Hindu Cultures and Traditions (Embedded in the Epic)

The Hindu religion and culture are ancient, colorful and theatrical, and nothing illustrates this better than its two major epic poems: the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. The Ramayana has traveled throughout the centuries from an oral tradition, much like the tales of Homer, to a written text studied by an educated elite, to a proliferation of stories, artworks and devotional practices. Its hero, Rama, has become a god and its lessons have profoundly influenced Hindu beliefs.

A “Remembered” Story

The Ramayana, 24,000 couplets that tell one of the classic Indian stories, is a sacred smriti text in the Hindu religion. Smriti, or “remembered” texts, are considered slightly less significant than shruti, the ancient Vedas, or received scriptures conveyed directly by God to humans who “heard” the words and taught them to others. The Ramayana probably dates from between 1500 B.C. and A.D 300, although some academics argue it is much older. According to Manas, a UCLA Division of Social Sciences website about India, Valmiki is the sage credited with transcribing the story of Rama and his consort from oral tradition to Sanskrit. The Ramayana is a practical primer for leading a spiritual life, stories that exist as examples of how to fulfill one’s duty or dharma. Its high drama, calamitous love story and cunning strategies to defeat evil contain lessons for ordinary humans.

True Love, Blackest Evil and a Monkey

The Ramayana is the story of Lord Rama, his beautiful and virtuous consort Sita, a plot to deny Rama his inherited throne and a terrible demon-king who covets Sita. Rama ventures into exile in the forest with Sita and his closest courtiers, led by his stepbrother Lakshmana. Sita is kidnapped by Ravana, the demon-king, and Rama’s efforts to free her are the heart of the story. Rama relies on his perfect devotee, Hanuman, the monkey god, who invents strategies to outwit the depraved king. Epic battles ensue, tricks are played, good triumphs over evil, Rama and Sita return to his kingdom, where he is crowned. The persistence of Rama, the devotion of the clever Hanuman, the steadfast virtue of Sita, the unrepentant fiendish behavior of Ravana — all point to the correct motivations and choices for leading a righteous life, a model for following the Hindu dharma, or duty.

Rama as Avatar

Vishnu the Preserver is part of the Hindu trinity, along with Shiva and Brahma, but only Vishnu has avatars. Avatars are reincarnations of a god, born in times of great spiritual turmoil to restore the faithful to the path of righteousness. Lord Rama, the eponymous hero of the Ramayana, is the celebrated seventh avatar of Vishnu, who symbolically slays the representative of demonic behavior, Ravana. As an incarnation of Vishnu, Rama embodies the qualities of fearless leader, faithful husband, devoted son and brother, noble soul and fierce warrior. He is worshiped as a god in the Hindu pantheon and Sita is linked with Vishnu’s consort, the goddess of abundance, Lakshmi. Emulating the highest qualities of avatars, gods and goddesses ensures adherence to Hindu beliefs.

Tulsidas and TV

Tulsidas was a 16th-century poet, a wandering holy man with an intense devotion to Rama who rewrote the Ramayana in the popular vernacular. His version, which he claimed Lord Rama directly inspired during periods of fervent devout practice, was accessible to common people with far less education than the Brahmin class who read Valmiki’s Ramayana. Both versions inspired the 1987-88 televised episodes of the Ramayana which transfixed the entire country of India for 78 consecutive Sunday mornings. For more than two thousand years, Rama, Sita and Hanuman have appeared in stories, songs, poems, paintings, statues, plays and temples, in the words and depictions of devotees, poets and Hindu teachers throughout Asia. The Ramayana has its critics, who object to the patriarchal culture it portrays, but even the critics agree that it captures important and enduring values that continue to inform and shape Hindu beliefs today.

Summary of Ramayana

Dasharatha was the King of Ayodhya and had three wives and four sons. Rama was the eldest and his mother was Kaushalya. Bharata was the son of Dasharatha’s second and favorite wife, Queen Kaikeyi. The other two were twins, Lakshmana and Shatrughna whose mother was Sumithra. In the neighboring city the ruler’s daughter was named Sita. When it was time for Sita to choose her bridegroom (at a ceremony called a swayamvara) princes from all over the land were asked to string a giant bow which no one could lift. However, as Rama picked it up, he not only strung the bow, he broke it. Seeing this, Sita indicated that she had chosen Rama as her husband by putting a garland around his neck. Their love became a model for the entire kingdom as they looked over the kingdom under the watchful eye of his father the king.

