AUGUST 2, 1872.]
249
WEBER ON THE RAMAYANA.
—With reference to this matter, I remark in passing, that the whole of this later story about Ku şa and Lava as sons of Rāma seems to me
to have been invented
merely by the bards
and minstrels, kušilava, in order to avert from themselves the odium attached to the name ku
šilava (see my Acad. Vorles. iiber Ind. Lit.
G.
and the St. Petersburg Lericon, s. v.), and to
interwoven the latest incidents in the story of Rāma, narrated for the first time in the Utta rakānda—this conjecture seems to be borne out by the fact that recently, and just in Southern India, quite a number of similar works bearing the name B a lar a may a fi a have been brought to light:
see Taylor, Catalogue of Oriental
Literatur auf der Insel Bali (see my notice of this work in the Ind. Stud. II. 133-136), the Uttarkánda, represented too as having been composed by Vālmīki, appears also among
MSS. of the College, Fort St. George (Madras 1857) I. 295, 296,299, 419, 450, 455. These are, to be sure, designated for the most part thus:—“A Brief Epitome for Schools (106 Ślokas);” but besides these, mention is also made, (p. 456), of two separate Sail grah a Rāmāyanas, a short one in seven sarg as, and a longer one of uncertain extent (the MS. is defective; it contains about fifty sargas); and similarly, (p. 169), of a prasanna-Rāmā yana in twenty-one sargas.” If we add to
the Sanskrit works translated into the K a vi
these the numerous translations of the Rāmā
language; and likewise that the Arjunavijaya, an independent Kavi poem (see ibid. p. 142),
with or without the Uttarakānda, in almost all
obtain, on the other hand, the highest possible consideration for their order.
And, as bearing upon this part of our subject I draw attention to the additional fact that, according to the account given by Friederich in his
treatise
is borrowed,
Ueber
die Sanskrit und
Kavi
so as far as its substance is
concerned, from the same work (see Uttara kánda, 21, 22). We are, however, in the mean time prohibited from drawing any chronological conclusion from this circumstance, so long as we are unable to fix exactly the time at which the work found its way into Java. The relations
of India to this island have evidently not been restricted to the circumstances of merely one
immigration, but they extend in all probability over several centuries; and consequently the
work may have passed over from the mainland at any particular date during that period. Lassen has indeed entered his protest(Ind. Alt. II. 1043ff) against Friederich's view that the earli
yana that are referred to in the Catalogue, the languages of the Dekhan, in Tamil, (p. 269, 520, 521), in Telugu, (p. 499), in Mala yalam, (p. 670), in Uriya, (p. 675), in Canar e se, both in prose and in verse, (p. 595, 597, 604, 605, 665, 666, 602
bālarāmāyana, 603,
606 Rāmāyanaprabandha), we are furnished, even from modern times,f with a sufficient num ber of analogues of the Kavi translation of the Rāmāyana, so that we are under no necessity, from the mere fact of its existence, to carry it back to any early date, as long as it cannot be shown from other sources that it really has any claim to such an antiquity.
To go beyond Bhavabh (, ti, in order to obtain testimonies
for
the existence of the
est of these relations does not go further back at
Rāmāyana, is evidently unnecessary; but yet,
all events than the year 500 A.D.; but whether his own views are so perfectly trustworthy has
considering the importance of the work with re ference to the history of literature, there is a
yet to be proved. In any case, what Friederich
certain interest in such an investigation. And
himself states regarding the K a v i translation of the Rāmāyana—see my remarks thereon in
therefore I will also exhibit here in one view, at
antiquity ought to be assigned to it: on the contrary, the conjecture which I have there
least briefly, such other laudatory notices of the Rāmāyana and such works directly assum ing its existence or based thereupon, as I find ready to my hand. As instances of the former class, I mention the notice of and panegyric
expressed, to the effect that the poem referred
upon the Rāmāyana, and indeed upon V fil
to is probably not the Rāmāyana itself, but
miki, by Raja še k h a rat who lived about the end of the tenth century, in the opening of
the place already referred to—is not brought forward with the view of making out that a high
only a B a lar a may an a, into which were
- In the Kavi-R a may a na, according to Friederich,
the contents of the first six books of the Rāmāyana are also divided into twenty-five sargas. + The translation by Kamban (with the
Uttarakanda) must
certainly date, according to, Wilson, , Maºziº Çollºtion, I.613,154, as far back as Sake 807=A.D. 885. The Cana
rese version of the Rāmāyana dates, according to Weigle (Z. d. M. G. I.I. 278) from about the 14th century, f Regarding the time at which he lived, cf. Ind. Streifen, I. §13,314. Rajasekhara lived both before Bhojadeva, who quotes him in his Sarasvatikanthabharana composed after Muñja's time; see Aufrecht, Catal. p. 209a, and before
