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Bhagvad Gita |
Bhagvata Purana |
Ramayana | Puranas |
Ramacaritmanas |
Jnaneshvari
The Ramayana belongs to a class of literature
known in Sanskrit as kavya (poetry), though in
the West it is considered to belong to the
category of literature familiar to readers of
Homer, namely the epic. It is one of two epics,
the other being the Mahabharata, which have had
a decisive influence in shaping the nature of
Indian civilization. The Ramayana existed in the
oral tradition perhaps as far back as 1,500 BCE,
but the fourth century BCE is generally accepted
as the date of its composition in Sanskrit by
Valmiki. Though some right-wing ideologues in
recent years, eager that the Ramayana should
have the same kind of historicity attached to it
as do the scriptures of Christianity and the
Koran, have sought to date the Ramayana back to
at least 6,000 years and even furnish an exact
date for its composition, it by no means
diminishes the importance of the text to suggest
that the historicity of the Ramayana is the
least interesting of the questions that can be
raised about it and its characters. Whether in
fact its hero Rama, who in Hindu mythology is an
avatar of Vishnu but a principal deity in his
own right, and who is also worshipped in parts
of north India as a king, existed or not is
scarcely of any importance. The other kind of
excess is to view him merely as a trope as a
sign of patriarchy, for example, or as an
insignia of valiant and militant kshatriyahood,
which is what the present generation of militant
Hindutvavadis have turned him into.
The main frame of the story of the Ramayana is
exceedingly well-known in India, imbibed by
every Indian with, so to speak, mothers milk.
The Koysala country, with Ayodhya as its
capital, is presided over by Dasaratha. Though
his eldest son Rama, son of his queen Kausalya,
is entitled to the throne, and Dasaratha is
himself keen that Rama should ascend to the
kingship, Dasarathas other queen Kaikeyi
contrives to have Rama sent into exile for
fourteen years, as well as have her own son,
Bharatha, installed as king. Though Bharatha is
not a party to the plot, and is devoted to his
elder brother, Rama nonetheless proceeds to the
forest, accompanied by his brother Lakshmana,
who is one of two sons of Dasarathas third
queen, Sumithra, as well as by his wife, Sita,
renowned for her beauty and matchless virtue. In
the forest, Rama and his party have numerous
adventures, but it is the abduction of Sita by
Ravana, the demon-king of Lanka, which sets the
stage for the epic battle between Rama and
Ravana. In his efforts to find Sita, whose
whereabouts are unknown, Rama is aided by
Hanuman, the monkey god or god of wind. In
Indian literature and mythology, there is no
greater exemplar of the perfect devotee than
Hanuman. Eventually, Ravana, his kin, and his
entire force is defeated by Rama and his
military allies, and in triumph Rama returns to
Ayodhya with Lakshmana and Sita and is crowned
king.
It is important to recognize that there is not
one Ramayana in India. Indeed, the original
composition in Sanskrit by Valmiki is seldom
read these days, and the most common Ramayanas
are in the vernacular Indian languages. In
south India, for instance, the Ramayana of
Kamban, written in Tamil in the eleventh
century, prevails; in north India, the Ramayana
of Tulsidas, called the Ramacaritmanas, has
become legendary. Even among the Hindus living
in far-flung places of the Indian diaspora, such
as Fiji and Trinidad, the Ramacaritmanas is the
devotional text of Hinduism par excellence.
There are Ramayanas in virtually all the major
Indian languages, and a few dozen translations,
mainly abridged, and "transcreations" in
English. In the Bengali version of the story,
Ravana is turned into the hero; and this
narrative was again taken up by the nineteenth
century Bengali writer, Michael Madhusudan Dutt
(1824-73), whose own epic retelling of the
Ramayana portrays Rama as a weak and effeminate
figure representing an earlier stage of
political naivete and parochialism. It is no
surprise that one American scholar, Paula
Richman, has written of the "many Ramayanas" in
a book by the same title.
Though the main story of the Ramayana may appear
to be without much complexity, the epic presents
numerous problems of interpretation, as has
already been suggested. True, Rama appears in
popular Indian representations (especially in
the north) as the very model of the monogamous
husband and just and good king; similarly, Sita
has been seen as the supreme model of the
virtuous, self-sacrificing, and obedient wife,
the supreme embodiment of femininity as much as
womanhood. But even a superficial reading of the
Ramayana puts this interpretation at some risk.
