Artists visualize the vimana, or flying chariot, in different ways. At times it is a cart or chariot pulled by donkeys, horses or swans, and sometimes the structure itself has wings.
A traditional Hindu or Jain temple is also called a vimana and is seen as a flying chariot used by divine beings to travel between heaven and earth.
In Greek mythology, one hears of gods and heroes flying: Zeus has his eagle, Bellerophon his flying horse, Hermes has shoes with wings and Medea has a chariot of flying serpents. But descriptions of earth from the sky are more frequently seen in Sanskrit poetry, starting with Valmiki.
Ram’s Atonement
The entourage stopped many times along the way.
First at the tip of Jambudvipa, from which sprang the bridge to Lanka, where Ram and Sita offered prayers to Shiva, to Sampati and to Varuna, thanking them for their support during the war. After a brief halt at the caves of Swayamprabha, they passed over Kishkindha and Ram pointed to the clearing in the woods where he had killed Vali and the boulder by which he had met Hanuman. Sita recognized the trees and the riverbanks over which she had strewn her jewels. She thanked them for passing on her message to her Ram.
Then they stopped at the ashramas of the rishis they had visited earlier: Agastya, Atri, Sharabhanga, Sutikshna and Bharadwaja. The birds and snakes had informed the tapasvis of Sita’s plight and the rishis were glad she was safe again. Lopamudra told Sita to think of the future. Anasuya warned her against dwelling on the past.
Later Ram asked the Pushpak to travel beyond Ayodhya to the Himalayas. ‘I killed a man who knew the hymns of the Vedas and was a master of many sciences and the arts. By killing its transmitter, I have committed the crime of brahmahatya. I need to atone for this disservice to humanity.’
‘But he abducted your wife,’ said Lakshman.
‘Ravana had ten heads. Nine were filled with delusion, which made him impatient, lustful, greedy, arrogant, insecure, angry, envious, rude and dominating. But he had one head filled with wisdom and faith. The cacophony of nine heads overpowered the music of that head. I regret killing that head.’
So on the slopes of the Himalayas, the vanaras and the rakshasas and Lakshman and Sita watched Ram seek Ravana’s forgiveness. He sat on the ground, shut his eyes and, contemplating on the events of the war, invoked the memory of that enemy of his with ten heads and twenty arms.
Two celestial beings appeared before Ram and said, ‘Know this. We are Jaya and Vijaya, doorkeepers of Vaikuntha. Once we had stopped four sages from entering the abode of Vishnu because Vishnu was asleep. We stopped them three times. And for this reason they cursed us to be born on earth three times. Vishnu promised us that he would liberate us from our mortal lives. The first time we were born as the asuras Hiranyaksha and Hiranyakashipu. Vishnu liberated us, taking the form of the boar Varaha and the man-lion Narasimha. Then we took the form of two rakshasas, Ravana and Kumbhakarna. Vishnu liberated us, taking the form of Ram. Now we shall be reborn as two humans, Shishupala and Dantavakra. Vishnu will liberate us taking the form of Krishna. Go to Ayodhya in peace, Ram. Know that you have done what you were destined to do.’
Only after this did Ram make his way to Ayodhya.
At Rameswaram, people make Shiva-lingas using sand, imitating Ram and Sita who did the same to invoke Shiva and thank him for his support.
At the temple of Rameswaram, there are two lingas of Shiva, not one. The story goes that Ram had sent Hanuman to Kashi to fetch a linga but it took him so long to return that he asked Sita to make one of sand instead. By the time the rituals started, Hanuman arrived with his linga and was angry that no one had waited for him. He tried uprooting Sita’s sand linga with his tail but failed. Thus he realized he was not indispensable. To pacify him and please him, Ram worshipped Hanuman’s Shiva-linga beside Sita’s Shiva-linga.
The idea of Ram atoning for brahma-hatya-paap, the crime of killing a priest, became a popular pilgrims’ tale in medieval times. Both Rameswaram in the south and Rishikesh in the north are identified as spots where Ram performed penance and ritual in memory of Ravana.
In the bhakti marga or devotional path, there is reference to viparit-bhakti or reverse devotion. By constantly abusing God, the enemy of God remembers God so many times that he forges for himself a path to divine grace. So it is with Ravana.
