at length, was
translated, into Chinese between 414 and 421 A.D. The Golden Age for
the court epics (which were written from 200 B.C. to 1100 A.D.) was
during the sixth century of our era.

In the fifth century A.D. the poet Kalidasa composed a nineteen-canto
epic, entitled Raghuvamca, wherein he related at length the life of
Rama, as well as of Rama's ancestors and of his twenty-four
successors. This poem abounds in striking similes, as does also the
same poet's Kumarasambhava or Birth and Wooing of the War God Siva.
There are, however, sundry cantos in all these poems which are too
erotic to meet with favor among modern readers. Kalidasa is also the
author of an epic in Prakrit, wherein he sings of the building of the
bridge between India and Ceylon and of the death of Ravana.

We are told that the Ramayana inspired the greatest poet of Mediaeval
India, Tulsi Das, to compose the Ram Charit Manas, an epic wherein he
gives a somewhat shorter and very popular version of Rama's
adventures. This work still serves as a sort of Bible for a hundred
million of the people of northern India.

The poet Kaviraja (c. 800 A.D.) composed an epic wherein he combines
the Ramayana and Mahabharata into one single poem. This is a Hindu
_tour de force_, for we are told that "the composition is so arranged
that by the use of ambiguous words and phrases the story of the
Ramayana and the Mahabharata is told at one and the same time. The
same words, according to the sense in which they are understood,
narrate the events of each epic."

THE RAMAYANA

This Hindu epic, an older poem than the Mahabharata, was composed in
Sanscrit some five hundred years before our era, and is contained in
seven books, aggregating twenty-four thousand verses. It is often
termed "the Odyssey of the East," and relates events which are said to
have occurred between two thousand and nine hundred B.C. The poem is
generally attributed to Valmiki, a hermit on the bank of the Ganges,
who, seeing one bird of a happy pair slain, made use of a strange
metre in relating the occurrence to Brahma. This god immediately bade
him employ the same in narrating the adventures of Rama, one of the
seven incarnations of the god Vishnu.

"Praise to Valmiki, bird of charming song,
Who mounts on Poesy's sublimest spray,
And sweetly sings with accents clear and strong
Rama, aye Rama, in his deathless lay."[41]

The poem opens with a description of the ancient city