आदिकाव्योत्पत्तिः

When he had heard Nārada’s words, the brief Rāmāyaṇa of the previous sarga, the righteous Vālmīki, a master of language, honoured the great sage together with his disciples. Duly honoured, the divine seer Nārada took his leave and, given permission, rose into the sky and went back to the world of the gods. The story heard in the first sarga now lies like a seed in the listener’s heart: the teacher gives his word and departs, and in the pupil’s mind that word slowly ripens. The whole of this sarga is that seed sprouting. The poet does not rush into his poem: first comes honour, then farewell, then solitude, and step by step the poet’s mind is made ready. We are told too that Vālmīki had disciples with him, for knowledge received from a teacher lives on in the world only through a line of pupils.

A moment after Nārada had gone, Vālmīki went to the bank of the Tamasā, a river flowing not far from the Gaṅgā. Reaching the bank, he saw a bathing place free of mud and clear, and said to his disciple Bharadvāja, who stood beside him: “Look, Bharadvāja, at this bathing place. It is free of mud, it is lovely, and its water is as clear as the mind of a good man.” The comparison is telling. To describe clear water the poet reaches for a good man’s mind, and the images a poet chooses reveal how he sees: only one whose own heart is clear sees clearness in the water outside. This verse also sets the stage for the pity that is to come, for where there is serenity a blow strikes all the harder. And by saying that the Tamasā flows near the Gaṅgā the poet fixes the place: the birthplace of the first poem is no imagined spot but a known land.

The sage told his disciple, “Set down the water pot here, my dear boy, and give me my bark garment. I shall bathe here, in this fine bathing place of the Tamasā.” At the great Vālmīki’s word the disciplined Bharadvāja handed his teacher the garment, and the sage, master of his senses, took it from him and wandered about, gazing at the wide forest on every side. These verses set the scene for the moment the poem is born. Nothing special happens: a sage has come to bathe, the water is clear, the forest is wide. A great event usually steals in upon a quiet moment. The disciple’s humility shows too: he asks nothing and does not delay, but simply does as his teacher bids. Handing over a bark garment is a small act, yet it reveals his discipline, for character is seen in small things.

Close by, a pair of krauñca birds, a kind of curlew, was moving about, never leaving each other’s side, and their sweet calls could be heard. The holy Vālmīki watched them. At that very moment a Niṣāda hunter, bent on evil and a very home of malice toward all creatures, shot the male of the pair while the sage looked on. The bird fell to the ground, its body covered in blood, writhing. Seeing her mate struck down, the hen cried out piteously; she was parted now from the copper-crested, joyful bird who had always moved at her side, and she lamented. The poet dwells on her grief because the poem itself will be born of it. The two words for the hunter are worth weighing: “bent on evil” and “home of malice.” Neither hunger nor fear moved him; malice alone was his dwelling. And the word “pair” tells us the two were one, so that killing one of them was in truth killing both.

Seeing the bird brought down by the Niṣāda, the righteous seer was filled with pity. Compassionate by nature, he judged the act unrighteous, and hearing the hen weeping, he spoke: “Niṣāda, may you never find an enduring place through all the endless years, since you killed one of this pair of krauñcas while it was lost in love.” These were the first words in all Sanskrit literature to take the form of a śloka, a verse. Speech that came out as a curse arranged itself in metre of its own accord: grief became verse. This is the heart of the sarga and the source of the whole first poem. And note that the sage had no wish to compose poetry; it was pity that shaped the metre on his lips. The theorists of poetry say that the finest poetry comes unasked.

When he had spoken, a thought troubled the sage as he stood there: “Stricken with grief for this bird, what is this I have said?” Reflecting, that wise and thoughtful man came to a decision and told his disciple: “Bound in four quarter-lines, each with the same number of syllables, fit to be sung to the rhythm of the lute, this utterance that came from me in my grief shall be a śloka and nothing else.” The disciple received his teacher’s matchless words gladly, and the sage was pleased with him. Here the poet himself defines the metre: it is bound in quarter-lines, equal in syllables and suited to rhythm. Poetry, then, is not feeling alone but feeling bound by rule. The disciple’s acceptance matters as well: what one says, another receives, and so a tradition begins. The poet intends the likeness of the words śoka, grief, and śloka, verse: by a slight change of sounds, grief becomes verse.

