WE LEARN FROM the later-day purāṇas that Vālmīki was the tenth son of Varuṇa. He had fallen into wicked habits in his younger days due to bad company. He robbed travellers of their belongings to support his family. Once, he saw the saptarṣis passing by and tried to rob them.[1] The saptarṣis asked him the reason behind his ignoble acts and instructed him to check with his family if they would also partake of the pāpa he had thereby incurred; the robber realised that his family would reap only the benefits of his actions and would not share the sins that he incurred. The saptarṣis helped wisdom dawn upon him and taught him the Vedas. He chanted the divine name of Rāma with such commitment and intensity that an anthill (‘valmīka’ in Sanskrit) grew over his body. After many years, the saptarṣis returned and brought him out of the anthill. As he emerged out of valmīka, he came to be called Vālmīki. Having thus realised the Rāma-tattva, he composed the Rāmāyaṇa.
It is quite unlikely that the story is literally true. It is symbolic. It shows the graduation of Vālmīki from the selfish activities connected with the world to the selfless realm of composing a poem that can help realise universal values. The anthill symbolises the deep internal journey that the sage went into before composing the epic. In the Sanskrit language, the anthill is also referred to as bhuvaḥ-śravas, i.e., the ear of the earth. It is composed of fine particles of soil dug out of the earth.
Likewise, a poet needs to have an unbiased ear which is open to everything; in other words, he must not close his ears to anything associated with the world. He must absorb the world completely and go on an internal introspective journey which will eventually help him create something beautiful. In fact, there exists a kavi-samaya, i.e., a poetic convention according to which the beautiful rainbow is born out of an anthill.
Vālmīki is not merely a poet, but also a sage. He is a ṛṣi-kavi – he lives the life that he writes about. As mentioned earlier, the sage feels pain for a bird which was killed in its moments of joy and also rescues Sītā who has been abandoned by Rāma. In the former case, the cause of separation is the hunter and in the latter, the people of Ayodhyā. The world interferes in the peaceful lives of people and a spiritually realised person can serve as the oasis of peace for those in distress. Vālmīki, thus, becomes relevant beyond his poem – he curses the hunter and rescues Sītā.
Another unique feature of the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata is that the poets themselves are characters in their poems. It is interesting to note that the poet depicts himself as a character in his artistic work. Vyāsa plays quite a significant role in the Mahābhārata and contributes towards greater dharma; among other things, he is the biological father of Dhṛtarāṣṭra and Pāṇḍu.
Vālmīki plays an important role in the Rāmāyaṇa in that he becomes Sītā’s guardian and in a sense, the foster grand-father of Rāma’s sons. Though Vālmīki displays soft resistance to the manner in which the world behaved with Sītā, he does not paint Rāma in a bad light. Sītā and Vālmīki know Rāma’s heart the best and we cannot know better.
Vālmīki and Vyāsa participate in their epics but are not perturbed by the events – they are truly jīvanmuktas.
Facts are connected with the spatiotemporal world and suffice to satisfy intellectual curiosity. In many cases, they do not have a transformative effect on our lives nor can they entertain us.
For instance, merely knowing the height of Mt. Everest or the Eiffel Tower does not give us the joy that we experience upon climbing them. Similarly, in everyday conversations when I ask my friend Ramesh if he knows Suresh, I am not trying to fetch the factual biometric details about the latter; neither does Ramesh tell me the height, weight, blood group, eye colour, and zodiac sign of Suresh. It is evident that I am asking about the intangible aspects of Suresh’s personality and not factual details.
Indian art in general and classical literature in particular address the intangible aspects of life. They are meant more as media for realising values and less as carriers of factual information.
The ṛṣi-kavi Vālmīki composed the epic to emotionally enrapture his readers and thereby help values blossom in their minds. The Mahābhārata proclaims with great conviction that it is an encyclopaedia of the cardinal values – dharma, artha, kāma, and mokṣa and the Rāmāyāṇa, too, is meant for the creative delineation of these values through characters and situations. It is for this reason that the epics are considered itihāsa in the Indian tradition. The word ‘itihāsa’ does not refer to mere factual history.
In the West, history is seen as a compendium of spatiotemporal facts; in India, however, itihāsa concerns itself more with values; facts are of secondary importance and lessons from the factual (or even fictional) episodes are of primary importance. A dry narration of historical facts can hardly be interesting; however, when history is expressed through poetry, it becomes universal and contemporary because human emotions and values can never become outdated. In other words, history universalised is itihāsa and the universalization is through the emphasis on emotions and values. This process of universalization is termed sādhāraṇīkaraṇa in the Indian tradition.
To be continued
Some versions of the story say that his name was Ratnākara and it was Sage Nārada who educated him about the profound principles of life. In the Kannada folklore, it is said that Ratnākara desisted from even uttering the name Rāma; Nārada convinced him to chant the word mara (meaning ‘tree,’ in Kannada). Uninterrupted chanting of mara-maramaramara, made it sound like Rāma and Ratnākara realised the Rāma-tattva. The story also suggests the power of chanting the sacred name.
Prof. M. Hiriyanna says, “If facts are apprehended, values are realised. It is only as realisable, or on the supposition that they are so, that we call them values.” Introduction to the treatise Indian Conception of Values.
dharme cārthe ca kāme ca mokṣe ca bharatarṣabha|
yadihāsti tadanyatra yannehāsti na tat-kvacit|| (Mahābhārata, Ādi-parva, 56.33). In this context, Bhāmaha says
dharmārtha-kāma-mokṣāṇāṃ vaicakṣaṇyaṃ kalāsu ca|
karoti kīrtiṃ prītiṃ ca sadhu-kāvya-niṣevaṇam|| (Kāvyālaṅkāra 112)
A great poem helps us realise the values of dharma, artha, kāma, and mokṣa and aids us in gaining insights into arts; it fills our lives with glory and love. In other words, it makes our lives happy.
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