Canto II.
THE RAMAYAN.
CANTO II.
BRAHMA'S VISIT.
Valmiki, graceful speaker, heard,
To highest admiration stirred.
To him whose fame the tale rehearsed
He paid his mental worship first;
Then with his pupil humbly bent
Before the saint most eloquent.
Thus honoured and dismissed the seer
Departed to his heavenly sphere.
Then from his cot Valmiki hied
To Tamasa's[1] sequestered side.
Not far remote from Ganga's tide.
He stood and saw the ripples roll
Pellucid o'er a pebbly shoal.
To Bharadvaja[2] by his side
He turned in ecstasy, and cried:
'See, pupil dear, this lovely sight,
The smooth- floored shallow, pure and bright
With not a speck or shade to mar,
And clear as good men's bosoms are.
Here on the brink thy pitcher lay,
And bring my zone of bark, I pray.
Here will I bathe : the rill has not,
To lave the limbs, a fairer spot.
Do quickly as I bid, nor waste
The precious time ; away, and haste.'
Obedient to his master's hest
Quick from the cot he brought the vest;
The hermit took it from his hand,
And tightened round his waist the band ;
Then duly dipped and bathed him there,
And muttered low his secret prayer.
To spirits and to Gods he made
Libation of the stream, and strayed
Viewing the forest deep and wide
That spread its shade on every side.
Close by the bank he saw a pair
Of curlews sporting fearless there.
Hut suddenly with evil mind
An outcast fowler stole behind,
And, with an aim. too sure and true,
The male bird near the hermit slew.
The wretched hen in wild despair
With fluttering pinions beat the air,
And shrieked a long and bitter cry
When low on earth she saw him lie,
Her loved companion, quivering, dead,
His dear wings with his lifeblood red ;
And for her golden crested mate
She mourned, and was disconsolate.
The hermit saw the slaughtered bird,
And all his heart with ruth was stirred.
The fowler's impious deed distressed
His gentle sympathetic breast,
And while the curlew's sad cries rang
Within his ears, the hermit sang :
- No fame be thine for endless time,
Because, base outcast, of thy crime,
Whose cruel hand was fain to slay
One of this gentle pair at play ! '
E'en as he spoke his bosom wrought
And laboured with the wondering thought
What was the speech his ready tongue
Had uttered when his heart was wrung.
He pondered long upon the speech,
Recalled the words and measured each,
And thus exclaimed the saintly guide
To Bharadvaja by his side:
- With equal lines of even feet,
With rhythm and time and tone complete,
The measured form of words I spoke
In shock of grief be termed a sloke.' 1
And Bharadvaja, nothing slow
His faithful love and zeal to show,
Answered those words of wisdom, ' Be
The name, my lord, as pleases thee.'
As rules prescribe the hermit took
Some lustral water from the brook.
But still on this his constant thought
Kept brooding, as his home he sought ;
While Bharadvaja paced behind,
A pupil sage of lowly mind,
And in his hand a pitcher bore
With pure fresh water brimming o'er.
Soon as they reached their calm retreat
The holy hermit took his seat ;
!iis mind from worldly cares recalled,
And mused in deepest thought enthralled.
Then glorious Brahma, 2 Lord Most High,
Creator of the earth and sky,
1 The poet plays upon the similarity in sound of the two words : soha, means ^rief, sloka, the heroic measure in which he poem is composed. It need scarcely je said that the derivation is fanciful.
z Brahma, the Creator, is usually regarded as the first person of the divine triad of ndia. The four heads with which he is epresented are supposed to have allusion o the four corners of the earth which he s sometimes considered to personify. As
an object of adoration Brahma has been
- ↑ There are several rivers in India of this name, now corrupted into Tonse. The river here spoken of is that which falls
into the Ganges a little below Allahabad. - ↑ 'In Book II,, Canto LIV., we meet with a saint of this name presiding over a convent of disciples in his hermitage at the confluence of the Ganges and the Jumna. Thence the later author of these
introductory cantos has borrowed the name and person, inconsistently indeed, but with the intention of enhancing the dignity of the poet by ascribing to him so celebrated a disciple.' SCHLEGEL,
