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 Hindutvavadis have turned him into.
There are Muslim versions in Java, and Buddhist versions in Thailand. The story exists as shadow plays in Indonesia, temple carvings in Cambodia, dances, plays and ritual enactments throughout India. The text lives in books made of ola leaf in Sri Lanka and on painted boxes in North India.
One of the phenomenons of this epic is its migration around the world, which has led to multiple versions and tellings, each storyteller re-composing the story for each audience. Ramayana is still a living performance tradition today.
According to scholars, the entire Ramayan is not the product of one hand. Their investigations have demonstrated that apart from minor interpolations in other portions, the first and seventh books were definitively added afterwards.
This process of deification must have taken some time, and it may even be that the genuine and spurious parts are divided by centuries. Now, to what period are we to assign the epic kernel itself? Buddha is mentioned only once, and that too perhaps in an interpolated verse, and the political conditions indicate the paternal rule of kings, exercising sway over small states.
A consideration of all these and other points has led Dr. The approximate determination of the date of the Ramayana does not, however, solve the difficulty of the chronological setting of its heroes. This problem, of course, does not disturb the average Hindu. But the critical reasoning of the historian is unable to find much useful information of the latter class. Indeed, some scholars even doubt if the narrative contains any history at all.
Macdonell and Jacobi, on the other hand, believe that it is a fanciful creation based on Indian mythology. According to this interpretation, Sita is the personification of the furrowgoddess; Rama stands for Indra; and his conflict with Ravana may be traced to the old Indra-Vritra myth of the Rigveda.
Without labouring the point further, it amply illustrates how the story of the Kamayana offers a fruitful ground for speculation. There is no doubt that it is thickly interwoven with mythological fiction, but to discredit the historicity of Rama altogether appears too wide an assumption. He is mentioned in the Buddhist DaJaratba Jataka, where we see him in his normal form divested of divine attributes. It is also known that Kosala was an important kingdom in Madhyadeta ever since Aryan expansion eastwards.
What, therefore, may be taken as the nucleus of fact is that Rama was a real person, who belonged to the royal Iksvaku house of Ayodhya, and whose achievements both in war and peace left a deep impression upon the popular imagination. The Ramayana is one of India and Southeast Asia's best known and most loved tales. Essentially a tale of love and banishment, it tells the story of Prince Rama who was sent into exile in the forest with his wife, Sita, and his brother, Lakshamana.
Sita is abducted by the evil demon Ravana but ultimately rescued by Prince Rama with the help of the Monkey God, Hanuman. It is important to recognize that there is not one Ramayana in India. 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. 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 , 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. Ramayana is essentially a story of love and banishment. It begins with the gods awakening Vishnu from a deep cosmic sleep and urging him to go to earth to rid the world of Ravana, who through a promise by Brahma can not be defeated by gods and must be defeated by a man.
Vishnu descends to earth as the man Rama and woos and wins Sita. Rama is given Sita's hand in marriage by the king because he is able to pull Shiva's bow. Rama is the eldest of Dasharatha, King of Koysala, with Aydohya as its capital. The king has three wives and four sons. Bharata is the son of his second and favorite wife, Queen Kaikeyi. The other two are twins, Lakshman and Shatrughna. Sita, renowned for her beauty and matchless virtue, is the daughter of a ruler in a neighboring city.
When it was time for Sita to choose her bridegroom, at a ceremony called a swayamvara, the princes were asked to string a giant bow. No one else can even lift the bow, but as Rama bends it, he not only strings it but breaks it in two. Sita indicates she has chosen Rama as her husband by putting a garland around his neck.
Later Dasharatha decides it is time to give his throne to Rama and retire to the forest to seek moksha. Everyone seems pleased. This plan fulfills the rules of dharma because an eldest son should rule and, if a son can take over one's responsibilities, one's last years may be spent in a search for moksha.
In addition, everyone loves Rama. However Rama's step-mother, the king's second wife, is not pleased. She wants her son, Bharata, to rule.
Because of an oath Dasharatha had made to her years before, she gets the king to agree to banish Rama for fourteen years and to crown Bharata, even though the king, on bended knee, begs her not to demand such things. Broken-hearted, the devastated king cannot face Rama with the news and Kaikeyi must tell him. Bharatha becomes king even though he is not a party to the plot, and is devoted to his elder brother Rama.
Rama, always obedient, dutifully agrees to his banishment. Sita convinces Rama that she belongs at his side. Rama then proceeds to the forest, accompanied by Lakshmana and the uncomplaining Sita. While in the forest the two men live like ascetics, with no complaints from Sita, and have many adventures. Rama and Lakshman destroy the rakshasas evil creatures who disturb the sages in their meditations.
In one episode a rakshasa kidnaps Sita. Just as it is about to devour her Rama and Laksama rescue her and slay the demon.
