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OCTOBER, 1877.]
BOOK NOTICES
309
BOOK NOTICES. THE RAMAYANA of TULSI Dås. Translated by F.S. such separate portion of the text is followed by a Growse, M.A., B.C.S., Fellow of the Calcutta University. Book I.-Childhood. (Allahabad: N. W. Provinces Press,
tikd or gloss, written by one Priya Dâs in the 1877.)
Sambat year 1769 (1713 A.D.), in which confusion Last year the author of this volume contributed is still worse confounded by a series of the most a specimen episode of his translation of the disjointed and inexplicit allusions to different Ramayana of Tulsi Das to the pages of this legendary events in the saint's life," Mr. Growse journal (see vol. V. pp. 213-221), with a few intro
then gives the text both of Nabha Ji's stanza and ductory remarks, and we gladly welcome this
of Priya Das's tikd--the latter in 44 slokas,-with first instalment of an excellent version of the most
translations, and Prof. H. H. Wilson's notice of popular of Hindi poems. A handsome edition of Talsi Dås, founded apparently on a prose redac. the text, we are told, was issued by the Baptist tion of the Bhakt-mdla. We quote the translation Mission Press of Calcutta many years ago, but it
of the first of these :has long been out of print, and the original is now
"For the redemption of mankind in this peronly to be read in lithograph or bâzâr type.
verse Kali Yug, Valmiki has been born again ns Though the subject is the same as that of the great
Tulsi. The verses of the Ramdyana composed in epic of Valmiki, it is, as Mr. Growse remarks, "in
s Mr. Growse remarks in the Treta Yug are a hundred crores in number: no sense a translation of the earlier work; the gen
but a single letter has redeeming power, and would eral plan and the management of the incidents are
work the salvation of one who had even commitnecessarily much the same, but there is a difference ted the murder of a Brahman. Now again as a in the touch in every detail; and the two poems blessing to the faithful has he taken birth and vary as widely as any two dramas on the same my.
published the sportive actions of the god. Intoxi. thological subject by two different Greek trage- cated with his passion for Râma's feet, he persedians. Even the coincidence of name is an accident; veres day and night in the accomplishment of his for Tulsi Das himself called his poem the Ram- vow, and has supplied as it were a boat for the charit-minas, and the shorter name, corresponding easy passage of the boundless ocean of existence. in form to the Iliad or Æneid, was only substituted
For the redemption of man in this perverse Kali by his admirers as a handier designation for a
Yug. Valmiki has been born again as Tulsi." popular favourite." Further, "in both, the first
From his own works and from tradition, Mr. book brings the narrative precisely to the same
Growse gathers that he commenced the composi. point, viz., the marriage of Rama and Sita. But
tion of his Ramdyana at Ayodhya in 1575 A.D.. with Tulsi Das it is much the longest book of the and that he studied for some time at Soron. He geven, and forms all but a third of the complete way a Kanaujiya Brahman; and in the Bhakt-Sin. work, while in the Sanskrit it is the shortest but dhu--"a modern poem of no great authority"-it is one." (Introd. pp. i. ii.) The two "agree only in said " that his father's name was Atma Râm, and the broadest' outline. The episodes so freely in- that he was born at Hastinapur. Others make troduced by both poets are for the most part Hajipur, near Chitrakat; the place of his birth. entirely dissimilar; and even in the main narra- The greater part of his life was certainly spent at tive some of the most important incidents, such as Banaras, though he also passed some years in the breaking of the bow and the contention with visits to Soron, Ayodhya, Chitrakat, Allahabad, Parasuram, are differently placed and assume a
and Brindaban. He died in the Sambat year 1680 very altered complexion." (p.iv.) OF Tulsi Das
(1624 A.D.)." Two MSS of his great work are himself little is known, but what information is said to exist in his own handwriting-one at available has been collected by Mr. Growse in his Rajapur, and the other in the temple of Sita introduction. The earliest notice of him is in the Rama which he founded at Banaras. Besides the Bhakt-mali, usually ascribed to Nabha Ji, Rimdyana he wrote at least six other poems, all "himself one of the leaders of the [Vaishnava] ! with the object of popularizing the worship of reform, which had its centre at Brindaban; but Râma. They are the Ramgitavali (used as a textthe poem as we now have it, was arowedly edited, book in the Government examinations in Hindi), if not entirely written, by one of his disciples Dohdvali, the Kalitsambandh, the Binay Patrika named Narayan Dås, who lived during the (printed for the college of Fort William in 1826). reign of Shahjahân. A single starza is all that the Pad Ramdyana, and the Chhanddvali. To these is ordinarily devoted to each personage, who is are sometimes added "the following minor works, panegyrized with reference to his most salient as to the genuineness of which there is consicharacteristics in a style that might be described derable doubt, viz. the Rám-Saldkd, the Hanunda as of unparalleled obscurity, were it not that each Bahuka, the Janaki Mangal, the Parvati Mangal,
