ory, that the
conquest of the southern region and of the island of Lanka is an allegory,
I do not hesitate to answer that such a presumption cannot be admitted and
that the thing is in my opinion impossible. Father Paolino da S.
Bartolommeo,(1182) had already, together with other strange opinions of
his own on Indian matters, brought forward a similar idea, that is to say
that the exploit of Rama which is the subject of the Ramayan was a symbol
and represented the course of the sun: thus he imagined that Brahma was
the earth, Vishnu the water, and that his avatars were the blessings
brought by the fertilizing waters, etc. But such ideas, born at a time
when Indo-sanskrit antiquities were enveloped in darkness, have been
dissipated by the light of new studies. How could an epic so dear in India
to the memory of the people, so deeply rooted for many centuries in the
minds of all, so propagated and diffused through all the dialects and
languages of those regions, which had become the source of many dramas
which are still represented in India, which is itself represented every
year with such magnificence and to such crowds of people in the
neighbourhood of Ayodhya, a poem welcomed at its very birth with such
favour, as the legend relates, that the recitation of it by the first
wandering Rhapsodists has consecrated and made famous all the places
celebrated by them, and where Rama made a shorter or longer stay, how, I
ask, could such an epic have been purely allegorical? How, upon a pure
invention, upon a simple allegory, could a poem have been composed of
about fifty thousand verses, relating with such force and power the
events, and giving details with such exactness? On a theme purely
allegorical there may easily be composed a short mythical poem, as for
example a poem on Proserpine or Psyche: but never an epic so full of
traditions and historical memories, so intimately connected with the life
of the people, as the Ramayan.(1183) Excessive readiness to find allegory
whenever some traces of symbolism occur, where the myth partly veils the
historical reality, may lead and often has led to error. What poetical
work of mythical times could stand this mode of trial? could there not be
made, or rather has there not been made a work altogether allegorical, out
of the Homeric poems? We have all heard of the ingenious idea of the
anonymous writer, who in order to prove how easily we may pass beyond the
truth in our wish to seek and