In both Jain and Buddhist traditions, Ravana is a wise man with a flaw. In the Jain tradition, he will be reborn as a sage. In the Buddhist tradition, he converses with the Buddha.
Testing Bharata
As Ram approached the borders of Kosala, he dispatched Hanuman to inform Bharata of his imminent arrival. ‘Tell him there is still time to claim what his mother secured for him. Tell him Ram will not think less of him if he chooses to be king.’
When Hanuman said this to Bharata, he said, ‘Like Ram, even I do not hunger for a kingdom. I do not need the crown of Ayodhya to feel validated. But the kingdom certainly hungers for a good king.’
‘And who is a good king?’ asked the ever-curious Hanuman.
Bharata replied, ‘A good king is one who does not see the kingdom as a measure of his worth. Such a king does not fight his brothers for the crown, nor does he demand the loyalty of his subjects. Such a king encourages people to take responsibility for their lives, and enables them to be dependable rather than dependent. Thus a happy kingdom comes into existence.’
‘Such a kingdom does not exist,’ argued Hanuman, remembering Kishkindha, where brothers were killed for a crown, and Lanka, where people were totally dependent on their great king.
‘It will,’ said Bharata, ‘when Ram sits on the throne, for it is a throne that he neither seeks nor claims as his right, but occupies only because he has been invited to do so by his people, his father and his brothers.’
Just as Bharata uttered these wonderful words, Ram emerged through the dark clouds on the horizon like the sun on his aerial chariot. Beside him sat Sita; behind him stood Lakshman. He was surrounded by vanaras and rakshasas. Bharata’s eyes widened in delight. The exile was over. His brother the king had finally returned.
In the Valmiki Ramayana, Hanuman simply goes to check if Bharata is comfortable with Ram’s return. He finds Bharata living like an ascetic in the village of Nandigram, ruling the kingdom in the name of Ram, whose sandals are placed on the throne. To make the return more melodramatic, Kamban in his Tamil Ramayana describes how Bharata plans to immolate himself if Ram does not arrive on time, disregarding the entreaties of his family, including Kaushalya’s.
The Ramayana is essentially the story of three sets of royal brothers: those of Ayodhya (humans) who are eager to give away the throne to the other brother; those of Kishkindha (monkeys) who cannot share the throne as their father had wanted them to; and those of Lanka (demons) where one brother claims the throne that rightfully belongs to the other. The relationship of Bharata and Ram is an indicator of brotherly love rising above all territorial desires and sibling rivalry.
Both the Ramayana and the Mahabharata raise the question of whether kingdoms are the properties of kings. Both agree that they are not.
Waking Up Urmila
The mothers did not recognize them at first: the boys who had left home fourteen years ago had returned as men. Their hair was long and thick and bleached by the sun. Their skin was dark and coarse. They had beards, and their bodies were emaciated, their features gaunt.
And the daughter-in-law who had left as a girl had returned a fully bloomed woman, dressed in bridal finery. And the jewels, which had once made her beautiful, now took their beauty from her.
Their eyes were calmer, like those of hermits who have solved the mystery of life and are surprised by nothing. The forest had not turned them into savages. Instead, in their presence even monkeys and bears had turned civilized.
When they stepped on earth at the gates of Ayodhya, everyone wept with joy. There was Guha, the fisherman, and Sumantra, the old king’s charioteer.
The mothers had changed so much: the
regal bearing was gone. They were bent and grey, with wrinkled skin, even Kaikeyi, she of spellbinding beauty. The sight made Sita cry.
Sumitra told Lakshman, ‘Go and wake up Urmila. Too long has she slept.’ Lakshman rushed to his mother’s courtyard and found a beautiful woman asleep on a mat. Was this his Urmila? He touched her. She awoke with a start. She looked at him and screamed, until the palace women assured her that the dark, bearded hermit was indeed Lakshman, and no one else. As she got up, she was trembling with excitement and was unable to tie her hair. Lakshman did it for her, and she blushed.
They were bathed, the men in the royal veranda, Sita and Urmila in the women’s courtyard. Vast quantities of water, milk, turmeric, oil and fragrant pastes made of herbs and flowers were poured on to their bodies to remove the sweat and grime.
The men saw the cuts and bruises on Ram’s and Lakshman’s arms and chests and realized how hard a life it had been in the forest. The soles of their feet were full of calluses, and the heels were cracked. On Lakshman’s chest was a dark wound, where he had been struck by Indrajit’s arrow. Their beards were shaved off, their moustaches oiled and curled.
