Valmiki's Ramayana:

An epic of universal appeal

by Prof. Purnima Velamuri

Ramayana is one of the well-known and time-honoured epics of the world. Ramayana is composed by Valmiki who is known as the Adi Kavi (the first poet) of India. Ramayana has extended its influence in the popular, religious and intellectual sections of India and many other countries till today. Though Indian in origin, it is universal in its hold on mind.

The legend of Ramanayana has outlasted time and space and has lent itself to so many reinterpretations. It is not unnatural, therefore, to wonder on the popularity of Ramayana and how it finds its expression in literary works and artistic creations over and over. Only Shakespeare has had this kind of popularity in literary and artistic circles of the world.

Immortal epic

Rama is the pivot on whom the whole fabric of this immortal epic is woven. Rama embodies virtue and ardently applies it to life in conflicting circumstances. But first and foremost Ramayana is the eternal love story of Rama and Sita. Here Sita is the ideal wife of Rama. She is the embodiment of purity and womanly virtues. She is the last word on womanly perfection. Sita outshines all the other characters in Ramayana.

The concept of character is indeed the most striking feature of the Ramayana. There is something strangely superb in the combination of virtue and power in its hero and heroine. In this respect, the Ramayana undoubtedly stands apart from the epics of the world. It is through its characters indeed that the Ramayana breathes the spirit of the Dharma (code of conduct).

Ramayana is a poetic record of the ideals of society of its times. It is difficult to fathom the working of a poet's mind engaged in composing a great poem. Still however, if collaboration and clash of characters, relation of incidents, working up of a climax and other similar features in the structure of a plot are the creations of a poet's genius, his characters which are indeed the nucleus of his great plot, are inevitably drawn from society.

Universal

It is for this reason that the reader's identification is more universal with characters than with events. As representatives of the ideas that a society has inherited from its past, and as the monuments of the ideals that it has laboured to maintain, these characters are the lighthouses that guide the poet, as well as his readers through trying moments of their reflective lives.

For his characters, a poet is always grateful to society. His sympathies with characters are an expression of this gratefulness.

Valmiki, too was grateful to the age which had produced the great characters of Ramayana.

Shortcomings

The poet did not idealise his characters to the extent of overlooking their shortcomings and weaknesses. If we fail to notice this feature of Valmiki's work, the fault is ours, if we notice these weaknesses a little too cynically, the poet is again not to be blamed for this.

The society that Valmiki was depicting had intimate links with the ancient way of life in which the vedic scriptures had infused purposes and values, unique in that age, when outside that society barbaric passions, demoniacal vanities, monstrous self-Assertions, self -aggrandisements and self-gratifications were nourished.

By force of clan feelings, arms, brute physical and diplomatic strength and even spiritual cults, pursued for the sake of mere - glorification.

Thus Valmiki gave to humanity a treasure of priceless values, which build man's self-confidence. His faith in the ultimate victory of good over evil and his hope in divine agency ever working to make law and virtue prevail over lawlessness and vice.

Valmiki cleverly brings out this to the world through the character of Sita in Ramayana.

Evil

Valmiki knew how in the flow of eternal time there are moments that sound the death knell of the ruling monstrous evil of the time. Sita's abduction marked such a moment. It was the climax event not only in Rama's life but also in the life of nature whose eternal laws had been shaken by the pest growing to the extent of blighting the fairest flower of humanity.

The event of abduction shows the poet's power of a classical restraint in poetry. Sita had been only too cordial and hospitable to Ravana. Her charming personality and courtesy were the relief given to mark the darkness of Ravana's design against her. Sita had innocently pinned her faith in the yellow robes of a hermit without knowing that it was Ravana who had come to her hermitage in disguise.

Indian womanhood had often stood bold in such crucial moments. Moral courage of Padmini against Ala-Ud-Din and of Durgavati against Akbar are only two of the many historical instances of indication of Indian woman's honour.

