The Rāmāyaṇa

The Rāmāyaṇa (“Rāma’s journey”) is the older of India’s two great Sanskrit epics, attributed to the sage Vālmīki and composed between about the fifth century BCE and the first century CE. In about 24,000 couplets, it tells the life of Rāma, prince of Ayodhyā and incarnation of the god Viṣṇu: his exile to the forest at the instigation of a jealous stepmother, the abduction of his wife Sītā by Rāvaṇa, the ten-headed demon king of Laṅkā, his alliance with the monkey people and the devoted Hanumān, the bridge built across the sea, the war in which Rāvaṇa is killed — and, in the final book, the tragic aftermath in which Rāma, doubting nothing but bowing to gossip, banishes the pregnant Sītā. Called the ādikāvya, the “first poem”, it is the foundation of Sanskrit literature and, retold in hundreds of versions in every language of South and Southeast Asia, perhaps the most widely loved story in the world. Where the The Mahābhārata shows dharma tangled and tragic, the Rāmāyaṇa offers an ideal — and then, in its last book, questions it.

Background

The birth of poetry

The epic opens with a story about its own origin. The sage Vālmīki asks the divine seer Nārada whether there is any perfectly virtuous man in the world; Nārada tells him of Rāma. Then, walking by the Tamasā river, Vālmīki sees a pair of krauñca birds (cranes) making love; a hunter shoots the male; the female cries out in grief. Moved by compassion and anger, Vālmīki curses the hunter — and his curse comes out in a new, metrical form:

mā niṣāda pratiṣṭhāṃ tvam agamaḥ śāśvatīḥ samāḥ yat krauñcamithunād ekam avadhīḥ kāmamohitam

May you, hunter, find no rest for endless years, since you killed one of a pair of cranes, lost in love.

His grief (śoka) had become verse (śloka). The god Brahmā appears and tells him to compose the story of Rāma in this metre. Vālmīki thus becomes the ādikavi, the “first poet”. Indian poetics later saw in this scene the theory that the essence of poetry is rasa — emotion transformed into aesthetic experience — and that the Rāmāyaṇa’s dominant rasa is karuṇa, compassion or pathos.

Text

The epic exists in northern and southern recensions; a Critical Edition was published by the Oriental Institute of Baroda (1960–75). Scholars generally regard Books 2–6 as the oldest core, with Books 1 and 7 (which present Rāma explicitly as an incarnation of Viṣṇu) as later additions. Vālmīki himself appears as a character in Book 7.

Plot summary

Boyhood

King Daśaratha of Ayodhyā, ruler of the solar dynasty of Ikṣvāku, has three queens but no sons. He performs a great sacrifice, and receives a divine elixir which he shares among his wives. Kausalyā gives birth to Rāma; Kaikeyī to Bharata; Sumitrā to twins, Lakṣmaṇa and Śatrughna. The gods have arranged this: Viṣṇu takes birth as Rāma to destroy the demon king Rāvaṇa of Laṅkā, who, by a boon from Brahmā, cannot be killed by gods, demons or spirits — but, scorning humans, did not ask protection from them.

While still a boy, Rāma, with Lakṣmaṇa — who becomes his inseparable companion — accompanies the sage Viśvāmitra to protect his sacrifices from demons, killing the demoness Tāṭakā, and receives divine weapons. On the way, his touch frees Ahalyā, wife of the sage Gautama, turned to stone by her husband’s curse for her seduction by Indra.

At the court of King Janaka of Mithilā, Rāma lifts and breaks the mighty bow of Śiva, which no other suitor could even move, and wins the hand of Janaka’s daughter Sītā — found as a baby in a furrow while Janaka ploughed a sacrificial field, the daughter of the Earth.

Exile

Years later, Daśaratha, growing old, decides to consecrate Rāma as heir. The city rejoices. But Kaikeyī’s hunchbacked maid Mantharā poisons her mistress’s mind: Rāma’s accession will make Kaikeyī and Bharata slaves. Long ago, Daśaratha had granted Kaikeyī two boons for saving his life in battle. Now she claims them: that Bharata be made king, and that Rāma be exiled to the forest for fourteen years.

