But it is not divine duty alone that makes Vishnu incarnate on earth. The Bhagavat Puran informs us that Vishnu descends not just to save mankind but also to liberate his doorkeepers from a curse.
Jaya and Vijaya
The two doorkeepers of Vaikunth would not let the four boy-sages, the Sanat Kumars, enter because Vishnu was asleep. Enraged at being kept away from God, the four Kumars cursed the doorkeepers that they would lose their exalted position so close to God and be born away from him on earth as two Rakshasa brothers—Ravana and Kumbhakarna. On learning that his doorkeepers had been cursed for doing their duty, Vishnu declared that he would himself descend on earth as Ram and to release his doorkeepers from their demonic form. No sooner were the two doorkeepers born on earth as Rakshasas than they began living a life with total disregard for dharma, in the hope that Vishnu would relieve them of their demonic life sooner rather than later.
Another story informs us that Vishnu descended as Parashuram, Ram and Krishna to kill the greedy rulers of the earth after the earth goddess complained that she could not bear their weight any more. According to the Padma Puran, Vishnu himself is compelled by a curse to live on earth as Parashuram, Ram and Krishna, making God very much a part of the web of karma that makes the Hindu world go round.
Beheading Kavyamata
Once while Shukra was away performing a penance, the Devas decided to attack and kill the Asuras. Without their guru, the Asuras were helpless so they sought the help of Kavyamata, Shukra’s mother. She assured them of her support. She decided to cast a spell that would put all the Devas to sleep. As she was about to chant the magical mantra to make this happen, Vishnu hurled his discus and severed her neck. When Shukra learnt of this he accused Vishnu of stri-hatya-paap, the crime of killing a woman. ‘Only when you live as a mortal for three lifetimes will you be cleansed of this crime,’ said Shukra and so Vishnu was born on earth as Parashuram, Ram and Krishna.
Although Parashuram, Ram and Krishna live in different ages and are involved in different crises, their tales are not independent of each other. There are deep connections between apparently disparate events in their lives thus driving home the point that all three of them are merely part of a much grander design. The story of Parashuram, for example, is curiously similar to that of Vasishtha and Vishwamitra found in the Ramayana.
Parashuram annihilates the warriors
King Kartaviryarjun coveted the wish-fulfilling divine cow called Kamadhenu that was in the possession of Rishi Jamadagni. When he tried to take the cow by force, he was stopped by Jamadagni’s youngest son, Parashuram, who hacked the king to death with an axe. In retaliation, the king’s sons killed Jamadagni. An enraged Parashuram, went about killing all the sons of the king and all their descendants and all their allies. He killed so many warriors that he filled five great lakes with their blood.
Parashuram kills the king who steals his father’s cow. Ram, on the other hand, accepts as his teacher Vishwamitra who as Kaushik had stolen Vasishtha’s cow. This clearly indicates a shift in values from Krita yuga to Treta yuga.
This shift in values is evident even in the way Parashuram and Ram deal with adultery. Parashuram beheads his mother, Renuka, for momentarily desiring a man who is not her husband. Ram, on the other hand, liberates Ahalya who is turned to stone by her husband when he finds her in the arms of Indra. In the Treta yuga, Vishnu seems to be making more room for human frailty.
When Ram breaks Shiva’s bow to win Sita’s hand in marriage, he is challenged by Parashuram himself to string the bow of Vishnu. When Ram succeeds, Parashuram realizes his time is over. The young lad before him is, like him, Vishnu’s incarnation, but one who is more appropriate for the Treta yuga.
Just as the Treta yuga is less perfect than the Krita yuga, the Dvapar yuga is even more imperfect than the Treta yuga. A new avatar of Vishnu is needed for this era—not Ram, but Krishna.
Ram is maryada purushottam, the supreme keeper of rules, while Krishna is leela purushottam, the best game player. Both stand for dharma, but their approach is different. For Ram, the means is as important as the end; for Krishna only the end matters and the spirit of the law is more important than the letter of the law. That is why perhaps, only Ram is visualized as king while Krishna remains a kingmaker. Unlike Ram who is faithful to only one wife, Krishna loves many women, each with the same intensity. The reason for this is karma says one folk story.
