{"collection":"Hinduism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/hin/rama/ry004.htm","path":"hin/rama/ry004.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/hin/rama/ry004.htm","text":"V\u00e1lm\u00edki, graceful speaker,heard,\n To highest admiration stirred.\n To him whose fame the tale rehearsed\n He paid his mental worship first;\n Then with his pupil humbly bent\n Before the saint most eloquent.\n Thus honoured and dismissed the seer\n Departed to his heavenly sphere.\n Then from his cot V\u00e1lm\u00edki hied\n To Tamas\u00e1's \u00a01 sequestered side,\n Not far remote from Gang\u00e1a's tide.\n He stood and saw the ripples roll\n Pellucid o'er a pebbly shoal.\n To Bharadv\u00e1ja \u00a02 by his side\n He turned in ecstasy, and cried:\n 'See, pupil dear, this lovely sight,\n The smooth-floored shallow, pure and bright,\n With not a speck or shade to mar,\n And clear as good men's bosoms are.\n Here on the brink thy pitcher lay,\n And bring my zone of bark, I pray.\n Here will I bathe: the rill has not,\n To lave the limbs a fairer spot.\n Do quickly as I bid, nor waste\n The precious time; away, and haste.'\n \u00a0\u00a0 Obedient to his master's best\n Quick from the cot he brought the vest;\n The hermit took it from his hand,\n And tightened round his waist the band;\n Then duly dipped and bathed him there,\n And muttered low his secret prayer.\n To spirits and to Gods he made\n Libation of the stream, and strayed\n Viewing the forest deep and wide\n That spread its shade on every side.\n Close by the bank he saw a pair\n Of curlews sporting fearless there.\n But suddenly with evil mind\n An outcast fowler stole behind,\n And, with an aim too sure and true,\n The male bird near the hermit slew.\n \n \n The wretched hen in wild despair\n With fluttering pinions beat the air,\n And shrieked a long and bitter cry\n When low on earth she saw him lie,\n Her loved companion, quivering, dead,\n His dear wings with his lifebiood red;\n And for her golden crested mate\n She mourned, and was disconsolate.\n \u00a0\u00a0 The hermit saw the slaughtered bird,\n And all his heart with ruth was stirred.\n The fowler's impious deed distressed\n His gentle sympathetic breast,\n And while the curlew's sad cries rang\n Within his ears, the hermit sang:\n 'No fame be thine for endless time,\n Because, base outcast, of thy crime,\n Whose cruel hand was fain to slay\n One of this gentle pair at play!'\n E'en as he spoke his bosom wrought\n And laboured with the wondering thought\n What was the speech his ready tongue\n Had uttered when his heart was wrung.\n He pondered long upon the speech,\n Recalled the words and measured each,\n And thus exclaimed the saintly guide\n To Bharadv\u00e1ja by his side:\n 'With equal lines of even feet,\n With rhythm and time and tone complete,\n The measured form of words I spoke\n In shock of grief be termed a s'loke.' \u00a01b\n And Bharadv\u00e1ja, nothing slow\n His faithful love and zeal to show,\n Answered those words of wisdom, 'Be\n The name, my lord, as pleases thee.'\n \u00a0\u00a0 As rules prescribe the hermit took\n Some lustral water from the brook.\n But still on this his constant thought\n Kept brooding, as his home he sought;\n While Bharadv\u00e1ja paced behind,\n A pupil sage of lowly mind,\n And in his hand a pitcher bore\n With pure fresh water brimming o'er.\n Soon as they reached their calm retreat\n The holy hermit took his seat;\n His mind from worldly cares recalled,\n And mused in deepest thought enthralled.\n \u00a0\u00a0 Then glorious Brahm\u00e1, \u00a02b Lord Most High.\n Creator of the earth and sky,\n \n \n The four-faced God, to meet the sage\n Came to V\u00e1lm\u00edki's hermitage.\n Soon as the mighty God he saw,\n Up sprang the saint in wondering awe.\n Mute, with clasped hands, his head he bent,\n And stood before him reverent.\n His honoured guest he greeted well,\n Who bade him of his welfare tell;\n Gave water for his blessed feet,\n Brought offerings,\u00a01 and prepared a seat,\n In honoured place the God Most High\n Sate down, and bade the saint sit nigh.