INTRODUCTION
THE Sanskrit Rámáyana of Válmíki has been published more than once, with all the advantages of European editorial skill and the most laxurions typography. It has also been translated both in verse and prose, and, in part at least, into Latin as well as into Italian, French and English. The more popular Hindi version of the same great national Epic can only be read in lithograph or bazar print, and has never been translated in any form into any language whatever. Yet it is no unworthy rival of its more fortunate predecessor. There can, of course, be no comparison between the polished phraseology of classical Sanskrit and the rough colloquial idiom of Tulsi Dás's vernacular; while the antiquity of Valmiki's poem farther invests it with an adventitious interest for the student on the other hand, the Hindi poem is the best and most trustworthy guide to the popular living faith of the Hindu race at the present day-a matter of not less practical interest than the creed of their remote ances- tors-and its language, which in the course of three centuries has contracted a tinge of archaism, is a study of much importance to the philologist, as helping to bridge the chasm between the modern tongue and the medieval. Itis also less wordy and diffuse than the Sanskrit original and, probably in consequence of its modern date, is less disfigured by wearisome interpolations and repetitions; while, high as Válmiki in some of his best passages, it maintains a more equable level of poetic diction, and seldom sinks with him into such dreary depths of unmitigated prose. It must also be noted that it is in no sense a translation of the earlier work: the general plan and the management of the incidents are necessarily much the same, but there is a difference in the touch in widely as any two dramas on the same mythological subject by two different Greek tragedians. Even the coincidence of name is an accident ; for Tulsi Dás himself called his poem the Rám-charit- mánas,' and the'shorter title, corresponding in character to 'the Iliad' o 'Eneid, has only been substituted by his admirers as a handier designation for a popu- lar favourite.
I A handsome edition of the text was issued from the press of the Baptist Mission in Calcutta many years ago ; bat it has long been out of print, and the only copy I have ever seen of it waa the in use at the College of Fort William. I had thus entirely forgotten the fact till reminded of t by Kr. Bate, a gentleman who has ably maintained the scholarly reputation of the Mission by the very useful Hindi Dictionary that he has lately compiled.
