part of
the Vasudeva legend. It quickly seized upon the popular imagination
and spread like wild-fire over India. For it satisfied many needs. The
tenderness of the father and still more of the mother for the little
babe, their delight in the sports of childhood, the amorist's pleasure
in erotic adventure, and, not by any means least, the joy in the
romantic scenery of the haunted woodlands--all these instincts found
full play in it, and were sanctified by religion.

[Footnote 29: Rapson, _Catal. of the Coins of the Andhra Dynasty,
etc._, pp. xliv, lxii, lxix, cxxxiii-cxxxvi, clxii; _Indian Antiq._,
xlvii, p. 85, etc.]

II. RAMA

Rama is the hero of the Ramayana, the great epic ascribed to Valmiki,
a poet who in course of time has passed from the realm of history into
that of myth, like many other Hindus. The poem, as it has come down to
us, contains seven books, which relate the following tale. Dasa-ratha,
King of Ayodhya (now Ajodhya, near Faizabad), of the dynasty which
claimed descent from the Sun-god, had no son, and therefore held the
great _Asva-medha_, or horse-sacrifice, as a result of which he
obtained four sons, Rama by his queen Kausalya, Bharata by Kaikeyi,
and Lakshmana and Satrughna by Sumitra. Rama, the eldest, was also
pre-eminent for strength, bravery, and noble qualities of soul.
Visiting in his early youth the court of Janaka, king of Videha, Rama
was able to shoot an arrow from Janaka's bow, which no other man could
bend, and as a reward he received as wife the princess Sita, whom
Janaka had found in a furrow of his fields and brought up as his own
daughter. So far the first book, or Bala-kanda. The second book, or
Ayodhya-kanda, relates how Queen Kaikeyi induced Dasa-ratha, sorely
against his will, to banish Rama to the forests in order that her son
Bharata might succeed to the throne; and the Aranya-kanda then
describes how Rama, accompanied by his wife Sita and his faithful
brother Lakshmana, dwelt in the forest for a time, until the demon
King Ravana of Lanka, by means of a trick, carried off Sita to his
city. The Kishkindha-kanda tells of Rama's pursuit of Ravana and his
coming to Kishkindha, the city of Sugriva, the king of the apes, who
joined him as an ally in his expedition; and the Sundara-kanda
describes the march of their armies to Lanka, which is identified with
Ceylon, and their crossing over the straits. Then comes the
Yuddha-kanda, which narrates the war with Ravana, his death