SOURCE: Raphael, R. “Heroic Sublimity in Valmiki's Ramayana.” Indian Horizons 28, no. 3 (1979): 16-34.

[In the following essay. Raphael argues that the Valmiki Ramayana is a sublime and heroic poem.]

I have always been fascinated by the majestic grandeur of Vālmīki's Rāmāyana, for the Rāmāyana, besides being a splendid poem on a heroic theme, is also one of the most important sources of our living cultural tradition, a mirror of the highest ideals of the Hindu view of life and civilization. It gives a vividly realistic picture of the social, economic, religious and political aspirations and achievements of our ancestors, says Dr. S. N. Vyas in India in the Rāmāyana Age (Atma Ram & Sons, Delhi, 1967). Dr. Vyas adds that its “importance as a source for the reconstruction of the cultural history of post-Vedic India is further enhanced by the fact that … it is intimately linked with the present religious faith of the millions in India.” Consequently, a knowledge of the Rāmāyana is essential for an understanding of the Indian mind, because Vālmīki gives us the most graphic picture of the life and manners of our ancestors. In short, a reading of the Rāmāyana gives us vital insights into the presentness of our past, to use a phrase from T. S. Eliot.

The Rāmāyana is about people, and what they do to each other. It deals with human relationships, such as those between husband and wife, parents and children, brother and brother and the ruler and the ruled. The emotions and passions it portrays are universal. We have in it a sublime presentation of filial obedience, fatherly affection, brotherly love and uxorial devotion. There is a transcendental or spiritual simplicity in Bharata's devotion to Rāma, while Lakṣmana's love for Rāma and Sītā is punctuated by heroic nobility and sincerity. And Rāma, whether one thinks of him as an incarnation of Viṣnu or as a human person, is far beyond comparison with any other mortals as far as his devotion to duty is concerned. As C. V. Vaidya says in The Riddle of the Rāmāyana, “It is in passion and in imagination that the Rāmāyana towers over all other Sanskrit poems. If the Mahābhārata teaches you the lessons of life, the Rāmāyana preaches the highest ideals of it. If one describes the troubles and the turmoils of this real world, the other delineates the pleasures and the pains of an imaginary sublime life. In short, to one who delights in the ethereal and the stupendous, the elevating and the sublime, the Rāmāyana of Vālmīki is one of the ideal poems of the world”. (Meharchand Lachhmandas Oriental Publishers and Book Sellers: Delhi, 1972).

What then, strikes the reader of the Rāmāyana is a sense of heroic sublimity. Take for instance, Sītā. She is infinitely more lovable than the heroines of all other epics. What marks her out as a great lady is her sublime spirituality, her pure and undiluted love for her husband, her integrity and the assertion of her dignity as a person. She shines in adversity through her sufferings. It has been said that ‘all the Greek tragedians show a humane response to suffering’. In Sītā, we have an Indian concept of suffering integrity. Yet Sītā craves for no undue sympathy. She merely wants Rāma to recognize her innocence and dignity. She has certain values and ideals for which she lives, loves and suffers in silence, and when those very values and ideals for which she lives have become suspect in the eyes of her husband, she goes through the fire-ordeal to vindicate herself, and ultimately sacrifices her life itself. Throughout the epic, then, a sense of spiritual heroism marks her out as a great character, who is neither flat nor round but sublimely divine.

Sītā stands always to gain in comparison with the heroines of all other epics. Helen is the heroine of the Iliad. Comparing this character with Sītā, Elizabeth A. Reed says in Hindu Literature, “But it would be unjust to compare Sītā, the chaste and beautiful wife of Rāma, with the treacherous Helen. The Indian princess, pleading eloquently to be allowed to follow her husband into exile, is a loyal, loving woman, while the beautiful Helen is a faithless, fickle wife, utterly unworthy of the life-blood of an honest man.” (Chicago, 1907). Helen is characterised by wanton sensuality and extravagance, while Milton presents Eve not only as gullible but also as a temptress. Eve's spiritual poverty makes her an easy victim of Satan's wiles, and being corrupted, she tempts her husband into sin and defiance of God's law. But Sītā is demure. While she is as beautiful as Helen and as delicate as Eve, Sītā remains spotless morally and spiritually.

However, it must be noted that in heroic grandeur, the Mahābhārata excels the Rāmāyana in many ways. As Romesh C. Dutt says in the Epilogue to his translation of the Rāmāyana, “In heroic description, the bridal Sītā is poor and commonplace, compared with the bridal of Draupadi … The rivalry between Rāma and Rāvana, between Lakshmana and Indrajit, is feeble in comparison with the lifelong jealousy and hatred which animated Arjuna and Karna, Bhīma and Duryodhana. Sītā's protest and defiance, spoken to Rāvana when he carried her way, lack the fire and the spirit of Draupadi's appeal on the occasion when she was insulted in court. The council of war held by Rāvana is a poor affair in comparison with the council of war held by Yudhisthir in the Matsya kingdom.

