The Rámáyan of Válmíki, translated into English verse

“Válmíki was the son of Varuṇa, the regent of the waters, one of whose names is Prachetas. According to the Adhyátmá Rámáyaṇa, the sage, although a Bráhman by birth, associated with foresters and robbers. Attacking on one occasion the seven Rishis, they expostulated with him successfully, and taught him the mantra of Ráma reversed, or Mará, Mará, in the inaudible repetition of which he remained immovable for thousands of years, so that when the sages returned to the same spot they found him still there, converted into a valmík or ant-hill, by the nests of the termites, whence his name of Válmíki.”

Wilson. Specimens of the Hindu Theatre, Vol. I. p. 313.

“Válmíki is said to have lived a solitary life in the woods: he is called both a muni and a rishi. The former word properly signifies an anchorite or hermit; the latter has reference chiefly to wisdom. The two words are frequently used promiscuously, and may both be rendered by the Latin vates in its earliest meaning of seer: Válmíki was both poet and seer, as he is said to have sung the exploits of Ráma by the aid of divining insight rather than of knowledge naturally acquired.”Schlegel.

Trikálajǹa. Literally knower of the three times. Both Schlegel and Gorresio quote Homer's.

Ὅς ἤδη τ' ἐόντα, τά τ' ἐσσόμενα,

πρό τ' ἐόντα.

“That sacred seer, whose comprehensive view,

The past, the present, and the future knew.”

The Bombay edition reads trilokajǹa, who knows the three worlds (earth, air and heaven.) “It is by tapas (austere fervour) that rishis of subdued souls, subsisting on roots, fruits and air, obtain a vision of the three worlds with all things moving and stationary.” Manu, XI. 236.

“Veda means originally knowing or knowledge, and this name is given by the Bráhmans not to one work, but to the whole body of their most ancient sacred literature. Veda is the same word which appears in the Greek οίδα, I know, and in the English wise, wisdom, to wit. The name of Veda is commonly given to four collections of hymns, which are respectively known by the names of Rig-veda, Yajur-veda, Sáma-veda, and Atharva-veda.”

“As the language of the Veda, the Sanskrit, is the most ancient type of the English of the present day, (Sanskrit and English are but varieties of one and the same language,) so its thoughts and feelings contain in reality the first roots and germs of that intellectual growth which by an unbroken chain connects our own generation with the ancestors of the Aryan race,—with those very people who at the rising and setting of the sun listened with trembling hearts to the songs of the Veda, that told them of bright powers above, and of a life to come after the sun of their own lives had set in the clouds of the evening. These men were the true ancestors of our race, and the Veda is the oldest book we have in which to study the first beginnings of our language, and of all that is embodied in language. We are by nature Aryan, Indo-European, not Semitic: our spiritual kith and kin are to be found in India, Persia, Greece, Italy, Germany: not in Mesopotamia, Egypt, or Palestine.”

Chips from a German Workshop, Vol. I. pp. 8. 4.

“Chandra, or the Moon, is fabled to have been married to the twenty-seven daughters of the patriarch Daksha, or Aśviní and the rest, who are in fact personifications of the Lunar Asterisms. His favourite amongst them was Rohiṇí to whom he so wholly devoted himself as to neglect the rest. They complained to their father, and Daksha repeatedly interposed, till, finding his remonstrances vain, he denounced a curse upon his son-in-law, in consequence of which he remained childless and became affected by consumption. The wives of Chandra having interceded in his behalf with their father, Daksha modified an imprecation which he could not recall, and pronounced that the decay should be periodical only, not permanent, and that it should alternate with periods of recovery. Hence the successive wane and increase of the Moon. Padma, Puráṇa, Swarga-Khaṇḍa, Sec. II. Rohiṇí in Astronomy is the fourth lunar mansion, containing five stars, the principal of which is Aldebaran.”Wilson, Specimens of the Hindu Theatre. Vol. I. p. 234.

The Bengal recension has a different reading:

“Shone with her husband like the light

Attendant on the Lord of Night.”

Brahmá, the Creator, is usually regarded as the first God of the Indian Trinity, although, as Kálidása says:

“Of Brahmá, Vishṇu, Śiva, each may be

First, second, third, amid the blessed Three.”

Brahmá had guaranteed Rávaṇ's life against all enemies except man.

