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280
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[DECEMBER, 1912.
with the taste of the new times and making it more easily understood and appreciated by the illiterate masses, the fact is that Tulasi Dâsa continually tries his best to keep clear of any imitation and to establish his own independence and originality. And he generally succeeds in this effort, so that in this respect he appears as the author of a new and original work, not of a rifacimento, and every one must acknowledge that however much Valmiki has been his source, Valmiki has not in the least been his model.
No doubt a great part of the appearance of originality, which, makes the Ramacharitamanasa look so different from the Ramayana, is due to the different religious principles with which it is wholly infused and to the different genius of the language in which it is clothed. I do not mean by this to refer to the general impressions one may derive from reading the poem. I have already pronounced myself in favor of a positive criterion for solving any question of dependence of one work upon another, and accordingly I avoid general impressions here also and confine myself to the comparison of parallel passages of the two poems. It is such a comparison, carried on patiently for the entire length of Rama's life, that has led me to the abovementioned conclusion: viz., that it is Tulasi Dâsa's deliberate wish to keep himself as independent as possible from Valmiki's expressions and that he tries continually to represent the facts in a new light, in order to make new impressions on the minds of his hearers and readers. This conclusion is chiefly deducted from the following observations:
(1) Tulasi Dâsa, though generally bent towards summarizing and condensing, dwells, often intentionally, on particulars hastily dealt with by Valmiki, and passes over or refers to by a simple allusion particulars which Valmiki has treated at some length. As an example illustrative of the first series of cases, I quote the episode of Angada's embassy to Râvana, which is circumscribed by Valmiki within a few slokas (C, VI, 41, 59 and B, VI, 16, 60 and ff), whilst Talast Dasa enlarges it enormously (R. C. M., VI, 17-35). The second series of cases is sufficiently illustrated by all those Vâlmikian episodes, which Tulasi Dâsa omits or mentions by a hurried and obscure allusion, and these have been already dealt with in the antecedent
pages;
(2) Talasi Dasa makes a constant endeavour not to reproduce Vâlmiki's similes and in parallel passages always replaces them by new ones, mostly of his own making;
(3) Tulasi Dâsa generally disdains to utilize words, appellatives or epithets used by Valmiki in parallel passages and substitutes synonyms for them.12
In spite of his continual efforts to keep clear of any imitation of Valmiki's art, Tulasi Das: nevertheless falls at times inadvertently into the very traps he wishes to avoid, and reproduces some turn of expression from the Ramayana in the very words used by Valmiki, or appropriates to himself some of his predecessor's similes. However scanty may be the number of these Valmikian reminiscences interspersed within the Ramacharitamánasa, and however difficult
11 His aversion to dwell upon particulars well known or largely and magisterially described by others is openly avowed by Talas! Dåss himself in more than one passage. For example, after having rapidly related Sati's suicide, he says: yaha itihasa sakala jaga jana ta tem maim samchhepa bakkand (This story all the world knows, therefore I have described it briefly) (R. C. M., I, 85, 4). A similar remark may be seen after the allusion to Kartikeya's birth and deeds (R. C. M., I, 103, 9-10). Tulasi Dâsa's tendency to give his descriptions a different length from Valmiki's had been already noticed by Growse: "In other passages, where the story follows the same lines, whatever Valmiki has condensed-as for example the description of the marriage festivities-Tulas! Dåsa has expanded; and wherever the elder poet has lingered longest, his successor as hastened on most rapidly" (Introduction to his Translation, page iv).
12 Though a good many of such substitutions by synonyms may be explained as prosodial necessities, yet t cannot be so in all cases. A few instances illustrative of the different cases are: Brahma-datta for Svayambhudatta (see parallel passage No. 79), sahodara for sodarya (see parallel passage No. 77), påvaka-sara for astram agnsyam (see parallel passage No. 7), Chandram& for Niçahara (R. C. M., IV, 29), Meghanada for Indrajit, eto.