“In the whole of the Rāmāyana there is no character with the fiery determination and the deep-seated hatred for the foe which inspire Karna or Arjuna, Bhīma or Duryodhana. And in the unending battles waged by Rāma and his allies there is no incident so stirring, so animated, so thrilling, as the fall of Abhimanyu, the vengeance of Arjuna, the final contest between Bhīma and Duryodhana. The whole tenor of the Rāmāyana is subdued and calm, pacific and pious; the whole tenor of the Mahābhārata is warlike and spirited.” (The Rāmāyana & The Mahābhārata, tr. by Romesh C. Dutt: London J.M. Dent & Sons, 1953)

And yet I must say that the Rāmāyana is sublime and heroic in its own way. There is heroism in suffering, in sacrifice, in self-abnegation, in devotion and in service. Every ideal is heroic in conception and becomes sublime when executed. Joy, suffering, separation, reunion, and pathos are all dealt with in a heroic manner.

One of the attributes of the sublime is energy. And Matthew Arnold says that genius is an affair of energy, and poetry is an affair of genius. His point is that a nation whose spirit is marked by energy is bound to become eminent in poetry and in all the things of the mind. He concludes that Shakespeare and Newton make England a nation with the greatest intellectual and aesthetic power.

The word ‘power’ can mean material, political or spiritual power. During Arnold's time England was the most energetic of nations politically, militarily and commercially, because it was the biggest empire. As for its spiritual power, doubt has always been expressed by her own people. But the spiritual power of India has never been questioned even by her detractors. Emerson acknowledged it and Walt Whitman was fascinated by it; Schopenhauer preferred the religions of India, both Hinduism and Buddhism. Indeed, India has always been characterized by her spiritual energy. That is why in poetry, in the arts and in the things of the mind, she has been second to none.

In the 18th century, ‘energy’ was a fashionable word with English critics and preachers. For Gray, Pope is full of energy; for Cowper, creation displays God's energy; for Coleridge, nature is a manifestation of energy. ‘Energy’ in this parlance meant strength of expression, force of signification, spirit and life. It was also associated with the Longinian concept of sublimity and with the Old Testament. Coleridge believed that the Western concept of sublimity was ‘Hebrew by birth’. Longinus himself took Genesis 1: 3 as the best example of the sublime. It is written there: “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was Good.” Morton D. Paley says in the Energy and the Imagination (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970) that the Cambridge Platonist Henry More and William Blake “share the notion of God's being manifest in the created universe through energy.” They believed that since the production of the world is the manifestation of divine energy, it is not at all strange to say that all things are the mere energy of God. For Burke, the Book of Job is the most important source of the sublime; William Smith praised the sublimity of the Psalms.

In his annotations to The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Blake argued that sublime poetry is possible only through inspiration and vision. Ever since Longinus wrote his On the Sublime, many writers have treated the problem of the sublime in literature. Writers such as John Dennis, Edward Young Robert Lowth, Edmund Burke and Blake “shared certain assumptions about sublimity. It is intense, suggestive of infinity, and productive of enthusiasm; it is associated with energy and is produced by contraries; it is, in its most powerful form terrifying.” Longinus argued that all the greatest writers are “above what is moral … Sublimity lifts them near the great-mindedness of God.”

Blake was a Platonist, and so was Longinus. Plato makes it plain in his Ion that the imaginative and visionary capacity of the poets to see the infinite in everything is actually the fruit of divine inspiration. “The muse first of all inspires men herself … For all good poets, epic as well as lyric, compose their beautiful poems not by art but because they are inspired,” says Plato. And he adds: “For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired.”

A detailed discussion of the imaginative basis of the sublime has become important in view of C. V. Vaidya's objection that the Rāmāyana is not an inspired work of art at all. He argues: “Whereas even the present edition of the Rāmāyana lays no claim to Vālmīki's having foretold the whole of it, Kālīdasa appears to have believed that it had been foretold by inspiration. Probably in Kālīdasa's time and undoubtedly ever since, Vālmīki's Rāmāyana was and has come to be so revered as to be looked upon as a revealed work like the Vedas and yet strangely enough it is least read and studied for otherwise such absurd ideas which are contradicted by what the Rāmāyana itself contains would not have gained popular credence … Now the Rāmāyana itself says in the first chapter that Vālmīki asked Nārada who was the best king and that Nārada thereupon related Rāma's life. This shows that the Rāmāyana was written by Vālmīki after this. If the Uttarakānḍa or the very second canto of the first Kānḍa is to be believed, the Rāmāyana was composed by Vālmīki when Sitā's sons were being reared up in his Āśrama. Even Brahmā's boon to Vālmīki simply says that Vālmīki might know by inspiration what Rāma did in private, i.e. what Rāma did not do in public. In either case it is certain that the Rāmāyana was not a revealed or inspired work as Kālidāsa probably thought it to be.”

There is nothing ‘absurd’ in Kalidāsa's belief that the Rāmāyana was an inspired work of art. The ‘absurdity’, if any, lies in Vaidya's tendency to confuse inspiration with revelation. Inspiration and vision go hand in hand. And Longinus says, “When the Imagination is so warm'd and affected, that you seem to behold yourself the very things you are describing.”

At this stage, an understanding of what Vālmīki has to say on the origin of his epic will be of great help in our understanding of inspiration in the poetic perception of the sublime.

