Ramayana, Epic of Rama, Prince of India

Epilogue by the Translator - 167
righteous devotion of Rama, and the faithfulness and womanly love of Sita, run
like two threads of gold through the whole fabric of the Epic, and ennoble and
sanctify the work in the eyes of Hindus.
Rama and Sita are the Hindu ideals of a Perfect Man and a Perfect Woman;
their truth under trials and temptations, their endurance under privations, and
their devotion to duty under all vicissitudes of fortune, form the Hindu ideal of
a Perfect Life. [187] In this respect the Ramayana gives us a true picture of
Hindu faith and righteous life as Dante’s “Divine Comedy” gives us a picture of
the faith and belief of the Middle Ages in Europe. Our own ideals in the present
day may not be the ideals of the tenth century before Christ or the fourteenth
century after Christ; but mankind will not willingly let die those great creation,
of the past which shadow forth the ideals and beliefs of interesting periods in
the progress of human civilisation.
Sorrow and suffering, trial and endurance, are a part of the Hindu ideal of a
Perfect Life of righteousness. Rama suffers for fourteen years in exile, and is
chastened by privations and misfortunes, before he ascends the throne of his
father. In a humble way this course of training was passed through by every
pious Hindu of the ancient times. Every Aryan boy in India was taken away
from his parents at an early age, and lived the hard life of an anchorite under
his teacher for twelve or twenty-four or thirty-six years, before he entered the
married life and settled down as a householder. Every Aryan boy assumed the
rough garment and the staff and girdle of a student, lived as a mendicant and
begged his food from door to door, attended on his preceptor as a menial, and
thus trained himself in endurance and suffering as well as in the traditional
learning of the age, before he became a householder. The pious Hindu saw in
Rama’s life the ideal of a true Hindu life, the success and the triumph which
follow upon endurance and faith and devotion to duty. It is the truth and
endurance of Rama under sufferings and privations which impart the deepest
lessons to the Hindu character, and is the highest ideal of a Hindu righteous life.
The ancient ideal may seem to us far-fetched in these days, but we can never
fully comprehend the great moral Epic of the Hindus unless we endeavour to
study fully and clearly its relations to old Hindu ideas and old Hindu life.
And if trial and endurance are a part of a Hindu’s ideal of a man’s life, devotion
and self-abnegation are still more essentially a part of his ideal of a woman’s
life. Sita holds a place in the hearts of women in India which no other creation
of a poet’s imagination holds among any other nation on earth. There is not a
Hindu [188] woman whose earliest and tenderest recollections do not cling
round the story of Sita’s sufferings and Sita’s faithfulness, told in the nursery,
taught in the family circle, remembered and cherished through life. Sita’s
adventures in a desolate forest and in a hostile prison only represent in an
exaggerated form the humbler trials of a woman’s life; and Sita’s endurance and
faithfulness teach her devotion to duty in all trials and troubles of life, “For,”
said Sita: –