- - .I.VJL JL o JL i.^ ti.A.f.K-K.t.JbJN UEi5

"Or if no way exists, 0 Brahmanas !, or if none tetl it me
though it exists, or if I find it not myself, with laborious search
and long, then shall I give up this place of pains wherein so
long I have abided, thinking* and believing that it was my
body. It is not mine, nor am I its at all, and like the flame of
the lamp unfed with oil, I too shall pass into extinction, being"
unnourished with desire.'*

CHAPTER IV
The Promise

So ended Rama's speech to the assembled B-shis, as end
the peacock's notes, suddenly exhausted, after welcoming the
deep dark rain-clouds, bending laden with the waters of com-
passion over the faint and thirsty earth.

The Bshis heard that sweet and wondrous speech which
was to wash away in its strong flow the stains of many a
mind. They heard it with deep joy. The King, his ministers,
and chiefs and honoured citizens, heard it in silent wonder.
The mothers and the ladies heard it, seated in their gallery
windows, in a stillness and an awe in which their very orna-
ments forgot to tinkle. The birds, perched in the garden-
creepers and the niches of the palace walls, listened, suppressing
their own melodies to drink that sweeter music. The wanderers
of Heaven heard those words. "Sadhu (1), 0 Prince f, well
done tn, the Si(idhas(2) cried. And after that, for the fourth part
of a Muhnrta (3), flowers fell from Heaven over the gathered
Sabha (4), like stars down-rushing in their eagerness to hear

(1) Excellent.

(2) Per fee bed souls, reeiding in the regions of the upper Air.

(3) A muhurta is the thirtieth part of a day-night, or forty-eight
minutes, by which period, the moon's rise advances, or recedes, each
night, in the bright, or the dark, fortnights, (4) Assemblage.