The Ramayana (2 page)

For their times, these English versions of the Ramayana were path-breaking. When they were written, the Ramayana was being progressively lost to young Indians who had been educated in schools where English was the medium of instruction and the system of education itself had become “modern,” westward-looking, and irretrievably secular. By the twentieth century, it was Shakespeare who was revered by the colonized Indian, rather than Valmiki or Vyasa, author of the Mahabharata. During colonial times and after Indian independence in 1948, the spiritual tradition of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata was sidelined, even actively suppressed, in favor of analytical Western thought and attitudes, especially socialist ones.

Among the retellings by foreigners, the best known recently have been ones by the late William Buck and by the Briton Kenneth Anderson, who calls himself Krishna Dharma because he belongs to the Hare Krishna movement in England. Mr. Buck's translation is a short, chatty one, which takes a great deal of liberty with the actual story. Mr. Anderson's is longer, more “epical.”

One must not ignore the actual translations of the epic, of which there are a few, including the three-volume edition by Hari Prasad Shastri. They are full-length, line-by-line endeavors, often with the Sanskrit text included, usually done by an Indian Sanskrit scholar or a member of a Hindu religious order. These have another sort of drawback: the English the translators use tends to be even more archaic than that of the few Indians who sought to retell rather than translate. The Sanskrit scholars' language is literal rather than literary, and hardly reflects either the poetry or the mystery of the Ramayana. I should also note the ongoing project at the University of California, Berkeley, to translate and annotate the entire text, which will consist of seven volumes and total more than two thousand pages when completed.

Though I have taken few liberties with the story or its sequence as it has come down in India, my Ramayana is not a scholar's translation, but a novelist's re-creation of the legend. The book is not based on a Sanskrit text, but on other English versions. The task I set myself, for which there did seem to exist a genuine place in our world of books, was to write an impassioned English Ramayana that is true to the spirit and story of the original. I felt I needed to write it well enough so that a reader of the early twenty-first century would want to read it for pleasure. I must further try to preserve some of the simple lyricism of the Ramayana, in what definitely has to be a prose rendition if anyone at all is to read it. My book must be not so short that it trivializes an epic, nor so voluminous as to be forbidding. It must be, first and last, a work of worship, but it must also be entirely modern and exciting without ever turning into kitsch. As I worked on it for the last ten years, I regarded the completion of this book as an act of faith, an offering to Rama.

Now that my work is finished, I have come to believe that any enterprise such as this one is always severely tested, but finally rewarded. Looking back, I see that along every step of the journey, whether I was aware of it or not at the time, there was help given me, and strength. And I hope that I might even have succeeded, in some measure, in what I set out to do.

A NOTE ON HINDU TIME

Three hundred sixty-five human years make one year of the Devas and Pitrs, the Gods and the manes.

Four are the ages in the land of Bharata—the krita, the treta, the dwapara, and the kali. The krita yuga lasts 4,800 divine years, the treta 3,600, the dwapara 2,400, and the kali 1,200; and then another krita yuga begins.

The krita or satya yuga is the age of purity; it is sinless. Dharma, righteousness, is perfect and walks on four feet in the krita. But in the treta yuga, adharma, evil, enters the world and the very fabric of time begins to decay. Finally, the kali yuga, the fourth age, is almost entirely corrupt, with dharma barely surviving, hobbling on one foot.

A chaturyuga, a cycle of four ages, is twelve thousand divine years, or 365 times 12,000 human years long. Seventy-one chaturyugas make a manvantara; fourteen manvantaras, a kalpa. A kalpa of a thousand chaturyugas, twelve million divine years, is one day of Brahma, the Creator.

Eight thousand Brahma years make one Brahma yuga; a thousand Brahma yugas make a savana; and Brahma's life is 3,003 savanas long.

One day of Mahavishnu is the lifetime of Brahma.

THE DEMON'S BOONS

The Rakshasa sat in penance on the Himalaya, amidst five fires. Four he lit around himself to heat the blazing rock he sat upon; the fifth was the pitiless sun above. Ravana was the son of the Rishi Visravas, who was Brahma's own grandson. Ten-headed, magnificent Ravana sat worshipping the God Siva. But even after he had sat for a thousand years, Siva did not appear before him.