A few years later, King Dasharatha decided it was time to give his throne to his eldest son Rama and retire to the forest. Everyone seemed pleased, save Queen Kaikeyi since she wanted her son Bharata to rule. Because of an oath Dasharatha had made to her years before, she got the king to agree to banish Rama for fourteen years and to crown Bharata, even though the king pleaded with her not to demand such a request. The devastated King could not face Rama and it was Queen Kaikeyi who told Rama the King’s decree. Rama, always obedient, was content to go into banishment in the forest. Sita and Lakshmana accompanied him on his exile.

One day Rama and Lakshmana wounded a rakshasas (demon) princess who tried to seduce Rama. She returned to her brother Ravana, the ten-headed ruler of Lanka. In retaliation, Ravana devised a plan to abduct Sita after hearing about her incomparable beauty. He sent one of his demons disguised as a magical golden deer to entice Sita. To please her, Rama and Lakshmana went to hunt the deer down. Before they did though, they drew a protective circle around Sita and told her that she would be safe for as long as she did not step outside the circle. After Rama and Lakshmana left, Ravana appeared as a holy man begging alms. The moment Sita stepped outside the circle to give him food, Ravana grabbed her and carried her to his kingdom in Lanka.

Rama then sought the help of a band of monkeys offer to help him find Sita. Hanuman, the general of the monkey band can fly since his father is the wind. He flew to Lanka and, finding Sita in the grove, comforted her and told her Rama would come to save her soon. Ravana’s men captured Hanuman, and Ravana ordered them to wrap Hanuman’s tail in cloth and to set it on fire. With his tail burning, Hanuman escaped and hopped from house-top to house-top, setting Lanka on fire. He then flew back to Rama to tell him where Sita was.

Rama, Lakshmana and the monkey army built a causeway from the tip of India to Lanka and crossed over to Lanka where a cosmic battle ensued. Rama killed several of Ravana’s brothers and eventually confronted the ten-headed Ravana. He killed Ravana, freed Sita and after Sita proved here purity, they returned to Ayodhya where Bharata returned the crown to him.

Background of Ramayana Epic

The Ramayana (Romance of Rama) is the shorter of two great epic poems from ancient India. It was originally written in Sanskrit in the tradition of the Vedas as an account of the lives of the gods. The poem tells a story of court intrigue, romance, and the struggle for good over evil.

It is shorter than the Mahabharata (Great Bharata dynasty), the other great epic poem of India. Some of the followers of the Ramayana date its origin to 880,000 b.c.e. While its exact origins are lost in Indianantiquity, the Ramayana is today attributed to the poet Valmiki. Most scholars believe that it was written in the third century b.c.e.

The Ramayana has been redacted several times, leading to several versions. These are divided into five, six, or seven books. The Ramayana contains 24,000 couplets. The verses are called sloka (two-line verses, each of 16 syllables), in Sanskrit.

They have a complex meter called anustup. The verses are grouped into individual chapters called sargas, which are grouped into books called kandas. The name kanda is taken from the internode stem of sugarcane. It suggests that each phase of the story is connected to the next phase.

The Srimad Valmiki Ramayana version is arranged into six books. The first book is the Bala Kanda (Book of youth, 77 chapters). The second book is theAyodhya Kanda (Book of Ayodhya, 119 chapters). The third book is the AranyaKanda (Book of the forest, 75 chapters).

The fourth book is the Kishkindha Kanda (Book of the empire of holy monkeys, 67 chapters). The fifth book is the Sundara Kanda (Book of beauty, 68 chapters). The sixth book is the Yuddha Kanda (Book of war, 131 chapters). The Ramayana is included in the great collection of Hindu books that were remembered, or smriti.

These are different from the shurti, which are books that were heard. Books in the shurti category include the Vedas. The Ramayana is known also as the Adi Kavya, which means the “original poem”, and is certainly one of the oldest, if not the first, epic poem produced in India.

The Ramayana tells the story of the history of Rama, who was a king from a line descending from the sun god Surya. With his wife, Sita, he ruled an earthly kingdom. In some versions the beginning is the birth of Rama in the kingdom ofAyodhya; in others the beginning is Rama’s wooing of Sita, daughter of King Janaka.

He wins her hand by being the only suitor able to bend the mighty bow of Siva (Shiva) at a bridegroom tournament. In yet other versions the Ramayana begins when Prince Rama is chosen as the heir of his father, King Dasartha of Ayodha.