When I become Krishna
As Ram passed through a forest looking for Sita, the trees, the birds, the animals and the sages of the forest were drawn to his beauty and august presence. ‘Come to us. Let us comfort you,’ they said. ‘No,’ said Ram, ‘none but Sita shall comfort me in this life. I am hers alone.’ Then, looking at their unhappy faces he assured them that in his next life when he would be Krishna, all of them would be reborn as milkmaids in Vrindavan. Together they would dance in the meadows of Madhuvan all through autumn nights. For as Krishna, he would be able to love more than one.
According to another folk retelling, Ram asked Manthara to poison Kaikeyi’s mind. ‘Only then will I be able to go to the forest and kill Ravana,’ Ram explained. With a heavy heart, Manthara obeyed God. Pleased with her devotion he said, ‘In your next life you will be as hunchbacked as you are now. But while you cause Ram misery, Krishna will embrace you and bring you much joy.’ And so the Bhagavat Puran informs us that when Krishna entered Mathura he embraced a hunchbacked maid called Kubja or Trivakra with such passion that her back straightened and she became a beautiful woman. This Kubja was none other than Manthara reborn.
Ram and Krishna are linked to each other through Hanuman also. While Ram is said to have ridden on Hanuman’s shoulders in battle in the Ramayana, Hanuman resides in the flag atop Arjuna’s war chariot that is driven by Krishna in the Mahabharata.
Ram and Krishna are also connected to each other through Jambavan, the king of the bears, who joined Ram’s monkey army to rescue Sita. His daughter, Jambavati, becomes one of Krishna’s chief queens.
It is said that as Krishna, Vishnu balances the imbalances created by Ram. Ram created an imbalance by killing Vali, son of Indra, by shooting him in the back while he was engaged in a duel with Sugriva, son of Surya. To balance the score, when Vishnu descended as Krishna, he had Arjuna, son of Kunti by Indra, shoot and kill Karna, son of Kunti by Surya, while the latter had his back turned and was busy pulling out his chariot wheel that had got stuck in the ground.
When the tales of Parashuram, Ram and Krishna are compared with each other, we find that they reflect the different responses of Vishnu to social and spiritual values that are eroding with the march of time.
The three incarnations of Vishnu are very different from each other in character and behaviour. Parashuram is an outraged priest; Ram is a straightforward warrior; Krishna is a charismatic, charming and shrewd strategist. Parashuram ruthlessly punishes those who fail to uphold dharma, sparing neither king nor mother. Ram acts with more empathy but gives utmost importance to the law. Krishna bends and breaks the rules when they lack the spirit of dharma.
Parashuram is born a Brahman but is always visualized as a warrior carrying a bow and an axe. Krishna is born a Kshatriya but is always visualized as a cowherd or charioteer. Only Ram is born a Kshatriya and is visualized performing his caste role, as king and warrior.
In each incarnation, Vishnu is accompanied by Lakshmi, his consort. While he protects her each time, her relationship with him differs with each incarnation. For Parashuram, Lakshmi is his mother, Renuka, and his cow, Kamadhenu, who must be protected from the lustful and greedy Kshatriyas. For Ram, Lakshmi is Sita, the faithful and domesticated wife, who has to be rescued from the Rakshasas. For Krishna, Lakshmi is Draupadi, who he has to rescue because Draupadi’s own husbands, instead of taking care of her, gamble her away and allow her to be disrobed in public.
With each incarnation, Lakshmi’s situation worsens as she drifts away from Vishnu. Each time, Vishnu manages to rescue her, as son, husband o
r friend, and restore dharma. But a time will come when things will be beyond repair. Then Vishnu will descend as Kalki and destroy the world himself. This will happen at the end of Kali yuga, after which the world will die, an event known as pralay or dissolution. After pralay, a new world will be born. A new kalpa with four new yugas. As time marches ahead, Vishnu will descend once more as Ram in the Treta yuga, after Parashuram of the Krita yuga but before Krishna of the Dvapar yuga.
Ram and the Ramayana thus cannot be seen in isolation. To fully appreciate Ram, his saga has to be compared and contrasted with the stories of Parashuram and Krishna that are partly told in the Mahabharata and partly in the Bhagavat Puran. All these have to be seen as part of the Vishnu Puran or the lore of Vishnu. To better understand the Vishnu Puran, one has to compare it with the lore of Shiva and Brahma, the Shiva Puran and the Brahma Puran. These make sense only when compared with the Devi Puran, the lore of Saraswati, Lakshmi and Shakti. All these tales are grounded in the wisdom of the Vedas, making Ram one piece of the grand Hindu jigsaw puzzle.
