{"collection":"Hinduism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/hin/rama/ry370.htm","path":"hin/rama/ry370.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/hin/rama/ry370.htm","text":"The V\u00e1nar watched concealed: each word\n Of S\u00edt\u00e1 and the fiends he heard,\n \n \n And in a maze of anxious thought\n His quick-conceiving bosom wrought.\n 'At length my watchful eyes have seen,\n Pursued so long, the Maithil queen,\n Sought by our V\u00e1nar hosts in vain\n From east to west, from main to main,\n A cautious spy have I explored\n The palace of the R\u00e1khshas lord,\n And thoroughly learned, concealed from sight,\n The giant monarch's power and might.\n And now my task must be to cheer\n The royal dame who sorrows here.\n For if I go, and sooth her not,\n A captive in this distant spot,\n She, when she finds no comfort nigh,\n Will sink beneath her woes and die.\n How shall my tale, if unconsoled\n I leave her. be to R\u00e1ma told?\n How shall I answer Raghu's son,\n 'No message from my darling, none!'\n The husband's wrath, to fury fanned,\n Will scorch me lifeless where I stand,\n Or if I urge my lord the king\n To Lank\u00e1's isle his hosts to bring,\n In vain will be his zeal, in vain\n The toil, the danger, and the pain.\n Yea, this occasion must I seize\n That from her guard the lady frees, \u00a01b\n To win her ear with soft address\n And whisper hope in dire distress.\n Shall I, a puny V\u00e1nar, choose\n The Sanskrit men delight to use?\n If. as a man of Br\u00e1hman kind,\n I speak the tongue by rules refined.\n The lady, yielding to her fears,\n Will think 'tis R\u00e1van's voice she hears.\n I must assume my only plan--\n The language of a common \u00a02b man.\n Yet, if the lidy sees me nigh,\n \n \n second passage, may perhaps be understood\n not a language in which words different\n from Sanskrit were used, but the employment\n of formal and elaborate diction,\n MUIR'S Sanskrit Texts, Part II. p. 166.}\n \n \n In terror she will start and cry;\n And all the demon band, alarmed,\n Will come with various weapons armed.\n With their wild shouts the grove will fill.\n And strive to take me, or to kill.\n And, at my death or capture, dies\n The hope of R\u00e1ma's enterprise.\n For none can leap, save only me,\n A hundred leagues across the sea.\n It is a sin in me, I own,\n To talk with Janak's child alone.\n Yet greater is the sin if I\n Be silent, and the lady die.\n First I will utter R\u00e1ma's name.\n And laud the hero's gifts and fame.\n Perchance the name she holds so dear\n Will soothe the faithful lady's fear.'\n \n \n \n \n411:1 In the south is the region of Yama the God of Death, the place of departed spirits.\n411:2 Kumbhakarna was one of R\u00e1van's brothers.\n411:3 I omit the 28th and 29th Cantos as an unmistakeable interpolation. Instead of advancing the story it goes back to Canto XVII. containing a lamentation of S\u00edt\u00e1 after R\u00e1van has left her, and describes the the auspicious signs sent to cheer her, the throbbing of her left eye, arm, and side. The Canto is found in the Bengal recension. Gorresio translates it. and observes: \"I think that Chapter XXVIII.--The Auspicious Signs--is an addition, a later interpolation by the Rhapsodists. It has no bond of connexion either with what precedes or follows it, and may be struck out not only without injury to, but positively to the advantage of the poem. The metre in which this chapter is written differs from that which is generally adopted in the course of the poem.'\n411:1b The guards are still in the grove, but they are asleep; and S\u00edt\u00e1 has crept to a tree at some distance from them.\n411:2b \"As the reason assigned in these passages for not addressing S\u00edt\u00e1 in Sanskrit such as a Br\u00e1hman would use is not that she would not understand it, but that it would alarm her and be unsuitable to the speaker, we must take them as indicating that Sanskrit, if not spoken by women of the upper classes at the time when the R\u00e1m\u00e1yana was written (whenever that may have been), was at least understood by them, and was commonly spoken by men of the priestly class, and other educated persons, By the Sanskrit proper to p. 412 an [ordinary","title":"BOOK V: Canto XXX.: Hanum\u00e1n's Deliberation.","type":"page"}