Kamba Ramayana A study 02

Sir V.S.Srinivasa Shastri in his " Lectures on The Ramayana " delivered in India and in the U.K. in the twenties and Thirties has elevated Kambar as equal or even superior to Vaalmeeki. He felt that Kambar has interpreted tricky situations in the narrative in a very humanitarian( and so can be perceived as such) and full of commons sense. Gandhiji loved to read or listen to Rajaji on Kambar. Two millenia separate Vaalmeeki from Kambar; and much water had flowed between the Ganga and the Kaaveri.

Mouli

VVS also looks at our epics in comparison to the classics from the west. But I guess I will stay with Valmiki and Kamba Ramayanas for now. The stories of Vashistha and Vishvamitra are well known. How Vishwamitra, then king Kaushika, failed in his attempts to seize Nandini, a cow which gave all one needed, from Vashistha.  Thus defeated he gave up his kingdom and with penance attained Brahmarishi status. As he probably retained some traces of his old nature as a king, he was quick to take offence. It is the calmer Vashistha who convinces Dasharatha to send Rama and Lakshamana with the sage. It would also be beneficial as Rama would acquire some astras from the rishi. (A win-win situation!)

Rama protects the sacred site from the asuras and then Vishvamitra takes the brothers to Mithila. It is his intention to get Rama and Sita married. We see Kamban infusing some sweet drama into the episode.

The artful rishi took Rama and Lakshamana through the very street where Sita's bower was situated. As luck would have it, Sita was standing on the top floor of her palace surrounded by her girl friends. To his great delight Vishvamitra saw Rama looking in that direction and noted that he encountered her eyes and afterwards he looked at nothing else. Who could look on that lovely face, sweet with the sweetness of an Indian spring, carrying memories of blue heavens and sunny glades, of the scent of  a thousand  delicate flowers, of the warbling brook and the voice of the koil, ......who could look on that face and not have his heart enthralled? The poet becomes speechless before the ineffable perfection of her loveliness and falls before it. He dare not describe her form. He says, 'What shall we compare that form to, by the standard of whose loveliness alone that other beauty be measured? The eyes of men as well  of those of the gods are too weak to drink in the effulgence of that heavenly form......When the creator had made Sita, he could create no higher beauty...The very Genius of Beauty acquired new loveliness by mingling with her form. 

Valmiki Ramayana appears all business and tradition:
Janaka speaks to Vishvamitra...Later, when I was ploughing the ritual field then raised by the plough from the furrow is a baby girl... since she is gained while consecrating the ritual-field, she is named as Seetha, and thus she is renowned...

Her's is a non-uterine birth as she surfaced from the surface of the earth, but fostered as my own soul-born girl and I am determined to give her in marriage to a bridegroom where his boldness is the only bounty, I receive in that marriage...

 In ancient India, there was.........kanyaa shulkam meaning 'some bounty, property or money offered by a bridegroom's family to the bride's family' since they are getting a worthy bride.