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Continued from yesterday's instalment
 Before we proceed with our discussion, it is all the more important to keep one point in mind. Valmiki was a contemporary of Sri Rama. He even plays an important role in the Uttara Kanda. It is therefore understandable that when Valmiki wrote the epic - which Sri Rama himself heard through his own children - he was more a king than a God. Any people who are ruled by the noblest of kings would naturally and obviously regard their king with awe and may perhaps even speak of him as God. But they certainly would not go to the extent of building temples for him and start worshipping him, at least during this lifetime. Therefore, Valmiki’s positioning of Rama more as a strategist is comprehensible.
But as the years rolled past, Rama became more a God than a king, as people have already started worshipping him. Therefore, this act of Sri Rama, combined with his assurance of kingship over Lanka to Vibishana was looked at with askance. Both Sri VVS Aiyar and Srinivasa Sastriyar have spoken at length on this matter. Sri VVS Aiyar cites a verse in Valmiki that occurs when both Rama and Lakshmana were lying on the battlefield, wounded by Indrajit. The verse shows Vibishana as saying, “Those two warriors on whose valour I counted so much for the sake of my advancement are now fallen on the field and are dead. Today I live a ruined man, with all my dreams of sovereignty gone for ever.”
Sri Aiyar continues. “These words, taken along with Rama’s quoted before, make of Vibishana a little more than a common traitor who has had the good fortune of having foreseen in time the sure ultimate victory of Rama. And this should explain the bad odour that surrounds the name of Vibishana among modern critics of the Ramayana in Bengal.” He says that in the South the cult of Rama as the avatar of Vishnu took shape somewhere in the early centuries of Salivahana era (around 78 A. D.) as evidenced by some of the great Tamil literary pieces written at that time. Vibishana is seen by these great geniuses of the South as a Baktha and therefore Kamban modified the version of Valmiki, toned down what was perceived to be a little harsh and mellowed the scene so that Vibishana is seen in the proper light.
 Srinivasa Sastriyar who was well versed in Valmiki (there of course is no evidence to show that he was familiar with what Kamban said) says that he was brought up with the view that Vibishana was a Baktha and that he was shocked to see when scholars of the North - especially Bengal - were of the opinion that he was a traitor.
He cites an incident. Gopalakrishna Gokhale (of whom Sastriyar was a follower) after the 1906 Congress undertook a series of lectures in various parts of India, emphasising that it was not good for India to sever British connections and boycotting everything British would end in disaster. At that time Aurobindo Ghosh was the editor of the famous newspaper ‘Bande Mataram.’ And there was an editorial on Gokhale’s campaign in the newspaper headed ‘Exit Vibishana’ referring to
Gokhale.
More follows…
Hari Krishnan
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