However, King Dasartha’s wife, Kaikeyi, pleads for the appointing of another son, Bharata, to be made king instead. King Dasaratha reluctantly agrees, and Rama is exiled from his kingdom. He goes into the forest for 14 years with hisbeautiful wife, Sita, and his half brother Laksmana.

In the forest Rama meets the demoness Surpanakha, who falls in love with him. He refuses her advances while Laksmana wounds her. She flees to the island kingdom of Lanka, where her brother, also a demon (raksasa), Ravana rules.

Surpanakha tells Ravana of the beauty of Sita. Desiring Sita for himself, Ravana decides to take her. He disguises himself as a holy man and finds her in the forest. He kidnaps Sita and carries her off to his palace at Lanka.

He tries to have his way with her, but she refuses and remains loyal to Rama. Grief stricken, Sita mourns in Ravana’s garden, as Rama and Laksmana searchfor her. Eventually, they meet Surgriva, the monkey king, who agrees to help.

The monkey general Hanuman searches for Sita. He finds Sita and shows her Rama’s ring to prove that he is Rama’s messenger. However, Ravana catchesHanuman and sets his tail on fire. In the excitement the monkey escapes and sets fire to the island of Lanka.

Rama and Laksmana attack Lanka, aided by the monkey army led by Hanuman. After a long siege Rama kills Ravana and regains Sita. However, Rama makes Sita prove her virtue by putting her to a test of fire.

She undergoes the test successfully, proving her chastity. Rama, however, later abandons her after public opinion will not accept her. She goes to the ashram of the sage Valmiki, to whom she tells her story. There she bears twin sons—Lava and Kusa.

When they are grown they are united with their father, Rama. Rama and Sita are often pictured as the ideal couple for their devotion to charma in the quest for victory over evil. The Ramayana greatly influenced Indian poetry, establishing the sloka meter that developed in later Sanskrit poetry.

Hindu Literature

Eventually, Hindus followed the impulse that had appeared among the Sumerians: they wrote poetic stories that focused on the power of the gods. These stories were written to create ideals for people to follow. The better known of these are poems called the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

Ramayana translates as the Story of Rama. It is believed to have been written by a Brahmin named Valmiki, a man whose style of poetry was new and a style to be copied thereafter. It is said to have appeared between 400 and 200 BCE. The story takes place centuries earlier, when Aryans were expanding their influence over Dravidians in southern India, the Aryans engaging in missionary endeavors supported by military power and a strategy of divide and conquer. In its seven books and 24,000 verses the Ramayanapraises the heroism and virtues of Aryan warrior-princes: the Kshatriyas. The Ramayana has as its main hero a prince called Rama, whose life the Ramayana describes from birth to death. Rama and his brothers are depicted as embodying the ideals of Aryan culture: men of loyalty and honor, faithful and dutiful sons, affectionate brothers and loving husbands, men who speak the truth, who are stern, who persevere but are ready and willing to make sacrifices for the sake of virtue against the evils of greed, lust and deceit.

Lord Rama, with brother, wife, and devotee.

The Mahabharata, meaning Great India, is said to have been written by a Brahmin named Vyasa, between 400 and 100 BCE, but no one really knows. Across centuries, priestly writers and editors with different attitudes in different centuries were to add to the work, and the Mahabharata emerged three times its original size. The Mahabharata was divided into eighteen books of verses interspersed with passages of prose. It attempted to describe the period in which Aryan tribes in northern India were uniting into kingdoms and when these petty kingdoms were fighting to create empire. The work attempted to be an encyclopedia about points of morality. One of its heroes is Krishna, described as a royal personage descended from the gods – an eighth incarnation of the god Vishnu. The Mahabharata’s heroes are described as yearning for power but, like the heroes of the Ramayana, devoted to truth and having a strong sense of duty and affection for their parents.

New contributions to the Mahabharata gave greater focus to the gods Vishnu and Shiva. A story incorporated into the Mahabharata became known as theBhagavad Gita (the Lord’s Song), shortened by many to the Gita. TheBhagavad Gita became Hinduism’s most popular scripture and into modern times it would be read by many for daily reference – a work that Mahatma Gandhi would describe as an infallible guide to conduct. In the Bhagavad Gita, Vishnu acquired a new incarnation: Krishna. Krishna was originally a non-Aryan god in northwestern India. In the old Mahabharata he was a secondary hero, a god who had appeared in human form. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna became the Supreme Deity in human form.