In the Bālakānḍa Vālmīki is introduced as a gifted saint who lived with Bharadvāja and other disciples in the solitude of a beautiful hermitage in the valley of the Tamasā. One day, as he was ambling in the forest, after his bath in the river, he came across a pair of birds at play with each other:

Close by the bank he saw a pair
Of curlews sporting fearless there.
But suddenly with evil mind
An outcaste fowler stole behind,
And, with an aim too sure and true,
The male bird near the hermit slew.
The wretched hen in wild despair
With fluttering pinions beat the air,
And shrieked a long and bitter cry.

The impact of this experience was so great on Vālmīki, and his own heart was so moved by the suffering of the female bird, that poetry spontaneously burst forth from his mouth in the form of a curse:

No fame be thine for endless time
Because, base outcaste, of thy crime,
Whose cruel hand was fain to slay
One of this gentle pair at play!

This imprecation is the result of the intense emotional experience by the poet. Intensity is a mark of sublimity, for Longinus says: “Sublimity lies in intensity”. Vālmīki's imprecation took the shape of a śloka, the freshness and beauty of which was such that the poet himself was pleased with his own utterance. This again is quite in accordance with Longinus's position that “Sublimity is always an eminence and excellence in language.”

Vālmīki is now back at his hermitage where Brahmā visited him. But even now the saint could not forget the fowler's act of killing the bird. So he uttered:

Woe to the fowler's impious hand
That did the deed that folly planned;
That could to needless death devote
The curlew of the tuneful throat!

Brahmā was obviously pleased with this poetry unconsciously uttered by the poet in His presence. And so He said:

The tuneful lines thy lips rehearsed
Spontaneous from thy bosom burst.

Brahmā then expresses His approval of Vālmīki's śloka by asking him to write the story of Rāma which the sage Nārada had told him on an earlier occasion. Brahmā promised him that He would help him narrate the story without any falsehood and then said:

As long as in this firm-set land
The streams shall flow, the mountains stand
So long throughout the world, be sure,
The great Rāmāyana shall endure.

Thereupon Vālmīki began to meditate on the story Nārada had told him. Vālmīki was a holy man. He wanted to know the attributes that make a man holy and perfect. So he asked Nārada:

In all this world, I pray thee, who
Is virtuous, heroic, true?
Firm in his vows, of grateful mind,
To every creature good and kind?

Nārada narrated the story of Rāma who was born in the line of Ikshavaku of Kośala. Through intense meditation and reflection Vālmīki could discover so many parallels between the emotions stirred up in him by the death of the male curlew and the story of Sītā separated from her husband. This ability to see the correspondence is itself a great poetic gift. He could see it as if it were in a vision, because he had a highly developed form of imagination:

And thus in meditation he
Entered the path of poesy.
Then clearly, through his virtue's might
All lay discovered to his sight.

Only a great mind can comprehend the rich life of Rāma. That Vālmīki was a great soul is beyond dispute, because, as Longinus says: “Sublimity is the note that rings from a great mind.” He adds further: “The true Orator must have no low ingenuous spirit, for it is not possible that they who think small thoughts, fit for slaves, and practise them in their daily life, should put out anything to deserve wonder and immortality. Great thoughts issue, and it cannot be otherwise, from those whose thoughts are weighty.” That Vālmīki wrote the Rāmāyana is itself the greatest proof of his greatness as a poet. What he wrote is not a prosaic statement about a sterile historical fact. No doubt, history might have provided him with the nucleus of the action. But he transformed the bare facts of history into a living event, which as Aristotle says is more philosophical and universal than any historical writing. Vālmīki transformed history into poetry, and therein lies the greatness of his imagination. He was genuinely ‘inspired’ in the Platonic and Blakean sense of the term:

For holy thought and fervent rite
Had so refined his keener sight
That by his sanctity his view
The present, past, and future knew
And he with mental eye could grasp …
The life of Rama, great and good

Vālmīki's visions of the past, present and future were not the result of hallucinations, nor were they mere fantasies. He was a sage and a prophet. And Blake wrote in his Descriptive Catalogue: “The prophets describe what they saw in Visions as real and existing men whom they saw with their imaginative and immortal organs … the clearer the organs the more distinct the object.” Vālmīki's imaginative faculty was closely allied to his senses so that he had “the power of bringing his imaginations before his mind's eye, so completely organized, and so perfectly formed … that while he copied the vision … he could nor err.” Vālmīki, thus, saw with the eye of his imagination whatever he described. And whatever he saw, he saw within himself, and when he says that Brahmā inspired him, what, in effect, is meant is that his own self is the fountainhead of all his creative activity. This might sound a far-fetched conclusion. But a passage from Thomas Taylor's Restoration of the Platonic Theology would make the point more clear. Taylor writes: “… those who are totally filled with the intoxicating nectar of divine contemplation, since beauty diffuses itself through every part of their souls, do not become spectators alone. For in this case the spectator is no longer external to the spectacle: but he who acutely perceives, contains the object of his preception in the depths of his own essence; though while possessing, he is often ignorant that he possesses.”