10
Valmiki’s Inspiration
Sweeter than sugar, tastier than curd,
Sweeter indeed than honey is the name of Ram
Constant repetition of this sweet name
Gives one the taste of divine nectar
Therefore, chant the name of Ram constantly
—A Telugu prayer
Many retellings, single tradition
Tradition has it that the goddess Shakti once asked Shiva what will give man hope in the Kali yuga, the spiritually bereft final quarter of the world’s life cycle. Shiva replied that hope would come from the hearing of Ram’s tale. Narada heard Shiva narrate the whole story to the goddess. He in turn passed it on to a highway robber called Ratnakar, who later in life became known as Valmiki.
Ratnakar
A highway robber called Ratnakar once attacked Narada with the intention of stealing his lute. ‘Please, before you strike me, tell me why are you doing this?’ Narada asked, as Ratnakar was about to kill him. ‘I have no other means to feed my family,’ Ratnakar replied. ‘So you are doing this for your family. Does that mean they will share the burden of this crime?’ Narada inquired. ‘Yes, of course,’ said Ratnakar. ‘Are you sure?’ Narada persisted, making Ratnakar suddenly unsure. ‘Why don’t you confirm this with them?’ Narada suggested. So Ratnakar tied Narada to a tree and went home and asked his wife and son if they would share the burden of his crime. ‘Why should we?’ asked his wife. ‘It is your duty to feed us. What you do for that is solely your responsibility.’ Ratnakar realized at that moment that ultimately one is responsible for all of one’s actions; one cannot blame others for it. He returned to Narada a changed man. ‘How do I cleanse myself of this burden of crime?’ he asked. ‘Chant Ram’s name,’ said Narada. But Ratnakar was such a terrible criminal that Ram’s name could not even form on his tongue. Narada then said, ‘Chant maramara repeatedly.’ Mara means ‘die’. Being a killer, Ratnakar could utter the word easily. ‘Mara-mara-mara . . . die-die-die . . . ’ Slowly the sound changed, ‘Ma-ra-ma-ra-ma-ra-ma-Ram-Ram-Ram.’ Thus the word meaning death reversed itself to become the name of God who liberates one from death. So intense was Ratnakar’s chanting that he lost all sense of the world. When he finally awoke from his meditative trance he found he was covered by a termite hill made of sand or valu. As a result Ratnakar came to be known as Valmiki. Valmiki then learnt from Narada the story of Ram and he took it upon himself to turn this story into a song that would inspire all of humanity.
A pair of parrots heard Valmiki’s composition. According to the Padma Puran, the parrots narrated this tale to Sita before her marriage. But they did not know the whole tale. Angry, Sita locked them up in a cage and one of the parrots died. The survivor cursed Sita that she too would experience separation from her husband. And that is why Sita was abandoned by Ram soon after their return to Ayodhya.
How could Sita hear the Ramayana when she played a role in it? The explanation given is that the Ramayana that was narrated by Shiva, then Narada, then Valmiki and finally the parrot was the Satakoti Ramacharitra or the timeless Ramayana, which becomes reality in every Treta yuga, the second quarter of the world’s life cycle. In traditional Hindu thought, the Ramayana is an eternal story, not the creation of one poet, not restricted to one period. Thus the Valmiki Ramayana is not the ‘original’ Ramayana. It is simply the oldest known Ramayana retold by a sage called Valmiki.
Valmiki’s Ramayana is generally treated as Adi Kavya, the first Sanskrit poetry ever written. While it was part of oral tradition for centuries, it reached its final form somewhere between 200 BCE (Before Common Era, formerly known as BC) and 200 CE (Common Era, formerly known as AD). The content took a lyrical form after Valmiki experienced a painful episode.
