by Vanamali
The life of Krishna, though filled with conflicts, arouses only joy in us. When we read the life of Rama, however, we are filled with sorrow. From the depths of this sorrow wells up a poetic outpouring that only grief can evoke. This is true of almost all poetry, in all cultures, and at all times. All Greek drama is tragic, for the Greeks believed that only the tragic sequences of human life can bring about a catharsis in human nature, which will help the person to evolve.
As Valmiki acknowledged, “From shoka comes sloka.” Poetry streams from sorrow. Pain and grief touch a deep chord in the depths of every human being in a way that happiness and joy cannot. The knife can penetrate depths that the finger cannot reach. The baby comes into our physical world with a cry of pain and the aged depart from life with a sob; in the time between these two traumatic events, we live in an ocean of tears, in which we are hard put not to drown. We keep ourselves afloat by clutching at the straws of so-called happiness that float past us in our make-believe material world, and pretend that we are happy. Most of the time we are in the grip of some misery or other. This being the case, some of the world’s most exquisite poetry has gushed forth from the spring of sorrow. The Ramayana is no exception to this rule. It is an epic of compassion and wrenches the heartstrings in a way that few other books can.
Before we actually go into the story, it would be good to clear some doubts that may arise in the reader’s mind regarding various situations found in the book.
There are hardly any controversies around Sri Tulsidas’s retelling of the story of Rama in Hindi, since it is an obvious treatise on bhakti alone, or devotion to a personal god, who is Rama. However, controversies rage around Valmiki’s Ramayana, since there are so many incidents that do not seem to fit our conception of a perfect human being, which is what Valmiki intended in writing his version of the story of Rama. One thing we must realize before diving into these controversies is that Valmiki was not a fool. He must have realized that the recounting of these incidents would surely taint the character he wished to depict as perfect. So then the question arises: Why did he do it? He could easily have avoided ambiguous situations, as Tulsidas did, and recounted only incidents that highlighted his hero in a most favorable way. Since Valmiki did not do this, we have to conclude that there must have been a very good reason for him to have kept those controversial situations in his book. In fact, unraveling the mystery of these very situations may reveal the key to Rama’s character and a true understanding of the Ramayana.
Before going into the story of Rama, it would be useful to determine if he was only a figment of Valmiki’s imagination or was a historical figure. It is generally believed that India has no recorded history. However our Itihasas (literally “histories” in Sanskrit), or epics—the Ramayana and the Mahabharata—give a faithful account of the history of India of those times. Valmiki was a contemporary of Rama, so the Ramayana is actually a firsthand account of events that took place in that age. We might wonder how this truth became so distorted through time that even the Indian people now believe Rama was a mythical character.
When westerners first came to India, they were appalled to discover that if Indian history as given in the Itihasas was true, then a glorious civilization existed in India at a time when Europeans were barbarians running around brandishing crude weapons. Realizing that the only way they could enforce their culture on the country would be to cast scorn on the two great gods of Hinduism—Rama and Krishna, they took pains to prove that they were purely mythical characters materialized by the fertile brains of Valmiki and Vyasa. Unfortunately, the Hindu elite, educated in English universities, believed them, since they had been inculcated with the belief that all civilization started with the Greeks.
Indian history as recorded by Valmiki in the Ramayana clearly states all the details of his lineage. He belonged to the Surya Vamsa (the line of the Sun) and was the sixty-fourth ruler of the Ikshwaku dynasty. The names of his predecessors are also given. What more proof is needed to establish his historicity? Yet western historians were determined to prove he was a myth.
Valmiki was not only the first poet, he was also the first astronomer, and due to his extraordinary astronomical observations, it is possible to pinpoint the exact dates he gave. His study of planetary configurations has stood the test of time, and the latest computer software corroborates his calculations. He gave Dasaratha’s (Rama’s father) zodiac sign as Pisces and his star as Revathi. Rama left for his exile at one of the conjunctions of these stars. Modern calculations reveal that this configuration took place January 5, 5089 BCE, at which time Rama was twenty-five years old, according to Valmiki. He also mentioned a solar eclipse that took place at the time of Rama’s fight with the asuras Khara and Dhushana. He noted that it was amavasya, or the night of the new moon, and Mars was flanked by Venus on one side and Mercury on the other. When this data was inserted into the software, it came up with October 7, 5077 BCE.
