Rama is the hero of the epic named after his exploits, the Ramayana. It is one of the most popular stories ever told in the world because there are over 35 versions of it available. All the major language groups of India have a version of his life and even Indonesia, Thailand and Java - Sumatra have their own versions. As may be expected, therefore, Rama is not any one personality but a composite of many authors' beliefs as to what a hero ought to be like. Like Proteus, God of a Thousand Faces, Rama is whatever you choose to make him.
Today, Rama is regarded as one of the major Avatars of Vishnu, second in importance only to the Krishna Avatar and even that is disputed. Originally however, he was a great Culture-Hero of the Aryan people, something implicit in the fact that even the Jains have a Ramayana, wherein he is absolutely non-violent as befits a Jain and the entire killing is done by Laxmana! In this version, which has proved to be controversial in the intolerant 20th century, he and Sita form a pair of Primodorial twins, siblings as well as spouses. This was a staple theme of ancient mythology, and not really so objectionable as it may seem, but the rest of India has too much emotional investment in Rama and his moral perfection to let such an alternative version breathe easy. In any case only very few scholars and determined controversialists are aware of this. It is included here merely to point out that Rama has always been interpreted, even used, according to the needs of the times. The ongoing controversy over his birthplace and the advent of a new, muscular and belligerent Rama in popular art is yet another example.
The Ur-text is the Valmiki Ramayana in Sanskrit and it is still the best account of Rama too. Valmiki is frank about his motives in writing the story. He wanted to convey an ideal of human perfection, a hero who is fearless, invincible, intelligent and compassionate, quick to forgive and slow to anger, but never compromising on what is right. Such a paragon he found in Rama. He was the son of Dasharatha, king of the Ikshavakus, a solar dynasty and born after many years of childlessness. Since his mother Kaushalya was the chief queen, he automatically became crown prince. That did not prevent him from deeply loving his half brothers, the twins Laxmana and Shatrughana, born to queen Sumitra, and Bharatha, born to his father's favorite queen, Kaikeyi. He had an especially powerful emotional bond with Laxmana and was responsible for keeping his irascible and dangerous wrath in check. All the young men proved to be great warriors, but Rama was always pre-eminent. The family guru, Vashistha, one of the most important rishis in mythical India, instructed him in statecraft which his keen intellect found easy to assimilate.
When he was sixteen, the great Vishwamitra came calling. The sage had been trying to perform some fire sacrifices for a long time, but vicious demons were perpetually putting out the fires with aerial attacks. They knew better than to come too close, as Vishwamitra was the undisputed master of weapons and he had something even better - a fiery temper that used to launch into earth shaking curses. Not willing to waste the power of his austerities on cursing such scum, he comes to ask for Rama and Laxmana to defend his sacrifice. The two boys are eager to go, as Vishwamitra was an unusually inspiring sort of personality. He teaches them the celestial weapons and makes them invincible. They massacre the demon hordes and send their chief Maricha flying a few leagues away with the impact of a blunt arrow. So great was the shock that he was defeated, that Maricha turns over a new leaf and begins a life of meditation!
It is a curious nature of Indian myth that the Hero's Journey aspect of any Hero always occupies only the first third of this life. Once he has completed that, he is essentially unchanging in his perfection. The hero does not grow in stature or personality after the first third of the narrative. Events no longer impact him, he transforms events but himself remains untouched and unchanged rather like a catalyst. This catalytic nature of the hero in Indian myth is a unique peculiarity in the structure of mythology, and represents the fundamental divergence between Indian myth and the rest of the world. Even Buddha's life, an archetypal Hero's Journey if there ever was one, follows this pattern. Where Rama is concerned, he goes forth from obscurity as just another royal prince, to becoming a genuine hero under the Mentor that is Vishwamitra. He then comes under the influence of the female energy of the Universe, Sita, daughter of Janka, king of Mithila. The wily Vishwamitra brings the young men to Mithila precisely to bring about this end. Rama and Sita fall in love at first sight, but there is a contest - old heroic chestnut - to be won first to marry her. This is a bow of Shiva, which is proving to be unliftable. Rama not only raises it, he breaks the divine bow while stringing it. He has now moved into authentic Great Hero status.
