{"collection":"Hinduism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/hin/rama/ry280.htm","path":"hin/rama/ry280.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/hin/rama/ry280.htm","text":"With joy that sprang from hope restored\n To R\u00e1ma spake the V\u00e1nar lord:\n 'I know, by wise Han\u00fam\u00e1n taught,\n Why thou the lonely wood hast sought,\n Where with thy brother Lakshman thou\n Hast sojourned, bound by hermit vow;\n Have heard how Sit\u00e1, Janak's child,\n Was stolen in the pathless wild,\n How by a roving R\u00e1kshas she\n Weeping was reft from him and thee;\n How, bent on death, the giant slew\n The vulture king, her guardian true,\n And gave thy widowed breast to know\n A solitary moaner's woe.\n But soon, dear Prince, thy heart shall be\n From every trace of sorrow free;\n \n \n For I thy darling will restore,\n Lost like the prize of holy lore.\u00a01\n Yea, though in heaven the lady dwell,\n Or prisoned in the depths of hell,\n My friendly care her way shall track\n And bring thy ransomed darling back.\n Let this my promise soothe thy care,\n Nor doubt the words I truly swear.\n Saints, fiends, and dwellers of the skies\n Shall find thy wife a bitter prize,\n Like the rash child who rues too late\n Thy treacherous lure of poisoned cate.\n No longer, Prince, thy loss deplore:\n Thy darling wife will I restore.\n 'Twas she I saw: my heart infers\n That shrinking form was doubtless hers.\n Which gaint R\u00e1van', fierce and dread,\n Bore swiftly through the clouds o'erhead\n Still writhing in his strict embrace\n Like helpless queen oft serpent race,\u00a02\n And from her lips that sad voice came\n Shrieking thine own and Lakshman's name.\n High on a hill she saw me stand\n With comrades twain on either hand.\n Her outer robe to earth she threw,\n And with it sent her anklets too.\n We saw the glittering tokens fall,\n We found them there and kept them all.\n These will I bring: perchance thine eyes\n The treasured spoils will recognize.'\n \u00a0\u00a0 He ceased: then Raghu's son replied\n To the glad tale, and eager cried:\n 'Bring them with all thy speed: delay\n No more, dear friend, but haste away.'\n \u00a0\u00a0 Thus R\u00e1ma spoke. Sugr\u00edva hied\n Within the mountain's caverned side.\n Impelled by love that stirred each thought\n The precious tokens quickly brought,\n \n \n And said to Raghu's son, Behold\n This garment and these rings of gold,\n In R\u00e1ma's hand with friendly haste\n The jewels and the robe he placed.\n Then, like the moon by mist assailed,\n The tear-dimmed eyes of R\u00e1ma failed;\n That burst of woe unmanned his frame,\n Woe sprung from passion for his dame.\n And with his manly strength o'erthrown,\n He fell and cried, Ah me! mine own!\n Again, again close to his breast\n The ornaments and robe he pressed.\n While the quick pants that shook his frame\n As from a furious serpent came.\n On his dear brother standing nigh\n He turned at length his piteous eye;\n And, while his tears increasing ran,\n In bitter wail he thus began:\n 'Look, brother, and behold once more\n The ornaments and robe she wore,\n Dropped while the giant bore away\n In cruel arras his struggling prey,\n Dropped in some quiet spot, I ween,\n Where the young grass was soft and green;\n For still untouched by spot or stain\n Their former beauty all retain.'\n \u00a0\u00a0 He spoke with many a tear and sigh,\n And thus his brother made reply:\n 'The bracelets thou hast fondly shown,\n And earrings, are to me unknown,\n But by long service taught I greet\n The anklets of her honoured feet.'\u00a01b\n \u00a0\u00a0 Then to Sugr\u00edva R\u00e1ma, best\n Of Raghu's sons, these words addressed:\n \u00a0\u00a0 'Say to what quarter of the sky\n The cruel fiend was seen to fly.\n Bearing afar my captured wife,\n My darling dearer tban my life.\n Speak, V\u00e1nar King, that I may know\n Where dwells the cause of all my woe;\n The fiend for whose transgression all\n The giants by this hand shall fall.\n He who the Maithil lady stole\n And kindled fury in my soul,\n Has sought his fate in senseless pride\n And opened Death's dark portal wide.\n Then toll me, V\u00e1nar lord, I pray,\n \u00a0\u00a0 The dwelling of my foe.\n And he, beneath this hand, to-day\n \u00a0\u00a0 To Yama's halls shall go.'\n \n \n329:1b B\u00e1li the king de facto.\n329:2b With the Indian, as with the ancient Greeks, the throbbing of the right eye in a man is an auspicious sign, the throbbing of the left eye is the opposite. In a woman the * of signs are reversed.\nOn the alliance between R\u00e1ma and the monkeys see ADDITIONAL NOTES.\n330:1 The Vedas stolen by the demons Madhu and Kait'abha.\n\"The text has (Sanskrit text) which signifies literally \"the lost vedic tradition.\" It seems that allusion is here made to the Vedas submerged in the depth of the sea, but promptly recovered by Vishn'u in one of his incarnation, as the brahmanic legend relates, with which the ordhodoxy of the Br\u00e1hmans intended perhaps to allude to the prompt restoration and uninterrupted continuity of the ancient vedic tradition.\"\nGORRESIO.\n330:2 Like the wife of a N\u00e1ga or Serpent- God carried off by an eagle. The enmity between the King of birds and the serpent is of very frequent occurrence. It seems to be a modification of the strife between the Vedic Indra and the Ahi, the serpent or drought-fiend; between Apoll\u00f3n, and the Python, Adam and the Serpent.\n330:1b He means that he has never ventured to raise his eyes to her arms and face, though he has ever been her devoted servant.","title":"BOOK IV: Canto VI.: The Tokens.","type":"page"}