Gods

Sita was one of the earliest in the line of Savitri, Arundhati, and Anasuya who had recoiled from accepting even gods as their lovers, when once they had cast their lovers, when once they had cast their lots with ascetics.

Rama was an exile but he was still Sita's dearest claim in her life. When Ravana revealed himself she was ablaze with her helpless rage against the tempter who was not a fait accompli. It hailed the day of reckoning for the long-standing perpetrator of heinous crimes.

The act was pregnant with dire consequences. It was in all respects an attempt by a slave of passions on the passionless. When Sita was in captivity Ravana wanted to impress her with his wealth and power by taking her round his palace and showing her all its beauties.

He wanted her to have a look at the pleasure garden laid out with beautiful walks and studded with thousands of rare trees and water-gods presiding over fountains.

"All these and a thousand more will be yours, O! Sita, he said in a passionate appeal to her.

"If you become the Queen of my kingdom, I will make you the chief queen taking precedence over all my wives."

Anger

Sita now becomes fearless in her anger. Disdaining to look at him she turned round and placing a piece of straw before her, addressed her reply to it.

"The prince of Ayodhya is my husband. He is my god. If you had attempted to do in his presence what you did today in his absence, you would have by now gone the way of your brothers - Khara and Idooshana.

Even now don't think that you have escaped. This place to which you have brought me by force will pay heavily for your sin.

These palaces and these gardens, these halls of gold and silver, your wealth and possessions are mere dust in my eyes and they will soon be reduced to dust and ashes. You have power only over my body, not over my mind, which is with my husband.

This was not only addressed to Ravana but also to those who think Sita would have been better off accepting Ravana's love for her rather than pining for Rama.

In another incident, when Hanuman offered to take Sita back to Rama, Sita politely refused and said, "That would be the everlasting ignominy of Rama. Death is better than infamy. The heroic course for Rama is to declare war, vanquish the evil doer and reclaim me." There was ethical beauty in it.

Rama was obsessed with his kingship and responsibilities that it entailed, for him his public image that of an ideal king, was more important than his love for Sita. Otherwise how could he have suspected her chastity, not once but twice in public?

Final hour

After rescuing Sita from Ravana, he suspected her (out of his over-solicitude towards the opinion of his subjects) and forced her to prove her chastity through purification by fire.

Even after that he was not very sure of her so he paid inordinate attention to the words of a washerman and banished her to the forest, without giving her a chance.

Even in the final hour when she came to his court along with her sons, Rama asked her to announce her chastity to the public present in the court. That broke Sita's patience and she refused to do it. Instead she protested silently by disappearing into the bowels of Earth, her mother.

Rama has the reputation of one who upheld the principle of Eka Patiniviratna (The value of being faithful only to one wife). He is quoted as the ideal of manhood and husbandhood. Every young girl wants to have a husband as steadfast and noble as Rama. He is also known as Maryadapurusa (the one who upholds all that is decent) Rama is a hero figure. He is idealised as ideal king and an ideal husband.

Sita loved Rama inspite of all the humiliations doled out to her by her husband and lover Rama.

Even when she gathers courage to question his actions against her she concludes by saying that her time in this world is up when she has to give up leaning on the shoulders of her Rama and go to the next world.

She claims she would never forget him, she would wait for him in the next world when he can join her after concluding all his worldly and kingly responsibilities and they can continue their love life.

No wonder, she has become the ideal of Indian womanhood.

We can write treatises on the characters of Ramayana. A love story can never die or lose appeal. And as long as love is the foremost emotion cherished by all, Ramayana will not lose its appeal.

There may have been several Ramas perhaps, but never more than one Sita. That is the grandeur of Sita's character in Valmiki's Ramayana.

"You may exhaust the literature of the world that is past, and I assure you that you will have to exhaust the literature of the world of the future, before finding another Sita," said

- Swamin Vivekananda

Valmiki excels as a poet in the characterisation of Sita; this made Valmiki's Ramayana such a sweet sentimental Kavya (poems), universally admired epic.