A Wisdom Archive on Rama

Introduction and links to related topics

Below are some short introductions. Click on the blue hyperlinked word to get more related articles.


Rama - An incarnation of God. The story of His earthly life is told in the Hindu epic, the Ramayana. In this story, Rama''s dearly beloved wife is kidnapped by a demon. After much difficulty, Rama eventually succeeds in slaying the demon, rescuing his wife, and restoring her to her former position. Allegorically speaking, this represents God''s salvation of the individual soul.

Ramayana - (Sanskrit) "Vehicle of Rama."

One of India''s two grand epics (Itihasa) along with the Mahabharata. It is Valmiki''s tragic love story of Rama and Sita, whose exemplary lives have helped set high standards of dignity and nobility as an integral part of Hindu dharma. Astronomical data in the story puts Rama''s reign at about 2015 bce.
See: Rama.

Ramayana - Ramayana (Sanskrit). The famous epic poem collated with the Mahabharata. It looks as if this poem was either the original of the Iliad or vice versa, except that in Ramayana the allies of Rama are monkeys, led by Hanuman, and monster birds and other animals, all of whom fight against the Rakshasas, or demons and giants of Lanka.

Yoga Vasishtha - (Sanskrit) Poetic work of over 29,000 verses attributed to Valmiki. It is a dialog between Prince Rama and his teacher, Sage Vasishtha, in the form of 50 intriguing stories which present advaita and the concepts and ideals of yoga in elegant Sanskrit. (Variously dated between 500 and 1000 ce.)

Suryavansa - Suryavansa (Sanskrit). The solar race. A Surayavansee is one who claims descent from the lineage headed by Ikshvaku. Thus, while Rama belonged to the Ayodhya Dynasty of the Suryavansa, Krishna belonged to the line of Yadu of the lunar race, or the Chandravansa, as did Gautama Buddha.

Vishnu Visnu - Vishnu Visnu (Sanskrit) [from the verbal root vish to enter, pervade]

The sustainer or preserver; the second of the three gods of the Hindu Trimurti or Triad. Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu together are infinite space, of which the gods, rishis, manus, and all in the universe are simply the manifestations, qualities, and potencies. Vishnu is called the eternal deity, and in the Mahabharata and the Puranas he is declared to be the imbodiment of sattva-guna, the quality of mercy and goodness, which displays itself as the preserving power in the self-existent, all-pervading spirit. His symbol is the chakra (circle). He is identical with the Hindu Idaspati (master of the waters) and with the Greek Poseidon and Latin Neptune.

Blavatsky gives a passage about Vishnu from the Laws of Manu, with interpolated remarks (SD 1:333): " ''Removing the darkness, the Self-existent Lord'' (Vishnu, Narayana, etc.) becoming manifest, and ''wishing to produce beings from his Essence, created, in the beginning, water alone. In that he cast seed . . . That became a Golden Egg.'' (V.6, 7, 8, 9) Whence this Self-existent Lord? It is called this, and is spoken of as ''Darkness, imperceptible, without definite qualities, undiscoverable as if wholly in sleep.'' (V.5) Having dwelt in that Egg for a whole divine year, he ''who is called in the world Brahma,'' splits that Egg in two, and from the upper portion he forms the heaven, from the lower the earth, and from the middle the sky and ''the perpetual place of waters.'' (12, 13.)"

In the Mahabharata (3:189:3) Vishnu says: " ''I called the name of water nara in ancient times, and am hence called Narayana, for that was always the abode I moved in'' (Ayana). It is into the water (or chaos, the ''moist principle'' of the Greeks and Hermes), that the first seed of the Universe is thrown. ''The "Spirit of God" moves on the dark waters of Space''; hence Thales makes of it the primordial element and prior to Fire, which was yet latent in that Spirit" (SD 2:591).

Vishnu has many names and is presented in many different forms in Hindu writings. Riding on Garuda, the allegorical monstrous half-man and half-bird, Vishnu is the symbol of Kala (duration), and Garuda the emblem of cyclic and periodical time. Vishnu as the sun represents the male principle, which vivifies and fructifies all things. The Puranas call Ananta- Sesha a form of Vishnu on which the universe sleeps during pralaya. In the allegorical Vaivasvata-Manu deluge, Vishnu in the shape of a fish towing the ark of salvation represents the divine spirit as a concrete cosmic principle and also as the preserver and generator, or giver of life. In the Rig-Veda Vishnu is a manifestation of the solar energy and strides through the seven regions of the universe in three steps. The Vedic Vishnu is not the prominent god of later times.