The Gita is an account of the origins, course and aftermath of a great war between royalty. In it a dialogue takes place between a prince, Arjuna, and the charioteer alongside him as the two ride into battle at the head of Arjuna’s army. The charioteer is Krishna in disguise. Arjuna sees that his opponents ahead of him are his relatives. He drops his bow and announces that he will not give the signal to begin the battle. He asks whether power is so important that he should fight his own kinsmen, and he states that the pain of killing his kinsmen would be too much for him, that it would be better for him to die than to kill just for power and its glory. Krishna is like the god of war of former times: Indira. Krishna gives Arjuna a formula for accepting deaths in war, a Hindu version close to the claim that those who die in battle will go to paradise. He tells Arjuna that bodies are not really people, that people are souls and that when the body is killed the soul lives on, that the soul is never born and never dies. According to Krishna, if one dies in battle he goes to heaven, or if he conquers he enjoys the earth. So, according to Krishna, one should go into battle with “a firm resolve.” Attitude was of the utmost importance. “Let not the fruits of action be thy motive, nor be thy attachment to inaction.”

Krishna reminds Arjuna that he is a warrior and that to turn from battle is to reject his karma, in other words his duty or place in life. He makes the irrefutable argument, an argument that leaves no room for questioning one’s own intentionality: that Arjuna should make war because it is his destiny to do so. He states that it is best to fulfill one’s destiny with detachment because detachment leads to liberation and allows one to see the irrelevance of one’s own work. To give weight to his argument, Krishna reveals to Arjuna that he is not just his charioteer, not just another military man who talks like he is divine but that he is the god Krishna – a claim that Arjuna accepts. Some readers of the Bhagavad Gita interpret this to mean that Arjuna does not need to step from his chariot to find God and that humanity does not need to search for the divine: that God is with a person and for a person.

Arjuna expresses his support for family values, and he is a defender of tradition. He complains of lawlessness corrupting women, and when women are corrupted, he says, a mixing of caste ensues.

Krishna became the most loved of the Hindu gods, a god viewed as a teacher, a personal god much like Yahweh, a god who not only believes in war but a god of love who gives those who worshiped him a gift of grace. A loving god could be found here and there in the old Vedic hymns of the Aryans, but this new focus on a loving god and the satisfaction it brought to the people of India was a challenge to Hindu priests, for it offered salvation without the need for ritual sacrifices. In the Bhagavad Gita (1:41), Krishna says: “Give me your heart. Love me and worship me always. Bow to me only, and you will find me. This I promise.”

According to Krishna, as expressed in the Gita (2:37), one could accumulate possessions and not lose blessedness so long as one remained indifferent about success and failure. One can attain salvation so long as one restrains one’s passions in whatever one does. One should be fearless, steadfast generous and patient. One should be compassionate toward other creatures. One should be without greed, hypocrisy, arrogance, overweening pride, wrath or harshness in speech. And one should “study the Holy Word, austerities and uprightness.” (16:1-2)

The Gita (2.22) describes the soul as shedding a worn-out body like an old worn-out garment and putting on a new body as one would a new garment. The soul is immortal and the body is subject to birth and death. The Gita extends the metaphor to reincarnation, to Karma as described in the Upanishads. Where a soul went depended upon how well a person had behaved in his previous life. Good actions in the former life led to a soul to take on a new higher form of life. The soul of the doer of evil led a soul to take the body of a lower form of life. Hinduism epic literature described what was good behavior, and in a new work, the Laws of Manu, defined more clearly what was bad.

ESPRESSO

SCHOOL LIFE

Waking up early in the morning and keep on repeating it every weekdays. A lot of projects, home works and quizzes. How tiring isn’t? This is all for the future, so deal with it.

FAMILY

I tried to run as fast as I can, but I get stumble and fall. I slowly look back and saw them; they will always be there since then.

FRIENDS

I was once alone until a butterfly came along, but be careful some are good and some are just hiding their true colors behind those beautiful wings.

PERSONALITY

I talk less but I think a lot, maybe I’m just lazy to talk so I just keep my vocal cord under strict lock and key.

SECRETS

As you look at me with those eyes I got hypnotized, when we talked, sometimes I get stuttered and tongue tied. Now I guess you got a little hint about my secret. 

Life is too short for a long story 💋

FIRST QUARTER CLASS CARD

THE AFRICAN CHILD BY EKU MCGRED

Adjective in a Sentence

AFRICAN POSTER

Poster about the poem African Child

BRITISH VS AMERICAN