A luminous saga made accessible to new generations of readers, The Ramayana can be enjoyed for its spiritual wisdom, or as a thrilling tale of ancient conflict. Here, drawing on the work of an eleventh-century poet called Kamban, Narayan employs the skills of a master novelist to re-create the excitement he found in the original. Although the Sanskrit original was composed by Valmiki around the fourth century BC, poets have produced countless versions in different languages. The greatest Indian epic, one of the world's supreme masterpieces of storytelling A Penguin Classic A sweeping tale of abduction, battle, and courtship played out in a universe of deities and demons, The Ramayana is familiar to virtually every Indian.
As he wrote and rewrote it for ten years, this was his offering to Rama. Yet, even if the language he uses is modern and exciting, his book remains, first and last, a work of worship, of bhakti. Though he takes no liberties with the story, Ramesh menon's Ramayana is a novelist's lush, imaginative rendering of the epic, rather than a scholar's translation. There is also a comparatively recent traditions of retelling the Ramayana in English, to which this volume belongs. Alonng the way, surely, numberless variations and embellishments were introduces into it by a host of now forgotten rishis, pauranikas, and even grandmothers telling Rama's story to their grandchindren- in so many different languages and folk traditions. The epic came through the mists of time in the ancient oral tradition of guru and shishya, before it was first written down. Hardly a handful of books in any language, from any age or part of the world, can be compared to it. Besides,the legend is a literary masterpiece in every sense,full of enchantment,mystery and wisdom. They also believed that hearing or reading the epic with faith will give a man anything at all that his heart desires. These masters of old held that listening to the Ramayana washes one's sins and purifies the body and the mind.
The sages of India have always said that thye true purpose of the Ramayana is to awaken its reader spiritually, and to send him forth on the great journey that leads to moksha,to God. The Ramayana is certainly one of the world's oldest legends.Modern scholars claim that it was first composed around 300 BC.The devout hindu believes that Rama lived many hundred millenia ago,in the treta yuga, and that was also when the Valmiki first told his immortal story.The epic is called the Adi Kavya,the world's first poem.The God Brahma himself is meant to have inspired Valmiki to creat his classics,in twenty-four thousand slokas.
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