî and the ugly Sîtâ, at the sight of the sun Râmas, deliver themselves in the fire from every mortal danger, and become beautiful and happy once more.
But the concord between the mythical husband and wife is not more steadfast than that of mortal couples. Râmas is very apt to be suspicious. Having returned to his kingdom of Ayodhyâ, he allows himself to brood upon what his subjects may say of him for having taken back his wife, after she had been in the hands of the monster (they were not present at the first fire-sacrifice of Sîtâ); Râmas reveals his suspicions to Sîtâ, and blames the evil-speaking of the citizens for originating them; she submits a second time to the trial by fire, but, offended by his continual suspicions, she flees from her husband, and on a car of light, drawn by serpents (Pannagâs), goes down again underground (which appears to mean simply this—the dawn, or spring, marries the sun in the morning, or she stays all day, or all summer, in his kingdom, and in the evening, or in the autumn, goes down into the shades of night, or of winter).[212] It is an indiscretion of the husband which causes his wife to abandon him.
Thus, in the Ṛigvedas, we have seen Urvaçî, the first of the dawns, flee from the sun Purûravas. In Somadevas,[213] the king Purûravas loses his wife Urvaçî, because he has let it be known in heaven that she was with him; in Kâlidâsas's drama of Vikramorvaçî, the king Purûravas, having helped Indras in the fight, receives from him Urvaçî to wife, with whom he engages to stay till a child is born to them; the king, shortly after having espoused Urvaçî, looks at another nymph, Udakavatî (the watery). Urvaçî, offended, flees; she enters a wood to hide herself, and is transformed into a creeper. In the brâhmanic tradition of the Yaġurvedas, referred to at length by Professor Max Müller, in his "Oxford Essays," Purûravas loses sight of Urvaçî, because he has let himself be seen by her without his regal dress, or even naked.
We find yet another similar legend in the Mahâbhâratam.[214] The wise and splendid Çântanus goes to the chase on the banks of the Gañgâ, and there finds a beautiful nymph whom he becomes enamoured of. The nymph responds to his suit, and consents to remain with him, on condition that he will never say anything displeasing to her, whatever she may do or meditate; and the enamoured king assents to the grave condition. They live together happily, for the king yields to the nymph in everything; but in the course of time, eight sons are born to them; the nymph has already thrown seven into the river, and the king, although inwardly full of grief, dares not say anything to her; but when she is about to throw the last one in, the king implores her not to do it, and challenges her to say who she is. The nymph then confesses to him that she is the Gañgâ itself personified, and that the eight sons born to their loves are human personifications of the eight divine Vasavas, who, by being thrown into the Gañgâ, are liberated from the curse of the human form: the only Vasus who is pleased to remain among men is Dyâus (the sky), in the form of the eunuch Bhîshmas, whom Çântanus would not allow to be thrown into the waters. The same curse falls upon the Vasavas for having ravished the cow of abundance from the penitent Apavas. We shall find a legendary subject analogous to this one of Çântanus in several of the popular tales of Europe, with this difference that, in European tradition, it is generally the husband who abandons his indiscreet partner. The Hindoo tradition, however, also offers us an example of the husband who abandons his wife, in the wise Ǵaratkarus, who marries the sister of the king of the serpents, on condition that she never does anything to displease him.[215] One day the wise man sleeps; evening comes on; he ought to be awakened in order to say his evening prayers; if he does not say them, he does not do his duty, and she would do wrong did she not warn him. If she awaken him, he will be enraged. What is to be done? She takes the latter course. The wise man awakes, becomes enraged, and abandons her, after she had given him a son.[216]
The glowing aspect of the sky, morning and evening, suggested the idea, now of a splendid nuptial feast, now of a fire. In this fire, sometimes the witch who persecutes the hero and heroine is burnt, and sometimes the hero and heroine themselves are immolated. The sacrifice of Çavarî and of Sîtâ, who are delivered by the sun Râmas, is only a variation of that of Çunaḥçepas, liberated by the dawn in the Ṛigvedas. The story of Çunaḥçepas has already been made known by Professor Rodolph Roth,[217] and by Professor Max Müller,[218] who translated it from the Âitareya-brâhmaṇam; and I refer the reader to these translations, as well as to the English version which Professor Martin Haugh has given us of all the Âitareya. I shall, therefore, here give but a short account of it, with a few observations apropos to the subject in hand.