Vishnu as the giver of life is the source of one line of avataras. The ten mythical avataras of Vishnu are: Matsya, the Fish; Kurma, the Tortoise; Varaha, the Boar; Narasimha, the Man-lion (last animal stage); Vamana, the Dwarf (first step toward the human form); Parasu-rama, Rama with the axe (a hero); Rama-chandra, the hero of the Ramayana; Krishna, son of Devaki; Gautama Buddha; and finally, Kalki, the avatara who is to appear at the end of the Kali yuga "mounted on a white horse" and inaugurate a new reign of righteousness upon earth.

" ''In the Krita age, Vishnu, in the form of Kapila and other (inspired sages) . . . imparts to the world true wisdom as Enoch did. In the Treta age he restrains the wicked, in the form of a universal monarch (the Chakravartin or the ''Everlasting King'' of Enoch) and protects the three worlds (or races). In the Dwapara age, in the person of Veda-Vyasa, he divides the one Veda into four, and distributes it into hundreds (Sata) of branches.'' Truly so; the Veda of the earliest Aryans, before it was written, went forth into every nation of the Atlanto-Lemurians, and sowed the first seeds of all the now existing old religions. The off-shoots of the never dying tree of wisdom have scattered their dead leaves even on Judeo-Christianity. And at the end of the Kali, our present age, Vishnu, or the ''Everlasting King'' will appear as Kalki, and re-establish righteousness upon earth. The minds of those who live at that time shall be awakened, and become as pellucid as crystal" (SD 2:483).

Again,

"If we only search for the true essence of the philosophy of both Manu and the Kabala, we will find that Vishnu is, as well as Adam Kadmon, the expression of the universe itself; and that his incarnations are but concrete and various embodiments of the manifestations of this ''Stupendous Whole.'' ''I am the Soul, O, Arjuna. I am the Soul which exists in the heart of all beings; and I am the beginning and the middle, and also the end of existing things,'' says Vishnu to his disciple, in the Bhagavad-Gita (ch. x)" (IU 2:277).

Ramayana - "The most ancient Sanskrit epic poem, written by the sage Valmiki. It is estimated to have been composed about 500 B.C., and contains approximately 50,000 lines. The Ramayana describes the life of Sri Rama: his banishment from Ayodhya; life in the forest with his faithful wife Sita; Sita''s abduction by Ravana; the war of Rama and his allies against Ravana; defeat of Ravana and rescue of Sita; Rama''s return to Ayodhya as ruler; slander of Sita by the people of Ayodhya and her banishment from the kingdom; her subsequent exoneration and final ascent to heaven, where she is joined by Rama."
-- Ramakrishna-Vedanta Wordbook

"The Ramayana is a work of the same essential kind as the Mahabharata; it differs only by a greater simplicity of plan, a more delicate ideal temperament and a finer glow of poetic warmth and colour. The main bulk of the poem in spite of much accretion is evidently by a single hand and has a less complex and more obvious unity of structure. There is less of the philosophic, more of the purely poetic mind, more of the artist, less of the builder. The whole story is from beginning to end of one piece and there is no deviation from the stream of the narrative. At the same time there is a like vastness of vision, an even more wide-winged flight of epic sublimity in the conception and sustained richness of minute execution in the detail.

...The eopic poet has taken here also as his subject an Itihasa, an ancient tale or legend associated with an old Indian dynasty and filled it in with detail from myth and folklore, but has exalted all into a scale of grandiose epic figure that it may bear more worthily the high intention and significance. The subject is the same as in the Mahabharata,, the strife of the divine with the titanic forces in the life of the earth, but in more purely ideal forms, in frankly supernatural dimensions and an imaginative heightening of both the good and the evil in human character. On one side is portrayed an ideal manhood, a divine beauty of virtue and ethical order, a civilization founded on the Dharma and realising an exaltation of the moral ideal which is presented with a singularly strong appeal of aesthetic grace and harmony and sweetness; on the other are wild and anarchic and almost amorphous forces of superhuman egoism and self-will and exultant violence, and the two ideas and powers of mental nature living and embodied are brought into conflict and led to a decisive issue of the victory of the divine man over the Rakshasa. All shade and complexity are omitted which would diminish the single urity of the idea, the representative force in the outline of the figures, the significance of the temperamental colour and only so much admitte as is sufficient to humanise the appeal and the significance.