From pain comes poetry
Valmiki once saw a hunter shoot down one of a pair of lovebirds. The surviving bird flew around in circles over the corpse of its beloved, wailing and moaning and finally dying of heartbreak. Pained by this sight, Valmiki cursed the hunter for his crime. The curse came in the form of a verse and Valmiki realized that the roots of poetry lay in pain. As he witnessed the pain of Sita’s life, who took shelter in his hermitage after she was cast away by Ram for no fault of hers, he was inspired to compose the epic of Ramayana. He taught it to Sita’s twin sons. So sweet was their rendition of this song that they were invited to sing before Ram himself in Ayodhya. They did not know that the man before them was their father. And Ram did not know that the young children singing his song were his own two sons.
The Ramayana also happens to be part of the Mahabharata, dated between 300 BCE and 300 CE, where it is called the Ramopakhyan. When the Pandavas bemoaned their thirteen years of forest exile, Rishi Markandeya retorted by telling them how Ram suffered for fourteen years and while the Pandavas deserved their punishment for gambling away their kingdom, Ram did not deserve his fate—he was simply obeying his father.
Though Buddhists and Jains turned away from mainstream Hinduism, they could not turn away from Ram.
The Buddhist Dashratha Jatak, written in Prakrit and dated to around 300 CE, identifies Ram as a Bodhisattva, or Buddha in an earlier life. Ram of the Buddhists is portrayed as a man full of integrity, compassion and wisdom who is fully aware that all things in this world, from kings to kingdoms, are impermanent.
Jains too had great regard for Ram. In the many Jain Ramayanas known as Puama-cariya or Padma Charitra, first written in Apabhramsha in 300 CE by Vimalasuri, and then adapted by many authors right up to 1600 CE, Ram, also known as Padma, displays all Jain virtues. Thus, the Jain Ram is too noble to be violent. As an upholder of Jain ideals, he does not kill Ravana. That task is left to the more aggressive Lakshman.
The great poet Kalidasa wrote the Raghuvamsa, the story of Ram’s ancestors in the fifth century CE. The playwright Bhavabhuti wrote Mahaviracharitra and Uttaramacharitra in the eighth century AD based on the early and later life of Ram. All these works were written in classical Sanskrit.
From the twelfth century onwards, as many of India’s local languages took shape, poets started writing the Ramayana in tongues that reached out to larger audiences. The Ramayana was amongst the first pieces of literature in most regional languages. Some of the more popular regional retellings of this sacred epic are:
Tamil Ramayana by Kamban in the twelfth century
Telugu Ranganatha Ramayana by Buddha Reddy in the thirteenth century
Assamese Kotha Ramayana by Madhava Kandali in the fourteenth century
Oriya Dandi Ramayana by Balaram Das in the fifteenth century
Kannada Torave Ramayana by Narahari in the fifteenth century
Bengali Ramayana by Krittivasa in the fifteenth century
Malayalam Adhyatma Ramayana by Ezhuthachan in the sixteenth century
Hindi Ram-charit-manas by Goswami Tulsidas in the sixteenth century
Marathi Bhavarth Ramayana by Ekanath in the sixteenth century
/> Punjabi Govind Ramayana by Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth guru of the Sikh community, in the seventeenth century
Kashmiri Ramayana by Divakar Prakash Bhat in the eighteenth century
Gujarati Giridhar Ramayana by Giridharadas in the nineteen century
Each Ramayana gives the audience something new to think about, a new insight into Ram’s tale which is actually a new insight about their own life. That is what has made the story of Ram come alive and remain relevant through the ages.
In the Adbhut Ramayana, Sita is even presented as daughter of Ravana’s chief queen, Mandodari, giving a new twist to the tale.
Mandodari’s daughter
Ravana, king of Rakshasas, used to harass Rishis. He would even charge them a tax. And if they could not pay the tax, he would take their blood and collect it in a pot, intent on using their spiritually endowed fluid for an occult ritual that would make him even more powerful. Ravana’s wife, Mandodari, unaware of what her husband was up to, wondered what was in the pot he kept so securely in his chambers. One day, unable to restrain herself, she picked up the pot and took a sip of the fluid inside. Instantly she became pregnant and delivered a girl child. A heavenly voice boomed that this girl would be the killer of her father. Fearing for Ravana, at the same time not wanting to harm her newborn daughter, Mandodari put the baby in a box and set it afloat on the sea. The sea god gave the girl to the earth goddess who gave her to Janaka, who adopted her and named her Sita.