________________
FEBRUARY, 1894.)
BOOK-NOTICE.
53
ance. I begin, more Hibernico, with the end. regarding the later origin of passages like the There are a number of useful indexes which can Episode of Visvamitra, and the R&vaņeïs of the only be mentioned, and a valuable concordance of 7th book. Internal evidence is, however, more the Bombay and Bengal recensions of the poem. valuable, and much can be learned from inconsisThis is preceded by an analysis of the poemtencies or contradictions in the test itself. By according to the former recension, with a special these tests Prof. Jacobi is able to shew that index of its own, which must, in future, be a passages, such as the episode of the burning of handbook indispensable to every student of the Lanka by Hanumat, the description of the four text. Hitherto our vademecum has been Sir M. quarters of the world put into Sugriva's mouth Monier-Williams' little work, bat Prof. Jacobi's in the fourth book, portion of the discussion as index at once places a new instrument in our to whether Vibhishana should be killed as a spy, hands. Certainly, this analysis is the most prac. and other important passages in the sixth book, tically useful portion of the book, and would well and, finally nearly the whole of the first book do deserve separate publication. It is immediately not form portions of the poem as originally compreceded by the main part of the work,--the text, posed. By an ingenious process of reasoning he if I may use the expression, to which all the rest is enabled to give what, in his opinion, was the forins an appendix.
original introduction of the poem, consisting of This text is divided into three parts, dealing,
only of some sixteen slókas. respectively, with the general question of the
The third and most interesting part of the recensions of the poem, the various additions and
work deals with the place of the Ramayana in interpolations which have increased the bulk of
Indian Literature. The author's theory of the the original text, and the place of the Ramdyana
growth of the poem is clearly put, and, though in in Indian literature.
one important point I am unable to agree with him, Dr. Jacobi commences by describing the three his general conclusions demand complete assent. well-known recensions of the Ramayana, the He first wipes away the theory of a tendentiöse Bombay or Commentators' (C), the Bengal Umarbeitung, a deliberate re-casting of the whole (Gorresio's) (B), and the newly discovered poemr to suit the theories of the Brahmans. The West-Indian (A). The Ramdyana, as he points growth of the poem was eminently natural. It out, must originally, and for many generations, was from the first the property of singers, rhaphave been sung by bards before it was first sodists, kulslavas, who wandered from village to reduced to writing, and this fact fully accounts village and court to court, reciting and singing for the discrepancies between the different recen- the national epic. These men had, like all of sions, which are nearly all just those which would their class, little reverence for the text of their result from slips of memory, e. g., passages poem, and lengthened out this touching episode, omitted or repeated, or alterations in the order of added that, inserted didactic passages, or comic the lines. Amongst the three recensions, however, or burlesque scenes, as they found their hearers O bears marks of being the nearest represent- appreciate them. This is what occurs down to the ative of the text as originally composed, present day with the modern successors of these but all are, necessarily, of a considerable kubilavas, who wander through Northern India, antiquity. The author illustrates his arguments singing the folk-epics which are now popular. by the episode of the parting of Hanumat and These additions soon became integral parts of Sit& in Lanka (which is repeated no less than the poem, and were handed down from father to three times in different places in C and A, and son and from one bard to another, each generatwice in B), and by a comparison of the texts tion making its own contributions and alterations of the various quotations from the Rámdyana to suit the tastes of its audience. At length the in the works of later Sanskrit authors.
Ramdyana so enlarged was fixed into & corpus, That the text, as we now find it in all the and what shape it then took may be gathered recensions, contains many later additions, bas
from the table of contents in the first canto of long been admitted, -amongst these, the chief the first book, in which the subjects described in being the first and last kandas. The original poem
the first and seventh books are not mentioned. certainly commenced with the second and ended Then came the later additions of these two with the sixth. Prof. Jacobi in the second part books, and the insertion of the second table of of his book endeavours to formulate some test contents in the third canto which refers to them. for distinguishing these added portions. The In all this there is no editing or retouching. The tests of metre, peculiarities of phraseology, and older parts are not manipulated to agree with the grammatical irregularities give us little assistance newer ones. There are nothing but additions, and only confirm judgments already arrived at land often these additions are so clumsily made
