[42] At this point the great epic of Valmiki properly ends; but a supplementary work, also popularly attributed to Valmiki, exists which affords further details of the lives of the principal personages of the poem. Upon the particulars supplied in this work the succeeding paragraphs are based.
[43] Professor E. B. Cowell (“Academy,” No. 43). In Bhavabhuti’s drama, entitled “Uttara Rama Charitra,” the dénouement is different. Sita’s purity is attested by the goddess Ganga (the Ganges) and by Prithivi (the earth). The people bow in respectful homage to her. Rama welcomes her back, and with her two sons, Kusa and Lava, they pass many happy years together.
[44] Muir, “Sanskrit Texts,” part iv., appendix.
[45] The “Ramayana” of Tulsi Das, which differs in some respects from the original poem of Valmiki, has been translated into English by Mr. F. J. Growse of the Bengal Civil Service.
[46] Ravana is described as having ten heads; but the effigy I saw had several faces, I do not think so many as ten, with the head of an ass surmounting all.
[47] Properly the figure should have had twenty arms.
[48] Bishop Heber was told that, in the good old times, the poor children were always “poisoned in the sweetmeats given to them the last day of the show, that it might be said their spirits were absorbed into the deities whom they had represented.”—Heber’s “Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India” (1824-25), p. 191.
[49] Vide “On the Ramayana,” by Dr. Albrecht Weber (Trübner and Co., 1863).
[50] “Indian Epic Poetry,” p. 3 (Williams and Norgate, London, 1863).
[51] “Early History of Northern India,” by J. F. Hewitt, “Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,” 1890, p. 744.