\n There sate before V\u00e1lm\u00edki's eyes\n The Father of the earth and skies;\n But still the hermit's thoughts were bent\n On one thing only, all intent\n On that poor curlew's mournful fate\n Lamenting for her slaughtered mate;\n And still his lips, in absent mood,\n The verse that told his grief, renewed:\n 'Woe to the fowler's impious hand\n That did the deed that folly planned;\n That could to needless death devote\n The curlew of the tuneful throat!'\n \u00a0\u00a0 The heavenly Father smiled in glee,\n And said, 'O best of hermits', see,\n A verse, unconscious thou hast made;\n No longer be the task delayed.\n Seek not to trace, with labour vain,\n The unpremeditated strain.\n The tuneful lines thy lips rehearsed\n Spontaneous from thy bosom burst,\n Then come, O best of seers, relate\n The life of R\u00e1ma good and great,\n The tale that saintly N\u00e1rad told,\n In all its glorious length unfold.\n Of all the deeds his arm has done\n Upon this earth, omit not one,\n And thus the noble life record\n Of that wise, brave, and virtuous lord.\n \n \n \n His every act to day displayed,\n His secret life to none betrayed:\n How Lakshman, how the giants fought;\n With high emprise and hidden thought:\n And all that Janak's child \u00a01b befell\n Where all could see, where none could tell,\n The whole of this shall truly be\n Made known, O best of saints, to thee.\n In all thy poem, through my grace,\n No word of falsehood shall have place.\n Begin the story, aud rehearse\n The tale divine in charming verse.\n As long as in this firm-set land\n The streams shall flow, the mountains stand,\n So long throughout the world, be sure,\n The great R\u00e1m\u00e1yan shall endure.\u00a02b\n While the R\u00e1m\u00e1yan's ancient strain\n Shall glorious in the earth remain,\n To higher spheres shalt thou arise\n And dwell with me above the skies!\n \u00a0\u00a0 He spoke, and vanished into air,\n And left V\u00e1lm\u00edki wondering there.\n The pupils of the holy man,\n Moved by their love of him, began\n To chant that verse, and ever more\n They marvelled as they sang it o'er:\n 'Behold, the four-lined balanced rime,\n Repeated over many a time,\n In words that from the hermit broke\n In shock of grief, becomes a s'loke.'\n This measure now V\u00e1lm\u00edki chose\n Wherein his story to compose.\n In hundreds of such verses, sweet\n With equal lines and even feet,\n The saintly poet, lofty-souled,\n The glorious deeds of R\u00e1ma told.\n \n \n \n \n7:1 There are several rivers in India of this name, now corrupted into Tarse. The river here spoken of is that which falls into the Ganges a little below Allahabad.\n7:2 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\n7:1b The poet plays upon the similarity in sound of the two words: s'oka, means grief, s'loka, the heroic measure in which the poem is composed. It need scarcely be said that the derivation is fanciful.\n7:2b Brahm\u00e1, the Creator, is usually regarded as the first person of the divine triad of India. Tne four heads with which he is represented are supposed to have allusion to the four corners of the earth which he is sometimes considered to personify. As an object of adoration Brahm\u00e1 has been entirely superseded by S'iva and Vishnu. In the whole of India there is, I believe, but one temple dedicated to his worship. In this point the first of the Indian triad curiously resembles the last of the divine fraternity of Greece, A\u00efdes the brother of Zeus and Foseidon. 'In all Greece, says Pausanias, there is no single temple of A\u00efdes except at a single spot in Ehs. See Gladstone's Juventus Mundi, p. 253.\n8:1 The argha or arghya was a libation or offering to a deity, a Br\u00e1hman, or other venerable personage. According to one authority it consisted of water, milk, the points of K\u00fasa-grass, curds, clarified butter, rice, barley, and white mustard, according to another, of saffron, bel, unbroken grain, flowers, curds, d\u00farb\u00e1-grass, k\u00fasa-grass, and sesamum.","title":"BOOK I: Canto II: Brahm\u00e1's Visit","type":"page"}