This results in a fight with the older avatar of Vishnu, Parashurama. (For details please look at Parashurama in our Gods section) Again, the heroic stature grows and his pre-eminent position amongst men is thus confirmed. He has been trotting out one miraculous feat of valor after another and there is no dispute in India that he is indeed Purushottama, "Best amongst men." However, that title is not an acknowledgement of his invincible fighting prowess and intellect alone. He does something even more dazzling in the social context of the time. So deeply does he love Sita that he swears never to have another wife. He never had sex with any other woman either. In the polygamous royal society of the time this was unthinkable heroism and formidable self-control. Thus arose the famous formulation, "Ekam patni vrata, Purushottama" or "He who is sworn to one wife alone is the best amongst men." Rama set a standard of monogamous fidelity that India has instinctively revered, even if not always followed. In all the unthinking criticism of him, let this be remembered. Almost all other heroes in all other cultures have failed miserably in this aspect of marital relationships.
By now he is the standard hero, the catalyst factor, and his aging father decides to crown him as king. It is a very popular decision, even amongst the queens. Kaikeyi's initial jubilation at the news is soon poisoned by a spiteful servant, and she resurrects old promises made by Dasharatha and demands the throne for her son and banishment into forest exile for Rama. This aspect has been well discussed in our article in the epics section, evil sex as the hidden villain of the Ramayana. Rama puts his father out of his misery by agreeing. Contrary to the popular perception of a diabetically sweet Rama, who just lives to obey insane commands from a senile father, he knows that injustice is being done. In a furious outburst in the forest, he calls his father a sex obsessed fool, for he chooses his young wife over his worthy son. However, a king's word is not a light thing and it cannot be shown to be disregarded. All order would unravel if people felt that a king's word was a trifle that could be adjusted according to convenient circumstances. Rama leaves for the larger social good, not because, as generations of timorous parents have told skeptical children, he was obedient. If obedience was the only reason, he was a fool and Rama was anything but that.
He refuses his brother Bharatha's urgent entreaties to ascend the throne once their father dies of grief. Bharatha rules as regent while Rama is in the forest. It is very instructive however that when he returns, the wise Rama sends Hanuman ahead to ascertain if fourteen years on the throne have corrupted Bharatha, and he is disposed to hang onto the crown. This note of caution is amazing, flying as it does in the face of the popular perception that the two brothers were bonded together in a state of gooey sentimentality, rather like living in a tub of melted chocolate. Rama's intelligence was only too aware of what can happen to people in changed circumstances, and it is one of the more mature passages in the Ramayana.
The Shoorpanaka episode, is the first cloud on the idyllic forest life. Sita insists on coming along, overruling Rama's objections, and even going to the extent of saying that her father had married her to a woman by mistake when he tried to insist upon his point of view. This should put paid to any lingering doubt that she was a doormat. The forest life is one long uninterrupted romantic episode and there is nothing like it in all literature. Since the Hero in Indian culture is expected to be an expert in love too, Valmiki obliged. Rama's love for Sita is the real thing, strong and fierce and touching. It is not a conventional romantic interaction that so bedevils Sanskrit literature. Other heroes sigh and sob and declaim romantically but Rama alone meant it and to this one woman alone. It is a constant source of wonder, even now.
After the kidnapping of Sita, Rama makes an alliance with Sugriva, the younger brother of the monkey king of Kishkinda, Vali. Rama promises to kill Vali and have Sugriva crowned king, so that the royal forces could help in the search for Sita. This episode has remained a controversial one, and there are many people who feel that it was a great lapse of Rama's part to have so struck Vali down, who was after all not a bad king. It was undoubtedly a regrettable action, but there was nothing in the nature of a moral or ethical lapse in it. Vali tried repeatedly to murder his younger brother over a genuine mistake, and he also forcibly dragged Ruma, wife of Sugriva, in to his harem. His pride in his virtues and accomplishments had turned rancid and he thought he was beyond any code. Rama struck him down from hiding with his arrow, not in the back as many seem to think, and it was perfectly justified. For in the days of his virtue, Vali had been granted the boon that anybody who walked into his sight would instantly lose half their strength, which would be transferred to Vali. He was therefore invincible, even for the gods. There was no other way to kill him. Had Rama gone mano-a-mano against him in the stupidity that is sometimes called bravery, he would have died a foolish death.It is one of the first principles of Myth that a hero may sometimes act like a villain but never like a fool.
