Ramayana

The Ramayana, also known as the Valmiki Ramayana, is one of the two great Sanskrit epics of ancient India, alongside the Mahabharata. It is traditionally attributed to the poet Valmiki and belongs to the smriti texts, traditions transmitted rather than directly revealed. Scholars date the main oral stage to roughly the 8th to 5th or 5th to 4th centuries BCE, although the legends it contains are older, and later stages of composition extend into the 3rd century CE.

The epic tells the story of Rama, the seventh avatar of the god Vishnu and prince of Ayodhya. His father, King Dasaratha, plans to crown him, but a scheme by his stepmother Kaikeyi forces Rama into fourteen years of exile in the forest, accompanied by his wife Sita and his brother Lakshmana. During the exile, Sita is abducted by Ravana, king of Lanka, and Rama sets out to rescue her with the help of the vanaras, among them the devoted Hanuman. The story ends with Ravana's defeat and the couple's return to Ayodhya, where Rama is crowned amid celebration.

In its surviving form the text runs to some 24,000 verses in seven books, composed in the śloka metre. Alongside the narrative it offers extensive teaching on duty, righteous conduct and family relationships, and its characters embody ideals of son, brother, husband, servant and king.

The work strongly shaped later Sanskrit poetry and Hindu religious and cultural life. Its figures are central to many literatures, including the Hindi poet Tulsidas and the Tamil poet Kamban, and its story spread with Hindu cultural expansion into Southeast Asia, where it inspired literature and temple architecture in countries such as Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia and Burma.