This passage emphasises among other things the fact that a poet who would write a heroic or sublime poem should himself be sublime. As A. K. Coomaraswamy would say, no man can ever be a great poet who is not capable of contemplation. And all genuine contemplation is ultimately introspection which leads to the discovery of one's self.

The Rāmāyana has been described as a lyric poem. For that matter, even Paradise Lost was described as a string of lyrical poems by Poe. Nevertheless, it would be more just to call the Rāmāyana a heroic poem. In fact, Vālmīki is in the major tradition of all heroic poets when he claims that he ‘heard’ the story of Rāma from Nārada, and that he was inspired by Brahmā. In making these claims, Vālmīki was trying to remain anonymous or impersonal. The problem of anonymity in heroic poetry has been deftly dealt with by C. M. Bowra in the following words: “Anonymity has been claimed as a characteristic of heroic poetry. We do not know who were the authors of the Anglo-Saxon poems or the Elder Edda or the Cid … It has been thought that this anonymity is a necessary element in heroic poetry and is to be explained by the theory that ‘however inventive he … may be, he seems to be regarded as a receiver or artist rather than as an author … Since a bard often claims the past or a god as the source of his information, he is not in a position to make any great claims for himself.”

I do not mean to say that the Rāmāyana is an anonymous poem. But I do feel that the origin of the Rāmāyana-story is anonymous. This, once again, is no accident. Oral poems generally tend to be anonymous, says Bowra. “The anonymity of oral poems is easily explained. Each poem has one existence, when it is recited, and then the audience knows who the poet is. He has no need to mention his name in his poem since it is familiar to those who listen to him and they are the only people who matter on each occasion. He does not foresee a time when his poem will be written down and people will wish to know the author's name, since he is unacquainted with the practice of writing poems down and may not know what reading is.”

Thus, it is clear that the story of Rāmāyana existed much before Vālmīki wrote it. That does not mean that he was nothing more than a mechanical copyist. As Bowra puts it: “For though this art is traditional, conventional, it nonetheless allows some scope to the individual poet and enables him to indulge his own taste and judgement in inventiveness.” In fact, we do not have any more the Rāmāyana as Vālmīki wrote it. It has been modified and altered during successive generations to propagate certain ideas of their own or to make the original epic more beautiful. C. V. Vaidya opines that the various additions were made in order to increase the element of the marvellous in the poem.

It is universally agreed that Vālmīki is the author of the Rāmāyana. However, we do not know much about his private life. The authors of the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyana were men of many parts. After a careful study of both the epics, E. Washburn Hopkins comes to the conclusion that they were well acquainted with the Vedās, the Upanishads, the Sūtras and the Dharmaṣastras.

Having dealt with the imaginative and spiritual endowments of Vālmīki, we now turn our attention to the other attributes of the sublime. An important source of the sublime is terror. In fact, the concept of the sublime not only includes the terrible, the obscure, the calm and the solemn, but also covers everything that has striking beauty and power, be it natural or man-made. The roaring of winds, the shouting of multitudes, the sound of vast cataracts of water, the burst of thunder and lightning are all grand subjects that overwhelm the human imagination. Fear and terror are sublime because they enable us to perceive our limitations and finitude. Edmund Burke observes: “Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling … Now as power is undoubtedly a capital source of the sublime, this will point out evidently from whence its energy is derived, and to what class of ideas we ought to unite it.”

According to Hugh Blair, sublime objects produce a sort of internal elevation and expansion, some sort of ecstasy or transport; in the words of Longinus they raise the mind much above its ordinary state, and fill it with a degree of wonder and astonishment. The emotion they engender is not only delightful but also serious: a degree of awfulness and solemnity, even approaching severity, commonly attends them when at their height. Thus, we might say that all vastness produces the impression of sublimity. Even Aristotle spoke of proper magnitude and proportion in a work of art. But vastness is not its sole attribute. Great noise, earthquakes, mountain torrents, the meeting of armies, hoary mountains and solitary lakes—all these have the attributes of the sublime, says Hugh Blair.

The religious element in human life is also an important attribute of the sublime. It has been said that no ideas are so sublime as those taken from the supreme being. We can, therefore, say that the treatment of Rama as an avatār of Viṣnu adds sublimity to the Rāmāyana. Disorder and chaos have their own contribution to make to the concept of the sublime. Blair argues that a great mass of rock thrown together by the hand of nature, with wildness and confusion, strikes the mind with more grandeur than if they had been adjusted to each other with the most accurate symmetry.

Having dealt with the various aspects of the concept of the sublime, we now turn our attention to a brief discussion of the qualities of the Rāmāyana as a heroic poem.

Greek epics grew from the belief that Homer's heroes were superior beings. The Greeks were atavistic inasmuch as they believed in a past heroic age when the dominant type of humanity had the qualities of the heroes. Hesiod placed the heroic age between the Bronze and the Iron Ages. The Greeks thought of this golden age as one of action and the honour that comes from it, an age during which the self-assertive principle in human life was predominant. Traces of this ideal of action are found in Greek epic poetry “and the later Greeks looked back to it with delighted admiration. Homer makes no attempt to conceal its superiority to his own time,” says Bowra. The chevalier of mediaeval French epic is much similar to the Greek hero. To the same class belong the Spanish caballero, the Anglo-Saxon cempa, the Russian bogatyr, the Serb yunak, the Old German held, the Norse jarl, the Tatar batyr, the Albanian trim and the Uzbek pavlan. I would not place Rāma in this company because he is more than a mere man of action. He is a man of duty, of dharma, of honour, but not of action for action's sake.

