A History of Sanskrit Literature

by Arthur Anthony Macdonell

Those which specially favour the cult of Çiva are the Skanda, the Çiva, the Linga, and the Bhavishya or Bhavishyat Purāṇas. The latter two contain little narrative matter, being rather ritual in character. A Bhavishyat Purāṇa is already mentioned in the Āpastamba Dharma Sūtra.

Besides these eighteen Purāṇas there is also an equal number of secondary works of the same class called Upa-purāṇas, in which the epic matter has become entirely subordinate to the ritual element.

The Rāmāyaṇa.

Though there is, as we shall see, good reason for supposing that the original part of the Rāmāyaṇa assumed shape at a time when the Mahābhārata was still in a state of flux, we have deferred describing it on account of its connection with the subsequent development of epic poetry in Sanskrit literature.

In its present form the Rāmāyaṇa consists of about 24,000 çlokas, and is divided into seven books. It has been preserved in three distinct recensions, the West Indian (A), the Bengal (B), and the Bombay (C). About one-third of the çlokas in each recension occurs in neither of the other two. The Bombay recension has in most cases preserved the oldest form of the text; for, as the other two arose in the centres of classical Sanskrit literature, where the Gauḍa and the Vaidarbha styles of composition respectively flourished, the irregularities of the epic language have been removed in them. The Rāmāyaṇa was here treated as a regular kāvya or artificial epic, a fate which the Mahābhārata escaped because it early lost its original character, and came to be regarded as a didactic work. These two later recensions must not, however, be looked upon as mere revisions of the Bombay text. The variations of all three are of such a kind that they can for the most part be accounted for only by the fluctuations of oral tradition among the professional reciters of the epic, at the time when the three recensions assumed definite shape in different parts of the country by being committed to writing. After having been thus fixed, the fate of each of these recensions was of course similar to that of any other text. They appear to go back to comparatively early times. For quotations from the Rāmāyaṇa occurring in works that belong to the eighth and ninth centuries A.D. show that a recension allied to the present C, and probably another allied to the present A, existed at that period. Moreover, Kshemendra’s poetical abstract of the epic, the Rāmāyaṇa-kathāsāra-manjarī, which follows the contents of the original step by step, proves that its author used A, and perhaps B also, in the middle of the eleventh century. Bhoja, the composer of another epitome, the Rāmāyaṇa-champū, probably used C in the same century.

The careful investigations of Professor Jacobi have shown that the Rāmāyaṇa originally consisted of five books only (ii.–vi.). The seventh is undoubtedly a later addition, for the conclusion of the sixth was evidently at one time the end of the whole poem. Again, the first book has several passages which conflict with statements in the later books. It further contains two tables of contents (in cantos i. and iii.) which were clearly made at different times; for one of them takes no notice of the first and last books, and must, therefore, have been made before these were added. What was obviously a part of the commencement of the original poem has been separated from its continuation at the opening of Book II., and now forms the beginning of the fifth canto of Book I. Some cantos have also been interpolated in the genuine books. As Professor Jacobi shows, all these additions to the original body of the epic have been for the most part so loosely attached that the junctures are easy to recognise. They are, however, pervaded by the same spirit as the older part. There is, therefore, no reason for the supposition that they are due to a Brahman revision intended to transform a poem originally meant for the warrior caste. They seem rather to owe their origin simply to the desire of professional rhapsodists to meet the demands of the popular taste. We are told in the Rāmāyaṇa itself that the poem was either recited by professional minstrels or sung to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument, being handed down orally, in the first place by Rāma’s two sons Kuça and Lava. These names are nothing more than the inventions of popular etymology meant to explain the Sanskrit word kuçīlava, “bard” or “actor.” The new parts were incorporated before the three recensions which have come down to us arose, but a considerable time must have elapsed between the composition of the original poem and that of the additions. For the tribal hero of the former has in the latter been transformed into a national hero, the moral ideal of the people; and the human hero (like Kṛishṇa in the Mahābhārata) of the five genuine books (excepting a few interpolations) has in the first and last become deified and identified with the god Vishṇu, his divine nature in these additions being always present to the minds of their authors. Here, too, Vālmīki, the composer of the Rāmāyaṇa, appears as a contemporary of Rāma, and is already regarded as a seer. A long interval of time must have been necessary for such transformations as these.

As to the place of its origin, there is good reason for believing that the Rāmāyaṇa arose in Kosala, the country ruled by the race of Ikshvāku in Ayodhyā (Oudh). For we are told in the seventh book (canto 45) that the hermitage of Vālmīki lay on the south bank of the Ganges; the poet must further have been connected with the royal house of Ayodhyā, as the banished Sītā took refuge in his hermitage, where her twin sons were born, brought up, and later learnt the epic from his lips; and lastly, the statement is made in the first book (canto 5) that the Rāmāyaṇa arose in the family of the Ikshvākus. In Ayodhyā, then, there must have been current among the court bards (sūta) a number of epic tales narrating the fortunes of the Ikshvāku hero Rāma. Such legends, we may assume, Vālmīki worked up into a single homogeneous production, which, as the earliest epic of importance conforming to the rules of poetics, justly received the name of ādi-kāvya, or “first artificial poem,” from its author’s successors. This work was then learnt by professional rhapsodists (kuçīlava) and recited by them in public as they wandered about the country.

The original part of the Rāmāyaṇa appears to have been completed at a time when the epic kernel of the Mahābhārata had not as yet assumed definite shape. For while the heroes of the latter are not mentioned in the Rāmāyaṇa, the story of Rāma is often referred to in the longer epic. Again, in a passage of Book VII. of the Mahābhārata, which cannot be regarded as a later addition, two lines are quoted as Vālmīki’s that occur unaltered in Book VI. of the Rāmāyaṇa. The poem of Vālmīki must, therefore, have been generally known as an old work before the Mahābhārata assumed a coherent form. In Book III. (cantos 277–291) of the latter epic, moreover, there is a Rāmopākhyāna or “Episode of Rāma,” which seems to be based on the Rāmāyaṇa as it contains several verses agreeing more or less with Vālmīki’s lines, and its author presupposes on the part of his audience a knowledge of the Rāmāyaṇa as represented by the Bombay recension.

A further question of importance in determining the age of the Rāmāyaṇa is its relation to Buddhistic literature. Now, the story of Rāma is found in a somewhat altered form in one of the Pāli Birth-Stories, the Daçaratha Jātaka. As this version confines itself to the first part of Rāma’s adventures, his sojourn in the forest, it might at first sight seem to be the older of the two. There is, however, at least an indication that the second part of the story, the expedition to Lankā, was also known to the author of the Jātaka; for while Vālmīki’s poem concludes with the reunion of Rāma and Sītā, the Jātaka is made to end with the marriage of the couple after the manner of fairy tales, there being at the same time traces that they were wedded all along in the original source of the legend. Moreover, a verse from the old part of the Rāmāyaṇa (vi. 128) actually occurs in a Pāli form embedded in the prose of this Jātaka.