page_title: Ramayana
section_title: Period
hierarchical_section_title: Ramayana / Period
caption_attribution_description: "Vishnu with his 10 avatars (incarnations): Fish, Tortoise, Boar, Man-Lion, Dwarf, Rama with the Ax, King Rama, Krishna, Buddha, and Kalkin. Painting from Jaipur, India, 19th century; in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Opaque watercolour on paper. Height: 48.3 cm, Width: 39.5 cm. Acquired by the Indian Museum and transferred to the South Kensington Museum in 1879."
context_page_description: Ramayana is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India, the other being the Mahābhārata. Along with the Mahābhārata, it forms the Hindu Itihasa.
  The epic, traditionally ascribed to the Maharishi Valmiki, narrates the life of Rama, the legendary Kosala Kingdom. It follows his fourteen-year exile to the forest by his father King Dasharatha, on request of his step-mother Kaikeyi, his travels across forests in India with his wife Sita and brother Lakshmana, the kidnapping of his wife by Ravana, the great king of Lanka, resulting in a war with him and Ram's eventual return to Ayodhya to be crowned king. This is the culmination point of the epic. It is considered a sacred book, and is read by millions of people every year.
  There have been many attempts to unravel the epic's historical growth and compositional layers; various recent scholars' estimates for the earliest stage of the text range from the 7th to 4th centuries BCE, with later stages extending up to the 3rd century CE.
  The Ramayana is one of the largest ancient epics in world literature.
context_section_description: In terms of narrative time, the action of the Ramayana predates the Mahabharata. However, the general cultural background of the Ramayana is one of the post-urbanization periods of the eastern part of north India, while the Mahabharata reflects the Kuru areas west of this, from the Rigvedic to the late Vedic period.
  By tradition, the text belongs to the Treta Yuga, second of the four eons (Yuga) of Hindu chronology. Rama is said to have been born in the Treta Yuga (869000 years ago) to King Dasharatha in the Ikshvaku dynasty.
  The names of the characters (Rama, Sita, Dasharatha, Janaka, Vashista, Vishwamitra) are all known only in the late Vedic literature. For instance, a king named Janaka appears in a lengthy dialogue in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad with no reference to Rama or the Ramayana. However, nowhere in the surviving Vedic poetry is there a story similar to the Ramayana of Valmiki. According to the modern academic view, Vishnu, who, according to Bala Kanda, was incarnated as Rama, first came into prominence with the epics themselves and further, during the Puranic period of the later 1st millennium CE. Also, in the epic Mahabharata, there is a version of the Ramayana known as Ramopakhyana. This version is depicted as a narration to Yudhishthira.
  Books two to six form the oldest portion of the epic, while the first and last books (Bala Kand and Uttara Kand, respectively) are later additions: style differences and narrative contradictions between these two volumes and the rest of the epic have led scholars since Hermann Jacobi to the present toward this consensus. The author or authors of Bala kanda and Ayodhya kanda appear to be familiar with the eastern Gangetic basin region of northern India and with the Kosala, Mithila and Magadha regions during the period of the sixteen Mahajanapadas, based on the fact that the geographical and geopolitical data accords with what is known about the region.
caption: Rama (left third from top) depicted in the Dashavatara, the ten avatars of Vishnu. Painting from Jaipur, now at the Victoria and Albert Museum
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