248
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
any great degree exceeding the difficulties which we have already encountered, namely, variations in the different recensions,
the the
notices in the scholia regarding interpola tions, and the contradictions and repetitions within individual texts. These quotations in Bhavabhūti, in fact, furnish rather a most va luable guarantee that the Rāmāyana, taking it as a whole, really existed at that time in essentially the same form as that in which we at present possess it.—And indeed this further conclusion may be drawn from what we find
ſ
[August 2, 1872.
Wheeler) Sità is obliged to adduce this further proof of her innocence, that in answer to her prayer the ground opens, the earth-goddess ascends out of the
down with
her into
chasm, and takes Sità
the Rasätala.:
And
then, further, the first meeting of Ráma with his two sons, which in the Uttarakönda, C.
1ff. Raghurans'a, XV. 63 ff. (and Adhyātma rámáyana) follows only upon their chant ing, at Rama’s sacrifice, of the Rāmāyana which Vālmiki had taught them, is much more poetically introduced in Bhavabhūti, namely, by
in the Uttararámacharita, that at that time
Lava's defeating of the army sent out for the
the stories also which are contained
protection of the sacrificial horse ; Ś the prowess of the son proves his legitimacy, and confirms
in
the
Uttarakānda were already thoroughly esta blished, in so far at least as they refer to the repudiation of Sità by Rāma after his return, to the birth of her two sons, Kuša and Lava, in
the hermitage of Vālmiki, to the latter's edu cating of the two boys in an acquaintance with the Rāmāyana which he had himself com posed, and to the re-uniting of Rāma and Sità.” The same remark holds good for the Raghuvaſışa But in the telling of these stories Bhavabhāti deviates in some degree from the version of them given in the Uttarakānda (as also from that of the Raghuvaſsa). He cannot find it in his heart, for instance, immediately to separate again the newly re-united pair, but leaves them in their state of restored union;t while in the Uttarakánda, CIV. 11; Raghuvansa, XV. 82, (and in the Adhyátmarándyana, according to
- Neither the Rāmāyana itself, the Râmopākhyāna,
the notices in the third, seventh, and twelfth books of the Mahābhārata, nor those in the Harivaāsa (ride supra p. ) make any mention of these incidents; on the other hand, they are all unanimous in relating that Rāma, after his return,
d as ā 's' v a m e d'h an ājahre j ñ r a thy an sa
nirargalān (Ramopſikhyana, Mahābhārata XII. 952. Hari as we find it in ºi or,2332
- —ājahāra . .
ii.
vans'a, bhūridakshinān an amplified form in Mhibh.
| nirargalam sajārūthyam asvamedhas'atam vibhuh. f Just as in the recension of the Rāmāyana followed by Wheeler (p. 403), and in the Jaimini Bhārata, xxxvi. 87. t Very different therefore both from our version of her “wishing to sink into the earth with shame,” and from the versions of the Buddhists. For in a Buddhist legend (Fausböll, Dhammapada, p. 340), the earth opens, the flames of Aviehi (the hell under the earth) burst forth, and the slanderess sinks down into them : and in Rogers (p. 158)
several other instances are given of falsehood being simi larly punished. Compare also Fausböll, l.c. p. 418, Wilson, Select Works, I. 69, and Bigantlet, Life of Gaudama (1856), p. 231, according to which Suprabuddha, the father-in-law of Buddha, seven days after he had calumniated the latter, sank down through the earth into hell, as a punishment for his offence.
A similar fate befell
pevadatta,
Fausböll,
l. c. p. 148, Bigandet, p. 252. According to Bigandet, p. 83, it was a universal custom among the Buddhists to call upon the Earth as a witness “of the good works they have done
Whether these the innocence of his mother. variations in Bhavabhūti are to be credited to
himself, or whether the responsibility of making them rests on some other recension| of the Uttarakánda less precise and possibly more wanting in reverence for the poet of the Rāmā yana, must in the meantime be left an open question.
The
circumstance that the version
given by Wheeler, equally with that in the Jaimini-Bhārata, harmonises in part with that of Bhavabhūti, certainly tells against the theory that these variations owe their origin to the latter; but yet it wants the force of direct evidence, inasmuch as both of these versions
may really bear a later date than his, a supposi tion which is in fact decidedly favoured by the
exaggerations which they exhibit (vide infran.S) Our “wishing to sink into the earth with shame" occurs in Sakuntalá, LXXII. 7, ed. Böhtlingk, where Sakun
talá, repudiated by the king, cries out in her despair :— bhaavadi vasuhe | dehi me vivaram
dhare 1).
(bhaavadi vasun
dehi me antaram, ed. Premachandra, p. 109,
So also in Bhavabhūti's Maharíracharita p. 54, where
Jāmadagnya (Parasurāma), after being defeated by Rāma, cries out :-bhagavati vasundhare prasida randhradānena § This idea is still more fully developed in the Jaimini Bhārata (Chap. 30–36); and the recension of the
º
402) also agrees with Rāmāyana followed by Wheeler this version of the story. In the Jaimini Bhārata, Ku s'a is victorious over his three uncles and even over R film a
himself, after Lava has been taken prisoner by Satru ghna : the story is somewhat differently told in Wheeler. | From the Sãhityadarpana Ś 304 (p. 136; see also p. 233) it appears that the rules of rhetoric not only permitted the dramatic poets, but even required them both to omit anything objectionable in the traditional legends which they made use of, and to select such variations in the stories as good taste might seem to demand. Thus we are told that Rāma's slaying of Vāli by means of a stratagem, in the Rāmāyana, is not mentioned at all in the drama Uditta Rāghava; and that in the Sugriva-Viracharita the incident is modified to this extent that Vāli goes forth to kill Rāma, and then is killed by Rāma. This last re
ference is probably to Bhavabhāti's Mahāríracharita (p. 76
or are about doing ;” and this custom is said to have arisen from the circumstance that Buddha himself, in his contest
82, Wilson, Hindu Theatre, II. 330, 331) which among other deviations from the version given in the Rāmāyana,
.
tºº tione
Māra, appealed to the Earth to bear witness in his
aVOur.
as a matter of fact, also the one here men
