Something You Probably Didn’t Know About World Literature — The Ramayana

Knowing about the Ramayana is important in your continuing education of World Literature for the CSET English and CSET Multiple Subjects exams.

The Ramayana (ram-EYE-ya-na) and the Mahabharata (ma-ha-BA-ra-ta), the great Indian epics, are among the most important works of literature in South Asia. Both contain important lessons on wisdom, behavior and morality, and have been used for centuries not only as entertainment, but also as a way of instructing both children and adults in the exemplary behavior toward which they are urged to strive and the immoral behavior they are urged to shun. Elements of the stories can be found in South Asian literature, theater, sculpture, dance, music, architecture, film, personal and place names, and even in statecraft.

The epic poem the Ramayana is thought to have been composed more than 2500 years ago, and like the Iliad and the Odyssey, was originally transmitted orally by bards. The full poem contains more than 24,000 verses, and was and continues to be a somewhat mutable work. Tellers of the epic add and delete pieces of the story, or localize the action by entering recognizably regional place names. The poem also changes as it is translated and reconstituted in each of India’s many different languages, taking on the new sounds and poetic structures of each language. While details main change, particularly through these processes of localization and translation, the main tenets of the story remain intact, and it continues to be used as an example of correct behavior by living one’s dharma.

The foundation the Ramayana is its use as a tool for instructing past, present and future generations in the code of right and moral behavior. This foundation is one of the main reasons why a story that was composed several millennia ago has survived, and still plays an important role in Indian society today. These lessons are put forth through the long string of moral conundrums that all of the story’s main characters encounter. The path that each character follows when confronted with these dilemmas is directly connected to the Hindu concept of dharma. Dharma includes both good and righteous behavior according to one’s role in society, and the correct performance of one’s role in society in any given situation. Following one’s dharma will result in the consistent and correct performance of one’s duties, according their responsibilities and station in life. The answers- both positive and negative- to the dilemmas presented in the Ramayana are clearly delineated in the behavior of the nearly binary cast of characters: Rama, as a good character, always follows dharma and makes the right choices, while Ravana, as an evil character, fails to follow dharma and always makes the wrong choices.

A predictable component of the Ramayana can be found in the repeated and reinforced lessons of dharma. The presence of the lessons of dharma in each episode of the story give a focus