Ever since I was introduced to what tradition regards as the first śloka ever written, Vālmīki’s first śloka now preserved at Rāmāyaṇa 1.2.14, I have had a question about it. Probably you or others have long ago answered it. Sorry for my ignorance of the relevant material on this verse.

mā niṣāda pratiṣṭhāṃ tvam agamaḥ śāśvatīḥ samāḥ |
yat krauñca-mithunād ekam avadhīḥ kāma-mohitam || 1.2.14 ||

“Since, Niṣāda, you killed one of this pair of krauñcas, distracted at the height of passion, you shall not live for very long.” (trans. Robert P. Goldman, 1984)

What first struck me is that both of the verbs in this verse, agamas and avadhīs, are aorists. Moreover, agamas has here retained its augment, although used with mā. My understanding is that, since aorists largely fell out of use after the Vedic period, they are not at all common in the Rāmāyaṇa. So here is my question. Assuming that this is in fact Vālmīki’s first śloka, would this point to an original Rāmāyaṇa that is considerably older than the Rāmāyaṇa we now have? Could the Rāmāyaṇa as now extant have been reworked, updated in language so to speak, from an earlier original? For example, F. E. Pargiter in his detailed study, The Purāna Text of the Dynasties of the Kali Age (1913), found considerable evidence that in the oldest purāṇas (Vāyu, Brahmāṇḍa, Matsya) the verses had been Sanskritized from an earlier literary Prakrit, and that these Sanskrit verses had in turn been condensed and rewritten directly in Sanskrit in some other purāṇas (Viṣṇu, Bhāgavata).

Best regards,

David Reigle

Colorado, U.S.A.