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RamacharitamanasaTulsi's great poem, popularly called Tulsi-krita Ramayana, but named by its author Ramacharitamanasa, the Lake of Rama's deeds, is perhaps better known among Hindus in upper India than the Bible among the rustic population in England. Its verses are everywhere, in this region, popular proverbs; an apt quotation from them by a stranger has an immediate effect in producing interest and confidence in the hearers. As with the Bible and Shakespeare, his phrases have passed into the common speech, and are used by every one (even in Urdu) without being conscious of their origin. Not only are his sayings proverbial: his doctrine actually forms the most powerful religious influence in present-day Hinduism; and, though he founded no school and was never known as a guru or master, but professed himself the humble follower of his teacher, Narhari-Das, from whom as a boy in Sukar-khet he heard the tale of Rama's doings, he is everywhere accepted as an inspired and authoritative guide in religion and conduct of life. Narhari-Das was the sixth in spiritual descent from Ramananda, the founder of popular Vaishnavism in northern India. The poem is a rehandling of the great theme of Valmiki, but is in no sense a translation of the Sanskrit epic. The succession of events is of course generally the same, but the treatment is entirely different. The episodes introduced in the course of the story are for the most part dissimilar. Wherever Valmiki has condensed, Tulsidas has expanded, and wherever the elder poet has lingered longest, there his successor has hastened on most rapidly. It consists of seven books, of which the first two, entitled Childhood and Ayodhya, make up more than half the work. The second book is that most admired. The tale tells of King Dasaratha's court, the birth and boyhood of Rama and his brethren, his marriage with Sita, daughter of Janaka king of Mithila, his voluntary exile, the result of Kaikeyi's guile and Dasaratha's rash vow, the dwelling together of Rama and Sita in the great central Indian forest, her abduction by Ravana, the expedition to Lanka and the overthrow of the ravisher, and the life at Ayodhya after the return of the reunited pair. It is written in pure Baiswari or Eastern Hindi, in stanzas called chaupais, broken by 'dohas' or couplets, with an occasional sortha and chhand the latter a hurrying metre of many rhymes and alliterations. Dr. Grierson well describes its movement: As a work of art, it has for European readers prolixities and episodes which grate against occidental tastes, but no one can read it in the original without being impressed by it as the work of a great genius. Its style varies with each subject. There is the deep pathos of the scene in which is described Rama's farewell to his mother; the rugged language depicting the horrors of the battlefield a torrent of harsh sounds clashing against each other and reverberating from phrase to phrase; and, as occasion requires, a sententious, aphoristic method of narrative, teeming with similes drawn from nature herself, and not from the traditions of the schools. His characters, too, live and move with all the dignity of an heroic age. Each is a real being, with a well-defined personality. Rama, perhaps too perfect to enlist all our sympathies; his impetuous and loving brother Lakshmana; the tender, constant Bharata; Sita, the ideal of an Indian wife and mother; Ravana, destined to failure, and fighting with all his demon force against his destiny, the Satan of the epic. All these are characters as lifelike and distinct as any in occidental literature.
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