This monarch (Dasaratha), a descendant of the moon, was sixty thousand years old when the story begins. Although his reign had already extended over a period of nine thousand years,—during which his people had enjoyed such prosperity that it is known as the Age of Gold,—the king, still childless in spite of having seven hundred and fifty concubines, decided to offer a great horse sacrifice (asvatmedha) in hopes of obtaining a son, to celebrate his funeral rites and thereby enable him to enter heaven.
In order to perform the ceremony properly, a horse had to be turned out to wander at will for a year, constantly watched by a band of priests, who prevented any one laying a hand upon him, for, once touched, the animal was unfit to be offered up to the gods. This horse sacrifice having been duly performed, the happy rajah was informed by the gods that four sons would uphold his line, provided he and three of his wives quaffed the magic drink they gave him.
Having thus granted the rajah's prayer, the lesser gods implored their chief Indra to rid them of the demons sent by Ravana, the Satan of the Hindus. This evil spirit, by standing on his head in the midst of five fires ten thousand years in succession, had secured from Brahma a promise that no god, demon, or genius should slay him. By this extraordinary feat he had also obtained nine extra heads with a full complement of eyes, ears, and noses, hands and arms. Mindful of his promise, Brahma was at a loss to grant this request until he remembered he had never guaranteed Ravana should not be attacked by man or monkey. He, therefore, decided to beg Vishnu to enter the body of a man and conquer this terrible foe, while the lesser gods helped him in the guise of monkeys.
"One only way I find
To slay this fiend of evil mind.
He prayed me once his life to guard
From demon, god, and heavenly bard,
And spirits of the earth and air,
And I, consenting, heard his prayer.
But the proud giant in his scorn
Recked not of man of woman born;
None else may take his life away
And only man the fiend can slay."
At Brahma's request, Vishnu not only consented to become man, but elected to enter the body of the rajah's oldest son—one of the four children obtained in answer to prayer. Meantime he charged his fellow gods diligently to beget helpers for him, so they proceeded to produce innumerable monkeys. The poem next informs us that Rama, son of the Rajah's favorite wife, being a god,—an incarnation of Vishnu,—came into the world with jewelled crown and brandishing four arms, but that, at his parents' request, he concealed these divine attributes, assumed a purely human form, and cried lustily like a babe. Two other wives of the rajah, having received lesser portions of the divine beverage, gave birth to three sons (Bharata, Lakshmana, and Satrughna), and the news that four heirs had arrived in the palace caused great rejoicings in the realm.
These four princes grew up in the most promising fashion, Rama in particular developing every virtue, and showing even in childhood marked ability as an archer. Such was his proficiency in athletic sports that a hermit besought him, at sixteen, to rid his forest of the demons which were making life miserable for him and his kin. To enable Rama to triumph over these foes, the hermit bestowed upon him divine weapons, assuring him they would never fail him.
"And armed with these, beyond a doubt,
Shall Rama put those fiends to rout."
The hermit also beguiled the weariness of their long journey to the forest by relating to Rama the story of the Ganges, the sacred stream of India. We are told that a virtuous king, being childless, betook himself to the Himalayas, where, after spending a hundred years in austerities, Brahma announced he should have one son by one of his wives and sixty thousand by the other, adding that his consorts might choose whether to bear one offspring or many. Given the first choice, the favorite wife elected to be the mother of the son destined to continue the royal race, while the other brought into the world a gourd, wherein a hermit discovered the germs of sixty thousand brave sons, all of whom, thanks to his care, grew up to perform wonders in behalf of their father and brother.
On one occasion, a horse chosen for sacrifice having been stolen, the father despatched these sixty thousand braves in quest of it, and, as they were not able to discover any traces of it on earth, bade them dig down to hell. Not only did they obey, but continued their search until they struck in turn the four elephants on whose backs the Hindus claim our earth peacefully reposes. Here the diggers disturbed the meditations of some god, who, in his anger, burned them up. The poor father, anxious to purify the ashes of his dead sons, learned he would never be able to do so until the Ganges—a river of heaven—was brought down to earth. By dint of penance and prayer, the bereaved parent induced Vishnu to permit this stream—which until then had only flowed in heaven—to descend to earth, warning the king that the river, in coming down, would destroy the world unless some means were found to stem the force of its current. Our clever rajah obviated this difficulty by persuading the god Siva to receive the cataract on the top of his head, where the sacred waters, after threading their way through his thick locks, were divided into the seven streams which feed the sacred springs of India. Thus safely brought to earth, the Ganges penetrated to hell, where it purified the ashes of the sixty thousand martyrs, and ever since then its waters have been supposed to possess miraculous powers.
For sin and stain were banished thence,
By the sweet river's influence.