In Chennai,my birthplace and the city my mother comes from,stories are still told of the founder of the Dravidian movement,EV Ramasamy Naicker,Periyar,who wrote a banned version of the Ramayana casting Ravana as a tragic hero,and,in an inversion of what happens at Dussehra,gathered hordes on the beach to burn images of Ram. In Pakistan,I was told as a five-year-old that Lahore came from Lavapuri,from a legend that Lahore was founded by Ram’s son Lava. In Indonesia,a largely Muslim country,we watched Wayang Kulit,the shadow puppet theatre which has plays on stories from the Ramayana. As a child who accompanied a diplomat father on various overseas postings Indonesia,Pakistan and Thailand the one constant in all the cultures I spent my childhood in was the Ramayana. The decision scares me for many reasons,partly because it suggests that a viewpoint is beginning to prevail which perpetuates the notion of the Ramayana as exclusive,Hindu property,and ignores the fact that the Ramayana has been re-told and is still being re-told by Muslims,Buddhists,Jains and people of other faiths. Julia Leslie, Hinduism and the Case of Valmiki.Last fortnight,Delhi University decided to remove AK Ramanujan’s essay Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation from its history syllabus,perhaps in response to earlier protests in 2008 over the inclusion of this essay.Linda Johnsen, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Hinduism (2002), pp."Ramayana." Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service.Oxford Concise Dictionary of World Religions, ed.
Then he realized that when he was saying "mara mara mara" he was also saying "rama rama rama." He then wrote the Ramayana in honor of the god who had changed his life. Valmiki liked it and kept repeating it, and he gradually became a better person. The sadhu gave him a mantra: "Mara" (evil). One day he tried to rob a sadhu, who of course owned nothing. Tulsi Das, medieval author of the Hindi translation, said, "Whenever I remember Rama's name, the desert of my heart blooms lush and green." Fun FactĪccording to legend, the poet who wrote the Ramayana was originally a thief. Gandhi called it the greatest book in the world. It was a favourite subject of Rajasthani and Pahari painters of the 17th and 18th centuries. In North India, the Ramayana is acted out in the annual pageant Ram-Lila. Rama and Sita are seen as the ideal married couple. Recitation of the Ramayana earns great merit.
#Ramayana kandas series#
India nearly shut down when a dramatized series of the Ramayana appeared on television in the 1980s. Hanuman - monkey-general and devotee of Rama.Sita - incarnation of Lakshmi Ravana - evil king of Sri Lanka.Rama - 7th incarnation of Vishnu and virtuous king of Ayodhya.Hindi version called the Rama Charita Manasa by Tulsi Das (16th century)Ī virtuous king named Rama is banished to the forest, where he has many adventures, then he rescues his wife Sita from the evil king of Sri Lanka with the help of his friends.There are multiple versions and translations of the Ramayana:
It consists of 24,000 couplets in seven books. The Ramayana is long - about the length of the entire Christian Bible.
Written in high Sanskrit in the form of rhyming couplets, the Ramayana contains seven sections (kandas): It tells the epic story of Rama, the 7th incarnation of the deity Vishnu. The Ramayana ("March of Rama") was composed by Valmiki around the 2nd century BCE, but likely drew on preexisting oral tradition.