While speaking of my own translation I must not fail to make some mention of my predecessors in this work. The magnificent edition of the Ramayana (Bengal recension), published with an Italian translation by Gorresio, at the expense of Charles Albert King of Sardinia in 1843-67, first introduced this great Epic to the European public; and it was not long before M. Hippolyte Fauche presented the European world with a French translation of this edition. The Benares recension of the Ramayana has since been lithographed in Bombay, and a printed edition of the same recension with Ramanuja's commentary was brought out by the venerable Hem Chandra Vidyaratna in Calcutta in 1869-85. The talented and indefatigable Mr. Ralph Griffith, C.I.E., who has devoted a lifetime to translating Indian poetry into English, has produced an almost complete translation of the first six Books in more than 24,000 English couplets, and has given an abstract of the seventh Book in prose. And a complete translation of the Ramayana into English prose has since appeared in Calcutta.

The object of the present work is very different from that of these meritorious editions and translations. The purpose of this work, as explained above, is not to attempt a complete translation of a voluminous Epic, but to place before the general reader the leading story of that Epic by translating a number of selected passages and connecting them together by short notes. The purpose of this volume is not to repeat the long poem which Rama's sons are supposed to have recited in 24,000 Sanscrit couplets, but only to narrate the main incidents of that poem within the reasonable limit of 2,000 verses. And the general reader who seeks for a practical acquaintance with the great Indian poem within a reason able compass will, it is hoped, find in this book a handy and not unacceptable translation of the leading story of the Epic.