# The Ramayana/Book I/Canto I: Nárad

* ↑ A divine saint, son of Brahmá. He is the eloquent messenger of the Gods, a musician of exquisite skill, and the inventor of the viná or Indian lute. He bears a strong resemblance to Hermes or Mercury.
* ↑ A divine saint, son of Brahmá. He is the eloquent messenger of the Gods, a musician of exquisite skill, and the inventor of the viná or Indian lute. He bears a strong resemblance to Hermes or Mercury.
* ↑ This mystic syllable, said to typify the supreme Deity, the Gods collectively, the Vedas, the three spheres of the world, the three holy fires, the three steps of Vishnu etc., prefaces the prayers and most venerated writings of the Hindus.
* ↑ This colloquy is supposed to have taken place about sixteen years after Ráma's return from his wanderings and occupation of his ancestral throne.
* ↑ Called also S'ri and Lakshmi, the consort of Vishnu, the Queen of Beauty as well as the Dea Fortuna. Her birth 'from the full-flushed wave' is described in Canto XLV of this Book.
* ↑ One of the most prominent objects of worship in the Rig-veda, Indra was superseded in later times by the more popular deities Vishnu and S'iva. He is the God of the firmament, and answers in many respects to the Jupiter Pluvius of the Romans. See Additional Notes.
* ↑ The second God of the Trimúrti or Indian Trinity. Derived from the root vis' to penetrate, the meaning of the name appears to be he who penetrates or pervades all things. An embodiment of the preserving power of nature, he is worshipped as a Saviour who has nine times been incarnate for the good of the world and will descend on earth once more. See Additional Notes and Muir's Sanskrit Texts passim.
* ↑ In Sanskrit devarshi. Rishi is the general appellation of sages, and another word is frequently prefixed to distinguish the degrees. A Brahmarshi is a theologian or Bráhmanical sage; a Rájarshi is a royal sage or sainted king; a Devarshi is a divine or deified sage or saint.
* ↑ Trikálaj'na. Literally knower of the three times. Both Schlegel and Gorresio quote Homer's. Os aedae ta t eonta, ta t essomena, pro t eonta. 'That sacred seer, whose comprehensive view, The past, the present, and the future knew.' The Bombay edition reads trilokajna, who knows the three worlds (earth, air and heaven.) 'It is by topas (austere fervour) that rishis of subdued souls, subsisting on roots, fruits and air, obtain a vision of the three worlds with all things moving and stationary.' MANU, XI. 236.
* ↑ Son of Manu, the first king of Kos'ala and founder of the solar dynasty or family of the Children of the Sun, the God of that luminary being the father of Manu.
* ↑ The Indians paid great attention to the art of physiognomy and believed that character and fortune could be foretold not from the face only, but from marks upon the neck and hands. Three lines under the chin like those at the mouth of a conch (S'an'kha) were regarded as a peculiarly auspicious sign indicating, as did also the mark of Vishnu's discus on the hand, one born to be a chakravartin or universal emperor. In the palmistry of Europe the line of fortune, as well as the line of life, is in the hand. Cardan says that marks on the nails and teeth also show what is to happen to us: 'Sunt etiam in nobis vestigia quædam futurorum eyentuum in unguibus atque etiam in dentibus.' Though the palmy days of Indian chiromancy have passed away, the art is still to some extent studied and believed in.
* ↑ Long arms were regarded as a sign of heroic strength.
* ↑ 'Veda means originally knowing or knowledge, and this name ia given by the Bráhmans not to one work, but to the whole body of their most ancient sacred literature. Veda is the same word which appears in the Greek οἰδα, I know, and in the English wise, wisdom, to wit. The name of Veda is commonly given to four collections of hymns, which are respectively known by the names of Rig-veda, Yajur-veda, Sáma-veda, and Atharva-veda.' 'As the language of the Veda, the Sanskrit, is the most ancient type of the English of the present day, (Sanskrit and English are but varieties of one and the same language,) so its thoughts and feelings contain in reality the first roots and germs of that intellectual growth which by an unbroken chain connects our own generation with the ancestors of the Aryan race,--with those very people who at the rising and setting of the sun listened with trembling hearts to the songs of the Veda, that told them of bright powers above, and of a life to come after the sun of their own lives had set in the clouds of the evening. These men were the true ancestors of our race, and the Veda is the oldest book we have in which to study the first beginnings of our language, and of all that is embodied in language. We are by nature Aryan, Indo-European, not Semitic: our spiritual kith and kin are to be found in India, Persia, Greece, Italy, Germany: not in Mesopotamia, Egypt, or Palestine.' Chips from a German Workshop, Vol. I. pp. 8. 4.