By following other planetary configurations as mentioned by Valmiki, we can see that Ravana was killed on December 4, 5076 BCE. Rama completed his exile on January 2, 5075 in the bright phase of the moon (shukla paksha) in the month of Chaitra (April/May), which was the month of his birth, and returned to Ayodhya at the age of thirty-nine.
There are twenty-three places on the Indian subcontinent with memorials commemorating events of Rama’s life as he passed through them. All of Hindu India and many parts of Southeast Asia believe in the historicity of Rama and Krishna, and most of the festivals in India revolve around events in the lives of these great incarnations. They are the life force flowing through the collective consciousness of India and knitting its diversity into a united country.
Now let us try to analyze the controversial situations in the book before starting on the main story. For this we should try to probe the mind of the author, Valmiki, to determine what he considered to be the main characteristic of Sri Rama. Only by doing this will we be able to understand the reason for Rama’s apparently strange behavior, which has provoked criticism from all sides and which even the staunchest of his supporters find difficult to explain.
The invincible, rocklike foundation of Rama’s character, around which Valmiki has built the entire story, is his absolute and unequivocal adherence to dharma, his first and last love. All the other loves of his life paled into insignificance before this all-consuming passion for dharma, which sometimes amounted to fanaticism. This is the basic facet of his character that we have to understand before we can begin to appreciate many of his actions, which seem to conflict with our ideas of a noble human being. As he told Bharata, “I will follow the path of dharma and obey the will of my father. A man of dharma should obey his guru; he must be true to himself and must keep his word.”
According to Hindu tradition, the triple laws that govern the universe are rita, satya, and dharma. The first two are universal laws that when translated to human life, are called dharma. One who bases life on this dharma would be true to himself and to the laws of the universe, and therefore such a person could well be called a perfect human being. Sri Rama is the personification of such a character. He is dharma incarnate. In the Mahabharata it was Yudhishtira who portrayed this role, though not as perfectly as Rama.
The universal laws of rita and satya, when reflected through the medium of the human mind, become distorted, and that is why we find that though many of us struggle hard to become totally dharmic, we do not always hit the mark. Even God, when he takes on a mortal body, appears to come at least a little under the sway of maya. That is why we often find even Sri Rama falling prey to the frailties of human emotion. For example, he is totally bereft at the loss of Sita and weeps like any infatuated husband who has been parted from his beloved wife. But there was an additional reason why Valmiki showed Rama in this state; despite his overwhelming love for Sita, he was prepared to banish her so as to be true to his dharma as king. Rama shows that a king’s first loyalty should be to his country and its citizens, always placing public duty before perso
nal satisfaction. This is true of anyone holding a government position. If all politicians followed this rule, every country would be a Ramarajya. It is to prove this point that Valmiki lost no opportunity in describing Rama’s great attachment to his wife. In fact, unusual for the custom of the age, when it was quite common for kings to have many wives, Rama refused to remarry after the banishment of Sita. The lesson Valmiki tries to teach us from this is “not that Rama loved Sita less, but that he loved dharma more.”
