Srimad Ramayana: The First Poem. Maharshi Valmiki: The First Poet

In this Series

THE RĀMĀYAṆA STANDS as a timeless testimony to the fact that human language does not merely have a utilitarian purpose but can also be used for artistic purposes.

The Vedas that predate Rāmāyaṇa are utterances of realised ṛṣis. They are rich in spiritual content and provide a sublime vision for life. While they contain a few poetic passages, they cannot be considered holistic poems that dispassionately delineate characters rich with human emotions and captivating episodes suggesting profound values.

Moreover, it is indisputable that language was used for everyday communication between humans. Thus, language seemed to have been employed for two purposes until the time of Rāmāyaṇa – first for the worldly, transactional purpose and second, for capturing spiritual experiences in words.

The Rāmāyaṇa, however, paved a hitherto untrodden and unrealised path – the path of artistic charm, where everything worldly is sublimated to the spiritual. This poetic path is a bridge that connects the worldly to the über-worldly – the rasa-bridge which fords the adhi-bhūta with the adhyātma.

Prof. M. Hiriyanna observes that while the Vedas are daivāśrita, i.e., deity-centric, the classical poems starting from the Rāmāyaṇa are mānavāśrita, i.e., human-centric.

The Ramayana tells us that the first poetic verse emerged naturally from Sage Vālmīki’s mouth when he was emotionally driven and dhārmically inspired. The creative talent and the detached attitude of the sage helped him create an epic poem upon seeing the krauñca birds in pain; however, a mere human would have been driven by compassion and would not have been able to think beyond the situation at hand; universalising the emotions of even the meekest of beings is the true calibre of a gifted poet.

Right at the beginning of the epic, we see that Sage Vālmīki is on a quest after perfection – he wishes to know if he can find the best physical, emotional, and spiritual qualities endowed in a human in the world contemporary to him. This is exactly what all of us seek – we would have heard of many ideal qualities that humans should possess, but without a living example, the qualities would merely be theoretical possibilities and not practical realities.

This quest for perfection of the poet has resulted in the epic poem, the Srimad Rāmāyaṇa. In other words, Maharṣi Vālmīki’s satya-śodhana has resulted in saundarya-nirmāṇa; he has paved a path of Beauty for the realisation of universal Truth.

The Rāmāyaṇa is thus, the ādi-kāvya and Vālmīki, the ādi-kavi.

The epic does not provide us with too many biographical details of the poet. This is true of most Indian poets of antiquity – it almost feels like these stalwarts wanted their works to speak for themselves while they withdrew and remained in the background. The poets, thus, become synonymous with their works. In another sense, a literary work is the true autobiography of a poet – he embodies in various characters his inspirations, aspirations, and commitment to values.  

From the Bāla-kāṇḍa and the Uttara-kāṇḍa, we learn that Vālmīki lived in an āśrama beyond the river Gaṅgā and near the river Tamasā; he lived with other sages and one of his prime students was Bharadvāja.

Vālmīki possessed a kind and compassionate heart and had a sublime vision of equanimity – the epic stands as evidence to these features of his personality. He hosts Sītā who has been abandoned by the lord of the land; he trains her twin sons Kuśa and Lava in the epic poem and gets them to perform it in an assembly of sages. The lads narrate, sing, enact, and dance the story to the rhythmic and melodious accompaniment of vīṇā. He gets them to perform the story with its primary character in the audience – Rāma himself. He listens to the story of his own life narrated and sung as a poem, the Rāmāyaṇa, through his sons; the sons don’t know that he is their father and the father does not know that they are his sons!

To be continued

Notes

• While there are academic debates about the antiquity of the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata, it is an indisputable fact that the most beautiful poetic passages are found for the first time in the Rāmāyaṇa. Every later-day poet and scholar of India has acknowledged this and has hailed Vālmīki as the first poet. This is true to the extent that the most celebrated poet of India, Kālidāsa refers to the sage as kavi (‘the poet’; not a mere poet, but is the foremost of poets), at least four times in his epic Raghuvaṃśa; being a poet is the most unique feature of Sage Vālmīki.

• This also brings to mind the words of Prof. M. Hiriyanna in the anthology Sanskrit Studies. He says, “…Vālmīki was the morning star of the Indian classical song. The appearance of Rāmāyaṇa marks a turning point in the history of the Indian language as well as in the history of Indian literature. It tells us in the first instance that what came to be known later as Saṃskṛta was for the first time raised to the dignity of a literary language by the efforts of Vālmīki.”

• The poetess Gaṅgā-devī, the author of the epic poem Mathurā-vijayam, hails Vālmīki with the following verse –

cetaso'stu prasādāya satāṃ prācetaso muniḥ|

pṛthivyāṃ padya-nirmāṇa-vidyāyāḥ prathamaṃ padam|| (1.5)

Sage Vālmīki took the first (and the best) step and

uttered the first word in a new branch of wisdom called poetry.

Kṣemendra in his Rāmāyaṇa-mañjarī says,

numaḥ sarvopajīvyaṃ taṃ kavīnāṃ cakravartinam |

 Yasyendu-dhavalaiḥ ślokairbhūṣitā bhuvana-trayī || (Bāla-kāṇḍa, verse 4)

Vālmīki is the emperor of poets; just as subordinate kings live upon the resources provided by the emperor, every poet of India derives inspiration and guidance from Vālmīki. The verses of the Rāmāyaṇa that are like cool, white rays of the moon embellish the three worlds.

He also says, oṅkāra iva varṇānāṃ kavīnāṃ prathamo muniḥ| (Second verse after the Uttara-kāṇḍa)

Vālmīki is like the primordial sound of creation, the oṅkāra; he is the first (and the best) seer-poet.

• See the essay titled Sanskrit Poetry: A Historical Retrospect in the anthology Sanskrit Studies

• He was also the first to hear the poetic utterance of Vālmīki and the first connoisseur of the epic poem. He is, however, different from Sage Bharadvāja whose āśrama Rāma, Sīta, and Lakṣmaṇa visit later in the story. And this becomes the first Kathā-kīrtana or Kathā-kālakṣepa (Hari-kathā) performance in the world!