by Valmiki
Vālmīki
THE RĀMĀYAṆA
Abridged and Translated by Arshia Sattar
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
Translator’s Note
Introduction
CHILDHOOD
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
AYODHYĀ
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
WILDERNESS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
KIṢKINDHA
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
BEAUTY
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
WAR
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Footnotes
Translator’s Note
CHILDHOOD
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
AYODHYĀ
Chapter Ten
Chapter Twelve
WILDERNESS
Chapter Three
KIṢKINDHA
Chapter Nine
WAR
Chapter Four
EPILOGUE
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Notes
Glossary
Follow Penguin
Copyright Page
PENGUIN CLASSICS
THE RĀMĀYAN
Vālmīki is almost indisputably the author of the Sanskrit Rāmāyaṇa even though it is quite likely that the story of Rāma’s life was in circulation before Vālmīki gave it its present form. As a poet and composer, Vālmīki acts within the story that he tells. Later legend has it that Vālmīki was a bandit who was converted from his life of looting and pillaging by Rāma’s grace. His devotion then inspired him to compose and recite the story of Rāma’s adventures. While it is impossible to establish conclusive dates for Vālmīki’s life and there is nothing outside the Rāmāyaṇa itself to prove that he was a historical figure, it is believed that this Sanskrit text was composed between 700 and 500 BC.
Arshia Sattar has a Ph.D from the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilisations at the University of Chicago. Her areas of interest are Indian epics, mythology and the story traditions of the subcontinent. Her articles appear in various national newspapers and magazines. Her translation of Tales from the Kathāsaritsāgara was published by Penguin in 1995.
For my parents,
Hameed and Nazura Sattar,
with love
Translator’s Note
In literal terms, to translate means to ‘carry over’, to cross boundaries and barriers without losing the material that you carry with you. In literary terms, to translate means to make another language read like your own, to preserve meanings and significances across grammars, syntaxes and vocabularies. And it is precisely at this point of grammars, syntaxes and vocabularies, i.e., at the very beginning, that it becomes apparent that there are certain problems unique to the translation of classics in general. Even if we translate a classic from within the same culture, we are never going to translate it from within the same time. The very notion of a classic implies that while it may be removed in time from the reader, it still speaks with relevance and meaning.*
Nonetheless translators of classics have a propensity to fall into forms of usage that are older, even, than the times in which they write. We have all encountered translations of the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata as well as the Iliad and the Odyssey that are littered with ‘thees’, ‘thous’, ‘wherefores’ and ‘it would behove you, sire’ even though these translations were produced at a time long after such words and phrases fell out of common usage.
There seems to be something about ancient literature, particularly epics, that inspires translators to dig deep into their vocabulary of archaisms in an attempt to reflect the ‘authentic’ voice of the text. Perhaps they are led to the use of such language by the perception that epics are ‘grand narratives’ full of noble emotions, immense dilemmas, huge wars, larger than life characters. Our common usage is considered inadequate to express this grandeur that has all but vanished from our mundane lives.
We must try and remember as we translate epics and traditional story literatures that even at their times of composition, these were not obscure texts meant for scholarly elites. They were living and vibrant and were composed in a language accessible to all kinds of people. Unlike highly refined poetry and drama, stories and epics had a common, ordinary audience. In the story literature and in the epics, it was the events and the characters that were more important than linguistic arabesques and curlicues. For us to cover these texts in a veil of language that obscures them is inaccurate as well as unfair.
There is a school of thought that believes that a classic should be re-translated every twenty odd years so that it is always in a current idiom, always accessible and meaningful to the contemporary reader. The theory that classics always need to find a contemporary voice, that they should be re-presented every generation, is simple enough, but the practise does not follow quite as easily. The search for a current idiom that can simultaneously contain within it forms and patterns of speech as well as concepts, principles and values that are no longer real or viable presents the translator with a problem of many dimensions. These problems would, perhaps, not apply equally to translators of contemporary work primarily because they are responsible only for bridging space. The translator of a classic must also bridge time.
In translating Indian classics for Indian readers, I am not compelled to explain concepts like dharma, karma, puruṣārtha, etc in detail. However, I am still compelled to negotiate such terms as Rāma being described as a ‘bull among men’ and Sītā having ‘the gait of a female elephant.’ The ideas of bravery and beauty implied by such formulaic Sanskrit phrases are as foreign to the contemporary Indian as dharma may be to a western reader.