“I congratulate myself,” says Schlegel in the preface to his, alas, unfinished edition of the Rámáyan, “that, by the favour of the Supreme Deity, I have been allowed to begin so great a work; I glory and make my boast that I too after so many ages have helped to confirm that ancient oracle declared to Válmíki by the Father of Gods and men:

Dum stabunt montes, campis dum flumina current,

Usque tuum toto carmen celebrabitur orbe.”

A legislator and saint, the son of Brahmá or a personification of Brahmá himself, the creator of the world, and progenitor of mankind. Derived from the root man to think, the word means originally man, the thinker, and is found in this sense in the Rig-veda.

Manu as a legislator is identified with the Cretan Minos, as progenitor of mankind with the German Mannus: “Celebrant carminibus antiquis, quod unum apud illos memoriæ et annalium genus est, Tuisconem deum terra editum, et filium Mannum, originem gentis conditoresque.” Tacitus, Germania, Cap. II.

The Sanskrit word Sindhu is in the singular the name of the river Indus, in the plural of the people and territories on its banks. The name appears as Hidku in the cuneiform inscription of Darius' son of Hystaspes, in which the nations tributary to that king are enumerated.

The Hebrew form is Hodda (Esther, I. 1.). In Zend it appears as Hendu in a somewhat wider sense. With the Persians later the signification of Hind seems to have co-extended with their increasing acquaintance with the country. The weak Ionic dialect omitted the Persian h, and we find in Hecatæus and Herodotus Ἴνδος and ἡ Ἰνδική. In this form the Romans received the names and transmitted them to us. The Arabian geographers in their ignorance that Hind and Sind are two forms of the same word have made of them two brothers and traced their decent from Noah. See Lassen's Indische Alterthumskunde Vol. I. pp. 2, 3.

A minute account of these ancient ceremonies would be out of place here. “Ágnishṭoma is the name of a sacrifice, or rather a series of offerings to fire for five days. It is the first and principal part of the Jyotishṭoma, one of the great sacrifices in which especially the juice of the Soma plant is offered for the purpose of obtaining Swarga or heaven.” Goldstücker's Dictionary. “The Ágnishṭoma is Agni. It is called so because they (the gods) praised him with this Stoma. They called it so to hide the proper meaning of the word: for the gods like to hide the proper meaning of words.”

“On account of four classes of gods having praised Agni with four Stomas, the whole was called Chatushṭoma (containing four Stomas).”

“It (the Ágnishṭoma) is called Jyotishṭoma, for they praised Agni when he had risen up (to the sky) in the shape of a light (jyotis).”

“This (Ágnishṭoma) is a sacrificial performance which has no beginning and no end.”Haug'sAitareya Bráhmaṇam.

The Atirátra, literally lasting through the night, is a division of the service of the Jyotishṭoma.

The Abhijit, the everywhere victorious, is the name of a sub-division of the great sacrifice of the Gavámanaya.

The Viśvajit, or the all-conquering, is a similar sub-division.

Áyus is the name of a service forming a division of the Abhiplava sacrifice.

The Aptoryám, is the seventh or last part of the Jyotishṭoma, for the performance of which it is not essentially necessary, but a voluntary sacrifice instituted for the attainment of a specific desire. The literal meaning of the word would be in conformity with the Prauḍhamanoramá, “a sacrifice which procures the attainment of the desired object.” Goldstücker's Dictionary.

“The Ukthya is a slight modification of the Ágnishṭoma sacrifice. The noun to be supplied to it is kratu. It is a Soma sacrifice also, and one of the seven Saṇsthas or component parts of the Jyotishṭoma. Its name indicates its nature. For Ukthya means ‘what refers to the Uktha,’ which is an older name for Shástra, i.e. recitation of one of the Hotri priests at the time of the Soma libations. Thus this sacrifice is only a kind of supplement to the Ágnishṭoma.”Haug. Ai. B.

To walk round an object keeping the right side towards it is a mark of great respect. The Sanskrit word for the observance is pradakshiṇá, from pra pro, and daksha right, Greek δεξίος, Latin dexter, Gaelic deas-il. A similar ceremony is observed by the Gaels.

“In the meantime she traced around him, with wavering steps, the propitiation, which some have thought has been derived from the Druidical mythology. It consists, as is well known, in the person who makes the deasil walking three times round the person who is the object of the ceremony, taking care to move according to the course of the sun.”

Scott. The Two Drovers.