There is another aspect to this Vali killing that people in India do not realize, used as they are to regarding childish and fantastic descriptions of battle as the real thing. In that context Rama's killing of Vali is the best and most heroic thing he ever did. This is my proposition. There is no moral, ethical, spirituality-inducing or virtue-developing way to kill. The only question is whether it is right to kill or not, and the usual answer to that is no. Some circumstances justify it however, but the act of killing itself can never be sanitized. Killing therefore is like excretion, a necessary evil to be got over with as efficiently and quietly as possible, and not explored for its ethical potential. Once the decision to kill Vali was taken - the moral imperative overruled for the sake of the ethical imperative - it does not matter how it is done, except that it was done quickly and well. Rama's choice of ambush therefore is a truly heroic choice, a refusal to flinch away from unpleasant reality and larger obligations because of some specious notion of valor. If India had fought its fights as Rama did Vali, the history of the country would have been a lot healthier.
That Rama was not a coward or a lazy fighter is proved when he lets Ravana off later, when the demon king was weaponless. This episode is much admired by the unthinking as the real, generous Rama, unwilling to fight a foe who is disarmed. Actually, Rama had a deeper agenda here. If he killed Ravana at that stage, enough powerful demons would be left to recover and regroup at some later stage. His mission was to forever remove the Rakshasha plague from the universe. He let Ravana off, and the slaughter of demons continued until Ravana was the only one left! The surviving Rakshashas were not of the same vicious propensities as their brethren and the Rakshasha menace was finally crushed. Individual demons continued their bad ways till the times of the Mahabharahta, but Rakshasha society would never again have the numbers to become a nuisance to the world at large. It was a stroke of political genius, not that of a pious softy, and it has gone totally unremarked till now.
The trial by fire episode, in which a suddenly grouchy Rama casts aspersions on the chastity of Sita during her captivity, makes for painful reading. However, if we accept the fundamental truth that nobody can be psychologically inconsistent, we can understand his point of view. We may not agree with it, but it is valid. Like Caesar's wife, Ikshavaku queens too had to be seen to be above suspicion. It was the social imperative he was worried about, the same reason why he accepted his father's insane promise - the people had certain expectations from their ruler and that could not be set aside. In one case his action wins him admiration, in the other it generates condemnation, - but he was operating from the same set of premises in both circumstances. In Valmiki, the fire vindicates Sita and that is the end of it. Rama returns to Ayodhaya and rules in what is nostalgically remembered as the Perfect Age, Rama Rajya - the Rule of Rama.
The Uttara Kanda with its banishment of a pregnant Sita is not the work of Valmiki. Even worse was the subversion of India's national hero to caste agendas by later interpolators. There is a repulsive episode involving the killing of a shudra named Shambuka, for the 'sin' of learning the Vedas and practicing austerities. Rama was used in every age to serve the needs of the time and this nasty little tale was foisted upon him by an India in deep intellectual and spiritual decline. Rama, who was the friend of boatmen and tribals, who actually ate and slept with them, would not have done such a vile action, but some people felt that his prestige was a useful stalking horse for their casteist agendas.
These apparent blemishes have only served to illuminate the bright spots of Rama even further. He is without doubt the Pre-eminent Hero of the nation, Best Amongst Men. It is interesting to note that in the Valmiki version, he is fundamentally a Great Hero, he is not aware of his avatar status. No matter how many times it is pointed out to him he never acts like god on earth. The later regional variations make him out to be a fully aware Avatar. The most important of these texts is the Ramacharitmanas of Tulsidasa, which has literally displaced the Valmiki version as the story of Rama in the Hindi speaking areas of India. Kalidasa wrote a Rama story too, the Raghuvamasham. Strangest of all Rama stories in Sanskrit is a long palindrome of a poem by an unknown author. When read forward it tells the story of Rama. When read backwards it recounts the Mahabharatha! There is a Sanskrit spiritual version of the Ramayana popular in Kerala, called the Ramaneeyam, which eliminates all but the spiritual aspects of the story of Rama. Many English versions have been written this century. The hold of Rama over India's imagination is not likely to dim any time soon.