On Sita’s body, the women found jewels of many kinds: those from Ayodhya, those gifted by the wives of rishis and those from her many friends in Lanka. They found a dark bruise on Sita’s arm, the mark of the only man who had touched her in the fourteen years in the forest – Ravana. Sita saw their eyes: yes, they had heard of what she had undergone. What was going through their minds? Sympathy? Indifference? Disgust?
When the mothers had finished feeding the exiles with their own hands, Ram was led into a new courtyard, built for Sita, the next queen of Ayodhya. He was made to recline on the vast swing. Sita was then asked to slice an areca nut, wrap it in a betel leaf and put it in Ram’s mouth, while the swing swayed gently.
The eldest daughter of the Raghu clan, Shanta, joined the festivities and said, ‘Too long have the young men and women of this household lived like sullen hermits. It is time there was joy in the palace, sounds of lovemaking and eventually the laughter of children,’ she said as only she could. Everyone enjoyed the acute embarrassment of the young couples.
Finally the people of Ayodhya asked Ram, ‘And have you brought anything for us from the forest?’
‘Yes, Shabari’s berries,’ he said.
The return of Ram to Ayodhya is celebrated across India as the festival of lights or Diwali.
Songs sung by Telugu women focus less on the adventure of the Ramayana and more on the relationships and the corresponding intimate emotions, often witnessed only in the privacy of the home. Thus, there are songs describing Urmila’s fear when she finds herself being woken up by a man she cannot recognize and how Lakshman combs Urmila’s hair after his return.
In modern poster art, Ram is always clean-shaven, with no trace of facial hair, a common feature of most gods. But in traditional paintings like Chitrakathi of Maharashtra and Kalamkari of Andhra Pradesh, and even a few miniatures, one does find Ram with a moustache, but no beard, indicating they shaved in the forest. The curled and oiled moustache has long been a symbol of masculinity in Indian society; to cut off a man’s moustache is a metaphor of insult to his male pride.
The transgendered community of hijras have an oral tale where on his return to Ayodhya Ram finds a group of hijras waiting for him outside the gate. He realizes that they have been waiting there for fourteen years and asks them why. ‘When you set out for exile and the people followed you, you begged the men and women of Ayodhya to return. We also followed you, but since we are neither men nor women, we had nowhere to go and so we stood where we were,’ they say. With this story this marginalized sexual minority grants itself validation through the Ramayana tradition.
Lakshman Laughs
Vishwamitra and Vasishtha arrived along with the rishis of the forest to perform the coronation ritual, long overdue. But just when the ceremonies were about to start, Lakshman started to laugh.
Everyone wondered who Lakshman was laughing at. Was he laughing at Ayodhya, victim of palace politics which had bowed before a pair of sandals for fourteen years? Was he laughing at Kaushalya, who had always wanted to see her son crowned king? Was he laughing at Kaikeyi, for all her plans to become queen mother had failed? Was he laughing at Bharata for letting go of an opportunity to be king? Was he laughing at his mother, Sumitra, and his brother, Shatrughna, who would always be servants no matter who was king? Was he laughing at Sugriva, who got Ram to kill his brother so he could be king, or at Vibhishana, who became king because he sided with his brother’s enemy? Was he laughing at Jambuvan because the bear was too old and so was overshadowed by Hanuman? Was he laughing at Hanuman, who set his own tail aflame to save Ram’s wife and got nothing in exchange? Was he laughing at Sita, who had to prove through a trial by fire that she was chaste after she was liberated from Lanka? Was he laughing at Ram for ending up with a wife of soiled reputation?
But actually Lakshman was laughing at no one. He was laughing at a tragedy that he knew was about to unfold. He could see Nidra, the goddess of sleep, approaching him. He had requested her to return to him after fourteen years. The fourteen years were up and he had to keep his word, fall into deep slumber exactly when he was about to see the one thing he desired most in life – his beloved brother, Ram, being crowned king.
The story of Lakshman laughing comes from the Telugu Ramayana of Buddha Reddy and is popular in Telugu folklore and folk songs.