As mentioned above the life of Rama shows that when a human being tries to uphold dharma at all costs, he must be prepared to sacrifice all other loves. Dharma is a stern disciplinarian and brooks no straying from its strict path. One who adheres fanatically to the path of dharma will find, like Rama, that even the strongest of material attachments must be sacrificed for the sake of his beliefs. The Ramayana is a fascinating story because we see in it the terrible anguish and pain that Rama felt as a mortal when the time came to sacrifice his greatest loves on the altar of dharma. On the other hand, we also see that despite this agony he did not deviate from the strict ideal he kept for himself and did not flinch from making the final sacrifice of even his beloved brother, Lakshmana. We who live in an age of easy morality, where ideals are conveniently renounced for the sake of self-interest, where greed and selfishness are the standards to be followed, may consider Rama a fool, but to ancient Indian society he was a god, for none but a god could conduct his affairs with absolutely no trace of self-interest. This is why Rama is deified in Tulsidas and why his picture can be found on every Hindu altar. The morals that have been instilled in the Indian people from Vedic times help us to at least appreciate godliness, even if we are unable to emulate it. Unfortunately, the younger generation has not tried to understand why Valmiki portrayed such a character. They denounce certain of Rama’s actions without understanding the tremendous moral purpose that motivated him. He has been held up as the model son, brother, friend, and husband. He played each role to perfection, no doubt, but eventually he was forced to sacrifice each of those whom he loved so dearly. The Ramayana is a story of utter pathos that ascends to sublime heights of glory, the pinnacle of divinity, for no ordinary mortal could be so utterly selfless to the point of being considered heartless. Whatever role he played, he followed only this rule: Am I acting according to dharma? In following this path of fire, he burned himself time and again and was instrumental in bringing about the death of all his dear ones, beginning with his father. Each person he loved had to be sacrificed as a yajna to that implacable law of dharma, which he was bent on following to the bitter end.
In the “Ayodhya Kanda,” we find that Rama’s stepmother Kaikeyi prevails on the king, Rama’s father, to grant her two boons he had promised—to appoint her son, Bharata, as prince regent and to banish Rama to the forest for fourteen years. Rama did not flinch when he heard this harsh order of his stepmother delivered to him on the eve of his coronation as heir apparent. His father could not even speak, due to his overwhelming sorrow, but Rama cheerfully agreed to this proposal and was quite prepared to renounce the golden throne of the kings of Ayodhya, to keep his father’s promise to Kaikeyi. He was fully prepared to discard the glory of a life as king; be parted from his newly wedded wife, beloved brothers, and parents; and wander alone in the forest for fourteen years, true to his role as dharmanuchara. His father, however, could not bear the loss and died of a broken heart.
Another controversy concerns his killing of Tataka and disfiguring of Shurpanekha. How could he have done this to women? Again, one has only to refer to his role as the upholder of dharma to understand this. One of the duties of a king was to see that the rishis were left unmolested during their spiritual practices; this was imperative, because the prosperity and well-being of the country depended on it. The rishis were no doubt powerful enough to protect their territory against evil forces but if they killed anyone, it would be a violation of their vows of nonviolence. This would lessen the psychic powers they had gained through their austerities, so they always sought help from the rulers whose dharma it was to give protection. Rama had agreed to protect the sacrifice at all costs, so Vishwamitra asked for Rama’s support. It was immaterial whether the distracting culprit was a man or a woman.
The case of Shurpanekha was a different story. The amorous rakshasi was so enamored of Rama that she was determined to have him. Since she took Sita to be the only obstacle in her path, she pounced on her and would have gobbled her up in a trice had not Rama intervened. Naturally it was his duty to protect his innocent wife, but he did not relish the task of killing Shurpanekha, since she was a woman and her only crime had been in desiring him. However he could not afford to let her go unpunished, since she was sure to return with more importunities and would most probably bide her time to kill Sita when her husband would not be around to protect her. Therefore he told Lakshmana to disfigure her and thus teach her a well-deserved lesson.
The next ambiguous incident is the one in which he killed Vali from behind a tree. To understand this one has to recall his earlier promise to Sugriva. When Sita was abducted by Ravana, the demon king, Rama was bereft. His foremost dharma at that moment was to rescue his wife at all costs. To help him accomplish this, Hanuman directed Rama to forge a friendship with Sugriva, deposed king of the vanaras, by which Sugriva would be bound to help him. This solemn pact of friendship was forged before a blazing fire; Rama and Sugriva went three times round the fire and Rama swore to help Sugriva defeat Vali and restore his kingdom, while Sugriva promised to help Rama rescue Sita. According to the ancient laws of dharma, death was the penalty for a man who committed adultery with his own daughter, his daughter-in-law, or the wife of his younger brother. Vali, Sugriva’s older brother, had abducted Ruma, Sugriva’s beloved wife, just as Ravana had abducted Sita, and now Rama was bound to kill Vali in order to uphold dharma. He was also honor bound to keep his promise to his friend that he would depose Vali, place Sugriva on the throne of Kishkinda, and restore his wife, Ruma, to him.