Today, Rama is regarded as one of the major Avatars of Vishnu, second in importance only to the Krishna Avatar and even that is disputed. Originally however, he was a great Culture-Hero of the Aryan people, something implicit in the fact that even the Jains have a Ramayana, wherein he is absolutely non-violent as befits a Jain and the entire killing is done by Laxmana! In this version, which has proved to be controversial in the intolerant 20th century, he and Sita form a pair of Primodorial twins, siblings as well as spouses. This was a staple theme of ancient mythology, and not really so objectionable as it may seem, but the rest of India has too much emotional investment in Rama and his moral perfection to let such an alternative version breathe easy. In any case only very few scholars and determined controversialists are aware of this. It is included here merely to point out that Rama has always been interpreted, even used, according to the needs of the times. The ongoing controversy over his birthplace and the advent of a new, muscular and belligerent Rama in popular art is yet another example.
The Ur-text is the Valmiki Ramayana in Sanskrit and it is still the best account of Rama too. Valmiki is frank about his motives in writing the story. He wanted to convey an ideal of human perfection, a hero who is fearless, invincible, intelligent and compassionate, quick to forgive and slow to anger, but never compromising on what is right. Such a paragon he found in Rama. He was the son of Dasharatha, king of the Ikshavakus, a solar dynasty and born after many years of childlessness. Since his mother Kaushalya was the chief queen, he automatically became crown prince. That did not prevent him from deeply loving his half brothers, the twins Laxmana and Shatrughana, born to queen Sumitra, and Bharatha, born to his father's favorite queen, Kaikeyi. He had an especially powerful emotional bond with Laxmana and was responsible for keeping his irascible and dangerous wrath in check. All the young men proved to be great warriors, but Rama was always pre-eminent. The family guru, Vashistha, one of the most important rishis in mythical India, instructed him in statecraft which his keen intellect found easy to assimilate.
When he was sixteen, the great Vishwamitra came calling. The sage had been trying to perform some fire sacrifices for a long time, but vicious demons were perpetually putting out the fires with aerial attacks. They knew better than to come too close, as Vishwamitra was the undisputed master of weapons and he had something even better - a fiery temper that used to launch into earth shaking curses. Not willing to waste the power of his austerities on cursing such scum, he comes to ask for Rama and Laxmana to defend his sacrifice. The two boys are eager to go, as Vishwamitra was an unusually inspiring sort of personality. He teaches them the celestial weapons and makes them invincible. They massacre the demon hordes and send their chief Maricha flying a few leagues away with the impact of a blunt arrow. So great was the shock that he was defeated, that Maricha turns over a new leaf and begins a life of meditation!
It is a curious nature of Indian myth that the Hero's Journey aspect of any Hero always occupies only the first third of this life. Once he has completed that, he is essentially unchanging in his perfection. The hero does not grow in stature or personality after the first third of the narrative. Events no longer impact him, he transforms events but himself remains untouched and unchanged rather like a catalyst. This catalytic nature of the hero in Indian myth is a unique peculiarity in the structure of mythology, and represents the fundamental divergence between Indian myth and the rest of the world. Even Buddha's life, an archetypal Hero's Journey if there ever was one, follows this pattern. Where Rama is concerned, he goes forth from obscurity as just another royal prince, to becoming a genuine hero under the Mentor that is Vishwamitra. He then comes under the influence of the female energy of the Universe, Sita, daughter of Janka, king of Mithila. The wily Vishwamitra brings the young men to Mithila precisely to bring about this end. Rama and Sita fall in love at first sight, but there is a contest - old heroic chestnut - to be won first to marry her. This is a bow of Shiva, which is proving to be unliftable. Rama not only raises it, he breaks the divine bow while stringing it. He has now moved into authentic Great Hero status.