Daśaratha is devastated, but bound by his word. Rāma accepts calmly — he will not let his father break his promise — and prepares to go alone. Sītā insists on following him: “Where you are, there is Ayodhyā.” Lakṣmaṇa also refuses to stay behind. The three leave the weeping city in bark garments. Daśaratha dies of grief, recalling a curse: as a young man, hunting at night, he had killed a boy fetching water for his blind parents, who cursed him to die grieving for a son.

Bharata, returning from his uncle’s kingdom, is appalled. He refuses the throne, rebukes his mother, and goes to the forest to beg Rāma to return. Rāma refuses: he must keep his father’s word. Bharata takes Rāma’s sandals back to Ayodhyā, places them on the throne, and rules as Rāma’s regent from a village outside the city, living as an ascetic, for fourteen years.

The forest and the abduction

Rāma, Sītā and Lakṣmaṇa wander through the forests of central and southern India, visiting hermitages and protecting sages from demons (rākṣasas). They settle at Pañcavaṭī on the Godāvarī river.

There Śūrpaṇakhā, Rāvaṇa’s sister, falls in love with Rāma and proposes to him; he jokingly sends her to Lakṣmaṇa, who mocks her back. Enraged, she attacks Sītā; Lakṣmaṇa cuts off her nose and ears. She runs to her brothers. Rāma kills the demon army sent against him, and Śūrpaṇakhā goes to Rāvaṇa in Laṅkā, inflaming his desire with descriptions of Sītā’s beauty.

Rāvaṇa sends the demon Mārīca in the form of a golden deer, which enchants Sītā. She begs Rāma to catch it. Rāma pursues it deep into the forest and shoots it; dying, Mārīca cries out in Rāma’s voice, “Ah Sītā! Ah Lakṣmaṇa!” Sītā, terrified, orders Lakṣmaṇa to go to Rāma’s aid. Lakṣmaṇa refuses — Rāma cannot be harmed — until Sītā accuses him of wanting her for himself. Wounded, he goes. (Later tradition adds that he drew a protective line, the Lakṣmaṇa rekhā, which she must not cross.)

Rāvaṇa appears disguised as a wandering ascetic begging for alms. When Sītā comes out to offer them, he reveals his ten heads and twenty arms and carries her off in his aerial chariot, the Puṣpaka. The old vulture king Jaṭāyu tries to stop him and is mortally wounded. As they fly south, Sītā drops her jewels to a group of monkeys below.

Rāma returns to find the hermitage empty, and is overcome with grief, wandering the forest asking the trees and rivers where Sītā is. He finds the dying Jaṭāyu, who tells him Rāvaṇa took her south.

The monkey kingdom

Directed south, Rāma meets the devout old woman Śabarī, who offers him berries she has tasted to check their sweetness — a famous image of devotion. Then he meets Hanumān, minister of the exiled monkey prince Sugrīva. Sugrīva has been driven from his kingdom of Kiṣkindhā by his brother Vālin, who took his wife. Rāma and Sugrīva form an alliance: Rāma will kill Vālin; Sugrīva will help find Sītā.

When Sugrīva challenges Vālin to a duel, Rāma shoots Vālin from hiding. Dying, Vālin reproaches him bitterly for this unfair act; Rāma justifies it (Vālin had violated dharma by taking his brother’s wife; and as a monkey he could be hunted) — one of the epic’s most debated episodes.

After the rainy season, the monkeys scour the four directions. The southern party, with Hanumān, learns from Jaṭāyu’s brother Sampāti that Sītā is held in Laṅkā, across the ocean.

