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The Rāmāyaṇa Version of Dhanesvara Suri
179
(11) ADDITIONS :
He has added the story of Anaranya and the image of Pārsvanātha with a view to glorifying the power and grace of the Pārsvanātha's image and the Satrunjaya mountain. (111) MODIFICATIONS :
Kaikeyi asks, here, for the banishment of Rāma and Laksmana for fourteen years, and the poet calls her 'Kütapetă. The Pc. tells us that Räma volunteers to go into exile and that Kaikeys, who is faced with the danger of losing both husband and son, asks for kingdom for Bharata in order to hold him back from taking Diksā. The poet tells us of the fight between Valin and Ravana and of the latter's humiliation at the hands of the former. In the Pc. Valin in order to avoid blood-shed becomes a monk, and consequently there is no such fight between the two heroes. In introducing these modifications the poet is obviously influenced by Vālmiki's Ramayana. Then Dhanešvara makes a departure when he says that the Vanaras did not interrupt Râvaņa in his acquisition of Bahurüpā Vidya. There are a few unimportant changes such as the following: Aparäjita (of the Pc.) is called here Kausalyā (after Valmiki's), Bhānukarņa (of the Pc. where the popular name Kumbhakarņa also is sometimes met with) is named as Kumbhakarna (of course after Válmiki). (iv) OMISSIONS :
Dhaneśvara has effected so many omissions. A number of Upākhyānas (such as that of madhu or of Valikhilya or of Kapila) and the lives of Tirthankaras etc., discourses on Jain ethics, philosophy and metaphysics, and narration of the past lives of principal characters and descriptions of nature - all these are omitted by Dhanesvara, his object being to give an abridged edition of the Paüma-Cariya, although he does not specifically state so.
We know that an abridged edition by its very nature is bound to be imperfect. But in abridging a work care must be taken to see that the essentials of the story are not impaired. Here we find that the characters of Kaikeyi and Ravana are more in consonance with Valmiki's conception of those characters than with Vimala's who ennobles them. The inexorable law of Karman plays a very conspicuous role in Vimala's work but Dhanesvara has, while abridging the story, almost ignored it. When the great epic, like Valmiki's Ramayana was before him we expect a better performance from Dhanesvara. His desire that the work should enjoy continued popularity, though natural, seems rather extravagant. 24
24.
This is the impression one would form by reading the 9th Canto only. A study of the complete text may lead us to revise this impression.
