The Ramayana-Book I - Canto XLI.: Kapil.
Sept 4, 2018 12:36:00 GMT 1
Post by Anne Terri on Sept 4, 2018 12:36:00 GMT 1
"GOD'S LIVING BIBLE ---- THE THIRD TESTAMENT ----- RESEARCH LIBRARY" ©*
THE RÁMÁYAN OF VÁLMÍKI
Translated into English Verse
BY
RALPH T. H. GRIFFITH, M. A.,
[(Ralph Thomas Hotchkin Griffith), b. 1826 d. 1906]
PRINCIPAL OF THE BENARES COLLEGE
London: Trübner & Co.
Benares: E. J. Lazarus and Co.
[1870-1874]
RAMAYANA-
BOOK I
CANTO XLI.: KAPIL.
The father lent a gracious ear
And listened to their tale of fear,
And kindly to the Gods replied
Whom woe and death had terrified;
'The wisest Vasudeva, 1b who
The Immortals' foe, fierce Madhu, slew,
Regards broad Earth with love and pride
And guards, in Kapil's form, his bride. 2b
His kindled wrath will quickly fall
On the king's sons and burn them all.
This cleaving of the earth his eye
Foresaw in ages long gone by:
He knew with prescient soul the fate
That Sagar's children should await.'
The Three-and-thirty, 3b freed from fear.
Sought their bright homes with hopeful cheer.
Still rose the great tempestuous sound
As Sagar's children pierced the ground.
When thus the whole broad earth was cleft,
And not a spot unsearched was left,
Back to their home the princes sped,
And thus unto their father said:
'We searched the earth from side to side,
While countless hosts of creatures died.
Our conquering feet in triumph trod
On snake and demon, fiend and God;
But yet we failed, with all our toil,
To find the robber and the spoil.
What can we more? If more we can,
Devise, O King, and tell thy plan.'
His chidren's speech King Sagar heard,
And answered thus, to anger stirred:
'Dig on, and ne'er your labour stay
Till through earth's depths you force your way.
Then smite the robber dead, and bring
The charger back with triumphing.'
p. 52
The sixty thousand chiefs obeyed:
Deep through the earth their way they made.
Deep as they dug and deeper yet
The immortal elephant they met,
Famed Virúpáksha 1 vast of size,
Upon whose head the broad earth lies:
The mighty beast who earth sustains
With shaggy hills and wooded plains.
When, with the changing moon, distressed,
And longing for a moment's rest,
His mighty head the monster shakes,
Earth to the bottom reels and quakes.
Around that warder strong and vast
With reverential steps they passed.
Nor, when the honour due was paid,
Their downward search through earth delayed.
But turning from the east aside
Southward again their task they plied.
There Mahápadma held his place,
The best of all his mighty race,
Like some huge hill, of monstrous girth,
Upholding on his head the earth.
When the vast beast the princes saw,
They marvelled and were tilled with awe.
The sons of high-souled Sagar round
That elephant in reverence wound.
Then in the western region they
With might unwearied cleft their way.
There saw they with astonisht eyes
Saumanas, beast of mountain size.
Round him with circling steps they went
With greetings kind and reverent.
On, on--no thought of rest or stay--
They reached the seat of Soma's sway.
There saw they Bhadra, white as snow,
With lucky marks that fortune show,
Bearing the earth upon his head.
Round him they paced with solemn tread,
And honoured him with greetings kind,
Then downward yet their way they mined.
They gained the tract 'twixt east and north
Whose fame is ever blazoned forth, 1b
And by a storm of rage impelled,
Digging through earth their course they held.
Then all the princes, lofty-souled,
Of wondrous vigour, strong and bold,
Saw Vásudeva 2b standing there
In Kapil's form he loved to wear,
And near the everlasting God
The victim charger cropped the sod.
They saw with joy and eager eyes
The fancied robber and the prize,
And on him rushed the furious band
Crying aloud, Stand, villain! stand!
