"Ten thousand years Ayodha, blest
With Rama's rule, had peace and rest.
No widow mourned her murdered mate,
No house was ever desolate.
The happy land no murrain knew,
The flocks and herds increased and grew,
The earth her kindly fruits supplied,
No harvest failed, no children died.
Unknown were want, disease, and crime,
So calm, so happy was the time." [**]

This state of universal happiness does not continue for ever. People in the city have doubts regarding the purity of their queen, which at length reach the ears of Rama, who, taking advantage of a wish of Sita once again to see a hermitage, leaves her to live an ascetic life. When her twin sons, born in her forest home, come of age, she sends them to their father's court. The king on seeing them, deeply feels the injustice he had done their mother, and determines at any cost to reinstate her as his queen. On her arrival he asks her to assert her innocence before the assembled court; but even Situ could not bear this. She calls to the earth which gave her birth now to give her a home; the earth opened and received her into her bosom. After this Rama grows

tired of life, and Time comes to inform him that his work is done. Hearing this, the good king goes to the banks of the sacred stream, and forsaking his body ascends to his home in heaven.

Rama, to a vast number of Hindus, is not merely the King of Ayodha, whose history is so pathetically told in the Ramayana; nor the benefactor of gods, as he slew their enemy, Ravana; but their saviour and friend. As the dead are carried to the river-side to be burned, the friends repeatedly cry, "Rama, Rama, Satya Nama," i.e. " Rama, Rama, the true name." Probably this is owing to the fact that in life his power of intercession for the dead was great; whilst his kindness to and care for his followers were such as to encourage men's trust. He is said to have taken the whole of the inhabitants of his beloved city Ayodha to Brahma's heaven without their suffering death. At his intercession Ravana's spies were saved; and the Vanar hosts that had fallen in battle were restored to life. He entreated his father Dasaratha to remove the curse which he had pronounced upon Kaikeya, the mother of Bharata, through whose unkindness Rama had been exiled.

Footnotes

^170:* It is a strange though real confirmation of the truth of the underlying history of the hero that to this day the aboriginal tribes inhabiting the Vindhya hills have many legends relating to the life of Rama and Sita, although they are not Hindus, and know but little of Hinduism. These people are not at all like the Hindus in appearance. They are black, have curly hair and thick lips, not very unlike some African races.

^172:* Griffiths's "Ramayana," i. 81.

^172:+ Ibid. i. 82.