The Ramayana: the story of Rama
The epic of Prince Rama, his exile, the abduction of his wife Sita by the demon king Ravana, and his return to rule Ayodhya in justice.
- The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki: An Epic of Ancient India — Robert P. Goldman (general editor), Princeton University Press (1984)
- Many Rāmāyaṇas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia — Paula Richman (ed.), University of California Press (1991)
- Ramlila, the traditional performance of the Ramayana (Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity) — UNESCO (2008)
Valmiki’s Ramayana, about 24,000 verses in seven books, tells how Rama, eldest son of King Dasharatha of Ayodhya, is sent into forest exile for fourteen years on the eve of his coronation, because of a promise his father made to a younger queen. His wife Sita and brother Lakshmana go with him. The demon king Ravana abducts Sita to his island of Lanka; Rama, with the monkey hero Hanuman and an army of monkeys and bears, builds a bridge across the sea, kills Ravana and returns home to rule.
- The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki: An Epic of Ancient India — Robert P. Goldman (general editor), Princeton University Press (1984)
- An Introduction to Hinduism — Gavin Flood, Cambridge University Press (1996)
Hindus revere it as scripture, and its characters are moral exemplars. But it also raises hard questions that Hindus have debated for centuries, above all Rama’s demand that Sita prove her purity in fire and his later banishment of her.
- The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki: An Epic of Ancient India — Robert P. Goldman (general editor), Princeton University Press (1984)
- Many Rāmāyaṇas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia — Paula Richman (ed.), University of California Press (1991)
The story has been retold endlessly: by the Tamil poet Kamban in the twelfth century, by Tulsidas in his Hindi Ramcharitmanas in the sixteenth, in Jain and Buddhist versions, and across Southeast Asia, in Thailand’s Ramakien and Javanese shadow puppetry. The scholar A. K. Ramanujan’s essay “Three Hundred Ramayanas” celebrated that diversity; in 2011 Delhi University dropped it from its syllabus after protests from Hindu groups.
- Many Rāmāyaṇas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia — Paula Richman (ed.), University of California Press (1991)
- Ramlila, the traditional performance of the Ramayana (Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity) — UNESCO (2008)
Rama is an incarnation of Vishnu who really lived in Ayodhya in a much earlier age of the world, the Treta Yuga, and the sage Valmiki recorded his life.
- The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki: An Epic of Ancient India — Robert P. Goldman (general editor), Princeton University Press (1984)
- An Introduction to Hinduism — Gavin Flood, Cambridge University Press (1996)
Valmiki's Sanskrit poem grew over several centuries, with later layers that stress Rama's divinity. There is no single Ramayana: hundreds of versions in many languages and religions tell the story differently, some with Sita or even Ravana at the centre.
- The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki: An Epic of Ancient India — Robert P. Goldman (general editor), Princeton University Press (1984)
- Many Rāmāyaṇas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia — Paula Richman (ed.), University of California Press (1991)
Why it matters today
Rama is the model of the dutiful son, husband and king, and "Ram Rajya", the rule of Rama, means an ideal state. Diwali celebrates his homecoming, the Ramlila is staged in thousands of towns each autumn, and the cry "Jai Shri Ram" is both a devotional greeting and, since the Ayodhya campaign, a political slogan.