'Avaunt! avaunt!' great Kapil cried,
His bosom flusht with passion's tide;
Then by his might that proud array
All scorcht to heaps of ashes lay. 3b
Footnotes
'Fama est Enceladi semiustum fulmine corpus
The father lent a gracious ear
And listened to their tale of fear,
And kindly to the Gods replied
Whom woe and death had terrified;
'The wisest Vasudeva, 1b who
The Immortals' foe, fierce Madhu, slew,
Regards broad Earth with love and pride
And guards, in Kapil's form, his bride. 2b
His kindled wrath will quickly fall
On the king's sons and burn them all.
This cleaving of the earth his eye
Foresaw in ages long gone by:
He knew with prescient soul the fate
That Sagar's children should await.'
The Three-and-thirty, 3b freed from fear.
Sought their bright homes with hopeful cheer.
Still rose the great tempestuous sound
As Sagar's children pierced the ground.
When thus the whole broad earth was cleft,
And not a spot unsearched was left,
Back to their home the princes sped,
And thus unto their father said:
'We searched the earth from side to side,
While countless hosts of creatures died.
Our conquering feet in triumph trod
On snake and demon, fiend and God;
But yet we failed, with all our toil,
To find the robber and the spoil.
What can we more? If more we can,
Devise, O King, and tell thy plan.'
His chidren's speech King Sagar heard,
And answered thus, to anger stirred:
'Dig on, and ne'er your labour stay
Till through earth's depths you force your way.
Then smite the robber dead, and bring
The charger back with triumphing.'
p. 52
The sixty thousand chiefs obeyed:
Deep through the earth their way they made.
Deep as they dug and deeper yet
The immortal elephant they met,
Famed Virúpáksha 1 vast of size,
Upon whose head the broad earth lies:
The mighty beast who earth sustains
With shaggy hills and wooded plains.
When, with the changing moon, distressed,
And longing for a moment's rest,
His mighty head the monster shakes,
Earth to the bottom reels and quakes.
Around that warder strong and vast
With reverential steps they passed.
Nor, when the honour due was paid,
Their downward search through earth delayed.
But turning from the east aside
Southward again their task they plied.
There Mahápadma held his place,
The best of all his mighty race,
Like some huge hill, of monstrous girth,
Upholding on his head the earth.
When the vast beast the princes saw,
They marvelled and were tilled with awe.
The sons of high-souled Sagar round
That elephant in reverence wound.
Then in the western region they
With might unwearied cleft their way.
There saw they with astonisht eyes
Saumanas, beast of mountain size.
Round him with circling steps they went
With greetings kind and reverent.
On, on--no thought of rest or stay--
They reached the seat of Soma's sway.
There saw they Bhadra, white as snow,
With lucky marks that fortune show,
Bearing the earth upon his head.
Round him they paced with solemn tread,
And honoured him with greetings kind,
Then downward yet their way they mined.
They gained the tract 'twixt east and north
Whose fame is ever blazoned forth, 1b
And by a storm of rage impelled,
Digging through earth their course they held.
Then all the princes, lofty-souled,
Of wondrous vigour, strong and bold,
Saw Vásudeva 2b standing there
In Kapil's form he loved to wear,
And near the everlasting God
The victim charger cropped the sod.
They saw with joy and eager eyes
The fancied robber and the prize,
And on him rushed the furious band
Crying aloud, Stand, villain! stand!
'Avaunt! avaunt!' great Kapil cried,
His bosom flusht with passion's tide;
Then by his might that proud array
All scorcht to heaps of ashes lay. 3b
Footnotes
51:1 Said to be so called from the Jambu, or Rose Apple, abounding in it, and signifying according to the Purána, the central division of the world, the known world.
51:1b Here used as a name of Vishnu.
51:2b Kings are called the husbands of their kingdoms or of the earth; 'She and his kingdom were his only brides.' Raghuvans'a.
'Doubly divorced! Bad men, you violate
A double marriage, 'twixt my crown and me,
And then between me and my married wife.'
King Richard II. Act V. Sc. I.