The poet makes us conscious of the immense forces that are behind our life and sets his action in a magnificent epic scenery, the great imperial city, the mountains and ocean, the forest and wilderness, described with such a largeness as to make us feel as if the whole world were the scene of his poem and its subject the whole divine and titanic possibility of man imaged in a few great or monstrous figures. The ethical and the aesthetic mind of India have here fused themselves into a harmonious unity and reached an unexampled pure wideness and beauty of self-expression. The Ramayana embodied for the Indian imagination its highest and tenderest human ideals of character, made strength and courage and gentleness and purity and fidelity and self-sacrifice familiar to it in the suavest and most harmonious forms..."
-- Sri Aurobindo, The Foundations of Indian Culture,
SABCL Vol 14 pp. 289-90

Saivism - (Sanskrit) The religion followed by those who worship Siva as supreme God. Oldest of the four sects of Hinduism. The earliest historical evidence of Saivism is from the 8,000-year-old Indus Valley civilization in the form of the famous seal of Siva as Lord Pashupati, seated in a yogic pose. In the Ramayana, Lord Rama worshiped Siva, as did his rival Ravana. Buddha in 624 bce was born into a Saivite family, and records of his time speak of the Saiva ascetics who wandered the hills looking much as they do today.

There are many schools of Saivism, six of which are
Saiva Shiddhanta,
Pashupata Saivism,
Kashmir Saivism,
Vira Saivism,
Siddha Siddhanta and
Siva Advaita.

They are based firmly on the Vedas and Saiva Agamas, and thus have much in common, including the following principle doctrines:
the five powers of Siva - creation, preservation, destruction, revealing and concealing grace;
The three categories: Pati, pashu and pasha ("God, souls and bonds");
the three bonds: anava, karma and maya;
the three-fold power of Siva: icçha shakti, kriya shakti and jnana shakti;
the thirty-six tattvas, or categories of existence;
the need for initiation from a satguru;
the power of mantra;
8the four padas (stages): charya (selfless service), kriya (devotion), yoga (meditation), and jnana (illumination);
the belief in the Panchakshara as the foremost mantra, and in rudraksha and vibhuti as sacred aids to faith;
the beliefs in satguru (preceptor), Sivalinga (object of worship) and sangama (company of holy persons).
See: individual school entries, Saivism (Saivism six schools), Saiva.

Vaishnavism - (Sanskrit) "Way of Vishnu." One of the four major religions, or denominations of Hinduism, representing roughly half of the world''s one billion Hindus. It gravitates around the worship of Lord Vishnu as Personal God, His incarnations and their consorts.

The doctrine of avatara (He who descends), especially important to Vaishnavism, teaches that whenever adharma gains ascendency in the world, God takes a human birth to reestablish "the way." There are either 10, 22 or 34 avataras of Vishnu, according to various scriptures. The most renowned avataras were Rama and Krishna. The last to come will be Kalki, the harbinger of a golden age on Earth.

Vaishnavism stresses the personal aspect of God over the impersonal, and bhakti (devotion) as the true path to salvation. The goal of Vaishnavism is the attainment of mukti, defined as blissful union with God''s body, the loving recognition that the soul is a part of Him, and eternal nearness to Him in Vaikuntha, heaven.

Foremost among Vaishnava scriptures are the Vaishnava Agamas, Bhagavad Gita and Bhagavata Purana. Among the earliest schools were the Pancharatras and the Bhagavatas.

The five major contemporary schools (founded between 1000 and 1500) are those of Ramanuja (Sri Vaishnavism), Madhva, Nimbarka, Vallabha and Chaitanya. Philosophically they range from Madhva''s pure dualism to Vallabha''s lofty monistic vision.