In the Adbhut Ramayana, Ram bans laughter in his kingdom because it reminds him of Ravana’s mocking laugh. But then Brahma himself comes to Ayodhya and tells Ram how laughter indicates happiness and without happiness no ritual is successful and no society can thrive.
Though the epic Ramayana is generally projected as rather ponderous and lacking in humour, comic relief is typically provided by vanaras and rakshasas. Ram is shown joking in Valmiki’s retelling of the Surpanakha episode but what could be jest seems rather perverse and dark when one considers how the episode ends.
The Coronation of Ram
Finally, fourteen years after Dashratha’s declaration, Ram sat on the throne of the Ikshavakus as the head of the Raghu clan and caretaker of Ayodhya. Sita sat on his lap, completing him. Bharata held aloft the royal umbrella. Lakshman and Shatrughna waved chowries, the yak-tail fly whisks reserved for kings. Hanuman sat at Ram’s feet. The people of Ayodhya enjoyed gazing upon this much-anticipated sight. Tears of joy gave way to robust cheers and a shower of flowers.
During the coronation, Anjana asked her son, Hanuman, ‘You are so strong. You leapt over the sea, defeated Surasa and Simhika, set Lanka aflame, carried a mountain from the north to the south, overpowered Mahiravana. Surely you could have defeated Ravana on your own. There was no real need to build the bridge to Lanka and make all the vanaras fight the rakshasas. So why didn’t you?’
Hanuman replied, ‘Because Ram did not ask me to. This is his story, not mine.’
Sita, seated on Ram’s lap, smiled on hearing this, for she clearly saw how Hanuman saw the world. Most people seek to be the sun around which the world revolves. Very few are willing to be the moon, allowing others to be the sun, despite having full knowledge that they can outshine everyone else. Ram’s brothers served him to uphold the integrity of the royal clan. She too was bound by wifely obligations. But only Hanuman did so out of pure love. That is why Ram held him closest.
‘Ram-patta-abhishekam’ or the coronation of Ram with his wife by his side and his brothers around him marks the end of the Yuddha-kanda, the sixth chapter of the Valmiki Ramayana. This image is very auspicious to the devout Hindu as the episode marks the final chapter of the Tamil Kamban Ramayana and the Tulsidas’s Avadhi Ramayana. Many reject the episodes that follow this ending.
Ram is the only avatar of Vishnu to be visualized as king. People often assume Krishna is a king, as he is called Dwarkadhish, lord of Dwarka. But as descendant of the accursed Yadu, Krishna could never wear the crown. He was at best a
nobleman and defender of his people, never king.
The chowrie, or yak-tail fly whisk, is a mark of royalty. Traditionally, only images of Ram are adorned with it. Krishna’s images are adorned with a morcha, a fan of peacock feathers, meant for noblemen who served royalty.
Ram Rajya or the rule of Ram is described as the age of perfection when rains come on time, women never become widows, sons outlive their fathers, there is no hunger or disease, and the arts flourish.
Nalambalam yatra is a unique religious journey popular in Kerala connected with the visit to four temples dedicated to the four sons of Dashratha: the Ram temple at Triprayar, the Bharata temple at Irinjalakuda, the Lakshman temple at Moozhikulam and the Shatrughna temple at Payammel near Irinjalakuda.
From the tenth century onwards, Hanuman became a deity in his own right. Unlike the regal and distant Ram, Hanuman was more accessible and identifiable. His images could be seen on streets and at marketplaces. He was not associated with lofty philosophies. He solved problems and gave courage.
Hanuman embodies devotion that gets the individual soul or jivatma (Sita) to meet the cosmic soul or paramatma (Ram) by overpowering the ego (Ravana), according to the Adhyatma Ramayana.
Many hymns to Ram are found in the Ananda Ramayana including the Ramashatanamastotra (the 108 names of Rama), the Ramastotram (the hymn to Ram), the Ramaraksha Mahamantra (the great hymn of Ram that grants protection) and the Ramkavacha (the armour of Ram’s grace).
Some Rajput families, especially royal ones, trace their ancestry to Ram and the Raghu-kula.
Hanuman’s Heart
Sita gave a necklace of pearls to Hanuman in gratitude for all that he had done for her. Hanuman started biting each pearl as if it was a fruit, and throwing it away in distaste on finding its contents wanting. Taking this to be an act of disrespect against their king, the people said, ‘What is that stupid monkey doing?’