Love and sorrow. On the sentience of ‘common’ animals in the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa

From the very beginning with the episode of the krauñcavadha, the Rāmāyaṇa shows in many passages the awareness that animals, or rather some of their species, love and suffer both mentally and physically, and that many animals can feel emotions. This paper is intended above all to be a review of passages in which these attitudes of the poem appear to be expressed. Of course, we are not dealing here in any way with the vānaras, the monkeys, or the great anthropomorphized vultures, but with some of the common animals mentioned by the poem. The identification of the sentience of animals we wish to highlight clearly derives from observation and empathy, and not from processes of anthropomorphization. This sentience is often expressed by similes, upamās, some of which are consolidated into recurring images, and in some cases are on the verge of becoming, or have already become, conventional expressions, without necessarily losing their strength. These similes directly relate human beings to the animals that form the second terms of comparison. In this way, the sensations, emotions and feelings of the animals involved are placed on the same level as those of humans. More generally, the greater or lesser elaboration of these associations reflects the different level of relationships and closeness, which may also be affective, for certain animals compared to others.