51:3b The thirty-three Gods are said in the Aitareya. Bráhmana.Book 1. ch. II. 10. to be the eight Vasus, the eleven Rudras, the twelve Àdityas, Prajápati, either Brahmá or Daksha, and Vashatkára or deitied oblation. This must have been the actual number at the beginning of the Vedic religion gradually increased by successive mythical and religious creations till the Indian Pantheon was crowded with abstractions of every kind. Through the reverence with which the words of the Veda were regarded, the immense host of multiplied divinities, in later times, still bore the name of the Thirty-three Gods.
52:1 'One of the elephants which, according to an ancient belief popular in India, supported the earth with their enormous backs; when one of these elephants shook his wearied head the earth trembled with its woods and hills. An idea, or rather a mythical fancy, similar to this, but reduced to proportions less grand, is found in Virgil when he speaks of Enceladus buried under Ætna:
'Fama est Enceladi semiustum fulmine corpus
Urgeri molo haec, ingentemque insuper Ætnam
Impositam, ruptis flammam expirare caminis;
Et fessum quoties mutat latus, intremere omnem
Murmure Trinacriam, et coelum subtexere fumo.'
Æneid. Lib, III. GORRESIO.
NEXT The Ramayana-Book I -Canto XLII.: Sagar's Sacrifice.
The Ramayana (/rɑːˈmɑːjənə/; Sanskrit: रामायणम्, Rāmāyaṇam [rɑːˈmɑːjəɳəm]) is an ancient Indian epic poem which narrates the struggle of the divine prince Rama to rescue his wife Sita from the demon king Ravana. Along with the Mahabharata, it forms the Hindu Itihasa.
The epic, traditionally ascribed to the Hindu sage Valmiki, narrates the life of Rama, the legendary prince of the Kosala Kingdom. It follows his fourteen-year exile to the forest from the kingdom, by his father King Dasharatha, on request of his second wife Kaikeyi. His travels across forests in India with his wife Sita and brother Lakshmana, the kidnapping of his wife by Ravana, the demon king of Lanka, resulting in a war with him, and Rama's eventual return to Ayodhya to be crowned king.
There have been many attempts to unravel the epic's historical growth and compositional layers; various recent scholars' estimates for the earliest stage of the text range from the 7th to 4th centuries BCE, with later stages extending up to the 3rd century CE. Wikipedia
“God / Brahman Speaking To Anne Terri Through The Holy Spirit: Today is August 25, 2018, and I have Asked Anne to begin to place The Ramayana within Our Research Library, for future links to research areas within. AMEN”
*© NOTICE OF ATTRIBUTION
Scanned at sacred-texts.com by John B. Hare. OCRed and Proofed at Distributed Proofing, Juliet Sutherland, Project Manager. Post-processing, computer programming, and additional proofreading by John B. Hare at sacred-texts.com. This text is in the public domain. These files may be used for any non-commercial purpose provided this notice of attribution is left intact.
Note: This verse translation by Griffith...was scanned in 2000 from an original copy, which had very poor typesetting. Due to the difficulty of converting this 600 page text to etext, the project was put on hold for several years until OCR technology matured. Finally in 2003, the text was OCR-ed and proofed at Distributed Proofing. However, despite best efforts, there are several places in this text where the proofing was difficult or impossible. These are indicated by asterisks or (illegible). We are in the process of cleaning up these issues and hope to have a definitive version of this text at some point. In the meantime we hope you enjoy this epic, which is one of the most popular tales of Indian mythology.
Scanned at sacred-texts.com by John B. Hare. OCRed and Proofed at Distributed Proofing, Juliet Sutherland, Project Manager. Post-processing, computer programming, and additional proofreading by John B. Hare at sacred-texts.com. This text is in the public domain. These files may be used for any non-commercial purpose provided this notice of attribution is left intact.
Note: This verse translation by Griffith...was scanned in 2000 from an original copy, which had very poor typesetting. Due to the difficulty of converting this 600 page text to etext, the project was put on hold for several years until OCR technology matured. Finally in 2003, the text was OCR-ed and proofed at Distributed Proofing. However, despite best efforts, there are several places in this text where the proofing was difficult or impossible. These are indicated by asterisks or (illegible). We are in the process of cleaning up these issues and hope to have a definitive version of this text at some point. In the meantime we hope you enjoy this epic, which is one of the most popular tales of Indian mythology.