Ramayana, an epic poem written by sage Valmiki in Sanskrit thousands of years back has been a perennial source of inspiration for the Indian civilization and has an exalted position in classical literature of the world. The poem in seven cantos narrates the story of Rama, a legendary prince of Ayodhya, who forsook his right to be the crown-prince and departed to the forests along with his wife Sita and brother Lakshmana in order to obey his father king Dasaratha , who was influenced by Rama’s step-mother Kaikeyi who wanted her son Bharata to be the crown prince. Sita is kidnapped in the forests by a demon-king Ravana and imprisoned in his kingdom-island of Lanka. Rama seeks the help of monkey chief Sugriva whose minister Hanuman leaps across the ocean and locates Sita in Lanka. Rama with the help of monkey hordes of Sugriva crosses the ocean, vanquishes the powerful armies of Ravana and finally kills Ravana in a fierce battle. When he returns to Ayodhya along with his wife Sita, his step brother Bharata who has all along the years been unwillingly looking after the kingdom as just a representative of Rama is too glad to make over the reigns to Rama, who is enthroned as king.
This is the gist of the story of the first six cantos of the epic. The seventh canto deals with Rama’s reign after his coronation when Rama abandons his pregnant wife Sita to forests in order to silence a section of the society which did not approve of his taking back Sita who had been kidnapped and held for months by Ravana.
It is generally recognized by scholars that the seventh canto is a later addition and that the poet wrote only the first six cantos.
Ramayana has over twenty thousand stanzas (Slokaas) in the first six cantos and is a formidable epic to read, study and digest. Although the poet has a lucid and beautiful style the very length of the epic often deters one from going through it.
To encourage lovers of Sanskrit literature to enjoy the poetry of Valmiki, an humble attempt has been made here to present an abridged version which is long enough to preserve most of the beauty of the original but is short enough to attract the modern day reader.
The following features of Ramayana facilitate its abridgment.
- There are portions of the text, which are recognized by scholars as later interpolations, which do not seamlessly blend with the remaining.
- There are a number of episodes which have a very marginal relevance to the main story, which could be omitted without unduly affecting the flow of the main story or the grandeur of the epic.
- Valmiki in a leisurely pace suited to his times indulges in grand descriptions and repetitions which provide scope for abridgment.
The technique adopted in abridgment of the epic is what may be called “the cut and paste technique”, in which portions of continuous text of the original are removed and the remaining re-pasted to form a seamless narration as true to the original as possible. In this process a part of one stanza is sometimes dovetailed on to the corresponding remaining part of another stanza. In rare occasions where this technique was not found to be suitable a few bridging words, phrases, and stanzas have been added which are not in the original. These bridges have been indicated by enclosing them in brackets. ().
The entire seventh canto has been omitted in this abridged version. Some stories narrated by the characters in the epic as also details of a number of battles where the monkey chiefs kill their antagonists do not find a place here.
In the original epic each canto (Kanda) has been sectionalized into untitled “Sarga"s. In this version as Sargas have often merged, each canto has been split into titled sections, each section being much longer than an average Sarga. The title of a section indicates one of the main episodes narrated in the section. This abridged version being called “Laghuvalmikiyam”- which means “lighter version of Valmiki’s epic”- has about 17250 lines of poetry, which roughly works out to one third the length of the original (including the seventh canto).
This work has been made freely accessible to the lovers of Sanskrit literature on the Internet as a PDF file for non-commercial purposes.
G.S.S.Murthy October, 2013
Bangalore