This results in a fight with the older avatar of Vishnu, Parashurama. (For details please look at Parashurama in our Gods section) Again, the heroic stature grows and his pre-eminent position amongst men is thus confirmed. He has been trotting out one miraculous feat of valor after another and there is no dispute in India that he is indeed Purushottama, "Best amongst men." However, that title is not an acknowledgement of his invincible fighting prowess and intellect alone. He does something even more dazzling in the social context of the time. So deeply does he love Sita that he swears never to have another wife. He never had sex with any other woman either. In the polygamous royal society of the time this was unthinkable heroism and formidable self-control. Thus arose the famous formulation, "Ekam patni vrata, Purushottama" or "He who is sworn to one wife alone is the best amongst men." Rama set a standard of monogamous fidelity that India has instinctively revered, even if not always followed. In all the unthinking criticism of him, let this be remembered. Almost all other heroes in all other cultures have failed miserably in this aspect of marital relationships.
By now he is the standard hero, the catalyst factor, and his aging father decides to crown him as king. It is a very popular decision, even amongst the queens. Kaikeyi's initial jubilation at the news is soon poisoned by a spiteful servant, and she resurrects old promises made by Dasharatha and demands the throne for her son and banishment into forest exile for Rama. This aspect has been well discussed in our article in the epics section, evil sex as the hidden villain of the Ramayana. Rama puts his father out of his misery by agreeing. Contrary to the popular perception of a diabetically sweet Rama, who just lives to obey insane commands from a senile father, he knows that injustice is being done. In a furious outburst in the forest, he calls his father a sex obsessed fool, for he chooses his young wife over his worthy son. However, a king's word is not a light thing and it cannot be shown to be disregarded. All order would unravel if people felt that a king's word was a trifle that could be adjusted according to convenient circumstances. Rama leaves for the larger social good, not because, as generations of timorous parents have told skeptical children, he was obedient. If obedience was the only reason, he was a fool and Rama was anything but that.
He refuses his brother Bharatha's urgent entreaties to ascend the throne once their father dies of grief. Bharatha rules as regent while Rama is in the forest. It is very instructive however that when he returns, the wise Rama sends Hanuman ahead to ascertain if fourteen years on the throne have corrupted Bharatha, and he is disposed to hang onto the crown. This note of caution is amazing, flying as it does in the face of the popular perception that the two brothers were bonded together in a state of gooey sentimentality, rather like living in a tub of melted chocolate. Rama's intelligence was only too aware of what can happen to people in changed circumstances, and it is one of the more mature passages in the Ramayana.
The Shoorpanaka episode, is the first cloud on the idyllic forest life. Sita insists on coming along, overruling Rama's objections, and even going to the extent of saying that her father had married her to a woman by mistake when he tried to insist upon his point of view. This should put paid to any lingering doubt that she was a doormat. The forest life is one long uninterrupted romantic episode and there is nothing like it in all literature. Since the Hero in Indian culture is expected to be an expert in love too, Valmiki obliged. Rama's love for Sita is the real thing, strong and fierce and touching. It is not a conventional romantic interaction that so bedevils Sanskrit literature. Other heroes sigh and sob and declaim romantically but Rama alone meant it and to this one woman alone. It is a constant source of wonder, even now.
After the kidnapping of Sita, Rama makes an alliance with Sugriva, the younger brother of the monkey king of Kishkinda, Vali. Rama promises to kill Vali and have Sugriva crowned king, so that the royal forces could help in the search for Sita. This episode has remained a controversial one, and there are many people who feel that it was a great lapse of Rama's part to have so struck Vali down, who was after all not a bad king. It was undoubtedly a regrettable action, but there was nothing in the nature of a moral or ethical lapse in it. Vali tried repeatedly to murder his younger brother over a genuine mistake, and he also forcibly dragged Ruma, wife of Sugriva, in to his harem. His pride in his virtues and accomplishments had turned rancid and he thought he was beyond any code. Rama struck him down from hiding with his arrow, not in the back as many seem to think, and it was perfectly justified. For in the days of his virtue, Vali had been granted the boon that anybody who walked into his sight would instantly lose half their strength, which would be transferred to Vali. He was therefore invincible, even for the gods. There was no other way to kill him. Had Rama gone mano-a-mano against him in the stupidity that is sometimes called bravery, he would have died a foolish death.It is one of the first principles of Myth that a hero may sometimes act like a villain but never like a fool.There is another aspect to this Vali killing that people in India do not realize, used as they are to regarding childish and fantastic descriptions of battle as the real thing. In that context Rama's killing of Vali is the best and most heroic thing he ever did. This is my proposition. There is no moral, ethical, spirituality-inducing or virtue-developing way to kill. The only question is whether it is right to kill or not, and the usual answer to that is no. Some circumstances justify it however, but the act of killing itself can never be sanitized. Killing therefore is like excretion, a necessary evil to be got over with as efficiently and quietly as possible, and not explored for its ethical potential. Once the decision to kill Vali was taken - the moral imperative overruled for the sake of the ethical imperative - it does not matter how it is done, except that it was done quickly and well. Rama's choice of ambush therefore is a truly heroic choice, a refusal to flinch away from unpleasant reality and larger obligations because of some specious notion of valor. If India had fought its fights as Rama did Vali, the history of the country would have been a lot healthier.
