Ramayana 

The Ramayana is an ancient Indian Sanskrit epic. The Ramayana is one of Hinduism’s two Itihasas, the other being the Mahabharata. Maharishi Valmiki wrote Ramayan, which has 24,000 lines in seven volumes (Kandas) and 500 sargas and relates the narrative of Rama. The Ramayana is written in a 32-syllable metre called anustubh, with a total of 50000 lines. Ramayan is known as Adi Kavya (India’s First Poem), and Valmiki is also known as India’s First Poet.  

• The epic, generally attributed to Maharishi Valmiki, tells the story of Rama, a mythological prince of Ayodhya city in the kingdom of Kosala, and was composed in Amritsar, Punjab. 
• The epic follows Rama’s fourteen-year exile to the forest, urged by his father King Dasharatha at the request of Rama’s stepmother Kaikeyi. 
• His travels across forests in the Indian subcontinent with his wife Sita and brother Lakshmana, the kidnapping of Sita by Ravana – the king of Lanka, which resulted in war; and Rama’s eventual return to Ayodhya to be crowned. 
• The Ramayana is one of the world’s largest ancient epics. 
• It has about 24,000 verses (mainly in the Shloka/Anustubh metre), separated into seven kas, the first and seventh of which are later additions. 
• It belongs to the Itihasa genre, which consists of accounts of previous occurrences mixed with lectures on the purposes of human life. Scholars think that the book was written between the 7th and 4th centuries BCE, with subsequent sections stretching up to the 3rd century CE. 
• Aside from Buddhist, Sikh, and Jain translations, there are several Ramayana variants in Indian languages. 

Textual Characteristics

• The name Ramayana is made up of two words: Rama and ayaa. The name Rama, the epic’s major hero, has two contextual connotations. 
• It signifies ‘dark, dark-colored, black’ in the Atharvaveda and is linked to the term ratri, which means ‘darkness or stillness of night’. 
• The Ramayana is an Itihasa, or story of past occurrences , genre that comprises the Mahabharata, Puranas, and the Ramayana. 
• Teachings on the purposes of human existence are also included in the genre. 
• It illustrates relationship roles by depicting ideal personalities such as the perfect parent, ideal servant, ideal brother, ideal spouse, and ideal king. 
• Ramayana, like the Mahabharata, uses narrative allegory to illustrate the teachings of ancient Hindu sages, interspersed with philosophical and ethical aspects. 
• The Ramayana’s earliest portions date from the mid-7th century BCE to the mid-6th century BCE. 
• This is because the story makes no mention of Buddhism or the importance of Magadha. 
• The book also refers to Ayodhya as Kosala’s city, rather than its subsequent appellation of Saketa or its successor capital of Shravasti. 
• In terms of narrative time, the Ramayana takes place before the Mahabharata. Scholarly estimates for the earliest stage of the known text span from the 7th to 4th centuries BCE, with subsequent phases reaching the 3rd century CE.