The Ramayana of Valmiki

The Ramayana is one of the two great itihasas of India, with the Mahabharata. It tells the life of Rama, the eldest son of King Dasharatha of Ayodhya, who gives up a kingdom to honour his father's word, lives fourteen years in the forest with his wife Sita and brother Lakshmana, and wins Sita back from Ravana, the king of Lanka, with an army of vanaras led by Sugriva and Hanuman.

It is far more than an adventure. For millions of Hindus it shows what dharma looks like in a human life: a son's obedience, a brother's loyalty, a wife's courage, a servant's devotion, and a king's duty to his people. Rama is called maryada purushottama, the best of men who never crosses the bounds of dharma.

The epic is divided into seven kandas (books) and subdivided into sargas (cantos). The traditional figure of 24,000 shlokas is given by the text itself and by later tradition. The sarga counts below follow the common printed (vulgate) text as found on Sanskrit Wikisource; the Baroda Critical Edition, which removes passages found only in some manuscripts, is somewhat shorter, and the northern and southern recensions differ in places.

According to the epic itself, Valmiki asked the sage Narada whether any truly virtuous man lived in the world, and Narada told him Rama's story. Soon after, at the river Tamasa, Valmiki saw a hunter shoot one of a pair of krauncha birds; his cry of grief came out as a perfectly measured verse, the first shloka. Brahma then appeared and asked him to compose the whole of Rama's story in that metre. Valmiki is also a character in the epic: he shelters Sita in his ashram and teaches the Ramayana to her sons Lava and Kusha, who sing it before Rama. Popular tradition adds that Valmiki was once a forest-dweller named Ratnakara who was transformed by repeating Rama's name; this story is found in later texts, not in the Valmiki Ramayana itself.

Scholars generally place the composition of the core text between about the 7th and 5th centuries BCE; Robert Goldman suggests roughly 750–500 BCE for its oral composition, with later layers extending into the early centuries CE. Many scholars consider books 2 to 6 the oldest and the Bala and Uttara Kandas later additions, pointing to differences in style and to the fact that Rama's divinity is emphasised more in these two books. A Critical Edition, prepared from manuscripts across India by the Oriental Institute of the M.S. University of Baroda between 1960 and 1975, is the basis for most scholarly work.

Dharma under pressure. The Ramayana repeatedly places its characters where duties collide: Dasharatha must keep his word to Kaikeyi even though it breaks his heart; Rama must choose between a throne and his father's honour; Bharata must choose between ambition and love for his brother.

Devotion and friendship. Hanuman's selfless service to Rama, Shabari's simple love, Jatayu's sacrifice and Vibhishana's surrender have shaped Hindu devotion for centuries. Rama's promise to protect anyone who comes to him for refuge, spoken when Vibhishana arrives, is treasured by devotees as Rama's vow of sharanagati.

The ideal kingdom. Ramarajya, Rama's just and prosperous rule, became the lasting image of good government in Indian thought.

The story's moments are woven into Hindu life: Diwali is widely linked with Rama's return to Ayodhya, Dussehra with his victory over Ravana, Ram Navami with his birth, and Hanuman Jayanti with the devotee whose story is told most fully in the Sundara Kanda.

The Sanskrit below follows the text on Sanskrit Wikisource (vulgate numbering).

The Ramayana lives in many forms. Pandits recite the Valmiki text in sequence (parayana), especially during the nine nights of Chaitra Navaratri ending on Ram Navami. The Sundara Kanda is recited on its own by many devotees, as it is believed to remove obstacles and bring strength. Katha-vachaks tell the story in temples, and Ramlila performances re-enact it across North India before Dussehra.

The epic has been retold in nearly every Indian language: Kamban's Tamil Ramavataram, Krittivasa's Bengali Ramayana, Ezhuthachan's Malayalam Adhyatma Ramayanam, and Tulsidas's Awadhi Ramcharitmanas, which is today the most widely read Rama story in the Hindi-speaking world. Its influence reaches across Asia, from the Khmer Reamker to Thailand's Ramakien and Indonesia's Kakawin Ramayana. Jain and Buddhist traditions have their own Rama stories as well.

Gita Press, Gorakhpur publishes the complete Valmiki Ramayana in two volumes with Sanskrit text and Hindi translation, the most widely used edition in Hindu homes. In English, the Princeton translation of the Critical Edition by Robert P. Goldman, Sally J. Sutherland Goldman and colleagues (seven volumes, completed in 2016) is the scholarly standard. Bibek Debroy's three-volume Penguin translation of the Critical Edition is more compact, and C. Rajagopalachari's short retelling (Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan) is a classic introduction for young readers. The Sanskrit text is freely available on Sanskrit Wikisource.

If you want to read the original rather than a retelling, begin with the first sarga of the Bala Kanda, which summarises the whole story in Narada's words, then read the Sundara Kanda, the best-loved book.