The Ramayana.—The immortal epic of Valmiki is-undoubtedly one of the gems of literature-indeed some considering it as the Kohinoor of the literary region, which has, for centuries and from time immemorial, shedding unparalleled and undying halo upon the domain presided over by " the vision and faculty divine," The author is regarded a riskior a seer and he says he was a contemporary of Rama His hermitage Jay on the banks of the Ganges, and there Sita was delivered of her twin sons, whose foster-father he was "It is quite possible that, as the Ramayana is said to have" ansen in the race of the Ikshvakus, many legends were afloat at the royal court, which were woven together in a poetic-form, in conformity to the rules of rhetoric by Valmiki, the Itrst poet. ' '
The age of the Ramayana has been already proved to be k> pre-buddh.snc, .as is also of all the epic pciry of Modern research has proved that the epic ke Ramayana must have been completed before the
f< I *»*^/4 «-ls n.______ . .

ains the
Sita, the Jaa couple after the manner of
time traces that -rce of the
aitered
°f theo lived at Kurupara to the West •of Godavari in Maharashtra and according to Burnell belongs to the sixteenth century. Older is Arjuna Misra, whose com-imentary appears in the Calcutta edition of 1875. The earlier -commentator is Sarvagna Narayana, large fragments of whose notes have been preserved and who cannot have written later than the 2nd half of the I4th century, but may be somewhat