e, but greatly
exaggerated by the ancient myth. In Sanskrit-Indian tradition are found
traces of another struggle of the Aryans with the Rakshas races, which
preceded the war of Rama. According to some pauranic legends, Karttavirya,
a descendant of the royal tribe of the Yadavas, contemporary with
Parasurama and a little anterior to Rama, attacked Lanka and took Ravan
prisoner. This well shows how ancient and how deeply rooted in the Aryan
race is the thought of this war which the Ramayan celebrates.

"But," says an eminent Indianist(1181) whose learning I highly appreciate,
"the Ramayan is an allegorical epic, and no precise and historical value
can be assigned to it. Sita signifies the furrow made by the plough, and
under this symbolical aspect has already appeared honoured with worship in
the hymns of the Rig-veda; Rama is the bearer of the plough (this
assertion is entirely gratuitous); these two allegorical personages
represented agriculture introduced to the southern regions of India by the
race of the Kosalas from whom Rama was descended; the Rakshases on whom he
makes war are races of demons and giants who have little or nothing human
about them; allegory therefore predominates in the poem, and the exact
reality of an historical event must not be looked for in it." Such is
Professor Weber's opinion. If he means to say that mythical fictions are
mingled with real events,

Forsan in alcun vero suo arco percuote,

as Dante says, and I fully concede the point. The interweaving of the myth
with the historical truth belongs to the essence, so to speak, of the
primitive epopeia. If Sita is born, as the Ramayan feigns, from the furrow
which King Janak opened when he ploughed the earth, not a whit more real
is the origin of Helen and AEneas as related in Homer and Virgil, and if
the characters in the Ramayan exceed human nature, and in a greater degree
perhaps than is the case in analogous epics, this springs in part from the
nature of the subject and still more from the symbol-loving genius of the
orient. Still the characters of the Ramayan, although they exceed more or
less the limits of human nature, act notwithstanding in the course of the
poem, speak, feel, rejoice and grieve according to the natural impulse of
human passions. But if by saying that the Ramayan is an allegorical epic,
it is meant that its fundamental subject is nothing but allegory, that the
war of the Aryan Rama against the Rakshas race is an alleg