e earth, the Descent
of the Ganges, etc. The epic genius however sometimes created beings of
its own and gave body and life to ideal conceptions. Some of the persons
in the Ramayan must be, in my opinion, either personifications of the
forces of nature like those which are described with such vigour in the
_Shahnamah_, or if not exactly created, exaggerated beyond human
proportions; others, vedic personages much more ancient than Rama, were
introduced into the epic and woven into its narrations, to bring together
men who lived in different and distant ages, as has been the case in times
nearer to our own, in the epics, I mean, of the middle ages.

In the introduction I have discussed the antiquity of the Ramayan; and by
means of those critical and inductive proofs which are all that an
antiquity without precise historical dates can furnish I have endeavoured
to establish with all the certainty that the subject admitted, that the
original composition of the Ramayan is to be assigned to about the twelfth
century before the Christian era. Not that I believe that the epic then
sprang to life in the form in which we now possess it; I think, and I have
elsewhere expressed the opinion, that the poem during the course of its
rhapsodical and oral propagation appropriated by way of episodes,
traditions, legends and ancient myths.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} But as far as regards the epic
poem properly so called which celebrates the expedition of Rama against
the Rakshases I think that I have sufficiently shown that its origin and
first appearance should be placed about the twelfth century B.C.; nor have
I hitherto met with anything to oppose this chronological result, or to
oblige me to rectify or reject it.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} But an eminent philologist already
quoted, deeply versed in these studies, A. Weber, has expressed in some of
his writings a totally different opinion; and the authority of his name,
if not the number and cogency of his arguments, compels me to say
something on the subject. From the fact or rather the assumption that
Megasthenes(1184) who lived some time in India has made no mention either
of the Mahabharat or the Ramayan Professor Weber argues that neither of
these poems could have existed at that time; as regards the Ramayan, the
unity of its composition, the chain that binds together its different
parts, and its allegorical character, show it, says Professor Weber, to be
much more recent than the age to whi