Valmiki Ramayana Balakanda

THE ENDURING EPIC OF GOOD VERSUS EVIL, NOW IN ITS DEFINITIVE TRANSLATION The Valmiki Ramayana remains a living force in the lives of the Indian people. A timeless epic, it recounts the legend of Rama, the exiled prince of Ayodhya, and his battle to vanquish the demon king Ravana. Exiled on the eve of his coronation, Rama enters the forests of Dandaka with his beautiful wife, Sita, and devoted brother, Lakshmana. When Sita is abducted by Ravana, who takes her to his isolated kingdom on the far side of the southern ocean, the two brothers set out to rescue her. What follows is a heroic tale filled with intrigue and adventure, gods and demons, colossal battles and ancient wisdom. But the Ramayana is also an intensely personal story of love and loss, duty and honour, petty jealousies and destructive ambitions. In Bibek Debroy’s majestic new translation, the complete and unabridged text of the Critical Edition of this beloved epic can now be relished by a new generation of readers.

One of India’s greatest epics, the Ramayana pervades the country’s moral and cultural consciousness. For generations it has served as a bedtime story for Indian children, while at the same time engaging the interest of philosophers and theologians. Believed to have been composed by Valmiki sometime between the eighth and sixth centuries BCE, the Ramayana tells the tragic and magical story of Rama, the prince of Ayodhya, an incarnation of Lord Visnu, born to rid the earth of the terrible demon Ravana. An idealized heroic tale ending with the inevitable triumph of good over evil, the Ramayana is also an intensely personal story of family relationships, love and loss, duty and honor, of harem intrigue, petty jealousies, and destructive ambitions. All this played out in a universe populated by larger-than-life humans, gods and celestial beings, wondrous animals and terrifying demons. With her magnificent translation and superb introduction, Arshia Sattar has successfully bridged both time and space to bring this ancient classic to modern English readers.

The first volume of Agni: The Vedic Ritual of the Fire Altar, contains a discussion of the place of the Agnicayana in the Vedic srauta tradition, its textual loci, traditional and modern interpretations of its origins and significance and an overview of the Nambudiri Vedic tradition. The bulk of the volume, written in close collaboration with C.V. Somayajipad and M.Itti Ravi Nambudiri, is devoted to a detailed description of the 198\75 twelve-day performance, richly illustrated with tipped-in photographs, mostly in colour and almost all by Adelaide de Menil. There are numerous text illustrations, tables and maps. The mantras are published in Devanagari and translation. The second volume, edited with the assistance of Pamela MacFarland, contains contributions by an international galaxy of scholars on archeology, the pre-Vedic Indian background, geometry, ritual vessels, music, Mudras, Mimamsa, a survey of Srauta traditions in recent times, the influence of Vedic ritual in the Homa traditions of Indonesia, Tibet, China, Japan and related topics. There are translations of the relevant Srauta Sutras of Baudhayana (together with Calanda`s text) and the Jaiminiya (with Bhavatrata`s commentary) as well as the Kausitaki Brahmana; and a survey of the project with an inventory of the films and tape recording made in 1975.

The last and most intriguing book of the Ramayana, the Uttara Kanda is rendered here by noted Sanskrit scholar Arshia Sattar in vivid, sensuous detail. First composed around 500 BCE, it tells the story of an unjustly exiled prince, the abduction of his wife from the forest by a ten-headed demon king, his alliance with a band of magical monkeys, and the internal and external battles he must fight to win back his wife and keep her. India’s great Sanskrit epic brings to readers the classic dilemmas every individual faces: love versus duty, destiny and free will, the public and the private self, the pull of family, and the right to personal happiness. These universal problems are layered with the quintessentially Indian ideas of karma (action) and dharma (duty).The book explores what it means to be human in a complex and demanding world, considering the parameters and contexts in which we make the decisions that will determine the color and tenor of our lives, the choices that make us who we are. It also offers a great, albeit tragic, love story—a story of the demands and pressures of love and how we might fail those that we love most. Accompanied by Sattar’s thoughtful essays weighing the moral complexity of this most enduring of epics, this translation crystallizes her deep and intimate knowledge of the Ramayana in a way that is utterly compelling.

This is a condensed version of a long epic, written between 750 and 500 B.C., consisting of 50,000 lines of Sanskrit verse. Divided into seven Kanor books, it tells the story of Rama from his birth to his death. At regular intervals throughout the text, the chapters being condensed are designated by Kantitles and numbers. Each interval is appropriate in length for a daily reading, and there are 365 intervals. The cast of characters is provided by a glossary of proper names.

Critical edition with English translation and with five classical commentaries, Amr̥takaṭaka by Mādhavayogī, ca. 1675-ca. 1750. Dharmakūṭa by Tryambakarāyamakhị, 17th cent.; Rāmāyaṇaśiromaṇi by Śivasahāya; Tattvadīpikā by Maheśvaratīrtha and Rāmāyaṇatilaka by Rāma, 18th cent.