One problem is that the Ramayana appears in many
versions, and the variant endings illustrate the
nature of the diverse readings. In the commonly
accepted version of the story, after Rama had
rescued Sita and brought her back to Ayodhya,
numerous rumors arose about the questionable
fidelity of Sita that had the effect of
unsettling Rama. Though Rama realized that his
wife was the very paragon of virtue untainted,
and that she would not have submitted to the
sexual advances of Ravana, in whose captivity
she had remained for many years, some doubts
began to creep into his own mind; besides, as a
king, it was his duty to put to rest the
anxieties expressed by his subjects.
Consequently, he subjected Sita to a public
test: if she could emerge from the flames of the
fire unscathed, that would be the touchstone of
her unimpeachable moral character. Sita passes
the test (agnipariksha) with flying colors, and
henceforth takes her place besides Rama, and
together they preside over Ayodhya. In a variant
ending, Sita is sent to pass the rest of her
life at the hermitage of Valmiki, where she
gives birth to the twins Lava and Kusa; and
eventually, pleading with the earth, from which
she is descended, to be her witness, Sita [the
word means "furrow"] returns to the earth from
where she had come forth. This can be seen as a
reprimand to Rama, as a reaffirmation of the
feminine principle against the masculinity of
realpolitik. One recent and moving
reinterpretation of the Ramayana by Ramachandra
Gandhi suggests that the portion about the
agnipariksha is not part of the story as it
appeared in the oral tradition, being added at
the instance of patriarchal men who came to
exercise increasing influence in Indian society.
Even the character of Rama is not without its
blemishes [see Rama]. Contrariwise, even
Tulsidass Ramacaritmanas, which is the most
patriarchal of the widely read versions,
recognizes that Ravana was not without certain
admirable qualities. Indeed, the tales about the
Ramayana suggest a wonderful self-reflexivity.
When Rama agrees to go into exile, he attempts
to dissuade Sita from following him; she is
advised that as a princess, accustomed to all
the luxuries that life has to offer, the
hardships of a meager and hard existence in the
forest are not for her. But, as a Hindu wife,
Sita suggests that she will willingly share her
husbands life, and that at this critical moment
she cannot abandon him. The Indian writer
Ananthamurthy has written about one version of
the Ramayana, where Rama pleads with Sita to
remain behind in Ayodhya; finally, exasperated
by his presumption that women must not undergo
the hardships of life, Sita says to Rama: "If in
all other Ramayanas I accompany you, how can I
not do so in this Ramayana."
THE TEXT: The Valmiki or Sanskrit
Ramayana contains nearly 50,000 lines of verse,
and is much longer than both the Iliad and the
Odyssey. The narrative is broken up into seven
books, as follows:
Bala-kanda: the boyhood and adolescence
of Rama;
Ayodhya-kanda: the court of Dasaratha,
and the scenes that set the stage for the
unfolding of the story, including the exchange
between Dasaratha and Kaikeyi, and the exile of
Rama;
Aranya-kanda: life in the forest and the
abduction of Sita by Ravana;
Kishkindhya-kanda: Ramas residence in
Kishkindhya, the quest for Sita, and the slaying
of Bali;
Sundara-kanda: description of the
landscapes over which Rama roams, and the
arrival of Rama and his allies in Lanka; sundara
means beautiful, and this portion of the book
has passages of lyrical beauty;
Yuddha-kanda: also known as the Lanka-kanda:
the book of war: the defeat of Ravana, the
recovery of Sita, the return to Ayodhya, and the
coronation of Rama; and
Uttara-kanda: the "later section",
detailing Ramas life in Ayodhya, the banishment
of Sita, the birth of Lava and Kusa, the
reconciliation of Rama and Sita, her death or
return to the earth, and Ramas ascent into
heaven.
There are numerous translations of the Ramayana
available in English. One popular, but extremely
condensed, version based on the Tamil of
Kamban is by R. K. Narayan (Penguin Books); in
India, just as popular is the version, also in
prose but longer, by C. Rajagopalachari (Bharatiya
Vidya Bhavan). Another easily available abridged
version in verse is by William Buck. The most
scholarly, and complete, English translation of
the Ramayana, is the multi-volume version by
Robert Goldman, Sheldon Pollock, and others,
published by Princeton University Press.
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