An age which believes in the pursuit of honour will naturally be superior to the other ages. This was the view of Homer, of Heraclitus and of Aristotle. Aristotle regarded honour as ‘the prize appointed for the noblest deeds’ and as ‘the greatest of external goods.’ During the heroic age, its admiration for honour was expressed “in a poetry of action and adventure, of bold endeavours and noble examples”, says Bowra.

The Rāmāyana is built on the themes of love and honour. Rama cherished so much love for Sītā that her abduction by Rāvana shattered his personality, bringing it to the verge of insanity. However, when he threatened the gods with the destruction of the world and of himself, we might be led to conclude that it was his love for Sītā that made him say those things. No doubt, he loved Sītā. But it was not love alone that made him undertake perilous adventures in search of Sītā and engage in deadly battles to rescue her but his devotion to his duties as a husband and as a Kṣatriya prince. He destroyed Tāṭāka and Subāhu not because he had given his word to Viśvāmitra, but because it was the duty of a prince to protect his subjects from evil-doers. Actually, the theme of honour appears only towards the end when Sītā is recovered. Rāma makes it clear that it was not for Sita's sake that he fought Rāvana but in order to uphold righteousness and to establish his own supremacy. In fact, Vālmīki was inspired by the belief that it is Rāma's real superiority in natural endowments that makes him honourable. And Rāma realises his superior qualities in action, in the ordeal of his heroic life. Every action of Rāma “gives dignity to the human race by showing of what feats it is capable; he extends the bounds of experience for others and enhances their appreciation of life by the examples of his abundant vitality.” No heroic poetry is possible without the belief that the hero can pass beyond the oppressive limits of human frailty and win for himself a self-sufficient manhood. Rāma's life is a sufficient proof that “human beings are in themselves sufficient objects of interest and that their chief claim is the pursuit of honour through risk.” Thus, Rāma is heroic in the sense that he does his utmost with all his human limitations to make this world a better place for humanity.

The heroic poets give a fair measure of independence and individuality to their heroes. They make them act on easily understood principles, allow them to speak for themselves and appeal to us in their own right. They win interest and admiration for their heroes by showing what they are and what they do. Thus, we love and respect Rāma for what he did and what he felt. Take, for instance, the killing of Tāṭakā. This evil fiend roamed by night and disturbed Viśvāmitra's holy sacrifices. Viśvāmitra wanted Rāma to kill her. Knowing that Rāma would not like to kill a woman, Viśvāmitra gives a long list of precedents of gods and men who had killed women in the past. He tells Rāma that Indra had killed Manthāra, Maha Viṣnu had slain the wife of Bhrigu and Parasurāma had killed his own mother. Describing Tāṭakā as a creature who could assume any shape and who has the strength of a thousand elephants, Viśvāmitra implores:

Go, Rāma, smite this monster dead,
The wicked plague, of power so dread,
And further by this deed of thine
The good of Brahmans and of kine.
Thy hand alone can overthrow,
In all the worlds, this impious foe.
Nor let compassion lead thy mind
To shrink from blood of womankind;
A monarch's son must ever count
The people's welfare paramount.
And whether pain or joy he deal
Dare all things for his subjects' weal;
Yea, if the deed bring praise or guilt,
If life be saved or blood be spilt:
Such, through all time, should be the care
Of those a kingdom's weight who bear.
Slay, Rama, slay this impious fiend,
for by no law her life is screened.

(Canto XXVII)

These lines show that by nature Rāma was compassionate. However, the emphasis of the passage is not on compassion and action for action's sake, but on duty. It is the duty of a king to protect his subjects from evildoers. Rāma, therefore, tells Viśvāmitra: “My father has enjoined on me the duty of obeying you. Therefore, I shall kill this Tāṭakā who takes pleasure in others' sufferings.” This answer shows that Rāma is never led to act on impulse. His judgement is mature and wise: he must obey his father.

Rāma advances two reasons for his not killing Tāṭakā: one natural and human, the other supernatural and divine. The natural reason is that Tāṭakā is a woman. And in advancing this reason, Rāma proves his human root. The other is his desire to save her from her wicked ways. He seems to hate the wicked ways of this fearsome creature but not her. I am reminded of Christ who said once that He came into this world to save sinners, not to condemn them. In not killing Tāṭakā immediately, Rāma did not in the least disobey Viśvāmitra. Whereas Viśvāmitra's concern was with the immediate temporal order, Rāma's concern was with the re-establishing of cosmic harmony. And in the eternal cycle of cosmic evolution, even Tāṭakā has her place, since there is no such thing as good and evil, absolutely speaking.

