Ramayana | Summary, Characters, & Facts (2024)

Ramayana, shorter of the two great epic poems of India, the other being the Mahabharata (“Great Epic of the Bharata Dynasty”). The Ramayana was composed in Sanskrit, probably not before 300 bce, by the poet Valmiki and in its present form consists of some 24,000 couplets divided into seven books.

The poem describes the royal birth of the god Rama in the kingdom of Ayodhya (Oudh), his tutelage under the sage Vishvamitra, and his success in bending Shiva’s mighty bow at the bridegroom tournament of Sita, the daughter of King Janaka, thus winning her for his wife. After Rama is banished from his position as heir to the kingdom through a palace intrigue, he retreats to the forest with his wife and his favourite half brother, Lakshmana, to spend 14 years in exile. There Ravana, the demon-king of Lanka, carries off Sita to his capital while her two protectors are busy pursuing a golden deer sent to the forest to mislead them. Sita resolutely rejects Ravana’s attentions, and Rama and his brother set out to rescue her. After numerous adventures, they enter into alliance with Sugriva, king of the monkeys, and, with the assistance of the monkey-general Hanuman and Ravana’s own brother, Vibhishana, they attack Lanka. Rama slays Ravana and rescues Sita, who undergoes an ordeal by fire in order to clear herself of suspicions of infidelity. When they return to Ayodhya, however, Rama learns that the people still question the queen’s chastity, and he banishes her to the forest. There she meets the sage Valmiki (the reputed author of the Ramayana) and at his hermitage gives birth to Rama’s two sons. The family is reunited when the sons come of age, but Sita, after again protesting her innocence, plunges into the earth, her mother, who receives her and swallows her up.

The poem enjoys immense popularity in India, where its recitation is considered an act of great merit. Little is known of Valmiki as a historical figure, though he is described as having been a thief named Ratnakara prior to becoming a sage. Many translations of the Ramayana into the vernacular languages are themselves works of great literary artistry, including the Tamil version of Kampan, the Bengali version of Krittibas, and the Hindi version, Ramcharitmanas, of Tulsidas. Throughout North India the events of the poem are enacted in an annual pageant, the Ram Lila, and in South India the two epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, make up the story repertoire of the kathakali dance-drama of Malabar. The Ramayana was popular during the Mughal period (16th century), and it was a favourite subject of Rajasthani and Pahari painters of the 17th and 18th centuries.

The story also spread in various forms throughout Southeast Asia (especially Cambodia, Indonesia, and Thailand), and its heroes, together with the Pandava brothers of the Mahabharata, were also the heroes of traditional Javanese-Balinese theatre, dance, and shadow plays. Incidents from the Ramayana are carved in bas-relief on many Indonesian monuments—for example, at Panataran in eastern Java.