Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)/Rámáyana

RÁMÁYANA, the name of one of the two great epic poems of ancient India (the other, see Mahabharata). Its subject matter is the history of Ráma, and its reputed author is Valmiki, who is said to have taught his poem to the two sons of Ráma. But though this latter account is open to doubt, it seems certain that Valmiki was a real personage, and, moreover, that the Rámáyana was the work of one single poet—not, like the Mahábhárata, the creation of various epochs and different minds. As a poetical composition the Rámáyana is therefore far superior to the Mahábhárata; and it may be called the best great poem of ancient India. Whereas the character of the Mahábhárata is cyclopædic, its main subject matter overgrown by episodes of the most diversified nature, the Rámáyana has but one object in view, the history of Ráma. Its episodes are rare, and restricted to the early portion of the work, and its poetical diction betrays throughout the same finish and the same poetical genius. Whether we apply as the test the aspect of the religious life, or the geographical and other knowledge displayed in the two works, the Rámáyana appears the older. It is the chief source whence our information of the Ráma incarnation of Vishnu is derived. The Rámáyana contains professedly 24,000 epic verses, or "Slokas," in seven books—some 48,000 lines of 16 syllables. The text which has come down to us exhibits, in different sets of manuscripts, such considerable discrepancies that there are practically two recensions. The one is more concise in its diction and has less tendency than the other to that kind of descriptive enlargement of facts and sentiments which characterizes the later poetry of India; it often also exhibits grammatical forms and peculiarities of an archaic stamp, where the other studiously avoids that which must have appeared to its editors in the light of grammatical difficulty. There can be little doubt that the former is the older and more genuine text.