Usually, heroic poems present an anthropocentric view of life, according to which man plays a central role in the drama of life. But in shamanistic poetry man is no more the centre of creation. He is regarded as a creature caught between unseen powers and influences. As a result, in shamanistic poetry, the elements of the marvellous and the supernatural play important roles. The shamanistic hero uses not only magic to achieve his end, but also assumes whatever shape he wants to, to frighten his foes into surrender. The Tibetan hero King Kesar of Ling had portentous birth, strength, wealth and intelligence. Since he is regarded as an incarnation of god and is helped by four divine spirits at every crisis, he remains a shamanistic hero. However, it must be noted that the “difference between shamanistic and heroic poetry is largely one of emphasis, but no poem can be regarded as truly heroic unless the major successes of the hero are achieved by more or less human means,” says Bowra.

In short, shamanistic poetry is more primitive than heroic poetry and tends to precede it historically. Heroic poetry is actually a development from the magical to a more anthropocentric outlook. Since heroic poetry sings the glory of man and his mighty doings, it must be differentiated from poems which tell of the doings of gods. Hesiod's Theogony is purely a theological work. He sings of “the race of the Blessed Gods,” while Homer's Odyssey is a song of “a man.” Of course, gods do play a large part in Homer but, though he introduces gods into the action, his main interest is in man.

In the Rāmāyana, too, the main interest is in man, in Rāma. Unlike Krṣna and Jesus, he “never claimed for himself divine attributes or divine origin nor did he act in this world as if he were an incarnation of God,” says Vaidya. It is Vaidya's belief that “the Vaiṣnavite elements did not form part of the original Rāmāyana of Vālmīki.” Both Weber and Muir were also convinced that Rāma was not an incarnation of Viṣnu. Indeed, the very fact that Rāma goes at the end of his life to Brahmaloka shows clearly that he was not an incarnation.

In Beowulf and the Rāmāyana (London: John Bale, 1934), I. S. Peter says that the story of the Rāmāyana “falls into two distinct sections, the first dealing with the banishment of Rāma, and the second with the abduction and recovery of Sītā.” Weber, while stating that the Rāmāyana is an allegory of the spread of Aryan civilisation towards the South, suggests that the banishment episode and the abduction-and-recovery-of-Sītā episode were originally unconnected. Accordingly, it is said that “the banishment story was narrated of a prince of North India, and the abduction story of a princess of South India. Vālmīki transferred the abduction to Sītā, and made Rāma the connecting link between the two originally independent episodes”.

There is nothing poetically objectionable in Vālmīki's linking originally independent episodes. But I. S. Peter finds a very serious flaw in the characterisation of Rāma. He says that the Rāma of the banishment episode and that of the abduction episode are two essentially distinct personalities. “The first is a tame and mild character, incapable of heroic action. The second is a heroic warrior. The first is a man of inaction, while the second is a man of action. In the original banishment story, the hero preferred contemplation to action. In the abduction episode the hero undertakes a vendetta against the abductor of his wife.” In short, says I. S. Peter, “The only link between the two is the common name Rāma, but the poet has not been able to obliterate the essential difference between the two heroes.”

This is an unjust criticism of Vālmīki's characterisation of Rāma. A careful reading of the poem will show that Rāma is represented as an unified, living and developing character capable of action, deliberation and decision. First of all, Rāma is presented as greater than all the other characters, such as Daśaratha, Bharata, Lakṣmana, Rāvana and Indrajit, Vāli and Sugrīva, and the value of the Rāmāyana lies in the adventures through which he passes. What happens to Rāma is very important, because he is an example of pre-eminent manhood. As such, he evokes our admiration, sympathy and awe. His love of honour and righteousness makes him lovable throughout the poem.

In the banishment episode, Rāma appears as a man of contemplation rather than of action. But this is no proof to show that he lacked the prowess befitting a heroic protagonist. Whereas Rāvana and Indrajit belong to a less developed civilisation that relied more on magic and magical weapons rather than on human prowess and wisdom, Rāma belongs to a comparatively well-developed civilisation. Although according to the law of primogeniture, Rāma was bound to become the heir-apparent, and although it was Kaikeyī's intrigue and Daśaratha's dotage that brought about his misery, Rāma did not assert himself and fight for his rightful place not because he lacked strength and courage but because he was an obedient and dutiful son who was ever mindful of his father's honour. As for his physical prowess, Vālmīki says that Viśvāmitra had so much confidence in it that he took him to his hermitage where he was frequently tormented and his sacrifices interrupted by the uncouth Rākṣasas. Even as a boy of fifteen, Rāma had the strength and courage not only to quell the Rākṣasas but also to bend and break the bow of Śiva which was brought before him by about five thousand men. Everybody present in Mithila, King Janaka's capital, was astounded by Rāma's strength. In short, he won his bride by a display of his superhuman prowess.

