महावीरचरितम् (महाकवि भवभूति - वीररस-प्रधान रामकथा नाटक सम्पूर्ण ७ अङ्क सटीक)

lv] History of the Rāma-story
18, Q.—Soon after the disappearance of Sītā, Rāma feels his own end
drawing near. The kingdom is divided amongst the four brothers, who in
turn settle it upon their children. In the meantime the aged Queen-
mothers die. Thereafter Lakshmaṇa, whom Rāma, for no fault of his own,
was compelled to send away from him, gives up the ghost. Finally Rāma
himself enters the waters of the river Sarayū, and his other brothers, and
the whole city of Ayodhyā in fact, follow after him to heaven. END OF
UTTARA-KĀṆḌA.
19. Vālmīki's Rāmāyaṇa not the sole source of our play.—Professor
Jacobi (in his book entitled Das Rāmāyaṇa, Geschichte und Inhalt, nebst
Concordanz, Bonn, 1893, p. 111), upon linguistic, geographical, astronomical,
and various other grounds, assigns the Rāmāyaṇa to the period between
800 and 500 B.C. By this he means of course the oldest strata of the epic.
Additions and interpolations came to be made from time to time even down
to the beginning of the Christian era. Besides the few cantos here and
there which carry the marks of spuriousness on their face, it is almost
certain that the major part of the Bāla-kāṇḍa (where for the first time
we find an attempt to treat Rāma as a divine Avatar) and the whole of the
Uttara-kāṇḍa (which deals with the later history of Rāma) are relatively
late additions. The present play, as its title shows, deals with the later
history of Rāma; and since it differs in many essential respects from the
account given in the last book of the Rāmāyaṇa, the question arises whether
Bhavabhūti used for his plot other sources than Vālmīki's epic.
The Mahā-Bhārata contains, at iii. 273 ff., a ‘Rāma-episode’ or Rāmo-
pākhyāna; but this text does not carry the story beyond Rāma's coronation.
In this fact some see a reason for considering the Rāmāyaṇa (at least in its
present form) as later than the Mahā-Bhārata. This does not follow; for,
considering that Mārkaṇḍeya relates the episode to illustrate how good
people, fallen in misfortune, do in turn gain happiness, there is no motive
for him to carry the story beyond the return to Ayodhyā, even if he knew
it. Further, the Mahā-Bhārata does elsewhere (vii. 59) narrate the story
of Rāma's death; but it is very short, and is of no significance for the
present problem.
The Rāma-story is given with more or less detail in the various Purāṇas
such as the Brahma-Purāṇa (of which the Adhyātma Rāmāyaṇa forms a part),
the Bhāgavata, Garuḍa, Skanda, Agni, Kūrma, and so on. But in discuss-
ing the sources of Bhavabhūti's plays, and particularly of the present play,
the most important text is the Padma-Purāṇa.
20. Three forms of the Rāma-story in the Padma-Purāṇa.—The Padma
gives the Rāma-story in three different places, each time with significant
variations. These differing versions could not of course have been intro-