Hanumān’s leap

In the Sundara Kāṇḍa (“the beautiful book”), the most loved and recited part of the epic, Hanumān, son of the wind god, grows to enormous size and leaps across the ocean to Laṅkā. He searches the golden city by night and finds Sītā in an aśoka grove, guarded by demonesses, refusing Rāvaṇa’s advances and threats. Rāvaṇa has given her two months to submit, or be cut up for his breakfast. Hanumān gives her Rāma’s signet ring; she gives him her hair ornament as a sign for Rāma. He offers to carry her back; she refuses — Rāma himself must rescue her, and she will not willingly touch another male.

Hanumān then wrecks the grove, kills Rāvaṇa’s soldiers and his son, lets himself be captured, and delivers a warning to Rāvaṇa. The demons set his tail on fire; he leaps across the rooftops and burns Laṅkā, then flies home.

The war

The monkey army marches to the sea. Rāvaṇa’s virtuous brother Vibhīṣaṇa urges him to return Sītā; Rāvaṇa kicks him out, and Vibhīṣaṇa defects to Rāma, who accepts him despite his followers’ suspicion: “I will protect anyone who comes to me for refuge.”

The ocean god allows the monkeys under the architect Nala to build a bridge (setu) of stones and trees across to Laṅkā. (In later legend, the stones float because the name “Rāma” is written on them; the chain of shoals between India and Sri Lanka is still called Rāma’s Bridge.)

A great war follows. Rāvaṇa’s son Indrajit wounds Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa with serpent arrows; they are saved by the eagle Garuḍa. Lakṣmaṇa is struck down by a spear, and Hanumān flies to the Himālaya for a healing herb; unable to identify it, he carries back the whole mountain. Rāvaṇa’s giant brother Kumbhakarṇa, who sleeps six months at a time, is woken to fight and killed. Lakṣmaṇa kills Indrajit.

Finally Rāma faces Rāvaṇa. Each time he cuts off one of Rāvaṇa’s heads, another grows. At last, using the divine weapon of Brahmā, Rāma shoots Rāvaṇa through the heart. Rāma has Rāvaṇa given a proper funeral, saying: “Enmity ends with death.” Vibhīṣaṇa is crowned king of Laṅkā.

The fire ordeal

Sītā is brought before Rāma. Then, before the assembled army, Rāma speaks coldly: he has done his duty and avenged the insult to his honour, but he cannot take back a woman who has lived in another man’s house. She may go where she likes.

Sītā, devastated, answers with dignity: her heart was always his; she could not control her body when she was seized. She asks Lakṣmaṇa to build a pyre, and walks into the fire (agni-parīkṣā). The fire god Agni rises from the flames holding her unharmed, and declares her pure. The gods appear and reveal to Rāma that he is Viṣṇu. Rāma takes Sītā back, saying he never doubted her, but needed the world to see her purity.

The fourteen years over, they fly back to Ayodhyā in the Puṣpaka chariot. Bharata returns the kingdom. Rāma is crowned, and his reign — Rāma-rājya — is a golden age: no widows mourn, no disease, no drought, no crime.

The Uttara Kāṇḍa: Sītā’s banishment

The seventh book tells what happened after. Sītā is pregnant. Rāma learns that his subjects are gossiping: how can the king take back a wife who lived in Rāvaṇa’s house? A washerman is heard saying to his wife, “I am not like Rāma, who took back Sītā.” Rāma, putting his duty as king and the opinion of his people above his love, orders Lakṣmaṇa to take Sītā to the forest and abandon her.

Sītā finds refuge in Vālmīki’s hermitage, where she gives birth to twin sons, Lava and Kuśa. Vālmīki teaches them the Rāmāyaṇa. Years later, at Rāma’s horse sacrifice, the boys sing the epic before the court, and Rāma recognises his sons. He asks Sītā to come and prove her purity again before the assembly. Sītā calls on her mother, the Earth: “If I have never thought of anyone but Rāma, may the goddess Earth open and receive me.” The ground splits; the Earth goddess rises on a throne, takes Sītā in her arms, and sinks back. Rāma is inconsolable.

Later, Time (Kāla) comes to tell Rāma his work on earth is done. He walks into the river Sarayū with his followers and returns to his form as Viṣṇu.

