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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[AUGUST, 1875.
their allegiance to the Brahmanical gods. Further, I cannot find that I have identified Rama with Balar & ma, the mythical founder of agriculture; “it is very obvious to trace a connection between R & ma and the agricultural demigod Rama Halabh sit" are my words, and in the note I refer also to the Raman Hudátra of the Avesta. Finally, I am surprised to learn that in my opinion "the victory of the second Råma over his elder namesake is to be considered as an echo of an acquaintance with the Homeric poems," whereas in fact Parasurama (that " elder namesake") is nowhere even mentioned in my whole treatise. (Lassen no doubt has confounded the bow of Janaka, and what I say about its bending and breaking, with the bow of Jámadagnya.) Now, what regards the objections themselves, first I am glad to see that Lassen coincides with me in regarding the Buddhistio narration of Rama as "the now existing oldest form" of the Rama- legend; but on the other hand I am quite at a loss how to combine with this acknowledgment his notion that this narrative is only a misconception
hat this narrative 18 only a misconception or distortion of the Brahmanical original. The very circumstance which he mentions in support of this, namely, that in the Dasaratha-jdtaka it is the sister, not the wife of R&ma who accompanies him in his exile,-no doubt because she too is afraid of the queen her stepmother,--and further that she, the sister, becomes the wife of her brother after their return from the exile, appears to me to attest the great antiquity of this form of the legend. For it is only in the Vedic age (compare Fier STT aparaq Rik. X. 3, 3; and Åmbik & as sister of Rudra) and earlier, in the Aryan period, that we find traces of intermarriage between brothers and sisters (the hymn in Rik. X. 10 seems to be composed just in order to put a stop to it!). The Buddhist legend on the origin of the Sakys family has one instance more of the kind. That the Ramdyana contains no direct allusions to the Buddhists is just one of the points which I myself have brought forward as militating against Talboys Wheeler's theory.-With regard to the next consideration of Lassen's, about the wars between the Brahmanical kings of Southern India and the Buddhists of Ceylon, and to his remark that an attack on the part of the Buddhists could only proceed from the side of Ceylon, I confess my inability to understand their pertinency to the points in question; moreover I beg to draw attention to the fact that the Mahavanso mentions repeated invasions in Ceylon from India dating in B.C. 257, 207, and 103 (pp. 127, 128, 203, Tarnour's translation). Further, as I have not "identified" Rama with Balarama, it is of no conseqnence that the Brahmans always accurately distinguish between the two, nor have I regarded the second
Râma directly " as a divine personification of agriculture;" what I maintain is simply that in the old legends, from which Válmiki drew, "the reign of Râma was a golden age, and that cultivation and agriculture were then vigorously flourishing." The whole character of Rama is certainly not so much that of a warrior-though he appears in the Ramayana also in this capacity-as that of a righteous, mild and gentle genius or king.--as it were a Buddhist ideal of a prince. Now, whether he was originally only a mythic conception of some as yet undetermined physical phenomenon, or really, as Lassen takes him to be, an historical personage, I dare not as yet decide. But when Lassen goes on to say that Sità too was originally an historical personaro who was turned into a daughter of the earth, nto a deified furrow, after Râma had been transported into the ranks of the gods, I cannot follow him at all. The goddess of the Vedic ritual, the spouse of Indra or Parjanya, or, as she appears in the Taittirfyu Brahmana, the daughter of Såvitar and courtier of the Moon, is protected by seven charms against such a dethronement.When Lassen calls it a "very paradoxical assumption" that the abduction of Sitâ and the conflict around Laika are echoes of an acquaintauce with the Homeric poems, as it imputes to the "Brahmanical poets a great poverty in creative power," I have simply to answer that in literary history we have many instances of the very first poets having taken the ideas and materials for their poems partly from other sources without any damage to their glory and to the halo of their creative power. I beg to mention only Shakespeare, Goethe, and Schiller. And when Lassen further remarks that an "echo in this case would really presuppose an acquaintance with the Homeric poems," I beg to state that I never maintained so much as that, nor do I think this presupposition anyhow necessary. There is nothing more required than what I have assumed, viz. that "some kind of knowledge of the substance of the Homeric story found its way to India," and here found a fertile soil in the mind of Valmiki, who combined some ideas from it with the old mythic or historical legends of the golden age of Rama, and created by his own poetical genius that great poem which is the wonder and the love of every Hindu. To deny to the Hindus any traces whatever of such an acquaintance with the Homeric saga cycle seems to me rather hard, after what we find in the PAli writings about Kirke and the Trojan horse; and as in the Janaka-jdtaka the rescue of a prince from shipwreck by a sea-goddess is combined with the bending of a great bow by him, and win. ning thus the hand of the Queen, I feel for my part fully convinced that here too (and conse