Introduction and links to related topics

Below are some short introductions. Click on the blue hyperlinked word to get more related articles.


Rama - An incarnation of God. The story of His earthly life is told in the Hindu epic, the Ramayana. In this story, Rama''s dearly beloved wife is kidnapped by a demon. After much difficulty, Rama eventually succeeds in slaying the demon, rescuing his wife, and restoring her to her former position. Allegorically speaking, this represents God''s salvation of the individual soul.

Ramayana - (Sanskrit) "Vehicle of Rama."

One of India''s two grand epics (Itihasa) along with the Mahabharata. It is Valmiki''s tragic love story of Rama and Sita, whose exemplary lives have helped set high standards of dignity and nobility as an integral part of Hindu dharma. Astronomical data in the story puts Rama''s reign at about 2015 bce.
See: Rama.

Ramayana - Ramayana (Sanskrit). The famous epic poem collated with the Mahabharata. It looks as if this poem was either the original of the Iliad or vice versa, except that in Ramayana the allies of Rama are monkeys, led by Hanuman, and monster birds and other animals, all of whom fight against the Rakshasas, or demons and giants of Lanka.

Yoga Vasishtha - (Sanskrit) Poetic work of over 29,000 verses attributed to Valmiki. It is a dialog between Prince Rama and his teacher, Sage Vasishtha, in the form of 50 intriguing stories which present advaita and the concepts and ideals of yoga in elegant Sanskrit. (Variously dated between 500 and 1000 ce.)

Suryavansa - Suryavansa (Sanskrit). The solar race. A Surayavansee is one who claims descent from the lineage headed by Ikshvaku. Thus, while Rama belonged to the Ayodhya Dynasty of the Suryavansa, Krishna belonged to the line of Yadu of the lunar race, or the Chandravansa, as did Gautama Buddha.

Vishnu Visnu - Vishnu Visnu (Sanskrit) [from the verbal root vish to enter, pervade]

The sustainer or preserver; the second of the three gods of the Hindu Trimurti or Triad. Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu together are infinite space, of which the gods, rishis, manus, and all in the universe are simply the manifestations, qualities, and potencies. Vishnu is called the eternal deity, and in the Mahabharata and the Puranas he is declared to be the imbodiment of sattva-guna, the quality of mercy and goodness, which displays itself as the preserving power in the self-existent, all-pervading spirit. His symbol is the chakra (circle). He is identical with the Hindu Idaspati (master of the waters) and with the Greek Poseidon and Latin Neptune.

Blavatsky gives a passage about Vishnu from the Laws of Manu, with interpolated remarks (SD 1:333): " ''Removing the darkness, the Self-existent Lord'' (Vishnu, Narayana, etc.) becoming manifest, and ''wishing to produce beings from his Essence, created, in the beginning, water alone. In that he cast seed . . . That became a Golden Egg.'' (V.6, 7, 8, 9) Whence this Self-existent Lord? It is called this, and is spoken of as ''Darkness, imperceptible, without definite qualities, undiscoverable as if wholly in sleep.'' (V.5) Having dwelt in that Egg for a whole divine year, he ''who is called in the world Brahma,'' splits that Egg in two, and from the upper portion he forms the heaven, from the lower the earth, and from the middle the sky and ''the perpetual place of waters.'' (12, 13.)"

In the Mahabharata (3:189:3) Vishnu says: " ''I called the name of water nara in ancient times, and am hence called Narayana, for that was always the abode I moved in'' (Ayana). It is into the water (or chaos, the ''moist principle'' of the Greeks and Hermes), that the first seed of the Universe is thrown. ''The "Spirit of God" moves on the dark waters of Space''; hence Thales makes of it the primordial element and prior to Fire, which was yet latent in that Spirit" (SD 2:591).

Vishnu has many names and is presented in many different forms in Hindu writings. Riding on Garuda, the allegorical monstrous half-man and half-bird, Vishnu is the symbol of Kala (duration), and Garuda the emblem of cyclic and periodical time. Vishnu as the sun represents the male principle, which vivifies and fructifies all things. The Puranas call Ananta- Sesha a form of Vishnu on which the universe sleeps during pralaya. In the allegorical Vaivasvata-Manu deluge, Vishnu in the shape of a fish towing the ark of salvation represents the divine spirit as a concrete cosmic principle and also as the preserver and generator, or giver of life. In the Rig-Veda Vishnu is a manifestation of the solar energy and strides through the seven regions of the universe in three steps. The Vedic Vishnu is not the prominent god of later times.

