Tulsidas

“ After returning to Kási he came to Brindá-ban and met Nábhá Jí, and heard his poetry, and his whole soul was filled with delight. On visiting the shrine of Madan Gopál he said—"Of a truth Ráma is my special patron; I would fain see him." Then appeared the god to him in that very form; and he was glad on beholding his incomparable beauty. It was said to him "The Krishna Avatár is of greatest renoun; Ráma was only a partial incarnation." On hearing this he said:—"My soul was full of love for him when I took him only for the son of Dasarath and admired his incomparable beauty ”

“ The highest reward for devotion to any special god is the exaltation of the soul to his particular sphere in heaven. But this blessedness is not of permanent duration; on the expiry of a proportionate period the burden of mundane existence has again to be undergone. ”

“ For good deeds and evil deeds and the god that recompenses them all alike belong to the unreal, to the fictitious duality, the world of semblances: while the so-called Supreme Being is no proper object of worship, being a mere cold abstraction, unconscious of his own existence or of ours, and devoid of all attributes and qualities. ”

“ But the worship of the inferior divinities and compliance with the external ritual of religion are considered to purify and prepare the intellect for the reception of higher truths. They are therefore salutary and even necessury practices during the early days of the soul's progress towards perfection. If a man is overtaken by death before he has advanced beyond this preliminary stage, he is born again either into this or into a higher world in some different form, the dignity of which is determined by the aggregate merit or demerit of all his actions in all his previous births. ”

“ The difficulty is one that has its root in the nature of things; and no solution of the mystery can be found but in the recognition of faith and reason as two distinct human faculties, with the infinite and the finite as their separate provinces. ”

“ But, on the other hand, the Hindi poem is the best and most trustworthy guide to the popular living faith of the Hindu race at the present day—a matter of not less practical interest than the creed of their remote ancestors—and its language, which in the course of three centuries has contracted a tinge of archaism, is a study of much importance to the philologist, as helping to bridge the chasm between the modern tongue and the medimval. ”

“ His theological and metaphysical views are pantheistic in character, being based for the most part on the teaching of the later Vedantists as formulated in the Vedánta-Sára and more elaborately expounded in the Bhagavad Gíta, which is the most popular of all Sanskrit didactic poems. The whole visible world, as they maintain, is an unreal phantasm, induced by ignorance or illusion, and it is only by a concession to conventional speech that it can be said to exist at all. The sole representative of true existence is the supreme spirit, Brahm, conceived as absolute and unchangeable unity ”

“ No one who has not had practical experience in the matter can fully appreciate the amount of thought that has to be expended on almost every sentence, before the peculiarities of Oriental expression can be adapted to the requirements of English idiom. Without the most delicate handling it is impossible to avoid either a sacrifice of accuracy in the letter, or a misrepresentation of the spirit by a baldness of rendering, which suggests only images of the ludicrous and grotesque, while the sentiments of the original in their native dress are felt to be both natural and pathetic. ”

“ The Emperor of Delhi sent an officer to fetch him, explaining "It is he, you must know, who brought the Bráhman to life again." "He is anxious to see you," they said,—"so come; all wiil be well." They spoke so courteously that he agreed and went. They arrived before the king, who received him with honour, gave him an exalted seat, and said in gracious tones:— Let me see a miracle; it is noised throughout the world that you are master of everything." ”

“ They grow up, and the king is thinking where to find suitable brides for them, when Visvamitra comes and after a long colloquy takes away with him Ráma and Lakshman to protect him at the time of sacrifice from the demons that persistently assail him. On the way they pass by the Anga hermitage, where the god of love had been reduced to ashes by Siva—a legend to which very brief allusion is made,—then through the forest of Táraká, whom Ráma meets in battle and slays, after her genealogy has been given in full. ”

“ That very moment thousands upon thousands of sturdy monkeys spread all over the place, clawing bodies, tearing elothes, and great was the alarm. They broke open the fort, wounding the men, destroying everything; where could one fly for safety? ”

“ Their acceptance by faith, even when they seem to conflict with reason, is a part of our earthly probation and a meritorious confession of our dependence on the Supreme. The final purpose of the Incarnation, like the idea of any revelation whatever from God to man, is above comprehension. ”

“ Again, the curiously artificial similes derived from the frequently fabulous habits of different birds and plants, which—like the oft-repeated refrain of a popular song—never fail to elicit the applause of an appreciative audience, only repel a foreigner as frigid and unmeaning conventionalities. ”

“ In the later Books the narrative is generally more rapid than in the earlier part of the poem and several incidents are so casually mentioned that, without the explanatory references to the Sanskrit Rámáyana, which I have given in the notes, a literal rendering would convey no meaning to the ordinary reader. [8] It is to some extent a literary defect that the rôle of poet is so often dropt for that of theologian ”

“ The actual poem commences at once with a description of Ayodhyá and its King Dasarath and his ministers, and of his longing for an heir and tells how Rishyasring, Vibhandak's son (whose previous adventures are recorded at length) was invited from the palace of his father-in-law, Lomapád, the King of Champá, to direct the ceremonies of a great sacrifice, which the childless Dasarath resolved to celebrate, in the hope of thereby obtaining his desire. The gods, being at that time sorely distressed by Rávan's persecution, had fled to Vishnu for succour ”

“ In spite of these drawbacks there are many passages instinct with a genuine poetic feeling, which appeals to universal humanity, and which it is hoped will be dimly recognized even through the ineffectual medium of a prose translation.
The characters also of the principal actors in the drama are clearly and consistently drawn; and all may admire, though they refuse to worship, the piety and unselfishness of Bharat ”

“ He was by descent a Bráhman of the Kanaujiya clan, and in the Bhakt-Sindhu—a modern poem: of no great authority, the writer when at a loss for facts being, as it seems, in the habit of supplying them out of his own imagination—it is stated that his father's name was Atmá Ram, and that he was born at Hastinapur. Others make Hájipur, near Chitrakút, the place of his birth. The greater part of his life was certainly spent at Benares, though he also passed some years in visits to Soron, Ayodhyá, Chitrakút, Allahabad, and Brindá-ban. ”

“ It is equally well adapted for both these apparently incongruous purposes: for a Hindu child generally grasps at once the familiar idiom, and finds no great difficulty in even the most crabbed passage; while on the other hand both the terminology and the syntactic collocation of the words are in the highest degree perplexing to the European student, and severely try his knowledge of the language. ”

“ Professor Wilson, in his most valuable and interesting "Essay on the Religious Sects of the Hindus," gives the following notice of Tulsi Dás, and adds that he had derived it from the Bhakt-Málá:-"Having been incited to the peculiar adoration of Ráma by the remonstrances of his wife, to whom he was passionately attached, he adopted a vagrant life, visited Benares, and afterwards went to Chitrakút, where he had a personal interview with Hanumán, from whom he received his poetical inspiration and the power of working miracles. His fame reached Delhi, where Shahjahán was emperor. ”

“ Manuals of history, geography and physical science are all very well in their way, but correct information by itself is really the least part of education. ↑ The word pulak, which I generally translate by 'quivering' or 'throbbing,' means strictly the bristling of the hair upon the body, which is a sign of violent mental agitation. ”