The linguistic negotiation would normally i
nvolve flattening out formulae into more familiar constructions like ‘Rāma was the best of men’ and ‘Sītā walked with a swaying grace’. While the literal images of the Sanskrit animal similes are being brushed over, their implied colours are being highlighted. The flattened phrases reflect the language we use today in our common speech as well as in literature even if they do not capture the original flavours and the subtle nuances of the language. They are, however, truer to our idioms and to the connotations of our current usage than images of bulls and elephants may be. At the same time, the task of the translator lies in making such phrases as ‘Sītā walked with the gait of a female elephant’ seem natural in their context. The translator must be able to carry the reader across both linguistic and cultural boundaries into a literary space where uncommon idioms, uncommon actions and uncommon events seem commonplace. In this translation, I have retained the ‘exotic phrase’ wherever it was unobtrusive. In other instances, I have flattened the Sanskrit usage into a more common English idiom.
What, then, of the grand and extended hyperbole that give epics their distinctive flavour? Warriors are as large as mountains, kings give away hundreds of thousands of millions of cows, gold and silver are as common as salt and pepper, people live for thousands of years. Everything is larger than life. Heroes are described by a string of superlatives that range from righteous, honourable, steadfast, splendid and effulgent to renowned. How does the translator maintain the grandeur of the emotions, the characters and the events without succumbing to a dull and formulaic litany of virtues? How do you carry the structures and restraints of a primarily oral tradition into a written one?
Once again, the theory is simple but the practise is not. A translation depends on evocations, echoes and resonances. These are generated by the translator and nurtured, in a sense, by the reader. Since the grandeur described and invoked by the epics and classical literatures no longer corresponds to reality (if it ever did, that is), it is the translator’s task to suggest this meaningfully, to provoke the reader’s imagination and to sustain her/his credulousness through an absolute engagement with the story and the characters. This can only be done through language that is transparent, that does not draw attention to itself (except very occasionally and very purposefully). The only language that will not draw attention to itself is one that seems natural, real and familiar.
Any contemporary idiom has the flexibility to evoke a response, to conjure up a universe, to create a sensibility. A translator can use this flexibility to create a delicate network of echoes and resonances that captures the moving spirit rather than the static letter of the original. Instead of allowing the source language to determine the flavour of the translation, we might be better off using our language to probe the nuances of the original, to seek out the significance of ideas, values and cultures that are available to us only as a view through a window. We cannot jump through the window and appropriate or participate in the world beyond ourselves, but we can appreciate it in our own terms and from our position in time and space.
Translating Vālmīki’s Rāmāyaṇa is both an exhilarating and daunting task. Exhilarating because the story of Rāma is perhaps the best known and most enduring of all Indian tales and Vālmīki’s telling of it is certainly the oldest version we have. And it is daunting for exactly the same reasons. Everyone I spoke to during the time I was translating this text stated categorically that they knew Vālmīki’s Rāmāyaṇa. But when we talked further, it would become apparent that what most people knew was a regional, non-Sanskrit version of Rāma’s adventures. Everyone knows that Vālmīki’s is the oldest Rāma story and they assumed that what they knew of Rāma’s adventures came from Vālmīki’s poem. It was then that the magnitude of the task I had undertaken began to dawn on me: the presentation of Vālmīki’s tale to an audience that already claimed to know it with a great deal of certainty and self-assurance.
My trepidation was compounded by the fact that I was contracted to produce an ‘abridged translation’ of Vālmīki’s epic poem, an abridgement that carried the original, but that fitted snugly into a single volume. Abridging, i.e., deciding what would be left out rather than what would be left in, became the most critical question I faced during the translation.
The source for this translation is the Critical Edition of the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa prepared by the Oriental Institute at M.S. University, Baroda. As I began to work on the text, many of the issues that bothered me actually resolved themselves. Readers who are already familiar with the Rāmāyaṇa and other tellings of Rāma’s story will notice that some of the incidents they know best are absent from this translation. For example, many of us know that when Lakṣmaṇa leaves Sītā alone in the forest and goes in search of Rāma, he draws a circle around her, telling her that she will be safe as long as she stays within it. This incident is so well known that the idea of Lakṣmaṇa’s circle, the lakṣmaṇarekha, has passed into many Indian languages as a metaphor for a boundary that cannot be transgressed. But it does not appear in the Critical Edition of Vālmīki’s text, not even in the. appendices.