Vishnu as the giver of life is the source of one line of avataras. The ten mythical avataras of Vishnu are: Matsya, the Fish; Kurma, the Tortoise; Varaha, the Boar; Narasimha, the Man-lion (last animal stage); Vamana, the Dwarf (first step toward the human form); Parasu-rama, Rama with the axe (a hero); Rama-chandra, the hero of the Ramayana; Krishna, son of Devaki; Gautama Buddha; and finally, Kalki, the avatara who is to appear at the end of the Kali yuga "mounted on a white horse" and inaugurate a new reign of righteousness upon earth.

" ''In the Krita age, Vishnu, in the form of Kapila and other (inspired sages) . . . imparts to the world true wisdom as Enoch did. In the Treta age he restrains the wicked, in the form of a universal monarch (the Chakravartin or the ''Everlasting King'' of Enoch) and protects the three worlds (or races). In the Dwapara age, in the person of Veda-Vyasa, he divides the one Veda into four, and distributes it into hundreds (Sata) of branches.'' Truly so; the Veda of the earliest Aryans, before it was written, went forth into every nation of the Atlanto-Lemurians, and sowed the first seeds of all the now existing old religions. The off-shoots of the never dying tree of wisdom have scattered their dead leaves even on Judeo-Christianity. And at the end of the Kali, our present age, Vishnu, or the ''Everlasting King'' will appear as Kalki, and re-establish righteousness upon earth. The minds of those who live at that time shall be awakened, and become as pellucid as crystal" (SD 2:483).

Again,

"If we only search for the true essence of the philosophy of both Manu and the Kabala, we will find that Vishnu is, as well as Adam Kadmon, the expression of the universe itself; and that his incarnations are but concrete and various embodiments of the manifestations of this ''Stupendous Whole.'' ''I am the Soul, O, Arjuna. I am the Soul which exists in the heart of all beings; and I am the beginning and the middle, and also the end of existing things,'' says Vishnu to his disciple, in the Bhagavad-Gita (ch. x)" (IU 2:277).

Ramayana - "The most ancient Sanskrit epic poem, written by the sage Valmiki. It is estimated to have been composed about 500 B.C., and contains approximately 50,000 lines. The Ramayana describes the life of Sri Rama: his banishment from Ayodhya; life in the forest with his faithful wife Sita; Sita''s abduction by Ravana; the war of Rama and his allies against Ravana; defeat of Ravana and rescue of Sita; Rama''s return to Ayodhya as ruler; slander of Sita by the people of Ayodhya and her banishment from the kingdom; her subsequent exoneration and final ascent to heaven, where she is joined by Rama."
-- Ramakrishna-Vedanta Wordbook

"The Ramayana is a work of the same essential kind as the Mahabharata; it differs only by a greater simplicity of plan, a more delicate ideal temperament and a finer glow of poetic warmth and colour. The main bulk of the poem in spite of much accretion is evidently by a single hand and has a less complex and more obvious unity of structure. There is less of the philosophic, more of the purely poetic mind, more of the artist, less of the builder. The whole story is from beginning to end of one piece and there is no deviation from the stream of the narrative. At the same time there is a like vastness of vision, an even more wide-winged flight of epic sublimity in the conception and sustained richness of minute execution in the detail.

...The eopic poet has taken here also as his subject an Itihasa, an ancient tale or legend associated with an old Indian dynasty and filled it in with detail from myth and folklore, but has exalted all into a scale of grandiose epic figure that it may bear more worthily the high intention and significance. The subject is the same as in the Mahabharata,, the strife of the divine with the titanic forces in the life of the earth, but in more purely ideal forms, in frankly supernatural dimensions and an imaginative heightening of both the good and the evil in human character. On one side is portrayed an ideal manhood, a divine beauty of virtue and ethical order, a civilization founded on the Dharma and realising an exaltation of the moral ideal which is presented with a singularly strong appeal of aesthetic grace and harmony and sweetness; on the other are wild and anarchic and almost amorphous forces of superhuman egoism and self-will and exultant violence, and the two ideas and powers of mental nature living and embodied are brought into conflict and led to a decisive issue of the victory of the divine man over the Rakshasa. All shade and complexity are omitted which would diminish the single urity of the idea, the representative force in the outline of the figures, the significance of the temperamental colour and only so much admitte as is sufficient to humanise the appeal and the significance.