Growing impatient one day, the Demon picked up his sword, cut off one of his ten heads, and, chanting Siva's name, fed it to the fire. Still the Lord did not come to him. Another thousand years passed; Ravana severed another head and fed that into the fire. But even now, Siva did not come.

Ravana did not flinch. In nine thousand years, the Rakshasa cut off nine of his heads and fed them to the agni. But there was no sign of Siva. When ten thousand years of perfect worship had passed, Ravana reached for his sword again: to hew off his tenth and final head, and make an end of himself. Then his eyes were blinded with light such as they had never seen before. At the heart of the luster stood Siva, the God of Gods, smiling at his fierce devotee.

Raising his hand in a blessing over the Rakshasa, Siva said, “Ask for any boon you want.”

Ravana asked for strength that no other creature in the universe possessed. After the offering of nine heads, Siva could not refuse him. He restored the Rakshasa's heads and gave him strength that would make him master of the earth one day.

But Ravana was not satisfied with one boon. He resumed his fervid penance, now in the name of his own great-grandsire: Brahma, the Creator. In a hundred years, Brahma also stood, four-faced and iridescent, before the Demon. “What boon do you want, Ravana? Ask me for anything.”

Ravana's tapasya had been so remarkable he could have asked for moksha, enlightenment. But being a rakshasa, he said, “Siva has already given me boundless strength. Pitama, you make me immortal!”

Brahma replied, “Immortality I cannot give, not to any of the created. Ask for another boon.”

Ravana thought for a moment. Then he said shrewdly, “Then bless me that I never find death at the hands of a Deva, Danava, Daitya, Asura, rakshasa, gandharva, kinnara, charana, siddha, or any of the divine and demonic beings of heaven and earth.”

With a sigh, knowing what the consequences of this boon would be, Brahma said, “So be it,” and vanished.

Ravana's triumphant roar echoed through the world. The Himalaya trembled; the sea rose in hilly waves and dashed against the shores of Bharatavarsha. Of course, the Rakshasa had thought it beneath his dignity to ask for invincibility against the puny race of men. For which mortal man could hope to threaten awesome Ravana's life? He was certain that now he was immortal.

And quickly, with his two boons, the Demon became sovereign of all he surveyed. For long ages he ruled, and darkness spread …

PROLOGUE

Hanuman could see into the little cloister from his leafy perch. He saw Sita shiver, when she knew the Lord of Lanka had arrived. Quickly she covered her body with her hands. Like frightened birds, her eyes flew this way and that, avoiding Ravana's smoldering gaze as he came and stood, tall and ominous, before her.

He drank deeply of the sight of her. He did not appear to notice how disheveled she was, or the dirt that streaked her tear-stained face. Before him, Ravana, master of the earth, saw his hopes, his life, his heaven and hell; and, if he had known it, his death as well. She stared dully at the bare ground on which she sat. She was like a branch, blossom-laden, but cut away from her mother tree and sorrowing on the ground.

Ravana fetched a sigh. In his voice like sleepy thunder he said, “Whenever I come here, you try to hide your beauty with your hands. But for me, any part of you I see is absolutely beautiful. Honor my love, Sita, and you will discover how deep and true it is. My life began when I first saw you and yet you are so cruel to me.”

She said nothing, never looked up at him. Hanuman, little monkey in his tree, sat riveted by what he saw and heard. Ravana's eyes roved over her slender form, and they blazed. He whispered, “Sita, give yourself to me! I will love you as women only dream of being loved. Rule my heart, rule me, and be queen of all the earth. We will walk hand in hand in this asokavana, just we two, and you will know what happiness is.”

But again she set a long blade of grass between herself and him, like a sword. She said, “I am another man's wife, Rakshasa. How can you even think of me as becoming yours, when I am already given? Not just for this lifetime, but forever, for all the lives that have been, and all those to come. I have always belonged to Rama and always will. You have so many women in your harem. Don't you hide them from the lustful gazes of other men? How is it, then, you cannot conceive that I would be true to my Rama? That it is natural for me, because I love him.”