As it turns out, there are few incidents that have actually been left out in this translation. The major excisions have been story cycles, primarily from the Bāla and Uttara Kāṇḍas. The only incidents that have been completely left out are those that I firmly believe would have no bearing on the reader’s understanding or appreciation of the text as a whole. Generally, passages have been shortened rather than excluded so that the story as well as the flavour of the text is retained.
Complete (and modern) translations of Vālmīki’s text are readily available, most notably Hari Prasad Shastri’s and N. Raghunathan’s three volume versions. An academically oriented Rāmāyaṇa translation is already in process. Robert Goldman heads a team of Rāmāyaṇa scholars, each translating one of Vālmīki’s kāṇḍas, to produce a scholarly but readable version of the Baroda Critical Edition of the Sanskrit text. Parallel to these complete Rāmāyaṇas, there have always existed ‘retellings’ of the tale. As diverse a group as C. Rajagopalachari, R.K. Narayan, P. Lal, Kamala Subramaniam and William Buck have ‘retold’ or ‘transcreated’ the Rāmāyaṇa in English.
Given the fact that longer and shorter English Rāmāyaṇas abound, what then is the value and purpose of this translation? To begin with, it distinguishes itself from the shorter versions, the retellings of the Rāmāyaṇa, by being a translation of the Sanskrit text. While some material has been left out, nothing has been added to the story or to the nuances and tone of the original Sanskrit. In terms of the longer, complete Rāmāyaṇa translations that already exist, this particular one has the advantage of being contained within a single volume. It is also directed at the lay reader, someone with an active interest in ancient Indian texts and stories but who is not necessarily interested in scholarly details.
This translation would never have been completed without the support and cooperation of Prof. V.L. Manjul, Chief Librarian at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune. I am deeply grateful to him and his staff, Satish, Megha and Gauri, for all their help. Since I have been involved with the Rāmāyaṇa and its accompanying materials for more than ten years, there are many people I must thank for helping me develop a familiarity with the text. Profs Alf Hiltebeitel, David Gitomer, Wendy Doniger and A.K. Ramanujan all shared their valuable insights with me and taught me newer and better ways to approach and understand the material. A.K. Ramanujan suggested that I translate the Rāmāyaṇa many years ago, at a time when it seemed unlikely that I would ever do so. I wish he could have been alive to see this published. Wendy Doniger has always been more to me than a teacher. Through this project, too, she provided long distance support, advice and encouragement. I thank her for keeping the faith and bearing witness. Laurie Patton was instrumental in helping me clarify my thoughts about the Introduction as well as cheering me through the last few weeks of my work. Anmol and Sarita Vellani deserve sincere thanks for careful reading and helpful suggestions,
for their patience with endless conversations about the Rāmāyaṇa, for food, drink and other kinds of sustenance. Ravinder Singh’s timely interventions helped me fine tune my thoughts on translation and I thank him for that. R. S. Iyer patiently read through early drafts and offered helpful suggestions. Ravi Singh, my editor, made my task infinitely easier with his careful readings and insightful queries. Thanks are also due to Sorab Mehta for silent but solid support and to Amrita Shodhan for always having something wise to say about anything that I do. Most of all, I thank Sanjay Iyer, who is a presence in all that I do and all that I write. He is in this book, too, and I can say with certainty that it would have been less without him.
This book is dedicated to my parents, Hameed and Nazura Sattar. Not only did they help me with the mechanics of books and libraries and the postal system, they fed, watered and sheltered me with unquestioning devotion for the last few months of this work. In many ways, this translation of the Rāmāyaṇa is the completion of a journey they allowed me to embark on many years ago. I can only hope that the book will bring them as much joy and satisfaction as the journey has brought me.
Arshia Sattar
December, 1995
Introduction
The story of Rāma spreads all over the cultures of the Indian Subcontinent and South-east Asia. It appears in literatures, in music, dance and drama, in painting and sculpture, in classical and folk traditions, in hundreds of languages, in thousands of tellings and retellings from thousands of tellers. Each of these versions has its own special flavour, ambience and distinctive style. A.K. Ramanujan goes as far as to say that ‘in India and South-east Asia, no one ever reads the Rāmāyaṇa or the Mahābhārata for the first time. The stories are there, “always already” …’1
Vālmīki’s Rāmāyaṇa is arguably the oldest surviving version we have of Rāma’s tale, but in the multiplicity of Rāma stories received today, Vālmīki’s Sanskrit poem is just one more version of Rāma’s adventures.2 Nonetheless, scholars hold that this telling is perhaps the most prestigious and influential of them all.3