Bharata, whose mother's evil plot has won him the throne, is very upset when he finds out what has happened. Not for a moment does he consider breaking the rules of dharma and becoming king in Rama's place. He goes to Rama's forest retreat and begs Rama to return and rule, but Rama refuses.
Bharata then takes Rama's sandals saying, "I will put these on the throne, and every day I shall place the fruits of my work at the feet on my Lord. Davis website]. Sita will not even look at him but thinks only of her beloved Rama.
Hanuman, the general of the monkey band can fly since his father is the wind, and Hanuman flies to Lanka and, finding Sita in the grove, comforts her and tells her Rama will soon come and save her. With his tail burning, Hanuman hops from house-top to house-top, setting Lanka afire.
He then flies back to Rama to tell him where Sita is. A might battle ensues. Rama kills several of Ravana's brothers and then Rama confronts ten-headed Ravana.
Ravana is known for his wisdom as well as for his weakness for women which may explain why he is pictured as very brainy. Rama finally kills Ravana. Rama frees Sita. After Sita proves here purity, they return to Ayodhya and Rama becomes king. His rule, Ram-rajya, is an ideal time when everyone does his or her dharma and "fathers never have to light the funeral pyres for their sons.
This lesson focuses on how the Ramayana teaches Indians to perform their dharma. Encourage students to pick out examples of characters in the epic who were faithful to their dharma and those who violated their dharma. Review with students the Indian concept of dharma. Remind them that dharma is like one's role in a play or position on a team.
For the play to go well or for the team to win, each person must "stay in character" or "play his position. When people or things violate their dharma, things fall apart. As an alternative strategy, tell students that Rama, Bharata and Sita are very important in India because they always did their dharma. Tell them to listen carefully to the story and then figure out what they think dharma means. Hand out the different visuals and ask groups of students to figure out what part of the story their picture illustrates.
Get the students to tell the story again by describing what's happening in their pictures. Discuss how Rama, Sita and Bharata all did their dharma.
Ask students to explain in their own words what they think dharma means based on how the characters acted. Rama, always obedient, was content to go into banishment in the forest. Sita and Lakshmana accompanied him on his exile. One day Rama and Lakshmana wounded a rakshasas demon princess who tried to seduce Rama. She returned to her brother Ravana, the ten-headed ruler of Lanka.
In retaliation, Ravana devised a plan to abduct Sita after hearing about her incomparable beauty. He sent one of his demons disguised as a magical golden deer to entice Sita. To please her, Rama and Lakshmana went to hunt the deer down. Bhim Singh also gave Tod a separate manuscript of the first book of the Ramayana dated They were all acquired by the British Museum in , and from there came to the British Library.
Buy the print. The Ramayana manuscripts commissioned by Rana Jagat Singh of Mewar were illustrated on the grandest scale so that no episode or detail of importance was omitted. This necessitated the revival of the ancient narrative method of simultaneous narration used in both sculpture and painting.
In European or Islamic illustration, each picture usually concentrates on depicting a single episode of the story - but in the Indian method, each picture might capture several episodes in the story so that the characters appear more than once in the same picture.
In the example shown above, reading anti-clockwise, we can follow Rama, Bharata and Satrughna from the top of the hill, down to the river in the lower right corner and back up again to where they sit outside the hut.
You can find out more in our Online Gallery: Sacred texts showcase. Quick guide to the Ramayana Background The Ramayana is an ancient Sanskrit epic which follows Prince Rama's quest to rescue his beloved wife Sita from the clutches of Ravana with the help of an army of monkeys.
Origins The original five books of an oral epic of local northern significance dealing with a hero and his exile, the abduction of his wife by a rival king and her rescue became conflated into seven books in which the hero Rama became an avatar of the god Vishnu, the scene shifted to encompass the whole of India, and the struggle to recover his wife became a metaphor for the final triumph of the righteous.
A brief summary of the Ramayana Rama, prince of Ayodhya, won the hand of the beautiful princess Sita seen here , but was exiled with her and his brother Laksmana for 14 years through the plotting of his stepmother.
Dasaratha is the King of Ayodhya, Rama's father. Kausalya is Rama's mother, Dasaratha's chief wife. The importance of the Ramayana in Indian culture The epic's poetic stature and marvellous story means that the story of Rama has been constantly retold by some of India's greatest writers both in Sanskrit and regional languages. The Ramayana manuscripts of Jagat Singh of Mewar Rama was of a royal race descended from the Sun, and Rajput clans of the Solar dynasty, among them the rulers of Mewar or Udaipur, claimed Rama as their ancestor, making the Ramayana something of a family history.
How to read a Rajput painting Buy the print The Ramayana manuscripts commissioned by Rana Jagat Singh of Mewar were illustrated on the grandest scale so that no episode or detail of importance was omitted.
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