The poet makes us conscious of the immense forces that are behind our life and sets his action in a magnificent epic scenery, the great imperial city, the mountains and ocean, the forest and wilderness, described with such a largeness as to make us feel as if the whole world were the scene of his poem and its subject the whole divine and titanic possibility of man imaged in a few great or monstrous figures. The ethical and the aesthetic mind of India have here fused themselves into a harmonious unity and reached an unexampled pure wideness and beauty of self-expression. The Ramayana embodied for the Indian imagination its highest and tenderest human ideals of character, made strength and courage and gentleness and purity and fidelity and self-sacrifice familiar to it in the suavest and most harmonious forms..."
-- Sri Aurobindo, The Foundations of Indian Culture,
SABCL Vol 14 pp. 289-90

Saivism - (Sanskrit) The religion followed by those who worship Siva as supreme God. Oldest of the four sects of Hinduism. The earliest historical evidence of Saivism is from the 8,000-year-old Indus Valley civilization in the form of the famous seal of Siva as Lord Pashupati, seated in a yogic pose. In the Ramayana, Lord Rama worshiped Siva, as did his rival Ravana. Buddha in 624 bce was born into a Saivite family, and records of his time speak of the Saiva ascetics who wandered the hills looking much as they do today.

There are many schools of Saivism, six of which are
Saiva Shiddhanta,
Pashupata Saivism,
Kashmir Saivism,
Vira Saivism,
Siddha Siddhanta and
Siva Advaita.

They are based firmly on the Vedas and Saiva Agamas, and thus have much in common, including the following principle doctrines:
the five powers of Siva - creation, preservation, destruction, revealing and concealing grace;
The three categories: Pati, pashu and pasha ("God, souls and bonds");
the three bonds: anava, karma and maya;
the three-fold power of Siva: icçha shakti, kriya shakti and jnana shakti;
the thirty-six tattvas, or categories of existence;
the need for initiation from a satguru;
the power of mantra;
8the four padas (stages): charya (selfless service), kriya (devotion), yoga (meditation), and jnana (illumination);
the belief in the Panchakshara as the foremost mantra, and in rudraksha and vibhuti as sacred aids to faith;
the beliefs in satguru (preceptor), Sivalinga (object of worship) and sangama (company of holy persons).
See: individual school entries, Saivism (Saivism six schools), Saiva.

Vaishnavism - (Sanskrit) "Way of Vishnu." One of the four major religions, or denominations of Hinduism, representing roughly half of the world''s one billion Hindus. It gravitates around the worship of Lord Vishnu as Personal God, His incarnations and their consorts.

The doctrine of avatara (He who descends), especially important to Vaishnavism, teaches that whenever adharma gains ascendency in the world, God takes a human birth to reestablish "the way." There are either 10, 22 or 34 avataras of Vishnu, according to various scriptures. The most renowned avataras were Rama and Krishna. The last to come will be Kalki, the harbinger of a golden age on Earth.

Vaishnavism stresses the personal aspect of God over the impersonal, and bhakti (devotion) as the true path to salvation. The goal of Vaishnavism is the attainment of mukti, defined as blissful union with God''s body, the loving recognition that the soul is a part of Him, and eternal nearness to Him in Vaikuntha, heaven.

Foremost among Vaishnava scriptures are the Vaishnava Agamas, Bhagavad Gita and Bhagavata Purana. Among the earliest schools were the Pancharatras and the Bhagavatas.

The five major contemporary schools (founded between 1000 and 1500) are those of Ramanuja (Sri Vaishnavism), Madhva, Nimbarka, Vallabha and Chaitanya. Philosophically they range from Madhva''s pure dualism to Vallabha''s lofty monistic vision.