| Ramayana | |
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The Ramayana is an ancient Sanskrit epic attributed to the
poet Valmiki and is an important part of the Hindu canon. The name
Ramayana is a tatpurusa compound of Rama and ayana "going, advancing", translating
to "the travels of Rama". The Ramayana
consists of 24,000 verses in seven cantos (kandas) and tells the story of a prince,
Rama of Ayodhya, whose wife Sita is
abducted by the demon (Rakshasa) king of Lanka, Ravana. In its current form,
the Valmiki Ramayana is dated variously from 500
BCE to 100 BCE, or about co-eval to early versions of the Mahabharata. As with
most traditional epics, since it has gone
through a long process of interpolations and redactions, it is impossible to
date it accurately. Indian tradition regards the
Ramayana as part of Ithihasa, or history, with Valmiki's version as the oldest
written form and the most authentic. The Ramayana had an important influence on later Sanskrit poetry, primarily through its establishment of the Sloka meter. But, like its epic cousin Mahabharata, the Ramayana is not just an ordinary story. It contains the teachings of ancient Hindu sages and presents them through allegory in narrative and the interspersion of the philosophical and the devotional. The characters of Rama, Sita, Lakshmana, Bharata, Hanuman and Ravana (the villain of the piece) are all fundamental to the cultural consciousness of India. |
TimelineThe Ramayana is ascribed to a single author, Valmiki. Its exact date of creation is unknown, and is estimated to lie between the 4th and 2nd century B.C "The Cultural Heritage of India", Vol. IV, "The Religions", The Ramakrishna Mission, Institute of Culture, says: "The first and the last Books of the Ramayana are later additions. The bulk, consisting of Books II--VI, represents Rama as an ideal hero. In Books I and VII, however Rama is made an avatar or incarnation of Vishnu, and the epic poem is transformed into a Vaishnav text. As per the traditional astronomical back-projection by Vedic system, the event of the war between Rama and Ravana is supposed to have happened 880,148 years ago, as of April 9, 2006. It should be added, however, that "attempts to date events or read history or allegory" from "the description of stars and planets" are not always persuasive. This is consistent with the treatment of evidence from archaeoastronomy in other cultures.Structure of Valmiki RamayanaValmiki's Ramayana, the oldest version of Ramayana is the basis of all the various versions of the Ramayana that are relevant in the various cultures. The text survives in numerous complete and partial manuscripts, the oldest surviving of which is dated from the eleventh century AD. The current text of Valmiki Ramayana has come down to us in two regional versions from the north and the south of India. Valmiki Ramayana has been traditionally divided into seven books, dealing with the life of Rama from his birth to his death. |
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| Mahabharata | |
Textual history and organizationIt is undisputed that the full length of the Mahabharata has accreted over a long period. The Mahabharata itself (1.1.61) distinguishes a core portion of 24,000 verses, the Bharata proper, as opposed to additional secondary material, while the Ashvalayana Grhyasutra (3.4.4) makes a similar distinction. According to the Adi-parva of the Mahabharata (shlokas 81, 101-102), the text was originally 8,800 verses when it was composed by Vyasa and was known as the Jaya (Victory), which later became 24,000 verses in the Bharata recited by Vaisampayana, and finally over 90,000 verses in the Mahabharata recited by Ugrasravas. As with the field of Homeric studies, research on the Mahabharata has put an enormous effort into recognizing and dating various layers within the text. The complex structure had caused some early Western Indologists to refer to it as chaotic. The earliest known references to the Mahabharata and its core Bharata
date back to the 6th-5th century BC, in the Ashtadhyayi (sutra 6.2.38)
of Panini (c. 520-460 BC), and in the Ashvalayana Grhyasutra (3.4.4),
while various characters from the epic are also mentioned in earlier
Vedic literature. This indicates that the core 24,000 verses, known as
the Bharata, as well as an early version of the extended Mahabharata,
were composed by the 6th-5th century BC, with parts of the Jaya's original
8,800 verses possibly dating back as far as the 9th-8th century BC. |
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| The earliest testimony of the existence of the full text of the Mahabharata is by the Greek Sophist Dion Chrysostom (c. 40-105), who mentions that "the Indians possess an Iliad of 100,000 verses". The later copper-plate inscription of the Maharaja Sharvanatha (533-534) from Khoh (Satna District, Madhya Pradesh) also describes the Mahabharata as a "collection of 100,000 verses" (shatasahasri samhita). The redaction of this large body of text was carried out after formal principles, emphasizing the numbers 18 and 12. The addition of the latest parts may be dated by the absence of the Anushasana-parva from MS Spitzer, the oldest surviving Sanskrit philosophical manuscript dated to the first century, that contains among other things a list of the books in the Mahabharata. From this evidence, it is likely that the redaction into 18 books took place in the first century. An alternative division into 20 parvas appears to have co-existed for some time. The division into 100 sub-parvas (mentioned in Mbh. 1.2.70) is older, and most parvas are named after one of their constituent sub-parvas. The Harivamsa consists of the final two of the 100 sub-parvas, and was considered an appendix (khila) to the Mahabharata proper by the redactors of the 18 parvas. | |
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