* ↑ As with the ancient Persians and Scythians, Indian princes were carefully instructed in archery which stands for military science in general, of which, among Hindu heroes, it was the most important branch.
* ↑ Chief of the three queens of Das'aratha and mother of Ráma.
* ↑ From hima snow, (Greek χειμ-ών Latin hiems) and álaya abode, the Mansion of snow.
* ↑ The moon (Soma, Indu, Chandra etc.) is masculine with the Indians as with the Germans.
* ↑ Kuvera, the Indian Plutus, or God of Wealth.
* ↑ The events here briefly mentioned will be related fully in the course of the poem. The first four cantos are introductory, and are evidently the work of a later hand than Valmiki's.
* ↑ 4:1 'Chandra, or the Moon, is fabled to have been married to the twenty-seven daughters of the patriarch Daksha, or Asviní and the rest, who are in fact personifications of the Lunar Asterisms. His favourite amongst them was Rohiní to whom he so wholly devoted himself as to neglect the rest. They complained to their father, and Daksha repeatedly interposed, till, finding his remonstrances vain, he denounced a curse upon his son-in-law, in consequence of which he remained childless and became affected by consumption. The wives of Chandra having interceded in his behalf with their father, Daksha modified an imprecation which he could not recall, and pronounced that the decay should be periodical only, not permanent, and that it should alternate with periods of recovery. Hence the successive wane and increase of the Moon. Padma, Purána, Swarga-Khanda, Sec. II. Rohini in Astronomy is the fourth lunar mansion, containing live stars, the principal of which is Aldebaran.' WILSON, Specimens of the Hindu Theatre. Vol. I. p. 234. The Bengal recension has a different reading: 'Shone with her husband like the light Attendant on the Lord of Night.'
* ↑ The garb prescribed for ascetics by Manu.
* ↑ Mount Meru, situated like Kailása in the lofty regions to the north of the Himálayas, is celebrated in the traditions and myths of India. Meru and Kailása are the two Indian Olympi. Perhaps they were held in such veneration because the Sanskrit-speaking Indians remembered the ancient home where they dwelt with the other primitive peoples of their family before they descended to occupy the vast plains which extend between the Indus and the Ganges.' GOBRESIO.
* ↑ The third God of the Indian Triad, the God of destruction and reproduction. See Additional Notes.
* ↑ The epithet dmija, or twice-born, is usually appropriate to Bráhmans, but is applicable to the three higher castes. Investiture with the sacred thread and initiation of the neophyte into certain religious mysteries are regarded as his regeneration or second birth.
* ↑ His shoes to be a memorial of the absent heir and to maintain his right. Kálidása (Raghuvans'a, XII. 17.) says that they were to be ahidevate or guardian deities of the kingdom.
* ↑ Jatáyu, a semi-divine bird, the friend of Ráma, who fought in defence of Sitá.
* ↑ Raghu was one of the most celebrated ancestors of Ráma whose commonest appellation is, therefore, Rághava or descendant of Raghu. Kálidása in the Raghuvans'a makes him the son of Dilipa and great-grandfather of Ráma. See Idylls from the Sanskrit, 'Aja' and 'Dilipa'.
* ↑ Dundhubi.
* ↑ Literally ten yojanas. The yojana is a measure of uncertain length variously reckoned as equal to nine miles, five, and a little less.
* ↑ Ceylon.
* ↑ The Jonesia As'oka is a most beautiful tree bearing a profusion of red blossoms.
* ↑ Brahmá, the Creator, is usually regarded as the first God of the Indian Trinity, although, as Kálidása says: 'Of Brahma, Vishnu, S'iva, each may be First, second, third, amid the blessed Three.' Brahmá had guaranteed Rávan's life against all enemies except man.
* ↑ Ocean personified.
* ↑ The rocks lying between Ceylon and the mainland are still called Ráma's Bridge by the Hindus.
* ↑ The Bráhmans, with a system rather cosmogonical than chronological, divide the present mundane period into four ages or yugas as they call them: the Krita, the Tretá, the Dwápara, and the Kali. The Krita, cailed also the Deva-yuga or that of the Gods, is the age of truth, the perfect age, the Tretá is the age of the three sacred fires, domestic and sacrificial; the Dwápara is the age of doubt; the Kali, the present age, is the age of evil.' GORRESIO.
* ↑ The ancient kings of India enjoyed lives of more than patriarchal length as will appear in the course of the poem.
* ↑ S'údras, men of the fourth and lowest pure caste, were not allowed to read the poem, but might hear it recited.
* ↑ The three s'lokas or distichs which these twelve lines represent are evidently a still later and very awkward addition to the introduction.