BOOK I: Canto VI.: The King.
CANTO VI.: THE KING.
There reigned a king of name revered,
To country and to town endeared,
Great Das'aratha, good and sage.
Well read in Scripture's holy page:
Who never from their duty swerved,
Their proper worship all addressed
To Bráhman, spirits, God, and guest.
Pure and unmixt their rites remained,
Their race's honour ne'er was stained. 2
Cheered by his grandsons, sons, and wife,
Each passed a long and happy life.
Thus was that famous city held
By one who all his race excelled,
Blest in his gentle reign,
As the whole land aforetime swayed
By Manu, prince of men, obeyed
Her king from main to main.
And heroes kept her, strong and brave,
As lions guard their mountain cave:
Fierce as devouring flame they burned,
And fought till death, but never turned.
Horses had she of noblest breed,
Like Indra's for their form and speed,
From Váhlí's 3 hills and Sindhu's 4 sand,
Vanáyu 5 and Kámboja's land. 6
Upholders of the skies.
With those, enrolled in fourfold class,
Who all their mighty kin surpass,
Whom men Matangas name,
And Mrigas spotted black and white,
And Bhadras of unwearied might,
And Mandras hard to tame. 2
Thus, worthy of the name she bore, 3
Ayodhyá for a league or more
Cast a bright glory round,
Where Das'aratha wise and great
Governed his fair ancestral state,
With every virtue crowned.
Like Indra in the skies he reigned
In that, good town whose wall contained
High domes and turrets proud,
With gates and arcs of triumph decked,
And sturdy barriers to protect
Her gay and countless crowd.
Footnotes
12:1b The Sataghní, i. e. centicide, or slayer of a hundred, is generally supposed to be a sort of fire-arms, or the ancient Indian rocket; but it is also described as a stone set round with iron spikes.
12:2b The Nágas (serpents) are demigods with a human face and serpent body. They inhabit Pátála or the regions under the earth. Bhogavatí is the name of their capital city. Serpents are still worshipped in India. See Fergusson'a Tree and Serpent Worship.
13:1 The fourth and lowest pure caste whose duty was to serve the three first classes.
13:2 By forbidden marriages between persons of different castes.
13:3 Váhlí or Váhlika is Bactriana; its name is preserved in the modern Balkh.
13:4 The Sanskrit word Sindhu is in the singular the name of the river Indus, in the plural of the people and territories on its banks. The name appears as Hidhu in the cuneiform inscription of Darius son of Hystaspes, in which the nations tributary to that king are enumerated.
The Hebrew form is Hodda (Esther, 1. I.) In Zend it appears as Hendu in a somewhat wider sense. With the Persians later the signification of Hind seems to have co-extended with their increasing acquaintance with the country. The weak Ionic dialect omitted the Persian h, and we find in Hecatæus and Herodotus Indos and hae Indikae. In this form the Romans received the names and transmitted them to us. The Arabian geographers in their ignorance that Hind and Sind are two forms of the same word have made of them two brothers and traced their decent from Noah. See Lassen's Indische Alterthumskunde Vol. I. pp. 2, 3.
13:5 The situation of Vanáyu is not exactly determined: it seems to have lain to the north-west of India.
13:6 Kámboja was probably still further
to the north-west. Lassen thinks that the
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