Ramayana

The epic history of Lord Ramachandra. The original version was written by the sage Valmiki, a contemporary of Lord Rama.

(See also: Ramayana, Bhakti, Bhakti Yoga, Bhakti Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

RAMAYANA: A holy narative of Lord Rama.

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Ramayana:

Ramayana (Raamaayana). The epic that narrates the story of Rama.

(See also: Ramayana, Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Ramayana:

Ramayana: a holy narative of Lord Rama.

(See also: Ramayana, Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Ramayana: epic story of Rama

(See also: Ramayana, Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Ramayana:

A famous Hindu epic.

(See also: Ramayana, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V X Y Z

Ramayana:

Ramayana ("Rama's life"): one of India's two great national epics telling the story of Rama; cf. Mahabharata

(See also: Ramayana, Yoga, Yoga Dictionary)

ramayana:

hindu epic scripture dealing with the heroic exploits of lord rama

(See also: ramayana, Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Ramayana:

Ramayana: (the path of Rama): the epos about the avatara Sri Rama, who in his youth was exiled into the forest with Sita, His wife, who battled against Ravana, a ten-headed demoniac ruler. (see Links).

(See also: Ramayana, Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Ramayana:  For the past two thousand years the Ramayana has been among the most important literary and oral texts of South Asia.  Telling the story of the banishment, wandering and eventual return of Prince Rama, this epic poem continues to influence the politics, religion and art of modern India.

(See also: Ramayana, Yoga, Yoga Dictionary)

Ramayana:

One of the great epic poems of India; attributed to the sage Valmiki, the Ramayana recounts the life and exploits of Lord Rama. This story, so rich with spiritual meaning, has been told and retold down through the ages by saints, poets, scholars, and common folk.

(See also: Ramayana, Yoga, Yoga Dictionary, Siddha Yoga, Siddha Yoga Dictionary)

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V X Y Z

Ramayana: the history of Sri Rama; the epic poem of 24,000 verses, written by Sri Valmiki. The Ramayana dramatizes the trials of the individual, represented by Sita, in spiritual evolution.

(See also: Ramayana, Hinduism, Yoga, Body Mind and Soul)

Ramayana:  For the past two thousand years the Ramayana has been among the most important literary and oral texts of South Asia.  Telling the story of the banishment, wandering and eventual return of Prince Rama, this epic poem continues to influence the politics, religion and art of modern India.

(See also: Ramayana, Yoga, Yoga Dictionary)

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.

(See also: Ramayana, Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary, )

Ramayana (Sanskrit) [from Rama an avatara of Vishnu + ayana goings, adventures]

One of the famous epic poems of India, relating the adventures of Rama, an avatara of Vishnu, in 48,000 lines. It is often termed the Iliad of the East.

"The whole History of that period [the struggle between the Atlantean and the Aryan adepts] is allegorized in the Ramayana, which is the mystic narrative in epic form of the struggle between Rama -- the first king of the divine dynasty of the early Aryans -- and Ravana, the symbolical personation of the Atlantean (Lanka) race. The former were the incarnations of the Solar Gods; the latter, of the lunar Devas. This was the great battle between Good and Evil, between white and black magic, for the supremacy of the divine forces, or of the lower terrestrial, or cosmic powers. . . . The Ramayana -- every line of which has to be read esoterically -- discloses in magnificent symbolism and allegory the tribulations of both man and soul" (SD 2:495-6).

The siege and subsequent surrender of Lanka (whose remnant is Ceylon or Sri Lanka) to Rama is placed by Hindu chronology -- based upon the zodiac -- at many hundreds of thousands of years ago, and the statement that the present island of Ceylon is the northern headland of ancient Lanka gives a hint as to how far back these events are to be placed.

(See also: Ramayana, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Ramayana

Hindu epic

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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

(See also: Ramayana, Hinduism, Vedic Scriptures, Yoga, Body Mind and 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.

(See also: Ramayana, Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

anuman:

the monkey god, protagonist in ramayana

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Valmiki:

Valmiki (Vaalmeeki). The saint-poet who wrote the Ramayana.

(See also: Valmiki, Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)