Whereas Peter's position implies that Vālmīki was an inferior artist incapable of constructing a well-structured plot, Srinivasa Sastri seems to argue that Vālmīki's characterisation of Rāma lacks psychological insight. For instance, he says that the character of Rāma is inconsistent. He argues that Rāma “sometimes moved on one level and sometimes on another,” and then tries to gloss over Rāma's supposed misbehaviour by saying that “we all know from experience that neither the best nor the lowest amongst us, neither men nor women, neither Westerners nor Easterners, none who is human, is able to occupy one level of thought, one level of action, and one level of function; we go up sometimes when we are in good moods, receptive of ethical notions, conscious of our duties …” The implication of this passage is that Rāma is a human being like us, he is a man of moods; and that when his mood brought him to a low level of action, he was not receptive of ethical notions, and conscious of his duties. This is by far the sharpest criticism ever levelled against the integrity of Rāma as a heroic character. Srinivasa Sastri then makes a futile attempt at defending Rāma. “But the point … is (that) … there is nothing wrong about it, nothing blasphemous … of this thought—that occasionally we do find that Sri Rāma did and said things which perhaps his own higher nature did not approve. It is not easy for us to say why he did these things, how he came to do them and how far they must be ascribed to defects in his character.” Nevertheless, argues Sastri, these defects do not in the least diminish the splendour and “sublimity of Rāma's character.”

To me it appears that the problem of characterisation of Rāma is intimately bound up with the process of divinization. Any attempt to regard him as an avatār of Viṣnu will do irreparable damage not only to the character of Rāma, exposing his motives to serious ethical problems, but also our sense of righteousness. The only way out from this dilemma is to say that Rāma is only a man, who was afflicted with all the scourges to which this species is open. But Rāma could be regarded as the ideal Hindu military hero: courageous, benevolent, generous, tactful, loving and lovable. Thus, I feel that Rāma's welcoming Vibhīṣana and giving him asylum against the wish of Lakṣmana should be regarded not as an act of charity to an enemy but as an example of supreme military tact. Rāma's declaration that “No man shall seek my protection in vain. He may be wicked, he may be undeserving, he may even be my bitterest enemy, Rāvana himself. But if he comes to me in a friendly and submissive spirit, I will not turn back,” should be treated as a rhetorical exclamation.

After all, Vibhīṣana did not come to Rāma as an enemy. And it requires only the astuteness of a military strategist to know the importance of a friend among the enemies. But Rāma is essentially humane. This can be seen from the treatment he meted out to Rāvana both immediately before and after the latter's death. To Vibhīṣana who was not willing to perform the funeral obsequies of his elder brother, Rāma says: “No Vibhīṣana, you are wrong. I did not kill an ignoble man in battle. Rāvana was a great warrior; he was a great man; he was a great king and greatly he died. Perform his obsequies according to the prescribed Śastra. And you will attain merit.”

We have seen that Vālmīki represented Rāma as an ideal man and as an ideal king. That he is an ideal military hero is made clear by the alliances he made with the Vānerās and the Rākṣasas. As a man he is “crowned with qualities, endued with prowess, knowing duty, and grateful, and truthful, and firm in vow.” As a king, he is learned, knowing the function of society and the art of pleasing his subjects. Nārada regards him as great because of his implicit obedience to his father. His nobility, it is said, shines through his calm acceptance of his father's cruel decree. He persuaded Kaushalyā, Lakṣmana and Sītā to accept the banishment unquestioningly.

At this time Lakṣmana suggests that they should imprison Daśaratha, the old dotard, who forsook his eldest son and the traditional law of succession through primogeniture for the sake of his favourite queen, a suggestion which was welcomed by Kausalyā. C. V. Vaidya terms this suggestion ‘dishonourable’, and its acceptance by Kausalyā, ‘criminal’. The suggestion seems to be ‘dishonourable’ and ‘criminal’ because C. V. Vaidya is unable to brook the idea of a son trying to imprison his father, while the mother aids and abets him in it. In my opinion, there is nothing ‘dishonourable’ in the suggestion. We have almost a similar situation in the Mahābhārata. It tells us that by rightful succession the kingdom belonged to the Pāndavas, but the covetous Kauravas usurped the land by using foul means. At last a great battle became unavoidable. Before the war started, however, Arjuna was seized of a moral dilemma: to fight, since he would be killing “teachers, fathers, sons as well as grandfathers, maternal uncles, fathers-in-law, grandsons, brothers-in-law and other relatives.” (Bhagavad Gitā I.34). He does not want to slay them “not even for the sake of domination over the three worlds” (I.35) not only because kingdom and enjoyment are of no avail to him (I.32) but also because “sin only will accrue to us by slaying these desperadoes.” (I.36)

Lord Krṣna characterizes Arjuna's frame of mind as “unmanly, heaven-barring and shameful” (II.2). He, then, elaborates the monistic metaphysics that there is but only One Ātman which has emanated itself into the many. This One Ātman alone is imperishable and immortal. “Nor I, nor you, nor any of these ruling princes was ever non-existent before; nor is it that we shall cease to be in the future” (II.12). Only Ātman is Real, is Existence. All else is māyā, appearance. Ātman is neither born nor dies. “He who holds Ātman slayer and he who considers it as the slain, both of them are ignorant. It slays not, nor is It slain” (II.19). He further admonishes Arjuna saying that there should be “nothing more welcome to a Kṣatriya than righteous war” (II.31) and that to refuse to wage a righteous war is to forfeit one's duty and honour as Kṣatriya and thus to incur sin” (II.33). So saying the Lord asked him to plunge into the war, because no one is an enemy and no one is a kinsman. All that is required is to treat pain and pleasure alike and then fight. At length Arjuna did fight the battle against his own kinsmen, because it was a righteous war.

