Ramayana Distortions

Ramayana Distortions

There are many Ramayanas or stories of the life of Rama, the son of Dashrath and Kausalya. In each there are tales of Hanuman, a monkeyman who was from tribes of half monkey half human species. In the time of Rama these people lived near Ayodhya the place where Rama was established as a king.

The original Ramayana is believed to be the oldest which is written in Sanskrit. It is written in a Sanskrit which is older than what we get in the Mahabharata. This is like reading a literature in English which was written in the 1600s and then reading a literature which was written a year ago. Both are in English and yet we can honestly tell that one is in Old English.

The original Ramayana is attributed to Valmiki who was a yogi living near to Ayodhya. He was a son (descendant) of Pracetas one of the original people according to the Vedic rendition of Indian history. The original people were sons of Brahma, a supernatural deity. Valmiki was inspired by the deity to write the literature of the history of Rama.

There are many stories about Valmiki. There is one which cites that he was an illiterate robber and that he was tricked to repeat the name of holy name of Rama by Narada who instructed him to say mara instead of rama where eventually mara converts into rama because one syllable follows the other. However, this story is not supported by the Valmiki Ramayana.

In this article, I wish to ask readers to understand that anything which is given as being the Ramayana and which is inconsistent with what is in the Valmiki Ramayana should not be used because if it is inconsistent with the Valmiki Ramayana, it is invalid or the Valmiki text is itself in question which causes a dilemma.

If Valmiki Ramayana is invalid then all other Ramayanas are invalid because the other tales are based in part or full on Valmiki’s writing.

If we accept Valmiki, then anyone who wrote anything which is inconsistent with his story cannot be accepted unless we agree to warp the tale. Most people feel that Tulsie Das is an incarnation of Valmiki and Tulsie’s book, the Ram Charita Manas indicated that to be a fact. If anyone accepts this, it would mean that in the life as Valmiki when this person lived in the time of Rama and fostered Rama’s wife and taught Rama’s son, this person was not as enlightened and wrote erroneous information which he corrected when he took the birth as Valmiki. Such a proposal is preposterous.

The most read version of the Ramayana, besides Valmiki’s Sanskrit text is the Ram Charita Manas or the lake of events of Rama. This was produced by Tulsie Das. It has many deviations from Valmiki. As far as I am concerned, one should read Valmiki first. Then if one is interested to check the other versions do so one by one with the understanding that other writers had motives to change Valmiki for one reason or the other.

The problem with the Valmiki version is that it is a rough shod, downright cruel story which is hard to accept through and through. Hence, we can understand why it became necessary to twist the story and change some of its events. Over the years I had person after person who heard of stories of Rama from the Ram Charita Manas reject the Ramayana of Valmiki because the Rama they accepted in Tulsie’s literature was different to the Rama portrayed by Valmiki. And the same goes for other Ramayana like for instance there is one by Morari Bapu.

For instance, in the Valmiki version, Rama’s wife, a princess name Sita (See-Taa) was kidnapped. This happened to her because she did not comply with Rama’s advice. She insulted and refused good advice from Rama’s brother who was posted as a guard to protect her from magicians in a remote forest.

Later after Sita was kidnapped, Rama fought a war with her kidnapper. After defeating the kidnapper, Rama called for the release of Sita who was held captive in a palace garden. However, when she approached him, Rama made it clear that he would not accept her by his side and that she could go wherever it suited her except for by his side.

Again, later when Rama and Sita were reunited and they became King and Queen of Ayodhya, Sita became pregnant. In that condition, Rama banished her from the city of Ayodhya. He did this on the pretext that a citizen criticized him for being with a woman who was with another man.

These are cruel instances in the Ramayana of Valmiki, which Tulsie Das did not like and so he adjusted the story to either omit these instances or to change them to make Rama’s behavior palatable.

This rewriting is however not acceptable in my opinion. In fact, it is violent maneuver because it caused through the years, devotees of Rama who are pseudo devotees only. These people admire a Rama who is not the Rama who lived in the time of Valmiki.

There were also some other changes in the various Ramayana. One problem which arose in the evolution of the rendering of Rama is that there is a book called the Yoga Vashishtha. This text is attributed to Valmiki. Whether he wrote it or not is still contended. However regardless, it is factual that in the Valmiki Ramayana, Vashishtha was one of the guru-priests of the Raghu dynasty of which Rama was a part.

In the Valmiki text, there is a part which Rama is banished to the forest. Sita and Lakshman, his brother, goes with him. He stayed a short time near Ayodhya and one of his brothers named Bharata, proceed to that place to convince Rama to return the Ayodhya and cancel the banishment order.

Bharat tried to convince Rama to breach the banishment order but Rama was determined to comply with the exile command. Two leading guru-priest Jabali and Vashishtha tried to convince Rama but Rama rejected their philosophy.

However, in the Yoga Vashishtha, Vashishtha Muni taught Rama about the absolute nature of the self. This was in Rama’s youth. Rama did not accept every aspect of that philosophy however. When in the presence of Vashishtha, Jabali argued on the basis of the Yoga Vashishtha for Rama to disconnect from the order of his father and realize that he was an independent entity, Rama rejected the proposals. He refused to apply their philosophy.

Today however some advaita vedantists broadcast the Yoga Vashishtha as the ultimate thesis on self-realization. Some of these exponents of advaita vedanta cite every Ramayana except Valmiki. Some of them give stories which they say are from the Ramayana of Valmiki but which are not in that text.

Hanuman

In relation to Hanuman he made his debut in the Valmiki Ramayana as an agent of a monkeyman named Sugriva. Rama and Lakshman crossed into an area of the territory which was dominated by Sugriva’s people. Sugriva was hiding in that place from his brother King Bali. Being afraid that perhaps Rama and Lakshman were sent by Bali to dispose of him, Sugriva sent Hanuman to interrogate the strangers, Rama and Lakshman.

When Hanuman first spoke to them, he did so in fluent Sanskrit which surprised Rama who alerted Lakshman about it, because it was unusually for a monkeyman to speak the language coherently.

However, this shows that in the Valmiki Ramayana, Hanuman was not a god, demigod, deity or incarnation of Shiva. He was merely the agent of a banished monkeyman prince named Sugriva.

Later in the text Hanuman proved his worth when he jumped from the southern tip of India to an island out in the sea. He was circumstantially given the task by some other monkey men and bearmen because he was known to be the one who could jump the furthest. All the moneymen could jump long distances but Hanuman was the best in this feat. It is not that he was the only one who could leap but he excelled the others.

When he reached the island of Lanka, he found Sita, Rama’s wife who was kidnaped by the King of the island. He asked her to jump on his shoulders so that he could take her back to India and to Rama but she refused explaining that he was a monkeyman and was unfamiliar with human morality which prohibited her from being in touch in any way with any other male besides Rama.

There are many other incidences but in none of these is Hanuman explained as a god, demigod, deity or incarnation of Shiva.

There is no statement I read where he was familiar with the Yoga Vashishtha or with advaita Vedanta. There is no verse where he compared himself to Rama in any way. There is no statement about him being one with Rama.

But this does not mean that another Ramayana lacks these statements. It is only that the Valmiki rendition does not have it. Hanuman is not a god in the Valmiki rendering. He is not a philosopher. In fact, after finding Sita in Lanka, Hanuman with some other monkeys who were sent to the South to find Rama’s wife, went back to their habitat, Kishkindya, and on the way there indulged in liquors and hooliganism, all because they were happy and merry because of locating Sita.

When they were sent to find her, the captain of the troops was not Hanuman. It was Angada who was a nephew of Sugriva, Hanuman’s boss.