One might ask why he did not face Vali in straightforward combat; Vali was a bhakta and Rama would never have been able to kill him in a duel, since Vali would have thrown himself on Rama’s mercy. Rama would then have been placed in a dilemma: he would not have been able to kill Vali, as he deserved to be killed, for having misappropriated his younger brother’s wife; nor would he have been able to keep his pledge to his friend Sugriva. Considering all this, Rama decided that the only way to kill Vali was from behind a tree. In this way he was able to uphold his dharma as king to see that justice was done, as well as his dharma to his friend by keeping his pledge.
The last and most inexplicable episodes, which have aroused criticisms from all and sundry, are the two concerning Sita. Why did he ask her to undergo the ordeal of fire, and why did he banish her to the forest when she was with child? Valmiki gave us countless instances before the fire ordeal that proved beyond a doubt that Rama was madly in love with his wife. There never was, and never would be, another woman for him. In fact, there were many scenes in which he seemed extreme in bemoaning the loss of his wife. Even Lakshmana gently pointed out to him more than once that this sort of behavior was not worthy of him. Valmiki deliberately depicted these scenes to show us how much Rama loved Sita; no woman was ever loved as much as Sita was. Rama entertained absolutely no doubts about her chastity, even though she lived in the city of the lustful Ravana, because he knew that her innate purity would protect her. But his dharma as king necessitated that he make a public demonstration of her purity. His dharma as a king demanded that his wife should not be above the law, or else he would be guilty of setting a bad example to his people, whom he was bound to rule as a benevolent patriarch. Knowing that “Caesar’s wife should be above suspicion,” Rama asked his beloved Sita to step into the fire. Had he been concerned even for a minute that she would be consumed by the fire, it is unlikely he would ever have had the courage to ask his love to undergo this ordeal. Knowing this Sita fearlessly agreed to ent
er the fire. Later events proved that Rama had, indeed, been right in taking such a precaution, but even this test of fire was not enough to subdue the envious voices of those who are always thirsty for another scandal, especially a royal scandal.
The next incident is the one in which he asked Lakshmana to abandon Sita in the forest when she was pregnant. We of the modern age are so obsessed by momentary sensual infatuations with no basis in dharma that we are unable to understand, much less appreciate, a person who is prepared to sacrifice the one he loves above everything in order to uphold the abstract ideal of a king’s dharma. We can appreciate the English king who gave up his kingdom for the sake of a woman, but we cannot esteem a Hindu king who gave up his beloved wife for the sake of his people. An individual who is prepared to sacrifice personal happiness at the altar of public service is totally alien to our modern culture, accustomed as we are to politicians who use their official status to feather their own nests. We have strayed so far from this ancient code of righteousness that we are unable to see the godlike nobility of such a character. As has been said before, there never was, and never would be another woman in Rama’s life. He was in the prime of life when he forsook his wife but refused absolutely to marry again, for he could not bear the thought of living with any other woman. Valmiki gave us enough incidents from their sojourn in the forest to allow us to imagine the years of loneliness and pain Rama must have gone through after having sent away his beloved, yet he was prepared to sacrifice his own pleasure and become a lifelong celibate for the sake of his royal dharma. When the time came for him to perform the ritual ashvamedha yajna, his guru urged him to take another wife, for a yaga (yajna) was incomplete unless it was conducted along with a consort, but Rama refused to do this and had a golden figure of Sita to stand beside him during the ceremony in lieu of a live woman. One cannot but feel a sense of awe in the face of such an overwhelming sacrifice.