Then the sage bathed in that bathing place as the rule prescribes and turned back to the hermitage, still turning the matter over in his mind. His modest and learned disciple Bharadvāja took up the full water pot and followed behind. Entering the hermitage with him, the sage, who knew dharma, sat down and talked of other things as well, but his thoughts stayed on that verse. Then Brahmā himself, the maker of the worlds, the self-born lord, four-faced and of great splendour, came to see that best of sages. Seeing him, Vālmīki rose at once, fell silent, joined his palms and stood composed but utterly astonished. Brahmā was not summoned; he came of his own accord. The poet’s meaning is that where something truly new is born, the divine itself draws near. And this sage, whose mind stayed fixed on one thing even while he spoke of others, had in that very concentration the root of the great poem to come.

He honoured the god with water for his feet, the welcome offering, a seat and a salutation, bowed as the rule prescribes, and asked after his well-being. The Lord sat down on the seat so honoured and directed the seer Vālmīki to a seat as well, and with Brahmā’s leave he too sat down. Yet even with the grandfather of the worlds seated before him, Vālmīki’s mind was still back at the river. Lost in thought, he brooded: “What a cruel thing that wicked man did, his mind set on malice, killing without cause a krauñca with so sweet a voice.” Still grieving, he sang the verse again for the krauñca hen. Even in Brahmā’s presence his grief did not leave him. This compassion is the mark of a poet: only one whose heart is touched by another’s pain is fit to make poetry. The order of worship is the traditional one, water for the feet, the welcome offering, a seat, a salutation and then the question about his health, the ancient rite of hospitality.

Once more the sage withdrew into himself and gave himself up to grief. Then Brahmā, smiling, said to that best of sages: “It is a śloka that you have composed; you need not think about it any further. It is by my own will, brahmin, that this speech has come forth from you.” These words settle two things. First, what came from the sage’s mouth was no fault but true metre. Second, that speech was not merely human but divine: words born of grief become poetry when the divine approves them. Brahmā’s smile has its meaning too, for it shows that the sage’s doubt was needless. Vālmīki had feared that he had uttered a curse; Brahmā took it not as a curse but as the gift of Sarasvatī, the goddess of speech. The same words take different forms under different eyes.

Then Brahmā commanded him: “Best of seers, compose the whole story of Rāma. Tell the life of Rāma, righteous, glorious, wise and steadfast, as you heard it from Nārada. Whatever that wise man did in secret and whatever in the open, whatever befell him with Lakṣmaṇa, Sumitrā’s son, whatever befell the rākṣasas in every respect, and whatever befell Vaidehī, known or hidden, all of it, though unknown to you now, shall become known to you. In this poem no word of yours will be untrue.” This boon is of the greatest weight: the poet is given divine sight. That is why tradition holds the Rāmāyaṇa to be not mere invention but a vision of what truly happened. Both the hidden and the known are named, so both outward deeds and inner feelings lie within the poet’s view. And with the words “as you heard it from Nārada” Brahmā ties this sarga to the one before: the story heard in brief is now to be told in full.

Brahmā went on: “Put the holy and delightful story of Rāma into verse. As long as mountains and rivers stand on this earth, so long will the story of the Rāmāyaṇa travel through the worlds; and as long as the story of Rāma that you have made travels among them, so long will you dwell in my worlds, above and below.” With these words the Lord Brahmā vanished on the spot, and the sage and his disciples were filled with wonder. The poet’s immortality is measured by the life of his poem. Mountains and rivers are the images of permanence, and by setting the poem’s life beside theirs Brahmā makes it as lasting as nature itself. His vanishing is telling too: the command has been given, and now the work belongs to the poet. The divine shows the way, but the steps must be taken by a man.

All his disciples then sang that verse again and again, delighting in it, and said to one another in great astonishment: “The grief the great seer sang in four quarter-lines of equal syllables has, by being repeated, become a śloka once more.” Then this thought came to the great seer, whose mind was now pure: “Let me compose the whole Rāmāyaṇa as a poem in verses like these.” And so that illustrious sage of noble vision composed, in hundreds of verses of equal syllables, with delightful words telling of noble deeds and their meaning, a poem to spread the fame of the famous Rāma. At the end the poet calls to his listeners: listen to the story of the best of the Raghus, composed by the sage, fitted with compounds and sound-joinings as they suit, framed in sentences whose sense is even and sweet, and to the killing of the ten-headed Rāvaṇa. So this sarga, beginning with grief becoming verse, ends with the resolve to make a great poem. Through the disciples’ singing the verse first spreads in the world, which shows that a poem lives through those who hear it.