seventy-five miles to the
north-west of Bombay. The appearance of these Brahmanical hermitages in
the country far away to the south of the Raj of Kasala, seems to call for
critical inquiry. Each hermitage is said to have belonged to some
particular sage, who is famous in Brahmanical tradition. But whether the
sages named were really contemporaries of Rama, or whether they could
possibly have flourished at one and the same period, is open to serious
question. It is of course impossible to fix with any degree of certainty
the relative chronology of the several sages, who are said to have been
visited by Rama; but still it seems tolerably clear that some belonged to
an age far anterior to that in which the Ramayana was composed, and
probably to an age anterior to that in which Rama existed as a real and
living personage; whilst, at least, one sage is to be found who could only
have existed in the age during which the Ramayana was produced in its
present form. The main proofs of these inferences are as follows. An
interval of many centuries seems to have elapsed between the composition
of the Rig-Veda and that of the Ramayana: a conclusion which has long been
proved by the evidence of language, and is generally accepted by Sanskrit
scholars. But three of the sages, said to have been contemporary with
Rama, namely, Visvamitra, Atri and Agastya, are frequently mentioned in
the hymns of the Rig-Veda; whilst Valmiki, the sage dwelling at
Chitra-kuta, is said to have been himself the composer of the Ramayana.
Again, the sage Atri, whom Rama visited immediately after his departure
from Chitra-kuta, appears in the genealogical list preserved in the Maha
Bharata, as the progenitor of the Moon, and consequently as the first
ancestor of the Lunar race: whilst his grandson Buddha [Budha] is said to
have married Ila, the daughter of Ikhsvaku who was himself the remote
ancestor of the Solar race of Ayodhya, from whom Rama was removed by many
generations. These conclusions are not perhaps based upon absolute proof,
because they are drawn from untrustworthy authorities; but still the
chronological difficulties have been fully apprehended by the Pundits, and
an attempt has been made to reconcile all contradictions by representing
the sages to have lived thousands of years, and to have often re-appeared
upon earth in different ages widely removed from each other. Modern
science refuses to accept such explanations; and consequently it is
impos