He looked away from her. Not that he saw anything except her face, even when he did; but he could not bear what she said, which was so savage and so true. He had never encountered such chastity, and to believe in it would mean denying everything he had lived for. Ravana turned his gaze away from her and a smile curved his dark lips.

Undaunted, Sita continued, “You court doom for yourself and your kingdom. Have you no wise men in your court to advise you against your folly?”

He laughed. “They all know I am a law unto myself. They know I am invincible.”

“You have violated dharma; punishment will come to you more swiftly than you think. You don't know Rama. He is not what you imagine him to be. You speak of this sea being an obstacle between him and me. But I say to you, Ravana, even if the ocean of stars lay between us my Rama would come to find me.”

BOOK ONE

BALA KANDA

{The beginning}

 

1. On the banks of the river Tamasa

“Holy One, I wonder if any man born into the world was blessed with every virtue by your Father in heaven.”

 

Long ago, the sage Valmiki sat meditating in his hermitage on the banks of the Tamasa. The river murmured along beside the dark, gaunt rishi, whose hair hung down to his shoulders in thick dreadlocks. But otherwise the secluded place was silent; not even birds sang, lest they disturb Valmiki's dhyana.

Suddenly the silence was shattered; the air came alive with the abandoned plucking of a vina. A clear voice sang of the Blue God who lies on his serpent bed, upon eternal waters. Valmiki's eyes flew open. Though he had never seen him before, he had a good idea who his visitor was.

Narada, the wanderer, was Brahma's son, born from his pristine thought in time out of mind. A curse had been laid on Narada before the earth was made: that he would roam the worlds without rest. Once he sent his brother Daksha's sons, who wanted to create the first races of men, on an impossible quest. He had asked them how they could become creators unless they first saw the ends of the universe. And Daksha cursed Narada to wander forever homeless and restless himself, for the endless wandering he sent those children on.

A fine aura enveloped Narada. Valmiki's disciples stood gaping at him, until their master called briskly to them. Then they ran to fetch arghya, milk and honey, for the guest, who accepted their offering graciously.

Valmiki folded his hands. “Be seated, Maharishi.”

Valmiki sat beside the hermit from heaven, by the languid Tamasa. As if he sought something, Narada stared up and down the river's course, while Valmiki sat absorbed.

Narada strummed a fluid phrase on his vina. “A blessing, dear Valmiki, for your thoughts!”

Valmiki laughed. “Muni, you are as subtle as Vayu the Wind. You can enter men's minds and read their thoughts; and surely mine as well.” He paused, then declared, “Holy One, I wonder if any man born into the world was blessed with all the virtues by your Father in heaven.”

“Tell me what the virtues are, and I will tell you the man who has them.”

Valmiki began in his inward way, enunciating each attribute carefully: “Integrity, bravery, righteousness, gratitude, dedication to his beliefs, a flawless character, compassion for all the living, learning, skill, beauty, courage beyond bravery, radiance, control over his anger and his desires, serenity, a lack of envy, and valor to awe Indra's Devas.” As Narada's eyes grew wistful, Valmiki continued. “I know I am asking for perfection in a mere mortal. But I wondered if a man of this world could have all these, which not even the Gods possess.” The sage was convinced his perfect man could only be the figment of a romantic imagination.

Narada still gazed out over the river's crisp currents, as if the water on which the noon sun sparkled could conjure the image of Valmiki's paragon. At last he said softly, “In these very times such a man was born into the world. His name is Rama.”

Narada beckoned to Valmiki's disciples to come closer as he began his story, as if it was a secret that not the jungle behind them nor their thatched huts on its hem should share, so precious was it. Weaving his tale into the river's drift, Narada began the legend of Rama, prince of Ayodhya, who was as noble as the sea is deep, as powerful as Mahavishnu, whose Avatara he was when the treta yuga was upon the world, as steadfast as the Himalaya, handsome as Soma the Moon God, patient as the Earth, generous as Kubera, just as Dharma; but his rage if roused like the fire at the end of time. His audience sat entranced, as heedless of the time that passed as they were of the flowing river. Valmiki sat in the lotus posture with his eyes shut, to listen to the tale of a human prince who was as immaculate as the stars.