The history and geography of the Ramayana*

*The history and geography of the Ramayana*

All great legends must have had a historic core but they mostly evolved out of oral accounts that were always elaborated through the frequent telling and retelling over the centuries. For many Hindus the Ramayana, or the story of Ram, is much more than a legend and many call it `Itihas’ or history. But the `Ramacharitamanas’ written in the local north Indian language of Awadhi by Goswami Tulsidas (1497 – 1623 CE)  is much better known and more revered than the `Ramayana’, written in Sanskrit, by Valmiki sometime between 500 and 100 BCE. 

There are also some 300 different versions of the great story revered in many parts of India as well as in Srilanka, Thailand and throughout South East Asia. Although they all have the same basic story there are numerous differences between them. Most Hindus strongly believe the version of Tulsidas and know something about the older version of Valmiki but they reject all the other accounts.

As Ram had evolved from a great mortal hero of the Ramayana to a divinity, an incarnation of the god Vishnu, in the Ramacharitmanas making it a virtual scripture instead of a legend. Many Hindus can therefore be easily angered by many of the other versions. These two are considered to be virtual scriptures but have a large number of inconvenient inconstancies. Some of the main differences are:

• In Valmikis account Ram’s father Dasrath had 353 wives although the three major ones were Kaushalya, Kaikaiya and Sumitra who were the mothers of the heroes Bharat, Ram and Lakshman. Some accounts say that Sumitra also had another son called Shatruguna. Tulsidas however speaks of only three wives in his Ramacharitmanas.

• Unlike the Ramacharitmanas the Ramayana has no mention of the story about the magic line or `Lakshmanrekha’ drawn to protect Sita when Ram and Lakshman go out hunting.

• In the Ramayana Hanuman is a human forest dweller and not a celestial monkey as in the Ramacharitmanas.

• In the Ramacharitmanas, Ram is a noble but mortal man – `Maryada Purushottam’ and not a divine incarnation of the deity Vishnu as in the Ramayana. As he is also an incarnation of Krishna the legends of Ram and Krishna creep into some of the accounts.

• In the Ramayana Ram wins the hand of Sita by being able to lift and break the great bow of Shiva and not through the `Swayamvara’ or selection of a groom by the bride as described in the Ramacharitmanas.  

• In the Ramacharitmanas the demon Ravan does not actually abduct Sita, who had been sent to the safety of `Agnipariksha’ so Ravan is fooled and actually only captures a clone or likeness of her. 

• Ravan fights Ram twice in the Ramayana and only once in the Ramacharitmanas.

• The Ramayana ends with Rama drowning himself in sorrow after the loss of Sita and Lakshman while the Ramacharitmanas ends with Sita going back into the earth while her twin sons Luv and Kush continue the story.

• Most of the Ramayana is devoted to Mahadeva, or Shiva, while the Vaishnava influence and beliefs are very strong in the Ramacharitmanas. The Ramayana therefore has many accounts about the eating of meat and even beef but the heroes of the Ramacharitmanas do not eat meat or beef. 

• In the Buddha Ramayana Sita is a sister of Ram and not his wife. 

Despite these and many other discrepancies many orthodox Hindus ardently believe that the legend is history.

Apart from many contradictions in the Ramayana history there are also many contradictions in the geography as well. The locations of all the places named in Valmiki’s account are quite vague and imprecise but become quite well detailed in Tulsidas’s much more recent Ramacharitmanas. It is however impossible to fix the location of Lanka that is such a vital part of both the narratives.

But there were many other Ramayana narratives too in Jain and Buddhist literature. The popular Valmiki Ramayana may have been composed around 400 BCE a thousand years before the Uttara Ramayana that describes Lanka and its surroundings in great detail. The latter’s description of Lanka seems to have little to do with Ceylon and describes a river island in Central India, about 30 kilometers to the north of Jabalpur in the Madhya Pradesh. It might have been in the flood basin of the Hiran River, a major tributary of the Narmada River. The wide flood basin looks like a sea in the monsoon months.

The Saryu River next to Ayodhya is a very important river of the Ramayana. There is however no such river near the modern city of Ayodhya but the Sharda river (also known as Kali River) that flows into Ghaghara River in the Sitapur district of Uttar Pradesh. This river had been recorded as the eastern boundary of the Arya tribes who seem to have first settled in the valleys of the Indus, Saraswati and Jamuna rivers. This Ghaghara is the longest river of Nepal but has been quite recently renamed as Sarayu beyond Bageshwar in India. As there is no ancient Saryu River in India but a river that flows through Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan that is still called Syr Darya there is therefore a possibility that the events of the Ramayana might have originally occurred in Central Asia from where the story could have migrated southwards with the Aryas or other native people of the area.”