The teaching of Lord Krṣna makes it clear that it would have been more honourable and dutiful on the part of Rāma had he fought against his father. “Why then did he not fight?” is a question that needs an urgent answer. I. S. Peter points out that according to Lakṣmana, “Rāma was adopting a virtuous attitude towards a course of action intended to deprive him of the kingdom”. However, says Peter, it never occurred to Rāma that his father was wrong in exiling him to Danḍaka. Śatrughna also argued that since the King was following an unrighteous course of action through the intrigue of a woman, he should have been checked at the very outset. Vālmīki also does not fail to indicate that Dásaratha in yielding to his wife was doing injustice to his eldest son. Besides, Rāma himself was convinced that his father had treated him unjustly.

If he was a man of action, Rāma should have either asserted his conviction, as Cordelia does in King Lear, or “taken up arms, as suggested by Lakṣmana, against his father, and secured the kingdom for himself,” argues Peter.

It is said that Rāma obeyed his father because he wanted to redeem his father who had made a promise of two boons to Kaikeyī. Now it is argued that a pledge whether good or bad must be redeemed, failing which one can never hope to enter heaven. Apparently, the argument sounds innocent. But I have my reservation. Should a promise, good or bad, be redeemed irrespective of the circumstance under which it was made?

Another reason given by Rāma for his inaction is that he and Kaikeyī are only instruments of Destiny, the working of which no creature may avert. It was Destiny that made Kaikeyī revolt against her husband; it was Destiny that was responsible for Kausalyā's separation from her son; Destiny too was responsible for Daśaratha's sufferings. Daśaratha had killed an ascetic boy mistaking him for a wild animal. He was cursed by the boy's aged parents that he too would die through grief for his son. “Kausalyā also considered that her son's banishment was due to her own actions. She had cut off the paps of kine and prevented their calves from drinking milk. She was, therefore, deprived of her son as a punishment for her sinful deeds. Sītā reconciled herself to her lot, because when she was a girl, an ascetic woman had informed her mother of her future abode in the forest. She later lamented that for having abstained from choice gifts in a previous birth she had to sorrow for her misfortunes in life.” What is interesting to note is that Daśaratha, Kausalyā and Sītā are all mortal human beings. They are therefore subject to the law of karma.

Now I. S. Peter argues that the Rāma of the banishment episode is inactive and unheroic, because he is incapacitated by his belief in Destiny. The crux of Peter's argument is that the gospel of karma is a gospel of inaction, because it takes away man's free will. Now, in his book, The Concept of Dharma in Vālmīki's Rāmāyana (Munshi Ram Manoharlal: New Delhi, 1965) Benjamin Khan violently disputes the argument that karma leaves little room for free will. He argues that “Vālmīki through Lakṣmana denies this rigid doctrine … It has been shown that Vālmīki's treatment makes us discard such a doctrine as Fate.”

It is true that Lakṣmana says that only the tremulous, weak and the powerless follow the track of Destiny and that mighty heroes pay no heed to it. Of course, Lakṣmana is entirely right when he argues that great heroes are masters of their own Destiny. That this has been so is also proved by Carlyle in his On Heroes and Hero Worship. Lakṣmana's position was accepted by Bharata when he refused to be crowned and by Sītā when she refused to live with the suspicious Rāma and preferred death instead. That the human will is free is the greatest truth that we learn from the lives of Bharata, Sītā and Lakṣmana.

Rāma is a suffering hero. C. V. Vaidya says that the Rāmāyana “delineates the pleasures and the pains of an imaginary sublime life.” Regarding the characterization of Rāma, he says that the leading trait in his character is “a pathos which is seldom found in any invented or real story.” He feels that the “vein of noble suffering” which runs through Rāma's life, does not rouse our pity and fear, but “our admiration mixed with a feeling of pain.”

I have stated earlier that every ideal is sublime in conception and becomes heroic when executed. Thus, Rāma stands for the ideal of honour. Says he to Sītā: “Here art thou, O Sītā, conquered back from my enemy. I have done what a brave man ought to do and have together wiped off my enemy and my disgrace. I have fulfilled my vow and rescued thee from confinement. … But remember all this was done in order to vindicate my honour and the honour of the great sun-race.” Bharata stands for righteousness, integrity and self-surrender; Lakṣmana stands for service with love and devotion; Sītā is by far the noblest character in Vālmīki's epic. She is the ideal wife with absolute faith and devotion in her husband. She suffered when he suffered; but she saw no happiness in this life. She is truly tragic and heroic. It must be noted that it was the suffering of the female curlew bird that produced the intense emotion in the poet which expressed itself in the form of an imprecation. The poet was able immediately to see the parallel between the sufferings of the bird and those of Sītā, now separated from her husband and living with him in his hermitage. If this account of the origin of the poem is correct, then Vālmīki must be a contemporary of Sītā. As such, it is Sītā's sufferings that make the Rāmāyana sublimely spiritual. And that is the reason why the Rāmāyana is able to capture the hearts of millions generation after generation.