The banishment also contains the episode of Śambūka, a śūdra (low-caste man) performing ascetic penance, which was forbidden to his caste; a Brahmin’s child dies as a result, and Rāma beheads Śambūka — an episode condemned by modern critics and by B. R. Ambedkar.

Characters

• Rāma — the ideal man, son, brother, husband and king (maryādā puruṣottama); calm, truthful, self-controlled; yet the final books show the cost of his perfection.
• Sītā — daughter of the Earth, faithful, courageous, outspoken; in modern readings, the epic’s moral conscience and its victim.
• Lakṣmaṇa — the devoted younger brother, fierce and loyal.
• Bharata — the brother who refuses a kingdom unjustly gained; the model of renunciation.
• Hanumān — the monkey hero, strong, wise, humble; the supreme devotee (bhakta), worshipped across India.
• Rāvaṇa — the ten-headed king of Laṅkā; a great scholar, devotee of Śiva and powerful ruler, undone by lust and pride. Some traditions (Tamil Dravidian movement, Jain versions) treat him sympathetically.
• Daśaratha — the king trapped by his promise.
• Kaikeyī and Mantharā — the stepmother and her maid, instigators of the exile.
• Vibhīṣaṇa — the righteous demon who chooses dharma over family.
• Sugrīva and Vālin — the monkey brothers.
• Jaṭāyu — the vulture who dies defending Sītā.
• Vālmīki — poet, sage and character.

Themes

Dharma as an ideal

Unlike the Mahābhārata’s tangled dharma, the Rāmāyaṇa largely presents its hero as perfect — keeping his father’s word, honouring his brothers, protecting refugees. “Rāma is dharma embodied” (rāmo vigrahavān dharmaḥ). See Morality.

Devotion

Hanumān, Bharata, Śabarī and Lakṣmaṇa embody bhakti, loving devotion, which later made the epic central to devotional Hinduism.

The trials of Sītā

The fire ordeal and banishment have provoked argument for centuries. Bhavabhūti’s play Uttararāmacarita (8th century) reconciles Rāma and Sītā; modern feminist readings see Sītā as the victim of patriarchal honour. Her final refusal — choosing the Earth rather than another test — is read as an act of dignity.

Versions and reception

A. K. Ramanujan’s essay “Three Hundred Rāmāyaṇas” shows the story as a family of tellings rather than a single text:

• Kamban’s Tamil Irāmāvatāram (12th century);
• Tulsīdās’s Hindi Rāmcaritmānas (1574–76), the most influential devotional version in North India;
• Kṛttivāsa’s Bengali, Eḻuttacchan’s Malayalam Adhyātma Rāmāyaṇam;
• Jain versions (Vimalasūri’s Paumacariya), where Lakṣmaṇa, not Rāma, kills Rāvaṇa;
• the Buddhist Dasaratha Jātaka, where Sītā is Rāma’s sister;
• the Thai Ramakien, the Lao Phra Lak Phra Lam, the Javanese Kakawin Ramayana, the Malay Hikayat Seri Rama.

Kālidāsa‘s Raghuvaṃśa tells the history of Rāma’s dynasty. In politics, Gandhi’s ideal of Rāma-rājya meant just and moral government; the Rāma story has since been central to Hindu nationalist movements, especially over the birthplace temple at Ayodhyā.

Key terms

Ādikāvya

"The first poem" — the Rāmāyaṇa's traditional status.

Śoka / śloka

Grief turned into verse — the origin of poetry.

Agni-parīkṣā

Sītā's ordeal by fire.

Rāma-rājya

The ideal just kingdom.

Lakṣmaṇa rekhā

The line not to be crossed — a boundary of safety.

Using the Rāmāyaṇa in conversation

• On origins of art: grief became verse — śoka became śloka.
• On loyalty: Bharata ruling with Rāma’s sandals on the throne.
• On promises: Daśaratha bound by his word.
• On refuge: “I will protect anyone who comes to me for refuge.”