That Rama was not a coward or a lazy fighter is proved when he lets Ravana off later, when the demon king was weaponless. This episode is much admired by the unthinking as the real, generous Rama, unwilling to fight a foe who is disarmed. Actually, Rama had a deeper agenda here. If he killed Ravana at that stage, enough powerful demons would be left to recover and regroup at some later stage. His mission was to forever remove the Rakshasha plague from the universe. He let Ravana off, and the slaughter of demons continued until Ravana was the only one left! The surviving Rakshashas were not of the same vicious propensities as their brethren and the Rakshasha menace was finally crushed. Individual demons continued their bad ways till the times of the Mahabharahta, but Rakshasha society would never again have the numbers to become a nuisance to the world at large. It was a stroke of political genius, not that of a pious softy, and it has gone totally unremarked till now.The trial by fire episode, in which a suddenly grouchy Rama casts aspersions on the chastity of Sita during her captivity, makes for painful reading. However, if we accept the fundamental truth that nobody can be psychologically inconsistent, we can understand his point of view. We may not agree with it, but it is valid. Like Caesar's wife, Ikshavaku queens too had to be seen to be above suspicion. It was the social imperative he was worried about, the same reason why he accepted his father's insane promise - the people had certain expectations from their ruler and that could not be set aside. In one case his action wins him admiration, in the other it generates condemnation, - but he was operating from the same set of premises in both circumstances. In Valmiki, the fire vindicates Sita and that is the end of it. Rama returns to Ayodhaya and rules in what is nostalgically remembered as the Perfect Age, Rama Rajya - the Rule of Rama.
The Uttara Kanda with its banishment of a pregnant Sita is not the work of Valmiki. Even worse was the subversion of India's national hero to caste agendas by later interpolators. There is a repulsive episode involving the killing of a shudra named Shambuka, for the 'sin' of learning the Vedas and practicing austerities. Rama was used in every age to serve the needs of the time and this nasty little tale was foisted upon him by an India in deep intellectual and spiritual decline. Rama, who was the friend of boatmen and tribals, who actually ate and slept with them, would not have done such a vile action, but some people felt that his prestige was a useful stalking horse for their casteist agendas.
These apparent blemishes have only served to illuminate the bright spots of Rama even further. He is without doubt the Pre-eminent Hero of the nation, Best Amongst Men. It is interesting to note that in the Valmiki version, he is fundamentally a Great Hero, he is not aware of his avatar status. No matter how many times it is pointed out to him he never acts like god on earth. The later regional variations make him out to be a fully aware Avatar. The most important of these texts is the Ramacharitmanas of Tulsidasa, which has literally displaced the Valmiki version as the story of Rama in the Hindi speaking areas of India. Kalidasa wrote a Rama story too, the Raghuvamasham. Strangest of all Rama stories in Sanskrit is a long palindrome of a poem by an unknown author. When read forward it tells the story of Rama. When read backwards it recounts the Mahabharatha! There is a Sanskrit spiritual version of the Ramayana popular in Kerala, called the Ramaneeyam, which eliminates all but the spiritual aspects of the story of Rama. Many English versions have been written this century. The hold of Rama over India's imagination is not likely to dim any time soon.
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